Today's Liberal News

Elaina Plott Rejoining The Atlantic as a Staff Writer

National political reporter Elaina Plott, who covered the Trump presidency for The Atlantic in 2018 and 2019, is rejoining The Atlantic. Elaina will become a staff writer this summer; she currently covers politics in Washington for The New York Times.“Elaina is one of the finest young magazine journalists in America. We are delighted to welcome her back to The Atlantic,” said Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor in chief.

Workers at Largest GM Plant in Mexico Win Historic Vote for New Independent Union After 2019 Reforms

In Mexico, thousands of workers at the country’s largest General Motors plant have won a historic vote to form an independent union, breaking from a tradition of corrupt unions tied to elites who cut deals with corporations to keep wages and benefits low. We go to Guanajuato, Mexico, to speak with historian Javier Bravo about the victory and the passage of critical labor reforms in 2019, which ensure workers can create new unions independent of the will of their employers, says Bravo.

“Don’t Look Up”: David Sirota on His Oscar Nod for Writing Blockbuster Climate Crisis & Media Satire

We speak to longtime progressive journalist and 2020 Bernie Sanders adviser David Sirota, who was just nominated for an Academy Award for co-writing the screenplay of the hit Netflix movie “Don’t Look Up” along with the film’s director, Adam McKay. The satire of the fight to have climate change acknowledged, let alone acted upon by global leaders, follows the plight of astronomy professor Dr.

Vladimir Putin: Modern Man

There is a peculiar modern tendency to describe things we don’t like as belonging to the past. The Taliban are medieval, Donald Trump supporters backward, Brexiteers nostalgic for empire. Under this rubric, Vladimir Putin is a Soviet throwback and the war he may soon start in Ukraine, as John Kerry once remarked, is like some 19th-century skirmish transplanted into the 21st.

Calgary Cruz declares support for anti-vaxx truckers’ insurrection in capital of his native country

A year later there’s another insurrection for Sen. Ted Cruz to support. This time it’s not Washington, D.C., but Ottawa, the capital of the country where the Texas senator was actually born. A mob of anti-vaxx Canadian truckers has occupied downtown Ottawa for more than a week in a protest over COVID-19 mandates, clogging the streets and honking their horns late into the night.

Black FedEx driver says he was shot at; suspects charged only with conspiracy and damage to van

Civil rights attorneys are advocating for harsher charges to be brought against two white men arrested on suspicion of chasing and shooting at a Black FedEx driver in Mississippi. Brandon Case and his father, Gregory Case, were arrested last Tuesday and released the same day on bond, The Associated Press reported. They face charges of shooting into a vehicle and conspiracy stemming from an incident on  Jan. 24 in Brookhaven, which is about 56 miles south of Jackson.

QAnon Chronicles: Somehow, the JFK Jr. conspiracy crew got even weirder

The Qronicles is a series that will collect some of the news, videos, and general mis/dis-information roiling around the conspiracy world of QAnon. You can cringe, you can laugh, but these folks are organizing and showing up at the polls!

This Qronicles we are going to try to collect together some of the QAnon world’s stories over the past couple of weeQs (see what I did there?). There are QAnon folks pleading guilty for participating in the Jan.

The Paradox of Sour Food

When researchers consider the classic five categories of taste—sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami—there’s little disagreement over which of them is the least understood. Creatures crave sweet for sugar and calories. A yen for umami, or savoriness, keeps many animals nourished with protein. Salt’s essential for bodies to stay in fluid balance, and for nerve cells to signal. And a sensitivity to bitterness can come in handy with the whole not-poisoning-yourself thing.

These Animals Are Feasting on the Ruins of an Extinct World

Karasik, the largest underwater mountain in the Arctic, was meant to be dead. Volcanically, it is. But biologically, it’s home to a teeming community of creatures, surviving in an environment with barely any food, through means that no one expected.The mountain lies 300 kilometers from the North Pole, at a ridge where the tectonic plates that hold Europe and North America are slowly drifting apart.

The NFL’s Black Coaches Should Stop Playing Along

In a damning 58-page class-action lawsuit against the NFL, Brian Flores presents screenshots of a text-message exchange that crystallizes the dilemma Black coaches routinely find themselves in: They’re supposed to play along with a hiring system that officially requires teams to consider minority candidates for top jobs but that, in practice, is plainly biased against them.

Hunger-Striking Teachers Say Oakland Plan to Close Schools Will Hurt Black & Brown Communities

We go to Oakland, where a group of teachers are on a hunger strike to protest a plan to close and merge over a dozen schools due to under-enrollment. This comes ahead of a critical school board vote Tuesday that will decide whether to proceed with the plan. Activists argue the move threatens to divert resources to charter schools and displace hundreds of Black and Brown children from their neighborhood schools.

Policing on Trial: Attorney Ben Crump on Fed Case Against Three Cops Involved in George Floyd Murder

The Minneapolis judge who signed the no-knock warrant that led to the fatal police shooting of 22-year-old Black man Amir Locke also presided over the trial of Derek Chauvin, the ex-police officer convicted for the murder of George Floyd. The trial of three officers facing lesser charges — Tou Thao, Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng — is currently underway after being delayed when one of the defendants tested positive for COVID.