Would you choose cohabitation over marriage?

How’s your week been? 

Good, I hope. 

It’s been a busy week here at Vox. We’ve been working on some exciting new projects you’ll learn about soon, and we launched an amazing package spearheaded by our talented climate team called Home Planet. It’s a series of stories all about our island Earth: the creatures who inhabit it (including us!), the ways in which its climate is changing, the wonders of nature, and even an investigation on whether this planet of ours is itself a living thing. Please check it out, if you haven’t already!

I run the general assignment team, so my team’s been very focused on Israel, Gaza, and Congress for the last few days. That’s meant delving into the campus protests you’ve no doubt heard about, working to untangle what they’re really about and why they’ve made certain segments of Americans so angry. We’ve also worked on explaining what’s known — and still unknown — about the mass graves found at two hospitals in Gaza, concerning discoveries made as the death toll in Gaza climbed above 34,000. And we explained all the money Congress handed out to American allies this week, including $13 billion for Israel and $61 billion for Ukraine.

That may seem like a lot, but it just scratches the surface of what my wonderful colleagues created this week. That said, let me get to what you’re here for, the pieces I’d recommend you spend some time with. I think you’ll find them as enriching as I did. 

—Sean Collins, news editor

🎧 Trudeau’s plan to fight populism

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stopped by Today, Explained this week and had a lot to say about democracy, populism, and life in Canada. Above all, he made a pitch for why government is important and why citizens should stay engaged with it, even when they find it exasperating. And in classic TEx form, the episode’s got some great sound design — the whole thing is food for thought and a treat for your ears. (P.S. If, like me, you prefer your podcasts in transcript form, you can read this interview here.)

The Supreme Court doesn’t seem eager to get involved with homelessness policy

It was a dizzying week at the Supreme Court — they heard everything from a major Trump case that could affect presidential power for generations to a case that could deepen abortion bans in new, potentially life-threatening ways. You should check out Ian Millhiser’s work on those cases. But there’s another case that may have gotten fewer headlines that I think is just as important: a case that’s essentially about whether someone ought to be allowed to be homeless; there’s a thorny legal precedent complicating this case, and like all the others the Court heard this week, the stakes are incredibly high.

🎥  Why it’s hard for Americans to retire

If you ever feel like you’ll never be able to retire, you’re not alone. And if you do feel that way, it’s easy to blame yourself — to believe you’re short because of some personal failing. But the Vox video team recently explained that’s not the case at all: Decades of poor policy choices stacked the deck against the average worker. Check out this video for more on how Americans ended up with a flawed retirement system, and for what you can do to try to make the best of it. 

Lawmakers are overreacting to crime

I live in DC and am often asked whether I feel safe by people who live in nearby suburbs. I do feel safe; DC hasn’t been a dangerous place as long as I’ve lived here, and police statistics (imperfect though they are) show crime is falling. As my colleague Abdallah explains, it’s not just DC that’s getting safer — most cities in the US are. The trouble is that reality hasn’t yet sunk into public and lawmaker consciousnesses. And that’s leading to a raft of bad policy decisions that could make life harder for everyone, especially those impacted by the already very punitive carceral system.

Why couples are choosing cohabitation over marriage

Anecdotally, I’ve started to notice what seemed to me to be an increase in couples I know living together. I thought perhaps this phenomenon was happenstance, or attributable to my generation growing older. But thanks to my colleague Allie, I learned there’s a lot more to it than that. Read her piece, and you’ll learn everything you might want to know about cohabitation, its history, why it has, in fact, grown more prevalent — and you’ll get to hear some cute love stories, too.

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