Today's Liberal News

Barbara Lee, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lead call urging Biden admin to raise refugee admissions cap

Nearly 70 legislators led by anti-war stalwart Barbara Lee and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are calling on the Biden administration to raise the refugee cap for the 2022 fiscal year, citing “vulnerable Afghans who are in grave danger following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.” President Joe Biden has previously pledged to raise the cap to 125,000 in the next full fiscal year. Currently its 62,500. Legislators are calling on him to raise it to at least 200,000.

The Two Blows America Is Dealing to the Taliban

Imagine how the scene at the Kabul airport looked to the suicide bomber in the last seconds before he committed his act of murder yesterday: thousands of men, women, and children queuing and jostling in desperate escape from the coming Taliban regime. These were not randomly selected men, women, and children either. These were people with technical skills: medicine, computers, electrical engineering. These were people who spoke foreign languages.

The Absurdity of Police Comparing Vaccine Mandates to Nazi Germany

It was after Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced that she would pursue a COVID-19 vaccination mandate for all city employees that the local Fraternal Order of Police president, John Catanzara, finally understood what it was like to be a Jew in Hitler’s Germany.“We’re in America, G-ddamn it. We don’t want to be forced to do anything. Period,” Catanzara said, as transcribed by the Chicago Sun-Times.

The Pandemic Is Making Dads Reevaluate Their Work-Life Balance

Zac Eash had originally planned to be home for two weeks when he became a father. But his daughter was born in early March 2020, and, well, you know. “We both got to spend a lot of time with her the first four months of her life,” Eash, a middle-school teacher living in Ames, Iowa, who finished out the school year remotely, told me.When in-person classes resumed late last summer, Eash was acutely aware of how much less time he had with his wife and baby daughter, and he missed it.

Schrödinger’s Planet

Updated at 4:15 p.m. ET on August 27, 2021.In 2006, astronomers gathered in Prague to consider a very basic question: How many planets are in our solar system? Was it nine, or was it actually eight, or perhaps as many as 12? By the end of the conference, after several polite debates and “lots of heated hallway discussions,” the verdict was in. Under the new rules of planethood, the solar system had eight planets, and Pluto wasn’t one of them.

The Books Briefing: Cultivate a Love of Reading Early On

Patrick Zachmann / Magnum
This week, kids and teachers across the United States went back to school, after a year and a half of remote learning and Zoom fatigue. This school year is likely to be a mess—again—and among all of the pandemic considerations, teachers are also contending with keeping students engaged in and out of the classroom.

California Recall: Right-Wing Radio Host Who Once Mentored Stephen Miller Could Replace Gov. Newsom

The conservative talk radio host Larry Elder is now the Republican front-runner challenging Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom in a special election that could also shape national politics. California voters cast ballots on September 14 on whether to recall Newsom, after a right-wing campaign to unseat the governor garnered enough signatures to trigger the vote.

Who Is ISIS-K? Anti-Taliban, Anti-U.S. Terror Group Claims Responsibility for Kabul Suicide Bombs

We speak with Haroun Rahimi, assistant professor of law at the American University of Afghanistan, about the Islamic State affiliate that claimed responsibility for this week’s devastating suicide bombings at Kabul airport, which killed more than 110 people, including 13 U.S. troops. Islamic State Khorasan, or ISIS-K, is a puritanical group that is “critical of all other sects of Islam,” says Rahimi.