Today's Liberal News

News Roundup: Gaetz mocks sex trafficking allegations; America has a fascism problem

In the news today: Never bet that Rep. Matt Gaetz can’t become more repulsive: You will always, always lose. Political pundits and journalists need to identify the post-Trump Republican Party as the anti-democratic, propaganda-peddling fascist movement it is. Republican governors are slashing pandemic unemployment aid, but the reasons they’re using to do it have more to do with racist theories than pandemic realities.

Nuts & Bolts: Inside a Democratic campaign—using digital meeting translation opportunities

This Sunday we’re going to delve into how to make your campaign and party more inclusive through your digital meetings. If you’ve missed out, you can catch up any time: Just visit our group or follow the Nuts & Bolts Guide. Every week I try to tackle issues I’ve been asked about. With the help of other campaign workers and notes, we address how to improve and build better campaigns, or explain issues that impact our party.

Proud Boys leader to former guy: ‘F*ck you Trump. You left us on the battlefield bloody and alone’

Pat yourself on the back if you sized Donald Trump up in two minutes, like a normal person. You could have instead been Ethan Nordean, who wasted years of his life and squandered his precious freedom for a guy who’d likely feed him to alligators—or a marginally more reptilian creature such as Roger Stone—if he ever showed up at one of his golf courses.

The New ‘Right Stuff’ Is Money and Luck

In a strip mall just off Houston’s NASA Parkway is a restaurant called Frenchie’s Italian Cuisine. You wouldn’t know it from the unassuming beige storefront, but inside, Frenchie’s looks like a museum. The walls are covered in framed pictures of smiling astronauts, in their blue jumpsuits and puffy spacesuits, holding up bubble helmets and model spaceships.

‘A Wishing So Strong That There Are Moments She Nearly Believes It’

Editor’s Note: Read Morgan Thomas’s new short story, “Bump.” “Bump” is a new short story by Morgan Thomas. To mark the story’s publication in The Atlantic, Thomas and Amy Weiss-Meyer, a deputy managing editor at the magazine, discussed the story over email. Their conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.Amy Weiss-Meyer: “Bump” begins with a confrontation of sorts, addressed “to those who accuse me of immoderate desire.

The Coal Cellar

Electricity was late and expensive
Coming to Appalachia
Knoxville especially so
Twice a month the coal
Man would come to fill the cellar
For warmth and sometimes food
And what I loved most was the fireplace
Where Grandmother and Grandpapa would sit
Near to tell stories but
Oak Ridge came for the war
Or maybe the war came for Oak Ridge
And atomic energy replaced coal
And the cellar became a home for mice
And maybe some insects that we never
Needed to bother since they didn’t bother usOne su

Bump

Editor’s Note: Read an interview with Morgan Thomas about their writing process. This story was published online on May 16, 2021.To those who accuse me of immoderate desire, I say look at the oil executives. Look at the Gold Rush. Look at all the women who want a ring and romance and lifelong commitment, and then look again at me.

America Will Have to Reckon With Its Cynicism About Afghanistan

Very few Americans are allowing themselves to feel anything about Afghanistan anymore. A triple bombing in Kabul left 80 people, many of them schoolgirls, dead last week. In photographs, you see the physical devastation of the bombing—a crater, twisted metal, gouged walls—but the more visceral devastation is in the faces of family members, the contorted, grief-stricken expressions of mothers and fathers at the gates of the school as they search for their daughters.