Today's Liberal News

Wellness for Activists: The amazing (science-backed) benefits of practicing kindness

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Welcome to my weekly feature covering ways us activists can lead healthier lives. For a full explanation check out the inaugural edition here, but in short, most of us do a terrible job of taking care of our minds and bodies. This is a science-based exploration of how to change that, so we can be around for many years of fruitful activism. 

I was a sullen, tortured teenager, bitter and angry at the world, as teens often are.

Six dead in Georgia poultry plant liquid nitrogen leak, this week in the war on workers

Six people are dead after a liquid nitrogen leak at a Georgia poultry plant and 11 others were hospitalized, with at least three in critical condition. Two of the people killed were Mexican citizens, and those injured included at least four firefighters.

“When leaked into the air, liquid nitrogen vaporizes into an odorless gas that’s capable of displacing oxygen,” the Associated Press explains.

They Called for Help. They’d Always Regret It.

Photographs by Arlene Mejorado and Carlos ChavarríaWhen Antonietta Zuñiga woke up to smoke pouring through her bedroom window, everything she had learned about how to care for her grandson completely left her mind. It was November 2019, in the Los Angeles County city of Pico Rivera. Antonietta’s grandson, Carlos Zuñiga Jr., is schizophrenic; she had the number for ACCESS, L.A. County’s mental-health hotline, taped to her fridge for moments precisely like these.

The Explosive Song That Liberated Tina Turner

Jack Robinson / Hulton Archive / GettyBefore a concert one night in 1968, shortly prior to recording the song that would launch her into superstardom, Tina Turner swallowed sleeping pills and lay down to die. “People backstage noticed something was very wrong with me and rushed me to the hospital, which saved my life,” she writes in her book Happiness Becomes You, published in the fall. “At first I was disappointed when I woke up and realized I was still alive.

Only Accountability Will Allow the U.S. to Move Forward

A white mob stormed government offices in an effort to overthrow the duly elected leadership, overwhelming the local police and killing several officers in a violent clash.This description is not only of the insurrection in Washington, D.C., on January 6, but of the Battle of Liberty Place in New Orleans, on September 14, 1874.

The Government Didn’t Foresee How Facebook Would Behave

The U.S. government almost never jumps at its first chance to confront an emerging monopoly. But regulators have a long history of getting it right the second time. Standard Oil controlled America’s petroleum market for years before the Justice Department sued the company under the Sherman Antitrust Act; the federal government helped enshrine AT&T’s telephone monopoly for decades before deciding to break up “Ma Bell.

Why Are There No Biographies of Xi Jinping?

“Living in China is confusing now,” the novelist Yan Lianke said, “because it can feel like being in North Korea and the United States at the same time.” I recall smiling and nodding when he made the remark, during a roundtable discussion at Duke University’s campus outside Shanghai three years ago. In one brief sentence, he captured just how special and strange China can seem—a country that has both gulags and Gap stores.

30 Things Donald Trump Did as President You Might Have Missed

Trump’s presidency may be best remembered for its cataclysmic end. But his four years as president also changed real American policy in lasting ways, just more quietly. We asked POLITICO’s best-in-class policy reporters to recap some of the ways Trump changed the country while in office, for better or worse.

Exposed: Proud Boys Hate Group Leader Enrique Tarrio Was “Prolific” FBI & Police Informant

We speak with Reuters investigative journalist Aram Roston, who has revealed a leader of the extremist hate group the Proud Boys, which played a key role in the Capitol riot on January 6, has a prolific history of cooperating with law enforcement. Court records show Enrique Tarrio was an FBI and police informant in Florida who went undercover in multiple drug and illegal gambling investigations after he was arrested in 2012.

Share the Technology: Experts Say We Must End Big Pharma Monopoly on COVID Vaccine Supply & Price

As rich countries race to roll out their vaccination programs, leaders in the Global South and global health advocates are increasingly decrying vaccine hoarding that has pushed poorer countries to the back of the line during the pandemic. Some rich countries have secured enough COVID-19 vaccines to inoculate their populations several times over, while poorer countries struggle to secure enough doses, almost certainly prolonging the pandemic by months or even years.