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Cheap goods from China on Americans’ go-to websites — from Amazon to Temu — are suddenly way more expensive. That’s because the “de minimis” exemption for Chinese imports expired Friday by order of President Donald Trump. Under that exemption, shipments of goods whose total value is less than $800 were exempt from tariffs — a threshold […]

A version of this story originally appeared in the Future Perfect newsletter. Sign up here! Last week, OpenAI released a new update to its core model, 4o, which followed up on a late March update. That earlier update had already been noted to make the model excessively flattering — but after the latest update, things really got out […]

California is rapidly reshaping its approach to homeless tent encampments in the wake of last year’s Supreme Court ruling that allowed cities to enforce anti-camping bans even when people have nowhere else to go. There are approximately 275,000 people living unsheltered in the US, with over half of them in California, and the Grants Pass […]

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. America’s federal public lands are truly unique, part of our birthright as citizens. No other country in the world has such a system.  More than 640 million acres, including national parks, forests, and wildlife refuges, as well […]

An obscure arm of the federal government killed almost 2 million wild animals last year using a variety of methods, including firearms, poisons, and traps that ensnare an animal’s neck, feet, or entire body.  Carried out by the US Department of Agriculture’s euphemistically named Wildlife Services department, the 2024 body count included over 2,000 green […]

When Donald Trump took office, he could reasonably claim to be popular — and to have an agenda that was popular, too. He had just won the popular vote and swept every battleground state. Key parts of his economic and domestic agenda were polling well. And his own personal popularity had never been higher — more […]

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: A federal judge today barred President Donald Trump from using a wartime powers law to rapidly remove people from the country, kicking off […]

This story originally appeared in Kids Today, Vox’s newsletter about kids, for everyone. Sign up here for future editions. The pronatalists have entered the White House. Last week, news broke that the Trump administration was considering a variety of policies to get Americans to have more kids, inspired by figures like Elon Musk (who has 14 known […]

A few short years ago, Harvey Weinstein was widely considered the monster against which all other alleged sexual abusers were measured. As he begins his New York state retrial for a series of rape and sexual assault charges over a period of years, that consensus has broken.  To see just how wide of a cultural […]

President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office have been a gift to a sector of the economy that gets little attention but has enormous social and economic consequences: the US meat industry. While Congress and both Republican and Democratic administrations tend to do what meat companies want — in part because those companies tend […]

India and Pakistan seem headed for a military conflict in the wake of India’s worst terrorist attack in years. The question is what form that clash will take and just how far the confrontation between the two nuclear-armed neighbors could escalate.  The latest crisis in the long-running tensions between the two nations began on April […]

To kick off his second term, President Donald Trump sought revenge on President Joe Biden, elite law firms, elite universities, and even some of his former staffers — including John Bolton.  Bolton has worked in every Republican presidential administration since the ’80s, including Trump’s first, as national security adviser. Together, they tore up the Joint […]

President Donald Trump warned of short-term pain resulting from his tariffs.  That pain has arrived in the form of higher prices — and it might not be temporary.  A wide range of products — from car tires to clothing, many of which are produced in China — have seen price hikes in recent weeks as […]

During an oral argument on Wednesday, the Supreme Court appeared all but certain to divide along party lines in a case that seeks to fundamentally expand the role religion plays in American public schools.  This isn’t surprising: Almost immediately after Republicans gained a supermajority on the Supreme Court, they started rewriting the Court’s religion decisions […]

After Jennifer French, a young professional in consumer tech, fell down a ski slope and broke her spine in 1998, she couldn’t tell you what exactly happened next. The next few months passed in a blur; she hadn’t yet fully accepted her prognosis — paralysis for life — when she came across a clinical trial […]

For decades, Christian relationship advice has trended toward regressive ideas about gender: namely, that women should be submissive to their husbands, who in turn are the head of the household. Those ideas arguably penetrated the mainstream with the rise of the tradwife and the idyllic image of the monogamous home life she represents.  Yet the […]

