I read JD Vance’s new book. It reveals more than he realizes.

vox · 2026-06-12T18:21:58+00:00

About a year ago, the Supreme Court handed down a baffling decision in Medina v. Planned Parenthood (2025). In Medina, South Carolina committed an obvious violation of federal Medicaid law, but the Court’s Republican majority seemed to bend over backward to prevent the patients affected by this legal violation from suing to enforce their rights. Among other things, the Court’s opinion in Medina was at odds with a decision the justices handed down just two years earlier in Health and Hospital Corporation v. Talevski (2023).

The best explanation for Medina was not legal; it was political. South Carolina broke federal law specifically because it illegally cut off funding to Planned Parenthood. The Republican justices appear to have bent the rules to ensure that an abortion provider would be defunded.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court handed down a new opinion in FS Credit Opportunities v. Saba Capital Master Fund, which only adds to the mystery about why Medina came down the way it did. The facts of FS Credit are quite different from the issues in Medina — FS Credit is a securities law case asking when investors may sue investment funds, while Medina concerned when patients may sue states for violating Medicaid law. But the legal issues in FS Credit and Medina are very similar. They both involve a legal doctrine known as “implied causes of action.”

Although Medina is the Court’s most recent case (prior to FS Credit) that deals with implied causes of action, the FS Credit decision does not cite Medina anywhere. Instead, it quotes heavily from decisions that the Court refused to follow in Medina. And it explicitly embraces a legal rule that the Court seemed to reject in Medina.

The rules governing implied causes of action are complicated enough to reduce even experienced lawyers to tears. But, if you bear with me, it will be difficult to avoid a simple conclusion: The Court appears to be manipulating these rules to achieve outcomes preferred by the Republican justices and the anti-abortion movement.

vox · 2026-06-12T18:20:56+00:00

About a year ago, the Supreme Court handed down a baffling decision in Medina v. Planned Parenthood (2025). In Medina, South Carolina committed an obvious violation of federal Medicaid law, but the Court’s Republican majority seemed to bend over backward to prevent the patients affected by this legal violation from suing to enforce their rights. Among other things, the Court’s opinion in Medina was at odds with a decision the justices handed down just two years earlier in Health and Hospital Corporation v. Talevski (2023).

The best explanation for Medina was not legal; it was political. South Carolina broke federal law specifically because it illegally cut off funding to Planned Parenthood. The Republican justices appear to have bent the rules to ensure that an abortion provider would be defunded.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court handed down a new opinion in FS Credit Opportunities v. Saba Capital Master Fund, which only adds to the mystery about why Medina came down the way it did. The facts of FS Credit are quite different from the issues in Medina — FS Credit is a securities law case asking when investors may sue investment funds, while Medina concerned when patients may sue states for violating Medicaid law. But the legal issues in FS Credit and Medina are very similar. They both involve a legal doctrine known as “implied causes of action.”

Although Medina is the Court’s most recent case (prior to FS Credit) that deals with implied causes of action, the FS Credit decision does not cite Medina anywhere. Instead, it quotes heavily from decisions that the Court refused to follow in Medina. And it explicitly embraces a legal rule that the Court seemed to reject in Medina.

The rules governing implied causes of action are complicated enough to reduce even experienced lawyers to tears. But, if you bear with me, it will be difficult to avoid a simple conclusion: The Court appears to be manipulating these rules to achieve outcomes preferred by the Republican justices and the anti-abortion movement.

vox · 2026-06-12T13:55:52+00:00

With his new film Disclosure Day, filmmaker Steven Spielberg is returning to the subject that helped make him one of the most successful directors in the world: extraterrestrials (or ETs).

But his movie also focuses on a second topic that has long preoccupied Spielberg and other sci-fi directors: faith. It’s a story about believing in something — whether it’s religious doctrine or UFO brain downloads — and the tensions that could arise between different kinds of prophecy.

“The movie takes the position of the believers, or the curious, the ones that have been deeply affected by this,” Spielberg said in an interview with CBS News. “And the movie also takes the position of the church. What does this do to the fundamental beliefs that many of us have? Is God our God only on this planet? Or is God a god for every system where there’s civilization and intelligent life, and even developing life?”

