Today's Liberal News

The Dark Side of Box Tops for Education

For many young adults and their parents, the words box tops evoke fond memories of cutting out cardboard rectangles and stuffing them into Ziploc bags to carry to school. The Box Tops for Education program, founded in 1996, is a General Mills initiative that allows families to redeem labels from eligible food and household products for 10-cent contributions to their schools. Over the past 25 years, the program has given nearly $1 billion to schools nationwide.

You Probably Have an Asymptomatic Infection Right Now

One of the most perplexing and enduring mysteries of the pandemic is also one of the most fundamental questions about viruses. How can the same virus that kills so many go entirely unnoticed in others?The mystery is hardly unique to COVID-19. SARS, MERS, influenza, Ebola, dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya, West Nile, Lassa, Japanese encephalitis, Epstein-Barr, and polio can all be deadly in one person but asymptomatic in the next.

“This Agreement Protects Jobs”: Four Unions at Rutgers University Reach Historic Deal to End Layoffs

After a year of layoffs, cuts and austerity, the faculty and staff of four unions at Rutgers University have voted in support of an unusual and pioneering agreement to protect jobs and guarantee raises after the school declared a fiscal emergency as a result of the pandemic. A key part of the deal is an agreement by the professors to do “work share” and take a slight cut in hours for a few months in order to save the jobs of other lower-paid workers.

Retired Black NYPD Detective: Derek Chauvin Trial Highlights “Race-Based” Police Brutality Problem

This week at the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, numerous members of the Minneapolis Police Department have taken the stand and testified that Chauvin violated policy by kneeling on Floyd’s neck for nine-and-a-half minutes, and the emergency room doctor who tried to save Floyd’s life said his chances of living would have been higher if CPR had been administered sooner.

The Crime Drama That Will Enthrall and Repel You

Writing about Titus Andronicus in 1948, the scholar John Dover Wilson bemoaned how Shakespeare’s bloodiest play “seems to jolt and bump along like some broken-down cart, laden with bleeding corpses from an Elizabethan scaffold, and driven by an executioner from Bedlam.” You couldn’t say the same for Gangs of London.

MLK Opposed “Poverty, Racism & Militarism” in Speech One Year Before His Assassination 53 Years Ago

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated 53 years ago, on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, at the age of 39. While Dr. King is primarily remembered as a civil rights leader, he also championed the cause of the poor, organized the Poor People’s Campaign to address issues of economic justice, and was a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy and the Vietnam War.

Study indicates the Jan. 6 riots were motivated by racism and white resentment, not ‘election theft’

The first major comprehensive study of those arrested for participation in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol strongly indicates that the true motivation of these rioters was not some quasi-patriotic reaction to Donald Trump’s fanciful assertions of election fraud. Rather, the root cause underlying that day of violence boils down to out-and-out racism by insecure whites, alarmed about the prevalence of darker-skinned Americans in their hometown environments.

The new ‘flex’ is showing off your vaccination card, Twitter says

As Americans get vaccinated in record numbers nationwide, people are taking to social media to share that they have been vaccinated. To date, over 100 million Americans have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. While some are posting selfies or pictures of themselves getting the shot, others are posting their vaccination cards after getting one or both doses. Social media users are calling this the new “flex” or way to show off.

ICE paying big bucks for empty beds adds to case for ending private prison contracts altogether

The number of people locked up in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention is right now at its lowest in two decades. That’s a good thing. But due to very lucrative agreements, private prisons contracted by the federal government to detain immigrants are getting paid for thousands of empty beds anyway. “At the median rate of $75 per bed, the estimated daily cost to taxpayers for these empty beds is $1.34 million per day,” NPR reports.

Louisiana Republican wants to make trans youth get parental approval for any gender-affirming care

Just a few months into 2021, we’ve already seen Republicans push dozens of anti-trans bills across the nation. Some bills, as Daily Kos has covered, center on keeping trans girls out of girls’ sports, even beginning as early as kindergarten. Other bills aim to prevent transgender and nonbinary folks from updating their birth certificates. And, in yet another area, some legislation seeks to bar transgender youth from receiving gender-affirming medical care.