Vox

The end of birthright citizenship as we know it? - April 1, 2026 - Vox

Is the Supreme Court considering a radical reinterpretation of the 14th amendment?

President Donald Trump has been on a crusade to end birthright citizenship for years. Challenging the long-held legal consensus that anyone born in the United States is granted citizenship, he signed an executive order stripping that right away from the children of undocumented parents and temporary visa holders.

The executive order after returning to the White House set in motion a series of lawsuits challenging Trump’s ability to make sweeping changes to birthright citizenship. And now it’s headed to the Supreme Court in a case called Trump v. Barbara.

The 14th Amendment was passed to guarantee citizenship to freed enslaved people and their children, but was later clarified to apply to anybody born on US soil with a few very specific exceptions. For well over 100 years, birthright citizenship has been enshrined in the Constitution with that understanding.

In Trump v. Barbara, the Trump administration claims that the law applies to those who are not just born in the United States but also “owe allegiance” to it — except…the words “owe allegiance” don’t appear anywhere in the 14th Amendment.

The plaintiffs are representing a group of people affected by Trump’s executive order, and their argument is simple: Leave birthright citizenship alone.

If you want to read more about the case, here are some of the sources that contributed to our reporting:

Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/protecting-the-meaning-and-value-of-american-citizenship/

The ACLU’s web page for Trump v. Barbara:

https://www.aclu.org/cases/barbara-v-donald-j-trump

Vox’s in-depth explainer video on why the US has birthright citizenship:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBFX4EuAWHc

Writer and law professor César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández’s SCOTUSblog series Immigration Matters:

https://www.scotusblog.com/author/chernandez/

Brennan Center for Justice’s coverage of Trump’s challenge to birthright citizenship:

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/birthright-citizenship-under-us-constitution

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Why humans need to matter - March 30, 2026 - Vox

Why do humans have this deep need to feel like we matter?

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Sean Illing talks with the philosopher Rebecca Goldstein about why “mattering” is not the same thing as being important, how the hunger for validation can go really, really badly, and the different ways we try to justify our lives to ourselves. Love. God. Winning. Greatness. Service.

Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling)

Guest: Rebecca Goldstein, author of The Mattering Instinct

Chapter Titles

1:13 Why do we want to matter?

8:39 How important are other people in our quest to matter?

14:48 Why are we so needy?

21:08 What are the different ways to matter?

31:18 What happens when a “mattering project” fails?

32:26 What does it mean to matter in politics?

We would love to hear from you. To tell us what you thought of this episode, email us at [email protected] or leave us a voicemail at 1-800-214-5749. Your comments and questions help us make a better show.

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John Bolton says Trump has lost the Iran war hawks | Today, Explained - March 28, 2026 - Vox

Ambassador John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, pushed for war with Iran for 20 years — but not like this. For years, even decades, John Bolton has argued for regime change in Iran and for America to take a proactive military role to make that happen. Bolton served as the US ambassador to the United Nations under George W. Bush and, later, as national security advisor to Donald Trump during his first term.

The partnership with Trump was fleeting, however. He did not leave the administration on good terms and has been a critic of Trump since. He’s even been indicted by Trump’s Department of Justice for the mishandling of classified documents. Despite that back story, it is still a bit confusing to hear one of America’s foremost Iran critics break with the Trump administration on this war. How did Trump lose the Republican party’s biggest Iran War Hawk? And why?

Today, Explained publishes video episodes every Saturday tackling key issues in politics and culture. Subscribe to Vox’s YouTube channel to get them. New episodes of Today, Explained drop every day of the week on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite listening app.

Chapter titles:

00:00 Intro

01:43 Seeking regime change in Iran

06:01 Why Trump went to war in Iran now

7:00 The Iran war debate: Trump 1

7:59 Was Iranian retaliation a consideration?

10:00 Reasons for the Iran war now

12:38 Trump’s stock market concerns

16:38 Lessons from Trump’s first term

18:46 Is regime change in Iran even possible?

20:25 Trump’s self-declared success

22:26 Did Iran pose an imminent nuclear threat?

23:42 The role of public opinion in the Iran war

25:00 How to bring about regime change

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A brief update on the AI apocalypse - March 27, 2026 - Vox

Something is definitely happening in the AI world, but how seriously should we take it? Is this another hype cycle or a genuine inflection point?

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Sean Illing talks with journalist Kelsey Piper (formerly of Vox, now at The Argument) about what’s changed, why AI “agents” are a different beast than yesterday’s chatbots, and why the debate is stuck between two lazy positions: total panic or total shrug. They get into the incentives driving the labs, what “alignment” even means, and why the real fear isn’t Terminator-style robots, but powerful systems sliding into everything before we’re ready.

Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling)

Guest: Kelsey Piper (@KelseyTuoc)

2:39 Recent changes to AI

6:35 AI models and blackmail in a controlled setting

14:36 AI agents versus LLMs

19:33 Are we building machines that will surpass us?

23:30 Who’s responsible for regulating AI?

31:24 What are the most realistic utopian and dystopian scenarios?

And you can watch new episodes of The Gray Area on YouTube. New episodes drop every Monday and Friday.

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Why some couples are happier living apart - March 26, 2026 - Vox

For generations, we’ve been taught that if you want to move a relationship forward, you have to follow a specific set of steps: Meet someone, fall in love, and eventually, move in together. Because moving in is a signal that the relationship is serious.

But a growing number of couples are opting out of that last step. Mike and Susan have been together for 23 years, but they’ve never lived together…and they don’t plan to.

This arrangement has a name: “living apart together” (or LAT), and it’s more common than you might think. Between 2000 and 2019, the number of married couples living separately rose by more than 25 percent. And it’s particularly popular with couples later in life, generally people in their 50s or 60s who are retired.

So if sharing a home is the ultimate sign of love and commitment, why are some couples deciding not to do it at all? And is living together actually the best model for every relationship? Or is it just the one we’ve normalized?