Preview: • Fox-Dominion trial delay 'is not unusual,' judge says • Fox News' defamation battle isn't stopping Trump's election lies

Preview: The judge just announced in court that a settlement has been reached in the historic defamation case between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems.

Preview: A settlement has been reached in Dominion Voting Systems' defamation case against Fox News, the judge for the case announced. The network will pay more than $787 million to Dominion, a lawyer for the company said.

Preview: • DeSantis goes to Washington, a place he once despised, looking for support to take on Trump • Opinion: For the GOP to win, it must ditch Trump • Chris Christie mulling 2024 White House bid • Analysis: The fire next time has begun burning in Tennessee

Preview: • 'A major part of Ralph died': Aunt of teen shot after ringing wrong doorbell speaks • 20-year-old woman shot after friend turned into the wrong driveway in upstate New York, officials say

Preview: Newly released body camera footage shows firefighters and sheriff's deputies rushing to help actor Jeremy Renner after a near-fatal snowplow accident in January. The "Avengers" actor broke more than 30 bones and suffered other severe injuries. CNN's Chloe Melas has more.

Preview: It's sourdough bread and handstands for Jake Gyllenhaal and Jamie Lee Curtis.

Preview: A tiny intruder infiltrated White House grounds Tuesday, prompting a swift response from the US Secret Service.

Preview: Trump-Musk Spat Creates More Problems for Tesla  The New York Times Who holds the cards in Trump vs. Musk? Trump, but …  CNN Opinion | Clash of the Bilious Billionaires  The New York Times Tesla already had big problems. Then Musk went to battle with Trump  CNBC Republicans fume as Elon Musk complicates tax bill path  The Washington Post

Preview: Wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia returning to U.S. to face criminal charges  Axios Return of Abrego Garcia Raises Questions About Trump’s Views of Justice  The New York Times JONATHAN TURLEY: Not the homecoming Dems and Abrego Garcia hoped for  Fox News Kilmar Ábrego García returned from El Salvador to face criminal charges in US  The Guardian How Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s case became a political flashpoint  CNN

Preview: David Huerta, president of SEIU California, detained during L.A. ICE raids  Los Angeles Times Federal agents conduct immigration raids across LA. Protesters and city officials respond  LAist ICE launches ‘military-style’ raids in Los Angeles: What we know  Al Jazeera ICE sweeps through LA businesses as local Democrats cry foul over Trump administration's enforcement actions  Fox News Riot police and protesters clash after LA immigration raids  BBC

Preview: How the U.S. became highly reliant on Elon Musk for access to space  NPR Elon Musk pulls back on threat to withdraw Dragon spacecraft  AP News How NASA Would Struggle Without SpaceX if Trump Cancels Musk’s Contracts  The New York Times Elon Musk’s Starlink gets licence to start India services amid feud with Trump  The Hindu Why Trump can’t just quit Musk  CNN

Preview: Trump’s International Student Ban Sparks Fear Among Harvard Attendees  The New York Times Continued court fights could put Harvard in unwinnable position vs Trump  Fox News ENHANCING NATIONAL SECURITY BY ADDRESSING RISKS AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY  The White House (.gov) This Harvard student’s grandmother sold her land and cattle to help get him from Kenya to Cambridge. Now what?  The Boston Globe Funding cuts, lawsuits, foreign students: The latest on Trump’s war with Harvard University  MassLive

Preview: Ex-police chief who escaped Arkansas prison while serving time for murder recaptured: Authorities  ABC News Former Arkansas police chief who escaped from prison has been recaptured, sheriff’s office says  CNN ‘Devil in the Ozarks' Escapee Is Caught Near Arkansas Prison  The New York Times Arkansas killer and rapist caught after 13-day manhunt in mountains  The Guardian Ex-police chief convicted of rape and murder captured after escaping Arkansas prison  NBC News

Preview: Trump says Xi agreed to restart flow of crucial minerals, but analysts say China won’t give up its ‘rare earth card’  CNN Xi’s Message to Trump: Rein In the Hawks Trying to Derail the Truce  The New York Times US, China set for trade talks in London on Monday  Reuters Xi Bets Trump Detente Will Lead to Future Wins on Chips, Tariffs  Bloomberg.com U.S. Trade Team to Meet Chinese Officials in London, Trump Says  WSJ

Preview: GOP senators’ top concerns with Trump’s big agenda bill, in their own words  CNN Could Trump fail on tax bill? Why going 'big' doesn't always work out as planned  USA Today 50 Wins in the One Big Beautiful Bill  The White House (.gov) Estimated Budgetary Effects of H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act  Congressional Budget Office (.gov) Here are taxes that Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' would repeal  ABC News

Preview: Washington governor activates National Guard in search for accused killer, Travis Decker  KATU Father searched online for jobs in Canada, how to relocate before 3 Decker sisters were killed  KING5.com GoFundMe for mother of slain Wenatchee girls surpasses $1M, 2nd-largest in WA history  MyNorthwest.com Police search for US man accused of killing his 3 daughters  BBC Travis Decker believed to be on Pacific Crest Trail; residents advised to lock doors  NewsNation

Preview: DOGE employees can search Social Security records, Supreme Court says  Los Angeles Times DOGE just got a green light to access your Social Security data. Here’s what that means  CNN Justices Grant DOGE Access to Social Security Data and Let the Team Shield Records  The New York Times Trump's winning at the Supreme Court. Justice Jackson warns about `troubling message'  USA Today Supreme Court halts lower court orders requiring DOGE to hand over information about work and personnel  CBS News

Preview: Seven public housing tenant association presidents told THE CITY that they were surprised to see their names on a list of Cuomo backers.

Preview: “I can’t believe that’s something a member of Congress feels comfortable saying out loud without any shame," said the "Late Night" comedian.

Preview: From denial and downplaying to anger and acceptance.

Preview: The MSNBC host slammed the president as a “vulgar lump of a man.”

Preview: The "Late Show" host finds a truly unexpected plot twist in the middle of the chaos.

Preview: “That’s true, that’s true,” Trump later admitted to Friedrich Merz.

Preview: Trump “wants that to be in the zeitgeist,” argued the CNN anchor.

Preview: The late night host showed how the battle was even better than he had hoped.

Preview: “Shouldn’t have done it, it was way too soon before we had any real information,” San Antonio Police Chief William McManus admitted in a Thursday press conference.

Preview: Michael Kosta highlighted the "crazy" circumstances of the nasty split between the world's wealthiest man and the president.

Preview: If Trump tries to cut the federal government’s ties with Musk’s companies based on his criticism, the courts and the First Amendment will serve as his best defense.

Preview: The federal government had asked the justices to halt a judge’s order blocking DOGE from sensitive Social Security information.

Preview: As Donald Trump launches an investigation into Joe Biden, it's the third time the Republican has engaged in such a flagrant abuse of presidential power.

Preview: Democrats' efforts to make “TACO” — or “Trump always chickens out”— a new political slogan could backfire. The meaning of it would push Trump the wrong way.

Preview: The Trump administration claims that Columbia insufficiently handled expressions of antisemitism and says the university is no longer eligible to be accredited.

Preview: Veterans are frustrated with Trump's broken promises, including threats from DOGE to cut core VA services.

Preview: The Trump administration had fought court orders requiring the government to remedy the illegal deportation to El Salvador.

Preview: As the conservative media ecosystem tries to cope with the fallout from an apparent feud between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, some right-wing influencers are trying to spin the spat as nothing more than two macho men in a benign sparring match.

Preview: The HHS under Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s leadership is poised to make the United States' already high maternal mortality rates even worse.

Preview: It feels like a distant memory now, but back in 2023, then-presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis faced widespread condemnation and ultimately fired a campaign staffer who circulated a video that featured Nazi imagery

Preview: With members embedded in multiple agencies, the team’s approach to transforming government is becoming “institutionalized,” as one official put it.

Preview: President Trump’s decision to pull a close associate of Elon Musk’s out of the running to lead NASA helped doom an extraordinary partnership.

