Month: November 2019

With three months to go until the Iowa caucuses, Democratic presidential candidates offered voters impassioned pitches about their proposals and their ability to beat Donald Trump at the Liberty and Justice Celebration dinner Friday.

The dinner — historically the largest gathering of voters in Iowa — marked the beginning of a final push to the caucuses at a moment when support for a number of candidates has seen major shifts.

For those who have benefitted from those changes, like Sen. Elizabeth Warren and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, the evening provided an opportunity to solidify that momentum; and for …

When I finally puked on the fourth night, I felt an odd sense of pride.

Inside the loud, stuffy ceremony room, people were laughing, crying, chanting, gyrating, and, yes, vomiting, around me. When my time finally comes, I think: Just aim for the bucket and keep your ass above your head like the shaman told you.

I try to wipe my face but can’t grab the tissue paper because it melts every time I reach for it. Nearby, a man starts to scream. I can’t make out what he’s saying on account of the shaman singing beautiful Colombian songs in …

When President Donald Trump appeared at a Tupelo, Mississippi rally Friday held to energize voters for the state’s Republican Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves — who is facing a tight race for governor against Democratic Attorney General Jim Hood on November 5 — it didn’t take long for the president to start stumping for himself instead.

In his first rally since the House of Representatives’ Thursday vote on the impeachment inquiry, the president did find some time to ask voters to support Reeves, who he brought onstage, but spent the majority of his address attacking lawmakers, the press, and political …

The November movie schedule is crowded with pleasures: There’s a tiny indie, several huge franchise blockbusters, documentaries, comedies, biopics, and a lot more. There’s a hotly anticipated movie about Mr. Rogers and a Christmas-y romcom. Some of this month’s movies are en route to the Oscars; others just want to make you laugh a lot. But it’s an exciting lineup nonetheless.

So when you’re planning your November movie viewing, be sure to save room for these 16 standouts.

Light From Light (November 1)

It’s extraordinarily tricky to describe Light from Light, which is both about ghosts and …

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This week in impeachment news

• The latest testimony from the House’s impeachment investigation into President Trump: the White House didn’t just place Trump’s call with the Ukrainian president into a secure system — a senior White House lawyer directed everyone not to talk about it. [Politico / Natasha Bertrand]
• That came from Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council member. Trump’s supporters

Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke is dropping out of the 2020 Democratic presidential race.

O’Rourke launched his campaign to great fanfare following an unsuccessful — but competitive — campaign to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). He burst onto the scene of the 2020 primary declaring he was “just born to be in it” and subsequently raised $6.1 million in his first day of fundraising. Some early supporters characterized him as “Barack Obama, but white.”

“My service to the country will not be as a candidate or as the nominee,” he wrote in a Medium post, explaining that he chose …

It’s beginning to look like there are very few Democrats under the age of 45 in Iowa interested in Joe Biden’s candidacy for president.

A new New York Times and Siena College poll found the former vice president in fourth behind Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Those four, all within the margin of error of each other, were the only Democratic candidates to register double digits in the poll.

Most striking in the survey, which polled 439 likely Democratic caucus-goers in the last week of October, was that Biden pulled only …

In Watch This, Vox critic at large Emily VanDerWerff tells you what she’s watching on TV — and why you should watch it too. Read the archives here. This week: the Bon Appétit YouTube channel’s new miniseries plotting out how to cook the perfect Thanksgiving.

There is no time of year quite like early November for a cooking obsessive like myself. The Thanksgiving issues of the two cooking magazines I subscribe to came in the mail a few days ago, my menu is already in the preliminary stages of completion, and my wife is already rolling her …

As measles cases soar worldwide, scientists have discovered yet another danger of the disease: the measles virus can wipe out the immune system, making people more susceptible to other illnesses later. The research sheds new light on a virus that’s infected humans for centuries.

The phenomenon is called “immune amnesia,” and a new study — published in Science — documented how it works. The measles virus appears to erase the body’s immune memory, destroying an average of 40 of the antibodies against other viruses and bacteria subjects in the study built up before the measles virus hit. This means …

The Netflix movie, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, had a scene-stealing cameo: a scrunchie. The fabric-covered hair tie is the centerpiece in a power tug-of-war between the protagonist, Lara Jean, and her former BFF turned mean girl, Genevieve. (“We used to be best friends,” Lara Jean explains in voiceover, “but post-middle school, for reasons having to do with her popularity and my lack thereof, we are now decidedly not.”)

The scrunchie in question passes as a kind of love token from Lara Jean to her pseudo-boyfriend, but Genevieve intercepts it and later flashes it in front of …