~vox | Bookmarks (527)

Less than six months ago, after an inappropriate amount of research, I bought a new toaster for $30. My old toaster had died, as old toasters do, and I wanted to buy one cheap enough that I wouldn’t be mad when I had to replace it. If President Donald Trump’s current 145 percent tariff on […]

From 2017 to 2020, meat-free sausages and veggie burgers had a moment. Sales of plant-based meat doubled thanks to new startups — like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods — which collectively took billions of dollars in venture capital investment and invented much more meaty vegetarian products than their predecessors. The emerging sector was hailed as […]

In late 2021, I stood in a forest about two hours from Mexico City and watched as a river of butterflies passed overhead. They were monarchs — the iconic, Halloween-colored butterflies — and they were coming here from the US to rest for the cold winter months.  Nearly all of the monarchs east of the Rocky […]

Nearly two weeks since his “Liberation Day” tariff announcements, President Donald Trump has roundly lost the majority of the American public’s support. According to polling, his chaotic trade policy has hammered trust in his economic stewardship, his economic approval ratings are tanking, and his overall popularity continues to slide. The public’s perception that Trump has […]

In March 2024, Kelli and Austin Emry welcomed their son Logan, a little brother for their toddler Mila and the final piece of the family they had always wanted. Born with a full head of black hair, Logan was a healthy, happy baby who thrived in his first weeks of life. When Kelli returned to […]

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 two federal judges threatening to hold the Trump administration in contempt, escalating a conflict between the president and the courts […]

“Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country,” President Donald Trump promised on “Liberation Day,” as he announced tariffs that have shocked global markets and set the country on course for a recession. “We will supercharge our domestic industrial base. We will pry open foreign markets and break down foreign trade barriers, and […]

Every artist I know is furious. The illustrators, the novelists, the poets — all furious. These are people who have painstakingly poured their deepest yearnings onto the page, only to see AI companies pirate their work without consent or compensation. The latest surge of anger is a response to OpenAI integrating new image-generation capabilities into ChatGPT […]

The United States and China are locked in an economic war. They’ve levied tit-for-tat tariffs on each other, and there’s little sign of detente.  President Donald Trump said in a statement Tuesday that “The ball is in China’s court. China needs to make a deal with us. We don’t have to make a deal with […]

Recessions are always officially declared after they have already started.  In the US, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is the official arbiter of what constitutes a recession, taking into consideration different economic indicators, including growth. The organization defines a recession as a “significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy,” […]

The Supreme Court’s Republican majority certainly seems eager to make taxpayers fund religious education.  Over the past few decades, the Court has slowly expanded the ability of religious schools to access public money. Most recently, in Carson v. Makin (2022), the Court held that states that provide tuition vouchers that pay for private education must […]

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 battle with Harvard University, in which a powerful university targeted by the president is pushing back. […]

President Donald Trump’s press conference with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele was, at heart, an authoritarian political performance. This was clearest in their discussion of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man that the Trump administration seized and then erroneously sent (by its own admission) to El Salvador’s infamous CECOT prison. The two men were sneeringly dismissive of […]

Trump v. Wilcox, a case now pending on the Supreme Court’s “shadow docket,” asks whether several federal agencies that are supposed to enjoy a degree of independence from the president should be stripped of that independence.  Wilcox is the latest in Supreme Court cases involving what’s known as the “unitary executive” theory, which, in its […]

If you’re bothered by allergies every spring, you may pop a Benadryl or Claritin most mornings to make the days tolerable. Two-thirds of Americans report spring allergies, and about 4 in 10 say they take an allergy medication several times a week. But those medicines, while valuable, don’t exactly fix the problem. One 2001 study […]

For many people, working out is a distinctly private pleasure. The way we run, the faces we make, the amount we sweat and the places we sweat from, the creaks and groans our bodies emit during a squat — these are our own little secrets. The last thing we want is to be filmed climbing […]

Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff policy, in which he declared trade war on the entire world simultaneously, was a bizarre and nonsensical undertaking, seemingly shaped only by the president’s own whims. But since that initial announcement, the policy has been modified to bear at least a little bit more of a resemblance to what Trump’s […]

When President Donald Trump unveiled tariffs on more than 180 countries and territories early this month, there was one place that was conspicuously left off the list: Russia.  Initially, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Axios that Russia had been excluded because US sanctions already “preclude any meaningful trade.” But this doesn’t make a […]

Remember Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law?  The unconstitutionally vague law imposed such unclear restrictions on teachers who speak about sexual orientation or gender identity that many feared they could be fired merely for mentioning their spouses. Eventually, Florida agreed to a settlement which affirmed its right to do things like excluding Harvey Milk from the […]

Welcome to The Logoff: Today I’m focusing on a showdown between the administration and the courts over a wrongful deportation, a critical test of the judicial branch’s ability to check Donald Trump’s power. What’s the latest? Justice Department lawyers told a federal judge on Sunday that they were not required to bring back a man who was […]

On Friday, four Republican members of the North Carolina Supreme Court issued an order attempting to disenfranchise more than 5,000 of the state’s voters. This order is part of an ongoing effort by Judge Jefferson Griffin, a Republican and the losing candidate in a recent state supreme court race, to overturn Democratic state Supreme Court […]

Mikaela Shafer values spending time with her friends, and if that means booking a flea market day three months in advance, she considers it a small price to pay. For a while, Shafer, 38, and her friends found themselves in the throes of schedule coordination hell. One person would attempt to make plans on a […]

Is college for everybody? According to Chelsea Waite, a senior researcher at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, the answer is no. And more students, parents, and educators are realizing it.  Waite spent two years speaking to administrators, teachers, parents, and students at six high schools in New England to learn more about post-grad desires. […]

President Donald Trump’s tariff plan has rattled Wall Street, alarmed the United States’ trading partners, and made Americans afraid of checking their retirement accounts.  It’s also been extremely confusing: After announcing that he would implement steep tariffs across the board (for reasons that didn’t make much sense), Trump walked back some of the tariffs before […]