Preview: The president could tighten federal oversight of the tech titan’s businesses, even if heavy reliance by the Pentagon and NASA on them makes terminating Mr. Musk’s contracts less feasible.

Preview: Already suffering from steep declines in sales and profit, the carmaker could now face the president’s wrath.

Preview: For the nearly three months before the Justice Department secured an indictment against the man, it had repeatedly flouted a series of court orders to “facilitate” his release from El Salvador.

Preview: The warm welcome for a technology executive whose purchases of the president’s digital coin won him a White House tour illustrates inconsistencies in the administration’s views toward visitors from China.

Preview: Sick children, families and businesses are among the many people in Haiti, a country plagued by gang violence, likely to be hit hard by a U.S. travel ban.

Preview: Russia’s spy hunters are increasingly worried about China’s espionage, even as the two countries grow closer.

Preview: Moscow has long been suspicious of foreign messaging apps. WeChat’s weak encryption makes it vulnerable.

Preview: A directive from Russia’s domestic security service was part of a cache that was advertised online by a cybercrime group.

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Preview: They knew what they were getting into.

Preview: Take a quick break with our daily 5x5 grid.

Preview: The star wants to broadcast his record-breaking Broadway show to as wide an audience as possible. It’s not hard to see why.

Preview: It’s been quite a show! We have some notes on their performance.

Preview: Candice Lim and Kate Lindsay discuss how TheWizardLiz’s breakup casts doubt on the entire concept of TikTok “relationship experts.”

Preview: Finance journalism’s best inside joke goes mainstream.

Preview: The project to demolish the New Deal reaches its apex one hundred years later with an intra-billionaire spat.

Preview: The Phoenician Scheme is about all of the things you can’t put in a Wes Anderson movie.

Preview: Thousands of people gather on the National Mall in Washington, DC, on September 26, 1998, to demand that the cause, the care, and the cure of cancer be made top research and healthcare priorities in the US. | Paul J. Richards/AFP via Getty Images On November 4, 2003, a doctor gave Jon Gluck some of the worst news imaginable: He had cancer — one that later tests would reveal as multiple myeloma, a severe blood and bone marrow cancer.  Jon was told he might have as little as 18 months to live. He was 38, a thriving magazine editor in New York with a 7-month-old daughter whose third birthday, he suddenly realized, he might never see. “The moment after I was told I had cancer, I just said ‘no, no, no,’” Jon told me in an interview just last week. “This cannot be true.” Living in remission The fact that Jon is still here, talking to me in 2025, tells you that things didn’t go the way the medical data would have predicted on that November morning. He has lived with his cancer, through waves of remission and recurrence, for more than 20 years, an experience he chronicles with grace and wit in his new book An Exercise in Uncertainty. That 7-month-old daughter is now in college. You could say Jon has beaten the odds, and he’s well aware that chance played some role in his survival. (“Did you know that ‘Glück’ is German for ‘luck’?” he writes in the book, noting his good fortune that a random spill on the ice is what sent him to the doctor in the first place, enabling them to catch his cancer early.) Cancer is still a terrible health threat, one that is responsible for 1 in 6 deaths around the world, killing nearly 10 million people a year globally and over 600,000 people a year in the US.  But Jon’s story and his survival demonstrate something that is too often missed: We’ve turned the tide in the war against cancer.  The age-adjusted death rate in the US for cancer has declined by about a third since 1991, meaning people of a given age have about a third lower risk of dying from cancer than people of the same age more than three decades ago. That adds up to over 4 million fewer cancer deaths over that time period. Thanks to breakthroughs in treatments like autologous stem-cell harvesting and CAR-T therapy — breakthroughs Jon himself benefited from, often just in time — cancer isn’t the death sentence it once was. Getting better all the time There’s no doubt that just as the rise of smoking in the 20th century led to a major increase in cancer deaths, the equally sharp decline of tobacco use eventually led to a delayed decrease. Smoking is one of the most potent carcinogens in the world, and at the peak in the early 1960s, around 12 cigarettes were being sold per adult per day in the US. Take away the cigarettes and — after a delay of a couple of decades — lung cancer deaths drop in turn along with other non-cancer smoking-related deaths. But as Saloni Dattani wrote in a great piece earlier this year, even before the decline of smoking, death rates from non-lung cancers in the stomach and colon had begun to fall. Just as notably, death rates for childhood cancers — which for obvious reasons are not connected to smoking and tend to be caused by genetic mutations — have fallen significantly as well, declining sixfold since 1950. In the 1960s, for example, only around 10 percent of children diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia survived more than five years. Today it’s more than 90 percent. And the five-year survival rate for all cancers has risen from 49 percent in the mid-1970s to 69 percent in 2019.  We’ve made strikes against the toughest of cancers, like Jon’s multiple myeloma. Around when Jon was diagnosed, the five-year survival rate was just 34 percent. Today it’s as high as 62 percent, and more and more people like Jon are living for decades. “There has been a revolution in cancer survival,” Jon told me. “Some illnesses now have far more successful therapies than others, but the gains are real.” Three cancer revolutions  The dramatic bend in the curve of cancer deaths didn’t happen by accident — it’s the compound interest of three revolutions. While anti-smoking policy has been the single biggest lifesaver, other interventions have helped reduce people’s cancer risk. One of the biggest successes is the HPV vaccine. A study last year found that death rates of cervical cancer — which can be caused by HPV infections — in US women ages 20–39 had dropped 62 percent from 2012 to 2021, thanks largely to the spread of the vaccine. Other cancers have been linked to infections, and there is strong research indicating that vaccination can have positive effects on reducing cancer incidence.  The next revolution is better and earlier screening. It’s generally true that the earlier cancer is caught, the better the chances of survival, as Jon’s own story shows. According to one study, incidences of late-stage colorectal cancer in Americans over 50 declined by a third between 2000 and 2010 in large part because rates of colonoscopies almost tripled in that same time period. And newer screening methods, often employing AI or using blood-based tests, could make preliminary screening simpler, less invasive and therefore more readily available. If 20th-century screening was about finding physical evidence of something wrong — the lump in the breast — 21st-century screening aims to find cancer before symptoms even arise. Most exciting of all are frontier developments in treating cancer, much of which can be tracked through Jon’s own experience. From drugs like lenalidomide and bortezomib in the 2000s, which helped double median myeloma survival, to the spread of monoclonal antibodies, real breakthroughs in treatments have meaningfully extended people’s lives — not just by months, but years. Perhaps the most promising development is CAR-T therapy, a form of immunotherapy. Rather than attempting to kill the cancer directly, immunotherapies turn a patient’s own T-cells into guided missiles. In a recent study of 97 patients with multiple myeloma, many of whom were facing hospice care, a third of those who received CAR-T therapy had no detectable cancer five years later. It was the kind of result that doctors rarely see.  “CAR-T is mind-blowing — very science-fiction futuristic,” Jon told me. He underwent his own course of treatment with it in mid-2023 and writes that the experience, which put his cancer into a remission he’s still in, left him feeling “physically and metaphysically new.” A welcome uncertainty While there are still more battles to be won in the war on cancer, and there are certain areas — like the rising rates of gastrointestinal cancers among younger people — where the story isn’t getting better, the future of cancer treatment is improving. For cancer patients like Jon, that can mean a new challenge — enduring the essential uncertainty that comes with living under a disease that’s controllable but which could always come back.  But it sure beats the alternative. “I’ve come to trust so completely in my doctors and in these new developments,” he said. “I try to remain cautiously optimistic that my future will be much like the last 20 years.” And that’s more than he or anyone else could have hoped for nearly 22 years ago.  A version of this story originally appeared in the Good News newsletter. Sign up here!

