Today's Liberal News

The Rogue Planets That Wander the Galaxy Alone

The Milky Way is home to hundreds of billions of stars, and many more planets. Some come in sets, as in our own solar system. But not every planet orbits a star.Some planets actually wander the galaxy alone, untethered. They have no days or nights, and they exist in perpetual darkness. In a kitschy NASA collection of travel posters for destinations beyond Earth, one of these cold worlds is advertised with the motto: “Visit the planet with no star, where the nightlife never ends.

Pandemic Poverty: The CARES Act Kept Millions from Going Hungry. Why Won’t the Senate Renew It?

The massive $2 trillion CARES Act — which sent households one-time payments and boosted unemployment checks with an additional $600 a week through July — helped keep millions afloat, but more than 8 million people have been forced into poverty since the aid ended. “The relief was temporary, and much of it has now expired, so now we’re seeing poverty rise again,” says Megan Curran, a researcher at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University.

Facebook Choked Traffic to Mother Jones & Other Sites While Amplifying Right-Wing Misinformation

Big Tech CEOs were grilled Wednesday about how they moderate election disinformation and extremist content, and were accused by Republicans of censoring conservatives. Overlooked were reports that Facebook designed changes to its news feed algorithm in 2017 to reduce the visibility of left-leaning news sites like Mother Jones. Mother Jones editors wrote in 2019 that the site had seen a sharp decline in its Facebook audience, which translated to a loss of around $600,000 over 18 months.

Is Republican Attack on Social Media Giants Part of an Effort to Invalidate Election Results?

Lawmakers grilled the chief executives of Facebook, Google and Twitter just days before Election Day on how they moderate hate speech, extremist content and election disinformation, including tweets from President Trump. Republicans have long accused Big Tech platforms of censoring conservative views, but tech policy expert Ramesh Srinivasan says the argument is shaped around talking points that are aimed at invalidating election results.

Wednesday Night Owls: Beating Trump is just the beginning

Night Owls, a themed open thread, appears at Daily Kos seven days a week

Heather Digby Parton at Salon writes—Progressives and power: If Trump is defeated, the real fight begins:

Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir wrote a thoughtful piece this week about political engagement in which he makes the case that merely voting is a tepid form of activism anyway, particularly in America, where it often becomes “a bizarre form of symbolic theater or p

An innovative way for Bay Area volunteers to get out the vote in swing states

We are one week away from the most important election of our lifetime. But as a Bay Area resident, it can feel frustrating to know it will really be decided in a handful of states that are hundreds (or thousands) of miles away from us.

And with COVID-19, a lot of us miss the camaraderie of being around like-minded people. While there are many ways to volunteer from home, we don’t have campaign offices this year.