Month: November 2019

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Voters across America face state and local elections

• Voters across the country have the opportunity to select their representatives Tuesday as several states hold elections. [Vox / Li Zhou]
• Mississippi, Louisiana, and Kentucky are looking at tight gubernatorial races, as many view these races as a referendum on Trump’s own candidacy. [Washington Post / Tim Craig and Seung Min Kim

Sen. Bernie Sanders is expanding the Democratic Party’s war on Big Tech to a new frontier, calling out Apple’s impact on the housing sector as the company tries to promote a new affordable housing initiative.

The debate between Democrats running for president has mostly focused so far on data collection, privacy, content moderation, and corporate market power. But Sanders on Monday tied critiques about tax evasion to a new, ballyhooed commitment by Apple to spend $2.5 billion — “pennies,” in Sanders’s view — on expanding affordable housing in the Bay Area.

“Apple’s announcement that it is entering the real …

The CEO of McDonald’s was booted from the company Friday after the board of directors discovered that he had a consensual romantic relationship with an employee.

Stephen Easterbrook, who has been the top executive at McDonald’s since 2015, stepped down for his “poor judgment” in violating the company’s code of conduct, according to an SEC filing. The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, with few details about the relationship.

Easterbrook’s separation agreement shows that he will get about 6.5 months of severance (his base salary is $1.5 million). As part of the deal, Easterbrook …

Popeye’s spicy fried chicken sandwich is back, and the hype around its highly anticipated return has not died down. The sandwich, which is currently available in 150 nationwide locations, made its comeback on November 3 (which is apparently National Sandwich Day), more than two months after Popeyes officially declared a shortage on August 27.

Demand for the sandwich is high. On social media, some customers reported waiting over an hour for their order. Those who ordered on Popeye’s mobile app managed to skip the in-store wait, making the process much faster.

It appears that the returning date — a Sunday …

Every TV show has one episode where its core audience goes all-in, where the show goes from merely “promising” to one that fans will watch every episode of, if only for a few seasons.

That episode will differ for every single audience member, but I (Vox critic at large Emily VanDerWerff) am totally unsurprised that “She Was Killed By Space Junk” is the episode where so many of my fellow TV critic pals, regardless of whether they’ve read the comics the series is based on or not, went from guardedly optimistic about Watchmen to all in on Watchmen. After …

As California continues to suffer from a number of wildfires, President Donald Trump has made a vague threat to cut federal aid to the state’s fire recovery efforts.

Amid high winds and dry weather, the fires have spread so rapidly that California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a statewide emergency last week to mobilize resources to fight the blazes. Californians have been experiencing historic blackouts and mandatory evacuations. Hundreds of people have lost their homes, and more than 10,000 acres have burned.

Rather than address those hit with tragedy, Trump criticized California Gov. Gavin Newsom Sunday morning for doing a …

The whistleblower who first brought concerns about President Donald Trump’s interactions with Ukraine to light has said he is willing to directly respond to Republican questions, according to his lawyer.

That lawyer, Mark Zaid, told CBS News he informed Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) — who is the ranking Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee — on Saturday the whistleblower had volunteered to answer Republicans’ questions of him in writing under oath and penalty of perjury.

Trump and other Republicans have called for the testimony of the whistleblower for some time, and have intensified that request in recent weeks. Nunes, …

President Donald Trump faced boos for the second time in a week when he met a crowd at a UFC match in New York’s Madison Square Garden.

Trump, who has long been a fan and supporter of the UFC, traveled to New York City on Saturday with his sons Donald Jr. and Eric along with Republican lawmakers Reps. Kevin McCarthy, Peter King, and Mark Meadows.

Trump’s appearance was intended to be a homecoming of sorts: when UFC was banned in some states and lost access to venues, he provided the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City to keep the sport …

The debate over the cost of Medicare-for-all took a new turn this week when Sen. Elizabeth Warren released her plan for paying for the policy.

Warren had been under pressure for some time to explain how she would fund the switch to single payer health care; at the October presidential debate, her rival Mayor Pete Buttigieg attacked her by saying, “Your signature is to have a plan for everything, except this.”

That is no longer the case, and Saturday Night Live offered its take on the plan in a cold open that had Warren wondering why other candidates haven’t …

President Donald Trump promised a wall on the border would radically change undocumented immigration and customs enforcement. But it turns out newly built sections of the president’s wall aren’t as sturdy as he promised: Smugglers have been using a commercial saw to cut through it, according to the Washington Post.

Smuggling people and goods into the US is a profitable industry for criminal organizations, which is why they are motivated to innovate when it comes to breaching barriers. Of late, smugglers have reportedly been cutting through the wall — which is made of steel bollards that are partially filled …