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Source: https://www.vox.com/rss/index.xml

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<title type="text">Vox</title>
<subtitle type="text">Our world has too much noise and too little context. Vox helps you understand what matters.</subtitle>
<updated>2025-10-30T22:40:09+00:00</updated>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.vox.com" />
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<entry>
<author>
<name>Cameron Peters</name>
</author>
<title type="html"><![CDATA[Why does Trump want the National Guard doing crowd control?]]></title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.vox.com/the-logoff-newsletter-trump/466792/trump-national-guard-quick-reaction-forces-crowd-control" />
<id>https://www.vox.com/466792/the-logoff-template</id>
<updated>2025-10-30T18:40:09-04:00</updated>
<published>2025-10-30T18:40:07-04:00</published>
<category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Donald Trump" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Politics" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="The Logoff" />
<summary type="html"><![CDATA[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 Pentagon is moving to create new National Guard “quick reaction forces” to be used for crowd control around the country.  What’s happening? National Guard […]]]></summary>
<content type="html">
<![CDATA[
<figure>
<img alt="" data-caption="Members of the Ohio National Guard stand outside the Jefferson Memorial on September 20, 2025, in Washington, DC. | Craig Hudson for the Washington Post via Getty Images" data-portal-copyright="Craig Hudson for the Washington Post via Getty Images" data-has-syndication-rights="1" src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/gettyimages-2236613804.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100" />
<figcaption>
Members of the Ohio National Guard stand outside the Jefferson Memorial on September 20, 2025, in Washington, DC. | Craig Hudson for the Washington Post via Getty Images </figcaption>
</figure>
This story appeared in <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-logoff-newsletter-trump" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Logoff</a>, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. <a href="https://www.vox.com/pages/logoff-newsletter-trump-administration-updates" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Subscribe here</a>.
Welcome to The Logoff: The Pentagon is moving to create new National Guard “quick reaction forces” to be used for crowd control around the country. 
What’s happening? National Guard quick reaction forces aren’t new, but the focus on crowd control — “quelling civil disturbances” — is. Existing quick reaction units focus primarily on responding to natural disasters, and aren’t intended for nationwide deployment on short notice. 
The creation of these new units dates back to an August executive order, but <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/29/pentagon-memo-quick-reaction-forces">new reporting this week</a> sheds light on the plan’s implementation. The forces will consist of about 23,500 total National Guard troops across 50 states and three territories, and are intended to be operational by the start of 2026. 
What’s the context? President Donald Trump has already expanded the domestic use of National Guard troops in unprecedented ways, deploying soldiers to Washington, DC, Chicago, and other cities — including, briefly, to Portland, Oregon, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/us/politics/national-guard-portland-trump.html">despite a federal court order</a> to the contrary.
Many deployments have come over the objections of state leaders, including in several cases where Trump has sent Guard troops from one state into another. Both the Chicago and Portland Guard deployments are currently on pause pending litigation; if the Supreme Court sides with Trump, <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/465487/supreme-court-trump-national-guard-illinois-ice-chicago">my colleague Ian Millhiser recently wrote</a>, it “could turn the National Guard into Trump’s personal army.”
Why does this matter? Trump has long expressed an eagerness to deploy the US military against Americans, dating back to his first term in office when he <a href="https://www.axios.com/2022/05/02/mark-esper-book-trump-protesters">reportedly asked</a> if soldiers could “just shoot” racial justice protesters. 
More recently, he told reporters this week that he could “send the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines. I could send anybody I wanted” into American cities, apparently a reference to the Insurrection Act. 
What’s the big picture? The Trump administration’s National Guard deployments already represent an extraordinary extension of US military force domestically. The Pentagon planning documents reported this week suggest those deployments may only be the start. 
<h2 class="wp-block-heading has-text-align-none">And with that, it’s time to log off…</h2>
Hi readers, here’s a cool weather phenomenon for your evening. In New Zealand earlier this month, three photographers hoping to capture the Milky Way ended up seeing something much more rare: “red sprites,” a type of electrical discharge more than 30 miles above the planet. They’re extraordinary to look at, especially with the Milky Way overhead. You can see photos and read the New York Times story about them <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/25/science/red-lightning-new-zealand.html?unlocked_article_code=1.xU8.QEDs.prq7uS_4bCD-&smid=url-share">here</a> (it’s a gift link). Thanks for reading, have a great evening, and we’ll see you tomorrow!
]]>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<author>
<name>Alex Abad-Santos</name>
</author>
<title type="html"><![CDATA[Are you old, or do you know who Sombr is?]]></title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.vox.com/culture/466673/sombr-tik-tok-concert-controversy-explained" />
<id>https://www.vox.com/?p=466673</id>
<updated>2025-10-30T15:52:23-04:00</updated>
<published>2025-10-30T15:55:00-04:00</published>
<category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Celebrity Culture" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Culture" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Internet Culture" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Music" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Social Media" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Technology" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="TikTok" />
<summary type="html"><![CDATA[An inevitable part of getting old is no longer recognizing the names of celebrities and musicians. Slowly and steadily, the more famous young and younger people get, the more their names will seem like incoherent phrases muttered by someone losing their mind, a vegetable side dish, or some kind of cruel trick. At some point, […]]]></summary>
<content type="html">
<![CDATA[
<figure>
<img alt="Sombr onstage, gripping a microphone stand and looking at the crowd" data-caption="This is Sombr, a real-life musician who functions as a litmus test between youths and olds. | Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for MTV" data-portal-copyright="Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for MTV" data-has-syndication-rights="1" src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/gettyimages-2234226858.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100" />
<figcaption>
This is Sombr, a real-life musician who functions as a litmus test between youths and olds. | Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for MTV </figcaption>
</figure>
An inevitable part of getting old is no longer recognizing the names of celebrities and musicians. Slowly and steadily, the more famous young and younger people get, the more their names will seem like incoherent phrases muttered by someone losing their mind, a vegetable side dish, or some kind of cruel trick. At some point, for a certain swath of millennials, Kourtney Kardashian will seem like old Hollywood compared to the likes of <a href="https://x.com/PopCrave/status/1983237254223995203">Terror Jr</a> (who Pop Crave assures me is a person).
Sometimes the only way to combat this and ensure you are not being defrauded by life itself is to accept your own mortality and find a smart, kind, young person and beg them for the truth. It’s not unlike asking a youth to hold on to your arm while crossing a busy street. This is why I chatted with <a href="https://www.vulture.com/author/jason-p.-frank/">Jason P. Frank</a>, a writer at Vulture and sterling member of Gen Z, to explain Sombr — allegedly a person, musician, and currently center of a seemingly impenetrable internet drama — to me (a grumpy millennial).
Jason, my first question to you, a youth, is to please explain to me, in millennial terms: Who is Sombr?
Sombr is a Timothée Chalamet lookalike rock singer, who sounds a little like The 1975 got put through the washing machine and all its big, even sometimes annoying, ideas got shrunken down into a TikTok-sized package. 
Are you sure Sombr is one man or is he simply three skinny children in a coat?
He’s skinny as one man in a coat!
Like Chalamet, he started his career at LaGuardia, a performing arts [high] school in New York. He’s the kind of act that you might remember from the days when groups like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJLD33K474ja0jSpuOzMjGA">Neon Trees</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6R1juCB5ArnJGMmUlEE_fg">Foster the People</a>, or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuLfR3hDx9lUrVWrNVYdWhA">Fun.</a> would break through and manage to get one pop radio hit. Except now there’s no pop radio to hit, so there’s no way to get just one good song out of him and send him home.
Fill in the millennial blank: “If I like ______, I will like Sombr.”
“If I like the song, ‘<a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/4Be8aq6mX3ZmBQFmZJfD4O?si=1ace5f1c0a024a73">I’m Not Going to Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You</a>‘ by Black Kids, I will like Sombr.”
Why does he spell his name like a <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/7wsov6/why_is_tinder_pronounced_as_tinder_but_grinders/">millennial app</a>? Is he trying to trick us?
His name comes from his real-world initials, SMB, and the fact that he was sad when he released his original song. I don’t know why it’s spelled like Grindr, but the fact that he didn’t see the connection is a great indication that he’s straight.
Since it obviously is not me, who is Sombr’s main audience?
His main audience is the same group that loved Panic! at the Disco, Fun., and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDAXusYwRJpiSP2CHnXnVnw">The Neighborhood</a>: There is always a group of teens looking for a cute, self-serious rocker to swoon over and feel emo with. 
And what are adults but simply teens that have become older? Now, from what I’ve heard through various group chats and TikToks that seemed entirely too long to listen to all the way through, Sombr is at the center of a controversy. Are the teens turning on this skinny man?
You can call [the controversy] a millennial-Gen Z divide if you want, but I think the real divide here is between young and old Gen Z. 
This is an important <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/414266/republican-conservative-two-gen-z-young-voter-trumpier-progressive">delineation</a>, 18- to 24-year-olds are wildly different beings from 25- to 29-year-olds. 
It’s a whole different world — the generation was set in stone well before Covid hit, and when you entered lockdown makes such a big developmental difference. 
The drama that started happened because a 25-year-old posted an eight-minute-long TikTok in which she criticized his performance at the Anthem in DC. She noted that she listens to Sombr and that a lot of people her age listen to Sombr, but the truth is that they’re on the older age of his listeners. 
I just clicked on Sombr on Spotify and an ambulance pulled up to my apartment to take me to an assisted living facility. 
Happy birthday by the way, Alex. 
I’m kind of like, If you’re out of college, you can graduate to actual rock music, but whatever. Either way, she was old enough to delineate a bad concert from a good concert, and said in the Tok that you shouldn’t buy a ticket if you’re “over 16.” 
<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-tiktok wp-block-embed-tiktok"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="tiktok-embed" cite="https://www.tiktok.com/@meganator__/video/7561494581523549454" data-video-id="7561494581523549454" data-embed-from="oembed"> <section> <a target="_blank" title="@meganator__" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@meganator__?refer=embed">@meganator__</a> idk what i expected but it was certainly not that <a target="_blank" title="♬ original sound - 𝓂𝑒𝑔💌" href="https://www.tiktok.com/music/original-sound-7561494657964722958?refer=embed">♬ original sound – 𝓂𝑒𝑔💌</a> </section> </blockquote>
</div></figure>
I like the idea of punishing children with a bad concert. 
Sombr then responded to the viral TikTok, all pissed off, and his young fans attacked the girl and called her old. She’s 25! Not old! (The 26-year-old says, feeling extremely old.) So Sombr’s fans and <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/slang/opps">opps</a> are both Gen Z, but the intra-generational lines have been drawn.
So the fight about Sombr is, at least, a little bit about being young and, perhaps, weaponizing a child army to wipe out your enemy. I don’t think one has to enjoy Sombr to understand that. 
Final question: Do you think Sombr’s fame will outlive his controversy? Or is this the sombr end? 
I mean yeah, I do think he’ll weather this particular controversy. It feels like the kind of thing that will only galvanize his hardcore fan base, who can’t pay for concert tickets anyway. Maybe it’ll even force his label to pay for him to get the training needed to be good onstage. Then, when he gets inevitably nominated for Best New Artist at the Grammy Awards and performs better than expected, it’ll be a great narrative. Congrats to Sombr in advance for that.

