2021: VOX (354)

JANUARY

Ted Cruz is spearheading a new GOP effort to overturn the 2020 election

Trump’s call with Georgia’s secretary of state is a subversion of democracy

The debate over Janet Yellen’s speaking fees, explained

Why anyone could win Georgia’s runoff elections, according to the polls

Trump supporters storm the US Capitol: The latest

Will Trump be impeached or face removal under the 25th Amendment?

Why Democrats are moving toward impeachment – 12 days before Trump leaves office

Here come the consequences for the Capitol insurrectionists

Top Democratic lawmaker says an impeachment vote will come this week

Democrats introduce article of impeachment against Trump

The case for consequences

The seat of American democracy looks like a city under occupation

Corporate America takes away Trump’s toys

Deep cleaning, packing supplies, and a concession: The Trumps plan their White House exit

Dozens of police officers attended the Capitol rally. It should come as no surprise.

How Californians are resorting to crowdsourcing to get their Covid-19 vaccine

As Trump prepares for final presidential pardons, will he attempt to pardon himself?

Biden’s key national security picks had their confirmation hearings. Here’s what to know.

Joe Biden’s unique Inauguration Day, in photos

Biden will use the Defense Production Act in his anti-coronavirus effort

Biden’s planned actions on reproductive health care, explained

The 50/50 Senate is already running into trouble figuring out its rules

How the Biden administration can save the Postal Service

What’s next for Trump’s Senate impeachment trial

Joe Biden is already facing an ally problem

4 reasons we’re suddenly seeing these worrying coronavirus variants

“People are not okay”: The mental health impact of the Trump era

The scandals swirling around QAnon-supporting Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, explained

Prisons have already failed to contain Covid-19. What happens when the new variants arrive?

Get vaccinated. Then keep your mask on.

FEBRUARY

Americans want Covid-19 done fast – even if it takes budget reconciliation

How neo-Nazi used the internet to instigate a right-wing extremeist crisis.

Who is Andy Jassy, Amazon’s new CEO?

The Senate vote-a-rama gets Democrats closer to approving Covid-19 relief on their own

Israel outpaced the world in vaccinations. Now it’s seeing the results

The risks of going too big on stimulus are real – but going too small could be riskier

America’s deeply unequal economic recovery, explained in 7 charts

The debate over who deserves a stimulus check, explained

Trump won’t be convicted. Impeachment is still worth it.

The 6 Senate Republicans to watch on impeachment

The debate over whether Democrats should call witnesses at Trump’s trial, explained

The real reason Trump’s impeachment defense was so bad

1 winner and 5 losers from Trump’s second impeachment trial

Two Republicans who voted for Trump’s conviction were immediately censured

Child care workers are getting left behind in the vaccine rollout

Who has died from Covid-19 in the US?

Baby bonds could shrink the Black-white wealth gap

Congress is writing up Biden’s stimulus plan. Here’s what’s in it.

What the US offer to talk to Iran means – and doesn’t – for the nuclear deal

“It’s criminal”: A Texas community left without aid in the cold

Doctors on what their dying Covid-19 patients have to endure

The effort to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom, explained

What Democrats can learn from Mitt Romney

How creating jobs through fighting climate change could boost Biden’s popularity

“We’ve made it so complicated”: Vaccine campaigns are failing to reach the most vulnerable

Black employees say Amazon has a race problem

Democrats’ remaining options for raising the minimum wage, explained

Should we be more careful outdoors as Covid-19 variants spread

MARCH

The Republican revolt against democracy, explained in 13 charts

The race against the coronavirus variants, explained

The union vote that could change Amazon forever

House Democrats passed HR 1, their massive voting rights bill

You got a vaccine. Walgreens got your data.

Why comparing Covid-19 vaccine efficacy numbers can be misleading

You’re fully vaccinated? The CDC says you can now have friends and family over for dinner.

Top Senate Democrat says Biden should “reconsider” May 1 Afghanistan troop withdrawal

The House passes the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief bill, sending it to Biden’s desk

Joe Biden just signed the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill

The state of the filibuster, explained

How Chile built one of the world’s most successful vaccination campaigns

Long Covid isn’t as unique as we thought

The problem is work

Russia tried to help Trump’s 2020 reelection, US intelligence says

What we know about the Atlanta shooting that left 8 dead at Asian businesses

Joe Biden’s tax plan, explained

The uneasy intimacy of work in a pandemic year

Youth climate activists are back with new demands for countries and corporations

3.9 million years

An unholy union

What’s new for small businesses in the American Rescue Plan

We were here

AstraZeneca’s absurd and unprecedented dispute with regulators, explained

Vaccines and the future of Covid-19 testing, explained

9 questions about the humanitarian crisis on the border, answered

Democrats’ new plan for passing more bills with 51 Senate votes, explained

How the science of grief can help the estimated 5 million Americans in mourning

Everything you need to know about vaccine passports

APRIL

A pandemic year in the life of a New York City block

Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure plan, explained in 600 words

Why the MLB pulled the All-Star Game from Atlanta, briefly explained

15 million ruined vaccine doses mean Johnson & Johnson will take charge of Baltimore plant

Why some Democrats are quietly unhappy with the House’s big voting rights bill

Minneapolis vowed to dismantle its police department. Is change finally coming?