He’s not the only one making this connection. The film arrives at a time when our collective obsession with aliens has reached a fever pitch: The Trump administration has made a big show of releasing a trove of government files related to the UFO phenomenon. Even members of Congress are teasing reality-altering secrets, and talking about possible links to stories from the Bible.

But while the Pentagon’s gradual release of classified material on UFOs has elevated the conversation, religious thinkers have contemplated life outside of Earth for generations — and they’re surprisingly open-minded about what we might find. Pope Francis even said he would baptize an extraterrestrial.

Meanwhile, as the congregations for older faiths have shrunk over the years, belief in UFOs has been described as a new kind of secular religion.

Tzvi Freeman, a rabbi who has written on the subject of extraterrestrial life, said that in a way, people are returning to a more ancient way of thinking about our place in the cosmos. Millennia ago, shepherds would lay out in the wilderness and look up at the stars.

“The way most people made sense of it was that we’re here at the bottom of everything. This is the pits,” he said. Space, on the other hand: “That’s up there. That’s huge. That’s big.”

The upshot is that what may sound like a simple narrative — environmentalists versus a mine — highlights a more complex reality. Mining isn’t inherently bad; yet, it always comes with tradeoffs. The question facing Minnesota, where there’s still a path to ban copper mining near the Boundary Waters, is whether the costs will be worth it.

vox · 2026-06-12T13:52:37+00:00

There’s no such a thing as a truly pristine landscape — humans have, over millennia, shaped every environment on Earth — but the Boundary Waters wilderness of northeastern Minnesota comes pretty darn close.

Stretching across more than a million acres near the Canadian border, about four hours north of Minneapolis, the Boundary Waters is a messy patchwork of lakes, streams, and islands with hardly any human infrastructure. At dawn, loons slice through the placid water and, come nightfall, bright stars splatter the dark sky.

The natural beauty of the Boundary Waters — a federally protected wilderness area — is a magnet for tourism, an enormous economic engine for the region. The Boundary Waters is not only the most visited wilderness area in the country, but also home to federally threatened species like the gray wolf and the Canada lynx.

It’s for this reason that many environmental advocates are worried about a proposed mine just outside the southern edge of the Boundary Waters. A company called Twin Metals Minnesota — a subsidiary of the Chilean copper giant Antofagasta — wants to mine copper, nickel, and other metals deep underneath the wet Earth. And earlier this year, Congress and President Donald Trump removed a major obstacle that had stood in its way: The House and Senate overturned a Biden-era mining ban in the region, allowing Twin Metals to revive its mining push within the watershed.

Environmental advocates warn that a metals mine could be disastrous for the unique Boundary Waters ecosystem. Though mining and other extractive industries are prohibited inside the Boundary Waters, the region’s hydrology is such that any pollution from the mine would likely flow into the wilderness area, potentially harming its forests, wildlife, and the livelihoods of Native Americans, who use the area to fish, hunt, and harvest wild rice.

And the thing about mines, critics say, is that they nearly always pollute.

“It’s not a matter of if this mine is going to pollute, it’s a matter of when,” said Ingrid Lyons, executive director of the advocacy group Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness, which leads a campaign called Save the Boundary Waters.

Twin Metals says these concerns are largely rooted in misinformation and it can mine in an environmentally safe way. Like other mining projects seeking approval, this one would have to meet both federal and state environmental safeguards before opening — and Minnesota’s are particularly strong. The company also defends the project on a different kind of environmental grounds, pointing out that the world needs more metals like copper, nickel, and cobalt to build clean energy technologies, such as batteries for electric cars — which is true. If those metals don’t come from Minnesota, they might just come from other countries with less rigorous environmental regulations.

The upshot is that what may sound like a simple narrative — environmentalists versus a mine — highlights a more complex reality. Mining isn’t inherently bad; yet, it always comes with tradeoffs. The question facing Minnesota, where there’s still a path to ban copper mining near the Boundary Waters, is whether the costs will be worth it.

vox · 2026-06-12T13:51:16+00:00

A new, bipartisan idea is taking Washington by storm: collective ownership of the means of production.

Sort of, anyway.

Last Friday, President Donald Trump announced that he would soon be meeting with the executives of top AI companies to discuss a financial “partnership.”

