Today's Liberal News

Ralph Nader on Corporate Crime, Holding Boeing Accountable for 737 MAX Deaths & Biden’s First Weeks

Legendary consumer advocate Ralph Nader says the U.S. is experiencing a “corporate crime wave,” and that the Trump administration’s $2.5 billion settlement with Boeing over the manufacturer’s faulty 737 MAX jets amounts to a “slap on the wrist.” Boeing’s faulty planes were involved in two fatal crashes that killed 346 people in 2018 and 2019, including Nader’s 24-year-old grandniece Samya Stumo.

Where Are the Witnesses? Ralph Nader Says Democrats’ Impeachment Case Is “Prescription for Defeat”

As the historic Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump continues, we speak with longtime consumer advocate, corporate critic and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader, who says Democrats have set themselves up for defeat by rushing proceedings and failing to call witnesses — including Trump himself. “The narrow approach of the articles of impeachment keep the Democrats from having a full hand,” says Nader.

You’ve seen the byline for a year. Now meet the 2021 Community Contributors Team!

I should have written this a year ago. 

As 2020 began, I was stumbling into my new role in Daily Kos management, with eyes that were always damp after a devastating loss weeks earlier. I was building a new department even as my stomach never quite calmed, thanks to a looming pandemic. We’d finally impeached the motherfucker, to quote a certain Michigan congresswoman, and the primaries were raging.

Biden administration ends Republican war on Medicaid enrollees once and for all

The Biden administration is ending Medicaid work requirements the previous occupiers of the executive branch foisted on the nation’s working poor. Two weeks ago, President Joe Biden signed an executive order instructing officials at the Department of Health and Human Services to remove barriers to Medicaid, and that’s just what they are doing.

A whole bunch of reactions to the Senate impeachment vote

Anger. Rage. Disgust. That is the vibe after 43 cowards and zealots within the Party of Trump opted not to convict their Dear Leader for inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6 in his historical second impeachment. Seven Republicans—a record-breaking 14% of the caucus—did vote “Guilty,” but it wasn’t enough to protect the nation from four more years of Trump rallies full of emboldened devotees.

It’ll Do

In 1955, a junior United States senator named John F. Kennedy published Profiles in Courage, a collection of short essays about eight of his predecessors who had risked their careers for their ideals over the previous 150 years.In one single day in 2021, that many senators showed courage worth enduring historical honor. Seven were Republicans: Richard Burr, Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse, and Pat Toomey.

Republicans won’t hold members of their own party accountable, so we have to

Senate Republicans have now acquitted Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial.

Thanks to the Senate’s six-year terms, many of the Republicans who set aside their oaths to protect the Constitution in favor of protecting their lord and master, Donald Trump, won’t be on the ballot next year. But quite a few of them will be, and several hold very vulnerable seats. They must face a reckoning for their party’s failure to hold a dangerous renegade president accountable.

Listen: A Forever Pandemic

Vaccine shortages frustrate countries around the world. The lines for vaccines are illogical. But residents of wealthy nations will likely get access to doses in the coming months. It may be much longer for the rest of the world—and, as epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves explains on the podcast Social Distance, that affects us all and should prompt dramatic action.

The Unsettling Message of Judas and the Black Messiah

“The Black Panthers are the single greatest threat to our national security. Our counterintelligence program must prevent the rise of a Black messiah from among their midst.” And so begins Judas and the Black Messiah, with an ominous speech from the FBI director J. Edgar Hoover (played by Martin Sheen) in 1968. The film, which debuted yesterday in theaters and on HBO Max, is part crime thriller, part civil-rights historical drama.

Taylor Swift Misses the Old Taylor Swift, Too

When Taylor Swift, the pandemic’s most productive pop star, announced that she’d be re-recording her albums in a push for ownership over her work, the venture sounded risky. Swift cast her decision as both a personal vendetta against the music executive Scooter Braun and a moralistic stand against the industry’s treatment of artists. But at face value, re-recordings seem to offer little to look forward to for listeners.