It is bad when centrists rationalize the crimes of America's allies. It is also bad when leftists do the same for America's adversaries. Both of these things are worth saying, even if the latter is less consequential www.vox.com/politics/486...

Israel’s apologists insist that its critics are motivated by sectarian biases rather than humanitarian principles. When influential leftists celebrate Mao, they lend credibility to such charges www.vox.com/politics/486...

Too often, Hasan Piker's commentary is a mirror image of what it claims to oppose: If Washington’s jingoists downplay or rationalize the crimes of America and Israel, Piker does their adversaries the same favor www.vox.com/politics/486...

Last week, OpenAI argued that the government may need to create a vast new welfare state to counter AI-induced unemployment and inequality. And yet, the company's leaders have ignored - or abetted - attacks on actually existing social programs www.vox.com/politics/485...

College grads have been “prolentarianized": Universities minted too many knowledge workers, and now they're working at Starbucks in unprecedented numbers. This is a popular narrative. But the share of recent grads in low-wage jobs is tiny (and down since the mid-90s) www.vox.com/politics/485...

As he put it in his inimitable fashion

Elon Musk's chatbot has forsaken its creator. A new study analyzed 1.6 million fact check requests -- and found that Grok was more likely to contradict Republican-leaning accounts than Democratic-leaning ones www.vox.com/technology/4...

How can you convince someone to abandon conspiratorial or pseudoscientific beliefs? Have them debate an LLM. Or so some new studies suggest. I wrote about why AI may be uniquely effective at countering misinformation (even as it also helps to spread it) www.vox.com/technology/4...

99%-ism - the belief that only the top 1% should have to pay higher taxes - is a scourge. Booker and Van Hollen's tax cut plans represent the culmination of a decades-long trend -- one that could make building a robust American welfare state impossible www.vox.com/politics/482...

How Iran views this war, according to historian of the regime @gbrew24.bsky.social www.vox.com/politics/482...

How AI could trigger an economic doom loop (according to a financial firm's viral memo) www.vox.com/politics/480...

An AI doom scenario so compelling, it shaved billions off the stock market. www.vox.com/politics/480...

It's true that there are tons of rich bigots. It's also true that more educated voters are, in the aggregate, much more progressive on social issues than non-graduates. This is reflected not only in their answers to polls, but in the parties/candidates they support nymag.com/intelligence...

A little over a year into his second presidency, Donald Trump has yet to turn America into a pure, uncut authoritarian nightmare — but not for lack of trying! www.vox.com/politics/479...

I wrote about why Silicon Valley is convinced we're in a "February 2020" moment (and how their dire prophesies could prove mistaken) www.vox.com/politics/478...

Over the past three weeks, the "nightmare scenario" for November's midterms has grown more plausible www.vox.com/politics/478...

Tulsi Gabbard has been investigating baseless allegations that Venezuelan hackers rigged the 2020 election That's alarming, as it could indicate that Trump is trying to establish a national security rationale for seizing voting machines in November www.vox.com/politics/478...

oh god we're doing it again aren't we

A lesson of the backlash to Pretti's murder: Video is one of the last remaining constraints on Trump's mendacity and malfeasance And this is what made some online liberals' response to the second Pretti video - declaring it a deepfake without solid evidence - misguided www.vox.com/politics/477...

Summary execution is not the punishment for assault on an SUV in the United States. www.vox.com/politics/477...

After years of denial and accusing anyone using the numbers of duplicity or Hamas sympathy, the Israeli military now admits — via anonymous briefing to domestic reporters — that the Gaza Health Ministry's death toll from the war is accurate

Gotta admit, I too fell for this. When I first saw federal agents fire 10 shots into the back of a man they'd just senselessly beaten, I thought it was wrong. But then I learned that the murder victim wasn't even *that* hot

The White House has tacitly admitted that Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller defamed a man who was killed by their agents. It is a scandal that they still hold their positions www.vox.com/politics/476...

Our initial analysis is up. The video footage appears to show that the gun was taken away from the man before he was shot. He was UNARMED before any of the shots were fired.