Preview: President Donald Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, during better days. Elon Musk and President Donald Trump — two of the most powerful, outspoken billionaires in America — are still tangled up in a messy breakup over a variety of issues. It’s no shock that these two men with huge egos would have friction, but it’s interesting to look at some of the specific things that seem to be causing trouble between them. In particular, Trump’s and Musk’s differing views on climate change and clean energy have evidently become an irritant again. Recall that Musk, CEO of the electric car company Tesla, participated in White House councils during Trump’s first term, but left after Trump began the process of pulling the US out of the Paris climate agreement.  View Link But Musk began to drift to the political right. He publicly backed Trump’s campaign for a second term — onstage and with money — and was rewarded with a high-profile quasi-governmental post as the head of the new Department of Government Efficiency that laid off thousands of federal workers. It seemed like they were accomplishing their mutual goals. Trump even turned the White House into a sales lot for Tesla and got one himself.  But after Musk left DOGE recently, he came out against the budget bill passed by House Republicans and backed by Trump, driving another wedge between them. The bill rolls back tax credits for electric vehicles and hits owners with a $250 fee to pay for the Highway Trust Fund, which pays for road maintenance through gasoline taxes. Though Musk owns an electric vehicle company, he says he doesn’t care about rolling back EV tax credits and is more concerned about how the budget bill increases the deficit. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the bill would add $2.4 trillion to the deficit over 10 years.  View Link However, Tesla made about one-third of its profits over the past decade from selling compliance credits to other carmakers in states that adopted California’s vehicle emissions rules as well as in several other countries. The Trump administration is also targeting the programs that created this line of business through executive orders.   The back-and-forth over the years between Trump and Musk was mirrored in the perceptions of Tesla’s products. The sleek electric cars were once rolling billboards projecting that their owners were concerned about climate change and are now attacked as endorsements of fascism.  More broadly, it shows that there are stubborn political divides on how people view clean technology — electric vehicles, renewable energy, battery storage, and so on.  A poll this week from the Pew Research Center showed that Republicans have less and less favorable views of clean tech. The exception is nuclear energy, which has seen increasing support among both Democrats and Republicans.  But on the flip side, Republicans tend to strongly support fossil fuel extraction from offshore oil drilling, hydraulic fracturing, and coal mining — far more than Democrats do.  Meanwhile, electric vehicles are taking to the road in greater numbers, though a partisan divide emerges here as well. Far more Democrats than Republicans say they are interested in buying an EV as their next car, though Democrats did look less favorably on Tesla EVs. Tesla sales are down in the US while overall EV sales are up. Hybrid cars are more popular across the country than pure EVs, according to the poll.  California and 11 other states now plan to end the sales of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035. Two-thirds of Americans say they are against this idea, but here, too, there’s a political divide, with 85 percent of Republicans and 45 percent of Democrats in opposition.    Looking back over the past five years, it’s apparent that even when Trump and Musk were in alignment, they couldn’t change the political valence of electric cars.  Now, at least one more Republican has soured on EVs: Trump is reportedly looking for a buyer for his red Tesla Model S after his dustup with Musk.   It will take more than a thumbs-up from the White House or the enthusiastic backing of a billionaire to change Republicans’ minds about technologies that help limit climate change. There are some outliers, though, like the Iowa Trump supporters who also back wind power.  But the momentum behind these tools is massive and mounting. Wind, solar, EVs, and grid batteries have all seen tremendous price drops, huge performance gains, and surging deployment in recent years. The Trump administration’s policies could sap some of this momentum, but they can’t stop it.

Preview: President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have quickly turned on each other in a very public and bitter feud. Their split isn’t just personal, but has major implications for the rest of the country, with Musk now strongly opposing Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.” It is the centerpiece of Trump’s legislative agenda, which includes tax cuts, Medicaid reductions, and increased border spending. The proposal would also significantly raise the national debt. Musk took aim at the bill as “massive, outrageous, pork-filled…a disgusting abomination” that would “massively increase” the budget deficit. “Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.” In response, Trump threatened Musk’s federal contracts. Then Musk threatened to start a new political party and accused Trump of covering up “the Epstein files.” Follow along here for updates and explainers to understand the deeper implications of this battle. The big reason why Republicans should worry about an angry Elon Musk Why Trump probably can’t cut Musk loose Jeffrey Epstein’s friendship with Donald Trump, explained The real reasons Musk is feuding with Trump The Trump-Musk breakup, briefly explained

Preview: In the November 2026 midterm elections, Elon Musk could have much more impact for much less money. | Allison Robbert/AFP via Getty Images How the Musk-Trump blowup ends, nobody knows. Most commentary gives President Donald Trump the advantage. But Elon Musk’s willingness to spend his fortune on elections gives him one distinct advantage — the ability to drive a brittle party system into chaos and loosen Trump’s hold on it.  Thus far, Musk has raised two electoral threats. First, his opposition to Trump’s One Big, Beautiful Bill has raised the specter of his funding primary challenges against Republicans who vote to support the legislation. Second, he has raised the possibility of starting a new political party. There are limits to how much Musk can actually reshape the political landscape — but the underlying conditions of our politics make it uniquely vulnerable to disruption. The threat of Musk-funded primaries might ring a little hollow. Trump will almost certainly still be beloved by core Republican voters in 2026. Musk can fund primary challengers, but in a low-information, low-turnout environment of mostly Trump-loving loyal partisans, he is unlikely to succeed.  However, in the November 2026 midterm elections, Musk could have much more impact for much less money. All he needs to do is fund a few spoiler third-party candidates in a few key swing states and districts. In so doing, he would exploit the vulnerability that has been hiding in plain sight for a while — the wafer-thin closeness of national elections. In a straight-up battle for the soul of the Republican Party, Trump wins hands down. Not even close. Trump has been the party’s leader and cult of personality for a decade.  But in a battle for the balance of power, Musk might hold the cards. Currently, the US political system is “calcified.” That’s how the political scientists John Sides, Chris Tausanovitch, and Lynn Vavreck described it in their 2022 book, The Bitter End: The 2020 Presidential Campaign and the Challenge to American Democracy. Partisans keep voting for their side, seeing only the reality that makes them the heroes; events may change, but minds don’t.  In a 48-48 country, that means little opportunity for either party to make big gains. It also means a small disruption could have massive implications.  Elon Musk doesn’t have a winning coalition — but he may not need one to hurt Trump Let’s imagine, for a moment, that Musk is serious about starting a new political party and running candidates.  He will quickly find that despite his X poll, a party that “actually represents the 80 percent in the middle” is a fantasy. That mythical center? Being generous here, that’s maybe 15 percent of politically checked-out Americans. View Link Realistically, the coalition for Musk’s politics — techno-libertarian-futurist, anti-system, very online, Axe-level bro-vibes — would be small. But even so, a Musk-powered independent party — call it the “Colonize Mars” Party — would almost certainly attract exactly the voters completely disenchanted with both parties, mostly the disillusioned young men who went to Trump in the 2024 election. Imagine Musk funds his Colonize Mars Party in every competitive race, recruiting energetic candidates. He gives disenchanted voters a chance to flip off the system: Vote for us, and you can throw the entire Washington establishment into a panic!  Practically, not many seats in the midterms will be up for grabs. Realistically, about 40 or so House seats will be genuine swing seats. In the Senate, there are realistically only about seven competitive races. But that means a small party of disruption could multiply the targeted impact of a precision blast with a well-chosen 5 percent of the electorate in less than 10 percent of the seats. Quite a payoff.  The short-term effect would be to help Democrats. Musk used to be a Democrat, so this is not so strange. If Musk and his tech allies care about immigration, trade, and investment in domestic science, supporting Democrats may make more sense. And if Musk mostly cares about disruption and sending Trump spiraling, this is how he would do it.   Musk is an engineer at heart. His successes have emerged from him examining existing systems, finding their weak points, and asking, What if we do something totally different? From an engineer’s perspective, the American political system has a unique vulnerability. Every election hangs on a narrow margin. The balance of power is tenuous.  Since 1992, we’ve been in an extended period in which partisan control of the White House, Senate, and the House has continually oscillated between parties. National electoral margins remain wickedly tight (we haven’t had a landslide national election since 1984). And as elections come to depend on fewer and fewer swing states and districts, a targeted strike on these pivotal elections could completely upend the system.  A perfectly balanced and completely unstable system It’s a system ripe for disruption. So why has nobody disrupted it?  First, it takes money — and Musk has a lot of it.   Money has its limits — Musk’s claim that his money helped Trump win the election is dubious. Our elections are already saturated with money. In an era of high partisan loyalty, the vast majority of voters have made up their minds before the candidate is even announced. Most money is wasted. It hits decreasing marginal returns fast. The very thing that makes our politics feel so stuck is exactly what makes it so susceptible to Musk’s threat. But where money can make a difference is in reaching angry voters disenchanted with both parties with a protest option. Money buys awareness more than anything else. For $300 million (roughly what Musk spent in 2024), a billionaire could have leverage in some close elections. For $3 billion (about 1 percent of Musk’s fortune) the chance of success goes up considerably. Second, disruption is possible when there are enough voters who are indifferent to the final outcome. The reason Ross Perot did so well in 1992? Enough voters saw no difference between the parties that they felt fine casting a protest vote.  In recent years, the share of voters disenchanted with both parties has been growing steadily. The share of Americans with unfavorable views of both parties was 6 percent in 1994. In 2013 it was 28 percent.  In a recent poll, a plurality of adults (38 percent) now say neither party fights for them. Both parties (and Trump) are very unpopular. The overwhelming majority of voters (70 percent) describe themselves as disappointed with the nation’s politics. Voters are angry, and eager for dramatic change.  Election after election, we’ve gone through the same pattern. Throw out the old bums, bring in the new bums —  even if 90-plus percent of the electorate votes for the same bums, year in and year out. But in a 48-48 country, with only a few competitive states and districts, a rounding-error shift of 10,000 votes across a few states (far fewer than a typical Taylor Swift concert) can bestow full control of the government. Think of elections as anti-incumbent roulette.   The system is indeed “calcified,” as Sides, Tausanovitch, and Vavreck convincingly argue. Calcified can mean immovable. But it can also mean brittle. Indeed, the very thing that makes our politics feel so stuck is exactly what makes it so susceptible to Musk’s threat. Most money in politics is wasted. But if one knows how to target it, the potential for serious disruption is quite real.

