Judge OKs $626 Million Settlement In Flint Water Litigation
About $600 million is coming from the state of Michigan, which was accused of repeatedly overlooking the devastating risks of switching Flint’s water source in 2014.
Today's Liberal News
The Uncomfortable Truths of American Spaceflight
Update your calendars, everyone: NASA isn’t going to put people on the moon in 2024. The space agency announced yesterday that it is now aiming to send a crew to orbit the moon, Apollo 8 style, in May 2024, and then land astronauts on the surface, à la Apollo 11, sometime in 2025. If your reaction to this news is something like, Wait a second, what? NASA is trying to land people on the moon again?—that’s fine.
Crying Pro-Trump Capitol Rioter Who Assaulted Cop Sentenced To 41 Months In Prison
Scott Fairlamb, whose brother is in the U.S. Secret Service, was the first Jan. 6 defendant sentenced in connection with an assault on cops.
“A Process of Violence”: Indian Author Amitav Ghosh on How Colonialism Fueled the Climate Crisis
As talks at the Glasgow U.N. climate summit accelerate, we look at how the roots of the climate crisis date back to Western colonialism with award-winning Indian author Amitav Ghosh, who examines the violent exploitation of human life and the natural environment in his new book, “The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis.
The Global Climate Wall: Wealthy Nations Prioritize Militarizing Borders Over Climate Action
The world’s richest countries have responded by militarizing their borders and treating the humanitarian crisis as a security issue. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg attended this year’s U.N. climate summit, marking the first time a top alliance leader came to the climate talks since they began. On Tuesday, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at COP26 raised the issue of security during a press conference.
This Will Set Africa on Fire: Nnimmo Bassey of Nigeria Blasts Progress of Talks at U.N. Climate Summit
Today a draft agreement at COP26 was released, calling on nations to accelerate the phasing out of coal and fossil fuel subsidies and make pledges to cut emissions by the end of 2022. The draft also urges wealthy nations to “urgently scale-up” financial support for developing countries to help them adapt to the climate crisis. This comes as a new report by the group Climate Action Tracker estimates world temperatures are on track to rise by 2.
The One Thanksgiving Necessity America Forgot to Stock
A couple weeks ago at my local CVS, I spied them in the wild for the very first time—Abbott BinaxNOWs, currently America’s most sought-after rapid, at-home coronavirus test, piled neatly behind the counter.With the fall and winter holidays on the way, I figured it was a good opportunity to stock up. But after I asked for a few tests to cover my multi-person household, the pharmacist plucked just a single box off the stack.
Hollywood Has Forgotten What a Good Action Movie Looks Like
If you assembled a focus group of frequent moviegoers and asked them to describe the elements of a good action film, they’d probably come up with something along the lines of Red Notice. The star-laden blockbuster, which is dropping on Netflix this week, features three A-list names, all in familiar roles: Dwayne Johnson as a tough FBI agent, Ryan Reynolds as a motormouthed art thief, and Gal Gadot as a mysterious criminal who forces the two men to team up against her.
The Right’s Total Loss of Proportion
You can tell a lot about a group of people by what makes them angry.Consider the furious way many conservatives are reacting to the passage last week of a $1 trillion infrastructure bill backed by President Joe Biden—and then compare it with their reaction to the January 6 insurrection.[Peter Wehner: Republicans own this insurrection]After some House progressives refused to vote for the package, Speaker Nancy Pelosi relied on 13 Republicans to help eke the plan through.
Biden administration: Blocking vaccine mandate could cost ‘hundreds of lives per day’
The administration warned a federal court of the dangers of a stay of its vaccinate-or-test requirement for private employers.
Surgeon general defends embattled vaccine mandate
“It’s a necessary step to accelerate our pathway out of the pandemic,” Vivek Murthy said.
How Trump’s deal with Moderna hampers the global vaccine effort
Operation Warp Speed poured billions into Moderna and agreed not to share its vaccines abroad. Now the company is holding up the race to vaccinate low-income countries.
CDC endorses first Covid-19 vaccine for kids 5-11
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky quickly endorsed the use of shots, which could become available as early as Wednesday.
Investors sour on cannabis after Democrats fail to help industry
Plummeting stock prices and lack of federal action has soured investors
‘Back into gear’: Solid jobs report boosts Biden’s case for recovery
“This recovery is faster, stronger, fairer and wider than almost anyone could have predicted,” Biden said.
