What A Day

Texas authorities arrested 26-year-old Lizelle Herrera, last week, on murder charges for what the local sheriff’s office described as a “self-induced abortion.” Her bond was set at $500,000 and her arrest sparked protests from abortion rights activists over the weekend. But on Sunday, local prosecutors dropped the charge against her. More than 50 people were killed and another 98 injured after a m...

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson became the first Black woman to be confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice on Thursday, and the first former public defender to sit on the high court. Three Republicans crossed party lines to support her, including Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Mitt Romney of Utah. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a new...

The Minneapolis police officer who shot and killed Amir Locke earlier this year will not face any criminal charges. Locke was a 22-year-old Black man who was killed while members of the Minneapolis Police SWAT team executed a no-knock warrant on his cousin’s apartment. An FDA advisory committee met yesterday to discuss the next phase of COVID vaccines and boosters. Dr. Abdul el-Sayed, an epidemiol...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave an emotional address to the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday after his visit to Bucha. In his speech, Zelensky accused Russian troops of atrocities, which included violent murder, rape, and a number of horrific acts. There are a number of states fighting over redrawing their maps even as the midterm elections inch closer. Michael Li, senior cou...

Amazon warehouse workers in Staten Island, New York, voted to form the company’s first union in the U.S. last Friday, making a historic win for labor organizers everywhere. The union earned recognition in less than a year into its existence, and it overcame multiple arrests as well as millions that Amazon spent on anti-union consultants. Chris Smalls, founder of the Amazon Labor Union, joins us to...

Signs of a massacre in Bucha, a town near Kyiv, have intensified calls for investigations into possible war crimes by Russia. Footage and photographs from Bucha show the corpses of at least twenty men strewn across the streets. The town’s mayor has said the victims included men and women and at least one child, and that they’ve already buried 280 people in mass graves. Today, hundreds of people ar...

The Biden administration will reportedly end its use of Title 42 by late May. The policy effectively acted as a suspension of the legal asylum process, and has been viewed as inhumane by immigration activists. The BA.2 Omicron subvariant is now the dominant COVID strain in the U.S. This comes as many states begin to close mass vaccination and testing sites that were vital throughout the pandemic....

Over 3.9 million people have fled Ukraine and become refugees since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war, according to the United Nations. About 2.3 million of those people have gone to neighboring Poland, and another 600,000 people have crossed into neighboring Romania. Julia Pashkovska, a mother who left her home in central Ukraine, joins us to discuss her experience fleeing the country. And...

The House select committee investigating the insurrection is reportedly soon going to seek an interview with Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. She was found to have lobbied former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to pursue a plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election, sending 29 texts on the subject. Immigration advocates, lawmakers, and health officia...

On Saturday, President Biden gave a speech from Warsaw, Poland, where he talked about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But at one point, he briefly spoke off the cuff and said about Russian President Vladimir Putin, “This man cannot remain in power.” White House officials quickly walked back Biden’s statement, saying that the U.S. has no strategy of regime change in Russia.  Today is the fourth day o...

President Biden spoke in Brussels after meeting with European allies on Thursday, and announced that the U.S. would commit more than $1 billion in humanitarian assistance to Ukraine and welcome 100,000 refugees. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is poised to sign two GOP-backed bills into law: the notorious Don’t Say Gay bill and the Stop WOKE Act. Florida House Representative Michele Rayner joins us...

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson faced her second day of questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday during her Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Like Tuesday, there were some moments of substance in there, but many Republican senators didn’t let up on a bad faith effort to drum up controversies around Judge Jackson that just don’t exist. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on...

Tuesday was the second day of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings. She faced questions from senators on the Judiciary Committee on a variety of topics, including her religion, abortion rights, critical race theory, war crimes, and child pornography sentencing. The World Health Organization said that as of March 18, at least 62 healthcare facilities had been hit in U...

Ukraine rejected Russia’s demand that soldiers surrender the city of Mariupol, on Monday, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky saying in part, “Ukraine cannot fulfill ultimatums.” And in Kyiv, a Russian missile struck a mall, killing at least 8 people according to officials. Republican-led state legislatures have passed an overwhelming amount of anti-abortion legislation in recent months, p...

Russia's attacks on the Ukrainian city of Mariupol continued through the weekend, with missiles striking an art school where 400 people had taken shelter. Russia is claiming that a bombing it carried out on a Ukrainian ammunition storage site was done with a hypersonic missile, and if this claim is true, it could mark the first use of this kind of weapon in combat. Confirmation hearings for Suprem...

Teachers in the Minneapolis Public School district are in the second week of their strike, led by The Minneapolis Federation of Teachers Local 59. Tequila Laramee, an associate educator who has been with Minneapolis Public Schools for ten years, joins us to discuss what she and the union are advocating for. At least 130 survivors have been rescued from the theater in Mariupol that had been serving...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed U.S. Congress on Wednesday to ask for a number of things including a no-fly-zone over his country. The Biden administration did not agree to that request, but it did announce $800 million in military aid to Ukraine including anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles, drones, and more. Christopher Miller, a correspondent for BuzzFeed News currently in the...

A missile strike on apartment buildings in the Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv on Tuesday killed at least four people and resulted in fires for hours after. The attack prompted a frantic rescue effort, and Kyiv’s mayor announced a 35-hour curfew in the city. Hong Kong is experiencing its worst COVID outbreak since the start of the pandemic. Unlike the U.S., the province is still grappling with the highl...

On Monday, delegations from Russia and Ukraine met again for talks in hopes of reaching a ceasefire, but the negotiations ended without reaching an agreement. Meanwhile, Russia expanded its missile attacks even further, hitting quiet residential neighborhoods in Kyiv and other cities. After 99 days, the Major League baseball lockout ended last Thursday with a full season set to begin on April 7. H...

Russia launched 30 missiles at a Ukrainian military base over the weekend, killing at least 35 people and wounding at least 134 more. New COVID cases in the U.S. have dropped from 800,000 cases per day at the pandemic’s peak to about 36,000 cases per day. Last week, the CDC announced that 98 percent of the U.S. population lived in areas where it’s safe to congregate indoors without masks on. Meanw...

Russian forces continued to advance in Ukraine after diplomatic talks between the two countries failed to stop the fighting or even to reach a temporary cease-fire on Thursday. As the violence continued, Vice President Kamala Harris called for an investigation into whether Russia committed war crimes against the civilians of Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russian civilians face economic hardships because of...

A Russian airstrike destroyed a maternity hospital in the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol on Wednesday. This is the latest example of Russian forces hitting civilians and civilian infrastructure, with United Nations monitors reporting on Wednesday that over 500 civilians have been killed so far. Washington Post journalist Isabelle Khurshudyan, who is currently in Odessa, Ukraine, joins us to d...

President Biden banned the import of Russian oil and natural gas into the United States on Tuesday, which is expected to have a serious impact on the Russian economy. Meanwhile on the ground, reports say that 2 million people have fled Ukraine, including one million children. Recent reports from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say that countries are not doing enough to reduce fo...

Today, workers in Hawai’i are rallying at their State Capitol to raise the state’s minimum wage for the first time since 2018. Christy MacPherson, the Lead Community Developer at the Hawaiʻi Appleseed Center for Law & Economic Justice, joins us to discuss how workers are being affected by low wages in the highest cost-of-living state in the nation. Russia and Ukraine engaged in their third rou...

Today marks 12 days since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Over the weekend, the violence continued in multiple Ukrainian cities, efforts to rescue civilians came under attack by Russian forces, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on NATO nations for further military support and humanitarian aid. Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser and host of Pod Save the W...