Today's Liberal News

Arizona Abortion Provider: Texas Ruling on Mifepristone Leaves Patients & Clinics “in Limbo”

We look at how racial disparities in healthcare treatment and access will shape the impact of anti-abortion rulings with Dr. DeShawn Taylor, an OB-GYN physician, abortion provider and owner of Desert Star Family Planning in Phoenix — the only Black-owned independent abortion provider in the border state of Arizona. Her upcoming book is Undue Burden: A Black Woman Physician on Being Christian and Pro-Abortion in the Reproductive Justice Movement.

What Is the Comstock Act? Texas Judge Cites 1873 Anti-Obscenity Law to Halt Approval of Abortion Pill

When U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled Friday the Food and Drug Administration’s two-decade old approval of the leading abortion drug mifepristone violates the law, he cited the 19th century Comstock Act, a so-called anti-vice law that prohibits the mailing of contraceptives and instruments or drugs that can be used in an abortion. It has been dormant for half a century. We speak to Lauren MacIvor Thompson, a historian of birth control, about the Comstock Act and its legacy.

Jessica Mason Pieklo: Republicans’ Anti-Abortion Moves Are Part of Wider “Authoritarian Movement”

We look at the dueling rulings by two federal judges on the abortion pill mifepristone. A Trump-appointed judge in Texas suspended the Food and Drug Administration’s decades-old approval of the drug, while a judge in Washington state ordered the agency to maintain the status quo. Jessica Mason Pieklo, executive editor of Rewire News Group, says the judicial assault on reproductive health is “a constitutional crisis” that requires urgent attention.

“Unconscionable”: Planned Parenthood’s Alexis McGill Johnson Slams Texas Ruling on Abortion Pill

We speak with Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, about the ruling by a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas to revoke the Food and Drug Administration approval of the abortion pill mifepristone. Shortly after the Texas ruling, a federal judge in Washington ordered the FDA to keep mifepristone on the market and maintain the status quo. The Justice Department has appealed the Texas ruling.

Should Clarence Thomas Be Impeached? GOP Megadonor Gave Justice Free Luxury Vacations for 20 Years

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas failed to report frequent luxury trips paid for by a billionaire Republican megadonor named Harlan Crow, leading to renewed calls for the conservative jurist’s impeachment. According to ProPublica, Thomas has for decades accepted flights on Crow’s private jet, trips on his yacht and frequent stays at his exclusive lakeside resort, in apparent violation of a law requiring justices and other federal officials to disclose most gifts.

Palestinian Poet Mohammed El-Kurd on Israeli Apartheid, Growing Tension in Region & Raid on Al-Aqsa Mosque

Israel has bombed southern Lebanon and Gaza as tension soars in the region days after Israeli police repeatedly attacked Palestinian worshipers inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem. In response to the raids on the mosque, militants in southern Lebanon and Gaza fired dozens of rockets into Israel. It was the largest rocket attack from Lebanon in 17 years.

“A Public Lynching”: Justin Jones, Black Tennessee Lawmaker, Responds to Expulsion from State House

We speak with Justin Jones, one of two Black Democratic lawmakers expelled by a Republican supermajority in the Tennessee state House of Representatives Thursday for peacefully protesting gun violence in the chamber last week as thousands rallied at the Capitol to demand gun control after the Covenant elementary school shooting in Nashville. A vote to expel their white colleague who joined them in solidarity failed.

“The Undertow”: Author Jeff Sharlet on Trump, the Far Right & the Growing Threat of Fascism in U.S.

We speak with award-winning journalist and author Jeff Sharlet, who has spent the last decade reporting on the growing threat of fascism across the United States. In his new book, The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, Sharlet says the language of “civil war” has become central to right-wing rhetoric, mainstreamed by former President Donald Trump, Congressmember Marjorie Taylor Greene and other Republicans.

Succession Finally Did It

This article contains spoilers through the third episode of Succession Season 4. He is … not risen?I think? For three-plus seasons, Logan Roy has ducked and weaved his way past near fatalities—a hemorrhagic stroke, multiple corporate coup attempts, a congressional investigation, a troublesome UTI, a collapse in the Hamptons—like a hirsute, cashmere-clad Road Runner. Hostile board meeting? Meep meep. Attempted patricidal veto under the Tuscan sun? Fuck off.

A Return to the Freaky, Awkward Glory Days of SNL

When Molly Shannon auditioned for Saturday Night Live in the mid-’90s, she received some appallingly bad advice. A scout warned her against doing the character Mary Katherine Gallagher—a geeky teenager who stuck her hands in her armpits and smelled them when she got nervous—because the show’s executive producer, Lorne Michaels, wouldn’t like it. “He’ll think it’s weird, that dirty little character,” Shannon recalled being told.

The Texas Abortion-Pill Ruling Signals Pro-Lifers’ Next Push

The chaos unleashed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade was underscored on Friday when federal judges released dueling opinions on mifepristone, a pill used in more than half of abortions in the United States. In a suit by 17 progressive states and the District of Columbia, Judge Thomas O. Rice of the Eastern District of Washington State ordered the FDA to preserve access to mifepristone. In a competing ruling from Texas, Judge Matthew J.

Where’s the AI Culture War?

You know something strange is afoot when Elon Musk comes out in favor of tech regulation. Or when Kevin McCarthy and a left-wing Joe Biden appointee agree that one particular issue is a priority. These are not people who tend to agree on, well, anything. But such are the nascent, topsy-turvy politics of artificial intelligence.AI is not really a single issue you can be for or against the way you can with, say, guns or abortion.

Sailing to Italy

When the poet Mark Strand was a child, his family was constantly in motion; he lived in Cleveland, Halifax, Montreal, New York, and Philadelphia, then Colombia, Mexico, Peru. “I moved around so much, and went to so many different schools,” he once said, “that I never found my own place.