Vox Quick Hits cover the big, complex, important topics in news, politics and pop culture in just a fraction of the time. Check in daily to hear short updates from your favorite journalists and podcasts in the Vox Media Podcast Network. 

Lawmakers in Washington are fighting over an internet law you’ve never heard of called Section 230. It’s a sword and shield that basically means internet companies like Twitter and Facebook can police their platforms however they want, and they’re not liable for what people post there. But now, the law is increasingly under fire on both sides of the aisle. Recode reporter Sara Morrison explains the growing criticism of Section 230 and whether scrapping or reforming it is really the best way to make the internet better.

Vox Quick Hits

Why is everyone talking about Section 230? | Tell Me More

If you’re looking for a weekend watch, Vox’s critic-at-large, Emily VanDerWerrf recommends Promising Young Woman, available for digital rental on Amazon, Google, Apple, and more. Carey Mulligan plays a woman who avenges the rape of a friend by pretending to be drunk, so men will take her home. Then, she scares them (hopefully) straight. But the true villain of this story isn’t any one man; it’s all of them at once.

Promising Young Woman | What to Watch

Vox's Zack Ward, Jenn Williams, and Alex Beauchamp discuss how the US Capitol insurrection fits into the broader spectrum of far-right political violence in the US. They debate whether the incident should be considered an act of terrorism, and if so, what that means in terms of how to craft policy responses to the threat. They end by looking at President Donald Trump’s role in uniting disparate far-right groups, from white supremacists to eco-fascists to anti-government militias, into a loose but dangerous coalition that may persist long after he leaves office.

Was it terrorism? | Worldly

A very big tech company now has a very small union. Recode’s Shirin Ghaffary explains why highly paid workers in an anti-union business still organized and made history.

Okay, Google: unionize! | Today, Explained

Nabil Ayers wasn’t looking for trouble; he just wanted to drive around the country with his bandmates making music. They had other ideas, though, which came to a head when they were busted by cops for carrying an entire tour’s worth of weed.

$2,000 on a lawyer  | The Best Money I Ever Spent

Harvard political theorist Danielle Allen has written an entire book about the deeper argument of the Declaration of Independence and the way our superficial reading and folk history of the document obscures its radicalism. (It’ll make you look at July Fourth in a whole new way). Her most recent book, Cuz, is a searing indictment of the American criminal justice system, driven by watching her cousin go through it and motivated by the murder that ended his life. Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, which Allen directs, has released the most comprehensive, operational road map for mobilizing and reopening the US economy amidst the Covid-19 crisis. And to top it all off, a two-year bipartisan commission of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, which Allen co-chaired, recently released a report with more than 30 recommendations on how to reform American democracy — and they’re very, very good.
This is a preview of a wide-ranging conversation for a wide-ranging moment. Allen and I discuss what “all men are created equal” really means, why the myth of Thomas Jefferson’s sole authorship of the Declaration of Independence muddies its message, the role of police brutality in the American revolution, democracy reforms such as ranked-choice voting, DC statehood, mandatory voting, how to deal with a Republican Party that opposes expanding democracy, the case for prison abolition, the various pandemic response paths before us, the failure of political leadership in this moment, and much more.
Listen to the whole episode here.

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Today Explained

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