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President Donald Trump has put millions of lives at risk by shutting down most of America’s humanitarian and development work abroad. After freezing almost all spending on foreign aid, the administration this week finished its purge at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), announcing that 83 percent of its programs are being axed. But […]

In a 2019 speech at Georgetown University, Mark Zuckerberg made a bold statement. Rather than to help college kids get dates, he claimed, Facebook was invented as a platform for “free expression.” Six short years later, Zuckerberg’s company is trying to muzzle yet another whistleblower — one who happens to have written a book full of […]

The US and Canada are meant to be the best of friends, but they’re in the midst of a pretty ugly fight.  It began with President Donald Trump’s ascent to the White House, when he began referring to his outgoing Canadian counterpart as “Governor Justin Trudeau of the Great State of Canada.”  Things escalated from […]

The Environmental Protection Agency announced this week that it’s starting the process of undoing 31 environmental regulations, including a ruling that’s foundational to US climate policy. But undoing any regulation is a cumbersome process, and with the climate rule in particular, the EPA may end up painting itself into a corner.  The big target here […]

From the start, the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has been extremely fragile. Since the agreement took effect in January, Israel has only escalated its raids in the West Bank, displacing more than 40,000 Palestinians — the highest level of displacement there since the occupation began in 1967. And after the first phase of the […]

People have known for centuries that drinking too much alcohol is bad for you. The short-term physical effects on cognition and motor function speak for themselves. The longer-term physical consequences of abusing alcohol — liver damage, jaundice, and cancer — have long been impossible to ignore. So why, in that case, has there been a widespread […]

Modern large language models are really good at a lot of tasks, like coding, essay writing, translation, and research. But there are still a lot of basic tasks, especially in the “personal assistant” realm, that the most highly trained AIs in the world remain hopeless at.  You can’t ask ChatGPT or Claude “order me a […]

Few individual animals have ever been more important to their species than 2323M — a red wolf, dubbed Airplane Ears by advocates for his prominent extremities, who spent his brief but fruitful life on North Carolina’s Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge. Red wolves, smaller, rust-tinged cousins to gray wolves, are among the world’s rarest mammals, […]

In the past week, Donald Trump announced that he would buy a Tesla and advertised the company’s vehicles at an event that turned the White House lawn into a showroom benefitting his ally, Tesla CEO Elon Musk. He also said that vandalizing Tesla cars — as some demonstrators have done to protest Musk — will […]

Candidate Donald Trump promised an economic renaissance. President Donald Trump is delivering economic turmoil.  The US stock market, once the only measure of economic performance that the president cared about, has seen a significant selloff amid fears of an impending recession — and the US is underperforming relative to its global peers. Other indicators look brighter, […]

It is a political truism that it’s bad to be the president in charge when the economy turns sour. It may be especially bad for President Donald Trump — because, through endless controversies during his decade in politics, voters’ belief in his economic savvy has been his most consistent polling bright spot, Now that bright […]

My entire job takes place on my laptop. I write stories like this in Google Docs on my laptop. I coordinate with my editor in Slack on my laptop. I reach out to sources with Gmail and then interview them over Zoom, on my laptop. This isn’t true of all journalists — some go to […]

This story originally appeared in Kids Today, Vox’s newsletter about kids, for everyone. Sign up here for future editions. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of reporting on the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the Department of Education. The news on that front has been chaotic — a draft executive order to close […]

Donald Trump has a gift for inheriting valuable things. And the economy of January 2025 was no exception.  When the president took office, stock values were hitting record highs, unemployment was hovering near historic lows, and consumer confidence was stable. Wall Street expected that business conditions would only improve. Among investors, conventional wisdom held that […]

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 move to cut the Department of Education’s staff by half. Before we dive in, a request: If you’re enjoying The […]

Conservative activists have been dreaming of dismantling the Department of Education for decades.  They’re halfway there. On Tuesday, the Department of Education announced mass firings of its workforce, which would cut the department staff down to about half of what it was when Joe Biden left office — from about 4,000 to about 2,000. President […]

Is Donald Trump tanking the economy? The stock market has taken a beating, giving up six months of gains in the past three weeks. Several economic indicators — consumer confidence, GDP estimates — have gotten gloomier.  All signs point to the main culprit being Trump and his trade war obsession. The markets have spoken loud […]

