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Two US cities could soon ban one of the world’s most controversial foods
In November, voters in Washington, DC, and Denver will cast their ballots to decide whether their cities’ restaurants and grocery stores can continue to sell one of the world’s more controversial foods: foie gras.
How housing victories in San Diego, Austin, and Atlanta could spread nationwide
As rents and homelessness climbed in San Diego over the last decade, leaders watched in frustration as affordable housing projects took months to get approved. The longer a project dragged on, the more expensive it became.
To save democracy, you might want to go to church
To the average observer concerned with the future of American democracy, it might be easy to conclude that religion has been part of the problem — particularly over the last few years. Right-wing religious leaders, including the leading Southern Baptist televangelist Robert Jeffress, have endorsed “Christian nationalism”; other evangelical pastors and conservative Catholic intellectuals have been openly pondering if America should become more of a theocracy; Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who once called for an “
Why the right turned on Indian Americans
In early October, Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican candidate for governor of Ohio, went for a classic “politician on the stump” move: He picked up a kid. Or at least he tried to. Ramaswamy fumbled the boy a bit, producing a clip that quickly went viral on social media.
The man who will likely be the next House speaker, explained
Barring a catastrophic midterm polling miss, Democrats are on track to win a majority in the House of Representatives next month. Come the new Congress in January, that will mean a new House speaker — and if all goes to plan, that will be current House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
The liver transplant system tried to fix its sex bias. Did it work?
In theory, getting a donor liver in the United States when you need one should be an extremely equitable process: The sickest patients with the greatest chance to benefit from a donated organ should jump to the front of the line regardless of their gender, race, or other factors.
Your kid wants to go vegan. Should you let them?
Hi readers! Shayla Love here, science journalist and longtime fan of Your Mileage May Vary. I’m honored to be subbing for Sigal Samuel while she’s out on parental leave. I’m diving into your questions as a way to help understand human nature and our choices through multiple lenses: philosophical, psychological, and beyond. Please send in any emotional, body/brain, sociological, perceptual, or other kind of life quandaries you might have.
The company behind Skittles might be to blame for your big vet bills
Whenever I have dinner with friends, the conversation always ends up on one of three topics: how hard dating is, the hunt for affordable housing, or an update on everyone’s pets. The last on that list includes cute photos and veterinarian updates. I love hearing about my friends’ cats and dogs. But I also have to admit that I just don’t get it. I don’t have a pet. I never have. (We won’t discuss the ill
The “grim” state of free speech in the US
On his first day back in office in January 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order “restoring freedom of speech and ending federal censorship.” More than a year and a half later, his administration is instead busy using government power to go after speech it dislikes.
Why Francesca Hong is still on the campaign trail
The Wisconsin gubernatorial race was one of the most closely watched Democratic primaries in the country this year, pitting a democratic socialist, state Rep. Francesca Hong, against Milwaukee Democrat David Crowley, who received the endorsement of the state’s sitting Democratic governor, Tony Evers.
The Trump administration plans a public killing
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: The Trump administration is planning a public killing. What’s happening? On Thursday, the Pentagon announced that it would execute Nidal Hasan, a former Army major sentenced to death for a 2009 mass shooting on a military base, publicly and on livestream. The execution, if it happens, would be unprecedented: The last widely reported publ
America’s good hurricane luck is about to run out
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
Who are the violent Israeli settlers in the West Bank?
In the weeks and months following Hamas’s brutal October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, and Israel’s devastating campaign in Gaza that followed, the world’s attention turned away from the West Bank.
Antarctica’s penguins are sending us a distress signal
This story was originally published by The Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
No one wants to be “Data Center Dave”
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
Is this the cure for Alzheimer’s?
The videos are astonishing. In one scene, a senior Chinese woman appears lost in the wilderness of dementia, unable to answer basic questions; in the next, she seems to be lucidly chatting and shucking beans for dinner. By all appearances, years of cognitive decline had been rapidly reversed after the patient underwent an experimental new surgery.
What if making your neighborhood safer means breaking the rules?
Jonathan Hale was ready to lay down his paint rollers. Hale, a law student turned viral road safety advocate, had run into legal trouble for painting his own DIY crosswalks across some of Los Angeles’s most dangerous intersections. In a meeting with LA Mayor Karen Bass earlier this year, he told her that if the city could commit to making its own streets safer for pedestrians, then he would stop his own vigilante activism.
