Today's Liberal News

Lady Gaga Sounds Like Herself Again

The anxiety of influence, a phrase that the literary critic Harold Bloom coined in 1973 to describe the struggle to write innovative poetry, lives on today in the form of reheated nachos. In internet slang, to reheat someone else’s nachos is to take old, soggy ideas and serve them up as if they’re fresh. An interviewer recently asked Lady Gaga to reply to the accusation that she was doing just that with “Abracadabra,” her new single that conjures many of her older songs.

Mahmoud Khalil: ICE Detains Green Card Holder over Columbia University Gaza Activism

Immigration agents with the Department of Homeland Security have detained a leader of the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia University in New York. Mahmoud Khalil, who is an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent, is a green card holder and is married to a U.S. citizen; his wife is eight months pregnant. Immigration officials told Khalil’s lawyer his green card was being revoked.

Stand Up for Science: Nationwide Protests Oppose Trump Cuts to Research from Cancer to Climate Change

Scientists rallied nationwide last Friday in opposition to the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts for scientific research and mass layoffs impacting numerous agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service. Thousands gathered at Stand Up for Science protests in over two dozen other cities. We air remarks from speakers in Washington, D.C., including former USAID official Dr. Atul Gawande and Dr.

Nicaragua Is in the Grips of Another Dictatorship, Decades After Sandinista Revolution: Reed Brody

Nicaragua announced last week it is withdrawing from the United Nations Human Rights Council, following a U.N. report that slammed the government’s human rights violations and warned the country was becoming an authoritarian state. The report by a panel of independent human rights experts adds to international pressure on the Nicaraguan government led by President Daniel Ortega and first lady Rosario Murillo, who was recently named co-president.

“Impeachment Is a Remedy for a Runaway President”: Rep. Al Green on Why He Disrupted Trump’s Address

We speak with Democratic Congressmember Al Green of Texas a day after he was censured by the House of Representatives for disrupting President Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress on Tuesday night. His dramatic protest came near the start of Trump’s record-long speech. In instantly iconic images, Green rose and shook his walking cane at the president on the rostrum, telling him “You have no mandate” to cut vital government programs. Green was ejected from the chamber.

U.S. Humanitarianism Often Reproduces Inequality, But Killing USAID Is Wrong Answer: Kathryn Mathers

Amid ongoing chaos and outrage stemming from the Trump administration’s gutting of the U.S. Agency for International Development, we hear a critique of USAID and the “humanitarian-industrial complex” from South African anthropologist Kathryn Mathers. ”USAID is very much a part of a system and industry that not only depends on global inequality … but in many ways produces it,” she says.

Finally, SNL Gets a Little Weird

Lady Gaga made her name bringing a touch of strangeness to whatever she does, and on Saturday Night Live last night, where she played the host and musical guest, she delivered with over-the-top costumes and theatrical choreography in performances of songs off her new album, Mayhem.
For the two musical interludes, Gaga was at her most exacting and confrontational.

The Court Hummed With Suitors

Four floors up, I’d look up from my work and cherish
the little arc of calm I felt from time to time.
I liked a drink, and to pose myself a problem
I could not always solve.
Now and again,
I’d bite into a lemon, to clear my head.
The acid was like a hook in my mouth: It was so sour,
I thought it must be good.
*
The one with the sewn-up face, he gave me
an electric feeling.
I got a little belly from all our drinking, and cooked meats
tasted distressingly of animal.