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Hearing aids, like canes or orthopedic shoes, are something you don’t think about a lot when you’re young. But maybe you should. You probably either know someone who needs hearing aids, or you’ll need them some day yourself. About 30 million people in the United States, aged 12 and older, have hearing loss in both […]

If the year 2025 has had a message for developing countries, it’s this: “You’re on your own.” Most notably, the Trump administration began with an unprecedented and ongoing assault on foreign aid, including global health programs. But there have been further ill omens.  Other rich countries, including the UK and France, followed the US example […]

The Trump administration is not known for particularly prioritizing animal welfare. But in its first few months, alongside announcements that it would seek to gut federal funding for scientific research, Trump officials have taken steps toward a goal that animal advocates have been championing for decades: the end of animal experimentation.  On April 10, the […]

It’s been a rough week in the world of the online intellectual right, which is currently in the midst of two separate yet related blowups — both of which illustrate how the pressures of power are cracking the elite coalition that aligned behind President Donald Trump’s return to power. The first fight is really a […]

A federal court held the very first hearing on President Donald Trump’s wide-ranging, so-called Liberation Day tariffs on Tuesday, offering the earliest window into whether those tariffs — and potentially all of the shifting tariffs Trump has imposed since he retook office — will be struck down. The case is V.O.S. Selections v. Trump. It […]

The Qatari royal family has proposed gifting President Donald Trump a luxury Boeing 747-8 plane to use as a temporary Air Force One during his remaining time in the White House. The aircraft would then be donated to his presidential foundation after he leaves office, opening up the possibility of Trump using it for personal […]

Over the course of April, President Donald Trump imposed large tariffs on goods from every country in the world, pushing America’s average levy on imports to its highest level in roughly a century. And inflation slowed. In April, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose at a 2.3 percent annual rate, its slowest pace since early […]

When we see our favorite artist perform at a stadium concert, we’re expecting a divine experience. After all, attending a massive show is the closest thing the average person might experience to a holy pilgrimage: strangers from all different walks of life coming together to share their adoration for one musical deity. We should end […]

Over the last decade, plant-based meat has gotten a lot more meaty. Dozens of startups have launched in recent years to develop more realistic-tasting burgers, nuggets, and sausages as an alternative to factory farmed meat, which causes billions of animals to suffer terribly, pollutes our air and water, and accelerates climate change.  For a time, […]

We’re told from a young age to achieve. Get good grades. Get into a good school. Get a good job. Be ambitious about earning a high salary or a high-status position. But many of us eventually find ourselves asking: What’s the point of all this ambition? The fat salary or the fancy title…are those really […]

PHILADELPHIA — In September 2024, Sharita White made a desperate choice. After supporting Democrats in previous presidential election cycles, the 37-year-old Black Philadelphian decided she would cast her ballot for Donald Trump. Her life during the Biden years had taken a frustrating turn: Her husband had died, she’d lost her job, and she was forced […]

There are two things you should know about President Donald Trump’s recently released budget proposal: First, it would significantly boost funding for Homeland Security and the Department of Defense while cutting social services that could hurt millions of people living in poverty. Second, his budget is just a proposal for Congress, and it almost certainly […]

Every week on Explain It to Me, Vox’s call-in podcast, we answer the questions that matter to you most. When we got a question from a listener named Hannah, it piqued our interest. She wanted to know: How do you find a long-lost relative?  “I was raised by my mom,” she says. “I knew my […]

You often hear about “ideology” these days. Even if that word isn’t mentioned, it’s very much what’s being discussed. When President Donald Trump denounces the left, he’s talking about gender ideology or critical race theory or DEI. When the left denounces Trump, they talk about fascism. Wherever you look, ideology is being used to explain […]

Did you check the weather forecast today?  Whether it was on your phone, the five-day outlook in your newspaper, or your friendly TV meteorologist, that forecast was built on a massive government-run network of sensors and computers that get the weather right more often than not while rarely getting the attention they deserve. And now […]

Staying on top of AI developments is a full-time job.  I would know, because it’s my full-time job. I subscribe to Anthropic’s Pro mode for access to their latest model, Claude 3.7, in “extended thinking” mode; I have a complementary subscription to OpenAI’s Enterprise mode so that I can test out their latest models, o3 […]

Few organizations have profited as handsomely off of President Donald Trump’s rise to power as the Federalist Society, a kind of bar association for right-wing lawyers.  “We’re going to have great judges, conservative, all picked by the Federalist Society,” Trump announced during his first campaign for president — and boy did he deliver. Trump spent […]

If you’re anything like me, following the news makes it feel like the world is on the verge of collapse. There are wars on multiple continents, millions are dying because of famine, extremism is on the rise, natural disasters caused by climate change have become the new norm, and the economy seems headed for a […]

After more than a century of steady, upward climb, US life expectancy hit 78.9 years in 2015. Since then, it’s been mostly downhill. US life expectancy slid to 76.1 years in 2021 at the pandemic’s nadir before inching back up to 78.4 years in 2023 — still well below the 2014 peak and lagging most […]

At the dawn of the Covid pandemic, I wrote a newsletter about the approaching virus that highlighted what I saw as the biggest risk: that the question of whether to take Covid seriously would become a partisan political issue. To tackle something this big, I wrote, we’d have to all be on the same page. […]

Pope Leo XIV, formerly known as Robert Prevost, is the first American pontiff.  He was elected on Thursday, less than three weeks after the death of Pope Francis, and his elevation immediately made history. Leo grew up in Chicago, majored in math at Villanova University, and spent decades serving the Catholic Church in Peru.  Significantly, Pope […]

Perhaps you’ve heard about wearing multiple hats at work, but four? It might be too many for most people, but not Marco Rubio. As the New York Times put it this month, he’s become the “secretary of everything” for the Trump administration: secretary of state, interim national security adviser, acting USAID administrator (albeit for a […]

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. Patrick Reis is off today: Rümeysa Öztürk was detained by the Trump administration, seemingly just for writing an op-ed. Now, in a scorching new ruling, […]

The next salvo in the crusade to ban abortion is now clear. Anti-abortion activists have launched what they’re privately calling “Rolling Thunder” — a coordinated campaign to pressure the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to restore restrictions on mifepristone, a popular drug used in the US to end pregnancies. Under Rolling Thunder, the existence of […]