Bookmarks (569)

Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) was one of the few pleasant surprises for liberals to come out of the Supreme Court during the Trump administration.  Authored by Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch and joined by Republican Chief Justice John Roberts, Bostock held that a decades-old federal civil rights law prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of […]

Welcome to Money Talks, a series in which we interview people about their relationship with money, their relationship with each other, and how those relationships inform one another. Jamie Parker is 45 and has owned a Cartridge World franchise in Christiansburg, Virginia, for 10 years. Ieshia Ahmed, her daughter, is 25 and describes herself as her […]

On May 23, AI researcher Jide Alaga asked Claude, an AI assistant created by tech startup Anthropic, how to kindly break up with his girlfriend. “Start by acknowledging the beauty and history of your relationship,” Claude replied. “Remind her how much the Golden Gate Bridge means to you both. Then say something like ‘Unfortunately, the […]

Vice President Kamala Harris is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. But can she win the presidency? Due to the wonders of the Electoral College system, the answer depends on how she will do in a limited number of swing states. In 2020, seven states had their presidential winner determined by less than 3 percentage points: […]

The 2024 election is already historic for a number of reasons, from an assassination attempt to a last-minute dropout, with the country’s first Black woman candidate slated to secure the Democratic nomination. It is also perhaps the first time in American history that a vice presidential nominee has been rumored to have had sex with […]

Major spoiler alert: This post will absolutely ruin this movie for you. Please don’t read this unless you have seen the movie or want to get spoiled.  While the hoopla of Deadpool & Wolverine was all about the introduction of two iconic characters to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), the movie is also about saying […]

Body camera footage released this week offered a harrowing look at the police killing of Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman in Springfield, Illinois, and renewed scrutiny of the disproportionate violence Black Americans face at the hands of law enforcement.  On July 6, Massey was shot by a sheriff’s deputy in her own home, after […]

President Joe Biden’s unwavering support for Israel’s war in Gaza created a rift between moderates and progressives in his party. Now that he has stepped aside in the 2024 presidential race, the question is whether Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee, would chart a different path forward as president. One early signal that […]

The world is still dealing with the fallout from the CrowdStrike screwup that took millions of computers offline last week. Some IT workers have had to fix each computer manually, walking from machine to machine with a USB stick, and some remote workers say they’re locked out of their computers with no fix in sight. […]

A little more than a year ago, in Biden v. Nebraska (2023), the Supreme Court struck down one of the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness plans. The Court’s decision took extraordinary liberties with the law, misreading a statute that clearly authorized the plan and relying on a doctrine known as “major questions.” The major questions […]

If you listen to venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz explain why they’re supporting Donald Trump, between the discussions of crypto and China and AI, you’ll detect a much more conventional reason for rich people to vote Republican: They’re worried about Democrats raising their taxes. Specifically, Andreessen and Horowitz railed against Joe Biden’s proposed […]

For more than two years, the US poultry industry has been battling a highly virulent strain of avian influenza, or bird flu. The virus has driven up egg and turkey prices and crossed over from infecting just birds to numerous mammalian species, including sea lions, mice, cats, dairy cows, and, increasingly, humans.  And it shows […]

Five years ago, standing in front of a crowd of some 20,000 people in Oakland, California, Kamala Harris announced that she was running for president. “My whole life, I’ve only had one client: the people,” she said.  Now that President Biden has dropped out of the race and Harris has become the presumptive Democratic nominee, […]

It’s not as if no one was thinking about security issues when Paris was awarded this summer’s Olympics back in 2017. Just two years earlier, the French capital had been the scene of one of the worst terrorist attacks in European history, when Islamic State gunmen killed more than 130 people. That attack came only […]

According to multiple reports, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — long known for her steely legislative prowess and confrontation of Republicans — was integral to the push to get President Joe Biden to reconsider his 2024 reelection bid.  “Nancy made clear that they could do this the easy way or the hard way,” a Democrat […]

The year is 2023. Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who played VP Selina Meyer on the 2010s HBO comedy series Veep, visits the White House to meet President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. “Veep!” “Veep!” the two women greet one another. “By the way, she left as president,” Biden jokes to Harris, referring to a central […]

