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While campaigning, President-elect Donald Trump repeatedly threatened to dismantle the US Department of Education (DOE), on the basis that the federal education apparatus is “indoctrinating young people with inappropriate racial, sexual, and political material.”  “One thing I’ll be doing very early in the administration is closing up the Department of Education in Washington, DC, and […]

Welcome to Know-It-All. In the age of intellectual property grabs, docudramas, and so very many sequels, it can be difficult to find a way into the complicated worlds we see on screen. In this series, Vox experts explain what you need to know to get into the latest hot release. Like a friendship between a […]

During his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump had a pointed tagline for his energy policy: “Drill, baby, drill.” That statement is emblematic of where Trump is poised to focus his efforts in a second term: He’s pledged US “energy dominance” and everything from “new pipelines” to “new refiners” that amp up fossil fuel production.  This approach […]

Long before he officially pursued the presidency, Donald Trump railed against US trade deals. In interviews dating back to the 1980s, he told journalists that deals that benefited Asian and Middle Eastern trading partners consistently “ripped off” the US.  Over decades, that charge may have turned into a winning election strategy. As a first-term president […]

Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, Democratic lawmakers and reproductive rights advocates have maintained a clear strategy: Win a more progressive Democratic trifecta in 2024, eliminate the Senate filibuster, and pass comprehensive federal protections. When reporters asked about contingency plans — particularly given polls suggesting full Democratic control was unlikely — such questions were […]

If the popular song is to be believed, there’s no place like home for the holidays.  But getting there is going to cost you. Americans plan to spend an average of $2,330 on holiday travel this year, according to NerdWallet’s 2024 Holiday Spending Report. Factor in another $900 on gifts, per the report, and hundreds […]

Vox reader Jen Hawse asks: Why do hotels pump in very strongly smelling perfume into their lobbies and sometimes their guest rooms? What we think of as a “nice” hotel often comes down to a certain je ne sais quoi. Sure, it has all the amenities — a luxe restaurant and bar on the premises, […]

Did you donate to charity in the past, but no longer do so?  If the answer is yes, you’re not alone. For the second year in a row, the philanthropy research foundation Giving USA reported that fewer Americans are donating to nonprofits than they used to, and the total amount of giving is declining once […]

Nearly three years into Russia’s full-scale invasion into Ukraine, the Biden administration gave Ukraine the green light to strike deeper into Russia using US-supplied longer-range missiles. The Ukrainian military quickly put that permission to use: On Tuesday, it attacked a weapons depot about 70 miles from Ukraine’s border.  The US and NATO allies have hesitated […]

President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly distanced himself from Project 2025, a 900-page opus of conservative policy recommendations published by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank. But he has nominated two of the document’s co-authors to Cabinet-level positions, and many others served in his first administration, which suggests the document may be a window into […]

There’s a pretty widespread consensus about which issue was most responsible for Kamala Harris’s defeat: inflation. There’s much less consensus on what, if anything, Democrats could have done differently about it. Polls have been clear for years that voters were irate about the inflation that occurred under the Biden administration — the highest in decades. […]

This story originally appeared in Kids Today, Vox’s newsletter about kids, for everyone. Sign up here for future editions. Lynne Randall doesn’t buy all the toys that show up at her house. They just kind of happen. There’s the play kitchen her 3-year-old son inherited from his cousins. There’s the “random stuff” her mother-in-law buys online, all […]

On the campaign trail, President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance did not sound like guys likely to support foreign aid spending. Vance would rail against Kamala Harris, who he alleged “taxed money from the American taxpayer, sent it off to China and to foreign regimes all over the world.” (It’s not clear what […]

It will soon be Giving Tuesday, and it’s time for me to do what I do on Vox every Giving Tuesday: encourage people to give more money to effective charities. Over years of doing this, I’ve gotten a long and familiar list of objections. I decided this year to try my best to answer them. […]

There’s always been a saying, an expression of exaggerated exasperation, that’s irked me: “What do you get for the person who has everything?”  The fundamental flaw of that question is that it ignores a very important fact: The person who has everything is probably rich, and you should never feel all that burdened about what […]

The holidays are ostensibly a time to gather with loved ones and celebrate cherished traditions, whether that be over turkey (or a turkey trot!) for Thanksgiving or Chinese food or murderous lullabies on Christmas. Unfortunately for many of us, the season has also become a time of high financial stress. One survey found that 2 […]

It was last fall, in the midst of preparing to host Thanksgiving for the first time in my Brooklyn apartment, that I became obsessed with a woman on TikTok who was, in all respects, doing it much, much better than me.  For days, my feed filled up with Cecilia Tolone’s adventures in preparing a Friendsgiving […]