The rise of gas station opioids
They have fun names like Feel Free, Smurphs, and Hazy Tabz. They come in colorful packages and in gummy form. They’re widely available at gas stations, corner stores, and smoke shops across the country.
Black Democrats are facing a crossroads
Welcome to The Midterms, Actually. Every week I’ll be writing about two things: one big idea or trend I see forming across the 2026 primaries, and one thing I’m hearing from a voice on the ground. You can sign up here to get it in your inbox every week. Let’s get into it.
How October 7 changed everything
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here. Jewish communities in Israel and around the world are currently marking the third anniversary of the October 7 attacks that killed 1,200 people and triggered the war in Gaza. Memorials for the victims of the attacks have been held at homes,
Why humans are so good at feeling bad
What can an economist teach us about misery? I had that question in mind while reading the new book The Opposite of Happiness: How Bad Feelings Make and Break Us, by eminent researcher George Loewenstein. The field is not exactly known for its facility with human emotions, but Loewenstein is a co-founder of behavioral economics, the subdiscipline that studies the many ways that people depart from the ideal of the perfectly rational actor.
Could the future of AI be determined by Florida Republicans?
If President Donald Trump had his way, the Republican Party would be top-to-bottom the party of AI — or, in his preferred branding, “super intelligence.”
The cruelty of a beloved American pastime
This story is part of a series supported by Animal Charity Evaluators, which received a grant from EarthShare.
Will Trump’s diesel order do anything?
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 trying to fix the diesel crisis he caused. What’s happening? On Monday evening, Trump signed an executive order intended to lower diesel prices by temporarily expanding access to red-dye diesel. Wha
Democrats are poised to take the House. Then what?
With 28 days until the midterms, polling suggests that Democrats have an excellent chance of taking back the House in November. Flipping the Senate, once considered a long shot, is starting to look realistic. Come November, the party may have majorities in both chambers that will give it far more
Movies may soon get more boring
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here. The Trumpy tech billionaire Larry Ellison has wrapped his tentacles around the US branch of TikTok, an entire Hawaiian island — and now, officially, a very large share of the world’s news and entertainment production. On Tuesday, the media behemoth Paramount — which is headed by Ellison’s
Redwoods are natural magic kingdoms. Extreme heat is breaking their spell
A grove of coast redwood trees is a forest of forests. Individual trees can live for thousands of years, and as they grow, their canopies develop mats of soils and ferns, creating something like a second forest floor hundreds of feet above the ground.
Trump’s plan to buy votes, briefly explained
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 trying to bribe his way out of a midterm disaster. What’s happening? Over the weekend, Trump announced a plan to send $90 payments to more than 20 million Americans 65 years and older, drawing from a pool of money called the Medicare Improvement
What you should know about the Russian “plague lab”
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here. The death of a 28-year-old lab tech halfway around the world is not typically the sort of thing the White House monitors. But when that tech dies of severe pneumonia…while working at a Siberian plague research lab…foreign governments (and pretty much everyone in my timeline) tend to pay more attention. The World Health Organization says that there’s
The Supreme Court is looking for a way to kill climate lawsuits
Inside Chief Justice John Roberts are two wolves. The first wolf is a staunch conservative who spent much of his career litigating on behalf of corporate interests. This wolf looks at a series of climate change lawsuits that could potentially cost the oil industry billions of dollars or more, and recoils in horror. The second wolf is a judge tasked with following the law wherever it leads.
What color is a tennis ball?
A while back, I was at physical therapy, and the topic of tennis came up. Someone said something about yellow tennis balls, and I was like… “What? They’re green.” And then someone else chimed in, “No, they’re yellow!” And then someone across the room hollered, “No, they’re obviously green.”
The messy bargain that could bring down your power bill
There’s no place like Kansas, a state whose howling winds are so fierce that in the 1800s, the roaring soundscape drove local farmers into madness. It is so windy in Kansas that every so often, trains get swept off their tracks or trampolines get hurled into the air and flung into neighbors’ trees.
When does trying to have a healthier baby become eugenics-y?
Editor’s note, October 4, 8 am ET: We’re bringing you some of our best-loved Your Mileage May Vary columns while Sigal Samuel is on parental leave. The one below was originally published last year.
Can thrift shops save us from Shein?
Think about what you’re wearing right now. Did you pick it out? Or was it chosen for you by an algorithm you haven’t even considered?
How did the Cornell rape case go so wrong?
