Today's Liberal News

9 Reader Views on the State of Immigration Policy

This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.Last week, I asked about your views on immigration. Harold’s personal history informs his support for it:
If current immigration policy was in place at the turn of the 20th century, I would not be here now.

Your Smart Thermostat Isn’t Here to Help You

Everything’s so smart now. Smartphones, smart speakers, smart lamps, smart plugs, smart doorbells, smart locks, smart thermostats. Smart things are smart not because they have smarts, but because they connect to the internet. Online connectivity allows them to be controlled, either locally or from afar—and in ways both visible and invisible.The sales pitch for smart devices typically focuses on convenience.

“We Are Proud Boys”: Far-Right Gang Normalized Political Violence, Embraced by GOP as Legit Discourse

As the House committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection is set to hold its first fall public hearing, we look at one of the key groups that helped plan and carry out the attack as part of their goal to normalize political violence, with HuffPost journalist Andy Campbell, author of the new book, “We Are Proud Boys: How a Right-Wing Street Gang Ushered In a New Era of America.

The Bonfire of the Headscarves

No one can predict how a revolution starts. Nor can anyone know when one injustice will be what causes a people’s fury to overcome their fear. In 2011, in Tunisia, a street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, sparked an uprising by setting himself on fire. In 2022, in Iran, the death in police custody of a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, has brought Iranians onto the streets in every corner of the country.

“Model America”: Family of Phillip Pannell, Killed by White NJ Cop in ’90, Still Struggles for Justice

A new series examines how protests that erupted over a police killing three decades ago offer important lessons for the Black Lives Matter movement today. We speak to the family of Phillip Pannell, a 16-year-old Black boy who was fatally shot in the back in 1990 by a white police officer later acquitted for the killing. Pannell is the subject of “Model America,” a new four-part series by MSNBC that looks at the racial divide in the U.S.

GOP can’t bring itself to stop defending Trump: This time on declassifying documents by thought

Listening to Republicans’ continued support of former President Donald Trump, an unfamiliar onlooker might think the former president’s words hadn’t inspired an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. It’s like the FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida, didn’t happen, and it didn’t end in the seizure of 11 sets of classified documents, including those related to nuclear weapons.

Donald Trump has already lost everything he wanted from a ‘special master’

Not one document has been sorted, but Donald Trump has already lost everything he gained when Judge Aileen Cannon appointed a “special master.” In the last week, rulings from that special master, Judge Raymond Dearie, and from a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, have drained the entire process of any value to Trump. That process will continue. But everything Trump hoped to achieve, is gone.