I can't decide which is more chilling -- watching federal agents commit a murder, or seeing the government and its supporters smear the victim with *blatant* lies

You don't need to have leftwing views on immigration to oppose what ICE is doing. You just need to value your own most basic rights www.vox.com/politics/476...

Wall Street buying up single-family homes is good, actually www.vox.com/politics/476...

Won't somebody *please* think of the landlords who own only 10-to-12 properties

In the 1990s, cable news networks discovered that viewers were less likely to click away from coverage of culture war issues than coverage of economic matters. TV news started giving social issues greater priority - and caused voters to do the same, a new study suggests www.vox.com/politics/475...

In the 20th century, poor whites voted to the left of rich ones. But that changed in 2016. And by 2024, the relationship between income and Republicanism had inverted completely: The more money a white voter made, the more likely they were to back Harris www.vox.com/politics/475...

Over the past 4 decades, the culture war's rise realigned American politics -- pushing working-class voters right and college grads left. A new study offers a simple theory for why this happened: Americans' at-home entertainment options got too good. www.vox.com/politics/475...

The president is all-but encouraging pogroms against specific Somali-owned businesses, on the grounds that they serve customers who pay in food stamps (much like countless Walmarts in heavily Republican rural areas)

The sheer volume of white nationalist memes/allusions posted from official government accounts over the past year is staggering www.vox.com/politics/475...

ICE's official recruitment ads are suffused with allusions to white nationalist memes and books. The government is openly trying to give guns and badges to supporters of ethnic cleansing. www.vox.com/politics/475...

I enjoyed this conversation and you might too!

Many of the left and right's contemporary debates may be rooted in one fundamental disagreement: How much less should we trust/care about strangers, compared to "our people?" www.vox.com/the-highligh...

What's the essential, philosophical disagreement that cleaves the left from the right? Some argue: There is none. "The left" and "the right" are just two contingent coalitions that propagandize for their members' interests. I think they are 30% right www.vox.com/the-highligh...

Putting Trump's 2020 statement on George Floyd next to his remarks on Renee Nicole Good is illuminating. Trump once felt compelled to suggest that his vision of “law and order” did not entail impunity for armed agents of the state Now, he doesn't. www.vox.com/politics/474...

I wrote about the president's menacingly dishonest response to the killing of Renee Nicole Good www.vox.com/politics/474...

After Venezuela, do we need to take Trump's most outlandish military threats seriously? Will US troops storm the beaches of Greenland? There's definitely cause for worry. But Trump's warmongering still appears to be limited by one major constraint www.vox.com/politics/474...

In truth, Trump's war in Venezuela does not actually serve the American oil industry's interests. It might nonetheless be motivated by oil, but only because Trump personally loves the idea of pillaging conquered lands www.vox.com/politics/473...

Trump didn't wage war in Venezuela to advance the oil lobby's interests. His motives appear much less coherent -- and more superficial -- than that www.vox.com/politics/473...

AI is more popular than child molesters www.vox.com/politics/473...

Voters don't "hate" AI. And only a tiny share of them consider it a top-tier issue. That could change. People are definitely anxious about the technology. But some recent pieces have wildly overstated the scale and intensity of the backlash thus far www.vox.com/politics/473...

I feel like "attention hacking" is most of politics now. The Minnesota aid fraud story is becoming a perfect example. Recap: In 2022, the Biden DOJ filed the first charges against dozens of fraudsters, many of them Somali-American, who'd fleeced a state food aid program. (1/x)

Rich nations are happier than poor ones. And poor countries tend to get happier as they get richer Yet wealthy countries have been getting richer - without getting discernibly happier - for decades. I wrote about one (not totally convincing) explanation: www.vox.com/politics/472...

Degrowth proponents often suggest that America can slash its resource use by over 50% -- while still expanding the *good* sectors, such as healthcare. I think this betrays a naivety about how resource-intensive modern medicine is www.vox.com/politics/472...

Americans' incomes are 26% higher than they were in 1996 -- yet our self-reported happiness has fallen sharply since then. I wrote about one theory of The Thirty Years' Vibecession www.vox.com/politics/472...