There’s a thought experiment that has taken on almost mythic status among a certain group of technologists: If you build an artificial intelligence and give it a seemingly innocuous goal, like making as many paper clips as possible, it might eventually turn everything — including humanity — into raw material for more paper clips.  Absurd […]

Civil rights advocates are accusing the Trump administration of trampling the First Amendment following the arrest of an immigrant who was involved with pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement reportedly showed up at Mahmoud Khalil’s university-owned apartment in Manhattan on Saturday and arrested him without telling him or his pregnant US […]

If I ever need a reminder that I’m not a natural extrovert, I need only to look at the journal I kept during the early days of my improv classes. “I am having incredible dread about improv tomorrow,” I wrote one day. “I would literally pay any amount to get out of this class,” I […]

Exactly five years ago today, after more than 118,000 cases and more than 4,200 deaths across 114 countries had been recorded, the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus a pandemic.  With the virus spreading rapidly around the world, the need for a vaccine was desperate — but the prior record for the fastest development […]

The beginning of Donald Trump’s second presidential term has most certainly been full of sound and fury. What has it signified? As in the first Trump administration, it’s been challenging to distinguish between the controversies of the day that will soon be forgotten, and the concrete changes that truly matter and will last.  On many […]

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 arrest of a pro-Palestinian activist, a chilling development for defenders of free speech and the First Amendment. What’s the latest? Immigration […]

The past few years have violated many of my assumptions about human progress. Twenty-year-olds are going MAGA. More and more Americans say that women should return to their “traditional” roles in society. For some reason, we have decided to gamble with bringing back once-eradicated deadly diseases.  And now, add to the list: Cow’s milk is […]

I sat down with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Saturday at SXSW in Austin, Texas. Remember Tim Walz? His running mate, former Vice President Kamala Harris, has been keeping a relatively low profile since leaving elected office earlier this year, but Walz is still out there talking — to Rachel Maddow, to Molly Jong-Fast, to […]

My job, like many of yours, demands more from my brain than it is biologically capable of. For all its complexity, the human brain is frustratingly slow, running at about 10 bits per second — less bandwidth than a 1960s dial-up modem. That’s not enough to keep up with the constant firehose of information we’re […]

The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will hear Chiles v. Salazar, a challenge to a Colorado law preventing most mental health professionals from offering “conversion therapy” — a discredited method of counseling that attempts to turn LGBTQ patients cisgender and heterosexual (or at least make patients act that way) — to people under age […]

Dating is tough. And for many single straight young men, it can feel downright hopeless.  As a man in his mid-30s, I can attest to this. When I was younger, meeting a potential partner felt so accessible. In school, it’s easy to meet women your age who have similar interests and hobbies because you’re in […]

President Donald Trump is going after a pair of major law firms — and attacking the First Amendment in the process. Trump issued an executive order on Thursday that took aim at Perkins Coie, a law firm that represented Hillary Clinton when she ran against Trump in 2016. Notably, Perkins Coie hired a research firm that […]

It’s possible that three years of fighting between Russia and Ukraine could end — at least temporarily— in a matter of weeks. It’s more likely it could continue for months or even years.  US and allied intelligence agencies have concluded Russia is probably not serious about making peace, which means the war would continue. If […]

In the 1970s, acid rain was one of the most serious environmental threats in North America and Europe. The air was so laden with pollution from coal power plants and cars at the time that it turned the rain toxic. Downpours killed fish, destroyed forests, eroded statues, and damaged buildings, sparking public outcry.  “Acid rain […]

In a show full of unlikable people, it takes a special character to be the absolute, no-contest worst of the bunch. On White Lotus’s season three, it’s without a doubt Greg (Jon Gries) a.k.a. Gary a.k.a. the not-so-grieving widower of season one and two’s Tanya McQuoid (Jennifer Coolidge).  In a bit of a twist, Greg […]

A Vox reader asks: What is wealth inequality and class warfare and why is it extra bad at this point in time? “Wealth” is someone’s net worth — that is, their assets (like savings, stock portfolios, and the value of their property) minus their debts (like student loans). “Wealth inequality” is measured by looking at […]

A global economic meltdown seems to be the only event that can cause people to cut back on meat. In the years that followed the 2007 Great Recession, the average American’s annual meat consumption fell by almost 9 percent. Milk purchases fell too.  But through it all, egg consumption remained relatively stable and kept climbing, […]

