Day: June 30, 2020

On Tuesday afternoon, Facebook announced that it had removed more than 200 accounts linked to the violent, anti-government extremist “boogaloo” movement. This move comes after weeks of criticism over the company’s handling of hate speech on its platform. Still, banning the boogaloo accounts does not solve Facebook’s larger hate speech problem.

More than 100 major brands, from Unilever to Verizon, have pulled advertising from the platform after civil rights groups called for a boycott in the past week. Facebook’s efforts to address the controversy included the announcement of increased efforts to prevent voter suppression based on race and ethnicity and …

The past few days in American politics have been dominated by revelations that Russia may have paid Taliban militants to kill US troops in Afghanistan in 2019 — and that the Trump administration knew about the scheme and did nothing to stop it or punish Russia.

The New York Times reported Friday that US intelligence officials found evidence indicating that a unit of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, had put out bounties on US troops in Afghanistan. It’s not clear how many Americans may have been killed as part of this plot, but at least one incident in April …

The next round of primary races on Tuesday, June 30, takes place in Colorado, Oklahoma, and Utah.

The biggest contest shaping up is a fierce Democratic primary race between former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, who are competing to take on Sen. Cory Gardner (R) this fall for a seat that national Democrats view as a top target to flip control of the US Senate.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of Colorado to Democrats’ chances of taking back the Senate in 2020; President Donald Trump lost the blue-leaning state by 5 points …

Mixtapes forever changed how we listen to music. What if news got the same treatment? Enter “Your News Update,” a new way to listen to Vox podcasts on Google Assistant.

Starting now, you can hear quick daily updates from Today, Explained on Google smart speakers and Assistant-enabled devices, and there’s more on the way later this year from the Vox newsroom.

Here’s how it works: The Your News Update algorithm curates a selection of audio stories tailored to you. What you hear each day is ultimately determined by where you live, what you like, what you need to …

In 2007, shortly after Democrats took back the House of Representatives in the 2006 midterm elections, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi created the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, meant to gather expert testimony and develop policy plans to address climate change. Until Republicans killed it in 2011, the select committee amassed an enormous body of knowledge, which it contributed to the 2007 energy bill, the 2009 Obama stimulus bill, and the ill-fated Waxman-Markey climate bill (which died in the Senate).

In 2018, after Democrats re-took the House, Pelosi proposed reconstituting the committee. Climate …

Jefferson Beauregard Sessions was about to become irrelevant.

It was his last day in office. Donald Trump’s attorney general, formerly a US senator from Alabama, had lost favor with the president for failing to stop the special counsel investigation into the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia in the 2016 election.

But he wasn’t quite done yet. Shortly before Sessions left the Department of Justice (DOJ) on November 7, 2018, he circulated a memo to senior Justice Department lawyers announcing a new policy.

The memo concerned consent decrees, a kind of court order negotiated between federal and state or local …