Today's Liberal News

This Week in Statehouse Action: Can’t Get Fooled Again edition

Yes, I know the headline dates me.

But whatever. It’s that super annoying day of the year when everybody thinks they’re MUCH funnier than they actually are.

But I’m not here for pranks, and the only jokes are the bad ones I make every week.

Frankly, I wish the latest GOP statehouse antics were April Fools pranks.

Alas, they’re all too serious.

How Black Mississippians found their power during Jackson’s water emergency

After the water stopped flowing, a grassroots effort in Jackson is organizing the Black community for future climate and political crises.

By Frances Madeson, for Capital and Main

After two weeks of taking sponge baths, Kalif Wilkes lingered in a long, hot shower with plenty of steam in his Jackson, Mississippi, home. The water had just come back on for this capital city of 160,000.

“The first shower I took, I stayed in there for 45 minutes.

Johnson & Johnson loses millions of doses of vaccine to manufacturing mix-up

On Wednesday, Johnson & Johnson issued a statement saying that the company met its commitment to deliver 20 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine within the United States by the end of March, and still expects to produce an astounding billion doses around the world before the end of 2021. However, there was definitely some bad news mixed with the good. As in millions of doses of vaccine had to be destroyed, and shipments of new vaccine have been temporarily halted.

Listen: No Shirt. No Shoes. No Shots. No Service.

Vaccine passports are almost certainly in our near future. But what are they exactly? And with concerns about vaccine equity now complicated by partisan fear mongering, how should they be implemented?Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist with NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine who’s spent years thinking about vaccine ethics, joins James Hamblin and Maeve Higgins on the podcast Social Distance to explain.

That Other Reason You Might Feel Terrible Right Now

One morning in March, I woke up feeling horrible. Head: pressurized. Limbs: leaden. Nose: runny. Oh no, I thought, as I lay in bed. I rubbed my eyes. They were … itchy! I got up and went to the bathroom mirror. Red, too! Thank God, I thought. Allergies!I don’t usually get so excited about the onset of my seasonal allergies. Most years, it goes something like this: I wake up feeling sick. I assume it’s a cold.

The Title IX Loophole That Hurts NCAA Women’s Teams

When Sedona Prince, a center on the University of Oregon women’s basketball team, shared a TikTok from the NCAA women’s basketball tournament earlier this month, it went viral. Her video compared the women’s weight room in San Antonio—a single small rack of dumbbells and a stack of yoga mats—with what the men’s teams were provided at their tournament, in Indianapolis: a gym-size room full of squat racks, benches, barbells, and racks of heavy plates.

“The System of Policing Is on Trial”: Derek Chauvin Murder Case Is About More Than Just George Floyd

After the third dramatic day in the murder trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis, we speak with Mel Reeves, who has been following the case as community editor at the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, the oldest Black-owned newspaper in the state. Reeves discusses the testimony heard so far, and juror selection, and says more is at stake than just what happened to George Floyd. “It is political. The system of policing is on trial,” says Reeves.

“Check His Pulse”: In Derek Chauvin Trial, Outraged Bystanders Describe Witnessing George Floyd Death

Jurors in Minneapolis heard another series of dramatic testimonies during the third day of the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for killing George Floyd. A teenage clerk named Christopher Martin at the Minneapolis convenience store outside which Floyd was killed told jurors during questioning that he felt guilty for reporting the fake $20 bill to his manager, who called the police on George Floyd.

The Best Losers in America

The sight of Ray Knight rounding third base with the winning run of Game 6 in the 1986 World Series against the Boston Red Sox—completing a two-run, two-out, two-strike comeback in the bottom of the tenth inning—was the greatest moment of my life, and I have two kids. I will cherish the memories of my sweet, gorgeous, magical children drawing their first breaths until the day I draw my last. I’ll just cherish them ever so slightly less than my memories of that Game 6.

Why Hong Kongers Are Slow to Get a Vaccine

Hong Kong’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic has put it in an enviable position. Bolstered by a public that learned difficult lessons from the 2003 SARS pandemic, and because of a relatively swift government response this time around, this city of roughly 7 million people has suffered fewer than 12,000 cases and only 205 deaths. It never underwent the large-scale, harsh lockdowns implemented elsewhere.