Today's Liberal News

You won’t have to search too hard to find a safe space here. Look right on the homepage

If you scroll down on the Daily Kos homepage, you may have noticed a list of anti-racist resources and a message of solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Well, both of those resources are the handiwork of the Daily Kos Equity Council, which aims to do exactly what the name suggests: build a better company and community by highlighting issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Elon Musk Buying Twitter Is Weird, Chaotic, and a Little Bit Awesome

To be honest, I still can’t believe this happened. Earlier today, Twitter accepted Elon Musk’s offer of $44 billion to buy the company and take it private. In one of the largest and weirdest tech acquisitions in recent memory, Musk fought off initial opposition and a poison-pill threat to buy the social-media service.News of the deal has polarized Twitter users and employees.

Running Twitter Is Going to Disappoint Elon Musk

A fun thing about content moderation—the practice of social-media platforms deciding what we can and cannot say in some of the world’s most important online spaces—is that almost everyone thinks that it’s broken, albeit in different ways. Almost everyone also thinks that if you just put them in charge, they would fix things. When you’re the world’s richest man, you can actually give it a shot.

When a TV Show Undermines the People It’s Trying to Celebrate

The role of the first lady has long been ill-defined. Until recently, she was the most prominent and therefore scrutinized woman in the White House, yet her position comes with murky expectations. Modern first ladies tend to manage a staff and champion carefully chosen causes, but their duties aren’t formally circumscribed. How many duties are too many? How many are not enough?Showtime’s The First Lady purports to answer those questions.

A Smarter Way to Divide Chores?

In theory, coming up with a fair division of housework should be simple: Take all the tasks and divide them in two.In practice, it’s more complicated. Some people find certain tasks more bearable than their partners do. Some chores are ones that no one wants to do. And, on average, women end up bearing a disproportionate share of their household’s chore burden.

Macron Defeats Le Pen in French Election Amid “Tremendous Amount of Dissatisfaction” Among Voters

French President Emmanuel Macron won a second five-year term on Sunday, triumphing over far-right challenger Marine Le Pen and becoming the first French president since 2002 to be reelected. Macron beat LePen by a 17-point margin, though over a quarter of voters abstained from voting and Macron’s victory was much narrower than in 2017 — pointing to growing support in recent years for Le Pen’s openly anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim platform.

Everything Everywhere All at Once Is Multiverse Storytelling at Its Best

What’s better than a Marvel Cinematic Universe? A Marvel Cinematic Multiverse. Once limited to theoretical physics and comic-book plot conveniences, the notion of a multiverse has been an essential tool for Hollywood. Whether it’s a role that’s been cast and recast, a franchise character that gets a spin-off when the larger story ends, or simply a reboot telling a new story without upending its origins, the answer to any big movie problem is often: multiverse.

“Powerlands”: Young Diné Filmmaker on Indigenous Resistance to Resource Colonization Worldwide

We continue our Earth Day special by looking at how Indigenous peoples are protecting the Earth. We follow the journey of Ivey Camille Manybeads Tso, an award-winning queer Navajo filmmaker whose new film “Powerlands” shows how corporations like Peabody, the world’s largest private coal company, have devastated her homeland. She also connects with Indigenous communities in Colombia, the Philippines, Mexico and Standing Rock facing the same struggle.

As Ukraine War Disrupts Steel Imports, Will U.S. Pivot to Green Future & Break Free from Dirty Steel?

On Earth Day, we look at how the war in Ukraine gives the United States a new chance to break free of emissions-heavy steel production. Russia and Ukraine supplied over 60% of the pig iron the U.S. imported last year to make steel, some of it produced at the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works plant in Mariupol where thousands of civilians and soldiers are now blockaded.

As Russia Intensifies Attack on Ukraine’s Donbas, Volunteers Try to Help Civilians in Leveled Cities

We get an update on the Donbas region of Ukraine, where Russian forces are now focused. Russia has backed a separatist movement in the Donbas since 2014 and used protecting the Russian-speaking population there as a justification for its invasion in February. We speak with Brian Milakovsky, who lived in the Donbas town of Severodonetsk before he evacuated to Croatia in January and is now fundraising for people trying to flee Russian attacks.

Matrix of War: Russian Elites Unlikely to Split from Putin Despite War Losses & Western Sanctions

Russians are weathering the fallout of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine with no sign of a negotiated peace deal soon. Economic sanctions have driven up food prices, and there has been repression of political dissent within the country. We speak with author Tony Wood, a member of the New Left Review editorial board, who says the crushing Western sanctions are unlikely to end Putin’s rule and are only hardening attitudes.

Former Nebraska Rep. Brad Ashford, who switched parties four times during long career, dies at 72

Former Rep. Brad Ashford, whose 2014 win gave Democrats their only victory in a Nebraska House race since the 1994 GOP wave, died Tuesday at the age of 72 two months after he announced that he had brain cancer. Ashford previously served as a Democrat, Republican, and independent during his two stints in the state’s unicameral legislature, though he was never fully at home in either party during his long career in local and national politics.