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The chaotic first months of President Donald’s Trump second term have made it difficult to distinguish between controversies that evaporate immediately — and meaningful shifts in American governance.  But amid the noise and a barrage of executive orders, clear patterns have emerged. Trump’s most consequential actions so far can be divided into four domains: Here’s […]

Elon Musk will step back from his Trump administration work with a trail of wreckage — and failure — behind him. Musk said last Wednesday that he’d scale back his White House work to one or two days each week soon, likely in May. But he’d already had his power reined in, becoming far less […]

Ashley Pro lived with her sister Dennice for 28 years. They moved in together after leaving their childhood home, and if Pro hadn’t been transferred to a different city for work, the sisters would likely still be roommates. Pro, a 29-year-old director for an after-school program in Rancho Cucamonga, California, initially worried that any distance […]

Should every woman be able to do 11 push-ups? According to orthopedic surgeon and health influencer Vonda Wright, they should — and, no, modified “girl push-ups”  don’t count.  Last month, Wright appeared on The Mel Robbins Podcast, the popular self-help show that tends to generate this sort of arbitrary health advice, to share her recommended […]

The Trump administration has been soliciting ideas on ways to encourage Americans to get married and have more children, according to a new report in the New York Times. Some of the proposals have ranged from ridiculous (reserving Fulbright scholarships for married applicants or those with children) to unnerving, like awarding a “National Medal of […]

LONDON, Canada — Canada’s Liberals just pulled off one of the greatest upsets in modern democratic history: going from a predicted wipeout in December to victory on Monday night. To understand why, you need to look at the signs on the sidewalk.  I don’t mean the ones advertising Prime Minister Mark Carney’s triumphant party, though there […]

This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here. Welcome to The Logoff: CBS News is accusing its parent company of censoring its coverage in order to appease the Trump administration, a warning sign for freedom of the press and […]

President Donald Trump’s tariffs have drawn a lot of opposition — from economists, businesses, Wall Street, and the majority of Americans. Yet Trump has received support from a seemingly unlikely source: Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, who staunchly backed former Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign and previously called Trump […]

Money is always stressful, but between on-again, off-again, on-again tariffs, inflation, and a general sense of uncertainty, all things finance have been especially anxiety-inducing lately. Much of the advice given is geared toward people who have time to make up losses in the stock market. But what if you’re retired or close to retirement age? […]

Canada’s Election Day is here.  It’s been a short, hectic campaign season, marked by startling reversals — most notably a massive decline in support for the current opposition Conservative Party — and ignited by the resignation of longtime Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.  The race has also been reshaped by the politics of the United […]

President George W. Bush brought Western wear with him to the White House — suits with cowboy boots, big decorative belt buckles, cowboy hats. President Barack Obama ushered in an era of slimmer suiting, while first lady Michelle Obama helped spark a renaissance of American design.  Presidential administrations always come with an aesthetic attached. What […]

A version of this story originally appeared in the Good News newsletter. Sign up here! Any time I try to convince skeptical people that the world isn’t as bad as they think it is — which I do quite a lot, given that I write a newsletter called Good News — they usually come back with […]

This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here. Welcome to The Logoff: FBI agents arrested a Milwaukee County judge this morning on felony charges of interfering with immigration agents, as the Trump administration cracks down on local officials who […]

President Donald Trump has been sending undocumented immigrants to a mega prison in El Salvador without due process. Most of these deportees have no criminal record, yet our government has condemned them to indefinite incarceration in an infamously inhumane penitentiary.  In the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Trump administration admits that its deportation order […]

In recent days, Donald Trump has signaled eagerness to reach a trade agreement with China. The president said Tuesday that his 145 percent tariffs on Chinese imports will “come down substantially” in the near future.  On Thursday, Trump said that his administration is already negotiating with China over trade, saying, “They had a meeting this […]

About nine years ago, a new organization called Canary Mission released a YouTube video describing their mission: maintaining a blacklist of anti-Israel college students. American campuses, the video warns, had become hotbeds of anti-Israel extremism: safe spaces for students to attend “Jew-hating conferences and anti-American rallies.” To fight this, Canary Mission would build an extensive […]

