Today's Liberal News

Pence takes hard pass on explaining Trump’s nonexistent preexisting conditions ‘plan’

Mike Pence was asked point blank at Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate to explain Donald Trump’s plan to protect health care coverage for people with preexisting conditions. And despite Pence’s earlier claim that such a plan exists, he ran for the hills.

“You mentioned earlier, Vice President Pence, that the president was committed to maintaining protections for people with preexisting conditions,” said moderator Susan Page of USA Today.

One of the unsung heroes of the night: The fly on Mike Pence’s head

Wednesday night’s vice presidential debate came to a close with a lot less heavy breathing and yelling than last week’s presidential showdown. But Mike Pence does retain the sociopathic-seeming ability to just lie through his teeth about virtually anything and everything, and Sen. Kamala Harris had to do a lot of history lessoning and in-debate fact-checking.

The Man Who Pretended Not to Notice

“It’s a visual medium.” So often said the late Roger Ailes about television. He said it to justify hiring women who looked a certain way and requiring them to dress a certain way. Ailes’s abuse of the saying does not make it any less true. The most striking thing about the Pence-Harris debate was nothing that was said. It was what we saw.We saw a vice president with a pale face, his mouth cankered by a cold sore, his eyes pink.

The Atlantic Daily: What’s at Stake in the Pence-Harris Debate

Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.DREW ANGERER / MICHAEL A. MCCOY / GETTYThe stakes of tonight’s vice-presidential debate are higher for Senator Kamala Harris than for Vice President Mike Pence, my colleague David A. Graham argues.

Why Kamala Harris Is Still Showing Up Tonight

Watching Kamala Harris take the stage tonight for her debate with Mike Pence, many Democrats may be wondering the same thing: Why would she agree to appear in person, just a few feet away from the vice president, amid a coronavirus outbreak that has ravaged the White House and infected President Donald Trump?

What Earth Owes to Black Holes

The first picture ever captured of a black hole, one situated in the center of another galaxy, was pretty blurry. Seen in silhouette, it appeared fuzzy, as did the ring of hot gas surrounding it. The reaction of the public did not necessarily match the unalloyed joy of astronomers accustomed to extracting cosmic wonders from lines in a graph. To anyone more familiar with black holes from epic space films, this one mostly looked like a flame-glazed donut.

Greensboro Massacre: City Apologizes 41 Years After Cops Allowed Klan, Nazis to Kill 5 Antiracists

Nearly 41 years after Ku Klux Klansmen and American Nazis shot dead five antiracist activists in the town of Greensboro, North Carolina, the City Council there has passed a resolution apologizing for the attack and the police department’s complicity in the killings. We speak with two survivors of the 1979 attack, Reverend Nelson Johnson and Joyce Hobson Johnson, who say the city’s apology acknowledges “the police knew and chose to do nothing.

Mary Trump: My Uncle Is Responsible for 210,000 Deaths and Is Now “Willfully Getting People Sick”

As President Trump compares the deadly COVID-19 outbreak to the flu despite being hospitalized for the virus, we speak to his only niece, Mary Trump, about his increasingly erratic behavior in the final weeks of the election season and how his family views illness as a weakness. “To be treated for something is to admit that you need the treatment, and I don’t see him having any self-awareness,” she says.

Hey, Bosses: Let Everyone Work Less

The only way parents and their child-free co-workers can survive this pandemic is for bosses to acknowledge reality, lower their goals, and do their part.