| THE BIG STORY Joe Biden and #MeToo
Alyssa Milano, one of the most prominent celebrity voices in the #MeToo movement, says she’s sticking with Joe Biden despite a sexual assault allegation from former Biden staffer Tara Reade.
"I still feel confident in endorsing Joe Biden," the actor said in an interview with BuzzFeed News yesterday. While we should always "start from the point of believing women," she said, people should "do your due diligence and research," which she did when looking into the allegations against the presumptive Democratic nominee.
Milano and others have taken criticism for their approach to the Biden allegations, both from Republicans who say activists are giving him a pass for partisan reasons and from other prominent #MeToo voices who have said they are betraying the movement. “You are a lie,” tweeted actor Rose McGowan in response to Milano’s comments. “You have always been a lie.”
Reade first went public with her allegation against Biden in a podcast interview in late March, saying he sexually assaulted her in a Senate building in 1993, the year when she worked in his office. She later spoke to the New York Times for its own investigation into the allegation, which Biden has denied.
Alyssa Milano (Ethan Miller / Getty Images) COME HANG OUT WITH ME TODAY
Last reminder, I promise
I’ll be hosting a live streamed Q&A with our reporter Ryan Brooks today. We'll be talking about his reporting on the young people graduating college and beginning their careers right now, in the middle of another giant recession. There's so much to discuss, come and join us! It’s happening today at 1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT. All the details can be found here. STAYING ON TOP OF THIS Inside the global mask hunt
Since the early days of the coronavirus outbreak hitting the US, we’ve been investigating the scramble among hospitals, governments, and everyday citizens to buy up personal protective equipment, from everyday stuff like face masks to the specialized gear needed in emergency rooms. Today, we published a deep dive into what that market really looks like.
“The term ‘shitshow’ is absolutely apt for what's happening right now,” said Rob Handfield, a professor of operations and supply chain management at North Carolina State University. “Nobody knows who to cut purchase orders to. Nobody knows where to even find the stuff. It's every man, hospital, and country for itself.”
Distributors on the ground in China spoke of people showing up at factories carrying sacks of cash, getting them to the front of the line for whatever is available. Typically those people aren’t there on behalf of a hospital or health care business: They’re just there to make a fast, easy buck. “When there's a huge breakdown in the supply chain, middlemen rush in,” said Lily Liu, a San Francisco entrepreneur who founded Operation Masks, a nonprofit that seeks out protective equipment for US hospitals. “They are buying for $1 to flip for $2.”
IT'S NEWS O'CLOCK Our new podcast is live! BuzzFeed News launched its new daily podcast this week, and it’s wonderful. In the latest episode of News O'Clock, Hayes Brown and Casey Rackham talk to BuzzFeed Parenting Editor Mike Spohr about how exactly you're supposed to pull off parenting and working and quarantining all at once. Check it out here! SNAPSHOTS Yesterday’s White House coronavirus briefing went off the rails when President Donald Trump began speculating on how to treat the virus using disinfectants and light beamed inside the body. “The whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That's, uh, that's pretty powerful.”
Doctors and medical workers in Mexico are reporting violent attacks and discrimination when they leave work. Neighbors, passersby, and even police officers suspect them of spreading the coronavirus; one was even arrested.
Elizabeth Warren’s oldest brother has died from the coronavirus. Donald Herring, 86, had a long military career and lived in Warren’s native Oklahoma.
A scientific journal has published a correction from two authors who had previously claimed the first known case of the coronavirus spreading from a corpse. The highly unusual measure only taken after a journalist contacted BuzzFeed News about the accuracy of the journal’s report.
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NAILING THE QUARANTINE LOOK
Beauty influencers are still figuring it out
What do you do when your livelihood is built around showing people how to look amazing, but then suddenly everyone is in a permanent state of sweatpants and giving no fucks? That’s an open question for beauty influencers, Tanya Chen reports.
Obviously the “natural” look is making a comeback in a big way — natural hair, natural nails, a natural lack of pants. “Everyone’s norms are being affected,” Chen reports. “For influencers who depend on their faces and looks for their lifestyles and income, those changes can be as small as having to buy lighter shades of makeup, or as existential as coming to terms with the more ~natural~ version of themselves.” YouTube / Jaclyn Hill THE INTERNET’S HOTTEST CLUB IS… Welcome to Chef Club
There is a magical place on the internet, and you may have been there without knowing it. For example, do you recall an Instagram video documenting the creation of a kind of monstrous omelette, involving beaten eggs being poured into a packet of crushed chips, and boiled? Do you remember ever seeing five entire wheels of camembert stacked atop one another, wrapped in pastry, baked, then impaled with dozens of skewers of bacon-wrapped roasted potatoes?
via Chefclub This is the world of Chef Club, and it’s pure culinary anarchy, writes Scaachi Koul. There are no rules, only chaos in its purest form, with melted cheese on top. The French food site has a consistent ability to churn out the strangest cooking videos on the internet, ones that keep escalating and mutating until they reach a crescendo of bizarreness. via Chefclub “The world of Chefclub is a world where nothing makes sense,” Koul writes. “The proposed kitchen hacks are actually far more complicated than they need to be, like stabbing into the cap of a water bottle to create a churro-dispensing tool. The recipes seem to all suggest that food should rarely resemble food, and instead should be something completely different: a lollipop, a face, a butt.”
Like Chefclub, you can be as weird as your heart desires this weekend,
Tom P.S. If you like this newsletter, help keep our reporting free for all. Support BuzzFeed News by becoming a member here. (monthly memberships are available worldwide) 📝 This letter was edited and brought to you by Tom Gara and BuzzFeed News. You can always reach us here.
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