One small idea in Biden’s infrastructure plan with big benefits: Electric school buses

3 possible futures for Covid-19 in the US – with hope for a return to normal

Amazon has won a historic warehouse union election. But the battle is not over.

Supreme Court rules against California’s Covid-19 restrictions on grounds of religious liberty

Maryland just repealed its police bill of rights. Here’s what it means for reform.

Conservationists want to protect 30 percent of Earth. This is more arbitrary than you’d think.

America’s forever war may be ending

If you get an insurance bill for your Covid-19 vaccine, it’s a mistake

How effective was Derek Chauvin’s defense?

The state of the plant-based food industry

Biden’s blunt opposition to marijuana legalization

South Korea’s Covid-19 success story started with failure

Why Chauvin’s conviction matters

Why is it so hard to prosecute police? It starts with the investigation.

5 things to know about the brand new US climate commitment

4 winners and 4 losers from Biden’s climate leader summit

A coronavirus surge is overwhelming India’s health care system

Polls: A majority of Americans feel good about Biden’s first 100 days

How the UK found the first effective Covid-19 treatment – and saved a million lives

3 reasons most public masking is still important – even if you’re vaccinated

How Senegal stretched its health care system to stop Covid-19

5 winner and 3 losers from Biden’s first congressional address

How the US won the economic recovery

MAY

The J&J vaccine isn’t causing nausea and fainting, anxiety is

Sen. Tim Scott says Congress is close to a police reform deal

America’s Covid-19 endgame could be much closer than you think

The home sales boom means you might end up renting

The inadequacy of the term “Asian American”

National Geographic faced up to its racist past. Did it actually get better?

Don’t freak out about the jobs report yet

Why stocks soared while America struggled

A new report complicates simplistic narratives about race and the 2020 election

Israel’s actions in East Jerusalem are a human rights test for Biden

Myanmar’s coup is uniting a country riven by ethnic divisions. Will it last?

The CDC embraces the power of the vaccines

Los Angeles’s quixotic quest to end homelessness

“Shocked and horrified”: Gaza news bureau is destroyed on live TV

The GOP whitewash of the Capitol attack shows the need for a January 6 commission

It’s time to make sure poor indoor air quality doesn’t keep making us sick

Joe Manchin says he needs Republicans to support voting rights. He found one.

Why the Republican Party can’t reckon with Trump

What banning abortion at 6 weeks really means

Biden’s negotiations with Republicans are making some Democrats anxious

Democrats barely passed a bill to increase security at the US Capitol

The death of Ronald Greene in Louisiana police custody, explained

What will shopping look like?

Any bipartisan January 6 commission is probably doomed

In defense of the two-state solution

2020 was the summer of road trips. 2021 is the summer of resorts.

Ohio’s vaccine lottery is winner no matter what

Justice Breyer’s new warning for Democrats couldn’t have come at a worse time

Why it took 100 years for America to learn about the Tulsa massacre

Where the next coronavirus could emerge, in one map

JUNE

What Chuck Schumer can learn from Harry Reid

The 6 reasons Americans aren’t getting vaccinated

California mandated masks. Florida opened its restaurants. Did any of it matter?

What Facebook’s two-year Trump ban does and doesn’t do

China extends reach in Hong Kong over Tiananmen Square vigil

What the “Fauci Gate” emails tell us about Covid-19 and American politics

Is there a housing bubble?

Justice Kavanaugh hands down some surprisingly hopeful news for women’s equality

Why on earth is Biden’s DOJ backing Trump in rape denial case?

The new Alzheimer’s drug that could break Medicare

What the new IG report about the gassing of protesters around Lafayette Square actually says

Colombia’s protests are a product of its post-peace-deal reality

The DOJ has a plan to protect voting rights. It might not be enough.

What the Novavax vaccine means for the global fight against Covid-19 

Call it authoritarianism

Biden’s big Putin bet

An epic Supreme Court showdown over religion and LGBTQ rights ends in a whimper

America’s largest evangelical denomination is at war with itself

The crisis roiling America’s largest evangelical denomination, explained by an expert

Iran has a new president. He could end up being much more than that.

