Today's Liberal News

News Roundup: Proud Boys indicted for seditious conspiracy; Jan. 6 committee prepares for hearings

Five top members of the far-right group Proud Boys have now been indicted for seditious conspiracy as a result of their actions in the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection; the charges indicate that prosecutors believe they can prove that at least some members of the violent crowd planned their actions as means of overthrowing the United States government.

This week will also see the first public hearings of the House select committee investigating the Jan.

Ukraine update: Russia attempting to take remaining villages north of Siverskyi Donets River

On Tuesday, the situation in Severodonetsk continues to be volatile, but the latest reports have the city more or less split down the center. Ukrainian forces control the industrial area on the west, as well as outlying villages and the southern edge of the city near the bridge to Lysychansk. Russia is positioned in the northern area and fighting with Ukrainian forces in the east.

Democrats land a high-profile recruit to take on a freshman Republican in south Florida

Democratic state Sen. Annette Taddeo announced on Monday that she’d drop her bid for governor and would instead seek to run against freshman GOP Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar in south Florida’s 27th Congressional District. Republicans made this seat several points redder in redistricting, shifting it from a 51-48 win for Joe Biden to a 50-49 margin for Donald Trump, but it remains one that Democrats are eager to target.

BTS Gets It

The White House briefing room hadn’t been packed like this in ages. That’s what journalists kept saying last Tuesday, as more than a hundred of them squeezed into the room, cradling their cameras and murmuring sorrys every time they bumped into one another. South Korean media outlets jockeyed for space alongside the usual American networks. A few people joked that the huge crowd was there for Brian Deese, the National Economic Council director, who was also scheduled to speak.

We Don’t Know Neptune at All

You don’t really hear about Neptune, do you?Not as often as the other planets, certainly. Space robots regularly provide snapshots of the surface of Mars and the clouds of Jupiter. Mercury is a frequent scapegoat for astrology-minded folks having a bad day (even though Mercury being in retrograde is actually just an optical illusion in our night sky). For 13 whole years, the Cassini spacecraft orbited Saturn before plunging into the planet, ending its glorious streak of observations.

Our First Encounter With T. Rex

The money had come fast. As a young man from humble stock, he had toiled away at an entry-level job in telecommunications. Now, as his ambition rode the wave of new technology, a small opportunity had turned into unimaginable riches. What to do with so much wealth? Restless and bursting with pride, and perhaps a tinge of guilt for his good fortune, the multimillionaire transformed into a titan of science.

The Indian Action Blockbuster That Should Make Hollywood Jealous

I can think of two action films from the past decade that involved a stunt in which an actor throws an entire motorcycle at someone. The first is the 2015 Marvel sequel Avengers: Age of Ultron. Captain America (played by Chris Evans), battling bad guys in a snowy forest, does a flip with his bike and flings it at an armored tank.

The United States Must Stand Up for One of Its Own

Updated at 12:52 p.m. ET on June 7, 2022.When the Palestinian American journalist and longtime Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh was killed on May 11 while reporting on an Israeli military raid in the city of Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, competing narratives quickly began to take shape.

“Corrections in Ink”: Keri Blakinger on Her Journey from Addiction to Cornell to Prison to Newsroom

Criminal justice reporter Keri Blakinger speaks with us about her new memoir, out today, called “Corrections in Ink,” which details her path from aspiring professional figure skater to her two years spent in prison after she was arrested in her final semester of her senior year at Cornell University with six ounces of heroin. Blakinger says her relatively short jail sentence was a lucky case, which she attributes to progressive drug reform as well as her racial privilege.

Texas Editor: Police in Uvalde Are Actively Obstructing Us from Doing Our Jobs

Police and bikers in Uvalde, Texas, are restricting a growing number of journalists from reporting on the aftermath of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School that left 19 fourth graders and two teachers dead. “None of us can ever recall being treated in such a manner and our job impeded in such a manner,” says Nora Lopez, executive editor of San Antonio Express-News and president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

We Can’t Get Answers: Texas Lawmaker Decries Police Refusal to Address Response to School Massacre

We speak with Texas Democratic state Senator Roland Gutierrez about how the police botched the response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, a small town that is part of Gutierrez’s congressional district. The shooting left 19 fourth graders and two teachers dead after the police waited over an hour before anyone confronted the gunman.

U.K. PM Boris Johnson Survives No-Confidence Vote But Faces Uphill Battle to Stay in Power

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson survived a vote of no confidence held by members of his own Conservative Party on Monday. The 211-148 vote came just days after Johnson was booed by conservative royalists when he arrived at a service to honor the queen’s 70-year reign. We speak with Priya Gopal, English professor at the University of Cambridge, who says the vote signals a division within the country’s Conservatives and an opening for progressives.

Biden OKs $5.8B in Debt Relief for Corinthian Students; Pressure Grows to Abolish All Student Debt

The Biden administration this week canceled almost $6 billion in student loan debt for borrowers who attended the now-defunct network of for-profit schools known as Corinthian Colleges, which defrauded thousands of students before being shut down in 2015. We speak to two activists from the Debt Collective, a group working to end the student loan crisis, about the ongoing fight for full federal student debt cancellation.