Month: July 2019

With former special counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony having come and gone, the White House is trying to turn the tables on President Donald Trump’s political opponents by portraying the years-long Russia investigation as a total waste of time. Toward that end, administration spokesperson Hogan Gidley went on Fox News on Friday and proclaimed it now has been “proven” that Russian interference had no impact on the outcome of the 2016 election.

“It’s now been proven by every metric that Russian meddling had no effect on the outcome of the election,” Gidley said.

Note: This article contains major spoilers for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and in particular the end of the film. If you haven’t seen the film yet and do not wish to be spoiled, read the spoiler-free review instead.

Before Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’s Cannes premiere, director Quentin Tarantino made waves (and ruffled a few feathers) by asking the audience not to reveal what happens at the end of the upcoming film. In some ways, it was a baffling ask. After all, Tarantino had announced months earlier that the film would center on …

Europe is now baking under its second heat wave this month, but this latest is one for the record books.

On Thursday, Paris set its all-time temperature high, reaching 108.6 degrees Fahrenheit. The United Kingdom’s Met Office reported that London’s Heathrow Airport reached 98.4 degrees, a record for July. Cambridge, England, heat climbed to 100.5 degrees, marking only the second time triple-digit temperatures have been recorded in the United Kingdom.

Several countries also set all-time heat records this week: The Netherlands heated up to 105.3 degrees. Germany reached 106.7. Temperatures in Belgium soared to 103.8.

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Mueller’s long-awaited testimony wasn’t as enlightening as some may have wished; Facebook is fined $5 billion over privacy practices.

Mueller finally testifies in front of Congress

Jonathan Ernst/Pool/Getty Images

• Former special counsel Robert Mueller finally appeared before Congress to testify today — and it didn’t exactly live up to the hype built up around it. [Vox / Emily Stewart and Alex Ward

Evidently, former special counsel Robert Mueller wanted to say as little as possible in his congressional testimony Wednesday — and he succeeded.

In contrast to past witnesses like former FBI Director James Comey, who have been loquacious and combative, trying to get facts out and debunk misinterpretations or misrepresentations, Mueller was terse and cautious.

His high-level takeaways were clear enough. The Russian government interfered in the election — which, he said, was “among the most serious” threats to democracy he’d seen in his career. However, his investigation didn’t establish a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government to …

Update 9:59 p.m. PT 7/23: DoorDash announced it is changing its tipping policy to stop subsidizing its workers’ base pay with customer tips. The company’s CEO, Tony Xu, announced the changes in a series of tweets posted on his personal account Tuesday night.

“We thought we were doing the right thing by making Dashers whole when a customer left no tip. What we missed was that some customers who *did* tip would feel like their tip did not matter,” wrote Xu.

Xu stated that more specifics on the changes will be announced in the coming days; for now it’s unclear …

Robert Mueller will bring along one of his deputies to his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday: his longtime aide, Aaron Zebley.

Zebley will sit beside Mueller at the hearing, but he won’t officially be a witness testifying, and will instead be available as counsel to advise Mueller on answering questions, according to the New York Times’s Nicholas Fandos.

Zebley worked closely alongside Mueller during the nearly two-year special counsel investigation. Before that, Zebley had been Mueller’s chief of staff when he was FBI director, and had then worked with him at the law firm WilmerHale.

Mueller …

More than half of all states have taken some action to legalize or decriminalize marijuana, but using the drug is still a crime under federal law. Senators, including 2020 contenders Cory Booker (D-NJ), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Bernie Sanders (I-VT), have proposed legislation to tackle this disconnect, and on Tuesday, Kamala Harris (D-CA) joined the fray.

Harris’s plan, one that she’s rolling out alongside House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler (D-NY), would decriminalize the possession of marijuana at the federal level, an effort backed by many of her fellow 2020 Democrats. Harris’s proposal goes one step further, however, imposing …

During a lengthy and at times wild White House press availability alongside Pakistani Prime Minster Imran Khan on Monday, President Donald Trump was asked if he plans to watch former special counsel Robert Mueller’s much-anticipated congressional testimony on Wednesday. Trump said he might watch “a little bit.” Some outlets highlighted that revelation as a key takeaway from Trump’s remarks about Mueller.

But perhaps more notably, in the span of just over one minute of talking, Trump told at least six demonstrable lies about Mueller and his investigation. The blizzard of falsehoods suggests that Trump anticipates Mueller’s testimony and its aftermath …

Big Little Lies capped off a controversial second season with a self-destructive finale that ripped apart the tenuous bonds of the “Monterey Five,” so the city has dubbed its conspiratorial suburban moms.

Throughout season two, the show has never seemed to know exactly what its theme really was or, more crucially, how that theme might relate to its ensemble of characters. With Meryl Streep joining the cast, all other characters — with the meme-able exception of Laura Dern’s Renata — seemed to be pushed aside for her character Mary Louise’s personal battle with her ex-daughter in law, Celeste (Nicole Kidman). …