Today's Liberal News

Ukraine Update: To mobilize or not—Putin’s lose-lose choice

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Today’s April 29 report really amounts to “zip.” A small village northeast of Kharkiv liberated by Ukraine was the only territory to change hands. On the main Donbas front, Ukraine General Staff reported repelling 14 attacks, none gained purchase. And yet again, we see Russia incapable of organizing a single, massive, coordinated push to crack Ukrainian defensive lines.

Boriqua activist offers classes for people of color to understand and decode ‘colonial mentality’

Educator and activist Constanza Eliana Chinea explains that her decolonization lessons aren’t designed with white people in mind. Rather, the classes are for people of color; those who “have been colonized” and are “trying to move away from assimilation.”

Chinea was born in New York, then moved to her parent’s birthplace in Puerto Rico at around 8 years old.

What a Nanny Knows

When Marion Crawford, the nanny for then-Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, published a gentle, ghostwritten memoir in the 1950s about her life with the royals, it was an instant sensation. The book, “novelistic and carefully plotted,” as my colleague Caitlin Flanagan noted in 2006, cataloged all the kinds of details that might captivate an outsider: “of dress and of food and of housekeeping on the grandest level imaginable,” she wrote.

What The New Yorker Didn’t Say About a Famous Writer’s Anti-Semitism

Whatever your views on “cancel culture,” one thing is certain: Search-and-rescue missions on behalf of the disappeared can take strange forms. Witness a 2020 New Yorker essay that was published online under the title “How Racist Was Flannery O’Connor?” The question suggested the possibility that something as vile as racism might be calibrated—and that O’Connor’s case had moved from the verdict to the sentencing phase.

Let Coach Kennedy Pray

Sign up for David’s newsletter, The Third Rail, here.Few legal doctrines are contributing more to the culture war than the idea that America’s public-school teachers have no meaningful free-speech rights when they’re at work.

“We Created the Pandemicene”: Ed Yong on How the Climate Crisis Could Spark the Next Pandemic

Climate change is forcing animal migrations at an unprecedented scale, bringing many previously disconnected species into close contact and dramatically raising the likelihood of viruses leaping into new hosts and sparking future pandemics. That’s according to a new study in the journal Nature, which predicts that climate-driven disruptions to Earth’s ecosystems will create thousands of cross-species viral transmissions in the coming decades.

Ukraine Accuses Russia of Firing Missiles Over 3 Nuclear Power Plants, Raising Fear of a New Disaster

Nuclear watchdogs are expressing alarm over safety conditions at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which has been under Russian control since early March after a fight that led to a fire near one of the plant’s reactors. It is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe and located in the largest city in southeastern Ukraine still under Ukrainian control.

The Women Naming Their Babies After Themselves

Choosing a baby name is one of the first major decisions you make as a parent, and it can be a stressful one. Should you pick a trendy, unique name? Honor a family member? Go gender neutral, or traditional? The questions can be dizzying, and the choices feel rife with meaning. Names, after all, are our introduction to the world and tend to make a statement.

Mars’s Soundscape Is Strangely Beautiful

There’s a lovely scene in Interstellar—one of the best space movies in history; don’t argue with me—when the NASA pilot tasked with saving the day hands a pair of headphones to his fellow space traveler, a physicist, who’s having a difficult time on their perilous journey through space. When the physicist puts the buds in, he and the audience hear the distinct sounds of Earth: crickets, rain, the low rumble of thunder.

Ukraine Update: With modern Western artillery on its way, Ukraine’s job is to just hold

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The old adage that “if it’s too good to be true, it likely is,” definitely applies in this war, as I spent much of the day trying to verify fantastical claims from both sides. I even had to enlist Mark Sumner at one point to help me sort through one rumor of a major Ukrainian breakthrough toward Mariupol. Turns out, no one is making big sweeping gains. It’s all “lay down artillery until defenders get the f’ out, walk in.

Trevor Reed’s parents say Biden saved their son’s life. Why can’t McCarthy give credit where due?

Wednesday brought news of a surprise prisoner exchange between the U.S. and Russia, with Russia releasing former Marine Trevor Reed as the U.S. released Konstantin Yaroshenko. The decision to make the exchange came amid the relentless advocacy of Reed’s parents and news of his deteriorating health, with President Joe Biden ultimately making the decision to trade Yaroshenko, who was convicted of drug trafficking in 2010.

U.S. Postal Service sued over massive gas-guzzling mail truck order

EarthJustice and the Center for Biological Diversity have teamed up to sue the U.S. Postal Service over its Next Generation Delivery Vehicle (NGDV) order of 50,000 mail trucks, just 10,019 of which will be electric. The order has been controversial since it was initially announced, though the USPS initially requested that just 10% of its NGDVs be EVs and has since ordered a slightly larger amount amid public outcry.