Today's Liberal News

Trump vs. Masks: Attacks on CDC, Doctors & Scientists Undermine a “Pillar of Pandemic Control”

As the official United States death toll from COVID-19 approaches 200,000 people, we speak with infectious disease expert Dr. Monica Gandhi, who says President Trump’s refusal to promote face masks has made the pandemic much worse. “Masks are a pillar of pandemic control. They are incredibly important,” says Dr. Gandhi, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, as well as a division head at San Francisco General Hospital.

Daniel Ellsberg Warns U.S. Press Freedom Under Attack in WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange Extradition Case

Legendary Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg says Julian Assange’s extradition hearing in London could have far-reaching consequences for press freedoms. The WikiLeaks founder faces an ever-evolving array of espionage and hacking charges related to the release of diplomatic cables that revealed war crimes committed by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Assange faces almost certain conviction, if extradited, and 175 years in prison.

The Inside Story of Why Mueller Failed

Andrew Weissmann was one of Robert Mueller’s top deputies in the special counsel’s investigation of the 2016 election, and he’s about to publish the first insider account, called Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation. The title comes from an adapted quote by the philosopher John Locke that’s inscribed on the façade of the Justice Department building in Washington, D.C.: “Wherever law ends, tyranny begins.

Sunday Night Owls. Mayer: Mitch moves his own strings, and he’ll dump anybody to preserve his power

Night Owls, a themed open thread, appears at Daily Kos seven days a week

At The New Yorker, Jane Mayer writes—For Mitch McConnell, Keeping His Senate Majority Matters More Than the Supreme Court:

As the Democrats weigh their options about how to stop Mitch McConnell from filling Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Supreme Court seat, one tactic that they should forget about immediately is arguing that it would be hypocritical of McConnell to jam in a new Justice so close to a

Hey Trump, I care about Israel, but my country is America

On Wednesday, during a call ostensibly about the upcoming Jewish High Holidays with leading members of the American Jewish community, President Charlottesville said this: “We love your country.” He wasn’t talking about the United States.

This is not the first time Donald Trump has assumed that Israel, not America, is the place where American Jews assign their primary loyalty.

Nuts & Bolts: Inside a Democratic campaign—persuasion, turnout, or both?

It’s another Sunday, so for those who tune in, welcome to a diary discussing the Nuts & Bolts of a Democratic campaign. If you’ve missed out, you can catch up any time: Just visit our group or follow the Nuts & Bolts Guide. For years I’ve built this guide around questions that get submitted, hoping to help small candidates field questions.

It’s propaganda, not hypocrisy: Republicans use lying as primary governing technique

There is no point in accusing Republican senators of hypocrisy. Absolutely none. Only hours after the death of Supreme Court icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Republicans—who had previously gnashed their teeth at the audacity of the suggestion that the nation’s first nonwhite president had the constitutional power to make nominations to the court at any point during the final year of his term—began declaring that this time around, obviously that new rule no longer applies.

If You Care About the Court, Don’t Talk About It

I know that Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s empty Supreme Court seat has provoked an epic, long-awaited clash between Democrats and Republicans, that the very principle of judicial independence hangs dangerously in the balance. I realize that the social-media wave cannot be stopped, that the talking heads cannot be silenced, and that Democrats in Congress must fight this nomination.

Nebraska: Images of the Cornhusker State

The state of Nebraska has a population of 1.9 million, and ranks 16th in area. It is largely a land of agriculture, with nearly 50,000 farms and ranches producing corn, beef, soybeans, and processed-grain products. From the grasslands through the Sandhills to the Missouri River, here are a few glimpses of the landscape of Nebraska and some of the wildlife and people calling it home.This photo story is part of Fifty, a collection of images from each of the United States.

Brain

Photo illustration by Miki LoweC. K. Williams stumbled into his poetry career by accident. When a college girlfriend asked him to pen a poem for her, his path became clear. But he felt frustrated by the cryptic ways in which poets got to their point. “It’s like a code,” he explained in 2000. “You say very little and send it out to people who know how to decode it.

How Boomer Parenting Fueled Millennial Burnout

The writer Anne Helen Petersen’s new book is primarily about “burnout,” a condition endemic to the Millennial generation that she describes as a persistent “sensation of dull exhaustion” and “the feeling that you’ve optimized yourself into a work robot.” Expanding on a widely read BuzzFeed News article from two years ago, Petersen follows lines of cultural and economic inquiry in an effort to identify the root causes of this generational malaise.