Just two years ago, the US was suffering through the worst stretch of its long-running drug overdose crisis. More than 110,000 Americans had died in the previous 12 months from an overdose — almost twice the number of people who died in all of the Vietnam War. But late last year, the country got some unexpected […]

The chaotic first months of President Donald’s Trump second term have made it difficult to distinguish between controversies that evaporate immediately — and meaningful shifts in American governance.  But amid the noise and a barrage of executive orders, clear patterns have emerged. Trump’s most consequential actions so far can be divided into four domains: Here’s […]

Elon Musk will step back from his Trump administration work with a trail of wreckage — and failure — behind him. Musk said last Wednesday that he’d scale back his White House work to one or two days each week soon, likely in May. But he’d already had his power reined in, becoming far less […]

Ashley Pro lived with her sister Dennice for 28 years. They moved in together after leaving their childhood home, and if Pro hadn’t been transferred to a different city for work, the sisters would likely still be roommates. Pro, a 29-year-old director for an after-school program in Rancho Cucamonga, California, initially worried that any distance […]

Should every woman be able to do 11 push-ups? According to orthopedic surgeon and health influencer Vonda Wright, they should — and, no, modified “girl push-ups”  don’t count.  Last month, Wright appeared on The Mel Robbins Podcast, the popular self-help show that tends to generate this sort of arbitrary health advice, to share her recommended […]

The Trump administration has been soliciting ideas on ways to encourage Americans to get married and have more children, according to a new report in the New York Times. Some of the proposals have ranged from ridiculous (reserving Fulbright scholarships for married applicants or those with children) to unnerving, like awarding a “National Medal of […]

LONDON, Canada — Canada’s Liberals just pulled off one of the greatest upsets in modern democratic history: going from a predicted wipeout in December to victory on Monday night. To understand why, you need to look at the signs on the sidewalk.  I don’t mean the ones advertising Prime Minister Mark Carney’s triumphant party, though there […]

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: CBS News is accusing its parent company of censoring its coverage in order to appease the Trump administration, a warning sign for freedom of the press and […]

President Donald Trump’s tariffs have drawn a lot of opposition — from economists, businesses, Wall Street, and the majority of Americans. Yet Trump has received support from a seemingly unlikely source: Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, who staunchly backed former Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign and previously called Trump […]

Money is always stressful, but between on-again, off-again, on-again tariffs, inflation, and a general sense of uncertainty, all things finance have been especially anxiety-inducing lately. Much of the advice given is geared toward people who have time to make up losses in the stock market. But what if you’re retired or close to retirement age? […]

Canada’s Election Day is here.  It’s been a short, hectic campaign season, marked by startling reversals — most notably a massive decline in support for the current opposition Conservative Party — and ignited by the resignation of longtime Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.  The race has also been reshaped by the politics of the United […]

President George W. Bush brought Western wear with him to the White House — suits with cowboy boots, big decorative belt buckles, cowboy hats. President Barack Obama ushered in an era of slimmer suiting, while first lady Michelle Obama helped spark a renaissance of American design.  Presidential administrations always come with an aesthetic attached. What […]

A version of this story originally appeared in the Good News newsletter. Sign up here! Any time I try to convince skeptical people that the world isn’t as bad as they think it is — which I do quite a lot, given that I write a newsletter called Good News — they usually come back with […]

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: FBI agents arrested a Milwaukee County judge this morning on felony charges of interfering with immigration agents, as the Trump administration cracks down on local officials who […]

President Donald Trump has been sending undocumented immigrants to a mega prison in El Salvador without due process. Most of these deportees have no criminal record, yet our government has condemned them to indefinite incarceration in an infamously inhumane penitentiary.  In the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Trump administration admits that its deportation order […]

In recent days, Donald Trump has signaled eagerness to reach a trade agreement with China. The president said Tuesday that his 145 percent tariffs on Chinese imports will “come down substantially” in the near future.  On Thursday, Trump said that his administration is already negotiating with China over trade, saying, “They had a meeting this […]

