Rachel Cohen Booth

Cutting five words from this law could make houses cheaper The commonsense, zero-cost fix that Congress wouldn’t touch.

The permanent chassis rule and its history offer a window into how smart ideas that could solve real problems can still languish for decades. But it also reveals what it takes to move even obvious reforms from inertia to action

www.vox.com/policy/42025...

Experts have been urging Congress to strike the requirement for a permanent chassis on manufactured housing for decades. It would cost no money to do it. so why have lawmakers not acted?

www.vox.com/policy/42025...

Cutting five words from this law could make houses cheaper The commonsense, zero-cost fix that Congress wouldn’t touch.

New: A 50-year-old federal rule has stifled affordable housing. Congress may finally, at long last, do something about it

www.vox.com/policy/42025...

Which matters more for the economy — babies or robots? Falling birth rates and AI automation are reshaping the same future.

Who is actually looking at these questions together, and what do we know? I pressed a lot of people over the last few weeks on these questions.

www.vox.com/economy/4200...

Which matters more for the economy — babies or robots? Falling birth rates and AI automation are reshaping the same future.

There’s so much discussion of falling birth rates — and the fear that we might not have enough workers in the future

There’s also so much talk about AI—and the possibility of tech automating millions & millions of jobs.

But these two discussions almost never intersect

www.vox.com/economy/4200...

Grok’s MechaHitler disaster is a preview of AI disasters to come Musk trained Grok to be right-wing. We’re lucky he wasn’t more subtle.

"It was immediately made clear how much one AI can change and dominate worldwide conversation — and we should all be alarmed that the company working the hardest to push the frontier of AI engagement on social media is training its AI on X’s most vile far-right content." www.vox.com/future-perfe...

Sweden’s Secret to Well-Being? Tiny Urban Gardens.

The garden programs were specifically designed to improve the mental and physical health of city dwellers. "In those days, there was lots of heavy drinking," Mr. Björk said. But at the garden colonies, "instead of drinking alcohol, you would grow potatoes."

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/08/w...

i feel so bad for teachers, and for kids.

Exclusive | There’s a Tool to Catch Students Cheating With ChatGPT. OpenAI Hasn’t Released It. The technology that is mired in internal debate can detect text written by artificial intelligence with 99.9% certainty.

sketch though since there's been such good reporting on how these companies are not interested in actually making it harder for students to cheat www.wsj.com/tech/ai/open...

the AFT announced today a new $23 million partnership with Open AI, Anthropic and Microsoft to "transform how artificial intelligence is taught and integrated into classrooms across the United States."

I reported on how $16 billion in new child care spending got included in the reconciliation package, and what advocates make of that in an overall gutting bill

www.vox.com/policy/41899...

I wrote about the $16 billion in new child care spending that ended up in the GOP tax deal, and why even Joni Ernst got on board

www.vox.com/policy/41899...

Trump goes ‘woke’ in report on antisemitism at Harvard - The Boston Globe What is most striking is the brazen hypocrisy — one might even say chutzpah — of the Trump lawyers’ arguments.

As I explain in this @bostonglobe.com op-ed, the new Trump ruling on antisemitism at Harvard is deeply ironic—it quietly embraces ideas about anti-discrimination law that the administration has repudiated for civil rights claims by every other group. (1/3)

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/07/03/o...

I wrote about the anti-abortion movement's push to pass emergency care "clarifications" to their abortion bans three years after Roe, and why @acog.org and reproductive rights groups are largely siding against them

www.vox.com/abortion/418...

Can abortion bans be made a little less bad? What the debate over “clarification” laws reveals about America three years out from Roe.

There were at least 42 bills across 12 states this year that sought to "clarify" when doctors could provide emergency abortion care. Three became law.

Many, though not all, physicians think the political cost of these reforms is not worth the risk

www.vox.com/abortion/418...

They were repeatedly ticketed because of their homelessness. What did it change? In Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Diego, homeless Californians describe their experiences as camping ban enforcement has increased.

terrific @calmatters.org reporting on the experiences of homeless people who have received repeated citations and arrests since the Supreme Court's Grants Pass decision came down last year

calmatters.org/housing/home...

More Than a Third of Homeschool Families Also Use Public Schools, New Data Shows ‘I don't know any family that really has kids who learn the same way,’ one parent said.

"To my knowledge no one has thought to ask this question before. Folks just assumed homeschool families were homeschool families"

via @lrj417.bsky.social

www.the74million.org/article/more...

lolz

The deceptively simple reform that could unlock more housing Do we need apartment buildings to have two staircases?

ooh the @vox.com piece by @rcobooth.bsky.social on single stair buildings is now unlocked

(sort of like how... single stair buildings unlock millions of accessible and more affordable homes in walkable areas)

www.vox.com/housing/4101...

Funder, pilot, survivor, physician: Inside the network assisting abortion journeys And some women who took them.

To mark the 3-year anniversary of the Dobbs decision, I published a guide on all the ways doctors, nonprofits, pilots, and ordinary people are helping people from banned states access reproductive healthcare. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

I'm writing a book!

After years of reporting, I realized we've come to expect too much from policy. CAPABLE is about how a well-intentioned distrust of agency has gone too far—sapping our prospects for structural change, and undermining well-being in the process.

really pumped to see this

NYT, Page One:

“Within hours, he had an email from China, offering to move his lab to ‘any city, any university I want,’ he said, with a guarantee of funding for the next 20 years.”

@nytimes.com

“She said it’s about time the nation’s second-largest district treats its workforce of more than 70,000 employees, including thousands of working moms like her, more fairly.”

www.the74million.org/article/los-...

thank you!

The fertility conversation we’re not having Our economy isn’t built for the biological clock. But it can be.

I love this piece from @rachelmcohen.bsky.social. I have long wanted to research what we can learn from the structure of career paths in traditionally female dominated professions (teaching, nursing, etc.) to inform how to restructure careers more generally.

www.vox.com/policy/41509...

it's feminist to expect our schools, workplaces and governments to accommodate reproductive timelines

everyone should have the right to decide if and when they have children

www.vox.com/policy/41509...

Opinion | Save Us, Senators, From a Very Expensive Mistake

NEW, from me: The House reconciliation bill would be horrible for the country’s energy policy. But the Senate can fix it.

I have a new piece in the @nytimes.com with the three recommendations for how lawmakers can avoid disaster: www.nytimes.com/2025/06/02/o...

Agree with all this. And: I don't expect structural change to come from the federal govt - so the onus right now is on other leaders to do more so people can have families if they want to (& make things better for everyone in the process.) Four concrete ideas from me: msmagazine.com/2025/05/30/w...

It's not what I personally wanted for myself, but there are legitimate reasons others might prefer something different