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Kamala Harris is running for president
The California senator and former state attorney general announced that she is joining an ever-growing field of Democrats looking to challenge President Donald Trump in 2020.
Harris said she was “honored” to make that announcement on a day celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy. Her campaign logo, her staff said, is inspired by the logo of Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to run for president for a major party.
Harris’s platform will focus on the rising cost of living for middle-class Americans, her campaign said, proposing rent credits and tax breaks for low-income and middle-class families, as well as on immigration and criminal justice reform.
The daughter of immigrant parents from Jamaica and India, Harris aims to be the first black woman to be nominated for president by a major party.
Further reading: Black women decided the 2016 Democratic nominee. They’ll have an even bigger say in 2020.
Theresa May has another big idea to solve the Brexit crisis. The EU is unlikely to be impressed.
The British prime minister is looking to add an end date to the controversial Irish backstop.
In simple terms, the backstop is the mechanism that will guarantee an open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, in the event that the UK leaves the EU without a securing a deal.
Since many MPs who voted against her deal are concerned the UK would be trapped in the backstop permanently, Theresa May is looking to put an expiration date on the backstop to gain their support.
The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, insisted on Monday that the withdrawal agreement, including the backstop, is not up for renegotiation.
SNAPSHOTS
A GoFundMe for the restaurant owner in the Fyre Netflix documentary has surpassed its target. Maryann Rolle said she was never paid by the failed festival in the Bahamas. Rolle still had to pay her staff and said she lost more than $50,000 of her own savings. Her testimony has resulted in an outpouring of love.
Brandon Truaxe, creator of the skin care brand The Ordinary, has died at 40. Truaxe was ousted from parent company Deciem in the fall after posting a rambling video in which he accused his colleagues of being “involved in a major criminal activity.” The cause of death is not yet known.
The “Bikini Hiker” died after falling while climbing a mountain in Taiwan. Gigi Wu, 36, regularly climbed mountains in swimwear. On Sunday, she used a satellite phone to call for help after falling down a 65-foot valley. Due to bad weather, authorities were delayed in responding to her call. When she was discovered on Monday, she was already dead.
A black teen says her dance team told her she was “too dark” to perform. Camille Sturdivant’s complaint says the team's choreographer told her she was “too dark” to take part in a contemporary dance performance and claimed her skin would clash with the costumes. Sturdivant says her school was dismissive of her complaint.
The unbelievable story of the plot against George Soros
You’ve likely heard of George Soros, even if you don’t know much about him. It’s a distinct feature of this political moment that his name gets thrown around in online conspiracy theories.
Soros is indeed Jewish. Yes, he has backed Democrats. But the many wild theories, which include the suggestion that he helped bring down the Soviet Union in order to clear a path to Europe for Africans and Arabs, are so crazy as to be laughable — if they weren’t so virulent.
But how did it come to this? Well, it began as a Hungarian political strategy by two Jewish Americans.
As George Birnbaum and Arthur Finkelstein worked in secret to elect far-right Hungarian politician Viktor Orbán, they set about creating a larger-than-life enemy. The plan worked so well that the anti-Soros sentiment went global.
Read the incredible story of how they manufactured the narrative that became a conspiracy theory.
This teen pranked her dad with Jimin from BTS and his reaction was delightful
Molly and her dad are pretty adorable.
Molly loves the boy band BTS but her bias, which is what K-pop fans call their favorite member, is Jimin. BTS is one of the ways she bonds with her dad — he jokes about it, but Molly knows he loves them too.
As her dad was returning from a business trip, Molly got the idea to prank her dad with photos of Jimin...everywhere. The result is such a pure and wholesome prank.