Reason magazine
Taxing the Poor, Globally
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) into law on July 4. One measure buried deep in the 870-page law imposes a 1 percent tax on remittances—the money that people send to friends and relatives in their home countries. The 1 percent tax applies to all remittance senders in the United States, though not to transfers sent from bank accounts and U.S.-issued debit or credit cards.
1 min |
October 2025
Reason magazine
Cairo: The Unfinished City
DRIVE ABOUT 40 minutes from the Giza Pyramids to the ancient step pyramid of Saqqara and you'll pass rows of half-built apartment blocks, skeletal overpasses, and roads that seem permanently under construction. Leave central Cairo and you'll see more of the same: neighborhoods where concrete beams poke out of rooftops, brick walls are left raw and unpainted, and windows are missing entirely from apartments.
2 min |
October 2025
Reason magazine
PUTIN AND THE D-WORD
IN DONALD TRUMP'S VIEW, VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY IS A \"DICTATOR,\" BUT VLADIMIR PUTIN ISN'T.
10+ min |
October 2025
Reason magazine
Cracks in the Map
THE IDEA OF carving out territorial exceptions to, or escape zones from, the hand of the nation-state has long captured the imagination of free market enthusiasts. In the 1990s, I was involved in several organizations devoted to the idea, and I witnessed the movement's gradual shift from a pipe dream of libertarian theorists to something attracting serious interest, and investment capital, from entrepreneurs, as libertarian-oriented free ports, special economic zones, charter cities, and even floating maritime cities (seasteads), began to look more politically possible. In 1993, my “free nation” group was meeting in a local North Carolina hotel; by 2011, I was sipping cocktails at a rather swankier “free cities” conference on the resort island of Roatán, Honduras—which, not coincidentally, today boasts its own charter city, Próspera.
5 min |
October 2025
Reason magazine
The Depopulation Bomb
NATALIST PANIC IS rife nowadays. The White House is weighing initiatives to boost the number of births, ranging from a $5,000-per-baby bonus to awarding “National Medals of Motherhood” to mothers with six or more children. In March, the NatalCon gathering in Austin, Texas, declared that we're “living through the greatest population bust in human history.” In April, the tech billionaire (and father of 14 children) Elon Musk posted on X: “Low birth rates will end civilization.”
4 min |
October 2025
Reason magazine
WHY EUROPEANS HAVE LESS
EUROPE IS POOR BECAUSE IT CHOOSES TO BE.
10+ min |
October 2025
Reason magazine
Poland Climbs, Hungary Slips
LOOKING BACK ON his career as one of Poland's most prominent economists and political leaders, Leszek Balcerowicz offered a succinct lesson for policymakers everywhere.
3 min |
October 2025
Reason magazine
Richard Dawkins on the New Enemies of Scientific Thinking
THE LEGENDARY ATHEIST AND EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGIST ARGUES THAT TRUTH SHOULDN'T BEND TO FAITH OR FASHIONABLE POLITICS.
10+ min |
October 2025
Reason magazine
DOGE BEFORE DOGE
BEFORE TRUMP HAD ELON MUSK, NIXON HAD HOWARD PHILLIPS.
10+ min |
October 2025
Reason magazine
Let Prisoners Work for Themselves
For nearly two decades, some Puerto Rican prisons allowed a very different sort of prison labor.
3 min |
October 2025
Reason magazine
Making Food Out of Thin Air
THANKS TO INNOVATIONS in food science and agriculture, the world is producing more food than ever before. While this has significantly reduced global hunger since the 1970s, it has impacted the environment; in 2023, food production generated about 26 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to Our World in Data.
1 min |
October 2025
Reason magazine
EDUCATING THE WORLD'S BEST AND BRIGHTEST— THEN SHOWING THEM THE DOOR
AMERICA'S STATUS AS A TOP DESTINATION FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS IS AT RISK.
