Today's Liberal News

News Roundup: Manchin has yet more demands; Supreme Court mulls Texas abortion ban

In the news today: Just as Democratic lawmakers seemed on the cusp of an infrastructure agreement, Sen. Joe Manchin held his very own press conference to announce yet another round of new complaints, criticisms, and demands. From the outside, it looked like an effort to sabotage both infrastructure bills—but Manchin may just be addicted to hearing himself talk.

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How Virginia’s Governor Race Could Impact 2024

Gubernatorial races can quickly become proxies for nationwide grievances and allegiances, and Tuesday’s neck-and-neck election between the Republican Glenn Youngkin and the Democrat Terry McAuliffe for the governorship of Virginia is no exception.

Jury says private prison profiteer must pay $17.3 million to immigrants forced to work for $1 a day

On Oct. 27, a court determined that GEO Group violated Washington state’s minimum wage law by paying immigrants detained at the Northwest ICE Processing Center (NWIPIC) just $1 per day for their forced labor. The next step was for the judge to determine how much the private prison profiteer “unfairly gained from its wage law violations spanning more than 15 years,” which could total millions, the Associated Press said.

Wyoming librarians won’t face obscenity charges over stocking sex ed, LGBTQ books for youth

As Daily Kos previously covered, a large-scale controversy has targeted a small library in Campbell County, Wyoming. Why? Anti-LGBTQ+ hysteria, of course. As you might remember, several community members were upset to realize that children’s and young adult books about LGBTQ+ issues and sexual education were available for check out at the library. These complaints resulted in 27 books being challenged, a process that any library patron can initiate for any book.

The Myth of Root Canals

Do you know what’s going on inside your teeth? I had never even contemplated the matter until April, when one of my molars began its revolt and my teeth became the only things I was capable of contemplating. As anyone who’s been in this position knows, the quaint discomfort that the word toothache implies doesn’t capture the incredible misery that a toothache can produce; sometimes, the pain was so bad that I found it difficult to use my laptop.

America Has Lost the Plot on COVID

We know how this ends: The coronavirus becomes endemic, and we live with it forever. But what we don’t know—and what the U.S. seems to have no coherent plan for—is how we are supposed to get there.

Protests at COP26 Climate Summit Call on U.K. to Block Massive Cambo Oil Field Off Scotland’s Coast

As the U.K. government tries to claim the mantle of climate leadership at the U.N. Climate Change Conference, we speak with Mary Church, head of campaigns at Friends of the Earth Scotland. She describes how activists are calling on U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson to block the development of the giant Cambo oil field off the coast of Scotland, which would run counter to the U.N. goals of phasing out fossil fuels.

Many Voices from Global South Shut Out of U.N. Climate Summit as Vaccine Apartheid Limits Travel to U.K.

This year’s U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow may be the whitest and most privileged one ever, with thousands from the Global South unable to attend because of lack of access to COVID-19 vaccines and travel restrictions. The global inequity in vaccine access mirrors the disproportionate impact of the climate crisis that has fallen mostly on poor countries least responsible for emissions, says climate activist Dipti Bhatnagar in Mozambique.

The Cancer Celebrities

I was 16, living for a year with my family in Ireland, and I was viciously homesick. I was an American teenager, and I wanted Coca-Cola with cracked ice, Lip Smackers, Sticky Fingers jeans. Ireland in the 1970s was still under the provisional rule of the Irish Taliban—even condoms were illegal, not that I needed any—and there was one television channel.

Josh Mandel Might Be Craven Enough to Win

Back when the Ohio Senate candidate Josh Mandel was a young man in politics, he had a spiel in his stump speech about bristling when people told him to wait his turn. Now, as Mandel approaches middle age, it seems that those people were onto something: Mandel just had to wait for the right moment, when his brand of cynicism would be the mainstream of Republican politics.Much national attention has focused on Mandel’s primary opponent J. D.