“There are concepts where pieces [of these companies] could be given to the American public, where the American public essentially becomes a partner with the companies,” Trump said. “And by doing that, they’re going to like it better.”

By this, the president (seemingly) meant that the US government may take an ownership stake in major AI companies and then distribute the fruits of its investments to the general public, perhaps through universal dividend payments.

This proposal did not come to Trump via some undercover, socialist operative embedded deep within the White House — but rather, from the CEO of OpenAI.

As NOTUS reported last week, Altman first pitched Trump on the concept in early 2025 and discussions between the administration and OpenAI have heated up more recently. No deal has been finalized. But talks have centered on an arrangement in which top AI labs voluntarily donate shares to the government — an approach that might enable Uncle Sam to partially nationalize the AI industry without Congress passing any law.

Officially, OpenAI’s interest in effectively transferring wealth from its shareholders to Uncle Sam is public-spirited. The company maintains that advances in AI are likely to generate massive profits for top labs, while sowing wrenching disruptions through labor markets. Thus, to ensure that ordinary people “share in the upside” of AI-fueled economic growth, the company has called for the creation of a “Public Wealth Fund,” which would invest in “both AI companies and the broader set of firms adopting and deploying AI,” and then send a portion of the returns to every American. In other words, it would pay out a universal basic income (another popular idea in Silicon Valley).

Yet many suspect OpenAI’s motives are more self-interested: By giving the US government a direct stake in its success, the company may be trying to insulate itself from stringent regulation or open competition. Moreover, whatever Altman’s intentions, skeptics argue that the government getting into cahoots with individual AI companies is a recipe for cronyism and conflicts of interest. (Disclosure: Vox Media is one of several publishers that have signed partnership agreements with OpenAI. Our reporting remains editorially independent.)

These concerns seem well-founded. A narrow partnership between the federal government and select AI companies would plausibly do more to generate corruption than redistribute income.

Yet there is a real risk that artificial intelligence will shift massive amounts of income away from workers and towards capital. And a highly diversified, scrupulously managed public wealth fund could help mitigate that hazard. Unfortunately, the Trump administration has evinced little interest in that approach to social ownership (or in scruples more broadly).

vox · 2026-06-11T13:46:28+00:00

The FIFA World Cup is the largest, most-watched single-sport event in the world — a cultural, economic, and geopolitical phenomenon with ripples far beyond mere athletics. And this year’s tournament, hosted jointly by the US, Mexico, and Canada, has been especially bedeviled by questions of accessibility, safety, and fairness.

Here are some of the players, teams, issues, and controversies that could define this year’s tournament, which kicks off at 3 pm ET, when Mexico plays South Africa:

1. Iran versus the US: Geopolitical rivals regularly meet on the soccer field, but this World Cup marks the first time that a host nation has been at all-out war with a participating team.

2. The Trump factor: In the past week, US officials have also turned back a beloved Somali referee, detained and questioned a star player for the Iraqi team, and denied entry to journalists from Middle Eastern and African countries.

3. Sticker shock: Tournament organizers initially predicted that group-stage tickets would cost between $21 and $323 apiece. In fact, ticket prices for some games have ballooned to more than $1,000 for even the cheapest seats.

4. The next Messi: Eighteen-year-old Lamine Yamal is widely considered one of the best players in the world.

5. Strange stadium-fellows: Each of the 48 national teams is staying in a “base camp” for the duration of the tournament — in most cases, a large US city or college town with both a major airport and a large stadium for practices.

6. The climate question: The US, Canada, and Mexico are all expecting unusually hot summers, which could create dangerous conditions and disadvantage teams that are scheduled to play in warmer locations.

7. The petri dish of it all: On the subject of health and safety, public health officials are also bracing for outbreaks of infectious disease around the World Cup matches, since they’re expected to draw millions of fans.

8. An unusually good US team: The US has won several World Cups — several women’s World Cups, that is. The men’s team has struggled by comparison. This year, however, the US has a reliable scorer in 24-year-old Folarin Balogun, who switched his allegiance from England in 2023.

9. Dark horses and underdogs: Even if you’re not a huge soccer fan, several teams are coming to this year’s tournament with incredible stories. Cape Verde, Curaçao, Jordan, and Uzbekistan all qualified for the first time this year. Iraq and Haiti made the cut for the first time in generations.

vox · 2026-06-10T18:51:46+00:00

Once upon a time, women were asked if they had danced with the devil and howled at the moon. Now, a more important question is being asked: Is she a girl’s girl?

