Andrew Yang's 2020 campaign just got a little bit weirder.
The tech entrepreneur has peppered his Democratic presidential run with charmingly odd tidbits about himself, notably promising to be the first "ex-goth" president and constantly reiterating how much he loves math. Yet in a Politico profile published Thursday, Yang let his pectoral muscles do the talking, with slightly disturbing results.
Yang, like his fellow millennials, spent his adolescence and young adulthood working through several phases. To Politico, he described himself as an "angsty" and "brooding" kid who read a lot of sci-fi and listened to a mix of Pearl Jam and Sarah McLachlan. Yang's personality evolved in college at Brown University, where he "started to lift weights, mostly to try to get dates, and was proud to be able to bench press 225 pounds eight to 10 times in a row," Politico writes.
Thus sums up the origin story of "Rex" and "Lex," Yang's right and left pectoral muscles, respectively. And back in college, Yang "could jostle them on command" to make them "talk," he wrote in his 2014 book Smart People Should Build Things. Today, Yang acknowledges, they're "almost mute," though Rex did sputter out a few sentences to Politico: "Andrew, I still have a little bit of voice left. You haven’t fed me in a long time. You used to looooove meeeeeee.'"
Read about more than just Yang's abandoned workout regimen at Politico. Kathryn Krawczyk
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on Saturday posted a photo to his Instagram account in which he is walking down a flight of stairs as part of his recovery after he was poisoned last month.
In the photo's caption, Navalny, one of Russia's most prominent Kremlin critics, wrote that he has a "clear path" to recovery, but suggested it will be a long one. He was removed from a ventilator five days ago and said he is still having trouble climbing stairs, pouring water, and using his phone. Still, he has apparently made significant progress since, he said, he was previously considered only "technically alive."
Navalny fell ill in August while in Siberia and was airlifted to a hospital in Berlin while in a coma. Multiple labs in Europe have confirmed he was poisoned by a Soviet-era nerve agent called Novichok. His supporters suspect Russian President Vladimir Putin was behind the assassination attempt, but Moscow has denied any involvement and has accused Navalny's aides of removing evidence, jeopardizing the official inquiry into the poisoning. Read more at Deutsche Welle and The Guardian. Tim O'Donnell
Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) says she won't vote on a Supreme Court nomination until after the election. Or at least that's what she said in an interview with Alaska Public Media only hours before the news of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's passing was reported late Friday.
"I would not vote to confirm a Supreme Court nominee. We are 50 some days away from an election," she reportedly said, referencing the 2016 case of Merrick Garland, when Republicans in the Senate, led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), blocked President Obama's nomination to replace Justice Antonin Scalia after he died that February. "That was too close to an election, and the people needed to decide."
McConnell, for his part, has already said he has no problem moving forward right away. "President Trump's nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate," he said in a statement Friday night. With that stance, tremendous pressure will fall on Murkowski and other moderate Republican senators like Susan Collins (Maine) and Mitt Romney (Utah) to stick to Murkowski's stated position.
Republicans could attempt to have it both ways and wait for the lame duck session after the election. Of course, confirming a Trump nominee at that point could be even more fraught if Joe Biden wins the presidency or if Democrats win the Senate. Bryan Maygers