Today's Liberal News

News Roundup: Republicans vow to block Biden (again); corporate backlash; Capitol denialism

In today’s policy and politics news, a Democratic president has proposed a thing and Republicans are vowing to oppose that thing. Georgia Republicans are still reeling over the corporate backlash to their newest voter suppression law. A new poll shows that over half of Republican voters believe Republican false claims that the election was “stolen” from Trump, and almost that many falsely believe the attempted insurrection at the U.S.

Here’s what happens when a developed nation lets in ‘too many’ immigrants

The acclaimed science fiction writer and author of the Dune series of novels, Frank Herbert, memorably wrote that “Fear is the mind-killer.”  Since the 1950s the Republican Party in this country has operated under a similar assumption, with the politics of fear as its modus operandi to achieving and consolidating political power.

Progressives look to maintain long-held grip on Wisconsin’s top education post in Tuesday election

Voters in the Badger State will select their next chief education official on Tuesday in an open-seat contest that pits Pecatonica School District Superintendent Jill Underly against former Brown Deer School District Superintendent Deborah Kerr.

The post is open because the current incumbent, Carolyn Stanford Taylor, decided not to run for election; Stanford Taylor was appointed to the position in 2019 by Democratic Gov.

Military voters have had enough of the GOP

While the Republican Party continues to devolve into the party of white supremacists, authoritarian fascists, and conspiracy theorists, they are losing their grip on many of the voting blocs they have always counted on to keep them in power. Several demographic groups are moving away from the Republicans, such as with older voters and suburbanites. Other blocs, like Asian Americans, have been slowly moving away for two decades.

Texas lawmakers look to dodge blackout responsibility with attacks on state solar and wind plants

It’s been a month and change since massive Texas blackouts caused by cold weather caused chaos, widespread property damage, and deaths, which has been enough time for Texas Republicans to move on from incoherent claims about it all being caused by windmills to incoherent legislative proposals aimed at deflecting attention from the state’s own screw-ups while once again sticking it to any energy company not chained to the state’s all-powerful fossil fuel industry.

April Blooms: Spring Is on the Way

Spring started about two weeks ago, and the Northern Hemisphere has begun to warm, with flowers and trees in bloom. Gathered here today, a small collection of images from the past few weeks from North America, Asia, and Europe, of tulips, sunshine, and cherry blossoms—surely signs of warmer days to come.

The Urgency of Vaccinating Kids

Kim Hagood hates needles. But as a middle-aged adult with chronic conditions, she got vaccinated against COVID-19 without delay. “I never thought I’d be so excited to get a shot,” she told me, giddily, hours before her appointment. A single mother in Trussville, Alabama, Hagood is less certain about vaccinating her 10-year-old son when the time comes.

The Biggest Party of 2021 Is About to Start

A lot can change in 17 years. The last time the cicadas were here, the virus behind the SARS outbreak had finally retreated. George W. Bush was campaigning for his second presidential term, and Myspace had commenced its meteoric rise. Tobey Maguire was still the reigning Spider-Man.

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.

Ethiopia Accused of Using Rape as a Weapon of War in Tigray as New Evidence Emerges of Massacres

We get an update on how the Ethiopian government has announced Eritrean forces are withdrawing from the Tigray region in northern Ethiopia, where harrowing witness accounts have emerged of Eritrean soldiers killing Tigrayan men and boys and rape being used as weapon of war by Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers. Eritrea entered the Tigray region to support Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s military offensive in November targeting the Tigray People’s Liberation Front.

9 Pieces of Advice to Help You See Relationships More Clearly

Editor’s Note: With Lori Gottlieb on book leave, Rebecca J. Rosen, the editor of “Dear Therapist,” begins another month as The Atlantic’s “Dear Therapist” archivist, pointing readers to some of Lori’s most beloved columns. For this month’s look-back at Dear Therapist columns, I’ve decided to turn not to a specific theme, but to a handful of columns that have been reader favorites over the years.Rereading them, I understand why.

The Awful Wisdom of the Hostage

Gérard DuBois
This article was published online on April 5, 2021.In October 2012, in the second year of the Syrian civil war, a 44-year-old freelance journalist named Theo Padnos crossed from Turkey into Syria with two young men he thought were his friends. Padnos made friends easily and indiscriminately: In 2006, he was in Yemen researching a book about foreign converts on the path of jihad, and he showed me around when I arrived in the country.