]]>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<author>
<name>Gina Barton</name>
</author>
<title type="html"><![CDATA[The messy truth about free speech]]></title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.vox.com/videos/466309/free-speech-jimmy-kimmel-fcc-rights" />
<id>https://www.vox.com/?post_type=vm_video_post&p=466309</id>
<updated>2025-10-30T14:37:27-04:00</updated>
<published>2025-10-30T14:30:00-04:00</published>
<category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Democracy" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Politics" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Video" />
<summary type="html"><![CDATA[On September 15, Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show opening monologue included comments about the shooting of right-wing media figure Charlie Kirk and how the “MAGA gang” was “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.”  Soon after, Brendan Carr, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission and […]]]></summary>
<content type="html">
<![CDATA[
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<img alt="Split photo of Donald Trump and Jimmy Kimmel" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Getty Images" data-has-syndication-rights="1" src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/the-messy-truth-about-free-speech_4cb03d.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100" />
<figcaption>
</figcaption>
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On September 15, Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show opening monologue included comments about the shooting of right-wing media figure Charlie Kirk and how the “MAGA gang” was “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.” 
Soon after, Brendan Carr, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission and an appointee of President Donald Trump, appeared on a conservative podcast and threatened to act against ABC and its parent company, Disney, for Kimmel’s remarks. On September 17, <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/461887/jimmy-kimmel-suspension-air-abc-charlie-kirk-nexstar">ABC and Disney suspended</a> Jimmy Kimmel Live! 
Kimmel’s suspension launched a national debate and protest around freedom of speech and satire. From celebrities like Wanda Sykes to Republicans like Sen. Ted Cruz, people from across the spectrum weighed in on the decision. The show returned days later on September 23, but the FCC’s actions left many questioning whether Kimmel’s First Amendment rights were violated.
This incident is just one of many instances of the gray areas of free speech making its way into the news cycle. In this latest Vox video, we take a look at the origins of the “inalienable right” to free speech, how the Supreme Court has determined the boundaries of speech (including hate speech), and where free speech might be headed next with a six-justice majority of Republican appointees. As this issue <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/461597/free-speech-charlie-kirk-death-first-amendment-incitement-misinformation">continues to evolve</a>, social media is one of the latest modes of communication, adding new layers of complexity to this age-old debate. Watch our <a href="https://youtu.be/Jik3F9zUXgo" data-type="link" data-id="https://youtu.be/xYFgJw01IDs">latest video</a> on free speech and others like it on our <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@Vox">YouTube channel</a>.

]]>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<author>
<name>Kenny Torrella</name>
</author>
<title type="html"><![CDATA[We may never get bird flu — or egg prices — under control]]></title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/466446/bird-flu-vaccine-eggs-chicken" />
<id>https://www.vox.com/?p=466446</id>
<updated>2025-10-30T12:33:01-04:00</updated>
<published>2025-10-30T12:35:00-04:00</published>
<category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Animal Welfare" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Economy" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Future Perfect" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Money" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Processing Meat" />
<summary type="html"><![CDATA[It might now be a distant memory, but by the end of last winter, the average cost of a dozen eggs soared to a record high of $6.23. (It’s now at $3.49.) The cause was H5N1, a highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza — or bird flu — that wild birds shed near farms as […]]]></summary>
<content type="html">
<![CDATA[
<figure>
<img alt="A hen in the foreground with a black background" data-caption="Bird flu is surging again on US poultry operations this fall, leading to the culling of 7.3 million birds since early September. | Leon Neal/Getty Images" data-portal-copyright="Leon Neal/Getty Images" data-has-syndication-rights="1" src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/GettyImages-2228338431_152052.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100" />
<figcaption>
Bird flu is surging again on US poultry operations this fall, leading to the culling of 7.3 million birds since early September. | Leon Neal/Getty Images </figcaption>
</figure>
It might now be a distant memory, but by the end of last winter, the average <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000708111">cost of a dozen eggs</a> soared to a record high of $6.23. (It’s now at $3.49.)
The cause was H5N1, a highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza — or <a href="https://www.vox.com/bird-flu">bird flu</a> — that wild birds shed near farms as they migrate for the winter. It’s now surging again in US poultry operations and could result in another winter of high egg prices — and tens of millions of dead birds. 
Over the last two months, the virus was detected on nearly 50 commercial poultry farms, leading to the <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23963820/bird-flu-surge-us-ventilation-shutdown-veterinarians">mass culling</a> of 7.3 million farmed birds — more than during the same period in previous years. Three-quarters of those birds were egg-laying hens from just three egg factory farms. 
<img src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/RSDds-over-7-million-farmed-birds-have-already-been-killed-as-a-result-of-bird-flu-this-fall-2.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100" alt="Over 7 million farmed birds have already been killed" title="Over 7 million farmed birds have already been killed" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="" />
Although that culling involves an enormous amount of animal suffering, the deaths represent less than 2 percent of US egg-laying hens, which, for now, isn’t enough to meaningfully affect egg prices. 
But given the early wave of mortality across a range of species compared to the last couple years,<s> </s>the sheer number of farms that have reported outbreaks, and the fact that a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/08/health/bird-flu-variant-nevada-human-case">newer bird flu variant</a> has become dominant, it “doesn’t bode well for a quiet year” for the virus, <a href="https://www.vet.cornell.edu/about-us/people/krysten-schuler">Krysten Schuler</a> — an associate research professor of public and ecosystem health at Cornell University — told me in an email.
For nearly four years, bird flu has wreaked havoc on the US poultry industry and the birds themselves. <a href="https://www.aphis.usda.gov/sites/default/files/hpai-depopulation-disposal.pdf">Federal policy</a> requires that as soon as the virus is detected on a farm, the entire flock must be killed to slow the spread of the disease. So far, poultry farms have killed more than <a href="https://www.aphis.usda.gov/livestock-poultry-disease/avian/avian-influenza/hpai-detections/commercial-backyard-flocks">180 million birds</a> since the start of the outbreak in early 2022. And the prevailing method of killing is grim: Producers close barn vents and pump in heat to raise the temperature, which slowly — and <a href="https://theintercept.com/2022/04/14/killing-chickens-bird-flu-vsd/">painfully</a> — kills the birds via <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23963820/bird-flu-surge-us-ventilation-shutdown-veterinarians">heat stroke</a> over several hours.
The virus has also spilled over to infect <a href="https://www.fao.org/animal-health/situation-updates/global-aiv-with-zoonotic-potential/bird-species-affected-by-h5nx-hpai/en?fbclid=IwY2xjawJBNJVleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHXjrgdsxDiVY31-svDHVEVzSHa3Sq5_ZzJwMkDOcrTzDxK2n5UNopOtyXQ_aem_zvon3ViBbCJLSSONfXFswQ">hundreds of other bird species and mammals</a>, including <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24128700/bird-fludairy-meat-industry-h5n1-cows-milk-eggs-safety">dairy cows</a>, foxes, bears, seals, and <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/risk-factors/bird-flu-in-pets.html">pet cats</a>. Seventy human cases have been reported in the US, including <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2025/m0106-h5-birdflu-death.html">one death</a>. Scientists are increasingly worried that the virus could <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00245-6">evolve into the next human pandemic</a>.
And it’s been a costly disease. The government has spent billions to manage it, including compensating egg and dairy producers for their losses, while consumers have spent an additional <a href="https://innovateanimalag.org/hpai-costs-2025">$14.5 billion on eggs</a> in 2024 and 2025 alone, according to one estimate. 
<div class="wp-block-vox-media-highlight vox-media-highlight">
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">This story was first featured in the <a href="https://www.vox.com/pages/processing-meat-newsletter-signup" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.vox.com/pages/processing-meat-newsletter-signup">Processing Meat newsletter</a></h2>
Sign up <a href="https://www.vox.com/pages/processing-meat-newsletter-signup" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.vox.com/pages/processing-meat-newsletter-signup">here</a> for <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect">Future Perfect</a>’s biweekly newsletter from <a href="https://www.vox.com/authors/marina-bolotnikova" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.vox.com/authors/marina-bolotnikova">Marina Bolotnikova</a> and <a href="https://www.vox.com/authors/kenny-torrella" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.vox.com/authors/kenny-torrella">Kenny Torrella</a>, exploring how the meat and dairy industries shape our health, politics, culture, environment, and more.
Have questions or comments on this newsletter? Email us at futureperfect@vox.com!
</div>
Through it all, the egg, chicken, and turkey industries have relied on improving biosecurity on farms — like sealing barn openings and disinfecting vehicles and equipment — in an effort to keep the virus out and killing infected flocks when that doesn’t work. 
Several effective bird flu vaccines for use in poultry birds have been licensed in the US, which you’d think would be a no-brainer solution to the outbreak. But they’ve yet to be deployed, because they’d disrupt international trade for the chicken meat industry. 
But now, the egg and turkey sectors — which are disproportionately affected by bird flu — are attempting to change that and are <a href="https://www.agriculture.com/usda-develops-potential-plan-to-vaccinate-poultry-for-bird-flu-11758561?">pushing for the US Department of Agriculture</a> to advance a vaccination program.
Earlier this year, the trade group United Egg Producers wrote in a <a href="https://hickmanseggs.com/avian-PDF/UEP-Board-Approved-HPAI-Vaccination-and-Surveillance-Plan.pdf">report</a> sent to the USDA that the approach of killing birds and beefing up biosecurity is “no longer adequate to prevent and control this devastating disease” and that “it is time for a new approach.” 
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The egg industry’s bird flu vaccine plan — and why it hasn’t moved forward</h2>
To mitigate the impact of the virus, the egg and turkey industries wouldn’t need to vaccinate all of their 300 million hens or 200 million turkeys. Instead, they would focus on farms located in the <a href="https://www.foodbusinessnews.net/articles/29233-egg-industry-seeks-action-as-hpai-devastates-flocks">four major flyways</a> where wild birds migrate and shed the virus, which is where farms have been hardest hit by bird flu.
While many egg and turkey producers are eager to start vaccination programs, the US doesn’t let them over concerns that it would impact the chicken meat industry’s bottom line. 
Last year, chicken meat companies exported <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/poultry-eggs/sector-at-a-glance">14 percent</a> of their product, which is valued at <a href="https://www.feedstuffs.com/livestock-and-poultry-market-news/poultry-and-egg-export-volumes-lower-to-close-out-2024">$4.7 billion</a>. But most of the countries that import American chicken meat would <a href="https://www.nationalchickencouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Letter-to-USDA-Re-HPAI-Vaccine.pdf">pause those imports</a> if any farmed birds in the US are vaccinated, even if no chickens raised for meat are vaccinated.
The reason behind these blanket bans stems from importing countries’ concerns around the so-called “DIVA” problem, which is short for “differentiating infected from vaccinated animals.” It represents the challenge of identifying whether a poultry bird is infected with bird flu or simply has avian influenza antibodies from vaccination.
That’s led the chicken meat industry, for now, to firmly oppose vaccination of any poultry birds in the US. “Until we have written assurances and trade protections in place with our trading partners, we will continue to oppose vaccination for Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI),” a spokesperson with the National Chicken Council wrote in an email to Vox. (Losing $4.7 billion in export value would also lead to an oversupply of chicken in the US, which would hurt the industry’s profits.)
<figure class="wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-2 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex"><img src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/Screenshot-2025-10-29-at-6.00.22%E2%80%AFPM-2.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=7.8981723237598,0,84.20365535248,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="In 2022, over 5 million egg-laying hens were culled after bird flu was detected at a farm in Iowa owned by the egg giant Rembrandt. Here, the dead birds are being sent through a chute into a large truck for disposal. | Direct Action Everywhere/Open Wing Alliance/We Animals" data-portal-copyright="Direct Action Everywhere/Open Wing Alliance/We Animals" />
<img src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/GettyImages-2242649710.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0.86092715231788,100,98.278145695364" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="Bodies of cranes that presumably died of bird flu are seen in the bucket of a wheel loader transporting them over a field near Linum, eastern Germany, on October 24, 2025. | Ralf Hirschberger/AFP via Getty Images" data-portal-copyright="Ralf Hirschberger/AFP via Getty Images" /></figure>
But <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/11/22/23472207/bird-flu-vaccine-turkey-prices-chickens-hens-cull-depopulation">experts</a> say this concern from trading partners can be overcome through increased disease surveillance combined with testing. 