Preview: Elon Musk gives a tour to President-elect Donald Trump and lawmakers of the control room before a test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket on November 19, 2024, in Brownsville, Texas. | Brandon Bell/Getty Images Breaking up is hard to do — especially when one party is a billionaire with near-unassailable dominance of the nation’s ability to launch things into space, and the other is a president who has staked a significant portion of his legacy on wildly ambitious space-based projects.  As President Donald Trump and his erstwhile financial backer and former DOGE boss Elon Musk traded blows on social media Thursday, the president at one point posted, “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”  This prompted Musk to announce that he was decommissioning SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, used to transport astronauts to the International Space Station, though he later backed down from the threat. Trump may soon find, however, that canceling Musk’s contracts is a lot harder than selling his Tesla, particularly if he wants to pursue goals like his much-vaunted Golden Dome missile defense project.  To get to space, the US needs SpaceX During President Joe Biden’s administration, concerns were indeed raised about Musk’s lucrative government contracts as well as his access to classified defense information, given his partisan political activities (unusual for a major defense contractor), communications with foreign leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin, and ties to the Chinese government.  But as Vox reported last year, unwinding the government’s relationship with Musk’s companies is a near impossibility right now, particularly when it comes to SpaceX. The company is simply better at launching massive numbers of objects into space than any of its competitors, and it’s not close: SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket was responsible for 84 percent of all satellite launches last year, and the constellation of more than 7,000 Starlink communications satellites accounts for around 65 percent of all operational satellites in orbit.  The reusable Falcon 9 has become the space launch workhorse of choice for a US military and intelligence community that is ever more dependent on satellites for communications and surveillance. “If one side or the other severed that relationship, which I don’t think is practical, you would very quickly see a backlog of military satellites waiting for launch,” said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow and space defense expert at the American Enterprise Institute. Ambitious plans like the National Reconnaissance Office’s ongoing project to launch a constellation of intelligence and surveillance satellites for military use would come to a “screeching halt,” said Harrison. The US military is also increasingly reliant on SpaceX for mobile internet connectivity via a specialized military-only version of Starlink known as Starshield. For NASA, the situation is, if anything, even more dire, as shown last March when two US astronauts returned, months late, from the International Space Station on a SpaceX Dragon capsule when problems were detected on the Boeing craft that brought them into orbit on its first ever flight.  Losing SpaceX “would basically just end the US participation in the space station,” said David Burbach, an associate professor and space policy expert at the Naval War College.  NASA’s space shuttle program shut down in 2011. Boeing’s Starliner is probably years from being a viable alternative, and going back to relying on Russian rockets — as the US did for nearly a decade between the end of the Space Shuttle and the advent of Dragon — would probably be a tough sell these days. Burbach, speaking in his personal capacity, not as a representative of the US military or war college, said such a break “would be the kind of thing that could trigger something truly drastic” such as the White House using the Defense Production Act to take control of the program. It’s not surprising Musk quickly backed down from the threat.  NASA’s ongoing Artemis program, which aims to eventually return humans to the Moon and establish a permanent lunar space station, is also heavily dependent on SpaceX’s Starship launch vehicle, as are longer term plans for a mission to Mars. These are (or at least were) priorities for the White House: The moon and Mars missions are the only parts of NASA’s budget that were increased in the president’s recent budget request and the president mentioned planting “the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars” in his inaugural address.   Mars is, to put it mildly, something of a fixation for Musk, and it’s hard to imagine an ongoing US program to get there without his involvement.  Trump’s golden dreams may require Musk A true Trump-Musk rift would also have implications for “Golden Dome,” the ambitious plan to “protect the homeland” from ballistic missiles, drones, hypersonic cruise missiles, and other aerial threats.  Plans for Golden Dome are still a little vague and no contracts for its construction have been awarded yet, but SpaceX is reportedly a frontrunner to build a constellation of hundreds of new satellites to detect missile launches and determine if they are headed toward the United States, and possibly even intercept them from space.  According to Reuters, SpaceX is bidding for portions of the project in partnership with Anduril and Palantir, two other defense tech companies also led by staunch Trump backers. SpaceX’s vision for the satellite network reportedly envisions it as a “subscription service,” in which the government would pay for access, rather than owning the system outright, a model that would presumably give Musk much more leverage over how Golden Dome is developed and deployed.  Critics of the program charge that it is little more than a giveaway to Musk and his allies and Democratic members of Congress have raised concerns about his involvement.   Advocates for the program, including the Heritage Foundation, which called for investments in ballistic and hypersonic missile defense in its Project 2025 document, have cited SpaceX’s success with Starlink and Starshield as proof-of-concept for their argument that deploying a layer of hundreds or thousands of satellites for missile defense is more practical today than it was in the days of President Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” project. Even if Golden Dome could be effective, which many doubt, Trump’s stated goal of having it operational with “a success rate close to 100 percent” in “less than three years” for around $175 billion (the Congressional Budget Office projects half a trillion dollars) is eyebrow-raising. The Pentagon had already backed away from the three-year timeline even before the president began feuding with the only person in the world who’s built anything close to this.  “Even for SpaceX, it would be challenging,” said Burbach. “I don’t think any other company has the capability. They’re really out in the lead on assembly line satellite capability.” Some experts think Golden Dome could be reconfigured with a greater role for land-based radar and interceptors, but this would almost certainly put it short of Trump’s expansive vision. As nuclear expert Ankit Panda succinctly put it on Thursday, “Golden Dome is cooked.” Is there an alternative? If anyone had a good day on Thursday, it was Musk’s fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos. In January, Bezos’s space company Blue Origin carried out its first successful launch of New Glenn, a reusable rocket meant to compete with SpaceX’s game-changing Falcon for contracts including military launches. The company has also begun launching satellites for its Kuiper communications network, a potential competitor to Starlink.  Both projects have suffered from long delays and have a long way to go to catch up with Musk’s space behemoth, but it’s still presumably good news for the company that their main competitor is no longer literally sleeping feet from the White House. Finding ways to at least encourage competition with Musk, if not cut him loose entirely, would likely have been a priority for a Kamala Harris administration, and may now be one for Trump as well. In response to Vox’s questions to the White House about the future of SpaceX’s contracts, spokesperson Karoline Leavitt responded in an emailed statement, “President Trump is focused on making our country great again and passing the One Big Beautiful Bill.” SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.  Though the two may no longer be speaking, Trump is likely to find it harder than he thinks to get out of the Elon Musk business entirely.

