Demolition weeks, decision points, and why the baguette wins

What you should read and watch from Vox this week.

View this email in your browser    Each week, a different Vox editor curates their favorite work that Vox has published across text, audio, and video. This week's recommendations are brought to you by senior editorial director, Future Perfect, climate, Unexplainable, and The Gray Area Bryan Walsh. Each week, a different Vox editor curates their favorite work that Vox has published across text, audio, and video. This week's recommendations are brought to you by senior editorial director of Future Perfect, climate, Unexplainable, and The Gray Area Bryan Walsh.   Hi,   Some weeks, the news feels like a home renovation show with a sledgehammer problem. Between the East Wing demolition saga, a major sports betting scandal bending the rules of the games we watch, and the aftermath of one of the biggest protests of our time, it's easy to feel like institutions are being stress-tested in real time.    My bias — and I suspect yours — is for pieces that trade anxiety for understanding, that show me the statute, the science, the on-the-ground reporting, not the vibes. This week's Vox picks do exactly that. They clarify who can deploy troops on American streets, explain why your sourdough tastes better in Paris than in Peoria, deflate a viral protein powder panic with actual toxicology, and take you to a distant place where amazing biodiversity is under threat. We finish with a smart one-minute video to rinse the doomscroll out of your feed.   Thanks for reading and for supporting this kind of work: journalism that survives the week and leaves you meaningfully less confused.   —Bryan Walsh, senior editorial director, Future Perfect, climate, Unexplainable, and The Gray Area TOP PICKS THIS WEEK A Supreme Court case with stakes you can feel on the sidewalk   What looks like a dry fight over federal power is anything but. The Court is being asked to bless an interpretation that would let a president federalize National Guard units to police even small, localized protests — on the president's say-so. Senior correspondent Ian Millhiser walks us through the legal plumbing: what the relevant statutes actually say, why "rebellion" was meant to be a high bar, and how a single 19th-century line (Martin v. Mott) is getting wrenched out of context. Read it to understand both the law and the real-world playbook it could rewrite.       Madagascar's vanishing wildlife — and the people-first fixes that work   Madagascar is a biodiversity outlier — lemurs exist only here, as well as nearly half the world's chameleon species — but it's also one of the poorest countries on Earth. That combination means resource extraction isn't villainy; it's survival, and it's grinding ecosystems down. Senior correspondent Benji Jones reframes conservation as anti-poverty policy. If you want forests, reefs, and the creatures that depend on them, you have to lower the day-to-day pressure on the people who live with those resources. It's a rare environmental piece that respects trade-offs and shows progress without spin. Read for the animals, stay for the pragmatism.         Why food tastes better abroad (and what policy has to do with your palate)   Yes, vacation goggles help — but there's a concrete, fixable reason the bread in France often crushes ours: law and time. As this great episode of the podcast Explain It to Me shows, a 1993 French rule says a true boulangerie baguette must be made fresh that day with four ingredients. The US, by contrast, optimized bread for speed, shelf life, and identical bubbles, not flavor. The episode walks through the industrial chemistry that turned bread into a four-hour, many-additives product — and why "time" is the fifth ingredient great bread needs. You'll come away understanding that better food isn't a mystery; it's incentives.         No, your protein powder isn't poisoning you (the real problem is regulation)   A viral investigation used California's Prop 65 — a hyper-conservative benchmark with a 1,000x safety factor — to claim that there were "unsafe" lead levels in popular protein powders. But as Jan Dutkiewicz writes in a piece for Future Perfect, toxicologists don't evaluate risk that way; the FDA's reference levels (and the fact that trace lead is ubiquitous in soil-grown foods) tell a more measured story. This piece threads a difficult needle, taking the threat of lead seriously while explaining why the scary percentage math collapses under a more appropriate baseline — and then pivots to the actual issue: a Swiss-cheese government regulation regime that relies on post-market enforcement for supplements. Evidence over vibes, and policy over panic.      📹 One sharp minute on the worst group chat in history   For a final palate cleanser, here's a crisp YouTube Short that does our favorite Vox trick: breaks down the political story of the minute — the extremely racist messages from a leaked Republican group chat — in a way that helps you actually understand it. This email was sent to aymentanaze.news@blogger.com. Manage your email preferences or unsubscribe. If you value Vox's unique explanatory journalism, support our work with a one-time or recurring contribution.   View our Privacy Notice and our Terms of Service.   Vox Media, 1201 Connecticut Ave. NW, Floor 12, Washington, DC 20036. Copyright © 2025. All rights reserved.