Despite the persistent, ongoing spread of bird flu in the US, other countries are able to continue safely importing US poultry products by temporarily suspending imports from certain regions — usually a state or county — actively experiencing an outbreak. The USDA surveils the affected area for bird flu and tests birds until the virus is no longer detected and trade resumes once the US has proven that exports are safe.
“It would be the same approach here with the vaccination strategy,” John Clifford, a former USDA chief veterinary officer and current adviser to the USA Poultry and Egg Export Council, told me. The US would show trading partners “how the US would still protect them, and we would not be shipping them any products that would be unsafe.” 
There’s precedent for this approach. Since late 2023, France has been vaccinating ducks against the bird flu, which has proven to be <a href="https://www.wattagnet.com/poultry-meat/diseases-health/avian-influenza/news/15768593/france-resumes-hpai-vaccination-program">highly effective</a>. But in response, the US and Canada banned poultry imports from France, which the countries lifted early this year after French authorities “succeeded in convincing the American and Canadian authorities of the safety” of vaccination, according to <a href="https://www.euromeatnews.com/Article-United-States-and-Canada-lift-of-embargo-on-poultry-imports-from-France/8118">Euro Meat News</a>. The vaccination program has cost French duck producers a little under <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/france-kicks-off-bird-flu-vaccination-despite-trade-backlash-risk-2023-10-02/">$2 per bird</a>.
In June, the USDA <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/usda-develops-potential-plan-vaccinate-poultry-bird-flu-2025-06-20/">announced</a> it was developing a vaccination plan to show to countries that import US chicken meat as a way to gauge whether vaccination would disrupt trade. The update represented forward momentum, but some scientific experts, and some in the egg industry, are becoming increasingly impatient with the USDA’s reluctance to allow egg producers to vaccinate.
The agency is, according to them, putting the chicken meat industry’s financial well-being above the massive impacts the bird flu has had on egg, turkey, and dairy producers. I would add that it’s also putting it above American consumers, animal welfare, and broader public health concerns.   
The USDA didn’t respond to a request for comment.  
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Actually measuring the cost of bird flu</h2>
Glenn Hickman, a large egg producer in Arizona who had to cull millions of hens earlier this year, has been direct about how he feels about the status quo. “The reason we’re not vaccinating chickens in this country today is because of trade implications…but I’m past caring,” Hickman <a href="https://www.feedstuffs.com/agribusiness-news/hickman-details-slow-motion-wreck-from-bird-flu">told</a> the agricultural publication Feedstuffs in July. “I’d like to vaccinate my chickens and protect my flock, and I cannot because of the obstacles that the poultry meat industry is putting in front of this.”
The argument that we shouldn’t vaccinate egg-laying hens and turkeys in order to protect $5 billion or so in chicken meat exports doesn’t sit well with <a href="https://vetmed.umn.edu/bio/college-of-veterinary-medicine/carol-cardona">Carol Cardona</a>, a professor at the University of Minnesota’s College of Veterinary Medicine. Cardona told me that when people say the cost of vaccination is too high, she says “the cost of outbreaks is too high.”
“We’re not necessarily measuring” the cost of not vaccinating, Cardona said. 
Those costs, she said, include:
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>The virus evolving to infect <a href="https://www.fao.org/animal-health/situation-updates/global-aiv-with-zoonotic-potential/bird-species-affected-by-h5nx-hpai/en?fbclid=IwY2xjawJBNJVleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHXjrgdsxDiVY31-svDHVEVzSHa3Sq5_ZzJwMkDOcrTzDxK2n5UNopOtyXQ_aem_zvon3ViBbCJLSSONfXFswQ">hundreds of new bird and mammal species</a>.</li>
<li>The environmental impact of raising so many poultry birds who are never consumed.</li>
<li>The burden on human health and the cost of preventing human infections.</li>
<li>The mental health impact on farmers, veterinarians, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/apr/28/egg-factory-avian-flu-chickens-culled-workers-fired-iowa">farm workers</a>.</li>
<li>Infections reported at more than 1,000 US dairy farms, resulting in illness for an unknown number of cows and <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-61553-z">economic losses for dairy producers</a>.</li>
</ul>
There are also, of course, the 182 million birds killed — mostly via painful heat stroke — in the US alone, along with the billions in taxpayer dollars spent to <a href="https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2024/05/30/usda-announces-824-million-new-funding-protect-livestock-health-launches-voluntary-h5n1-dairy-herd">suppress the virus and compensate</a> <a href="https://www.farmforward.com/publications/subsidizing-the-spread-bird-flu-bailouts-expand-from-poultry-to-dairy/">egg and dairy producers</a> for their losses.
As far as I’m aware, no economist has put a comprehensive dollar amount on the bird flu’s annual toll, but it’s likely much higher than the economic damage it would do to the chicken meat industry. Until policymakers take a more holistic outlook on the industry’s bird flu crisis, those most vulnerable to it — animals, farm workers, and consumers — will continue to bear the heavy burden of this deadly virus. 
]]>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<author>
<name>Joshua Keating</name>
</author>
<title type="html"><![CDATA[Trump isn’t interested in war with China. But it might be interested in him.]]></title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.vox.com/politics/466624/xi-trump-trade-nukes-taiwan" />
<id>https://www.vox.com/?p=466624</id>
<updated>2025-10-30T15:53:12-04:00</updated>
<published>2025-10-30T11:45:00-04:00</published>
<category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="China" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Defense & Security" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Donald Trump" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Politics" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="World Politics" />
<summary type="html"><![CDATA[Since President Donald Trump’s second term began, his administration’s approach to China has been arguably the toughest aspect of its foreign policy to parse. In part, that’s because the top members of Trump’s team haven’t always seemed to be on the same page with each other or with the president on the question of just […]]]></summary>
<content type="html">
<![CDATA[
<figure>
<img alt="Trump laughing while walking with Xi." data-caption="President Donald Trump takes part in a welcoming ceremony with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, on November 9, 2017, in Beijing during Trump’s first term in office. | Thomas Peter/Pool/Getty Images" data-portal-copyright="Thomas Peter/Pool/Getty Images" data-has-syndication-rights="1" src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/gettyimages-871894534.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100" />
<figcaption>
President Donald Trump takes part in a welcoming ceremony with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, on November 9, 2017, in Beijing during Trump’s first term in office. | Thomas Peter/Pool/Getty Images </figcaption>
</figure>
Since President Donald Trump’s second term began, his administration’s approach to China has been arguably the toughest aspect of its foreign policy to parse. In part, that’s because the top members of Trump’s team haven’t always seemed to be on the same page <a href="https://www.vox.com/world-politics/386680/trump-foreign-policy-rubio-hegseth-waltz-gabbard">with each other or with the president</a> on the question of just how confrontational to be with America’s closest superpower rival.
If there was something of an emerging consensus, it was that Trump has been willing to confront China on trade and economic issues — though through its <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/77eabb2b-e422-4863-86e1-1a6948ecf368">effective weaponization of rare earth mineral supply chains</a>, the nation has proved tougher to pressure via trade than most other countries on the receiving end of Trump’s tariffs. At the same time, he has been less interested in competing militarily and geopolitically with China, a competition that has consumed much of Washington — including his own first-term administration — in recent years.
Heading into Trump’s meeting on Thursday with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea, Semafor’s Ben Smith predicted the occasion would “<a href="https://www.semafor.com/article/10/27/2025/trump-is-poised-to-end-washingtons-decade-of-the-china-hawks">end Washington’s decade of China hawks</a>.” The fear among many was that Xi would exploit Trump’s desperation for a trade deal for concessions on the geopolitical questions he knows Trump is less interested in. In particular, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/china/trump-xi-talks-china-taiwan-8ed82d1b">Xi is reportedly seeking a statement from Trump</a> formally opposing Taiwan’s independence. (The current US position is that it does not support a unilateral move toward Taiwan independence. That might not seem like a major distinction, but this is a conflict where subtleties like this can have enormous consequences.) <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/ahead-xi-meeting-white-house-aides-worry-trump-will-say-taiwan-rcna239949">Before the meeting</a>, one Trump aide told NBC News that “everyone is holding their breath” to hear what he would say about Taiwan.
In the end, according to Trump, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/key-issues-trump-xi-talks-south-korea-2025-10-30/">the issue did not even come up</a> at the meeting in Korea. In the talks that Trump rated a “12 out of 10,” the two leaders reached a truce of sorts of trade issues: Trump said he would reduce tariffs on China by 10 percentage points, while Xi agreed to resume US soybean purchases, lift restrictions on rare earths exports, and <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/406336/fentanyl-china-canada-mexico-trump">promised to crack down</a> on Chinese exports of chemicals that are used to make fentanyl.
So, has the temperature been lowered? Well, sure — for all issues but the small matter of nuclear war. 
<h2 class="wp-block-heading has-text-align-none">Trump drops a nuclear “bombshell”</h2>
Just minutes ahead of the meeting with Xi, Trump posted a message on Truth Social announcing that he had ordered the resumption of nuclear testing:
<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-truth-social wp-block-embed-truth-social"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<div class="iframely-embed"><div class="iframely-responsive"><a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/115460423936412555" data-iframely-url="https://cdn.iframe.ly/api/iframe?maxheight=750&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftruthsocial.com%2F%40realDonaldTrump%2Fposts%2F115460423936412555%3F__cf_chl_tk%3DZaI4p88BHnP.psZvm2uP2itD84Grnzw1M9TCdMrnBFU-1761822637-1.0.1.1-EQ3Xxz.BNZz1_9qmvB6lg2Ay4FzJzom1F4GMwVAEc0A&key=a95589c51263af39f0de8ef8737db4f3"></a></div></div>
</div></figure>
It’s hard to know exactly how to interpret this announcement since most of it is inaccurate. <a href="https://fas.org/initiative/status-world-nuclear-forces/">Russia has more nuclear weapons</a> than the United States; the ongoing US nuclear modernization program is years from completion. China is building up its arsenal, but it won’t be even with the US in five years under even <a href="https://authory.com/JoshuaKeating/Chinas-plan-to-be-the-next-nuclear-superpower-ada094a58e6db44acad90284fc2d087d4">the most dire Pentagon estimates</a>. The Department of Energy, not Defense, is responsible for nuclear testing.
No country, other than North Korea, has actually detonated a nuclear weapon since the 1990s. It’s possible Trump was referring to Russia’s recent test of a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/china/putin-says-russia-tested-poseidon-nuclear-capable-super-torpedo-2025-10-29/">nuclear-capable and nuclear-powered torpedo</a>. 
Trump didn’t answer a reporter’s question about the announcement in Korea, and the White House has not yet responded to Vox’s request for clarification. Though the US has never ratified the global treaty banning nuclear tests, it hasn’t carried one out since 1992. But there has been speculation this could change. The <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/392807/nucear-risk-weapons-arms-race">Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 suggested</a> that the US should “indicate a willingness to conduct nuclear tests in response to adversary nuclear developments if necessary.” But this announcement is not motivated by technical necessity; the US and other nuclear states have a number of ways of testing the reliability of their arsenals without actually detonating them. Rather, it’s driven by a desire to demonstrate the credibility of the US deterrent.
