Today's Liberal News

Listen: Coronavirus Mutations

After a new variant of the coronavirus spread throughout the United Kingdom, daily cases hit record levels and the prime minister ordered a national lockdown. Now more mutations from South Africa and Brazil have made headlines.

The Coronavirus Is Evolving Before Our Eyes

In the final, darkest days of the deadliest year in U.S. history, the world received ominous news of a mutation in the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. Scientists in the U.K. had identified a form of the virus that was spreading rapidly throughout the nation. Then, on January 4, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a lockdown that began almost immediately and will last until at least the middle of February.

Would You Patent the Sun? Polio Vaccine Inventor Jonas Salk’s Son Urges More Access to COVID Vaccine

The total number of deaths from COVID-19 in the U.S. is set to top 400,000 before Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20, but rollout of coronavirus vaccines has been slow, with many describing a vexing amount of red tape standing between them and the shot. We look at the development and distribution of another vaccine during the polio epidemic in the 1950s with Dr.

From Charlottesville to the Capitol: Trump Fueled Right-Wing Violence. It May Soon Get Even Worse

As security is ramped up in Washington, D.C., and state capitols across the U.S., the FBI is warning of more potential violence in the lead-up to Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20. Federal authorities have arrested over 100 people who took part in last week’s deadly insurrection at the Capitol, and The Washington Post reports that dozens of people on a terrorist watch list — including many white supremacists — were in Washington on the day of the insurrection.

Abortion plotlines on TV and film last year didn’t reflect reality, new report says

Content creators in Hollywood are known to bend the truth. When it comes to potraying abortion plotlines on the screen, things are no different. A new report by Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) at the University of California, San Francisco, looked into the ways abortion patients and topics are portrayed on TV and in movies. Researchers have been compiling annual data since 2012, and publicly releasing the reports since 2016.

Texas didn’t go as planned for Democrats, but the suburbs still moved sharply away from Republicans

Our project to calculate the 2020 presidential results for all 435 congressional districts nationwide goes to Texas, where the GOP gerrymander helped the party hold on to 23 of the state’s 36 U.S. House seats despite several Republican retirements. You can find our detailed calculations here, a large-size map of the results here, and our permanent, bookmarkable link for all 435 districts here.

This Week in Statehouse Action: Sedition edition

By this time next week, we’ll have a new president! (… hopefully)

But with Donald Trump’s second impeachment (who says Congress can’t act with state legislature-like speed when it wants to?) because of his responsibility for last week’s violence in the U.S. Capitol, we’re very much not yet done with the old one.

COVID-19 Deaths Are 25 Percent Higher Than in Any Previous Week

Editor’s Note: The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here. For 16 weeks, throughout the fall and then straight through the data disruptions around Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day, the number of people currently hospitalized with COVID-19 has risen. On October 13, there were 36,000 people with COVID-19 in U.S. hospitals. Yesterday, on January 13, there were 130,000.