Clubs are, first and foremost, for dancing. One could theoretically do other things there — drink, meet strangers, conduct important and possibly illicit business deals, anything really — but likely everything but dancing could probably be done more efficiently somewhere else. At the same time, while no one’s stopping anyone from dancing in other places […]

Creatine — yes, the favorite of gym rats everywhere, a supplement many of us have taken ourselves — is a naturally occurring compound that is already found inside each person. Scientists have been studying creatine since the 1830s and, for more than a century, we have known that it was pivotal for producing energy in our […]

A Vox reader asks: Why do so many people believe in astrology? Astrology has been around as long as people have had problems. Frustrated with their terrestrial existence, humans have looked to the stars for answers. A constellation shaped like a goat, an archer, or a virgin could have just as much insight into life as […]

This story was originally published in The Highlight, Vox’s member-exclusive magazine. To get early access to member-exclusive stories every month, join the Vox Membership program today. At long last, spring has arrived here in New England, with verdant leaves erupting through soil and piles of brown leaves. That means the return of neighbors who pass by my garden […]

For most of the last 30 years, the story of religion in America has been a pretty steady one: a constant, and consistent, drop in religious affiliation every year.  Starting in the 1990s, the share of Americans who identified as Christian, or identified with any religion at all, began to drop precipitously. At the same […]

This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here. Welcome to The Logoff. President Donald Trump signed an executive order that takes aim at a longtime core principle of civil rights law known as disparate impact. And though he can’t […]

Almost immediately after he began his second term, President Donald Trump ordered the military to ban transgender people from serving in the US military. Under the Defense Department’s policy implementing this order, the military was supposed to start firing trans service members on March 26, although those firings were halted by a court order. That […]

A version of this story originally appeared in the Future Perfect newsletter. Sign up here! Right now, OpenAI is something unique in the landscape of not just AI companies but huge companies in general. OpenAI’s board of directors is bound not to the mission of providing value for shareholders, like most companies, but to the mission of ensuring […]

In his free time, while working as a clerk at a local Australian railway, James Harrison saved millions of lives — with his blood. Harrison had particularly special plasma: It had a rare antibody that doctors used to make a medication for pregnant mothers with different blood types from their newborns. When this happens, it […]

Consider the transistor, the basic unit of computer processors. Transistors can be tiny, down to single-digit nanometers in size. Billions can fit on a computer chip.  Though they have no moving parts, they devour electricity as they store and modify bits of information. “Ones and zeros are encoded as these high and low voltages,” said […]

If anything is safe from the economic chaos caused by President Donald Trump’s tariffs, it’s probably gold — or at least that’s what investors seem to think. The price of gold has increased rapidly in the months since Trump took office, surging particularly since his March 2 announcement of a baseline 10 percent tariff on […]

This story was originally published in The Highlight, Vox’s member-exclusive magazine. To get early access to member-exclusive stories every month, join the Vox Membership program today. Less than a week after becoming vice president, JD Vance, only the second Catholic to hold the office, had a very public break with the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church […]

There’s a bodega on the corner where I live in Brooklyn, New York, with a massive TikTok following and a thick cable almost always stretched out the front door and plugged into a Tesla. In a tiny parking lot around the corner, the local grocery store has a fast charger that looks like a mini […]

Twenty years ago, few people would have been able to imagine the energy landscape of today. In 2005, US oil production, after a long decline, had fallen to its lowest levels in decades, and few experts thought that would change.  The US invasion of Iraq had sent gasoline prices skyward. Solar and wind power provided […]

This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here. Welcome to The Logoff: Today I’m focusing on the controversy surrounding Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, as reports of mismanagement and dysfunction in his office suggest he’s unfit for one of the […]

Three years ago, Montgomery County, Maryland, approved several books with LGBTQ characters for use in public school classrooms. Not much else is known about these books, how they have been used, when they were used in lessons, or how teachers plan to use them in the future. These questions have come before lower courts, but […]

Over the last few months, the Trump administration has intensified its attacks on elite, Ivy League institutions like Columbia and Harvard, enacting sweeping funding cuts and even threatening to revoke their tax-exempt status. But what’s happening on the campuses of state schools is much less covered. Take for example the public university system in Florida. […]

On Monday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that could lead health insurance plans to offer narrower coverage. The case, known as Kennedy v. Braidwood Management, challenges the authority of a group within the US Department of Health and Human Services tasked with requiring insurers to cover some forms of preventative care. […]