If Trump actually means a return to active nuclear testing — detonating warheads — that would be a major escalation that could prompt reciprocal moves from Russia and China. It’s a tough move to square with his repeatedly stated desire for “<a href="https://thebulletin.org/2025/02/trump-wants-to-initiate-denuclearization-talks-with-russia-and-china/">denuclearization</a>” talks with both Russia and China.
Whatever he actually intends, the timing just before a meeting billed as a deescalation of US-China tensions doesn’t seem coincidental. 
<h2 class="wp-block-heading has-text-align-none">Is there still risk of a clash over Taiwan?</h2>
There will be some sighs of relief in both Washington and Taipei that Trump did not “sell out” Taiwan’s autonomy for a deal on soybeans. That doesn’t mean the issue — the most likely flashpoint that could cause a US-China military conflict — is likely to go away. Trump may not be interested in war with China, but war with China could still be interested in him.
Trump has said he does not believe Xi will attack Taiwan, despite the island being the “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/20/trump-china-taiwan-invasion-xi-jinping">apple of his eye</a>,” and that may well be true given how daunting an <a href="https://authory.com/JoshuaKeating/Could-the-US-and-China-actually-go-to-war-over-Taiwan-Imagining-the-unimaginable-ac08ba446e8ca4c4285b79969439856a1">all-out amphibious invasion</a> could be with or without US involvement. But China’s moves to ramp up pressure on the country — which <a href="https://www.vox.com/world-politics/390895/china-taiwan-conflict">Beijing considers a rebellious province</a> — seem more plausible. Those moves could range from increasing cyberattacks, to seizing one of Taiwan’s smaller outlying islands, to imposing a <a href="https://www.vox.com/world-politics/390895/china-taiwan-conflict">full blockade</a>. And these possibilities that fall short of total conquest raise the question of how the US would respond.
Under <a href="https://www.ait.org.tw/policy-history/taiwan-relations-act/">legislation passed in 1979</a>, the US is obligated to take measures to help Taiwan resist any use of force to change its status, but subsequent administrations have long been coy about whether this would mean actually using military force to protect Taiwan from invasion — a policy known as “strategic ambiguity.” Joe Biden came about as close as any president ever had to abandoning this policy, saying on four separate occasions that he believed the US was obligated to defend Taiwan, though administration officials always walked these statements back.
Trump has not said anything like that, which Jason Hsu, a former Taiwanese legislator and who is currently a senior fellow at Hudson Institute, told me may actually be for the best. “If he said, ‘Okay, America would defend Taiwan,’ then that would make Taiwan relax,” Hsu said. In Taiwan’s neighborhood, relaxation can be dangerous. “We need to get ourselves together and bolster our self-defense.”
At the same time, this is clearly not the Trump administration posture toward Taiwan that many were expecting. When I <a href="https://www.vox.com/world-politics/390895/china-taiwan-conflict">visited Taiwan last year</a>, just prior to the US election, I found officials and ordinary citizens fairly optimistic about what a potential second Trump administration would mean for them. It’s not hard to understand why. During his first term, Trump broke precedent by <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38191711">speaking directly with Taiwan’s president</a>. He dispatched <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-taiwan-us-2nd-senior-trump-admin-official-visits-taipei-fueling-row-with-beijing/">two Cabinet officials to visit the country</a> — the highest-level US official visits to the country since the 1970s. And he <a href="https://www.csis.org/blogs/new-perspectives-asia/how-biden-building-trumps-legacy-taiwan">increased arms sales</a>, including some systems that the Obama administration had withheld. Trump’s first term secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, later <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/us-should-recognise-taiwan-former-top-diplomat-pompeo-says-2022-03-04/">called in 2022 for the US to formally recognize Taiwan’s independence</a>.
In this term, by contrast, as Trump has pursued a US-China trade deal, he has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/09/18/trump-taiwan-arms-sales-military-aid/">declined to approve $400 million in arms sales</a> to Taiwan, and he told Taiwan’s president, William Lai, to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/30/world/asia/trump-taiwan-china.html">avoid a stopover in New York in July</a>. 
But the Pentagon is not out of the China competition game entirely. Also just ahead of Thursday’s Trump-Xi meeting, CBS reported that the US military’s Indo-Pacific Command had given an order for a “show of force” operation to deter Chinese aggression in the South China Sea — though it’s unclear if the US <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/u-s-show-of-force-chinese-aggression-south-china-sea-trump-xi-meeting/">operation will actually be carried out</a>. Trump also announced on Thursday that the US would allow South Korea to access the technology <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/10/29/trump-south-korea-nuclear-submarine/">needed to build a nuclear submarine</a>, another move that China is likely to see as provocative.
<h2 class="wp-block-heading has-text-align-none">Are we sleepwalking into war? </h2>
Still, overall, the administration has signaled that preparing for military confrontation with China is not a major issue. The <a href="https://www.vox.com/world-politics/24107959/replicator-drones-china-taiwan-ukraine-pentagon">fleet of autonomous drones</a> that the Pentagon had been building to surveil China is <a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/pentagon-ai-weapons-delay-0f560d7e?mod=Searchresults&pos=1&page=1">well behind schedule</a>. The Pentagon’s forthcoming national security strategy is <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/05/pentagon-national-defense-strategy-china-homeland-western-hemisphere-00546310">expected to downgrade</a> Chinese competition, to place it below border security and Western Hemisphere issues.
“I think the Biden administration was strategic, but not ambiguous,” Zack Cooper, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who studies US-China competition, told Vox. “The Trump administration is ambiguous, but maybe not very strategic.”
Given what we know about <a href="https://www.vox.com/world-politics/459513/trump-globalist-foreign-policy">Trump’s attitude toward the use of military force</a> — he prefers quick, decisive strikes against weaker targets like Iran, the Houthis, or alleged drug boats in the Caribbean that don’t have any capacity to retaliate or get the US involved in a protracted conflict — it’s hard to imagine him getting embroiled in a conflict with China. Even under the most optimistic scenarios (ones that don’t go nuclear), a war like that would involve the kind of losses that the US hasn’t seen since World War II.
“In a Taiwan scenario, if you bomb China, they’re going to bomb you back,” said Jennifer Kavanagh, senior fellow at Defense Priorities. 
Kavanagh, who advocates a policy of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/opinion/taiwan-china-war-trump.html">dialing back the US defense buildup in Asia</a>, said that as Taiwan manages its own relations with Beijing and prepares for potential military conflict, “I think it’s really important to assume that the US won’t come.”
On the other hand, Trump is nothing if not unpredictable, as the nuclear testing announcement on the eve of his summit demonstrated. The next few years of history in Asia may hinge on just how much Xi is willing to test that unpredictability.  
]]>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<author>
<name>Adam Clark Estes</name>
</author>
<title type="html"><![CDATA[Elon Musk made his own Wikipedia. What could go wrong?]]></title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.vox.com/technology/466568/elon-musk-grokipedia-wikipedia-competitor-grok-xai" />
<id>https://www.vox.com/?p=466568</id>
<updated>2025-10-30T10:28:11-04:00</updated>
<published>2025-10-30T07:30:00-04:00</published>
<category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Artificial Intelligence" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Elon Musk" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Influence" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Innovation" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Technology" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Technology & Media" />
<summary type="html"><![CDATA[Grokipedia, Elon Musk’s attempt at creating an alternative to Wikipedia, is now live. Early analysis suggests that the site — powered by Musk’s xAI and fact-checked by Grok, the company’s right-leaning AI assistant — is already a sort of self-sustaining nuclear reaction of misinformation. More than anything, though, Grokipedia represents another front of Musk’s war […]]]></summary>
<content type="html">
<![CDATA[
<figure>
<img alt="A man holds up a cardboard cutout of Elon Musk overhead, surrounded by other protesters and signs, in London." data-caption="A man holds up a cardboard cutout of Elon Musk during a protest against a visit by President Donald Trump to the UK on September 17, 2025." data-portal-copyright="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/GettyImages-2235955651.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100" />
<figcaption>
A man holds up a cardboard cutout of Elon Musk during a protest against a visit by President Donald Trump to the UK on September 17, 2025. </figcaption>
</figure>
Grokipedia, Elon Musk’s attempt at creating an alternative to Wikipedia, is now live. Early analysis suggests that the site — powered by Musk’s xAI and fact-checked by Grok, the company’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/technology/elon-musk-grok-conservative-chatbot.html">right-leaning AI assistant</a> — is already a sort of self-sustaining nuclear reaction of misinformation.
More than anything, though, Grokipedia represents another front of Musk’s war on wokeness and another example of Musk taking a thing that works — in this case, Wikipedia — creating a broken version of it, and declaring the battle won. 
If Musk gets his way and Grokipedia does become a real Wikipedia competitor, the average internet user faces a problem. We’ve already seen how Musk can flex his wealth and power to turn one platform, X, <a href="https://www.vox.com/technology/383336/trump-election-elon-musk-misinformation">into a misinformation machine</a>. Creating a repository of that misinformation, one that might train xAI’s model or even competing AI models, is bound to accelerate its spread.
It’s not just that Grokipedia might be bad. It might make the rest of the web worse with it.
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The road to Grokipedia</h2>
Grokipedia appears to use Wikipedia as its primary source, but injects some far-right politics and conspiracy theories into certain topics before presenting the information as fact. There are currently no photos and no links, which makes the whole thing look a bit like the results of a chatbot prompt, which it effectively is. Grokipedia is also roughly seven times smaller than Wikipedia. But this is just version v0.1, and Musk <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1982983035906842651">says</a>, “Version 1.0 will be 10x better.”
I was quite surprised to see there was no article for “apartheid,” but if you looked up “white genocide theory” — one of Musk’s ideological obsessions and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/may/14/elon-musk-grok-white-genocide">the center of many unhinged Grok rants</a> earlier this year — you’ll find an article that bemoans academia’s tendency to “relegate the theory to fringe conspiracy status despite the observable data on population trajectories.” Wikipedia, for what it’s worth, refers to this theory <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_genocide_conspiracy_theory">as a conspiracy theory</a> in its article’s title.
To understand Grokipedia, you have to know its origin story, which can be traced back to <a href="https://x.com/DavidSacks/status/1972750330459996558?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1972992095859433671%7Ctwgr%5E052973061692a7eb86e17fbceb0e98c80a7d359a%7Ctwcon%5Es3_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Ftechnology%2F2025%2F10%2F27%2Fgrokipedia-wikipedia-musk-%2F">a tweet from President Donald Trump’s AI czar</a>, venture capitalist, and longtime Elon pal David Sacks. The September 29 tweet read, in part, “Wikipedia is hopelessly biased. An army of left-wing activists maintain the bios and fight reasonable corrections.”
It really feels like Sacks was tweeting directly at Musk, who has been ramping up his criticism of Wikipedia all year. Last Christmas Eve, Musk <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1871443771424116954?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1871443771424116954%7Ctwgr%5Ee3538a12ce60ee70192201b3f0c6ddf73c13bd9d%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.snopes.com%2Ffact-check%2Felon-musk-stop-donating-wikipedia%2F">told his followers</a> to “Stop donating to Wokepedia,” claiming that the organization was overspending on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Musk <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/02/elon-musk-wikipedia/681577/">has called</a> Wikipedia “an extension of legacy media propaganda,” and <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1972992095859433671?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1972992095859433671%7Ctwgr%5E052973061692a7eb86e17fbceb0e98c80a7d359a%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Ftechnology%2F2025%2F10%2F27%2Fgrokipedia-wikipedia-musk-%2F">announced that xAI would build Grokipedia</a> in response to Sacks’s tweet.
