Today's Liberal News

How the Pandemic Has Changed Us Already

During the past five months, many prognosticators have prognosticated about how the coronavirus pandemic will transform politics, work, travel, education, and other domains. Less sweepingly, but just as powerfully, it will also transform the people who are living through it, rearranging the furniture of their inner life. When this is all over—and perhaps even long after that—how will we be different?For one thing, we’ll better understand the importance of washing our hands.

Dismiss Minor Misdemeanors During the Pandemic

My husband and I are both public defenders in Maryland. Last week, he attended his first scheduled bench trial since the courts were closed in March. The client, witnesses, court staff, and attorneys were all expected to appear in court and potentially be exposed to COVID-19. And for what? To adjudicate a misdemeanor charge of malicious destruction of property worth less than $1,000.

The Fun Police Should Stand Down

State and local officials across the country are unleashing a new weapon in America’s war against the coronavirus: the cops. Citing parties as the cause of recent clusters of infections in Massachusetts, Governor Charlie Baker recently authorized state and local police to crack down on public and private gatherings that violate social-distancing guidelines. The sheriff’s office in New York City took on new coronavirus duties, including the enforcement of party bans.

The Last Convention

So many simple pleasures are gone, casualties of the pandemic. Baseball games. Live concerts. Summertime parades. One civic ritual that’s neither simple nor necessarily pleasurable is also withering under the virus’s spread: the presidential nominating convention as we know it. Starting next week, the parties will hold stripped-down versions of the quadrennial gatherings to formalize the Donald Trump–Joe Biden matchup, creating, perhaps, a template for the future.

General Strike & Blockade in Bolivia Enter Day 11 as Protesters Condemn Delayed Vote by Coup Gov’t

We go to Bolivia, where opponents of the coup government have entered day 11 of a general strike and nationwide highway blockade to protest the repeated postponement of Bolivia’s first presidential election since last year’s ouster of Evo Morales by the right-wing coup government of Jeanine Áñez, which was followed by an economic collapse and oppression.

Was Kamala Harris a Progressive Prosecutor? A Look at Her Time as a DA & California Attorney General

As Senator Kamala Harris makes history as the first woman of color on a major party ticket, we host a debate on her record as California attorney general and San Francisco district attorney, when she proudly billed herself as “top cop” and called for more cops on the street. San Francisco Deputy Public Defender Niki Solis says Harris was the state’s most progressive DA and advocated for “so many policies and so many alternatives to incarceration.

Trump’s personal autopsy of his own reelection bid concludes America needs more Trump

Donald Trump has reportedly taken stock of the current state of his reelection bid and, according to the AP, knows just what it needs—a heck of a lot more Trump magic, if you will. 

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, America, but there’s just no escaping him. Trump not only revived the White House task force briefings, he sidelined all the actual experts so the klieg lights would be on him and him alone.

Three guesses who’s ‘concerned’ about Trump’s Postal Service sabotage

Remember when Susan Collins—just six months ago—so infamously declared that she didn’t need to vote to impeach Donald Trump because “I believe that the president has learned from this case. […] The president has been impeached. That’s a pretty big lesson.”

You have to wonder if she has any personal regrets about her three years’ worth of support for Trump. Right now, she’s the Republican canary in the Trump coal mine.

‘How cruel can they be?’: COVID-19 patient left with effects of Trump’s failure of an eviction order

A Memphis woman hospitalized with COVID-19 managed to recover enough to return home, only to find out she no longer had a home, WPSD-TV reported. Leslie Nelson, 56, was evicted after she was unable to pay her rent due to medical costs in the thousands, the news station reported.

To add insult to injury, a process server tasked with serving her an eviction notice allegedly had to be talked out of taking the woman’s antique rifle.

‘Boogaloo’ extremism continues to thrive on Facebook while the company dismisses critics

Facebook is failing the public—and the underlying principles of an open society, including the free exchange of ideas—on a multitude of fronts. The social-media giant has become the home, organizationally and (dis)informationally, of a broad menu of far-right extremists and their endless supply of frequently absurd conspiracism: QAnon, white supremacists, “Boogaloo Bois,” you name it.

Harris emerging as the right fit for Biden campaign to energize the diverse Democratic voting base

Michelle Obama encapsulated what an awful lot of Americans woke up feeling Thursday morning, the day after Sen. Kamala Harris became Joe Biden’s running mate for the White House. “You get used to it, even as a little girl—opening the newspaper, turning on the TV, and hardly ever seeing anyone who looks like you. You train yourself to not get your hopes up,” Obama wrote. “[I]t always feels like someone is waiting to tell you that you’re not qualified.