Beto O’Rourke drops out of the 2020 Democratic primary

Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke is dropping out of the 2020 Democratic presidential race.

O’Rourke launched his campaign to great fanfare following an unsuccessful — but competitive — campaign to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). He burst onto the scene of the 2020 primary declaring he was “just born to be in it” and subsequently raised $6.1 million in his first day of fundraising. Some early supporters characterized him as “Barack Obama, but white.”

“My service to the country will not be as a candidate or as the nominee,” he wrote in a Medium post, explaining that he chose …

In Iowa, only 5 percent of Biden supporters are younger than 45

It’s beginning to look like there are very few Democrats under the age of 45 in Iowa interested in Joe Biden’s candidacy for president.

A new New York Times and Siena College poll found the former vice president in fourth behind Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Those four, all within the margin of error of each other, were the only Democratic candidates to register double digits in the poll.

Most striking in the survey, which polled 439 likely Democratic caucus-goers in the last week of October, was that Biden pulled only …

Bon Appétit’s new Thanksgiving show is the most ambitious crossover event in history

In Watch This, Vox critic at large Emily VanDerWerff tells you what she’s watching on TV — and why you should watch it too. Read the archives here. This week: the Bon Appétit YouTube channel’s new miniseries plotting out how to cook the perfect Thanksgiving.

There is no time of year quite like early November for a cooking obsessive like myself. The Thanksgiving issues of the two cooking magazines I subscribe to came in the mail a few days ago, my menu is already in the preliminary stages of completion, and my wife is already rolling her …

A new study on measles reveals a scary side effect: “immune-system amnesia”

As measles cases soar worldwide, scientists have discovered yet another danger of the disease: the measles virus can wipe out the immune system, making people more susceptible to other illnesses later. The research sheds new light on a virus that’s infected humans for centuries.

The phenomenon is called “immune amnesia,” and a new study — published in Science — documented how it works. The measles virus appears to erase the body’s immune memory, destroying an average of 40 of the antibodies against other viruses and bacteria subjects in the study built up before the measles virus hit. This means …

How the scrunchie rose and fell and rose again in popularity

The Netflix movie, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, had a scene-stealing cameo: a scrunchie. The fabric-covered hair tie is the centerpiece in a power tug-of-war between the protagonist, Lara Jean, and her former BFF turned mean girl, Genevieve. (“We used to be best friends,” Lara Jean explains in voiceover, “but post-middle school, for reasons having to do with her popularity and my lack thereof, we are now decidedly not.”)

The scrunchie in question passes as a kind of love token from Lara Jean to her pseudo-boyfriend, but Genevieve intercepts it and later flashes it in front of …

Vox Sentences: All-in for impeachment

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Impeachment inquiry gets formal go-ahead

The House impeachment vote made the inquiry official. Here’s what’s next.

On October 31, the House of Representatives voted to approve its first resolution related to their impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. The resolution passed by a vote of 232 to 196, with Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN) and Jeff Van Drew (D-NJ) dissenting from their party to vote no. Former Republican Rep. Justin Amash (I-MI), who left the party earlier this year, joined Democrats to vote yes. All current Republicans voted no.

The resolution was a set of procedures proposed by Democratic leaders for how the impeachment inquiry will function going forward. And this vote paves the way for …

Terminator: Dark Fate is all about the kickass ladies

Either by design or stroke of luck, the Terminator franchise is set up brilliantly for logically explainable reboots. This isn’t a Hulk or Fantastic Four situation, where you just start all over again. In the time-traveling Terminator world invented by James Cameron in 1984, movies can easily be both sequels and reboots.

If assassins and heroes are traveling from the future to change events in the present, then the future keeps changing, which means those who travel from the future to the present are there to change different events in the present, and … well, you get the idea. There’s …

You may not have to pay anything — for now — to see new shows on Apple TV+ and elsewhere

Netflix has ruled the streaming video world for years. Now Apple, Disney and other big companies are trying to change that: They’d like to claim some of the time and money you give to Netflix — which has nearly 160 million subscribers worldwide — and they’re going to spend billions trying to make it happen.

Which is why you’re hearing a lot right now about Apple’s new streaming service, which launches Friday, and Disney’s, which launches a couple of weeks after that. And you’ve probably heard about WarnerMedia’s new take on HBO, which will come online in May, but …

You’re never too old for trick-or-treating

Halloween is a flashpoint for many of our deeply held and most arbitrary social fears. For a while, we all worried about whether unscrupulous homeowners were handing out poisonous, razor blade-filled candy (a myth that’s been roundly debunked); more recently that morphed into terror over pot-laced edibles slipped into trick-or-treaters’ bags (relax, nobody likes your kid enough to waste that kind of money on them). Halloween combines costumes, candy, strangers, and darkness — it’s practically a powder keg of worry.

A perennial source of that fretting? The question of how old is too old to run around in said …