About nine years ago, a new organization called Canary Mission released a YouTube video describing their mission: maintaining a blacklist of anti-Israel college students. American campuses, the video warns, had become hotbeds of anti-Israel extremism: safe spaces for students to attend “Jew-hating conferences and anti-American rallies.” To fight this, Canary Mission would build an extensive […]

Clubs are, first and foremost, for dancing. One could theoretically do other things there — drink, meet strangers, conduct important and possibly illicit business deals, anything really — but likely everything but dancing could probably be done more efficiently somewhere else. At the same time, while no one’s stopping anyone from dancing in other places […]

Creatine — yes, the favorite of gym rats everywhere, a supplement many of us have taken ourselves — is a naturally occurring compound that is already found inside each person. Scientists have been studying creatine since the 1830s and, for more than a century, we have known that it was pivotal for producing energy in our […]

A Vox reader asks: Why do so many people believe in astrology? Astrology has been around as long as people have had problems. Frustrated with their terrestrial existence, humans have looked to the stars for answers. A constellation shaped like a goat, an archer, or a virgin could have just as much insight into life as […]

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. At long last, spring has arrived here in New England, with verdant leaves erupting through soil and piles of brown leaves. That means the return of neighbors who pass by my garden […]

For most of the last 30 years, the story of religion in America has been a pretty steady one: a constant, and consistent, drop in religious affiliation every year.  Starting in the 1990s, the share of Americans who identified as Christian, or identified with any religion at all, began to drop precipitously. At the same […]

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. President Donald Trump signed an executive order that takes aim at a longtime core principle of civil rights law known as disparate impact. And though he can’t […]

Almost immediately after he began his second term, President Donald Trump ordered the military to ban transgender people from serving in the US military. Under the Defense Department’s policy implementing this order, the military was supposed to start firing trans service members on March 26, although those firings were halted by a court order. That […]

A version of this story originally appeared in the Future Perfect newsletter. Sign up here! Right now, OpenAI is something unique in the landscape of not just AI companies but huge companies in general. OpenAI’s board of directors is bound not to the mission of providing value for shareholders, like most companies, but to the mission of ensuring […]

In his free time, while working as a clerk at a local Australian railway, James Harrison saved millions of lives — with his blood. Harrison had particularly special plasma: It had a rare antibody that doctors used to make a medication for pregnant mothers with different blood types from their newborns. When this happens, it […]

Consider the transistor, the basic unit of computer processors. Transistors can be tiny, down to single-digit nanometers in size. Billions can fit on a computer chip.  Though they have no moving parts, they devour electricity as they store and modify bits of information. “Ones and zeros are encoded as these high and low voltages,” said […]

If anything is safe from the economic chaos caused by President Donald Trump’s tariffs, it’s probably gold — or at least that’s what investors seem to think. The price of gold has increased rapidly in the months since Trump took office, surging particularly since his March 2 announcement of a baseline 10 percent tariff on […]

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. Less than a week after becoming vice president, JD Vance, only the second Catholic to hold the office, had a very public break with the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church […]

Twenty years ago, few people would have been able to imagine the energy landscape of today. In 2005, US oil production, after a long decline, had fallen to its lowest levels in decades, and few experts thought that would change.  The US invasion of Iraq had sent gasoline prices skyward. Solar and wind power provided […]

There’s a bodega on the corner where I live in Brooklyn, New York, with a massive TikTok following and a thick cable almost always stretched out the front door and plugged into a Tesla. In a tiny parking lot around the corner, the local grocery store has a fast charger that looks like a mini […]

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 controversy surrounding Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, as reports of mismanagement and dysfunction in his office suggest he’s unfit for one of the […]

Three years ago, Montgomery County, Maryland, approved several books with LGBTQ characters for use in public school classrooms. Not much else is known about these books, how they have been used, when they were used in lessons, or how teachers plan to use them in the future. These questions have come before lower courts, but […]

Over the last few months, the Trump administration has intensified its attacks on elite, Ivy League institutions like Columbia and Harvard, enacting sweeping funding cuts and even threatening to revoke their tax-exempt status. But what’s happening on the campuses of state schools is much less covered. Take for example the public university system in Florida. […]