~vox | Bookmarks (533)

Vox reader Brian Diederich asks: Why and how do so many collegiate basketball teams — both men’s and women’s — now have so many international student-athletes? If you’ve turned on March Madness this year, you’ve witnessed the most international players ever in college basketball’s signature competition.  Across both the men’s and women’s brackets, 264 athletes […]

It’s been a big week for the group chat.  On Monday, the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg published a story revealing that National Security Advisor Michael Waltz accidentally added him to a Signal thread where top Trump cabinet members were discussing upcoming military strikes in Yemen.  First, the Trump administration denied that top Trump officials shared […]

I was an English major in college, and my favorite poet was the first-generation Romantic William Wordsworth. For one thing, there’s the name, the best example of nominative determinism in the annals of English literature. But what I most love about Wordsworth is the way he acts as a bridge between the formal, at times […]

All nine of the Supreme Court justices are lawyers. All of them have friends and law school classmates in private practice. All of them sit at the apex of a legal system that depends on lawyers to brief judges on the matters those judges must decide. Many of them were themselves litigators at large law […]

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 effort to eliminate the US Agency for International Development, the next step in its campaign against foreign assistance and a […]

For the second time in a year, Elon Musk appears to be trying to bribe voters — and election law experts say it’s probably illegal.  Musk offered Thursday to “personally hand over” a total of $2 million to two individuals who have already voted in the closely watched Wisconsin Supreme Court race. (It’s unclear whether […]

At around 5:15 pm on Tuesday, a man in a black hoodie stopped Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk on the street in Somerville, Massachusetts. She tried to walk by, but he grabbed her. She screamed, and it seemed like help was arriving. But the masked newcomers were actually there to help her assailant. They […]

The buzzword of the past couple of weeks is Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s new book about why we stopped being able to build things in America and how that’s destroying our country. (Klein is a co-founder of Vox and now a columnist for the New York Times; Thompson writes for the Atlantic.) Abundance’s […]

This story was produced in collaboration with The Dodo. One morning this week, Hanna Koch was snorkeling in the Florida Keys when she came across a brown beer bottle on the sea floor. Koch, a marine biologist for Florida’s Monroe County, picked up the bottle, planning to carry it with her and later toss it […]

Earlier this month, Thomas Edsall published a column in the New York Times titled, “Even if the Democrats can move to the center, it may not help.” In it, the eminent political analyst argued that “there is evidence that the process of moderation has the potential to result in unintended adverse consequences.” Edsall was referring […]

Washington has been convulsed over the past week by the question of how a prominent journalist was invited into a private Signal chat between senior Trump administration officials over an impending military action and why that conversation was happening on Signal at all. But the actual topic that these officials were discussing — a strike […]

President Donald Trump came into office with plans to enact his agenda at breakneck speed, and to some extent, it’s working. Less than 100 days into his second term, Trump has already issued 99 executive orders — a “shock and awe” approach meant to overwhelm his opposition and signal decisive action to his supporters. However, the […]

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. In almost all ways, the Liberty Hotel in Boston is like any other swanky hotel. It hosts galas, weddings, and New Year’s Eve parties. It has weekly events like “Fashionably LATE […]

A Vox reader asks: How do I know which vitamins and supplements are right/safe for me? I feel inundated by the vitamin craze these days. When I’m scrolling Reddit, I frequently see promotions for the Hims brand that sells pills for erectile dysfunction and hair loss; I guess the algorithm has figured out I’m middle-aged. […]

If, on January 19, 2025, a day before Donald Trump’s inauguration, you had asked foreign aid experts, “does the US Agency for International Development (USAID) need reform?” most would have readily said “yes.” Not enough programs are evaluated for effectiveness; too much is run through a small number of private contractors; the foreign aid mission […]

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 focused on the Trump administration’s attempt to deport a foreign student without trial, seemingly as a punishment for her political views. What’s […]

Can you truly be friends with a chatbot?  If you find yourself asking that question, it’s probably too late. In a Reddit thread a year ago, one user wrote that AI friends are “wonderful and significantly better than real friends […] your AI friend would never break or betray you.” But there’s also the 14-year-old […]

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. If you want to observe a particularly American problem, go open your phone’s Venmo app. Click on “me” and then click on “transfer.” If you have a balance in your account, […]

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. This past fall, I set out to get rejected as often as I could.  A healthy fear of rejection lives inside most people, and has some of us in a chokehold. […]

The biggest story in America is, and should remain, the Trump administration’s accidental inclusion of Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg on a Signal group chat about planning airstrikes in Yemen. This is not only colossally incompetent, but a scandal of the first proportion: Top officials, including the vice president and secretary of defense, discussing the most […]

The Social Security Administration — which distributes benefits to tens of millions of retired workers, people with disabilities, and their families — is in crisis. Since billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) set its sights on finding fraud in Social Security, the agency has been trying to shed 12 percent of its workforce, […]

“The only thing worse than being homeless in America is not being considered homeless in America,” says Brian Goldstone, a journalist and ethnographer. America’s homelessness crisis extends far beyond what we see on the streets, and Goldstone wants us to pay attention to those who are hidden from public view.  In his new book, There […]

Kerr v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic is one of the most straightforward cases the Supreme Court will hear this year. It involves a federal law that requires every state’s Medicaid program to ensure that “any individual eligible for medical assistance” may obtain that care “from any institution, agency, community pharmacy, or person, qualified to perform […]

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. America’s fragile child care system relies heavily on immigrant workers. Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown could cripple it. Since 2011, federal guidance has advised Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents against conducting […]