Today's Liberal News

Filipino Scholar Walden Bello on Why the Global South Is Suspicious of U.S. Motives in Ukraine War

We speak with acclaimed Filipino scholar and activist Walden Bello on the Global South’s response to the unfolding crisis in Ukraine. Bello says there’s hesitation from many world leaders to take an active role in the crisis, arguing that there is a lack of explicit national interests and a general suspicion the U.S. provoked the invasion to take advantage of the subsequent backlash against Russia.

As Biden Touts Anti-Russia Response in SOTU, U.S. Remains Addicted to Fossil Fuels That Drive War

We discuss President Biden’s first State of the Union address with Jacobin magazine’s Branko Marcetic, who says Biden should have focused more of his speech on laying out goals to reach renewable energy independence since the continued reliance by the U.S. on the oil and gas reserves of countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia gives those countries “relative freedom” to commit war crimes on the world stage.

“Ukrainians Only”: Nigerian Student Fleeing War Describes Rampant Racism Against Africans at Border

The United Nations reports more than 800,000 people have fled Ukraine since Russia attacked last week, but many foreign nationals trying to escape have described racist discrimination and abuse, saying they were turned away from buses and at the border, while Ukrainians were welcomed with open arms. We speak with one of the African students who documented their experiences on Twitter with the hashtag #AfricansInUkraine.

Nonviolence Int’l in Kyiv: Resistance Mounts to Russian Invasion as 2,000 Civilian Deaths Reported

As a massive Russian military convoy approaches Kyiv while Russia intensifies attacks on civilian infrastructure across Ukraine, we get an update from Andre Kamenshikov, Ukraine director for Nonviolence International in the southern Kyiv suburbs. He says “people are holding out, and I think there is growing confidence that the Russian forces will not be able to take the city.

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.