Month: May 2020

Coming in eighth place behind contenders like Axl Rose, murder hornets, Elon Musk and Grimes’s newborn baby, and a 90 Day Fiancé cast member, President Donald Trump (played by Alec Baldwin) was chosen as the graduation speaker for Saint Mary Magdalene by the Expressway 2020 high school during the cold open of Saturday Night Live’s season 45 finale.

“Congratulations to the class of Covid-19. I’m so honored to be your validictator,” Baldwin’s Trump said. “There are so many exciting new jobs out there, like grocery store bouncer, cam girl, porch pirate, amateur nurse, and coal.”

The …

In the last few weeks, protests against state lockdowns and social distancing measures have seized national headlines. The wall-to-wall coverage might give the impression that what we’re seeing is a powerful grassroots movement in the making.

But research we just conducted on protest attendance and media coverage shows something different: this massive media coverage has in fact been out of proportion.

A comprehensive look at the social distancing protests reveals that they have been small in terms of both the number of participants and locations. As one official in the administration of Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) tweeted about a …

Former President Barack Obama leveled stinging criticism against President Donald Trump in a private call to former members of his administration Friday, saying Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic is “an absolute chaotic disaster,” and that the Justice Department’s choice to drop charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn undermines the rule of law.

The remarks, first reported by Yahoo News, are a rarity from Obama, who — in public at least — has been reserved in his assessments of his successor since leaving office.

The call, with the Obama Alumni Association, was intended to urge former staffers …

Top White House officials suppressed guidelines from public health experts on reopening the economy for weeks, and only ordered the approval of parts of that guidance after media reports exposed the delay, according to a report from the Associated Press.

Public health experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) spent weeks preparing detailed guidance to help schools, child care centers, religious groups, bars and restaurants, public transit officials, and others plan for a return to normalcy. The CDC’s work featured phased reopening plans, steps for ensuring each phase was completed successfully, and flow charts to help …

A new report from the inspector general for the Small Business Administration finds that forgivable loans from the government — intended to help small businesses weather the current economic fallout — could ultimately leave many weighed down by debt.

The report, released Friday, concluded that rules created by SBA, which dictate how forgivable loans offered by the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) can be spent, run counter to how Congress intended the program to be administered — and could be limiting the loans’ utility.

The PPP, a new effort established in the CARES Act, provides forgivable loans of up to $10 …

Richard Wayne “Little Richard” Penniman has died. The musician, known for his wild vocals, original persona, and unbridled enthusiasm onstage, was 87.

Rolling Stone reported Little Richard’s passing the morning of May 9, citing confirmation by his son Danny Jones Penniman. No cause of death has been given.

Little Richard’s music career spanned more than 60 years. Born December 5, 1932, he found his passion for music in his hometown of Macon, Georgia, singing gospel and playing piano. As he discovered R&B, the artist shifted away from being a talented choir boy, and toward becoming the more eccentric, vaudeville-inspired performer …

Along with everything else, the coronavirus has upended pop culture: Movie theaters are closed; concerts and other live events are canceled or postponed; TV production is all but shut down. But the powers of the internet and digital media prevail! Whether old or new, there are still plenty of movies and TV shows and TikToks to watch, games to play, songs to listen to, and books to read.

Here at Vox Culture, we’ve been working hard to recommend all kinds of entertainment that might help you during your time at home. And in the process, we’ve been consuming oodles …

For weeks now, the federal government has issued warnings to the American public about deceptive or just plain crooked companies selling at-home coronavirus test kits that weren’t authorized by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — despite some of them claiming that they were. That’s now changed.

If you want to get tested for Covid-19 without leaving your home, you now have two FDA-authorized options to choose from. On May 7, the FDA granted an emergency use authorization for at-home saliva collection for Covid-19 tests developed by a lab at Rutgers University. The lab, RUCDR Infinite Biologics, joins LabCorp’s …

The United States has endured over 78,000 coronavirus deaths as of May 8, far more than double the second hardest-hit country. Unlike most comparable countries, the trajectory of the per-day death toll has not yet meaningfully bent down here nor has the number of new cases diagnosed each day.

By contrast, Germany and Japan combined have had just over 9,000 confirmed Covid-related deaths. Though Japan didn’t get off to a great start, the number of new cases per day has been hovering around 200 there. In Germany, it’s around 1,000. In either case, the new case numbers are …

Most Americans think snooping on a partner’s phone is a bad thing to do, but that hasn’t stopped more than a third of people in committed relationships from doing it anyway, according to Pew research published Friday. As many of us find ourselves cooped up with our partners and our phones for the foreseeable future, the researchers suggest that using this technology is not necessarily great for the health of our long-term relationships.

As tempting as it may be to snoop, please don’t.

Pew’s study, conducted last October, involved surveying nearly 5,000 US adults who were asked a wide …