vox.com
As the Manhattan district attorney’s case against Donald Trump got underway this week — with the former president accused of falsifying business records to cover up hush-money payments — one question has so far haunted the proceedings: Can the court actually select an impartial jury for one of the most polarizing figures in American history? Over the past week, the judge, prosecution, and defense have been interrogating prospective jurors, asking them things like where they get their news, and s…
8 days ago
vox.com
If the United States had a public transit problem, Washington’s Metro was a good case in point. In the years leading up to the Covid-19 pandemic, DC’s transit system — widely considered to be one of the best in the nation — found itself plagued by frequent delays, safety concerns, and falling ridership. Other US cities were struggling, too. America’s public transit agencies often fall victim to a vicious cycle that looks something like this: Politicians slash budgets, agencies cut their services…
17 days ago
vox.com
Truth Social, Donald Trump’s social media platform, has not exactly been a resounding business success story, but it recently made the former president a whole lot richer. That’s because Trump Media, the network’s parent company, went public last week and catapulted Trump’s net worth to an estimated $7.5 billion. Now you might be wondering how Trump’s social media company is worth that much money. And the short answer is: It isn’t. On Monday, after the company reported more than $58 million in l…
23 days ago
vox.com
The United States immigration system is so dysfunctional that it might sometimes seem as though it has no redeeming features. Asylum seekers are left in legal limbo for years, and immigration courts face a growing backlog of cases — all while arrests of migrants at the southern border have reached a record high. But when it comes to addressing the current wave of migrants, many of whom are families and asylum seekers, American lawmakers don’t have to look very far to find a model to emulate: the…
about 2 months ago
vox.com
Two recent verdicts have now left Donald Trump on the hook for nearly half a billion dollars. On Friday, a New York judge handed the former president a $355 million penalty, and banned him from serving in a leadership position in any business in New York for three years, for fraudulently inflating his net worth to lenders in order to receive more favorable loan agreements. And in January, a Manhattan jury ordered Trump to pay the writer E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million for defaming her after she ac…
2 months ago
vox.com
The biggest spectacle in Washington this week was the unraveling of an immigration deal in Congress, a border security bill that Republicans pushed for, only to turn against it because former President Donald Trump didn’t want any legislation that might help President Biden stay in the White House this fall. But more complicated and consequential is what’s been happening on immigration far from Washington. And although the political stakes of immigration in Congress and at the White House are hi…
3 months ago
vox.com
Come nighttime in Boston, some migrant families with no place to stay are put in cabs and sent to Logan International Airport — where, according to some estimates, more than 100 people, some of them children, sleep by baggage claim. During the day, they’re directed to Massachusetts’s family welcome centers, set up by the state to help recent arrivals with housing and other services, only to make their way back to the airport for another night. For some families, this cycle goes on for more than…
3 months ago
Search by beat, location, outlet & position to find the right journalists for your story.
Sign up for freevox.com
Donald Trump, who propelled his political career with the lie that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States, is again spreading baseless claims about who is and isn’t legally qualified to serve as president. And it’s revealing his vision for what he thinks American democracy should look like. Just as in 2016, when Trump claimed that his primary opponent Texas senator Ted Cruz was potentially ineligible to be president, Trump is now casting doubt on yet another Republican rival’s citizenship…
3 months ago
vox.com
Over the last couple of years, it seemed that America was experiencing a shoplifting epidemic. Videos of people brazenly stealing merchandise from retailers often went viral; chains closed some of their stores and cited a rise in theft as the primary reason; and drugstores such as CVS and Walgreens started locking up more of their inventory, including everyday items like toothpaste, soaps, and snacks. Lawmakers from both major parties called for, and in some cases even implemented, more punitive…
4 months ago
vox.com
A few years ago, Americans saved a lot of money at an unprecedented speed. When the pandemic hit, household spending plummeted as people stayed home and businesses temporarily shut down. At the same time, many of those households saw a dramatic increase in income because of massive federal government spending: higher unemployment payments, universal stimulus checks, and expanded child tax credits. As a result, Americans accumulated trillions of dollars more than they were on track to save before…
5 months ago
vox.com
There’s a scene in Home Alone 2 that stood out to me when I was a kid. It’s the one where Kevin McCallister gets chased through the streets of New York by the two dimwitted burglars known as the Wet Bandits. But it wasn’t the cartoonish chase that grabbed my attention. It was a brief moment that most of the movie’s viewers probably never noticed: An extra, playing a street vendor, was wearing a keffiyeh. The traditional Middle Eastern scarf was on the screen for only a few seconds, but I remembe…
5 months ago