In October 2024, students at Cornell University received a campus crime alert about a reported sexual assault. At the time, it was just a campus story. Nearly two years later, on September 16, the victim, known only as “Jane Doe,” filed a civil lawsuit that brought national attention to her story. People across the country are asking what happened and why criminal charges never followed.
Anthropic vs. the pope
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
The Cornell case, explained
“In what world,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul asked on Friday, “would the police learn from a victim that she’d been literally gang raped while she was intoxicated by five men in a fraternity house and not elevate those allegations to the district attorney?”
More kids are using AI for companionship — and it’s making them lonely
There’s a lot to be anxious about as AI agents and bots get more integrated into every aspect of our lives. Meta, which recently agreed to pay over $17 billion to settle a lawsuit related to harming kids, now wants you to hand over all your online accounts to an inexplicably cute “agent” named Muse that might give a stranger your home address. OpenAI just introduced little blobs called Dots that can supposedly automate routine tasks, like planning dinner and ordering it from your favorite neighborhood spot.
A guide for raising boys to be resilient men
In 1995, gender studies researcher Judy Chu found herself chauffeuring around her 13-year-old brother and his friend. The boys’ curiosity got the better of them, and they asked what she was learning: adolescent girls’ development, she told them.
Trump’s “Most EXCLUSIVE DINNER IN THE WORLD”
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 once again selling access to the highest bidder(s). What’s happening? On Thursday, the Washington Sun’s Jeff Stein reported that Trump will reprise his 2025 “crypto dinner” later this year, hosting some of the top investors in the
How both parties have changed since 2024
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
The two athletes in every horse race
Horse racing can be an unusually dangerous profession for both the jockey and the horse: Riding a half-ton animal at nearly 40 miles per hour means your fate depends on the health and performance of both athletes. And the horse can be at risk of catastrophic injury if the jockey doesn’t have the required physical fitness to maintain proper technique and lightning-quick reflexes.
Disney World solved a problem that could save America billions every year
Buried beneath every American city is a mysterious jumble of cables, pipes, and gas lines, entangled like a pair of wired headphones the moment you pull them out of your pocket. Every time a contractor sticks a shovel in the asphalt, they embark on a high-risk excavate-by-dots obstacle course, dodging color-coded clusters of spaghetti-like power lines, gas mains, sewers, and fiber-optic cables. A line of blue spray paint means water. Red means power. Yellow is gas. Orange is telecom. About
The Democrats who bet wrong on ICE
Welcome to The Midterms, Actually. Every week I’ll be writing about two things: one big idea or trend I see forming across the 2026 primaries, and one thing I’m hearing from a voice on the ground. You can sign up here to get it in your inbox every week. Let’s get into it.
What Democrats are still getting wrong about voters
With the 2026 midterm elections fast approaching, polling increasingly suggests that the GOP is in for a bad time. As the Iran war drives up inflation and fuel prices, Republicans are on the back foot not just in swing states like Michigan, but in redder parts of the map: Iowa, Texas, and maybe even Kansas, among others. (Not to mention Georgia and North Carolina.)
America leaves Iraq, again
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
Why diesel prices are an economic time bomb
Everyone knows how much gasoline prices matter. The recent spike in gas prices triggered by the war with Iran has fueled deep pessimism about the economy and weighed heavily on President Donald Trump’s approval ratings. But diesel fuel — the lifeblood of shipping, agriculture, and heavy industry — usually flies under the radar. Its price has surged too, and while truckers and farmers are feeling the initial blow, the rest of the country won’t be far behind. “Most products in America are shipped along the road via trucks,”
How can we create more Indianapolises and fewer San Franciscos?
The Soviet Union famously churned out tens of thousands of new apartment buildings in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s — some assembled in as little as 12 days — together comprising tens of millions of individual apartments. Such speed is not unique to communist command economies, or even to grim concrete mega-blocks. In Sweden and Japan today, modern, high-quality new homes can be factory-built and assembled in a matter of weeks using the same basic method — prefabrication — as the Soviets.
A crisis that goes far beyond Cornell
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
What China wants from AI
The national conversation about AI in the US is full of fear: fear about AI’s potential to end humanity, fear of data centers moving in, fear that government officials will do absolutely nothing even as the industry pleads for regulation, you name it.
The next generation of Republican justices will be even more partisan
The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that Missouri may not use a newly drawn Republican gerrymander during the 2026 congressional election. This decision should surprise no one because, about two weeks ago, the Supreme Court ruled that Missouri may not use a newly drawn Republican gerrymander during the 2026 congressional election.
