Day: May 7, 2020

The Justice Department has dropped its case against former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, erasing his guilty plea in the Mueller probe and ending a years-long saga over his sentencing.

In a court filing Thursday, the Department of Justice said that “based on an extensive review and careful consideration of the circumstances … continued prosecution of this case would not serve the interests of justice.” The filing was signed by Timothy Shea, who’s currently serving as the US Attorney for the District of Columbia.

Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to FBI investigators about his contacts …

Welcome to the latest installment of Vox’s Ask a Book Critic, in which I, Vox book critic Constance Grady, provide book recommendations to suit your very specific mood: either how you’re feeling right now or how you’d like to be feeling instead.

We have somehow made it to May, beloveds, and by the traditional publishing calendar, that’s when the beach reads start to come out. This year, many of us probably won’t be spending time at the beach, but nevertheless, a variety of light and frothy books have begun landing on my desk. For that reason, I spent …

Hillary Clinton wore a black breathing mask imprinted with the word “VOTE” in Twitter and Instagram posts this weekend, posing in what appeared as a homespun effort to pitch “the must-have accessory for spring.” The posts bear an unassuming hashtag: #MaskingForAFriend.

But behind this hashtag and those fun posts — as well as similar ones by celebrities like Arnold Schwarzenegger — are a group of tech billionaires trying to answer a weighty, almost existential question: How can we make sure a devastating pandemic never happens again?

That’s one of the main focuses for a group formed by major tech philanthropists …

In April 2019, a woman named Tara Reade reached out to me with a clear, consistent story to tell about her experience as a staffer in Joe Biden’s Senate office in 1993. I spent hours on the phone with her, and many more tracking down possible witnesses and documents, trying to confirm her account.

Reade told me that a senior aide told her Biden liked her legs and that he wanted her to serve cocktails at a fundraiser for him, a request she found demeaning and declined. When she later complained to others in the office that Biden would put …

In 1991, a group of eight people entered a giant dome, a closed-system biosphere intended to be self-supporting. They called themselves “Biospherians,” wore space-age jumpsuits, and planned to stay two years, growing their own crops, recycling waste and air, and performing an “experiment” to see if it would be possible for human life to be sustained in such an environment. The structure was called Biosphere 2 (because Biosphere 1 is Earth), and it was a huge media sensation.

If you remember the media coverage of Biosphere 2 — or the 1996 Pauly Shore movie Biodome, which is (very) …