The Supreme Court’s unanimous decision on paying NCAA student-athletes, explained

Andrew Yang and the complexities of representation

Democrats think now is their last, best chance to pass a big climate bill

What the hysteria over critical race theory is really all about

6 crucial climate actions the Senate left out of its infrastructure deal

The DOJ’s lawsuit against Georgia’s voter suppression law is probably doomed

Covid-19 made America’s long-term care crisis impossible to ignore

What the American dream looks like for immigrants

Biden’s infrastructure deal proves bipartisanship can’t deliver

The court decision freeing Bill Cosby, explained as best we can

JULY

The indictment of the Trump Organization and its CFO Allen Weisselberg, explained

3 winners and 3 losers from the just-completed Supreme Court term

The GOP backlash against corporations isn’t real – yet

How to be a good ancestor

The 25 best movies of 2021 (so far)

Political polarization is killing people

7 questions about Covid-19 booster shots, answered

3 big questions about NYC’s ranked choice experiment

“Race Norming” and the long legacy of medical racism, explained

What the assassination of Haiti’s president means for US foreign policy

How online fundraising led voters to donate more money than they realized

How American parents became obsessed with gender

The GOP voting bill that literally caused Texas Democrats to flee the state, explained

Haitian civil society leaders have a plan for the country’s future. It doesn’t involve the US.

Biden’s biggest anti-poverty plan has launched. He can still make it even better.

The surgeon general wants Facebook to do more to stop Covid-19 lies

A federal judge just declared DACA unlawful. Here’s what that means

The harrowing new reality for Alzheimer’s patients

Why a new law requiring Asian American history in schools is so significant

The Senate’s infrastructure gamble, explained

An Indigenous firefighter explains how to better manage wildfires

Did the Covid-19 Olympics have to be a mess?

The “magical thinking” Olympics

The Simone Biles scoring controversy, explained

Starbucks can’t be America’s bathroom

The courts are destroying America’s ability to fight pandemics

Cops at the schoolyard gate

The 4 main fault lines that divide the vaccinated and the unvaccinated 

America’s mental health moment is finally here

Trump’s aggressive efforts to overturn election results might come to light

AUGUST

Federal eviction protections have ended, leaving renters scrambling

Congress wants to make going to the airport less miserable

Can we save the planet by shrinking the economy?

America isn’t taking care of caregivers

Covid-19 cases now fall into 3 distinct categories

How to fight climate despair

The long reach of Belarus’s repression

“There’s no going back”: The UN’s dire new climate report, explained

What’s in the new infrastructure bill – and why it’s a big deal

Democrats’ infrastructure gamble actually seems like it could be working

The delta doldrums

The IRS has a big opportunity to fix the way Americans file taxes

CDC approval of Covid booster shot offers help for some Americans

The rapid fall of Afghanistan to Taliban forces, explained

Who are the Taliban now?

Why Biden was so set on withdrawing from Afghanistan

The US needs to meet its moral obligation to Afghan refugees

What we actually know about the vaccines and the delta variant

The history of US intervention in Afghanistan, from the Cold War to 9.11

Congress’s Democrat-on-Democrat hostage standoff, explained

What are jobs for?

How Florida’s massive Covid-19 spike got so bad

A cheap, generic antidepressant has emerged as the next promising weapon against Covid-19

The lab leak hypothesis – true or not – should teach us a lesson

The helplessness of being an Afghanistan War vet

What do hurricane categories mean?

Why Hurricane Ida as been so devastating to the Gulf Coast

An alarming new Supreme Court case could unravel Roe v. Wade as soon as tonight

SEPTEMBER

The Supreme Court allows an alarming anti-abortion law to take affect

The staggering implications of the Supreme Court’s anti-abortion ruling

The evidence for violence interrupters doesn’t support the hype

Millions of Americans don’t have drinkable water. Can the infrastructure bill fix that?

What we talk about when we talk about gentrification

What an enormous global study can tell us about feeling better during the pandemic

America needs to decide how much Covid-19 risk it will tolerate

Medicare benefits are a mess. Can Democrats fix them?

How European beat the US at vaccinations

Americas is still stuck in the world 9/11 built

20 years, $6 trillion, 900,000 lives

How Walgreens’ sloppy Covid-19 test registration system exposed patient data

Americans are dying because no hospital will take them

The pandemic has created a nation of insomniacs

Does everybody need a booster shot?

AI’s Islamophobia problem

The Texas GOP sees Haitian migrants in crisis as a political opportunity

Why everybody’s hiring but nobody’s getting hired

What it’s like to seek an abortion in Texas right now

‘Covid didn’t make us poor; we already were poor”

The Afghan refugee crisis has revealed the artificial limits of America’s will to welcome

Why American keeps turning its back on Haitian migrants

The largest space telescope in history is about to blow our minds

Where are the delta-specific vaccines?

How the Christian right embraced voter suppression

An “attack on American cities” is freezing climate action in its tracks

23 species were just declared extinct. Here’s what that really means.