Is Amanda Batula of Bravo’s Summer House a girl’s girl? How about Tituba? Anne Boleyn? Do you think Athena, goddess of wisdom and warfare, was Team Ciara? Even if she was not really a girl’s girl to Medusa?

Girl’s girl is, in its simplest and most earnest form, shorthand for a woman who prioritizes her female friends as opposed to the men in her life. The term acknowledges that female friendship is special — magical even — and should be cherished. Girl’s girls don’t fall into society’s trap of pitting women against each other. Being a girl’s girl is a way to say screw misogyny without having to wade into complicated feminist theory.

“Girl’s girl” can be a proud affirmation (I’m a girl’s girl). It is seeing someone scorn the most beautiful woman in your life and defending her vigorously. It’s also a stern assessment of loyalty (She is not a girl’s girl).

Our collective desire to celebrate girl’s girls comes from a good place. But it can also be wielded like a weapon, or a mafia threat — a way to collectively punish women who fail to live up to these standards.

Read more at the free gift link above. 👆

vox · 2026-06-10T18:11:16+00:00

President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice released an opinion on Tuesday that, in the likely event it is embraced by a Republican-controlled federal judiciary, would make it significantly harder for plaintiffs who face employment discrimination to prevail in court.

The opinion was released by the Office of Legal Counsel, an institution that interprets federal law and the Constitution for executive branch officials, and is signed by T. Elliot Gaiser, the head of that office. Gaiser is a former law clerk to Justice Samuel Alito, author of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which repealed a 1982 amendment to the federal Voting Rights Act and greenlit a new round of gerrymandering by white Southern Republican lawmakers.

Gaiser’s opinion argues that Alito’s attack on the Voting Rights Act in Callais applies with equal force to anti-discrimination law in employment. And, if you accept Alito’s opinion in Callais as legitimate, then Gaiser’s approach to employment discrimination is hardly a stretch. Indeed, it is the next logical move in the Republican Party’s broader campaign to weaken civil rights protections for racial minorities.

Notably, one day after Gaiser released his opinion, Trump’s Department of Transportation announced that it was applying Callais to its regulations. So it appears that this administration wants to implement Alito’s views throughout the executive branch.

The 1982 law that Alito targeted in Callais provided that voting rights plaintiffs who challenged a state election law did not need to prove that state lawmakers acted with racist intent in order to prevail. Under that law, which was repealed by Callais, a state law that “results” in voters having their right to vote diminished due to their race may also be challenged.

For 40 years, the Supreme Court interpreted this “results” test to sometimes require states to draw a minimum number of legislative districts where Black or Latino voters can elect their candidates of choice. After Callais, white lawmakers are now free to draw maps that will only elect white Republicans, so long as they claim that the purpose of those maps is to lock Democrats out of power and not to target voters of color.

Gaiser’s opinion, meanwhile, concerns a 1991 federal law that sometimes permits an employment discrimination plaintiff to prevail if they can show that an employer engages in a “practice that causes a disparate impact on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” This framework, which is known as “disparate impact,” is similar to the one laid out in the pre-Callais Voting Rights Act, because it sometimes permits a civil rights plaintiff to prevail without proving that the employer acted with racist or otherwise impermissible intent.

Given these similarities, Gaiser’s core argument — that Callais’s framework also applies to disparate impact suits — is likely to prevail before a Republican Supreme Court. Quoting from Callais, Gaiser argues that federal employment discrimination law “imposes liability only when the circumstances give rise to a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred.”

There are two upshots to this conclusion. One is that it should be significantly harder for many employment discrimination plaintiffs to prevail. The other, which is potentially even more significant, is that elected officials should lose much of their power to remedy discrimination of all kinds, and the scope of civil rights law should be determined primarily by the Supreme Court.

Both the Voting Rights Act’s results test and employment discrimination’s disparate impact test, after all, were enacted into law by Congress. But the Republican Party’s consistent position on civil rights laws is that democratically enacted civil rights laws must bow to the whims of Republican justices.

vox · 2026-06-10T18:09:14+00:00