THE BIG STORY

Bernie is on a roll

Bernie Sanders absolutely crushed it at the Nevada caucuses, winning 40% of the vote there, according to our live results page.

One big reason for his huge win: many members of the Nevada Culinary Workers Union — the state’s largest union — appear to have defied their leadership and sided with Sanders. “The majority of union members caucusing at the Bellagio Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas strip backed Sanders,” Nidhi Prakash reports, despite the union escalating its criticism of his Medicare For All plan in the leadup to the vote.

Sanders could effectively have the Democratic nomination all wrapped up in the next couple of weeks. If he has another strong performance on Super Tuesday — when 14 states all vote on March 3 — it could be all over, Ruby Cramer reports.

“It is one of the surest, most unyielding rules in presidential politics,” she writes. “Once one candidate has a sizable delegate lead, it becomes difficult — at first increasingly improbable, then mathematically impossible — for another to catch up.”

BuzzFeed News

STAYING ON TOP OF THIS

What really happened at LuLaRoe?

In March 2015 there were 1,000 people working as LuLaRoe “consultants,” selling women’s clothing through the company’s multi-level marketing scheme. One year later, there were 60,000.

LuLaRoe went viral. The company promised millennial women an Instagram-friendly pathway to financial freedom by selling is stuff, and it grew at the pace of a trending Facebook post. It was extremely on-brand for the mid-late 2000s — Athleisure! Rise-and-grind entrepreneur culture! People suspecting things might be scams!

By 2017, just four years after being registered as a business, LuLaRoe generated $2.3 billion in sales. But then came the reckoning, which Stephanie McNeal has reported out in detail and which you absolutely have to read for yourself. It’s too much to summarize in a newsletter, and it’s completely wild!

SNAPSHOTS

Harry and Meghan will stop using the term “royal” in their work. It’s all part of the deal they’ve struck to exit their royal duties. Farewell to their “Sussex Royal” brand.

The Harvey Weinstein jury will continue its deliberations today. On Friday they told the judge they were deadlocked on the most serious charges against the disgraced producer.

Jake Paul posted that he almost had to fight Zayn Malik. In response, Malik’s girlfriend Gigi Hadid called him “irrelevant” and mocked his “embarrassing crew of YouTube groupies.”

The New York Post had a normal one on Sunday. It published 12 different stories about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, including my favorite: “Here’s what AOC and pals think about Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.”

IN MEMORIAM

Stuntman “Mad” Mike Hughes died on Saturday

He died doing what he loved: launching himself into the sky on increasingly powerful home-made rockets. This weekend he was aiming to make it 5,000 feet into the air, but it all went wrong.

The dream was to eventually make it right to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere, 62 miles up.

Mad Mike got a bunch of press coverage lately by saying his rocket launches were part of an attempt to prove the world is flat. But a spokesperson told Otillia Steadman that was just classic Mad Mike showmanship.

"We used flat Earth as a PR stunt. Period," he said. "He was a true daredevil decades before the latest round of rocket missions. Flat Earth allowed us to get so much publicity that we kept going! I know he didn’t believe in flat Earth and it was a schtick."

James Quigg / AP

The mathematics are on your side today,

Tom