Preview: For decades, digital privacy advocates have been warning the public to be more careful about what we share online. And for the most part, the public has cheerfully ignored them.  I am certainly guilty of this myself. I usually click “accept all” on every cookie request every website puts in front of my face, because I don’t want to deal with figuring out which permissions are actually needed. I’ve had a Gmail account for 20 years, so I’m well aware that on some level that means Google knows every imaginable detail of my life.  I’ve never lost too much sleep over the idea that Facebook would target me with ads based on my internet presence. I figure that if I have to look at ads, they might as well be for products I might actually want to buy.  But even for people indifferent to digital privacy like myself, AI is going to change the game in a way that I find pretty terrifying. This is a picture of my son on the beach. Which beach? OpenAI’s o3 pinpoints it just from this one picture: Marina State Beach in Monterey Bay, where my family went for vacation.  To my merely human eye, this image doesn’t look like it contains enough information to guess where my family is staying for vacation. It’s a beach! With sand! And waves! How could you possibly narrow it down further than that?  But surfing hobbyists tell me there’s far more information in this image than I thought. The pattern of the waves, the sky, the slope, and the sand are all information, and in this case sufficient information to venture a correct guess about where my family went for vacation. (Disclosure: Vox Media is one of several publishers that have signed partnership agreements with OpenAI. Our reporting remains editorially independent. One of Anthropic’s early investors is James McClave, whose BEMC Foundation helps fund Future Perfect.)  ChatGPT doesn’t always get it on the first try, but it’s more than sufficient for gathering information if someone were determined to stalk us. And as AI is only going to get more powerful, that should worry all of us. When AI comes for digital privacy For most of us who aren’t excruciatingly careful about our digital footprint, it has always been possible for people to learn a terrifying amount of information about us — where we live, where we shop, our daily routine, who we talk to — from our activities online. But it would take an extraordinary amount of work.  For the most part we enjoy what is known as security through obscurity; it’s hardly worth having a large team of people study my movements intently just to learn where I went for vacation. Even the most autocratic surveillance states, like Stasi-era East Germany, were limited by manpower in what they could track. But AI makes tasks that would previously have required serious effort by a large team into trivial ones. And it means that it takes far fewer hints to nail someone’s location and life down.  It was already the case that Google knows basically everything about me — but I (perhaps complacently) didn’t really mind, because the most Google can do with that information is serve me ads, and because they have a 20-year track record of being relatively cautious with user data. Now that degree of information about me might be becoming available to anyone, including those with far more malign intentions. And while Google has incentives not to have a major privacy-related incident — users would be angry with them, regulators would investigate them, and they have a lot of business to lose — the AI companies proliferating today like OpenAI or DeepSeek are much less kept in line by public opinion. (If they were more concerned about public opinion, they’d need to have a significantly different business model, since the public kind of hates AI.)  Be careful what you tell ChatGPT So AI has huge implications for privacy. These were only hammered home when Anthropic reported recently that they had discovered that under the right circumstances (with the right prompt, placed in a scenario where the AI is asked to participate in pharmaceutical data fraud) Claude Opus 4 will try to email the FDA to whistleblow. This cannot happen with the AI you use in a chat window — it requires the AI to be set up with independent email sending tools, among other things. Nonetheless, users reacted with horror — there’s just something fundamentally alarming about an AI that contacts authorities, even if it does it in the same circumstances that a human might. Some people took this as a reason to avoid Claude. But it almost immediately became clear that it isn’t just Claude — users quickly produced the same behavior with other models like OpenAI’s o3 and Grok. We live in a world where not only do AIs know everything about us, but under some circumstances, they might even call the cops on us.  Right now, they only seem likely to do it in sufficiently extreme circumstances. But scenarios like “the AI threatens to report you to the government unless you follow its instructions” no longer seem like sci-fi so much as like an inevitable headline later this year or the next. What should we do about that? The old advice from digital privacy advocates — be thoughtful about what you post, don’t grant things permissions they don’t need — is still good, but seems radically insufficient. No one is going to solve this on the level of individual action.  New York is considering a law that would, among other transparency and testing requirements, regulate AIs which act independently when they take actions that would be a crime if taken by humans “recklessly” or “negligently.” Whether or not you like New York’s exact approach, it seems clear to me that our existing laws are inadequate for this strange new world. Until we have a better plan, be careful with your vacation pictures — and what you tell your chatbot! A version of this story originally appeared in the Future Perfect newsletter. Sign up here!

