Today's Liberal News

Amy Littlefield on Oklahoma’s New Total Abortion Ban & the Long Fight Ahead After Roe Falls

After a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion revealed the intention to overturn Roe v. Wade, abortion has increasingly become a state issue, with conservative states criminalizing the procedure. Oklahoma approved a bill on Thursday that outlaws almost all abortions beginning at fertilization. The measure is modeled after a Texas ban that encourages private citizens to sue abortion providers and people who assist in abortions.

Buffalo: India Walton on the Racist Massacre & Community’s Need for Gun Control, Good Jobs, Housing

As Buffalo, New York, mourns the loss of the 10 people killed Saturday in a racist rampage at a local grocery store in the heart of the city’s African American community, we get an update from longtime community activist and former mayoral candidate India Walton about the lack of attention to the structural issues that made the Black community vulnerable and the ineffectiveness of police.

Lessons for Buffalo? Meet the Activist Who Sued the White Supremacists Behind Charlottesville & Won

The Buffalo shooter wrote racist screeds online before targeting and killing people in a majority-Black neighborhood. We look at the incident’s similarities to other white supremacist killings, particularly the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Amy Spitalnick is the executive director of Integrity First for America, a nonprofit organization that successfully sued the white supremacist organizers of Unite the Right.

Battle of Donbas: Dramatic Interview from Ukrainian-Held Severodonetsk as Missiles Rain Down

In a rare interview from the frontlines of the Russian invasion, we speak with American journalist Billy Nessen in the Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk. It is the easternmost city still held by Ukrainian forces after almost three months of war. He says Russian troops have devastated the city with heavy shelling. The interview with Nessen was interrupted when a shell landed in the building next door. Nessen speaks about the Ukrainian resistance, the Azov Battalion and more, including the U.S.

News Roundup: Justice asks for Jan. 6 transcripts; expanding the Supreme Court

In the news today: More movement in the probe of the Jan. 6 insurrection, with the Justice Department now asking for copies of what the House congressional committee has pried out of witnesses. Calls to expand the Supreme Court keep growing. Oh, and a professional anti-abortion activist told Congress under oath that our electrical grid was powered by burning fetuses. So yeah, it does seem like civilization is on its last legs here.

Ukraine update: Cutting through the fog to get some sense of what’s happening at Staryi Saltiv

I’ve written before about the danger of basing any interpretation of what’s happening on the ground on the data from NASA’s FIRMS instruments. A collection of orbiting spectrographs and infrared sensors are not a substitute of any sort for reports on the ground. They can’t distinguish artillery from a forest fire, can’t tell what the source of any fire might be, and absolutely can’t fit all those little colored squares into any kind of narrative.

Sinclair Broadcast Group CEO calls a politically divided America ‘very good for our business’

Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. is looking forward to taking in a massive haul in TV ad spending in the run up to November’s midterm elections. The conservative-slanted broadcasting company—the second-largest owner of local TV stations in the U.S.—has already seen a surge in TV ad spending, thanks to competitive primary races in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and other key states.

CPAC travels to Hungary to fete the Trump of Europe, authoritarian leader Viktor Orban

Remember the old days, when Democrats and Republicans argued over trivialities, like the capital gains tax and Michael Dukakis’ tank helmet, not whether democracy was a good idea? Look where we are now. Democrats, as always, have been full-throated in defense of Western liberal democracy, whereas Republicans have been making Magi-like treks to Hungary to quaff from the cold, clear, invigorating wellspring of Viktor Orban-style authoritarianism.

The Review: Knocked Up

Fifteen years on, what can we learn from how the movie Knocked Up treated abortion, pregnancy, and women’s bodily autonomy? And what does it say in the era of a leaked Supreme Court opinion that could overturn Roe v. Wade as we know it? Join The Review as Sophie Gilbert, Megan Garber, and Hannah Giorgis dissect Judd Apatow’s 2007 film.Listen to the discussion here:The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

So, Have You Heard About Monkeypox?

Yesterday afternoon, I called the UCLA epidemiologist Anne Rimoin to ask about the European outbreak of monkeypox—a rare but potentially severe viral illness with dozens of confirmed or suspected cases in the United Kingdom, Spain, and Portugal. “If we see those clusters, given the amount of travel between the United States and Europe, I wouldn’t be surprised to see cases here,” Rimoin, who studies the disease, told me.

A Very Expensive, Technically Illegal Workaround to the Formula Shortage

The baby-formula shortage has been something of a nightmare for Aleisha Velez, a 25-year-old mother of two who lives in Philadelphia. Velez relies on the federal government’s Woman, Infants, and Children (WIC) program to get free formula, which means she can’t just get the product shipped to her home. So over the past two months, she has called store after store to find in-stock formula before traveling up to an hour one-way on a train or a bus (or both) to get it.

How Hulu’s Conversations With Friends Got Sally Rooney So Wrong

Early in Sally Rooney’s debut novel, Conversations With Friends, the heroine has a nightmare. Frances, a college student, dreams that a tooth has come loose in her mouth, leaving a hole that pumps out so much blood, she can’t speak. “The blood tasted thick, clotted and salty,” she recounts. “I could feel it, vividly, running back down my throat.