In 2012, astronaut Ron Garan did an AMA on Reddit. In between questions about aliens (he didn’t see any in space) and where his coffee came from (recycled urine), he responded to a question about why we should accept the risks of a future mission to Mars. Garan quoted a colleague: “If the dinosaurs had […]

A lot has happened in the last six weeks, to put it mildly, and it can be hard to see through the dust and tell what’s actually ongoing.  The government threatened tariffs, backed off, then did the tariffs, and then started carving out tariff exceptions for connected-enough constituencies.  We did showy military deportation flights then […]

Welcome to The Logoff. Today I’m focusing on Donald Trump’s effect on the economy, because we’re seeing some early indications of how the president’s policies are affecting the rest of us — and because the markets may influence his behavior going forward. What’s the latest? We got two early signs of how Trump’s economy is doing today. The […]

Spoiler warning: This post contains spoilers for the winner(s) of The Traitors’s third season. Bambi. Gaggy. Ciggy Mommy. Newlywed. America’s Sweetheart.  Former Bachelorette star and podcast host Gabby Windey has, at times, embodied all those ideals, and now she can add one more title to her bio: Traitors season three winner.  Windey, along with fellow […]

Disney has added an explicitly Christian character to Pixar’s new series Win or Lose. That might not be head-turning in isolation, but it comes just months after nixing a transgender character’s storyline from the same show, and amid a cultural wave of pushbacks to diversification, both for Disney and the country at large. Now fans […]

By 2017, the true crime podcasting space might have already seemed crowded — but perhaps what it was missing was full body chills.  That was the year Ashley Flowers and her pal Brit Prawat launched their true crime podcast Crime Junkie into an arena that already included pioneers like Serial (2014), Generation Why (2012), and […]

Since returning to office, the Trump administration has moved to upend America’s long-standing approach to tackling homelessness. The “housing-first” model — which has enjoyed bipartisan support for decades — prioritizes getting people into stable accommodations before addressing other issues like mental health or substance abuse.  This evidence-backed approach first gained prominence during George W. Bush’s […]

Last year, a specific archetype for an ideal boyfriend gained traction online: a Man in Finance. Trust fund. Six-foot-5. Blue eyes. What began as a playful TikTok song from creator Megan Boni became a viral sensation — endlessly memed and remixed until even David Guetta hopped on the track. Aside from its earworm status, “Man in […]

The Great Gatsby is 100 years old this year, which feels right in a way. After all those years as a perennial mainstay of the American high school English curriculum, all those Gatsby-themed flapper parties, all those valiant but ham-fisted attempts to adapt it, we know the beats of it well: the parties, the glamour, […]

President Donald Trump’s tariffs have had a chaotic week. First, they were on, then they were great, then they were maybe off, then definitely off (but just for now). After the Trump administration enacted its 25 percent tariffs on most Mexican and Canadian goods on Tuesday, stocks immediately fell. As of Thursday, the S&P 500 […]

The past few years have violated many of my assumptions about human progress. Twenty-year-olds are going MAGA. More and more Americans say that women should return to their “traditional” roles in society. For some reason, we have decided to gamble with bringing back once-eradicated deadly diseases.  And now, add to the list: Cow’s milk is […]

This story originally appeared in Kids Today, Vox’s newsletter about kids, for everyone. Sign up here for future editions. In the 19th century, it was incredibly dangerous to be a child. As of 1900, about 18 percent, or nearly one in five, American children died before their fifth birthday. The most common causes were infectious diseases — […]

Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency have been rampaging through the federal government. But before he was letting his DOGE team accidentally fire nuclear safety workers and declaring that he loved Donald Trump “as much as a straight man can love another man,” he supported Barack Obama.   That is, Musk is a complicated, […]

Since the start of 2025, over 27 million egg-laying hens — 9 percent of the entire national flock — have died from the bird flu or have been (horrifically) killed to slow the spread. It’s led to egg shortages and price spikes, with a carton of a dozen eggs today costing double what it did […]

For millennials everywhere, two of the most glamorous and terrifying fashionistas of the 2000s were the hosts of TLC’s What Not to Wear, Stacy London and Clinton Kelly. London’s Cruella streak of white hair, Kelly’s herringbone suits — the polish! The fabulousness! The way they would cackle over a hapless victim’s mom jeans and dated […]

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 a line in Donald Trump’s speech last night that I found surprisingly honest: “There will be a little disturbance, but we are okay with that.” It […]