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The blurry jpeg theory of the internet</h2>
When I heard about Grokipedia’s launch, I immediately thought of what I call <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/chatgpt-is-a-blurry-jpeg-of-the-web">“the blurry jpeg” piece that the New Yorker published</a> in 2023. Written by the science fiction author Ted Chiang, the article does a great job explaining the then-unfamiliar concept of large language models, how they generate synthetic text based on real writing, and whether they can accurately communicate genuine knowledge.
The blurry jpeg he talks about refers to the problem of uploading an image to the web, which requires compression; downloading the lower-resolution version; and doing that over and over again. Eventually, the image becomes unrecognizable because so much information is lost in the process of copying a copy.
This has been happening to information on the web from its earliest days. And in a sense, this idea of downloading, remixing, and redistributing content has been what’s made the web so fun. Blogging, which got me and many others started in journalism, often amounts to reading what’s happening online, processing the ideas, and repackaging them for a particular audience, sometimes with a slant and usually in a post shorter than the source material. Tweeting, a descendant of blogging, compressed those posts even more, but the medium retained the basic goal of democratizing and accelerating the spread of knowledge and ideas online. Wikipedia, in its most basic form, does this, too.
But inevitably, as with jpegs or sheets of paper sent through old-fashioned Xerox machines, making copies of copies blurs out certain details, often ones that seem less important. The compression makes it easier to share the data but harder to find your way back to the original source. 
That seems to be happening with Grokipedia. It’s not clear exactly how xAI built it, but Matteo Wong <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2025/10/grokipedia-elon-musk/684730/?gift=iWa_iB9lkw4UuiWbIbrWGfiDsXn1Rd9onjE7AP9QHtM">offers a theory over at the Atlantic</a>. The world’s richest man bought Twitter and welcomed the most extreme right-wing voices onto the platform. “Then he fed this repository of conspiracy theories, vitriol, and memes into an AI model already designed not to shy away from controversial or even hateful views,” Wong writes. “Finally, Musk used that AI model to write an anti-woke encyclopedia.”
In other words, there were humans involved in building Grokipedia, but it was probably mostly Musk. It’s like he’s uploading his rage, downloading the replies from his far-right followers, and reuploading them into an AI that’s organizing the ideas into an encyclopedia: Grokipedia. In contrast, Wikipedia is not perfect and, largely due to its open platform, is also filled with misinformation at any given moment, but there’s a human-centric system in place to take care of it.
What fills me with dread is the idea that the blurry jpeg analogy, while worrisome, misses the point. Back in the months after ChatGPT launched, we didn’t know if this technology would lead to more good things than bad. Now, with the rise of AI slop and sites like Grokipedia, we’re seeing a lot of bad. It seems inevitable that generative AI and its many offshoots, including AI-generated encyclopedias, will reproduce the contents of the internet — and, in a sense, knowledge itself — in a way that’s lower resolution, lower quality, blurry. Slop <a href="https://www.vox.com/technology/464097/meta-openai-sora-slop-ai">is just one example</a>.
What I’m really worried about is what happens when that slop gets weaponized, trained for a specific purpose — say, to radicalize a larger portion of the online population — and starts chipping away at the integrity of institutions dedicated to preserving knowledge on the problem-filled web, like Wikipedia. 
Elon Musk won’t make a better Wikipedia. But he has plenty of bots trained on the goal of making people trust Wikipedia less. The blurrier Musk’s version of reality gets, the more dangerous.
A version of this story was also published in the User Friendly newsletter. <a href="https://www.vox.com/pages/user-friendly-tech-newsletter-signup">Sign up here</a> so you don’t miss the next one!
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</entry>
<entry>
<author>
<name>Zack Beauchamp</name>
</author>
<title type="html"><![CDATA[Americans have a secret weapon against Trump]]></title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.vox.com/politics/466518/trump-business-boycott-democracy-resistance" />
<id>https://www.vox.com/?p=466518</id>
<updated>2025-10-29T18:24:00-04:00</updated>
<published>2025-10-30T07:00:00-04:00</published>
<category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Donald Trump" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Politics" />
<summary type="html"><![CDATA[President Donald Trump is clearly unpopular: Most Americans disapprove of his performance and millions recently turned out for “No Kings” protests. So why is it that so many major corporations and billionaires are either actively assisting Trump’s attack on democracy or else meekly complying with his dictates? The disconnect is, most likely, the result of […]]]></summary>
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<![CDATA[
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<img alt="" data-caption="Protesters rally during the "No Kings" national day of protest in Washington, DC, on October 18, 2025. | Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images" data-portal-copyright="Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images" data-has-syndication-rights="1" src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/gettyimages-2241510058.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100" />
<figcaption>
Protesters rally during the "No Kings" national day of protest in Washington, DC, on October 18, 2025. | Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images </figcaption>
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President Donald Trump is clearly unpopular: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/polls/donald-trump-approval-rating-polls.html">Most Americans disapprove</a> of his performance and <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/465779/democrats-resistance-liberal-no-kings-energy-midterms-protest-stop-trump">millions recently turned out for “No Kings” protests</a>. So why is it that so many major corporations and billionaires are either <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/202272/larry-david-ellison-paramount-warner-pro-trump-media-behemoth">actively assisting Trump’s attack on democracy</a> or else <a href="https://www.advocate.com/news/companies-abandoning-dei#rebelltitem1">meekly complying with his dictates</a>?
The disconnect is, most likely, the result of simple cost/benefit analysis. For the American business elite, the cost of crossing Trump is high and specific: He might <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/461887/jimmy-kimmel-suspension-air-abc-charlie-kirk-nexstar">deny your mergers</a>, initiate <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/more-than-50-universities-face-federal-investigations-under-trumps-anti-dei-campaign">bogus civil rights investigations</a>, or even <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/462958/james-comey-indictment-read-perjury-trump-bondi">attempt to throw you in jail</a>. By contrast, the costs of compliance are low: Perhaps a majority of voters might disapprove, but they can’t really do anything about it.
Or can they?
Consider, as one piece of evidence, a brand-new <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w34413/w34413.pdf">study on the fortunes of Elon Musk’s Tesla</a>. The researchers show, using careful empirical analysis, that Musk’s foray into far-right politics — and especially his role into the Trump administration — have cost his company enormously.
All told, the researchers find, Tesla would have sold as many as 1.25 million more cars in the past three years had Musk behaved differently. This is equivalent to roughly 83 percent of Tesla’s actual sales during this period, meaning the company could have nearly doubled its sales had its CEO not alienated its <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/mar/08/major-brand-worries-just-how-toxic-is-elon-musk-for-tesla">heavily Democratic customer base</a>.
Partially, this is a story of individual liberal consumers making their own choices. But it’s also the story of an organized movement — the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/business/elon-musk-trump-tesla-protests.html">#TeslaTakedown boycotts and protests</a> that began in response to the cruelty and lawlessness of Musk’s DOGE.
And the Tesla protests were not one-offs: There are other moments in Trump’s second term that show liberal consumer boycotts can inflict real damage on corporations who align with Trump or bend the knee.
When you look at all of this together, you can start to see the contours of a real and actionable plan for challenging elite quiescence in the face of democratic backsliding — one with deep roots in the history and theory of civil resistance.
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Liberal consumers 1, Elon Musk 0 </h2>
The Tesla study, written by a team of four researchers at Yale University, <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w34413/w34413.pdf">tracks trends in monthly auto sales</a> between 2018 and the first quarter of 2025. In the early years of the investigation, Tesla was on an upward trajectory — buoyed by rising enthusiasm for electric vehicles (EVs).
But the authors find that this growth began to slow sharply at a very specific moment in time: October 2022, the month that Musk purchased Twitter. That moment marked Musk’s definitive entry in the political fray on the Republican side, and it seemed to have transformed the way that Tesla’s mostly Democratic consumers saw the company.
The researchers’ careful estimates, based on county-level data, showed that the company lost out on an astonishing amount of sales. It also showed that these losses were higher in heavily Democratic counties, suggesting Musk was specifically being punished by liberal consumers. Moreover, it found a concomitant rise in sales of EVs and hybrids made by Musk’s competitors — suggesting these consumers were not moving away from Tesla specifically, not electric cars in general.
But for present purposes, the most relevant finding is one buried deep in the paper’s analysis: a sharp increase in the size of Tesla’s sales loss this year.
<img src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/gettyimages-2206936355.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0.054288816503799,100,99.891422366992" alt="Protesters by the side of a road holding a sign that reads Boycott Tesla" title="Protesters by the side of a road holding a sign that reads Boycott Tesla" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="Baltimore-area residents protest the Trump administration and Tesla CEO Elon Musk at a Tesla car dealership on March 29, 2025. | Dominic Gwinn/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images" data-portal-copyright="Dominic Gwinn/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images" />
The researchers found that, relative to the overall average, the size of the sales loss roughly doubled its average level in the first quarter of 2025 — with the company losing out on nearly 150 percent of actual sales, rather than the between 67 percent and 83 percent average throughout the entire sample.
While the study’s authors do not attempt a causal analysis of Tesla’s 2025 collapse, the reason is not hard to divine: That’s when Musk went from backing the GOP to actually participating in the Trump administration. His role in DOGE prompted an organized campaign of boycotts and protests, called #TeslaTakedown, designed explicitly to punish Musk financially — with sales of the flagship Model Y reaching their lowest point since late 2022. 
Here’s a simple stat to clarify things: By March of this year, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/03/13/nx-s1-5325321/elon-musk-tesla-politics-republican-buyers-sales">only 5 percent of Kamala Harris voters</a> had a positive view of Musk. These are most of the people who want to buy electric cars. So they took their business elsewhere.
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Tesla as blueprint for a new fight against backsliding</h2>
At first blush, this might all seem like old news: a dispatch from the ancient and forgotten era of this April.
But the absolute size of the effect of the damage to Tesla documented in the paper suggests that ordinary liberals are extremely willing to put their money where their mouth is: to wield financial power as a means of punishing those they hold responsible for at least part of Trump’s attack on democracy. The fact that <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/22/teslas-revenue-and-income-plummeted-in-the-first-quarter-00304436">Musk openly cited Tesla’s revenue problems</a> as a reason for his resignation from DOGE suggested that this kind of economic coercion can have a major impact on elite decision-making.
Nor is Tesla a one-off.
When Target announced it was scrapping its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in response to Trump’s executive orders in January, it got hit by a liberal boycott campaign which <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/08/23/nx-s1-5511314/are-boycotts-hurting-targets-bottom-line">Target’s own executive admitted had damaged sales</a> — forcing them to release a PR statement about its “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/08/23/nx-s1-5511314/are-boycotts-hurting-targets-bottom-line">unwavering</a>” support for diversity as damage control.
More recently, ABC/Disney’s decision to cancel Jimmy Kimmel Live! led to a concerted and effective <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/business/media/disney-subscription-cancellations-kimmel.html#:~:text=People%20who%20were%20angry%20about,posted%20on%20her%20Instagram%20account.">Disney+ cancellation campaign</a> — driving the rate of cancellations to <a href="https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/jimmy-kimmel-cancel-disney-plus-hulu-rates-doubled-suspension-1236557108/">double its typical monthly average</a>. Disney insiders told Reuters that these <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/disney-says-jimmy-kimmel-will-return-air-tuesday-2025-09-22/">subscription cancellations played</a> at least some role in Kimmel’s eventual reinstatement.
The Tesla study is, in short, unusually rigorous empirical validation of what these events suggest: that liberals are increasingly willing to punish companies they see as aligned with Trump, and that they’re willing to do so at scale and for extended periods of time.