President Donald Trump ran on a promise of more fossil fuels, fewer environmental regulations, and outright climate denial — and now he’s following through. His administration is gutting clean energy policy, fast-tracking oil and gas projects, and reshaping environmental policy with sweeping consequences. At the same time, though, there’s another force pulling hard in the […]

Back in 2021, far-right blogger Curtis Yarvin, who supports abolishing American democracy and replacing it with a dictatorship, went on a podcast to discuss how a hypothetical “American Caesar” might successfully carry out a power grab if elected president. His interlocutor, then-former (and now, current) Trump official Michael Anton, argued that any such effort would […]

At every light switch, power socket, and on the road, an unstoppable revolution is already underway.  Technologies that can power our lives and jobs while doing less harm to the global climate — wind, solar, batteries, etc. — are getting cheaper, more efficient, and more abundant. The pace of progress on price, scale, and performance […]

Many worry that the Trump administration will derail the clean energy transition. But there’s reason to believe otherwise.

Donald Trump made his energy plans pretty clear during the campaign: more fossil fuels, fewer environmental protections, and a full-on retreat from global climate cooperation.  Nearly 100 days into his second administration, he has moved with dizzying speed to fulfill those promises.   On Day 1, he pulled the US out of the Paris climate agreement, […]

Your Mileage May Vary is an advice column offering you a unique framework for thinking through your moral dilemmas. To submit a question, fill out this anonymous form or email sigal.samuel@vox.com. Here’s this week’s question from a reader, condensed and edited for clarity: Lately, in order to help with my mental health, I’ve been avoiding news about […]

Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old accused of brazenly gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson turned celebrated vigilante, was indicted by a federal grand jury on Thursday. The federal charges include stalking, a firearms offense, and murder through use of a firearm, according to NPR.  If convicted, the murder charge makes Mangione eligible for the death penalty. Mangione […]

Shortly after midnight early Saturday morning, the Supreme Court handed down a brief order forbidding the Trump administration from removing a group of Venezuelan immigrants from the United States without due process.  The facts of this case, known as A.A.R.P. v. Trump, are uncertain and rapidly developing. Much of what we do know about the […]

What should America’s immigration policy be?  This might seem like an absurd question to ask in a year when our current immigration agenda involves sending hundreds of people — including some who came here legally and many with no criminal record — to a Salvadoran maximum security prison known for human rights abuses, revoking the […]

Top officials within the Justice Department, the State Department, and possibly even the White House may be barrelling toward a criminal conviction for contempt of court. It is far from clear, however, whether anything will happen to them even if they are convicted. On Wednesday, Chief Judge James Boasberg determined that he has “probable cause” […]

This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here. Welcome to The Logoff: Today I’m focusing on the Trump administration’s escalating fight with the judicial branch over a wrongful deportation, after appellate judges — the last stop before the Supreme Court […]

The koala is a national icon of Australia. And in some parts of the country, these marsupials — known for their fluffy ears, adorable clingy babies, and diet of eucalyptus leaves — are endangered. In the last two decades, their population size in some areas has dropped by half. It may seem odd, then, that […]

J.K. Rowling’s supporters frequently claim the author has never actually said or done anything transphobic. It’s a position you can see on social media, in the pages of the New York Times, and even on a 2023 podcast with Rowling herself. It’s also an easily debunked lie. Some of this confusion around Rowling’s opinions can […]

It’s perhaps the most urgent reason Democrats lost in November: The party has solidly lost the support of working-class voters across the country and doesn’t have a solid sense of how to win them back. Now, a group of Democratic researchers, strategists, and operatives are launching a renewed effort to figure out — and to communicate […]

Last year, a coterie of tech billionaires rallied behind Donald Trump’s candidacy. Many had not been lifelong Republicans. In 2016, the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen declared Hillary Clinton the “obvious choice” for president, saying Trump’s immigration agenda “makes me sick to my stomach.” Elon Musk, meanwhile, had once been an Obama-supporting climate hawk. Yet they, […]

Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian student at Columbia University, went into a US Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Vermont on Monday for his scheduled naturalization interview. But instead of being granted citizenship, he was arrested and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which started the process to deport him. In a memo reviewed by […]