The comforting fiction that Charlie Kirk’s killer was far-right www.vox.com/politics/462...

The past week has shown us something scary — the concrete and specific outlines of a durable authoritarian state in America. Here's what this state would look like, and the precise policy levers Trump is pulling to get there from here. www.vox.com/politics/462...

RFK Jr.’s newly appointed Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices made changes to the MMRV vaccine schedule and revised guidance for the Covid-19 vaccine.

Democracies are supposed to absorb careless speech. Bad jokes, bad takes, even vile remarks are the price of a free society. And the whole point of the First Amendment is to take the government out of the business of deciding what we can and can’t hear.

In the past few weeks, a series of developments has revealed a disturbingly credible policy pathway to power consolidation. We now know what a Trump-led authoritarian state in America would look like — and how we would get there from here.

‘The Strategist Kids’ Department’ is delivered every Tuesday. Sign up now so we can send you the best stuff for kids of all ages, vetted by picky parents like us and our even pickier kids.

A United Nations commission published a 72-page report on Tuesday that concluded Israel has committed a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The commission’s findings determined that Israel has perpetrated at least four of the five acts of genocide as defined by the 1948 Geneva Convention.

AI firms’ recent reports are most useful at giving us a point-in-time snapshot, and a recent history over a couple of years, of what kind of queries are being sent to ChatGPT and Claude. Here are some takeaways from the two reports:

Jimmy Kimmel was taken off the airwaves because the Trump administration didn’t like what he had to say. His removal demonstrates how far down the authoritarian road the United States has traveled in just eight months. #JimmyKimmel #DonaldTrump #ABC #Disney

Arie Perliger, a professor of criminology at UMass Lowell who has studied hundreds of political assassinations from the past century, has found that political violence is a much more complicated phenomenon than the current discourse would have us believe.

I delved into the history of Jimmy Kimmel's feud with Trump, and how the guy from The Man Show became the guy pissing off the president www.vox.com/culture/4619...

The controversy is a shocking turn in the Trump administration’s escalating war on its critics and in Jimmy Kimmel’s once pointedly apolitical career. Kimmel, after all, has spent most of his career embodying one archetype: regular American straight white dude.

According to a new commentary paper in the journal Nature Food, some of the worst animal suffering in the world can be prevented at a rate of just a couple of pennies per hour: the extreme pain experienced by chickens raised for meat.

For all the overwhelm in the world, you might have an itch for a more tactile, creative outlet — one that takes you away from the news, screens, and chaos, and puts you in touch with your more playful side. 🎨✍️

The bullet casings authorities recovered during their investigation of Charlie Kirk’s killing make at least one thing clear: The alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, was speaking the language of memes. voxdotcom.visitlink.me/QVYVdg

The details of the Jimmy Kimmel situation reveal that Trump has adopted one of Viktor Orbán's most effective weapons against the free press www.vox.com/politics/461...

Let’s be clear about what just happened: Jimmy Kimmel, a prominent late-night comedian, was just taken off the airwaves because the Trump administration didn’t like what he had to say — and threatened his employer until they shut him up. voxdotcom.visitlink.me/fryLLE

Ousted CDC director Susan Monarez came to the Senate to share her story of being fired by HHS Secretary RFK Jr. and President Donald Trump, the latest volley in an ongoing battle between the Trump administration and the public health establishment.

Do you think AI is dangerous? The authors of a new book, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, think so. And they mean that very literally: a superintelligence — an AI that’s smarter than any human, and smarter than humanity collectively — would kill us all.

Across the country, ordinary Americans are being fired for expressing their opinions about Charlie Kirk’s killing. Read more about why this is a moment very much akin to the Red Scares of the 20th century: voxdotcom.visitlink.me/8uypM5

In a trio of cases, two currently pending before the Supreme Court and one that is likely to land on the justices’ doorstep as soon as Tuesday, President Donald Trump claims new powers that, if he prevails, would give him near-total control over all US fiscal and monetary policy.

Senator Van Hollen believes that the Republicans have more to lose by withholding concessions in the upcoming government funding bill than the Democrats do by holding the line.

The dangers and virtues of free speech have gained new relevance after the killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. While praised in death by those on the right and beyond as an exemplar of free speech, he has also been held up as its enemy by his critics. Here's why. 👇

As Trump grabs for influence over the American arts, he’s been straightforward in what he thinks it should look like. He's not being all that innovative. The CIA spent decades during the Cold War funding some artists and literary magazines while surveilling and harassing others.

A long-simmering showdown over whether President Donald Trump may seize control over the Federal Reserve appears to be entering its endgame. It is highly likely that SCOTUS will weigh in on this dispute either Monday evening or Tuesday.

Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot last week at a campus event in Utah, was a hero to a generation of young conservatives. Last week @christianpaz.bsky.social wrote about how he and his organization, Turning Point USA, redefined what politics and political media looked like for many in Gen Z. 👇

With the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur coming up, a reader wrote into our advice column Your Mileage May Vary as “someone who struggles with scrupulosity — constantly worrying about my morality and if I’m doing The Most Possible Good™.” What a biblical story can teach us about striving for perfection:

The incipient rise of self-driving cars promises to bring the most tumultuous shift in transportation since cars first rumbled their way onto the scene. 🚗

Charlie Kirk’s impact on Gen Z conservatives is hard to deny. Before he was killed at Utah Valley University this week, Kirk had created a new generation of leaders, activists and groups through his nonprofit Turning Point USA.

Since the killing of Charlie Kirk, the response on the left has been shock and horror. No one of prominence has justified the killing; hundreds, from Democratic leadership on down, have condemned political violence. But below the unanimity is a subtler debate: how to think about Kirk's life.

It’s a dangerous moment, similar to those many other countries — including the U.S. — have faced in the past. An awful act of violence like Charlie Kirk’s killing can become the justification for a government campaign of repression against political opponents who had nothing to do with that killing.

The right is calling Charlie Kirk a martyr for free speech as they demand a violent crackdown on progressive dissent. More from senior correspondent @ericlevitz.bsky.social:

The polarization of the United States’ political parties and President Donald Trump’s aggressive power grabs put America on shaky ground following the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. More from @zackbeauchamp.bsky.social: voxdotcom.visitlink.me/yQx0ip

Suspected Russian drones entered Polish airspace and were intercepted on Monday. While it was the first time that NATO aircraft had engaged potential threats in allied airspace, it was not the first time Russian aircraft and weapons had crossed into NATO territory.

"We can understand mourning [Kirk's] killing as an obligation to our broader community — in this case, our country. Someone walked up to a person giving a speech and shot them. That should disturb anyone, and makes us all less safe." - @rcobooth.bsky.social

Fellowship had a special resonance with its audience because of when it came out: a mere three months after September 11, 2001. It met an American audience ready and eager to throw themselves into the story of an epic battle between good and evil — one that good was definitely going to win.

Charlie Kirk's murder has plunged us into a democratic crisis www.vox.com/politics/461...

On the horrible murder of Charlie Kirk — and the threat to democracy it created. www.vox.com/politics/461...

More than one analyst said they don’t necessarily expect the iPhone Air to be a huge seller. It’s flashy, but again, that thinness comes at the cost of good battery life. 📱

I wrote about why vacant houses are not quite as promising a solution to the housing crisis as they first sound (but also what we should/could still do about them) www.vox.com/housing/4607...

Democrats are deciding whether to shut down the government as a response to President Trump’s lawlessness. What struck @zackbeauchamp.bsky.social after reading an assessment by @ezrakleinbot.bsky.social is how centrally the internal Democratic debate revolves around the question of “normalcy.”

If there’s one thing a large majority of Americans have consistently agreed on this year, it’s that the Democratic Party sucks. Three charts explain why: voxdotcom.visitlink.me/buUvPv

Israel’s attempted killing of Hamas’s senior global leadership on Tuesday was the clearest indication in months that the war in Gaza is unlikely to end in a hostage deal between Israel and Hamas.

In his second term, the way Trump is profiting from the presidency is more brazen than ever before. To put into perspective just how much money Trump is extracting from the presidency, look no further than the Trump family’s crypto ventures.

To vaccinate or not to vaccinate — that is the question being asked by parents around the country as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. makes changes to the nation’s vaccine policies. 🧵

SCOTUS decided Noem v. Perdomo in the Trump administration’s favor, lifting a lower federal court’s injunction that stopped federal law enforcement from stopping or detaining people in Los Angeles based “solely” on four factors, or any combination of them. More on the impact of the decision. 👇

President Donald Trump has vowed to deport 1 million undocumented immigrants out of the United States every year. So far, he’s falling well short of that goal, with estimates in the neighborhood of 200,000 as of August.

You may have seen that Trump has been doing some remodeling around the White House, including a new Rose Garden patio and so, so much gold in the Oval Office. @abdallahfayyad.bsky.social talks about how it’s the most immediate representation of Trump’s efforts to rebrand America in his image. 👇

Today @vox.com is rolling out something special from climate correspondent Umair Irfan. Recently, we went to southern Texas to dig into an unsettling story: how climate change—and the ways we’ve built our cities—is giving mosquito-borne diseases new footholds in the US. www.vox.com/climate/4603...

Changing the branding for the government’s largest department, with facilities and bases around the world, would be extremely expensive. As Reuters notes, the Biden administration’s now-scuttled plan to rename just nine Army bases that honor Confederate leaders would have cost around $39 million.