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Elon Musk has opinions on how a lot of the world’s countries should be run.  He has weighed in on elections in Germany on behalf of a far-right party, sparred with the government of his native South Africa, and called for the removal of the president of Ukraine, not to mention the two-month siege he […]

If you have any say, you might want to avoid scheduling your next surgery on a Friday. The most comprehensive analysis of what happens to patients who have surgery on Fridays versus Mondays, published this month in JAMA by more than a dozen US and Canadian researchers, is unequivocal: The people who underwent all kinds […]

In the first few months of the Covid-19 pandemic, the media did not exactly cover itself in glory. To quote myself from an early February 2020 piece, when the virus had already been spreading for more than a month in China and the US already had confirmed cases:  In the last week or so, new […]

Disney’s new live-action Snow White, dogged by controversy after controversy, must have been cursed at birth by a wicked fairy (oops, wait, wrong fairy tale). It has to be disconcerting for the studio. The original animated film was such a massive success when it was first released in 1937 that it more or less invented […]

The conservative philosopher GK Chesterton is known for a parable about two lawmakers who encounter a fence. One, brash and overeager, announces that he can’t see the point of the fence so it should be removed. The other, who Chesterton labels the “more intelligent type of reformer,” scolds his companion, warning him that they should […]

It’s now well established that for decades, major oil companies knew that burning fossil fuels would cause global warming, and yet did everything in their power to obstruct climate policy. They intensively lobbied policymakers, ran advertising campaigns, and funded think tanks to cast doubt on climate science. According to two new papers recently published in […]

Last summer, I quit Spotify, and wrote about it with the rather unsubtle headline “Why I quit Spotify.” My reasons remain sound: The software had become clunky, the ads relentless, and the Sabrina Carpenter songs too inescapable. I wanted to find a better music streaming service. It gives me no pleasure to report that a […]

When a Democrat contemplates their nation’s biggest problems today, minimum lot sizes in suburban housing codes probably don’t rank very high on the list.  After all, the US president is a reality star turned insurrectionist, who’s ordering investigations of his political enemies, subverting court orders, gutting entire federal agencies, and fomenting a global trade war. […]

For half a century, conspiracy theories about the assassination of John F. Kennedy have flourished. President Donald Trump himself has dabbled in these theories, once claiming that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the former president’s murder.  Now, Trump has officially declassified the remaining JFK files. And so far, the documents appear to […]

I have, like I suspect many readers, been in quite a bad mood for the last two months. My go-to joke explaining why — which I feel like should land with readers of this newsletter — has become: “I didn’t realize quite how much my overall optimism about the state of the world depended on […]

Humanity’s battle against tuberculosis has been one of slow and imperfect progress. The disease no longer kills one in seven people in the US, as it did in the 19th century. But look elsewhere and its burden is still terrible: TB killed more than 1.2 million people in 2023, likely making it once again the […]

The Trump administration has shuttered a number of federal agencies, and ordered another tranche closed last Friday. Among them was Voice of America — a news outlet founded to help the Allies fight the Nazis that still publishes and broadcasts today. Or did, until Saturday, when its employees found themselves unable to go to work.  […]

Over and over again, the Trump administration has claimed to be fighting antisemitism while wielding power against its domestic enemies. Yet, at the same time, there’s been a troubling surge in antisemitism among MAGA influencers and even some Trump administration staff. Concern for the safety of the Jewish community has been the stated motivation for […]

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 we’re focusing on a new development in Ukraine that gives us more insight into Donald Trump’s approach to Russian President Vladimir Putin. What’s the latest? Putin […]

It’s been 12 years since Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie published her last novel, Americanah, to overwhelming acclaim. In the time since, she’s delivered a viral TED talk on feminism, been sampled by Beyoncé, been denounced by students for anti-trans speech, and denounced those students in turn for cancel culture. Now, at last, Adichie has finally released […]

Louisiana v. Callais, a case about whether Louisiana’s congressional maps are an illegal racial gerrymander, should be one of the easiest cases the justices have heard in many years. That’s because less than two years ago, the Supreme Court decided another gerrymandering case, known as Allen v. Milligan (2023), which by Louisiana’s lawyers’ own admission […]

The question of what happens if the Trump administration openly defies a federal court order has hung over the United States since President Donald Trump’s second term began. If that happens, it will trigger a constitutional crisis. Now, that long-awaited crisis may be upon us. On Saturday, Trump issued a proclamation claiming the authority to […]

Over the weekend, the stakes of the Trump administration’s deportation efforts reached a new level after the White House invoked an 18th-century legal authority to expand its powers. A federal judge attempted to block the removal of hundreds of alleged gang members, but the administration carried on with the deportations, arguing the order came too […]

What makes something an “American” crime? It’s a question that’s inadvertently surfaced in true crime entertainment lately.  The trend started with the twin pillars of O.J. Simpson television projects in 2016 — American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson, Ryan Murphy’s fictionalized account of the 1995 trial, and the documentary series O.J.: Made in America. […]

For a chance at a youthful complexion, you could slap rendered cow fat on your face, rub snail slime into your wrinkles, or get a salmon sperm facial right after a microneedling treatment.  You read that right: These are things actual people are doing. Influencers, celebrities, and everyday consumers alike are touting the youthful glow […]

Throughout his first term as president, Donald Trump repeatedly threatened to leave NATO, an alliance that in his view allows other countries who don’t spend enough on their own defense to get a free ride on US security guarantees. His former national security adviser John Bolton has written that he believes Trump would have followed […]

On Monday, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) posted on X that it would terminate over 400 grants, adding up to some $250 million in funding, to Columbia University over its response to pro-Palestinian protests. The following day, the Trump administration pulled $800 million in USAID-related grants from Johns Hopkins University, academia’s biggest research and […]

A Vox reader asks: If we have “separation of church and state,” why do we give religious schools tax exemption? How come religious schools get government funding? Why was Trump allowed to campaign on religion and publicly sell Bibles? Why does it say “In God We Trust” on our money? Why is “under God” in […]

The buzzwords “diversity, equity, and inclusion” are everywhere right now, but you can’t be blamed if you don’t quite have a handle on what they mean. The origins of DEI date back to the civil rights era — but recently “DEI” has been thrown around with regard to everything from plane crashes to Super Bowl […]