Day: June 26, 2020

The European Union will reportedly block most Americans from traveling to the bloc even as those countries reopen to other travelers, a policy that reflects the United States’s failure to fully control the coronavirus pandemic.

The European Union restricted non-essential travel to most of its member-states under rules in effect until at least June 30. But starting July 1, European countries are loosening some of those measures and allowing travel again from over a dozen countries — including China (if Beijing allows EU travelers too) — that meet certain criteria, including their ability to contain the coronavirus.

Right now, …

As the Vox Book Club sails into July, we’re going to take a moment to wave a fond farewell to the frothy joys of The Princess Bride. We just closed out a fantastic panel discussion on both book and movie with the Cut’s Sangeeta Singh-Kurtz and the Undefeated’s Soraya Nadia McDonald, which covered everything from why Prince Humperdinck is a lost Trump brother to our dream casting for an updated Princess Bride prestige limited cable series (Dev Patel and Zendaya, call your agents). If you missed it, we’ll be posting a recording and a transcript next week, and I …

Cards Against Humanity, its legions of supporters, and perhaps an entire culture of ironic humor is currently undergoing a reckoning.

The popular card game company faced multiple allegations of fostering a long-standing abusive, racist workplace culture earlier this month. After weeks of discussion online, including a resurfaced 2014 rape allegation, the best-known Cards Against Humanity co-founder, Max Temkin, has left the company.

On June 23, Cards Against Humanity published a statement in a preemptive response to a pending report by Vox sister site Polygon. The company alternately confirmed and contradicted many of the allegations made against it while also outlining …

For the past three months, Americans across the country have been sheltering, maybe miserably, in place. Governors and mayors, taking the advice of health officials, shut down almost all activities — restaurants, bars, movie theaters, gyms, hair salons, amusement parks — to curb the spread of the coronavirus. From coast to coast, people have been asked to spend their days, nights, and weekends at home.

That’s slowly changing as states and cities start to reopen — some like Arizona and Florida have already opened even in the face of rising case rates.

The specific restrictions depend on …

What a bizarre year it’s been so far — including “at” the movies. Scarcely a month after the raucous Korean social thriller Parasite unexpectedly won Best Picture at the Oscars, movie theaters around the world were shutting down due to the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. In many places — including the US — they remain closed, well into what is traditionally the summer movie season. Film production went on hiatus and film festivals were delayed, canceled, or shifted to digital editions. Highly anticipated blockbusters have been pushed into the fall or next year. The 2021 Oscars have moved to …

The House on Thursday passed Democrats’ police reform bill, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020, by a 236-181 vote. Three Republicans joined Democrats to vote in favor of the bill, which now heads to the Senate, where it isn’t expected to get much traction.

Thursday’s vote underscores an ongoing stalemate: Over the past few weeks, congressional Democrats and Republicans have been at an impasse over the next steps on police reform, with each party respectively introducing its own bill. Senate Democrats rejected Republicans’ proposal, the Justice Act, earlier this week, on the grounds that it wasn’t …