Vox Politics

For several minutes on Tuesday evening, Democrats thought they’d actually scored an important legal victory — and in an election case to boot! But then a single Trump-appointed judge cast a cloud of doubt over that victory, and potentially threw Missouri’s upcoming congressional elections into chaos. Last Thursday, the Missouri Supreme Court effectively halted a […]

Germany’s local elections usually don’t matter to anyone but Germans. But Sunday’s contest in the state of Saxony-Anhalt was an exception: It could very well produce the first far-right government anywhere in Germany since the Nazis.  Alternatives fur Deutschland (AfD), a party so extreme that Germany’s intelligence services put them under surveillance, won 43.8 — 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: The head of the Smithsonian Institution will resign after weathering nearly two years of attacks by President Donald Trump.  What’s happening? Lonnie G. Bunch III, […]

Can a love-thy-neighbor, stop-the-division campaign win over masses of rural voters? Rob Sand, the Democratic candidate for governor in Iowa, has his hopes pinned on it.  Key to Sand’s campaign is a promise to end the red-blue warfare in politics. He’s made embracing independents and disgruntled Republicans a core part of his campaign, in addition […]

This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here. I spent Labor Day weekend in Montreal, and signs of the trade war were everywhere.  On Google Maps, which — at least until we crossed over the border — jarringly displayed the label “Lake […]

Are we on the precipice of a white Christian nationalist takeover?  The author and religion scholar Robert P. Jones sure feels like we’re close. “This is our 1933,” he writes in his new book, referencing the year that Weimar Germany fell to a Nazi takeover. Panicked allusions to Nazi Germany have been a common occurrence […]

The data center backlash has entered the midterms conversation.  Politicians from across the spectrum have changed their minds — or at least their policy positions — about data centers in the past few months as public resistance  to their construction has skyrocketed. A major example is Texas, where just about one year ago, Republican Gov. […]

Last month, Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon won the state’s Democratic Senate nomination in a major upset over her better-funded opponent, retired Army Lt. Col. Alex Vindman. Her victory was quickly slotted into a narrative about the Democratic Party’s insurgent progressive movement, which has triumphed in House and Senate primaries in Michigan, Colorado, New York, […]

After 12 years of dominating American politics — either as president, as a candidate, or from the sidelines — Donald Trump will finally exit the stage in 2028, and it’s anybody’s guess what will come next. But one thing we do know is that Gen Z, many of whom were children during Trump’s first campaign, […]

The national debt hasn’t been a major issue in the 2026 midterms. But perhaps it should be. As of last month, the United States is in debt to the tune of $40 trillion. That’s 12 zeros, which averages out to about $116,000 per American.  It’s enough that even economists like Jared Bernstein, the chair of […]

This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here. Gloria Steinem — the one-woman powerhouse who, in many ways, defined modern feminism in the United States — died Wednesday at 92 after six decades of activism. Steinem was a journalist and advocate who […]

For a brief moment last week, it appeared that an ICE officer, who allegedly shot a man during the early 2026 occupation of Minneapolis and then lied about it, might actually face legal consequences for his actions. Christian Castro, the now-suspended ICE officer in question, was confined to a Texas jail and potentially faced two […]

In the United States, building a data center now polls roughly as well as abolishing the police. If current trends continue, server warehouses may soon be less popular with Americans than pizza topped with pineapple and shattered glass. In an August survey from Heatmap Pro and Embold Research, just 15 percent of Americans said they […]

Welp, the Supreme Court has decided that President Donald Trump gets to build his ballroom. The decision in National Park Service v. National Trust for Historic Preservation is 5-4, with Republican Chief Justice John Roberts joining the three Democratic justices in dissent. Notably, no member of the Court argued that Trump’s ballroom, an enormous structure […]

This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here. President Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again war with Iran is officially on again. (So recursive is this never-ending conflict, in fact, that I had to search my inbox to confirm I hadn’t already written that […]

Aaron Renn was in a good mood. And that was fair: It’s not every day that you get labeled the No. 1 “intellectual super influencer” for a major swath of the Trump-era right. “It’s always good to have some independent validation of your work,” he told me. A former partner at the consulting firm Accenture, […]

Until recently, Natalie Harp was an omnipresent but low-profile aide to President Donald Trump: always there, but rarely part of the story herself. That changed abruptly earlier this month, when Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), who is currently running for reelection, name-dropped her in a speech.  Trump “doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to […]

Well, that was quick. On Thursday evening, federal district Judge Indira Talwani issued a new order that temporarily blocks an effort by the Trump administration that appears designed to sabotage voting by mail in the upcoming midterm election. Talwani previously blocked an executive order that President Donald Trump issued in March, which ordered the US […]

Imagine this: Two countries are at war. Country X sends a drone into a major industrial city in Country Y, aiming to take out two propane tanks. A routine sequence. But this time, the drone never reaches its targets. Instead, Country X’s drone accidentally strikes a wall nearby, explodes, and kills three young civilians.  When […]

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 says he’s renaming Lake Ontario. Let’s talk about it.  Can he really do that? Probably, though it doesn’t mean anyone will listen.  Strictly […]