Re/code

Federal agencies routinely buy cellphone location data from private companies. | Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty ImagesPrivate companies collect location data on millions of Americans and provide it to the DHS, IRS, FBI, and DEA — no warrants…

The fates of the American middle class and American department stores have always been intertwined. Department stores, once a symbol of the American middle class, have been declining for years, along with the shopping malls they anchor in communities across…

Shaneé Benjamin for VoxA look at the finances, footprints, and futures of department store chains. The pandemic has been terrible for numerous industries, and department stores are no exception. Once the main place many Americans did their clothing and other…

In factory farms, pigs are sometimes locked in crates the width and length of their bodies, so they can’t even turn around.  | Getty ImagesThese are the most effective charities for reducing animal suffering. If you care about animals and want to reduce…

Shaneé Benjamin for VoxIn movies like Splash, Miracle on 34th Street, and The Women, the department store is where we go to learn middle-class values. There’s a French movie from 1930, black-and-white and silent, that begins with a young country girl named…

Ajit Pai is leaving the FCC when the Biden administration begins. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesPai’s business-loving, regulation-undoing legacy will likely last for years to come.…

A shot from Hell or High Water (2016). | CBS Films/YouTubeRural America on film, from Appalachia to the Ozarks, coal miners to sharecroppers. Let’s not mince words: Netflix’s new Oscar-bait Hillbilly Elegy is not the ode to vanishing rural American life it…

Shaneé Benjamin for VoxThe collapse of America’s middle class crushed department stores. Amazon and the pandemic are the final blows. In a New Jersey suburb seven miles west of Midtown Manhattan, the American Dream is on shaky ground.…

TV shoppers at a Best Buy in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2018. | Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe/Getty ImagesStreaming TV should be easy, but fights among Roku, Amazon, HBO, and NBC are making it hard. When Wonder Woman 1984 opens in theaters on Christmas…

Parler is attracting posts that Twitter and Facebook don’t allow, like hate speech and conspiracy theories about the US election. | Olivier Douliery/AFP/Getty ImagesConservatives are flocking to a site where they can post things that Facebook and Twitter…