Month: September 2020

Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) has won his primary, successfully holding off a challenge from Rep. Joe Kennedy, a scion of the famous Massachusetts political family.

Markey, a longtime US lawmaker, is known for being a stalwart champion of environmental policy including cosponsoring the Green New Deal, as well as landmark House legislation on cap and trade 11 years ago.

There had been a limited ideological case for Kennedy’s run since the two lawmakers both identify as progressives, and Markey leaned heavily into his legislative work on both climate and tech to carve out an advantage. A robust digital presence …

Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA) has fended off a high-profile primary challenge in Massachusetts.

Neal, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee and represents Massachusetts’ First Congressional District, faced a tight race with Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse heading into Massachusetts’ primary on Tuesday. Morse, who is gay, was backed by Justice Democrats, the progressive group that recruits and supports progressive candidates to primary incumbents. He hoped to follow in the footsteps of figures such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman in New York and Cori Bush in Missouri in unseating an entrenched Democratic member of Congress.

Ultimately, Neal, who …

The coronavirus pandemic has shuttered thousands of colleges and universities around the US, creating new challenges for young voters both in registering to vote and in accessing polling places. In response, student activists are working to employ new strategies for enfranchising first-time voters — and ensuring they actually vote.

Finding ways to increase the youth vote has long been a challenge. The US has one of the lowest youth voter turnout rates in the world, with voters 60 and over nearly three times as likely to turn out to vote as 18- to 29-year-olds, according to data from the Comparative …

President Donald Trump has been known to dabble in conspiracy theories — be it that Barack Obama was secretly born in Kenya, that global warming is a hoax created by China, or that Bill and/or Hillary Clinton had child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein murdered in prison.

But his latest whopper — that his political opponent, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, is secretly being controlled by a roving band of black-clad violent extremists who like to fly on commercial airlines — is more than just another conspiracy theory. It’s also disturbingly reminiscent of a disinformation tactic commonly deployed …

Welcome to our first-ever week of Vox Video programming for kids!

It’s time to make a catapult.

We wanted to launch some marshmallows, so we built a miniature machine based on Leonardo da Vinci’s designs. Watch the above video to see how we did it.

Leonardo da Vinci was a famous artist and inventor, and his sketchbooks include a couple of catapult drawings that you can use to make a catapult model. We did just that, and it was a lot of fun.

Catapults have a long history, going back to the ancient world (and appearing all across it, from …

Walmart’s much-anticipated membership program, Walmart+, will finally launch nationwide September 15, the company announced today, about six months after the Covid-19 pandemic pushed the retailer to delay its original timing. The brick-and-mortar retail giant needs the program to be successful to stop top-spending customers from fleeing to Amazon Prime.

Walmart+ will cost $98 a year, or $12.95 a month, and focus mainly on unlimited delivery of groceries and other general merchandise from Walmart stores that will be delivered as soon as the same day they are ordered. Members also get fuel discounts at Walmart gas stations and those of partners, …