Today's Liberal News

News Roundup: Republicans to punish Cheney for opposing election hoax; Arizona ‘audit’ continues

In the news today: House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy sets Wednesday vote to remove Rep. Liz Cheney from leadership due to Cheney’s “relitigating” of whether or not Republicans should continue to promote election hoaxes claiming the last presidential election to have been “stolen.” Not considered “relitigating” the election: the ongoing Arizona Republican election “audit” examining ballots for Asian “bamboo fibers.

Corporate PAC webinar gives advice on defending donations to hoax-promoting lawmakers

At Popular Information, Judd Legum obtained a copy of a webinar hosted by NABPAC (the trade association for corporate PACs) in which a Republican consultant described listening to member companies’ strategies for restarting cash donations to the Republicans, who voted on Jan. 6 to nullify state electoral votes recognizing Joe Biden as winner of the U.S. presidential election.

Ransomware and cybercrime are critical infrastructure issues

Last week it was revealed that Colonial Pipeline had been struck by a massive ransomware attack. Ransomware has one goal: to shut down the end user and demand money, often in the form of bitcoin, to pay for decryption codes. As cryptocurrency values rise and the ease of access to encryption tools grows on the dark web, ransomware has become a blight on American infrastructure.

Biden’s ‘Historic’ Funding of Black Colleges

The rich have grown richer and the poor poorer during the pandemic, and institutions of higher education have been no exception. Colleges that primarily serve students who are an unexpected expense away from leaving school bore the brunt of the crisis. Community-college enrollments were down 9.5 percent last fall; historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) saw a decline of 5 percent. Despite a year of record philanthropic giving, 2020 was financially devastating for many of them.

The Texas Republican Asking His Party To Just Stop

Will Hurd is the kind of politician who loves to find the middle ground. He spent six years as a Republican congressman from one of the most competitive districts in the country, a sprawling expanse that traces the southwest border of Texas along the Rio Grande. He’s got the jocular manner of a student-body president—which he was, at Texas A&M—and styles himself as a wonkish policy guy. “You said the magic word,” he told me cheerfully when I called him up recently.

Weaponizing Trump’s Big Lie: Ari Berman on GOP’s War on Democracy & Voting Rights

Extreme voting restrictions have advanced in several Republican-led states across the U.S., including in Florida, where Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has signed a sweeping voter suppression bill that will make it harder to vote by mail, limit ballot drop boxes, impose new voter ID requirements and criminalize giving food and water to voters waiting in line at polling places.

Afghanistan in Mourning After School Bombing in Kabul Kills 85, Mostly Hazara Shiite Girls

At least 85 people, mostly young girls, were killed in Afghanistan after several bomb blasts outside a school in the capital Kabul. Survivors said the bombs were timed to go off as the girls left school for the day. The neighborhood where the attack occurred is mostly populated by the minority Hazara Shia community, and the Afghan government blamed the Taliban, though the group denies responsibility. The massacre came one week after U.S.

“Ethnic Cleansing”: Amid Protests of Palestinian Evictions in Jerusalem, Israel Raids Al-Aqsa Mosque

Hundreds of Palestinians have been wounded after Israeli forces raided the Al-Aqsa Mosque for the second time in four days, with reports showing police fired rubber-coated bullets, stun grenades and tear gas at Palestinian worshipers. Palestinians have been staging weeks of protests to block Israel from evicting dozens of Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem to give their homes to Jewish settlers, which the United Nations has described as a possible war crime.

There’s a Perfect Number of Days to Work From Home, and It’s 2

Unless you’re extraordinarily wealthy (congrats on that), your experience of working through the pandemic has probably been miserable. If you’ve had to work in person, your days have been dangerous and precarious. If you’ve been able to work from home, you’ve had an enormous privilege. But devoid of choice and novelty, remote work has lost some of its romance for office workers who previously dreamed of ending their commute.

“The War on Nostalgia”

For so many Americans, “history isn’t the story of what happened; it is just the story they want to believe. It is not a public story we all share, but an intimate one, passed down like an heirloom, that shapes their sense of who they are. Confederate history is family history, history as a eulogy, in which loyalty takes precedence over truth.

On Substack, You Can Never Go Too Far

Normal people—with regular lives and real jobs—have soap operas and reality shows. People who are Extremely Online have Substack.Over the past few months, the PR travails of the newsletter start-up have become a reliable source of media gossip. Jude Doyle is leaving! Grace Lavery has joined! Oh man, Matt Yglesias shouldn’t have taken that advance; he’d have made far more money purely from subscriptions! Perhaps those names don’t mean anything to you.