Today's Liberal News

When Your Doctor Is on TikTok

In the second week of March 2020, uncertainty ruled TikTok. Students shared clips of school PA systems announcing closures and cancellations. Travelers filmed their frantic efforts to return to the U.S. before President Donald Trump’s border restrictions went into effect. And yet many users speculated that warnings of a life-reordering pandemic were overblown. Comment sections seemed angsty, but conspiracies abounded, hinting at the diverging versions of reality that lay ahead.

Your Presidential Picks: Adam Silver, Tyler Cowen, Stacey Abrams

Sign up for Conor’s newsletter here.“You can appoint any American citizen to one term as president,” I wrote earlier this week, “so long as your choice has never run for president before. Who do you appoint to the White House and why?” Among politicians, Jared Polis, the governor of Colorado, was mentioned most. Former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels and former Georgia State Representative Stacey Abrams were tapped, too.

ACLU Lawyer: Biden Is “Hiding Behind CDC” to Keep Pushing Trump-Era Anti-Immigrant Title 42 Policy

As the Biden administration marks its first year in office this week, we look at the president’s ongoing defense of Trump-era anti-immigration policies. Department of Justice lawyers were in court Wednesday to defend the Trump-era order known as Title 42, which has been used to expel hundreds of thousands of migrants at the border without screening them for asylum.

Afghanistan Faces “Tsunami of Hunger” as U.S. Sanctions Crash Country’s Economy

The World Food Program has warned Afghanistan faces a “tsunami of hunger” as the economy continues to collapse, due in part to U.S. sanctions and the freezing of Afghan assets following the Taliban takeover of Kabul. Meanwhile, President Biden once again defended his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan on Wednesday without acknowledging the humanitarian crisis that followed his exit.

“Davos Man”: How Billionaires Devour the World & Fuel Global Inequality, Prolonging the Pandemic

As many of the world’s wealthiest people wrap up virtual talks today at the World Economic Forum based in Davos, Switzerland, Oxfam reports the incomes of 99% of the world’s population dropped during the pandemic while the world’s 10 richest men saw their wealth double. Meanwhile, vaccine profits have minted at least nine new billionaires at Moderna, BioNTech and China’s CanSino, amassing a combined new wealth of over $19 billion.

Ralph Nader: Biden’s First Year Proves He Is Still a “Corporate Socialist” Beholden to Big Business

As President Biden marks one year in office, we speak with former four-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader and The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel, who say Biden has failed so far to sell his agenda to the American people and bring about the transformative policy he campaigned on — from quelling the pandemic to passing his landmark Build Back Better legislation. The two also critique the U.S.

‘I just got hit by a car’: Journalist goes viral for continuing to report after on-air accident

A video of a reporter in West Virginia being hit by a car while doing a live report has gone viral on social media, with many talking about the depths reporters go to get the news out. In the video, the journalist, identified as Tori Yorgey, immediately pulls herself up and continues speaking on camera—despite having just been hit by a car.

“Oh my God. I just got by a car, but I’m okay!” Yorgey says as she falls to the ground.

Real cancel culture: Organization goes after students who dare protest apartheid in Israel

University of Michigan freshman Reem Al-Khatib was asked to appear in a video supporting the #UMDivest resolution in the student government council. The resolution called for the University’s Board of Regents to create a committee to investigate three companies operating in Israel and involved in alleged human rights violations against Palestinians. The video was pretty innocuous, with her complete statement being, “I’m a Palestinian freshman.

Republicans are preparing another ‘Contract on America’ with the aid of … who else?

There are few people in modern political history who have done as much damage to our democracy as Newt Gingrich. As the prototypical, ideological Republican “bomb-thrower” who first came of age during the Reagan “revolution” in the 1990s, Gingrich ushered in and patented an era of hyperpartisan viciousness and crass, unrelenting political rancor that finally reached its apotheosis in a GOP now firmly under the thumb of Donald Trump.

Union membership dropped in 2021, this week in the war on workers

Union membership as a percentage of all U.S. workers dropped from 10.8% to 10.3% in 2021, returning to its 2019 level. The bump in 2020 is instructive, since it came because, in the mass job loss of the pandemic, more nonunion workers lost their jobs. But the lousy numbers for union membership are also important to understand in the context of popular opinion and U.S. labor law.

The Atlantic Daily: Six Poems to Bring You Comfort This Winter

We’re fumbling our way through another challenging January. Writers and editors from around our newsroom share the poems that they’re turning to this month. Then: Here’s what else to read, listen to, and watch this weekend.“I Could Be a Whale Shark” by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
It’s been a difficult couple of pandemic years for parents of young children.

André Leon Talley Defined Style on His Own Terms

André Leon Talley, who died on Tuesday at the age of 73, made the fashion world take notice of Black design genius. In the late 1990s, he regularly championed Kevan Hall, Stephen Burrows, Willi Smith, and many others in his Vogue “StyleFax” column, firmly placing these emerging designers in the mainstream.

The Continuing Humiliation of Black NFL Coaches

Coaches such as David Culley, just fired from the Houston Texans, and Brian Flores, of the Miami Dolphins until very recently, face a major problem in the NFL. It’s not their pedigree. It’s not their experience. It’s not their ability to relate to players. It’s not their offensive or defensive schemes.It’s that they’re Black.

The Filibuster Is Still Doomed

To hear Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema tell it, they hoped to defend voting rights. They also hoped, even more fervently, to defend the Senate filibuster.In the end, they did neither.It’s true that by joining their Republican colleagues this week to reject a rules change and block a pair of voting-rights bills, the two Democrats ensured that the filibuster remains temporarily intact.