OCTOBER

Why people who don’t trust vaccines embrace unproven drugs

The nihilism of Neil Gorsuch

When the world actually solved an environmental crisis

Why this Facebook scandal is different

We still haven’t figured out how to talk about Monica Lewinsky

Why lawmakers are fighting over the debt ceiling – again

The US is closer than ever to making major progression the climate crisis

The best- and worst-case scenarios for Covid-19 this winter

A brief history of the internet hating Jonathan Franzen

The thorny truth about socially responsible investing

A better way to legalize marijuana

The controversial plan to bring jaguars back to the US

Can the US cut drug prices without sacrificing new cures?

How TV lied about abortion

The $5 trillion insurance industry faces a reckoning. Blame climate change.

The myth of the climate moderate

Americans are ready to tax the rich

Millennials grew up hating their bodies. Does Gen Z have to be the same?

Texas’s anti-abortion law is back at SCOTUS. Here’s what’s different this time around.

The Freedom to Vote Act is almost certainly doomed

Democrats are setting up social policies for painful cliffs

The Supreme Court’s very unusual new abortion orders, explained

Who should get a Covid-19 booster shot right now?

How biological detective work can reveal who engineered a virus

What will the Virginia and New Jersey governor’s races mean for Biden?

Is ignoring the pandemic a crime against humanity?

President Biden’s Plan B for the climate crisis, explained

What’s in – and what’s out of – Biden’s latest spending proposal

Are “net-zero” climate targets just hot air?

Why progressives still aren’t voting for the infrastructure bill

The horror century

NOVEMBER

An unusual alliance appears likely to fracture Texas’s abortion ban

Covid-19 vaccines for young kids are a big step toward a new normal

What Glenn Younkin’s Virginia win means for Democrats

Did critical race theory really swing the Virginia election?

The open secret to looking like a superhero

Can the Iran nuclear deal be saved?

The open secret to looking like a superhero

How to fix Facebook

5 things to know about the big climate conference in Glasgow

Ahmaud Arbery and the case for getting rid of citizen’s arrests

The lofty goals and short life of the antiracist book club

The big questions about Covid-10 booster shots

How a simple solution slashed child mortality in rural Kenyan villages

What one American’s case says about the future of the courts in Hong Kong

The bipartisan infrastructure law is both historic and not nearly enough

State have the power to make or break the infrastructure law

One of the billionaire scientists behind the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine on what’s next

Oklahoma will not execute Julius Jones, but the outcome should still trouble you

The intellectual right’s war on America’s institutions

“We are going to make you beg for mercy”

King Richard and reclaiming Richard Williams’s legacy

Kyle Rittenhouse and the scary future of the American right

At-home Covid-19 tests are getting better. Experts say: Stock up for winter.

It matters that 3 white men were found guilty of murdering Ahmaud Arbery

Lawyers left racism out of the trial over Ahmaud Arbery’s death. Here’s why.

How Puerto Rico became the most vaccinated place in America

Why Democrats shouldn’t cut paid leave from their social spending bill

The lost parents to Covid-19. Are We abandoning them?

4 big questions about the new omicron variant

Congress is getting ready to do what it does best: Procrastinate

DECEMBER

It sure sounds like Roe v. Wade is doomed

How to know if omicron is as scary as it seems

Biden’s winter Covid plan is what a new normal might look like

Biden’s bewildering decision to expand a Trump-era immigration policy

The escalating costs of being single in America

The US needs a clear Covid-19 goal now more than ever

Did Democrats blow it on Roe v. Wade?

Why adoption isn’t a replacement for abortion rights

Why South Africa seems cautiously optimistic about omicron

Don’t be fooled: The Supreme Court’s Texas abortion decison is a big defeat for Roe v. Wade

My year of smells

The best $210 I ever spent: My sobriety

A good life is painful

January 6 texts from Fox hosts reveal the lie at the heart of the conservative movement

The January 6 committee’s showdown with Mark Meadows, explained

Joe Manchin cancels Build Back Better’s Christmas party

Does it still make sense for vaccinated people with Covid-19 to isolate for 10 days?

You might get a breakthrough case of Covid-19 this winter. Here’s how to prepare.

Two ways to read Manchin’s “no” on Build Back Better

6 epidemiologists on how omicron is – and isn’t – changing their holiday plans

How omicron ruined testing the week before Christmas

Case numbers? Hospitalizations? The omicron data you should track

What makes the omicron variant so strange and surprising

Botox, billionaires, and bitcoin: 2021 in charts

Democrats’ unfinished to-do list

It’s only a matter of time before omicron spreads through immigration detention

Welcome to Covid-19’s “junior year.” It’s not pretty.

Covid-19 surges spark chain reactions that strain US hospitals everywhere

Despite omicron, Covid-19 will become endemic. Here’s how.

22 predictions we made in January, and the 13 we got right

Money has never felt more fake

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