Today's Liberal News

News Roundup: Hearings, hearings! Jan. 6 hearings!

It is Friday. It is the day after the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol held its first “prime time” public hearing on the evidence they have been collecting for the last 18 months. The GOP, having chosen to align itself with an attempted coup d’etat, is defending itself by alternately saying nothing happened on Jan.

Immigrant families cry, celebrate after Massachusetts legislature overrides GOP governor’s veto

The Massachusetts legislature on Thursday easily overrode Republican Gov. Charlie Baker’s veto of legislation opening driver’s licenses to undocumented residents. When the Work and Mobility Act goes into effect in July 2023, the commonwealth will join at least 16 states, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C., in making roads and communities safer by allowing undocumented residents to drive legally.

DeVos claims she resigned over Trump’s inaction on Jan. 6, Pence’s refusal to support 25th Amendment

All of sudden, after four years of complete devotion to the Trump administration, former secretary of education Betsy DeVos is speaking out against the former president. She was never equipped to do the job to which she was appointed, and has zero experience in education, so she should feel loyal to him. But DeVos’ latest claim that she left the administration after seeing Trump’s reaction (or inaction) on Jan.

Cheers and Jeers: Rum and Coke FRIDAY!

Late Night Snark: Yeah, It Was A Coup Edition

“Congress held its first public hearing on the January 6th Capitol attack. The footage was rough to get through. Five minutes in even Mike Pence was like, ‘I’ve had enough. Let’s see what’s happening on RuPaul’s Drag Race.’”
—Jimmy Fallon

“Fox News decided not to carry the hearings about January 6th on their news network.

The Moral Desolation of the GOP

Yesterday evening, the leaders of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol opened their public hearings—hearings that will show, in the words of vice chair Liz Cheney, that “Donald Trump oversaw a sophisticated seven-part plan to overturn the presidential election and prevent the transfer of presidential power.”Or, as committee chair Bennie Thompson put it, “Donald Trump was at the center of this conspiracy.

What Chesa Boudin Revealed About an Undemocratic Election System

This week, San Francisco voters recalled Chesa Boudin, the city’s district attorney and the face of the nationwide progressive-prosecutors movement. The election, widely described as a referendum on crime and disorder and a backlash against the Democratic Party’s leftmost edge, was a caustic local fight played out on a national stage. It was democracy at work, with the public ousting a leader they considered incompetent or unfitting.

Life, Literature, This Moment of June

In Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, as Clarissa Dalloway runs errands throughout London, the narration takes note of the sensory feast that she encounters: “the swing, tramp, and trudge” of urban life; “the bellow and the uproar” of music, yelling, cars, buses, and an airplane overhead. Clarissa famously revels in “life; London; this moment of June.

Now Even NASA Wants to Talk About UFOs

UFOs? After years of avoiding any serious discussion of such things, NASA is on it.The space agency announced yesterday that it will form a team dedicated to studying unidentified aerial phenomena “that cannot be identified as aircraft or known natural phenomena.” Starting this fall, the team will examine existing data on these objects and brainstorm new ways to collect future data.

Carnage & Chaos: “I Was Slipping in People’s Blood” on Jan. 6, Says Brain-Injured Capitol Officer

The second witness who testified live in the first primetime hearing of the House select January 6 committee was Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards, who suffered a traumatic brain injury as she tried to hold the line outside the Capitol with fellow officers. She was with officer Brian Sicknick, who she said appeared to have been sprayed in the face and was extremely pale. Sicknick died the next day. Sicknick’s fiancee sat behind Edwards as she testified.

“From Protesters … to Insurrectionists”: Jan. 6 Witness Describes Proud Boys’ Violence at the Capitol

The white supremacist Proud Boys group and the far-right, anti-government Oath Keepers militia played an instrumental role in planning for a violent insurrection on the Capitol, according to the January 6 House committee, which aired new testimony from witnesses and the groups’ leaders in its first public hearing Thursday night. British filmmaker Nick Quested was embedded with the Proud Boys and shared his footage with the committee.

How Did They Get Inflation So Wrong?

Last week, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen did something unusual for a Washington policy maker: She admitted that she’d made a mistake. In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer about the U.S.’s persistently high inflation rate, Yellen said, of her predictions last year that prices would stay under control, “I was wrong then about the path that inflation would take.”That she was.

“Attempted Coup”: First Public Jan. 6 Hearing Puts Trump at Center of Plan to Overturn 2020 Election

The House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection held its first public hearing Thursday night, televised in primetime by all major networks except Fox News. We spend the hour featuring excerpts from the hearing, starting with Committee Chair Bennie Thompson’s opening statement, in which he argued January 6 was the “culmination of an attempted coup” by Donald Trump, comparing the insurrection to the ransacking of Washington, D.C.