2024 is on track to become the hottest year since humans have been keeping track, beating out 2023.  The extraordinary back-to-back record-breakers amplified disasters like heat waves, hurricanes, and torrential downpours around the world, claiming thousands of lives and causing billions in damages.  Few countries have emerged completely unscathed over the past two years, but […]

Today, President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 out of the 40 people on federal death row, reducing their sentences to life without parole.  “I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level,” Biden said in a statement. Biden also recently commuted sentences […]

When Kay’s two best friends — a married couple she met at work — told her they weren’t voting for Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, she believed them. After all, Kay and her friends shared similar values; they all supported issues like reproductive rights and protections for LGBTQ people. But while she was […]

One fall day in 1856, a family of Eastern gray squirrels in rural New York uncurled from a cozy nest in a chestnut tree, looked around, and joined half a billion other squirrels on a multi-state walkabout. Waves of fur, claws, and sharp incisors swarmed like locusts in squirrel armies that could be up to […]

This story was originally published in The Highlight, Vox’s member-exclusive magazine. To get early access to member-exclusive stories every month, join the Vox Membership program today. What does “Latino” mean? And is there still such a thing as the “Latino vote”? At first glance, both questions are simple to answer. Latinos are simply any of […]