This creates a large and mostly untapped potential avenue for pro-democracy organizing. The Disney+ campaign was short-lived and very specific; the Target boycott has been relatively small-scale. There is a potential to take the energy that powered a multiyear blow to Tesla’s sales and channel it strategically, directing pain at specific companies who are helping implement Trump’s antidemocratic policies or complying with them in an especially egregious way.
Obviously, asking anti-Trump consumers to boycott many different companies at once is unrealistic. Rather, any such campaign should target one specific and recognizable company at a time, ideally one that is relatively dependent on left-leaning consumers for revenue. Organizers should target them in retaliation for a very specific act of complicity or compliance, and rally liberal consumers to end purchases at this shop unless and until they reverse course.
In practice, then, this would look a lot like what happened with Disney+ — only repeated enough times that it becomes a threat companies have to take very seriously.
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The evidence for a boycott strategy</h2>
To understand the logic of a boycott strategy, it’s worth looking a little bit more abstractly at the theory of nonviolent resistance.
In a lot of popular understandings, nonviolence is about symbolism. You get so many people on the street, making their case in a peaceful and morally unimpeachable way, that their opponents come to see the justice of their cause and the inevitability of their victory. This is often linked to the statistic that no government has ever survived sustained protest by 3.5 percent of the citizenry.
This understanding is partially correct: The moral power of nonviolence, spread through images like police beating on unarmed protesters, really does help galvanize support and social change. But it’s only one part of the story. These campaigns also rely on coercion: on changing the cost-benefit analysis of key actors, be it regime apparatchiks or business leaders, on complying with the Trump administration. They do so by putting pressure on them in a strategic manner: staging specific actions, be they demonstrations or strikes or boycotts, that signal that compliance will be costly.
Erica Chenoweth, the Harvard University professor who developed the 3.5 percent figure, <a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/docserver/fulltext/polisci/26/1/annurev-polisci-051421-124128.pdf?expires=1761764035&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=41AB2F6CB88B72C1CC76FF5F34F5B090">put the point well in a recent article</a>:
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
The primary logic of nonviolent resistance is one of building sufficient power to disrupt the status quo; building influential coalitions among opposition actors; obtaining leverage over the adversary; and signaling to security forces, economic elites, civil servants, and key political elites that their long-term interests are better served by refusing to uphold the existing system. By peeling away the adversary’s key supporters, the resistance movement severely constrains his options.
</blockquote>
For this reason, the civil rights movement wasn’t just street demonstrations and sit-ins. It also took actions, like the famous Montgomery bus boycott, designed to impose costs on elite actors who sustained or supported segregation. 
“Standing beside love is always justice, and we are only using the tools of justice. Not only are we using the tools of persuasion, but we’ve come to see that we’ve got to use the tools of coercion,” as <a href="https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=3&psid=3625">Martin Luther King Jr. said</a> in a speech four days after Rosa Parks’ arrest.
This logic also applies in more contemporary struggles against democratic backsliding — like the early 2023 Israeli protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to seize control of the Supreme Court.
Organizers put millions in the streets, and that mattered on its own. But they also called strikes and got military reservists to publicly refuse to show up if the bill was passed. The sense that passing the bill would do severe damage to the nation, led then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to speak out against it. Ultimately, Netanyahu withdrew the bill (though the government <a href="https://verfassungsblog.de/the-judicial-overhaul-post-october-7/">quietly pushed elements of it after October 7</a>, using the Gaza war as cover).
<img src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/gettyimages-1246639611.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0.0060975609756113,0,99.987804878049,100" alt="Demonstrations of over 100,000 people against the judicial overhaul in Tel Aviv in 2023" title="Demonstrations of over 100,000 people against the judicial overhaul in Tel Aviv in 2023" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="Israelis take part in a protest against the Israeli far-right government on January 28, 2023, in Tel Aviv. | Amir Levy/Getty Images" data-portal-copyright="Amir Levy/Getty Images" />
Now, the United States is a very different country — we have neither the union density for a general strike nor mass military conscription. Here, the focus on coercing corporate compliance makes more sense, in part because there’s recent precedent. And not just on the left.
In 2023, right-wing consumers organized a boycott movement against Bud Light — in retaliation for an ad featuring a trans influencer — that helped speed a broad <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/351890/your-favorite-brand-no-longer-cares-about-being-woke">decline in “woke” corporate advertising</a>. More recently, right-wing consumers successfully wielded similar tactics to force Cracker Barrel to back down from a logo change that they perceived as <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1183211857160562">erasing an old white mascot</a>. There’s no reason consumers on the left can’t do the same thing, especially given how engaged rank-and-file Democrats appear to be in the wake of No Kings.
To be clear: The point is not that you can punish all corporations to change all their policies. Changing consumption patterns is costly, and ordinary citizens have limits as to how much they’ll do for a political cause.
Rather, the goal is to make a few more high-profile examples that change the calculations of the many. If there are perceived risks on the consumer end that counterbalance the government pressures to do something like take Kimmel off the air, then CEOs might approach their overall positioning differently. And if there’s an organized movement that could threaten to target your corporation sooner or later, the threat will be more credible than it presently is.
Democratic backsliding in the United States is a multifaceted problem, and a complacent corporate class is only one of many conditions helping it continue. But it is a problem, and one about which much more can and should be done.
The Tesla research, as well as some recent events, shows that the raw material is there. The question is whether anyone is willing and capable of doing something with it.

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</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<author>
<name>Ian Millhiser</name>
</author>
<title type="html"><![CDATA[The tariffs case is Trump’s ultimate loyalty test for the Supreme Court]]></title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.vox.com/politics/466510/supreme-court-trump-tariffs-loyalty-test-major-questions" />
<id>https://www.vox.com/?p=466510</id>
<updated>2025-10-29T16:13:32-04:00</updated>
<published>2025-10-30T06:30:00-04:00</published>
<category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Donald Trump" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Economy" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Money" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Politics" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Supreme Court" />
<summary type="html"><![CDATA[As recently as one year ago, the Supreme Court’s Republican majority was determined to reduce executive power. Joe Biden, a Democrat, was in the White House, and the Republican justices were very concerned that the executive branch was claiming “highly consequential power beyond what Congress could reasonably be understood to have granted.” To keep the […]]]></summary>
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<![CDATA[
<figure>
<img alt="Trump greets Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh" data-caption="President Donald Trump greets Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh ahead of the State of the Union address during his first term in office. | Mario Tama/Getty Images" data-portal-copyright="Mario Tama/Getty Images" data-has-syndication-rights="1" src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/gettyimages-1204097749.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100" />
<figcaption>
President Donald Trump greets Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh ahead of the State of the Union address during his first term in office. | Mario Tama/Getty Images </figcaption>
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As recently as one year ago, the Supreme Court’s Republican majority was <a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus/410749/supreme-court-neil-gorsuch-trump-judges-tarri">determined to reduce executive power</a>.
Joe Biden, a Democrat, was in the White House, and the <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf">Republican justices were very concerned</a> that the executive branch was claiming “highly consequential power beyond what Congress could reasonably be understood to have granted.” To keep the executive in check, the Republican justices invented a legal doctrine, known as “<a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus/23791610/supreme-court-major-questions-doctrine-nebraska-biden-student-loans-gorsuch-barrett">major questions</a>,” which was supposed to prevent the president or his subordinates from enacting new policies with “vast ‘economic and political significance’” — at least without getting very specific authorization from Congress first.
Flash forward to the present, and these same Republicans are about to reveal whether this major questions doctrine was an honest effort to allocate power among the three branches of US government, or whether it was simply something they made up to stymie a Democratic president from enacting his agenda.
On November 5, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in two cases — <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/cases/case-files/learning-resources-inc-v-trump/">Learning Resources v. Trump</a> and <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/cases/case-files/trump-v-v-o-s-selections/">Trump v. V.O.S. Selections</a> — both of which challenge the ever-shifting tariffs that Trump has imposed on US imports. 
In both cases, the challengers argue that various provisions of the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/committee-report/110th-congress/senate-report/82">International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977</a> (IEEPA), the law Trump relied upon when he instituted his tariffs, do not actually permit those tariffs to exist. Several of these statutory arguments, as <a href="https://www.vox.com/donald-trump/414794/trump-tariffs-supreme-court-vos-selections-oregon">numerous federal judges have now concluded</a>, are quite strong.
But it’s the Republican justices’ major questions doctrine that should remove any doubt that Trump’s tariffs are illegal. According to the center-right Tax Foundation, Trump’s tariffs “are the <a href="https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/trump-tariffs-trade-war/">largest US tax increase</a> as a percent of GDP (0.55 percent for 2025) since 1993.” The Tax Foundation estimates that they will “raise $2.9 trillion in revenue over the next decade on a conventional basis and reduce US GDP by 0.7 percent” — and that’s not counting the <a href="https://www.frbsf.org/research-and-insights/publications/economic-letter/2025/07/economic-implications-of-tariff-increases/">money Americans are losing</a> because other countries respond to US tariffs by imposing similar trade barriers on the United States.
The tariffs, in other words, are clearly a matter of “vast economic and political significance.” 
Trump’s tariffs also appear to divide more traditional, fiscally conservative Republicans from the president’s MAGA loyalists. 
One of the primary lawyers challenging the tariffs is <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24-1287/380052/20251020141757521_25-250%20-%20Merits%20Brief%20for%20Private%20Respondents.pdf">Michael McConnell</a>, a former George W. Bush appointee to a federal appellate court. At a Federalist Society conference on executive power last spring, numerous speakers <a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus/412624/supreme-court-federalist-society-donald-trump-tariffs">criticized the tariffs and questioned their legality</a>. One of many Republicans who joined briefs opposing the tariffs is <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24-1287/379951/20251017152444804_Merits%20Amicus%20Brief.pdf">former Sen. John Danforth (R-MO)</a>, an early mentor to Justice Clarence Thomas.
The major questions doctrine itself is the culmination of a decade-long project by many Republican lawyers and judges to limit executive power. Beginning in the Obama administration, the Federalist Society’s annual lawyers conference became a <a href="https://archive.thinkprogress.org/the-little-noticed-conservative-plan-to-permanently-lock-democrats-out-of-policymaking-9f776ad16635/">showcase of various proposals</a> to limit the president’s power to make policy changes without seeking new legislation from Congress — even when an existing statute seemed to authorize the president’s action.
Admittedly, many of the same Republican judges and advocates also embraced other legal theories seeking to expand presidential authority — the most notable is the <a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus/397729/supreme-court-unitary-executive-donald-trump">unitary executive theory</a>, which Trump has wielded aggressively to take control of federal agencies that are supposed to have a degree of independence from the president. But this effort to centralize control over federal agencies in the White House happened in parallel with a broader effort to diminish the executive’s power to set policy,
V.O.S. Selections and its sister case, in other words, are a loyalty test for the Republican justices. If those justices hew to the legal views they expressed during the Biden administration, or if they remain aligned with the Republican Party’s traditional approach to economic policy, then they must strike down the tariffs. 
Similarly, if they want to demonstrate their loyalty to the current leader of their political party, the Republican justices will need to write an opinion that simply cannot be squared with their Biden-era decisions.
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The actual legal questions before the Supreme Court</h2>
The IEEPA permits the president to “regulate…transactions involving, any property in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest.” By law, however, the president may only use this power to “<a href="https://www.congress.gov/congressional-report/110th-congress/senate-report/82">deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat</a>.”
The various plaintiffs challenging these tariffs make several arguments that this statutory language does not permit Trump to impose his tariffs. First, they claim that the power to “regulate” imports does not include the power to tax them, pointing to a <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/22/1/">famous 1824 Supreme Court decision</a> that said “the power to regulate commerce” is “entirely distinct from the right to levy taxes and imposts.”
