Today's Liberal News

What to expect when you’re inoculating (i.e. what you can—and can’t—do after being vaccinated)

Congratulations! You have a fresh SpongeBob Band-Aid on your off arm; a dose of Pfizer, or Moderna, or Johnson & Johnson vaccine sunk deep into your muscle tissue; and the rabbit is … sorry, rabbits have nothing to do with this. However, if your first inclination is to climb onto a table in the middle of the nearest Applebee’s and belt out a chorus of “Climb Every Mountain,” there are several reasons why you really shouldn’t.

Supreme Court dismisses so-called sanctuary city cases following Biden admin request

The Supreme Court on Friday granted a request from the Biden administration to dismiss several cases around the previous administration’s withholding of federal funds from so-called “sanctuary cities.” Punishing localities for pro-immigrant policies was a favorite pastime of the Department of Justice (DOJ) under former Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III since the beginning of the previous administration.

TV Had Never Seen Anything Like WandaVision Before

This story contains spoilers for all of WandaVision.Within minutes of WandaVision’s finale dropping on Disney+ this morning, my Twitter timeline began to fill with questions about what the ending meant. After a few hours, YouTubers started posting breakdowns of what viewers might have missed.

Portrait of a Leader Humblebragging

Some books age poorly; others are poorly aged from the moment they’re published. American Crisis: Leadership Lessons From the COVID-19 Pandemic, Andrew Cuomo’s recent memoir, manages to fall into both categories. The New York governor’s paean to his handling of the COVID-19 crisis is in some ways a classic political chronicle: a hero’s journey, through the ordeal to the victory, told by the hero himself.

There’s No Real Reason to Eat 3 Meals a Day

For the first 34 years of my life, I always ate three meals a day. I never thought much about it—the routine was satisfying, it fit easily into my life, and eating three meals a day is just what Americans generally do. By the end of last summer, though, those decades of habit had begun to erode. The time-blindness of working from home and having no social plans left me with no real reason to plod over to my refrigerator at any specific hour of the day.

The Books Briefing: Gender Equality Is Valuable but Vague

Editor’s note: This week’s newsletter is a rerun.
We’ll be back with a fresh newsletter next week.Every year on March 8, International Women’s Day promotes gender equality—a term that leaves room for many interpretations, some of them contradictory. For example, the historian Paula J. Giddings describes how America’s early feminist organizations excluded women of color, including the journalist and activist Ida B.

‘This Is Unprecedented’: Why America’s Housing Market Has Never Been Weirder

If you think the U.S. housing market is behaving very, very strangely these days, that probably means you’re paying attention.In almost any other year, a weak economy would cripple housing. But the flash-freeze recession of 2020 corresponded with a real-estate boom, led by high-end purchases in suburbs and small towns. Even stranger, in America’s big metros, home prices and rents are going in opposite directions. Home values increased in all of the 100 largest metros in the U.S.

New York Congressmember Mondaire Jones: Israel Should Ensure Palestinians Have Access to COVID Vaccine

Israel has failed to make COVID-19 vaccines available to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, despite its responsibility under the Geneva Conventions. Critics in the United States say this “vaccine apartheid” is another example of Israeli human rights abuses going unpunished, even as the country receives billions in U.S. aid each year. Congressmember Mondaire Jones of New York says Israel must ensure that Palestinians are vaccinated.

Rep. Mondaire Jones: Voting Rights Bill H.R. 1 Is of “Foundational Importance” to U.S. Democracy

The House of Representatives has approved sweeping legislation protecting the right to vote with the For the People Act, which has been described as the most sweeping pro-democracy bill in decades. The legislation is aimed at improving voter registration and access to voting, ending partisan and racial gerrymandering, forcing the disclosure of dark money donors, increasing public funding for candidates, and imposing strict ethical and reporting standards on members of Congress and the U.S.

Rev. William Barber to Democrats: Overrule the Senate Parliamentarian & Pass the $15 Minimum Wage

The Senate has voted to open debate on President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package. The legislation has widespread support from voters, with one new poll showing 77% of Americans support the bill, including nearly 60% of Republicans. But the Senate bill has some key differences from the package approved by the House, including a reduction in the number of people eligible for direct stimulus checks and no provision to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.