Today's Liberal News

Bill McKibben on Dire IPCC Climate Report & How Oil and Gas Are Fueling Putin’s Ukraine Invasion

We speak with climate author, journalist and movement leader Bill McKibben upon the release of the highly anticipated U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2022 report, which finds the impacts of the climate crisis are already worse than predicted, driving poverty, hunger, disease and species extinction. McKibben also speaks about how global dependency on oil and gas empowers autocrats like President Vladimir Putin and is helping fuel the Russian war in Ukraine.

Biden Seizes the Center

If it’s not quite morning in America, President Joe Biden tried to persuade Americans during his first State of the Union address, we might be starting to see glimmers of the dawn.“There’s something happening in America,” Biden said tonight. “Just look around and you’ll see an amazing story.” That message is a tough sell. Polls show that Americans are not happy about what they see around them—or how the president is governing.

Ukraine update: Russia begins new, more brutal phase of their assault

Russia’s attack on Ukraine is now in a new phase, and it is the one observers feared Putin would turn to after the humiliating performance of Russian forces in the first days of the war. After surrounding Ukrainian cities, Russia is shifting to artillery attacks on civilian areas, attacks on television broadcasting towers, and the apparent use of large-scale thermobaric weapons.

Live coverage: March 1, 2022 Texas primaries

Tonight is the first primary night of the 2022 election cycle! Polls close at 8 PM ET / 7 PM CT throughout most of Texas, while the small portion of the state located in the Mountain time zone around El Paso will be voting until 9 PM ET. We have plenty of exciting races to watch, and our guide to the key contests can be found here.

Note that if no candidate clears 50% in any given race, the top two vote-getters will advance to a May 24 runoff.

Republicans Are Trying to Send a Message

Tonight was probably the first time that many Americans had ever heard of Kim Reynolds. It almost certainly won’t be the last.The 62-year-old governor of Iowa delivered the official Republican response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address from outside the Capitol in Des Moines. Reynolds has been involved in Iowa politics for more than a decade.

Putin waited to invade Ukraine because a second-term Trump would have handed it to him

As Russian forces mounted their military invasion of Ukraine, it took exactly zero hours for pro-Trump (and sometimes pro-Putin) Republicans to claim that none of this would be happening if Donald Dear Leader Trump was in charge. That argument has faded a bit in the last few days, likely because Trump himself showed up to bloviate about it and there are few Republican arguments that can withstand 10 minutes of Donald Trump saying things.

Hillary joins Rachel Maddow to discuss Ukraine and make us wish she’d been president

Sometimes I wonder what might have happened had Jim Comey kept his mouth shut prior to the 2016 election, and if Hillary Clinton were now in the second year of her second term. The House hearings on Mr. Potato Head would have been something, I’m sure. That said, it’s hard to believe we’d be in the position we’re in now, after four years of nearly unrestrained GOP Putin-enabling led by the li’l Russian marionette himself.

The Impossible Suddenly Became Possible

History has accelerated; the impossible has become possible. Shifts that no one imagined two weeks ago are unfolding with incredible speed.As it turns out, nations are not pieces in a game of Risk. They do not, as some academics have long imagined, have eternal interests or permanent geopolitical orientations, fixed motivations or predictable goals. Nor do human beings always react the way they are supposed to react.

Biden’s State of the Union Audience of One

Tonight, at his State of the Union address, Joe Biden plans to pivot to deficit reduction. The move seems designed to persuade just one guy—Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia—to sign on to parts of the president’s Build Back Better proposal.This new emphasis might give wonks and Hill staffers flashbacks.

Vladimir Putin United America

At some point during tonight’s State of the Union address, President Joe Biden will likely denounce Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, voice support for the Ukrainian people, and tout the significant sanctions that he and U.S. allies in NATO have placed on Russia in response. When he finishes that sentence, most if not all members of the bitterly divided Congress will erupt in applause.

Journalist Andrew Cockburn & Historian Timothy Snyder on Ukraine, Russia, NATO Expansion & Sanctions

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues, veteran journalist Andrew Cockburn and Yale historian Timothy Snyder discuss the history of the region and what role NATO’s expansion played in the current crisis. Cockburn says the United States and its allies broke promises made in the 1990s not to expand the military alliance into Eastern Europe, setting the stage for an eventual confrontation.

Ukrainian Pacifist in Kyiv: Reckless Militarization Led to This War. All Sides Must Recommit to Peace

Russia has escalated attacks against Ukraine, launching a missile strike hitting a government building and shelling civilian areas in Kharkiv, reportedly targeting civilians with cluster and thermobaric bombs, and killing more than 70 Ukrainian soldiers at a military base in Okhtyrka. Meanwhile, the U.S. rejected Ukrainian President Zelensky’s demand for a no-fly zone over Ukraine, saying it could lead to a war between the U.S. and Russia.