Today's Liberal News

Texas ‘Trump Train’ of flag-bearing pickups ambushes, harasses Biden-Harris campaign bus

A caravan of Donald Trump supporters driving dozens of mostly banner-festooned pickup trucks and SUVs deliberately ambushed a Biden-Harris campaign bus traveling to Austin and other parts of Texas on Thursday, harassing them constantly en route, forcing Democrats to cancel at least two campaign events out of concern for public safety. The participants, however, all proudly boasted about the harassment on social media, and police made no arrests.

As early voting winds down across the country, voters are more determined to cast ballots than ever

Last Saturday was Vote Early Day, a joyful celebration of the great right and responsibility to shape the direction of this nation. The dispatches from Vote Early Day featured singing, dancing, laughter, and other forms of joy. 

The dispatches since are a bit more somber. Sure, folks are celebrating submitting their ballots—I did, after I voted on Tuesday—but most folks’ focus is on getting others to vote.

Let the Incarcerated Vote

On the morning of Election Day in 2018, I went to vote at my local polling site in Maryland and then drove down to the D.C. Central Detention Facility, where I taught creative-writing workshops with a group of 18-to-24-year-old incarcerated young men. I parked, turned off the engine, and felt the soft vibration of the car come to a stop. I sat there and looked down at the I VOTED sticker in my hand—its adhesive clinging to my finger, its waxy paper catching the light through my windows.

25 Feel-Good Films You’ll Want to Watch Again—and Again

Over the course of 2020, I’ve compiled several movie-recommendation lists for viewers who are at once in desperate need of distraction and yet never able to fully escape the year’s pressing realities. A global pandemic. Economic turmoil. An impending election showdown. Natural disasters. Police killings and unrelenting national protests.

The YouTuber Who Treats the Inner City Like a Safari

Video above: A snippet from the YouTube video by Charlie Moore, a.k.a. CharlieBo313, titled “SAN FRANCISCO WORST HOUSING PROJECTS / HOOD INTERVIEW”Charlie Moore shoots hood safaris. For years, he’s filmed visits to the most impoverished neighborhoods in cities across the United States for his CharlieBo313 YouTube channel, which has almost 350,000 subscribers.

Trump’s Pathology Is Now Clear

The human brain makes decisions in two basic modes. One is analytic, which involves carefully weighing costs and benefits and choosing the best option. The other mode is intuitive: doing what feels right. Both have their merits. Intuitive thinking allows us to make split-second decisions. It helps guide our romantic lives and our lunchtime sandwich choices. But it is not the mode that should inform a strategic response to a pandemic.

Beware False Endings

Earlier this week, a striking thing happened at the Supreme Court: A justice inserted several errors into the record. The mistakes came as the Court was making last-minute decisions about the precise time span of an election that has been taking place for weeks. The errors were products, as The New York Times put it, of “the court’s fast pace in handling recent challenges to voting rules.

Pandemic Poverty: The CARES Act Kept Millions from Going Hungry. Why Won’t the Senate Renew It?

The massive $2 trillion CARES Act — which sent households one-time payments and boosted unemployment checks with an additional $600 a week through July — helped keep millions afloat, but more than 8 million people have been forced into poverty since the aid ended. “The relief was temporary, and much of it has now expired, so now we’re seeing poverty rise again,” says Megan Curran, a researcher at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University.