10+ min |
October 2025
Reason magazine
Our Lab-Grown Future
THINGS DIDN'T GO well the first time Rebecca Torbruegge took a turn at the go-kart track. She ended up with a burn on her leg that refused to heal and eventually—skip the next bit if you're squeamish—\"started bubbling.\" Doctors in Sydney quickly determined she'd need a graft. But instead of following the usual procedure of scraping a patch from the 22-year-old's backside, slapping it over the wound, and hoping for the best, researchers wondered if she'd like to try something new: custom-printed skin, laid down layer by layer by a machine, built from her own cells.
3 min |
October 2025
Reason magazine
Chatbots Win the Debate
IN A MAY 2025 study in Nature Human Behavior, researchers set up online debates between two humans, and between a human and the large language model GPT-4. In some debates, they provided both humans and AI with basic personal information about their opponents—age, sex, ethnicity, employment, political affiliation. They wanted to find out if such personalized information helped debaters both human and machine to craft more persuasive arguments.
3 min |
October 2025
Reason magazine
A Spy's Eye View
NOT ALL OF James Bond's gadgets were fictional. In the 1969 movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Bond uses a strange-looking metal square to photograph supervillain Ernst Stavro Blofeld’s secret plans. The same metal square appears in the 2013 season of the Cold War-themed show The Americans, when an FBI asset is sent to copy documents in the Soviet Embassy.
3 min |
October 2025
Mother Jones
PROJECT 2026 TRUMP'S PLAN TO HIJACK THE NEXT ELECTION
On an April episode of the popular Politics War Room podcast, the veteran journalist Al Hunt posed an increasingly common question from listeners to Democratic strategist James Carville. “Is Trump looking to spark enough protest to justify declaring martial law in 2026, thus suspending the election?” Hunt asked.
10+ min |
September/October 2025
Mother Jones
“YOU CAN’T LIVE LIFE ON SHEER TERROR”
Author, TV writer, and social media wit Kashana Cauley on living with debt, leaving Twitter, and finding humor in dark times
3 min |
September/October 2025
Mother Jones
REFRIGERATOR MOMS REDUX?
Don't blame ADHD on stressed moms.
8 min |
September/October 2025
Mother Jones
HIDING IN LA
WHEN DEPORTATION forces descended on Los Angeles, a new reality set in for many Angelenos: the fear of living in a city under constant threat from ICE. For many, it means sheltering in place—avoiding work, social life, or even a walk outside.
1 min |
September/October 2025
Mother Jones
THE GOLDEN KINGDOM
Crypto's true believers gather and rejoice under Trump.
10 min |
September/October 2025
Mother Jones
ROOFTOP RESISTANCE
TRUMP IS TRYING TO KILL SOLAR. HERE'S HOW TO FIGHT BACK.
10+ min |
September/October 2025
Mother Jones
POD OF WAR
HOW MAGA'S FAVORITE MILITARY INFLUENCER WEAPONIZES VULNERABILITY
10+ min |
September/October 2025
Mother Jones
NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH
ON THE GROUND WITH A SCRAPPY NETWORK OF VOLUNTEERS PROTECTING THEIR COMMUNITY FROM ICE
8 min |
September/October 2025
Mother Jones
“DIVISIVE"
How the right enforces the myth of American unity
4 min |
September/October 2025
Mother Jones
THE PLOT AGAINST VACCINES
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his allies have hit on a way to undermine immunization.
10+ min |
September/October 2025
Mother Jones
WHITEWASH
Trump is perverting the mission of an agency founded to fight discrimination.
5 min |
September/October 2025
Mother Jones
STATUS ANXIETY
HOW TO DEPORT 1 MILLION PEOPLE A YEAR? MAKE RULE-FOLLOWING IMMIGRANTS UNDOCUMENTED.
10+ min |
September/October 2025
Mother Jones
DISINFORMING AMERICA
How a network of conservative funders and outlets is distorting news in battleground states
7 min |
September/October 2025
Mother Jones
PLASTIC MEASURES
The synthetic stuff in our brains, oceans, and politics
3 min |
September/October 2025
The Atlantic
THE MAN WHO ATE NASA
The agency once projected America's loftiest ideals. Then it ceded its ambitions to Elon Musk.
10+ min |