Powell is rolling back Fed aid to the economy. Here’s what comes next.
The long-awaited move signals both optimism about the pace of job growth and wariness about price surges that have pushed inflation up to its highest level in decades.
The Fed is ready to rein in its aid. Market tremors are already emerging.
Weaker-than-projected economic growth in the last quarter, a jobs slowdown and supply chain snags that are likely to continue into next year are sending warning signs for the economy.
Trouble ahead for Dems: A barrage of attacks over the economy
It’s not just Republicans who are assigning responsibility to the administration for the rocky economic recovery, polls show.
The Greenwashing of COP26: Fossil Fuel Lobbyists Make Up Biggest Delegation at U.N. Climate Summit
The Glasgow U.N. climate summit is inundated with fossil fuel lobbyists, according to a recent report published by Global Witness that found “if the fossil fuel lobby were a country delegation at COP, it would be the largest with 503 delegates — two dozen more than the largest country delegation.
News Roundup: House Republican promotes clip showing him ‘killing’ a Democrat
In the news today: No matter how grotesque the behavior of House Republicans has gotten—or how dangerous—they continue to have the apparent full support of their party leaders. Ever-odious Rep. Paul Gosar was nearly giddy in promoting a new animated clip depicting him attacking and killing a fellow member of Congress; that sort of thing would get you fired and quite possibly arrested in any other workplace in America.
Rocker Van Morrison is the latest celebrity to land in hot water over irresponsible COVID-19 claims
It can be tough to separate the art from the artist, particularly when the artist has separated his own brain stem from his cerebral cortex. Such is the case with Irish rock legend Van Morrison, who’s embraced the COVID-19 death cult with the kind of vigor Donald Trump might embrace a big slab of rotisserie gyro meat in the bathroom stall of a Coney Island Greek restaurant at 3 AM on a random Tuesday.
Federal Judge Denies Trump’s Attempt To Use ‘Executive Privilege’ To Hide Jan. 6 Role
Trump is unlikely to succeed on the merits of his claims and cannot show how the release of public documents harms him, the U.S. District Court judge ruled.
I love the smell of Republican recriminations in the morning
In the final vote count for the so-called “bipartisan” infrastructure bill now sailing towards President Joe Biden’s desk to become the law of the land, there were six Democratic “no” votes—all from a subset of House Democrats who Fox News considers equally interchangeable whenever it’s time to demonize the Democratic Party. They were Reps.
Mitch McConnell’s daughter tweeted about the need to pass the Voting Rights Act
The Washington Post has published a quasi-profile of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. It is a halfhearted attempt at pretending that the man who led the Republican Party to do nothing except deregulate and lower taxes on the wealthiest Americans and corporations while fostering the rabid bigotry of a disenfranchisement-fearing white voter base (which led to electing Donald Trump) is somehow in a weird place now.
The Senate has to act soon to fix the FTC’s zombie problem
As chair of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation committee, Sen. Maria Cantwell has a lot of work to do on nominations and not much time to do it. There are several weeks of purely concentrated hell before the Senate, starting when they return next week (they’re taking this week off) and then resuming again after they take the Thanksgiving week off.
Rep. Paul Gosar Bizarrely Defends Anime Video Attacking Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Although the video shows the Arizona Republican slashing the congresswoman, he claimed it simply depicted “a battle between lawful and unlawful policies.
One Of The Men On Trial For Killing Ahmaud Arbery Changed His Story Within Hours
Gregory McMichael and the other defendants are claiming self-defense, but shifting stories on the day of the fatal shooting might damage their argument.
Jan. 6 Committee Subpoenas Stephen Miller, Kayleigh McEnany Over Capitol Attack
The committee’s announcement comes just one day after it subpoenaed six others who worked with former President Donald Trump.
Parental Leave Is American Exceptionalism at Its Bleakest
American exceptionalism can sometimes be quite bleak: The United States is the only wealthy country in the world without a national program for paid parental leave.The U.S.’s best chance yet of giving up this dismal distinction might be slipping away. The $1.
Ann Coulter Calls Trump ‘Abjectly Stupid’ For Betraying His Base
“I didn’t think he was a genius, but I didn’t think he was that stupid,” the conservative pundit griped in a podcast with Andrew Sullivan.