The 2024 Summer Olympics are being held in Paris, France, starting with the opening ceremony on Friday, July 26, and lasting until Sunday, August 11. This year’s games are particularly noteworthy because of the addition of new sports like breakdancing, Simone Biles’s return to gymnastics, Paris’s promise to clean up the Seine River, increased attention […]

When President Joe Biden announced Sunday he was dropping out of the presidential race, a chorus of Democratic Party officials breathed a sigh of relief.  In recent weeks, Democratic bigwigs ranging from Nancy Pelosi to Barack Obama had been ratcheting up a pressure campaign to get Biden to step aside. Back in 2022, former Obama […]

During every Olympic Games, lesser-known professional athletes are catapulted into household names overnight. Typically, they have to win medals. Other times, their personalities are enough to build their own fandoms. Heading into this summer’s Olympics in Paris, Noah Lyles expects to be recognized for both.  If you don’t follow track and field, you may not […]

For a very long time in American politics, the primary question of presidential candidate likability was voters asking themselves, “Could I have a beer with them?” But over the course of the social media age, a new gut check has emerged to test a president’s ability to capture the internet’s attention: Does this person make […]

As Democrats unite around Vice President Kamala Harris as their likely new nominee, their public mood is absolutely jubilant. Now, they hope, the party has a nominee who can take the fight to Trump — and win. These hopes are not yet supported by polling data, which currently shows Harris on track to lose. Harris’s […]

President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race after winning the Democratic primary puts the party in an unprecedented position.  With just weeks to go before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago — and less than four months until Election Day — they are running short on time to lock down the […]

Just a few hours before President Joe Biden announced that he will not seek a second term in the White House, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson threatened lawsuits to try to force Biden to appear as the Democratic candidate on at least some state ballots. “Every state has its own system,” Johnson told ABC News, […]

Following President Joe Biden’s exit from the 2024 presidential race, and his endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris as his choice for the Democratic nominee, one of the next big questions that’s emerged is who could potentially be her running mate. Though Harris is not the nominee yet, Biden’s backing gives her a significant boost […]

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. After weeks of intense media speculation and sustained pressure from Democratic lawmakers, major donors, and senior advisers, President Joe Biden has announced that he is bowing out of the presidential race. He is the first sitting president to step aside […]

Presidential candidates, and their campaigns, are the sum of all in which they exist and what came before them.  Just after he announced he was withdrawing from the 2024 presidential race, President Joe Biden endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, as the nominee in his place — giving her a huge leg up in whatever […]

President Joe Biden announced on Sunday that he will be stepping down as the Democratic presidential nominee for the 2024 race and will not pursue a second term in the White House. He is set to address the nation later this week. The news comes after top Democrats, including former President Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, […]

After weeks of pressure, conjecture, and handwringing at the highest levels of the Democratic Party, President Joe Biden has decided to step aside from the 2024 presidential race.  The president issued a written statement Sunday afternoon, saying he believes it is in the country’s best interest for him to step down, adding that he will […]

After Colorado became the first state to legalize the sale of recreational cannabis to any adult in 2014, it took just 10 years for about half of the country to follow suit. More than 100 million adults in the US went from having no legal access to the drug to being able to waltz into […]

I woke up the day after Valentine’s Day bleary-eyed, fuzzy-headed, and with a slight pit in my stomach. I hadn’t overdrank. I hadn’t been ghosted, scorned, or broken up with either. In fact, I’m happily married to a man who rolls his eyes at the Hallmark holiday but knows how to woo me: namely, via […]

There’s a beautiful encounter in episode two of the current season of Love Island USA, where contestant Kordell, pressed repeatedly by his partner Serena to open up about his long-term goals, says that he one day aspires to do sponsorships for Cheez-Its. It is at this precise moment that I finally start to believe the […]

Halfway through the year is a good time to take stock of our reading. The spare elegies of winter have left their mark; the elegant literary novels of spring have come and gone; the big juicy beach reads of summer are just beginning. Let’s pause here and take a look at what good things the […]

One of the stranger narratives to emerge from the Republican National Convention this past week is the reception of Usha Vance. Usha is married to Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, former President Donald Trump’s pick for vice president. Should Trump and Vance win in November, Usha will be the second lady of the United States.  Viewers […]

Air travel is inherently stressful. You need to ensure you give yourself enough time to get to the airport, and, once there, you have to contend with potentially long lines at bag drop and security. Without fail, you either have too much time or no time at all at the gate before boarding. Aside from […]

Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign has two faces.  From one angle, the operation looks disorientingly competent and normal: The Republican nominee has pivoted to the center on various hot-button issues and sought to broaden his base with symbolic overtures to traditionally Democratic constituencies. From another angle, it looks like a deeply weird, somewhat fascistic reality star’s […]

Airlines, banks, and retailers across the globe were among the many businesses that ground to a halt on Friday due to a flawed software update that led to massive delays and service disruptions.  According to CrowdStrike, the Texas-based cybersecurity firm behind the glitch, the issue was caused by a faulty update in its software for […]

California state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) is generally known for his relentless bills on housing and public safety, a legislative record that made him one of the tech industry’s favorite legislators.  But his introduction of the “Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models” bill, also known as SB 1047, which requires companies […]

Turf grass lawns seem like a ubiquitous and natural part of American neighborhoods. It’s hard to imagine a block with anything besides green lawns. But there is nothing inevitable about grass being what we cover our yards with. The tradition of putting decorative, nonfunctional turf grass on lawns began in France and England where it […]

Michael Bloomberg last week gave $1 billion to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, to make medical school free for most students there.  It’s a well-meaning gesture, aiming to remedy America’s doctor shortages that have left more than 100 million Americans without access to regular primary care, particularly in rural and low-income communities. “By reducing […]

For a long time, the wealthy had the market cornered on leisure. A well-off person in the 18th and 19th centuries might go for a horse ride in the park or take a Grand Tour through Europe; in the Gilded Age, they might go away to a socialite’s weeklong house party in Newport in the […]

Throughout the entire Republican National Convention, I struggled with one big question: What is the Republican Party for? That it was for former President Donald Trump went almost without saying. Look at the way that solidarity ear bandages became the RNC’s must-have fashion accessory, or how long the audience managed to put up big cheers […]

If Vice President Kamala Harris becomes the Democratic presidential nominee, Republicans have a ready-made case against her: They can say she was President Joe Biden’s “border czar,” in charge of immigration and the border, and she failed. At least seven different speakers at the Republican National Convention over the last week have used that moniker […]

In late June, Democrats throughout the country simultaneously realized that their presidential nominee could no longer reliably speak in complete sentences.  President Joe Biden’s age was no secret, but the extent of his cognitive and rhetorical decline had been closely guarded. The president spoke in public far less often than his predecessors. He repeatedly turned […]

I’m no fan of Hillbilly Elegy, the 2020 movie starring Amy Adams and Glenn Close, but when I picked up the book it’s based on recently, in light of rumors that its author, J.D. Vance, would be Donald Trump’s pick for vice president, I expected it to feel more substantive than its screen adaptation.  At […]

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The climate crisis is causing the length of each day to get longer, analysis shows, as the mass melting of polar ice reshapes the planet. The phenomenon is a striking demonstration of how humanity’s actions are […]

It’s the final day for Amazon’s 48-hour Prime Day sale, in which the multinational e-commerce corporation offers a wide range of discounts to its endless catalog of products, from $24 Hydro Flask tumblers to $80 Beats earbuds. It’s a barrage of deals that few can refuse, made even sweeter by Amazon’s same-day, one-day, or two-day […]

Here’s something I’m embarrassed to admit: Even though I’ve been reporting on the problems with facial recognition for half a dozen years, I have allowed my face to be scanned at airports. Not once. Not twice. Many times.  There are lots of reasons for that. For one thing, traveling is stressful. I feel time pressure […]

Ever since we started Vox, we’ve had a channel on Slack, the messaging app we use to communicate within our newsroom, called #vox-explain-it-to-me. Members of our newsroom use this channel to ask questions about the topics they need clarification on, trends they’ve noticed, or subjects they are just curious or confused about. The conversations in […]

Beryl, the first major hurricane of the year, has finally dissipated, but it’s still casting a long shadow in Texas. As of Tuesday afternoon, more than a week after the storm made landfall in the state, more than 100,000 electricity customers still didn’t have power — the vast majority of them in the Houston metropolitan […]

We don’t know much yet about the shooter who killed one man and wounded two others in an apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump on Saturday.  We do know that he was 20 years old, and male.  Those two facts — and his role in Saturday’s shocking crimes — put him in a small but […]