Vox

Former President Trump with Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett at her swearing-in ceremony in October 2020. | Getty Images The former president is out of office, but his policies have found a lifetime appointment. The night of the 2016 election, millions stood in front of television screens fearful that Trump’s electoral victory would mean harsher treatment for groups like people of color, immigrants, women, and LGBTQ individuals. He had, after all, promised such policies and delivered on many of them. With President Joe Biden finally in office after a seditious mob overran the Capitol, some believed they could lay...

Sleep loss — whether due to insomnia or sleep deprivation — is a global epidemic. | Getty Images A new law will require the school day to start later in California — and other states may soon follow. In California, a new law went into effect July 1 that will probably make a lot of teenagers happy. It delays school start times, requiring public high schools to start at 8:30 am or later — half an hour later than the US average — while middle schools will start at 8 am or later. The result: Teens get to sleep in...

Johanne Louise Schmidt as Signe Kragh, left, and Sidse Babett Knudsen as Birgitte Nyborg in Borgen season 4. | Mike Kollöffel/Netflix via IMDB The latest season of Borgen is a political thriller for the Great Resignation. It’s no surprise that the Danish series Borgen was a balm for many American viewers in the early days of the pandemic. Centering on the (fictional) first female prime minister of Denmark, the show depicts a functioning democracy with a robust social safety net, where government-funded health insurance and pensions are benefits voters take for granted. Sure, the show sometimes felt like fanfic, and...

Abortion rights demonstrators gather outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on June 24, 2022. | Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Democrats don’t have the votes right now for major Supreme Court reform. But if they pick up seats, they could have many options. Editor’s note, July 2: The following is an updated version of an article that originally ran in Vox in October 2020. We are republishing it with revisions to reflect the Court’s most recent term. The Supreme Court’s just-concluded term was a bacchanalia of reactionary indulgence. Roe v. Wade is dead. Gun laws throughout the...

President Joe Biden speaks during a virtual meeting with governors to discuss efforts to protect access to reproductive health care, on July 1 in Washington, DC. | Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images “It is unacceptable that there was not a concrete plan the minute this decision came down.” Over and over, Democrats’ main refrain in response to the end of Roe v. Wade has been to tell people to vote in the midterms. “This fall, Roe is on the ballot. Personal freedoms are on the ballot,” said President Joe Biden in a recent speech. “A woman’s right to choose — reproductive freedom...

Photo by STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images The decision overturns the landmark 1973 court case that established the constitutional right to an abortion. The US Supreme Court has officially overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that established a constitutional right to an abortion. Now the matter will be settled on a state-by-state basis, with 22 states likely to quickly ban all or nearly all abortions. The road to the decision began when the state of Mississippi enacted a law banning nearly all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The state’s law violated the Court’s decision in Planned Parenthood...

Pro-abortion rights demonstrators hold signs outside the US Supreme Court on June 24, when Roe v. Wade was overturned. | Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Data shows why taking abortion rights away is structural violence against women. For Colleen McNicholas, a physician in Missouri, the impact of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision can already be keenly felt. The Planned Parenthood in St. Louis where she works — the last operating abortion clinic in the state — has halted all abortion appointments since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, stripping Americans of their constitutional right to an...

The overturning of Roe v. Wade has sparked an interest in vasectomies, but access and cost barriers remain as Obamacare does not cover the procedure. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images Expanding access to vasectomy care could help shift some of the burden of birth control. In early May, after the Supreme Court draft opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade leaked, Google searches for vasectomies spiked — and then spiked again in late June when the final decision was handed down on June 24. Bobby Najari, a urologist and assistant professor at NYU Langone Health, says some of that spike translated into...

Denis Novikov/Getty Images A looser schedule can allow for serendipity. On the spectrum from carefully curated scheduling to go-with-the-flow attitude, most people fall somewhere in the middle: a few can’t-miss occasions here, some loose plans there. The conditions of the past two years, however, have rendered impromptu hangouts difficult, if not impossible. Unplanned dinners, playdates, and afternoon jaunts to the museum were complicated by pandemic restrictions, staffing shortages, reservations needing to be secured weeks in advance — not to mention concerns such as whether outdoor locales would have bathrooms or the weather would hold up. Even the easiest of hangs...