Second, the plaintiffs argue that Trump has not identified an “unusual and extraordinary threat” that can justify his tariffs. Trump claims that most of his tariffs are needed to address the US trade deficit: the fact that the United States buys more goods from foreign nations than it sells. But the United States has had a trade deficit <a href="https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/united-states/trade-balance-deficit">since the mid-1970s</a>, and <a href="https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2025-06063.pdf">Trump’s own executive order</a> announcing many of his tariffs concedes that they are “persistent” and “a feature of the global trading system.”
So it’s tough to see how trade deficits qualify as unusual or extraordinary.
Additionally, the plaintiffs point out that there is a <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/19/2132">separate federal law</a> governing when the president may impose tariffs to deal with trade deficits. This law only permits tariffs of up to 15 percent, and it stipulates that they must expire after 150 days. This limited grant of authority, they argue, displaces any power to impose tariffs targeting trade deficits that the president would otherwise have under IEEPA.
Trump’s lawyers, for what it is worth, have plausible rebuttals to at least some of these arguments. They note, for example, that when Congress enacted IEEPA, the <a href="https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/5914c642add7b049347d9f1f">only federal appellate decision</a> concerning whether the word “regulate” includes the power to impose tariffs concluded that it does. Courts sometimes presume that, when Congress uses a word that has an established legal meaning, it wants that word to keep that same meaning.
But any uncertainty about how to read IEEPA should be resolved by the major questions doctrine, which says that courts should avoid reading federal laws to give the executive powers of “vast ‘economic and political significance’” if at all possible.
The major questions doctrine is very new, and has <a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus/23791610/supreme-court-major-questions-doctrine-nebraska-biden-student-loans-gorsuch-barrett">only ever been used against one president</a>: Biden. But in 2014, the Republican justices did apply an early version of it to a hypothetical EPA regulation, in <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/573/302/">Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA</a>. That case also provides a pithy, one-sentence summary of this brand new legal doctrine: “We expect Congress to speak clearly if it wishes to assign to an agency decisions of vast ‘economic and political significance.’”
Under Biden, however, the doctrine grew in scope. In <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-506_nmip.pdf">Biden v. Nebraska</a> (2023), for example, the Republican justices struck down a student loan forgiveness plan that was <a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/6/30/23779903/supreme-court-student-loan-biden-nebraska-john-roberts">clearly authorized by an act of Congress</a>. The Heroes Act, the law at issue in Nebraska, gave the education secretary broad authority to “waive or modify” student loan obligations during a national emergency such as the Covid-19 pandemic “as the Secretary deems necessary.”
Indeed, the Heroes Act permitted the education secretary to act “notwithstanding any other provision of law, unless enacted with specific reference to” that Act. So it is hard to see how Congress could have been clearer that it intended to give the secretary — not the Supreme Court — the final word on student loans.
Nevertheless, the Republican justices deemed the Biden administration’s student loans plan — which they estimated would cost “<a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus/460312/supreme-court-trump-tariffs-vos-selections">between $469 billion and $519 billion</a>” — to be too ambitious to exist. The “economic and political significance” of such a plan, they concluded, “is staggering by any measure.”
But if the rule is that a presidential administration may not create a new policy that involves hundreds of billions of dollars, then Trump’s tariffs obviously must fall. Trump’s own lawyers claim that his new import taxes will “reduce federal deficits by <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26082943-20250903-trump-v-vos-selections-cert-petition/">$4 trillion in the coming years</a>.” More reliable sources, like the Budget Lab at Yale, estimate that Trump’s import taxes will “<a href="https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/state-us-tariffs-october-17-2025">raise about $2.5 trillion over 2026-35</a>.” That’s five times the amount of money at stake in Nebraska.
To this, Trump’s lawyers respond that the Supreme Court should simply <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24-1287/375365/20250919182906186_24-1287ts_Govt_IEEPATariffs_final.pdf">create some new exceptions to their brand-new major questions doctrine</a>, to make sure that the doctrine doesn’t apply to Trump. They argue, for example, that the doctrine should not apply to policies that are enacted by an order from the president himself, rather than a Cabinet secretary or some other official that works for the president. They also claim, quoting from an opinion by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, that “the major questions canon has not been applied by this Court in the national security or foreign policy contexts.”
It’s hard to rebut these arguments, because the major questions doctrine is not law — or, at least, it is not law in the sense that it derives from any particular statute or constitutional provision. It’s merely something the Republican justices made up. So there’s no legal provision that anyone can read to determine how the major questions doctrine should apply in, say, the national security context. As Thomas wrote in a <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-1039_c0n2.pdf">recent concurring opinion</a>, “judge-made doctrines can be difficult for courts to apply,” because those courts “lack an underlying legal authority on which to ground their analysis.”
These doctrines often lead to what Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson called “<a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus/460270/supreme-court-republican-partisan-hacks-donald-trump">Calvinball jurisprudence</a>,” where the rules change based on the justices’ personal preferences or some other extra-legal factor.
In any event, if it was legitimate for the Republican justices to make up a brand new legal rule that they could use to sabotage Biden, then it must be equally legitimate for those same justices to make up arbitrary limits on their new rule, limits that conveniently allow a Republican president to do whatever he wants.
But if that happens, there would be little doubt that the Court is placing partisanship ahead of the law. One of the cardinal principles of any system rooted in the rule of law — a principle that <a href="https://constitutionalcommentary.lib.umn.edu/article/on-treating-unlike-cases-alike/">stretches all the way back to Aristotle</a> — is that similar cases should be treated similarly. The president’s powers cannot change simply because a different political party controls the White House.
]]>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<author>
<name>Dylan Scott</name>
</author>
<title type="html"><![CDATA[Why are my health insurance premiums going up so much?]]></title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.vox.com/health/466458/health-care-insurance-marketplace-premiums-2026" />
<id>https://www.vox.com/?p=466458</id>
<updated>2025-10-30T10:51:59-04:00</updated>
<published>2025-10-30T06:00:00-04:00</published>
<category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Health" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Health Care" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Policy" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Politics" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Public Health" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Today, Explained newsletter" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Trump Administration" />
<summary type="html"><![CDATA[Many Americans are going to have sticker shock when they sign up for health insurance this year.  For the roughly half of Americans who get insurance through their work, premiums are set to grow by another 6 percent on average, up to roughly $27,000 per year for family coverage. That is a 26 percent increase […]]]></summary>
<content type="html">
<![CDATA[
<figure>
<img alt="Rising health care costs are depicted by a bar chart featuring medicine and pills. " data-caption="US health care costs are still steadily rising 15 years after the Affordable Care Act became law." data-portal-copyright="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/GettyImages-170887182.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100" />
<figcaption>
US health care costs are still steadily rising 15 years after the Affordable Care Act became law. </figcaption>
</figure>
Many Americans are going to have sticker shock when they sign up for health insurance this year. 
For the roughly half of Americans who get insurance through their work, premiums are set to <a href="https://www.kff.org/health-costs/2025-employer-health-benefits-survey/#55d346a7-5bff-4d99-840c-a793b6a03320">grow by another 6 percent on average</a>, up to roughly $27,000 per year for family coverage. That is a 26 percent increase since 2020. Costs have been steadily climbing for a long time now: Rates are more than twice as high as they were in 2010.
And then there are the 24 million people who buy insurance on the Affordable Care Act marketplaces who face much higher increases — <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/10/24/obamacare-premiums-rise-30-percent/">by 30 percent on average</a> next year because Congress can’t agree on a deal that would keep them lower. This is the sticking point at the center of the ongoing government shutdown.
Defending and expanding federal health care funding has been a winning issue for the Democrats since Republicans tried and <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/11/7/18070152/midterm-elections-2018-results-trump-obamacare-repeal">failed to repeal the ACA in 2017</a>. But is the law worth defending, really? If it has been such a success, then why are costs still climbing for the vast majority of Americans? 
It’s a complicated story with a complicated answer. 
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The ACA was designed to expand coverage, not to control costs</h2>
The ACA has one unambiguous success: The uninsured rate in America is around 8 percent, roughly as low as it has ever been, half what it was before the law passed. More than 40 million people have been covered by either the <a href="https://www.kff.org/affordable-care-act/state-indicator/marketplace-enrollment/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D">marketplaces</a> or <a href="https://www.kff.org/medicaid/state-indicator/medicaid-expansion-enrollment/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D">Medicaid expansion</a>.
<img src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/Rb4up-the-us-uninsured-rate-has-plummeted-since-the-affordable-care-act-became-law.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100" alt="The US uninsured rate has plummeted since the affordable care act became law" title="The US uninsured rate has plummeted since the affordable care act became law" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="" />
But you would be forgiven for thinking the real purpose of the ACA was to lower the cost of health care for everyone: It is named, after all, the “Affordable Care” Act. And <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-a-joint-session-congress-health-care">Democrats sold it on that premise</a>.
“In the end, our goal is to make health care more affordable for families, businesses, and the federal government. If you have health insurance, the reforms we seek will bring stability and security you don’t have today,” President Barack Obama said in 2009 during a speech to Congress as the bill was being debated. “For those who don’t, we’ll offer you quality, affordable choices. And we’ll finally keep insurance companies from discriminating against those who are sick and need care the most.”
But in reality, affordable health care is still elusive. Most of the law’s provisions and funding focused on “those who don’t” — on expanding coverage to the uninsured. The vast majority of <a href="https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/ftpdocs/113xx/doc11379/amendreconprop.pdf">ACA spending was earmarked</a> for financial assistance for people who buy insurance on the marketplaces or for covering the cost of expanded Medicaid for people who are in or near poverty.
For many of those people, the law has delivered clear benefits. 
Insurance companies can no longer deny them coverage for preexisting conditions, and the federal government is stepping in to cover much of their health care costs. According to one study, <a href="https://news.uchicago.edu/story/new-research-shows-medicaid-expansion-reduced-mortality-low-income-adults">Medicaid expansion saved about 27,400 lives</a> from 2010 to 2022. <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24002/w24002.pdf">Bankruptcies for Medicaid patients dropped</a>. Evaluations of the ACA marketplaces likewise find that the people signing up for those plans who were <a href="https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2017.1390">previously uninsured are now better off</a>.
But those wins encompass, at most, about 13 percent of the population. For everyone else, the ACA’s record is mixed. 
Yes, even employer plans are now <a href="https://www.kff.org/affordable-care-act/aca-preventive-services-tracker/">required to cover preventive services</a>, including some forms of birth control, for free. Yes, those plans also now have to place an annual limit on how much patients can be asked to pay for their medical care. But more diffuse savings — going to your annual physical and not owing a $30 copay is nice — aren’t as life-altering as getting covered for the first time in years. The new annual out-of-pocket limits only come into play if you have a serious medical situation; they are a valuable safety net, but not necessarily something that makes more routine health care more affordable.
Nevertheless, the <a href="https://www.kff.org/affordable-care-act/5-charts-about-public-opinion-on-the-affordable-care-act/">ACA has grown in popularity</a> over time as more people have gained health care access. But it’s proven not to be enough to fix the problem of rising costs.
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Health care costs are still rising too fast — and we don’t have a great plan to stop it</h2>
Democrats said they want to lower the country’s overall health care costs within the framework of the ACA, but the law’s provisions to actually do that were limited. The current law allows the government to run pilot projects that could bring down the cost of healthcare, but while some have shown promise, they have not been adopted widely enough to fundamentally change how healthcare is financed in the United States.