Preview: For the last year and a half, Angela has been waging a silent corporate war with her boss. When the two women started working together in finance, they were peers. Even then, Angela felt this coworker was a little too judgmental when Angela took time off work, a little too comfortable asking Angela why she was avoiding her in the hallways. (Angela says she never purposely shirked her.) But about seven months ago, the colleague was promoted to be Angela’s manager. Her behavior became even more intrusive, says Angela (Vox granted her a pseudonym to talk freely about her manager without repercussions). “When I have doctor’s appointments,” Angela, a 33-year-old who lives in Philadelphia, says, “she wants me to put them on her calendar and tell her what they are.” Her boss has even given her negative performance reviews that are in stark contrast to the praise she used to receive from previous managers. Every day, Angela bites her tongue. But internally, she’s stewing on negative emotions. “I know that this is a problem with her and not with me, but the reason I’m feeling resentment is because it’s really pulling me down in all aspects of my life,” Angela says. “Because even if you know that you are not the problem, when somebody is coming at you every single day with aggression, it’ll bring anybody down.” Resentment is the weapon we silently wield against partners, friends, family, colleagues, and neighbors for wrongs, either real or perceived. Harboring feelings of resentment is more common than people probably would like to admit — it’s the weapon we silently wield against partners, friends, family, colleagues, and neighbors for wrongs, either real or perceived, that we can’t seem to forgive. The experience is so pervasive, says therapist and registered social worker Audrey Kao, she created a YouTube video summing up all the information she’d shared with clients.  Resentment is commonly described as festering or simmering, probably because it doesn’t just come out of nowhere. Envy is wanting what someone else has, according to psychologists, while jealousy is a fear of losing what you have to another person. These are more momentary feelings that can accumulate over time to resentment, Kao says, which is a response to repeatedly being made to feel inferior or being the victim of perceived injustices. Hear a friend discuss their lavish lifestyle long enough and mild annoyance and envy might curdle to resentment. Opposed to envy and jealousy which are action-oriented emotions, resentment can be something you get stuck in. When people hold resentments, they often don’t take action to rectify the situation because “it’s easy to think that the other person’s behavior is the cause of our resentment,” Kao says, “and if only they didn’t behave this way, then I wouldn’t be like this.” You may be hesitant to bring up your feelings out of fear the other person will get angry or end the relationship. When this state of affairs continues for a while, bitterness can take root. If the dam ultimately breaks, months or even years of resentments could come spilling out at once. With a lifetime of hard feelings out in the open, is it even possible to salvage the relationship? Should you even want to? Rather than let ill will accumulate and simmer over time, experts say, in most situations, you should fall back on a bit of evergreen wisdom: communicate your needs in the moment.  How resentments form The simmering blaze of bitter indignation stems from a single spark. These inciting events are usually the result of broken expectations or when the resentful party was made to feel inferior, according to Kerry Howells, a visiting professor at Tallinn University in Estonia and the author of Untangling You: How Can I Be Grateful When I Feel so Resentful? You might hold resentment toward your partner when they failed to throw you a surprise birthday party. Or, like in Angela’s case, you could feel ill will toward your boss for constantly undermining you.  The blame shouldn’t be placed entirely on one side. When you fail to communicate the fact that you wanted a surprise birthday party, you set your partner up for failure — and yourself for disappointment. “We can interpret that as them not caring,” Kao says. “If that disappointment doesn’t get addressed, and we still don’t decide to talk to the other person about how we really feel, then inevitably, that disappointment is going to be festering until it turns into resentment.” Those who struggle with people-pleasing tendencies in particular may prioritize others’ happiness so that they end up silently resenting their friends for not intuiting their needs.  There are, of course, power imbalances that make accusing your boss or pushy mother-in-law of overstepping unwise and unfeasible. “The environment is unsafe — that’s a very real thing,” says psychotherapist Israa Nasir, author of Toxic Productivity: Reclaim Your Time and Emotional Energy in a World That Always Demands More. “Those are structural realities, and so you’re stuck with resentment.” With no outlet, resentment builds over time. You file away every slight, every snide remark, every time your emotional needs aren’t prioritized until it snowballs into something that rankles just underneath the surface.  When resentment grows into contempt No one wants their relationship to devolve to a point where they despise the way a friend chews, laughs, speaks. But unchecked resentment can push us to unpleasant emotional territory. “Resentment breeds contempt,” Nasir says, “and contempt is a very powerful emotion.” Once there, you may find it hard to cut the person any slack at all. You therefore detach, give them the silent treatment, or become passive aggressive. You could resort to playing little games like waiting for them to acknowledge your anniversary first or making a backup dinner reservation because you don’t trust your flaky friend to do it.  “Gratitude is about awakening to everything that I receive from others and resentment puts us in this state of ruminating about what’s been taken away from us.” Excess resentment can ratchet up your desire to undermine and backstab, Howells says, as a way of coping with pent up bitterness. You might speak poorly of a coworker you resent not only to vent, but to impact how other colleagues see them, too. “We think that’s making it better, but it’s actually making it worse,” Howells says. “We push the relationship even further away.” Through all of this, the foundation on which your relationship was built, as well as any good memories or positive associations that went along with it, is forgotten. Resentment is the antithesis of gratitude, Howells says, and without it, all we see is a person to blame. “Gratitude is about awakening to everything that I receive from others,” she says,” and resentment puts us in this state of ruminating about what’s been taken away from us.” Addressing resentment without ruining the relationship There is a wrong way to air your grievances: unloading them all at once. It’s nearly impossible to rebound after hearing how your partner or your friend has been carrying a grudge for all the choices you’ve made in the relationship. Before launching into a discussion, decide if it’s even appropriate to bring up resentments. First, think about the role you played. Did you tell your friend you wanted to spend more time one-on-one and they keep planning group outings, or did you hope they’d just know? Are you really putting more work into a relationship or do you have unrealistic expectations of what dating should look like? “Resentment always happens when a need is not being met, but you have to think about what you are doing to create an environment where your needs are not being met, and, of course, assessing the environment itself,” Nasir says. When you fail to take ownership over your own actions (or inaction), you’re likely to place blame on others and find the cycle repeating in other relationships.  In some situations, bringing up your resentments isn’t necessarily helpful. For instance, if you’re single and jealous a friend is getting married, telling them as much might only sow discord. What would be the point of the conversation? “That might be a sign that it’s more about your insecurity, or that you’re not happy with your own life,” Kao says. In that case, your efforts would be better spent on working toward your goals. A friend’s success or happiness does not negate or prevent your own. But there are still plenty of scenarios where it’s worth having a direct, clarifying conversation in order to address your unmet needs. Kao has observed that people often drop hints about their feelings (“We never do date night,” or “You always cancel our dinners”) without coming out and saying, “I feel unimportant when you spend more evenings at work than you do with me,” or “I don’t feel valued when you keep changing our plans.” The key is to communicate your hurt head-on without blaming the other person, which is why Kao and Nasir recommend therapist-favorite “I statements” that focus on describing your feelings and how you’d like to mend the relationship. (No, “I resent you” doesn’t count.) For instance, if you’re starting to resent a friend who seems to leave you out of every social event, you could say, “I feel like I don’t know what’s going on with you. I think it’s because we’re both so busy. I’d love a monthly hang to catch up.” “It’s always helpful to come to the table with a solution, because that’s the repair piece,” Nasir says. “The solution is not just ‘you need to change.’ It’s this thing needs to change, or this needs to be added, or this needs to be removed.” The whole point of the conversation should be to preserve and improve the relationship.  Try to broach these conversations sooner rather than later. The longer you sit in the hurt, the more you might be tempted to dump a backlog of resentments. But don’t race into them too quickly while the emotions are still so fresh that you end up saying something you regret. Finding that sweet spot can be as difficult as having the conversation itself.  “It’s always helpful to come to the table with a solution, because that’s the repair piece.” Workplace resentments are far trickier since there are risks to your livelihood. You could try to tell your boss you feel undervalued or ask a coworker not to put you down in meetings, but they might not be compelled to change because, technically, they don’t have to. These people could also make your life more difficult. Howells suggests writing all your resentments in a letter that you’ll never send or working with a therapist to parse through your emotions.  The greatest gift we can give ourselves is knowing when to pick our battles. Some habits — like your partner’s penchant for showing up to every event 15 minutes late — are hard to break and it isn’t worth feeling bitter over them. The rest of the relationship is worth more than a few embarrassing, fashionably late entrances.  Taking a hard look at resentments — and what causes them — can also be freeing. Admitting to yourself that you’re jealous and resentful of a friend whose career is thriving can feel uncomfortable “because that means taking responsibility for your own unhappiness,” Kao says. “But this is actually a very liberating thought to have, because that means that if we cause our own unhappiness, then we can also solve it.” That firmly places the power in your own hands.

Preview: Smoke from Canadian wildfires dims Chicago’s skyline on June 3, 2025. Smoke from wildfires in Canada is once again shrouding parts of the United States — cities like Chicago and Milwaukee — with unhealthy air, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. Parts of the plume have reached as far as Europe. The bulk of the smoke is forecasted to drift eastward across North America and thin out.   As of Thursday afternoon, Canada was battling more than 200 blazes, the majority in western provinces like British Columbia and Alberta, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. In Canada, the fires forced more than 27,000 people to evacuate, but the smoke is “impacting aerial operations for both suppression and evacuation flights.”   This is all too familiar. Canada faced a massive spate of wildfires in 2023 and in 2024 that similarly sent clouds of ash and dust across North America, reaching places like New York City. The burned area this year is a fraction of the size of the regions scorched in 2023, a record-breaking year for wildfires in Canada, but it’s still early in the fire season. Canadian fire officials warn that the “potential for emerging significant wildland fires is high to extreme” and lightning may lead to more ignitions in the next few days.  These blazes remind us that the dangers of wildfires reach far beyond their flames, and the threat is growing.  Wildfire smoke contains a melange of gases like carbon monoxide, particles of soot, and hazardous chemicals like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons that can cause cancer. The tiniest particles in smoke can penetrate deep into the lungs, and even reach the bloodstream, leading to a variety of health problems. When it drifts over a community, it often causes a surge in emergency room visits as people who breathe the smoke suffer strokes, heart attacks, and asthma attacks. There’s also evidence that long-term exposure to smoke can lead to a higher likelihood of death from heart, lung, kidney, and digestive diseases.  And experts believe the true health burden from wildfires is likely much more extensive than we realize.  The harms to health will increase as wildfires become more destructive. Though wildfires are a natural, regular, and vital phenomenon across many landscapes, more people are now living in fire-prone areas, increasing the risk to lives and homes. That increases the odds of starting a fire and means more people and property are in harm’s way when one ignites. Decades of fire suppression have allowed fuels like trees and grasses to build up to dangerous levels. And as humanity continues to burn fossil fuels, emitting greenhouse gases and heating up the planet, the climate is changing in ways that enhance fire conditions.  On top of wildfires, the summer season can cause other problems. The hot, sunny weather can trigger the formation of ozone, a compound that can cause lung trouble. Dry air can lead to more airborne dust. This week, there’s also a huge cloud of dust from the Saharan Desert making its way westward across the Atlantic Ocean. Such clouds can also fill the air with tiny irritating particles and carry pathogens and heavy metals.  So smoke isn’t the only pollutant to worry about, and as average temperatures continue to rise, these factors are undoing hard-fought progress in improving air quality across much of the world.  However, there are ways to clear the air and avoid some of the worst harms. One tactic is to pay attention to the Air Quality Index in your area and avoid being outdoors when pollution reaches high levels. Wearing a high-quality KN95 or N95 mask can help reduce the damage from polluted air. Blocking air from getting indoors and filtering the air in living areas reduces smoke exposure as well.  It’s also important to mitigate wildfires where possible. On a bigger scale, that means smarter planning: limiting development in areas likely to ignite, building defensible perimeters around structures, and reducing fuels with controlled burns. And we can’t get around the fact that reducing our risk will also require limiting climate change. Otherwise, more smoky, dusty, and dirty summers lie ahead.