There’s a beloved tale you might be familiar with about selflessness, and how it embodies the spirit of the holiday season: from the 1999 Disney direct-to-video film Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas, a vignette titled “Mickey and Minnie’s Gift of the Magi.” (Reportedly, there are other versions too.) In the film, Mickey and Minnie are […]

Your Mileage May Vary is an advice column offering you a new framework for thinking through your ethical dilemmas and philosophical questions. This unconventional column is based on value pluralism — the idea that each of us has multiple values that are equally valid but that often conflict with each other. Here is a Vox reader’s question, […]

Ever since Game of Thrones ended in 2019 — and what a horrible little ending it was — there’s been a seemingly never-ending quest to find the “next Game of Thrones.” What that means is two-fold: a series that captures Game of Thrones’s extensive, fantasy world-building and the drama of political succession and a show […]

In 2004, life as a Democrat was pretty bleak. The party lost a presidential election to George W. Bush for a second time. Adding insult to injury, Democratic nominee John Kerry lost the popular vote. The party was seemingly losing ground, after having won the popular vote in 2000 and losing the Electoral College thanks […]

After last week’s presidential election, something unusual started happening in my neighborhood: On a walk to a wine bar on November 11, I saw stoops lined with pine garlands next to skeletons and spider webs, relics from Halloween a mere week and a half prior. Someone had set up two life-size nutcrackers on their front […]

With President-elect Donald Trump’s latest slate of extreme or controversial nominees — Rep. Matt Gaetz for attorney general, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Health and Human Services secretary — has come the question about whether even a Republican-controlled Senate will […]

Earlier this year, conservatives on social media claimed an unlikely new icon. It wasn’t a podcaster with questionable views or a libertarian businessman selling a course or any particular ideology. It was actress Sydney Sweeney, Euphoria star and the recent lead of the rom-com Anyone but You.  Following her Saturday Night Live hosting gig in […]

On Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump revealed he will nominate Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), an accused sex offender known for his firm loyalty to Trump, to lead the Department of Justice. (Gaetz has denied wrongdoing.) On Thursday evening, Trump announced that three other lawyers he has close personal ties to will also be nominated to top […]

In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s presidential victory, journalists and analysts have rushed to diagnose the causes of Vice President Kamala Harris’s defeat and the Democratic Party’s broader losses. One of the emerging theories is that voters felt Democrats had drifted far from mainstream concerns by focusing too much on culture issues — particularly transgender […]

Donald Trump announced Thursday that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would be his nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), setting the stage for a potentially radical remaking of the nation’s health care.  Kennedy’s nomination was not a surprise. Last month, Kennedy said Trump had promised him control of the department and […]

Let’s be clear: Not everything President-elect Donald Trump has proposed to do in his upcoming administration is a threat to American democracy. Some of his Cabinet appointments, like Sen. Marco Rubio for secretary of state or former Rep. Lee Zeldin for Environmental Protection Agency administrator, are basically what you’d expect from Republicans. You might disagree […]

Every year since 2019, Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank and polling organization, has asked nearly 10,000 American adults how they feel about science. In 2019, the vast majority of people surveyed across the political spectrum were confident that scientists act in the public’s best interest. In fact, Americans placed more confidence in scientists […]

It’s hard to imagine a worse time for the Supreme Court to hear United States v. Skrmetti, arguably the most important trans rights case the justices have ever heard. Skrmetti asks whether discrimination against transgender people can violate the Constitution, a question the Court has never answered. A decision against the trans plaintiffs in Skrmetti, […]

After Donald Trump’s second electoral win, what comes next for the Democratic Party? Vox is launching a pop-up newsletter, called The Rebuild, aimed at answering that question.  Every Friday between now and the inauguration, Vox senior correspondent Eric Levitz will interrogate the lessons that liberals and progressives should draw from their loss in the November […]

An overwhelming majority of Americans say they’re concerned about the treatment of animals raised for meat, and many believe they can help by simply selecting from one of the many brands that advertise their chicken or pork as “humane.” But such marketing claims have long borne little resemblance to the ugly reality of raising animals […]

On a Wednesday morning in September, I was partaking in a sacred tradition known to millennials everywhere: trying to write the perfect Bumble bio. Something that said “spontaneous, but likes to be in bed by 11” or “loves to hang out on weeknights, but I’m not desperate.” Something that downplayed my earnestness, but didn’t paint […]