But the ACA is not a major financing reform bill. It did not fundamentally change how providers set prices for their services. And the law’s new <a href="https://www.kff.org/affordable-care-act/health-policy-101-the-affordable-care-act/">insurance requirements to cover all people</a>, no matter their health status, and to provide a broader suite of benefits actually pushed costs in the other direction. It is simply more expensive to require insurers to cover everyone.
Over time, though, there have been some positive effects on costs. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/09/05/upshot/medicare-budget-threat-receded.html">Medicare spending has flattened</a>, and the ACA likely <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/09/upshot/obamacare-medicare-spending-slowdown.html">deserves</a> much of the credit for that, given its direct payment cuts. But if you look at other measures, such as medical price inflation or workers’ contribution to their premiums, as New York Times economics reporter Talmon Joseph Smith <a href="https://x.com/talmonsmith/status/1979548543133102566">pointed out on X</a>, it’s hard to see any discernible impact from the ACA at all.
Obama and congressional Democrats hoped that the ACA would bend the cost curve over time. Part of the plan was those targeted payment reforms. Part of it was the belief — <a href="https://www.wsj.com/opinion/how-do-we-know-if-aca-expansion-worked-health-outcomes-study-letter-e8a51f3c?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AWEtsqeltwfUW0L-Kmi9T4J-tabcm2TYtW0vV6IsTm7WYKQIVfHhYaC4DKjG9blRwDo%3D&gaa_ts=690002e3&gaa_sig=AsRDLFpsWjxhtVPw1N7SUDuAf4fEiypVMLolCQ2ld93L6U3oKEKdG5c9dxbAhR7BKvp3r4eGreAa55zR2x8VgQ%3D%3D">still contested to this day</a> — that giving people health insurance would lead to them being healthier in the long term, which would save money over time.
But, at least so far, the law appears to have merely put a ding in the cost curve. 
Health care costs are growing at a slower rate, but they are still growing: According to <a href="https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2019.01478">a 2020 Health Affairs review</a>, national health spending grew at a 6.9 percent annual pace from 2000 to 2009 and then a 4.3 percent pace from 2010, the year the ACA was passed, to 2018.
<img src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/yrAI5-us-health-care-costs-have-been-growing-at-a-faster-and-faster-speed.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100" alt="US health care costs have been growing at a faster and faster speed" title="US health care costs have been growing at a faster and faster speed" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="" />
The ACA delivered real benefits, especially to particular patients, but it did not solve the problem of unaffordable health care. Even people who have health insurance increasingly struggle to afford their medical bills because costs have kept rising: The <a href="https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/surveys/2024/nov/state-health-insurance-coverage-us-2024-biennial-survey">rate of underinsurance</a> — when you have coverage but can’t afford your medical bills — has been steadily rising for years.
And now the US population is getting older, and the cost crunch is likely to only get worse as more people require more serious medical care. 
So what do we do?
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">America’s health care system is stuck</h2>
No country’s health care system is perfect, but ours is uniquely flawed: <a href="https://www.vox.com/health-care/2020/1/29/21075388/medicare-for-all-what-countries-have-universal-health-care">We spend more money than our economic peers and yet we see worse outcomes</a>. We’re getting a bad deal, and Americans understandably want health care prices to come down. 
And so it makes sense that Republicans and Democrats are fighting over what comes next — and why they’re at such an impasse: Both sides have a point.  
Democrats acknowledge that the ACA is flawed. In 2021, the party made federal subsidies more generous and made more people eligible for them. Now, they want Republicans to agree to extend those enhanced subsidies in exchange for the votes to reopen the government, arguing that without the additional funding, health care would become unaffordable for many people. 
Republicans, on the other side, have never liked Obamacare. They believe the continued increase in health care costs is evidence that the ACA was a bust, and they are reluctant to pump any more money into it — especially, they would argue, when Democrats are holding the government hostage over the issue. They want the Democrats to fund the government, without any strings attached, before they negotiate ACA funding. (The GOP may not support the law, but they do <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/26/politics/health-care-premiums-obamacare-republicans-shutdown">worry about voters blaming them for rising costs</a> and may be willing to deal. They just don’t want to give in to Democrats with the government shut down.)
Health insurance is going to become a lot more expensive for people if Congress refuses to act. And people who lose their health coverage are more likely to skip necessary medical care and let chronic conditions fester, which can lead to worse outcomes. Progressives believe it is better to have the government pick up the tab, even as health care costs continue to rise, rather than to let people get sick or die because they can’t afford medical services. And most Americans agree: More than 60 percent of the public believes it is the federal government’s responsibility to <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/654101/health-coverage-government-responsibility.aspx">make sure everyone has health coverage</a>.
And yet, GOP leaders are also correct when they point out that health care costs kept rising after the ACA. That has required the federal government to funnel more and more money into health care to keep costs down for people on the ACA’s marketplaces or on Medicaid, while those people on employer-sponsored plans have seen their premiums more than double since 2010. 
But at the same time, Republicans don’t have much of a plan to reduce aggregate costs. In general, they talk about <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/vances-obamacare-plans-include-high-risk-pools-pre-existing-conditions-rcna173610">deregulating health insurance again</a> — which could then re-create all of the problems that predated the ACA and led to its passage in the first place. And their major legislation passed this year, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, <a href="https://www.vox.com/health-care/418431/big-beautiful-bill-lose-medicaid-trump">did cut Medicaid funding</a>, but by cutting people off the program — <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/blog/medicaid-cuts-would-reduce-access-to-health-care-for-entire-communities">not the best approach</a> if the goal is to improve people’s health, even if it does reduce government spending.
Some conservatives have become more interested in tightly regulating health care prices, and President Donald Trump has <a href="https://www.vox.com/health/463602/what-is-trump-rx-prescription-pharmaceutical-drugs">tried to use the bully pulpit</a> to address prescription drug costs specifically. But the prevailing attitude within the GOP is still to try to get the government out of health care — and whether that is the fix for an industry already beset by <a href="https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/research-summary/achieving-universal-health-insurance-coverage-in-the-united-states-addressing-market-failures-or-providing-a-social-floor/#:~:text=A%20market%20failure%20is%20when%20the%20distribution,investing%20in%20population%20health**%20Innovation%20benefits%20all">market failures</a> is, at best, dubious.
Absent better ideas and the political will to implement major changes to the health system, we’re left with little choice but to keep pumping more money into a broken system — or leave more people on their own to cover unaffordable medical bills.
To escape that trap, we’d need to <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/22/21055118/maryland-health-care-global-hospital-budget">make health care pricing more rational and value-based</a>. Rather than pay providers based on the volume of services they perform, could a system instead connect their payments to the quality of care they provide and the outcomes that their patients experience? There have been halting steps in that direction — with health insurers like Cigna experimenting with value-based contracts with providers  — but it is difficult to build on that momentum both practically and politically, given the power of the various health care industry lobbies.
The shutdown has revealed the fragility of the US safety net: When food stamps run out of funding in early November, thousands of people could struggle to afford food. 
But the standoff will end eventually. It’s even plausible that Democrats and Republicans will reach a deal on extending the ACA subsidies. But that is just another Band-Aid. Patients will keep feeling the squeeze every time they sign up for a new health plan or check out at the doctor or pharmacy — until policymakers get serious about the real problems making health care unaffordable to too many Americans. 
]]>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<author>
<name>Cameron Peters</name>
</author>
<title type="html"><![CDATA[DOJ indicts a congressional candidate in Chicago]]></title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.vox.com/the-logoff-newsletter-trump/466555/kat-abughazaleh-indictment-chicago-ice-protest-broadview" />
<id>https://www.vox.com/466555/the-logoff-template</id>
<updated>2025-10-29T18:02:41-04:00</updated>
<published>2025-10-29T18:05:00-04:00</published>
<category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Donald Trump" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Politics" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="The Logoff" />
<summary type="html"><![CDATA[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: A federal grand jury in Illinois has indicted six people, including a Democratic congressional candidate, for participating in a September protest outside an ICE facility […]]]></summary>
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<img alt="Kat Abughazaleh carries yard signs" data-caption="Kat Abughazaleh, a Democratic candidate for Illinois's 9th congressional district, carries yard signs into her campaign office in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago on May 6, 2025. | Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images" data-portal-copyright="Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images" data-has-syndication-rights="1" src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/gettyimages-2221291233.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100" />
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Kat Abughazaleh, a Democratic candidate for Illinois's 9th congressional district, carries yard signs into her campaign office in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago on May 6, 2025. | Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images </figcaption>
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This story appeared in <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-logoff-newsletter-trump" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Logoff</a>, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. <a href="https://www.vox.com/pages/logoff-newsletter-trump-administration-updates" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Subscribe here</a>.
Welcome to The Logoff: A federal grand jury in Illinois has indicted six people, including a Democratic congressional candidate, for participating in a September protest outside an ICE facility near Chicago. 
What happened? The indictment charges six people, including two local elected officials and Kat Abughazaleh, a Democrat running for Congress on Chicago’s North Shore, with conspiring to interfere with and forcibly impeding a federal agent outside of an ICE facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview.
The indictment alleges that, among other actions, the people charged “physically hindered and impeded Agent A and the Government Vehicle such that Agent A was forced to drive at an extremely slow rate of speed to avoid injuring any of the conspirators.” Video of the confrontation <a href="https://x.com/KatAbughazaleh/status/1971567602003820796">posted to X by Abughazaleh</a> shows protesters chanting and attempting to block the car. 
What’s the context? Since early September, the greater Chicago area has faced an especially brutal immigration crackdown by the Trump administration, resulting in headlines like “<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/border-patrol-agents-fire-allegedly-disrupting-childrens-halloween/story?id=126900354">Border Patrol agents under fire for allegedly disrupting children’s Halloween parade</a>.” 
Protests against the crackdown have often centered on the Broadview ICE facility, and peaceful protesters — including <a href="https://x.com/KatAbughazaleh/status/1969013628398411810">Abughazaleh</a> and <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy/465969/ice-protests-chicago-broadview-pastor-pepper-spray">members of the clergy</a> — have repeatedly been assaulted and tear-gassed by federal agents. Such tactics have been under increasing legal scrutiny; this week, a Border Patrol official was told to appear in court daily as a judge scrutinizes use of force by agents.
Why does this matter? This indictment is the latest in an alarming trend of protesters, including elected officials, being targeted for prosecution by the Trump administration — at the same time that federal immigration agents have functionally been <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/464962/supreme-court-ice-no-law">placed above the law</a>.
In May, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested outside an ICE facility, and Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver was later charged with forcibly impeding an officer; <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/462869/lamonica-mciver-prosecution-trump-authoritarianism">my colleague Ian Millhiser described</a> the McIver indictment as possibly “the most anti-democratic thing [Trump has] done since January 6.” 
<h2 class="wp-block-heading has-text-align-none">And with that, it’s time to log off…</h2>
Hi readers, bear with me here: This is a less cheerful closing note than we often try for in the Logoff, but it’s important. Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica this week, killing at least seven and doing billions of dollars in damage. It’s one of the strongest storms ever recorded, and recovery will be a long, difficult process. 
If you feel the urge to help, my colleague Sara Herschander wrote <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/466544/hurricane-melissa-how-to-help-jamaica-haiti-charities-disaster-recovery">a sharp, useful piece</a> about how to do the most good. She’s collected a list of trustworthy, effective organizations to support that will help Jamaica, Haiti, and other impacted countries recover now and in the months and years to come. You can find it <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/466544/hurricane-melissa-how-to-help-jamaica-haiti-charities-disaster-recovery">here</a>. Thanks for reading, have a great evening, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow.
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