Vox

Let’s face it: Another baby boom isn’t coming anytime soon. The latest round of US birth data, released earlier this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, show the general fertility rate has dropped to a new record low of 53.1 per 1,000 females between 15 and 44 — a 23 percent decrease […]

This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here. Anyone booking on Spirit Airlines kind of knew they were taking their flight into their own hands. America’s original ultra-low-cost airline has been on death’s door since the pandemic.  First, it tried to merge […]

“I suggested a little bit of a ceasefire, and I think he might do that,” President Donald Trump told reporters this week after a conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “There’s so many people being killed, it’s so ridiculous.” Putin has proposed “little” ceasefires before, but more than four years since its full-scale invasion, he […]

The Electoral College — our nation’s bizarre system that hands a few narrowly-divided states the privilege to choose our presidents — has been entrenched for two centuries. But a long-game effort from reformers, which has played out quietly in blue states across the country over the past 20 years, has gotten it surprisingly close to […]

Sleep can feel like a precious commodity in my household. My wife has had her fair share of insomnia. Across the hall, our one-and-a-half-year-old is…well, a one-and-a-half-year-old. The days of regular, two to three times a night wake-ups have barely faded. Plus, all it takes is one daycare sickness to take us right back. I’m […]

On Friday evening, the far-right United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit attempted to cut off access to the abortion drug mifepristone. If you’re experiencing déjà vu, you should be, because in 2023, the far-right United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit also attempted to cut off access to the abortion […]

This spring, videos of teenagers gathering in massive crowds in Washington, DC, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, Jacksonville, and other cities have gone viral. In most of the videos, you’ll see hundreds, sometimes thousands, of young people gathered in open spaces or in the parking lots of restaurants and malls. Oftentimes, it can look chaotic. These […]

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: Donald Trump is eyeing a new target in his effort to remodel DC. What’s happening? Over the weekend, the Washington Post reported that Trump is […]

Over the last few decades, wildfires, farmers, and cattle ranchers have razed millions of acres of tropical forests across the planet. Much of that deforestation has occurred in three countries: Brazil, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Indonesia. But in the last few years, another, smaller nation has risen in the ranks of nations with […]

Being a Supreme Court justice is a pretty sweet gig. The Court typically hears about 60 cases a year, plus a smattering of “shadow docket” cases that receive expedited review. Like schoolchildren, the justices take their summers off — typically wrapping up their pending cases in June and then skipping town in early July. And […]

Cole Tomas Allen, the suspect in the attempted White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting, is unusual among attempted assassins — in his normalcy.  His political grievances, laid out in a manifesto and social media posts, are not dissimilar from those of an ordinary Democrat. He believed that President Donald Trump was a lawless, corrupt leader who […]

I have been a bridesmaid six times. I’ve traveled across the country and outside of it to see my friends get married. I’ve planned bachelorette parties in New Orleans and gone to bridal showers in Arizona. I love love. It’s a beautiful thing to witness. But it adds up: the dresses, the flights, the gift.  […]

Sentience is hot these days. Partly because of the development of impressive new AI systems, everyone seems to be asking: How do we know if something is sentient?  While consciousness means simply having a subjective point of view on the world — a feeling of what it’s like to be you — sentience is the […]

In a lab room, a toddler, deaf from birth, sits while a tone plays. There’s no reaction. His face does not change.  Six weeks later, after a single injection of an experimental gene therapy, the same toddler is back in the same room. The tone plays. The toddler’s head turns toward the sound. And somewhere […]

How would you grade America’s first 250 years?  That’s the question I posed to historian and professor Heather Cox Richardson on this week’s episode of America, Actually — and a question I pose to myself. All grades are subjective, and the rubric of whether America earns a passing grade is one of position and perspective, […]

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 told Congress the Iran war is over. Is it?  What happened? Friday marks a legal deadline for Trump, after which he should […]

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has a longstanding fascination with the Crusades. That’s right, the Crusades: the series of late 11th to 13th century medieval wars in which Europeans fought to control the Holy Land. He has tattoos that reference the Crusades, which actually came up during his confirmation hearing in 2025. And his 2020 […]

Ricky and Royce Marnell, 28-year-old fraternal twins from Orlando, Florida, have seldom done anything apart. Together, they competed on the wrestling team throughout their childhood and adolescence. On weekends, they’d venture to the nearby park to play football. When boredom struck, they’d head to the garage for a friendly game of ping pong. When it […]

“We may stop by Cuba after we’re finished with this,” President Donald Trump mused earlier this month during remarks about the war in Iran, one of a number of times in recent weeks that he has implied Cuba will be “next” on the administration’s regime change agenda.  The administration amped up its “maximum pressure” campaign […]

The Devil Wears Prada is one of the great millennial fairy tales.   Released in 2006, the year before the financial crisis and Great Recession would come for us all, the movie (based on a novel inspired by writer Lauren Weisberger’s experience working for Anna Wintour at Condé Nast) posits a subversive fantasy: Our heroine Andrea […]