Mulan is coming to Disney+ as a $30 rental

The coronavirus pandemic has trashed the entertainment industry, and one of its highest-profile targets has been Disney’s live-action adaptation of Mulan. Originally slated to release on March 27, the film’s theatrical debut was moved to July 24, then August 21, then taken off the calendar entirely.

But on an earnings call with investors, Disney executives announced that Mulan will be released on Disney+, the company’s streaming service, on September 4. It will come with a fee attached: Subscribers will pay an additional $29.99 to rent the film. In countries without Disney+ — including China, the country in which Mulan

Mask mandates are crucial for fighting Covid-19. How should they be enforced?

Though 33 states now have face mask mandates, Gov. Pete Ricketts says his state of Nebraska will not be joining them. On Monday, Ricketts doubled down on his conviction that a statewide mask mandate would be too “heavy-handed.”

“I don’t want to make it a crime,” he said at a press conference.

Ricketts’s resistance comes as his office is challenging mask ordinances in Lincoln and Lancaster County that have already gone into effect. Teachers’ unions, meanwhile, have called his failure to pass a statewide mask order a “dereliction of duty.”

“I would die for my students. Please don’t make …

How Portland’s Wall of Moms collapsed — and was reborn under Black leadership

Last Wednesday, the Wall of Moms Facebook group descended into chaos. One woman said a group of Black moms was left unprotected at a rally in downtown Portland, Oregon. Another claimed that group leader Bev Barnum had co-opted Black Lives Matter for her own gain. There were endless threads of comments from women disappointed that the protest group — made up of mothers and grandmothers who had gained international recognition for standing on the front line of the city’s protests — seemed to have lost its way.

The Wall of Moms, at least the original version, was collapsing. It had …

America needs a bar and restaurant bailout

You can’t eat a meal, down a shot, or sip a cup of coffee while wearing a mask.

So if wearing masks inside is crucial to halting the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic — and at this point, just about everyone in the scientific, medical, and public health communities agrees that it is — people can’t be eating or drinking in indoor settings outside the house.

Yet despite this seemingly straightforward logic, many jurisdictions in the US have allowed the partial reopening of bars, restaurants, and coffee shops.

In Washington, DC, for example, Mayor Muriel Bowser is sufficiently concerned about …