Preview: Elon Musk attends a Cabinet meeting held by President Donald Trump at the White House on March 24, 2025, in Washington, DC. | Vox; Win McNamee/Getty Images Ketamine seems to be everywhere — from the nightclub to the psychiatric clinic. Among its growing number of users is Elon Musk, who says he takes ketamine every two weeks for depression as prescribed by a doctor. He’s far from alone: More and more Americans are turning to ketamine for relief for their mental health struggles.  But the New York Times reported recently that Musk was taking so much ketamine during last year’s presidential campaign, sometimes daily, that he reportedly told people it was causing him bladder problems, a known symptom of chronic ketamine use. Musk’s reported experience with the drug — from medical to possibly abusive — provides a window into ketamine’s growing popularity in the United States, and the paradox that popularity presents. Ketamine, both an anesthetic and a hallucinogen, was first synthesized in the 1960s and has long been used for surgery and veterinary medicine. More recently, it has shown remarkable effectiveness in alleviating symptoms of depression, particularly in treatment-resistant populations. Clinics administering the drug — which legally must be licensed by the government to provide intravenous infusions — are becoming more popular. The Food and Drug Administration approved the first ketamine-derived nasal spray for depression in 2019.  On the other hand, as highlighted in the Times’ report alleging that Musk was mixing ketamine with other drugs, more Americans appear to be using ketamine recreationally and outside of medical supervision. Chronic misuse can put people at risk of serious physical and mental health consequences, from kidney and liver damage to memory loss and paranoia.  “There is absolutely a role for ketamine to help people with depression and suicidal ideation,” said Dr. Kevin Yang, a resident physician in psychiatry at the University of California-San Diego. “At the same time, that doesn’t mean it’s going to be safe and effective for everyone.”  According to a study co-authored by Yang and published earlier this year, the percentage of Americans who reported using ketamine within the past year grew by 82 percent from 2015 to 2019, took a brief dip in 2020 — possibly because of the pandemic complicating people’s access to the drug — and then rose another 40 percent from 2021 to 2022. The increases were similar for both people with depression and people without, suggesting that the growth is being driven by both more people seeking ketamine for clinical purposes and more people using it recreationally. The overall number of people taking ketamine is still tiny: About 0.28 percent of the population as of 2022, though this might be an undercount, as people don’t always tell the truth in surveys about drug use.  There is other evidence to suggest more people are taking ketamine recreationally. Yang’s study found that ketamine use was rising most among white people and people with college degrees, and users reported taking it more often in combination with other recreational drugs such as ecstasy and cocaine. Ketamine drug seizures nationwide increased from 55 in 2017 to 247 in 2022, according to a 2023 study led by Joseph Palamar at New York University. Experts think most recreational ketamine is produced illicitly, but the number of legitimate ketamine prescriptions that are being diverted — i.e., lost or stolen — has been going up, a 2024 analysis by Palamar and his colleagues found, which is another possible indicator of a blossoming black market. The buzz about ketamine’s popularity in Silicon Valley and its persistence in certain club cultures that first emerged in the ’80s confirms its place in the counterculture. We can’t know the reality behind Musk’s public statements and the anonymous reporting about his ketamine use. The Times reports that people close to Musk worried that his therapeutic use of ketamine had become recreational; Musk quickly dismissed the Times’s reporting. But the drug does coexist as a therapeutic and a narcotic, and the line between the two can be blurry.  People should not try to self-medicate with ketamine, Yang said. Its risks need to be taken seriously. Here’s what you need to know. How to think about ketamine as its popularity grows Ketamine is edging into the mainstream after years at its fringes. It has been around for decades, enjoying a boom as a party drug in the ’80s and ’90s. For the most part, ketamine had been viewed warily by mainstream scientists. But in 2000, the first major research was published demonstrating its value in treating depression. And increasingly over the past decade, however, ketamine has started to gain more acceptance because of its consistently impressive study results. Studies have found that for some patients, ketamine can begin to relieve their depression symptoms in a matter of hours after therapy and other medications have failed. The testimonials of patients whose depression improved quickly, such as this one published in Vox, are convincing. The benefits identified in clinical research have opened up a larger market for the substance. Johnson & Johnson developed its own ketamine-derived treatment for depression (esketamine, sold as a nasal spray called Spravato) that received FDA approval in 2019, the first of its kind. The number of monthly prescriptions for Spravato doubled from the beginning of 2023 to October 2024. People can also visit clinics to receive an IV of conventional ketamine for treatment, and that business is booming too: In 2015, there were about 60 clinics in the US dedicated to administering ketamine; today, there are between 1,200 and 1,500. For the 21 million Americans who experience major depression, this widening access could help: ketamine and esketamine do appear to have strong anti-depressive effects — as long as it is used in consultation with a doctor and under their supervision. A 2023 meta-analysis of the relevant studies found that across many clinical trials, most patients reported significant improvements in their symptoms within 24 hours. It is recommended primarily for people whose depression has not gotten better after trying other treatments or for people with severe suicide ideation, who need a rapid improvement in their symptoms to avoid a life-threatening emergency.  But providers also screen potential patients for any current substance use problems for a very important reason: The risks for ketamine abuse are real. When taken outside of a clinical setting, ketamine is often consumed as a pill or a powder, either snorted or mixed with a drink, and it’s easy to take too much. One recent survey found that more than half of patients who attempted to take ketamine at home for depression either intentionally or accidentally took more than the prescribed amount. Users can also develop a tolerance over time, which raises the risk that people will take stronger and stronger doses to feel the same effects. Scientists have found that people who use ketamine can develop a dependency on it, especially with frequent and high-dosage use. They become irritable or anxious without the drug and experience other withdrawal symptoms. Its addictive quality, while less potent than that of nicotine or opioids, is an important difference from some other hallucinogens, such as psilocybin, that are also being used in experimental settings for mental health needs and are less likely to be habit-forming.  Maintenance doses can also be necessary for ketamine therapy, and regulating any long-term use to prevent dependency is another reason medical supervision is so crucial. There is limited evidence that most people who use ketamine in a clinical setting do not end up abusing it, which is a promising sign that properly managing its use reduces the risk of therapeutic use turning into a disorder. But because ketamine’s use for depression is still so new and still growing, it’s an important risk to watch out for. Johnson & Johnson urges patients to be mindful of Spravato’s potential for misuse. The line between genuine therapeutic use and abuse becomes clearer when a biweekly treatment at a clinic turns into a regular at-home habit, especially if that involves obtaining the drug from illicit sources whose purity is not guaranteed. Street ketamine is typically just the drug itself, produced and sold illegally. But Dr. Nabarun Dasgupta, who oversees the University of North Carolina’s Street Drug Analysis Lab, told me they’ve noticed a recent rise in samples where ketamine is combined with other substances. On its own, ketamine overuse in the short term can cause nausea and high blood pressure, with all of the attendant risks, as well as hallucinations and “bad trips.” Longer-term abuse can lead to problems with a person’s bladder and urinary tract, which can create difficulty urinating — the kind of issues Musk described to people in private, according to the Times. People who chronically abuse ketamine can also experience paranoia, memory loss, and a shortened attention span. The potential for ketamine in a clinical environment is exciting. But its use does come with risks, and not enough people are aware of them: A recent survey from the United Kingdom found that many people there who were taking ketamine did not know that it could be addictive.  It can be. Ketamine is not something to experiment with on your own. Clinics have all sorts of safety checks for their patients, Yang told me. Ketamine “absolutely has been shown to be very effective,” he said, before adding the all-important qualifier: “under the supervision of a clinical physician.”