Live auctions are turning shopping into gambling
If you haven’t heard of “live shopping,” you might soon. Livestream shopping is already a staple of e-commerce in China, where consumers log onto apps like Douyin and Taobao to buy products from a livestreamer — think QVC. Now, a new app is trying to bring it to the United States.
Trump’s taxpayer-funded propaganda blitz
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 spending taxpayer money on propaganda ads. What’s happening? Over the weekend, the Trump administration aired a 30-second spot of Trump promising to “demolish the deep state, expel the warmongers from our government,
Trump’s China reversal
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
Welcome to the October issue of The Highlight
Vegan and vegetarian dining options might be more common than ever, but around the country, vegan restaurants are closing at a quicker rate than their non-vegan peers. In this month’s Highlight cover story, Marina Bolotnikova investigates what’s happening to those restaurants as her own favorite vegan establishment closes its doors. And she tries to answer the bigger questions about the closures: What’s lost for the vegan community as restaurants disappear, and what does it tell us about the future of the plant-based movement?
Flock cameras are creepy. They might still be worth it
To no small extent, Americans have grown accustomed to being watched. For more than a decade, CCTV cameras have recorded a hefty portion of many people’s public movements, while ubiquitous smartphones have made us all perpetually vulnerable to unsolicited documentation (if not, social media notoriety). Until recently, however, technical limitations constrained the reach of government surveillance (at least, in the physical realm). Police may have been swimming in CCTV footage.
Wait, what are the rules around cellphone etiquette now?
Recently, while taking the metro to work, I encountered something that shocked me. The train was pulling up, just as the man in front of me tapped to pay to go through the gate, and a woman pushed past me to cut me in line. I still made the train (after I briefly considered acting in a way that would have made us both late for work), but as I passed each stop I got angrier and angrier. Why did she think her commute was more important than someone else’s?
This weather threat costs us billions. And it’s about to get worse
This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk Collaboration.
Why Democrats stopped talking about climate
William Lawrence is a Democrat running to represent Michigan’s Lansing-area Seventh Congressional District with a campaign that largely focuses on data centers and affordability. It’s not an unusual story in 2026 — but not long ago, Lawrence was cutting his teeth in progressive politics as a co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, primarily focused on organizing around the climate crisis.
Inside a quest to learn about the ocean’s mysterious “deep reefs”
This story was originally published in The Highlight. To get access to member-exclusive stories like this every month, become a Vox Member today.
Why Democratic Senate hopes are rising
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
The online “burnerverse” trying to ruin young women’s lives
Maddie Kowalski is a student at the University of Florida. Last November, someone found nonconsensual intimate images and videos of her, stitched them together, and uploaded them to X, where they were viewed millions of times.
Can you spend your way out of loneliness?
Over the years, Julianne Holt-Lunstad has fielded many requests from startups looking for her help. These entrepreneurs came to the Brigham Young University professor with the well-meaning goal of “solving” loneliness; they believed their app or company could help consumers build genuine connections, and wanted Holt-Lunstad’s opinion on this feature or that business tactic.
Alzheimer’s treatment is advancing rapidly — and there’s one thing all of us can do to help
This story was originally published in The Highlight. To get access to member-exclusive stories like this every month, become a Vox Member today. Every day it seems scientists are making breakthroughs in Alzheimer’s disease. New treatments that actually slow the disease’s progression — lecanemab and donanemab —
Why red states are rejecting Trump’s AI vision for schools
Six months ago, first lady Melania Trump walked into a White House education summit next to a faceless robot powered by artificial intelligence, which she said could one day give children personalized instruction. “Imagine a humanoid educator named ‘Plato,’” she said. “Access to the classical studies is now instantaneous…humanity’s entire corpus of information is available in the comfort of your home.”
There’s a global plan to save humans from AI. Can it actually work?
When the AI apocalypse becomes regular dinner-table conversation, you know we’ve reached the freakout stage. Rogue AI agents are hacking into competitors. Former Big Tech employees are posting Skynet-style warnings on social media. CEOs are crying for help in ways that have made this once-wonky tech issue a frontline political fight. I still think many of the concerns outlined by the AI leaders themselves are massively self-serving — especially
Trump’s short-lived press ban
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: The media outlets President Donald Trump banned from the White House last week are back. What happened? Early on Thursday morning, a federal district court ruled that the White House had to immediately restore press credentials for CNN, Politico, and MS NOW and allow
Why Americans are warming to China
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.