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This past weekend, X owner Elon Musk elevated a false right-wing talking point about immigration, claiming Democrats were fast-tracking citizenship applications to rig elections in the party’s favor.  “If even 1 in 20 illegals become citizens per year, something that the Democrats are expediting as fast as humanly possible, that would be about 2 million […]

You wouldn’t expect to find the linchpin of the global microchip industry tucked away in a Blue Ridge Mountains town, but it’s there. Scattered across the outskirts of Spruce Pine, a series of mines has been extracting some of the purest quartz on Earth for decades. The resource is so essential that almost every advanced […]

Israel has begun a military invasion of Lebanon it said would be “limited,” following days of bombing campaigns near and within the capital, Beirut.  The Israeli military said that it had moved one army division, typically numbering around 10,000 troops, to the Lebanese border and told Lebanese civilians in about two dozen villages in the […]

Life is not just a deluge of bad news. Every day, all sorts of wonderful things are happening. People fall in love. New vaccines are getting closer to saving the roughly 500,000 children who die from malaria each year. And for those of us interested in the science of meditation, which promises a deeper understanding […]

Vox reader Mike Lovely asks: Why does the US keep creating new health insurance programs (CHIP, ACA, Medicaid expansion alternatives, etc.) instead of consolidating them into one big program where all insurer carriers participate and all people pick their coverage? Health insurance in America is a constellation of brands and acronyms: Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, […]

At the vice presidential debate Tuesday night, Sen. JD Vance faced one fundamental challenge: How to make a radical right-wing agenda sound like middle-American common sense. Judging by the polls, America’s voters are not enthusiastic about the Biden-Harris administration’s record. And on the issues they rank highest — such as immigration and the economy — […]

Lead poisoning has, historically, been a major blind spot in the global health world. The extent of the problem is enormous: A landmark study found that about half of children in poor countries are exposed to very high levels of lead. At least 1.5 million people die annually from cardiovascular diseases (like heart disease) caused […]

The vice presidential debate between Tim Walz and JD Vance on Tuesday was something of a stalemate, though it did feature several striking moments and offered an interesting preview into what presidential politics might look like once Donald Trump is off the stage. It isn’t clear yet how genuinely undecided voters responded to the debate […]

At the end of the vice presidential debate, Gov. Tim Walz asked Sen. JD Vance a pointed question: Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election? Vance’s response: “Tim, I’m focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 Covid situation?” There is a clear right […]

Workers at ports on the East and Gulf Coasts went on strike Tuesday following a breakdown in negotiations between the union representing them, the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), and the organization of international shipping companies that employ them. Approximately 45,000 workers walked off the job at 12:01 am, making it the most significant strike the […]

The Menendez brothers, Lyle, now 56, and Erik, now 53, probably never had an incestuous relationship. There has never been any evidence presented anywhere that they did, and in court, both have vehemently denied a sexual relationship. None of this stops Monsters, the new Ryan Murphy-helmed Netflix drama about the brothers — who were convicted […]

The scenes from North Carolina are shocking: roads and bridges washed away. Houses ripped from their foundations. Entire towns reduced to mud and debris. On Thursday night, Hurricane Helene slammed Florida as a Category 4 storm with winds reaching 140 miles per hour. In coastal communities, Helene knocked down trees and power lines, and caused record storm […]

Recently, trauma suffered by NFL stars has raised fresh concerns about the league’s ongoing issues with head injuries — and raised questions about whether there is more the NFL could do to protect its players.  In early September, Tua Tagovailoa, a quarterback for the Miami Dolphins, suffered a frightening third (diagnosed) concussion, prompting some fans […]

The inflammation chatter is everywhere, and it’s coming for your legumes.  I first heard it from a friend recovering from surgery, who blamed her unusual post-op incision site irritation on foods TikTok had (incorrectly) informed her were inflammatory, like lentils. Antibiotics ultimately fixed her pain — turns out the incision was infected. Who knows what […]

The signature policy proposal of Donald Trump’s third campaign for the presidency is a tariff: a tax of 60 percent imposed on all imports from China and 10 percent on imports from any other country. Not only does he want this tax hike, which would raise about $291 billion or 1 percent of GDP when […]

Therese Mascardo was done with the daily grind of life in Los Angeles. As a licensed clinical psychologist, she was seeing around 40 clients a week and spending hours in the car commuting.  “There’s a pressure that you feel as an American, and in LA, I certainly felt like I needed to work as much […]

In some ways, there have never been more dollars flowing into abortion rights organizing, with philanthropies finally stepping up and more Americans activated over freedoms they previously doubted were really at stake. With hundreds of candidates vying for office and abortion rights on the ballot in 10 states, advocates have been busy raising money to […]

Welcome to the first issue of Within Our Means, a biweekly newsletter about ending poverty in America. If you’d like to receive it in your inbox, please sign up here: I’ve always been interested in how race and class shape our society and my work often focuses on topics like criminal justice, housing, and the social […]

If I asked you to tell me the one issue that makes you feel the most pessimistic, what would it be? I feel pretty confident saying that the most popular response — certainly one of the most popular responses, anyway — would be climate change. But is climate despair really as tempting and reasonable as […]

I write reasonably often about degrowth, the movement to save the world by shrinking the economy. Why? After all, it’s an extremely niche ideology, one basically confined to European socialist academics, with absolutely no chance of ever becoming law or policy anywhere. Is it even worth continuing to rebut?  I think so, and the reason […]

Last year was the hottest year on record, and this year’s temperatures may reach even higher. With so many extraordinary heat waves, floods, and storms piling up, one may wonder: Just how much warmer is the Earth going to get? The answer hinges on two main factors: how much more heat-trapping gasses humans will emit, […]

Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida last night as a ferocious Category 4 storm after gaining strength as it barreled across the Gulf of Mexico. According to Vox’s Benji Jones, the storm and its expected surge have the potential to wreak havoc across the Southeast, but also dump heavy rains onto Appalachia and beyond.  Before […]

Listen to the way Democrats talk about guns, violent crime, and the criminal justice system these days, and you’ll notice that things sound different from the way they did in 2020.  That year, following a national protest movement centered around the high-profile police killings of unarmed Black Americans, including Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, Democrats […]

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been indicted by federal authorities for allegedly accepting illegal donations and perks from a Turkish government official and Turkish businesspeople, and providing favorable treatment in return.  The indictment follows months of investigations by federal prosecutors, who’ve also been looking into many of Adams’s current and former associates, including […]