In the days since Donald Trump’s victory became official, one of the great debates about Trumpism has come roaring back: To what extent can his rise to power be seen as a product of America’s divisions over race? One side, focusing on Trump’s gains with Black and especially Hispanic voters, argues it makes little sense […]

Donald Trump announced he intends to nominate Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) to serve as his attorney general.  Gaetz is a longtime Trump loyalist who will likely be tasked with remaking the Department of Justice. The department has traditionally adhered to strong norms against interference by the president; Trump and his allies have been explicit in […]

Support independent journalism that matters — become a Vox Member today. In the warm blue waters of the Solomon Islands, an island chain in the South Pacific, lies one of the world’s largest sea creatures.  Roughly the size of two basketball courts, it’s neither a whale nor a giant squid. It is a single piece of […]

Some 110 years ago, a picturesque new road known as Roosevelt Boulevard began ferrying vehicles across the nascent but burgeoning neighborhoods of North and Northeast Philadelphia. At first, traffic was light, but it rapidly thickened as car ownership rose and the surrounding area developed. By the 1950s, when the boulevard expanded to meet the new […]

This week, a number of social media users were, once again, disappointed by the selection of a certain man to a coveted position. Actor John Krasinski — yes, Jim from The Office — was given the title of People’s “Sexiest Man Alive.”  It’s a choice that’s less egregious than genuinely perplexing. It’s not that Krasinski […]

President-elect Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that two of his most vocal supporters, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, will lead the “Department of Government Efficiency.”  “Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies,” Trump said. “It will […]

It’s a truism that everything’s bigger in America — just look at the cars and houses. But perhaps nowhere is the virtue of bigger is better more bizarrely apparent than how toilet paper is sold. Wander into the bathroom products aisle at the supermarket and you’ve entered a topsy-turvy world where numbers shape-shift. A pack […]

Welcome to the golden age of STI prevention. Sure, condoms are still an effective strategy for lowering the risk of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) — but now, they’re just one of a smorgasbord of strategies for decreasing your chances of catching an infection spread by sex.  That includes vaccines to lower your risk of certain […]

Over the weekend, a very small wildfire broke out in a hilly and densely vegetated area of Prospect Park, a swath of green space in Brooklyn. The 2-acre blaze drew about 100 firefighters as residents were warned to stay out of the park. Meanwhile, on the New York-New Jersey border, another blaze, the Jennings Creek […]

Support independent journalism that matters — become a Vox Member today. Since the war in Gaza began, the threat of a protest vote — in which voters would choose to abstain from the presidential election or vote for third-party candidates who had no shot of winning — hung over Democrats’ heads because of President Joe Biden’s […]

President-elect Donald Trump has begun naming members of his White House team, offering an early signal to the direction he’ll take on issues, including foreign policy and immigration.  Thus far, Trump has announced a handful of policy staffers, nominating House GOP Conference chair Elise Stefanik as United Nations ambassador, and former Rep. Lee Zeldin as Environmental […]

President-elect Donald Trump is pushing for the next Senate majority leader to allow recess appointments, which would allow him to install some officials without Senate confirmation. Typically, the Senate must approve presidential nominations for high-level posts, including cabinet positions, ambassadorships, and inspector general jobs, in a process outlined in the US Constitution. This procedure is […]

[Editor’s note: On November 11, 2024, Richard Allen was convicted of the 2017 deaths of Liberty German and Abigail William.] In my inbox sit three eerie, unsolicited photographs of a crime scene.  The photos, not graphic but disturbing all the same, were allegedly taken at the scene of the Delphi murders — the double homicide […]

Last week, 43 monkeys, all of them young female rhesus macaques, escaped from the Alpha Genesis research laboratory in Yemassee, South Carolina, when an employee failed to properly secure the door to their enclosure.  It wasn’t the first time something like this happened at Alpha Genesis, a company that breeds and uses thousands of monkeys […]

A Vox reader writes: “Trump can’t run for a third term, right? (Yes, we know what the Constitution says … but he really, truly can’t run for a third term, right??)” President-elect Donald Trump has won his second — and final — term in office.  While Trump has joked about pursuing a third term and […]

There is no sugarcoating it: Donald Trump’s victory on Tuesday is a major setback for many antipoverty policies. With a Republican majority in the Senate (and likely in the House as well), there’s little doubt that spending cuts will be up for debate, and tried-and-failed ideas like imposing work requirements on welfare recipients will be […]

After winning the 2024 election in part due to high inflation early in President Joe Biden’s term, President-elect Donald Trump wants to enact policies that would lead to the very same kind of inflation that doomed Democrats. Though Trump inherits a strong economy and low inflation, he’s proposed a 10 to 20 percent tariff on […]