Preview: Northeastern University students toss their caps at the end of their graduation ceremony on May 11, 2025, at Fenway Park in Boston. | Matthew J Lee/The Boston Globe via Getty Images A Vox reader Nneoma Ngene asks: Maybe it’s because I am a new grad, graduating with my bachelor’s in May yippee! But it seems everyone is super pessimistic about the job market these days. Has it been harder to get a job for people in recent years, or am I just finally shedding my childhood naïveté and being forced to wake up to the way the job market has always been? Congratulations on your graduation! That’s a genuine achievement worth celebrating, even amid job market concerns.  The short answer to your question is that, unfortunately, the economic data does confirm what you’re sensing: The job market really is more challenging for new graduates right now, and it’s not just your childhood optimism fading away.  You and your peers have faced uniquely tough circumstances. You started college during a pandemic, and now you’re entering a job market that’s shifting beneath your feet in ways that can feel discouraging, even though they’re driven by much larger economic and technological forces. This isn’t the first time graduates have faced a difficult transition. The Great Recession in 2008 led to hiring freezes and layoffs that blocked new workers from landing entry-level jobs. The labor market took time to heal after unemployment peaked in 2009, but improved steadily until the pandemic disrupted that progress.  What new grads are facing Numbers from the first quarter of 2025 from the New York Federal Reserve show that the unemployment rate for recent college graduates reached 5.8 percent, up from 4.8 percent in January. Companies have also pulled back on hiring. Last fall, employers expected to increase college-graduate hiring by 7.3 percent, according to a survey led by the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Now they’re projecting just a 0.6 percent increase, with about 11 percent of companies planning to hire fewer new grads than before. A few different factors are working together to create this challenging environment. First, the new tariffs have created economic uncertainty. The stock market responded accordingly, with the S&P 500 down about 6.5 percent since inauguration day. As a result, businesses are hesitant to expand their workforce.   The elephant in the room here — that Great Recession grads didn’t have to deal with — is artificial intelligence. There’s evidence that AI might be affecting entry-level opportunities. The tasks typically performed by new college graduates — synthesizing information, producing reports — align with what generative AI can now generally handle.  And while the unemployment rate for recent grads is 5.8 percent, the overall unemployment rate is 4.2 percent —  a record gap. This suggests that while companies are not laying workers off because of AI en masse, they may be using AI to do jobs that would otherwise have gone to new grads. It’s understandably frustrating when you’ve done everything “right” — earned your degree and prepared for the job market — only to face conditions that are more challenging than in recent years. The good news about the job market Despite these challenges, some sectors are still actively hiring.  Health care accounts for 34 percent of total payroll gains this year. Engineering positions, especially electronics engineering, offer opportunities with high starting salaries (projected at $78,731). Special education roles are abundant, and while federal hiring has contracted, state and local governments remain strong for entry-level hiring. Sales consistently ranks among the top fields for new college graduates. On the tariffs front, the situation seems to be turning a corner now, as stock markets digest news of President Donald Trump’s recent deal with China. This deal could help prevent a full recession and improve the outlet for college-graduate hiring.  The reality is that your job search might take longer than you hoped. Over 80 percent of seniors told ZipRecruiter in March that they expect to start working within three months of graduating, but in reality, only about 77 percent from recent graduating classes started that quickly. If it takes even longer for you or your peers, that’s not a personal failure — it’s simply a reflection of the market you’re entering. Your question asked whether this is just “the way the job market has always been.” The truth is that job markets fluctuate, and the timing of your graduation coincides with a particularly challenging period. But previous generations have faced similar challenges and found their way through, and yours will too.

Preview: WASHINGTON—As part of ongoing efforts to improve the efficiency with which it collects money for the world’s richest man, officials at the Internal Revenue Service announced a new plan Tuesday allowing taxpayers to deposit payments directly into Elon Musk’s bank account. The mandatory new service will reportedly help streamline the tax payment process, bypassing the […] The post IRS Allows Taxpayers To Deposit Payments Directly Into Elon Musk’s Bank Account appeared first on The Onion.

Preview: WASHINGTON—Making sure the pair were sitting down before she delivered the news, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles reportedly told the Trump boys Friday that their Uncle Elon had been blown up in a rocket accident. “Boys, your father wanted me to tell you that you won’t be seeing your Uncle Elon anymore because […] The post Weeping Trump Boys Told ‘Uncle Elon’ Blown Up In Rocket Accident appeared first on The Onion.

Preview: WASHINGTON—After days of listening to the tech billionaire criticize his ‘Big Beautiful Bill,’ President Donald Trump escalated his feud with Elon Musk Friday by nuking Mars. “Elon was ‘wearing thin,’ I asked him to leave, and then I blew up his stupid planet that no one else cared about,” Trump wrote in a post on […] The post Trump Escalates Musk Feud By Nuking Mars appeared first on The Onion.

Preview: HBO’s Harry Potter reboot is anticipated to hit the streaming service in 2026. The Onion shares everything that is known about the TV adaptation so far.  Q: Is J.K. Rowling involved? A: The author will serve as Executive Producer and Chief Goodwill Destroyer.  Q: Who is playing Dumbledore? A: John Lithgow stepped in after the […] The post Everything Known About The New ‘Harry Potter’ Series So Far appeared first on The Onion.

Preview: The owner of Pornhub has blocked access to its website in France because of its objections to a new French law requiring pornographic sites to verify the age of their users. What do you think? The post Pornhub Exits France Over Age Verification Law appeared first on The Onion.

Preview: MEADE, KS—Saying the difficult act was necessary so his family wouldn’t be starved for clangs, local farmer Troy Cox told reporters Friday that he had been forced to slaughter a cow for its bell. “I told Molly that I was sorry, girl, but we need that bell if we’re going to make it through the […] The post Cow Slaughtered For Its Bell appeared first on The Onion.

Preview: VATICAN— In an effort to bring openness and transparency to his role as supreme pontiff, Pope Leo XIV vowed Friday that “the truth will finally be revealed” as he issued an order fully declassifying the Church’s Jesus Crucifixion Documents. “Ever since Christ was executed in broad daylight in the middle of Golgotha, questions have swirled […] The post New Pope Declassifies Jesus Crucifixion Documents appeared first on The Onion.

Preview: Celebrities including Rihanna and Blackpink’s Lisa have been spotted with Labubu dolls, the latest craze to hit the U.S. Here is everything you need to know about the plush toys. Q: What is a Labubu? A: A Labubu is designer Kasing Lung’s best attempt at what a British person looks like. Q: Why do they […] The post What To Know About Labubu Dolls appeared first on The Onion.

Preview: A 200-year-old illustrated condom will go on display with Dutch golden age masters in Amsterdam, after the 19th-century “luxury souvenir” became the first-ever contraceptive sheath to be added to the Rijksmuseum’s art collection. What do you think? The post Dutch Museum Displays 200-Year-Old Condom Made From Sheep Appendix appeared first on The Onion.

Preview: WASHINGTON—Visibly unnerved after experiencing a slight breeze through an office window, acting head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency David Richardson reportedly became confused Thursday by the concept of wind, remarking that he didn’t understand how he could feel something that he couldn’t see. “Does anyone else feel, like, air moving across their skin?” the […] The post FEMA Chief Confused By Wind appeared first on The Onion.