Today's Liberal News

Republicans won’t hold members of their own party accountable, so we have to

Senate Republicans have now acquitted Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial.

Thanks to the Senate’s six-year terms, many of the Republicans who set aside their oaths to protect the Constitution in favor of protecting their lord and master, Donald Trump, won’t be on the ballot next year. But quite a few of them will be, and several hold very vulnerable seats. They must face a reckoning for their party’s failure to hold a dangerous renegade president accountable.

Listen: A Forever Pandemic

Vaccine shortages frustrate countries around the world. The lines for vaccines are illogical. But residents of wealthy nations will likely get access to doses in the coming months. It may be much longer for the rest of the world—and, as epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves explains on the podcast Social Distance, that affects us all and should prompt dramatic action.

The Unsettling Message of Judas and the Black Messiah

“The Black Panthers are the single greatest threat to our national security. Our counterintelligence program must prevent the rise of a Black messiah from among their midst.” And so begins Judas and the Black Messiah, with an ominous speech from the FBI director J. Edgar Hoover (played by Martin Sheen) in 1968. The film, which debuted yesterday in theaters and on HBO Max, is part crime thriller, part civil-rights historical drama.

Taylor Swift Misses the Old Taylor Swift, Too

When Taylor Swift, the pandemic’s most productive pop star, announced that she’d be re-recording her albums in a push for ownership over her work, the venture sounded risky. Swift cast her decision as both a personal vendetta against the music executive Scooter Braun and a moralistic stand against the industry’s treatment of artists. But at face value, re-recordings seem to offer little to look forward to for listeners.

Friday Night Owls: Amnesty Int’l calls on President Biden to shut down Guantánamo military prison

Night Owls is a themed open thread appearing at Daily Kos seven days a week.

In response to reports that the Biden administration has launched a formal review of the future of the Guantánamo Bay detention facility, Daphne Eviatar, Director of the Security with Human Rights Program at Amnesty International USA, released the following statement:

“We are pleased to hear that the Biden administration wants to review the U.S.

Health experts weigh in on their efforts to reverse vaccine distrust in the Black community

At a time when a global pandemic is affecting and killing Black and brown Americans at a significantly higher rate than white Americans, reluctance to get inoculated can have especially dangerous consequences. Taking time to build trust in communities that are hesitant to get vaccinated is crucial—and when people are desperate to return to some semblance of normalcy, time is something there isn’t much of.