Today's Liberal News

News Roundup: Biden promises infrastructure is ‘just the beginning’; Republicans defend Gosar

In the news today: While President Biden vows the newly passed infrastructure bill is “just the beginning” of revitalization efforts, House Republicans are still focused on protecting even their worst members from consequences for their acts. Another revelation seems to confirm that Trump’s most vocal advocates for nullifying the election were swimming in a whole sea of crackpot conspiracy theories—and demanding Trump’s military act on them.

ICE ignores pleas for release and instead transfers remaining immigrants detained at New Jersey jail

New Jersey’s Bergen County was the remaining locality in the state to continue holding a federal immigration contract when the commissioner board voted unanimously last month to end the agreement. Last Friday, the remaining 15 immigrants at the jail were removed, a week ahead of schedule. It was the culmination of years of organizing by immigrants and advocates.

New Orleans sheriff desperate to keep predatory prison phone call rates for sake of budget

Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman is facing his first major challenger in years. The sheriff, who’s been in power for 17 years and automatically won his 2017 re-election bid because no one challenged him, has found himself in a runoff with former police monitor Susan Hutson. The two could not be more different in their approach to running the office that oversees Orleans Parish Prison.

Birds Fake Their Own Death to Scare Off Intruders

In the spring of 2019, the biologist Tore Slagsvold headed into the forests outside Oslo to stage a series of tiny crime scenes. He didn’t need bullets, or bootprints, or even bodies or blood; only a handful of plush, white feathers.Slagsvold’s audience was avian—the region’s blue tits and pied flycatchers. And with any luck, his faux, fluffy evidence was going to scare the bejesus out of them.

We Live By a Unit of Time That Doesn’t Make Sense

Days, months, and years all make sense as units of time—they match up, at least roughly, with the revolutions of Earth, the moon, and the sun.Weeks, however, are much weirder and clunkier. A duration of seven days doesn’t align with any natural cycles or fit cleanly into months or years.

Kyle Rittenhouse Is No Hero

As the Kyle Rittenhouse trial comes to a close, two things are becoming clear at once. First, absolutely no one should be surprised if Rittenhouse is acquitted on the most serious charges against him. And second, regardless of the outcome of the trial, the Trumpist right is wrongly creating a folk hero out of Rittenhouse. For millions he’s become a positive symbol, a young man of action who stepped up when the police (allegedly) stepped aside.

Historian Alfred McCoy Predicts the U.S. Empire is Collapsing as China’s Power Grows

President Joe Biden’s virtual summit Monday with Chinese President Xi Jinping follows the two countries’ announcement just days earlier they will work together to confront the climate emergency after Xi did not attend the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow. Tension has been mounting between the two superpowers, especially over Taiwan and Hong Kong, with some speculating that a new Cold War is developing.

“Hell on Earth”: Millions of Afghans Face Starvation as U.S. & West Freeze Billions in Gov’t Funds

Humanitarian and economic conditions are rapidly deteriorating in Afghanistan, where the U.N. estimates that more than half of the population suffers from acute hunger. The country has fallen into an economic crisis after the U.S. and other Western countries cut off direct financial assistance to the government following the Taliban takeover in August. Taliban leaders are also unable to access billions of dollars in Afghan national reserves that are held in banks overseas.

The Personality Test in Your Closet

As a wearer of novelty T-shirts and lifelong collector of stuff, I’ve amassed quite a lot of tees over the years. A family road trip to the Ben & Jerry’s factory one summer in the 1990s netted a bright, tie-dyed number, while a recent pandemic acquisition, a forest-green long-sleeved tee, came from Mystic Muffin, a Toronto restaurant famous for its apple cake. I’ve misplaced the former somewhere in storage, but wear the latter all the time in cooler weather.

East Timor Massacre Remembered: U.S.-Armed Indonesian Troops Killed 270 Timorese 30 Years Ago Today

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the Santa Cruz massacre in East Timor, when Indonesian troops armed with U.S. M16s fired on a peaceful memorial procession in the Santa Cruz cemetery in Dili, killing more than 270 East Timorese. Indonesia had invaded East Timor in 1975 and maintained a brutal occupation until 1999, when East Timorese voted overwhelmingly for independence in a United Nations referendum.

‘Dad, welcome back’: Advocate for deported veterans wins his own fight to return to the U.S.

An activist and military father who has advocated for deported veterans as co-director of Unified Deported Veterans in Tijuana now gets to return back home himself. Robert Vivar “walked back to San Diego from Tijuana on Veterans Day,” nearly two decades after he was initially deported and had his life upended over a shoplifting offense, The San Diego Union-Tribune reports.

Waiting for him on the U.S.