Surfers call it the washing machine. When a giant wave throws you off your board and plunges you underwater, you lose all sense of where you are. That is what befell Donald Trump and his party on November 3rd, as they were slammed by tens of millions of American voters. They have still to grasp just how much their country has changed.

Already it is clear this was not a normal midterm swing against a sitting president, but the biggest wave-election since the aftermath of Watergate more than 50 years ago. Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress, flipping seats deep into once-safe red waters, from South Carolina to Texas.

The coming days will spell out two further lessons. One is that this is not just a triumph for Democrats, but also for American democracy. Voters cannot be taken for granted. If they are angry, they will turn against parties they have long supported. The other lesson, which follows from this, is that both parties now need to find a new way of doing politics—one that spends less time riling up their constituents and more getting things done on their behalf.

The wave has swept across America.

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Donald Trump’s humiliation offers America an opportunity https://t.co/Naxd9wxajs https://t.co/sXRA5MiMCp

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) November 5, 2026

The national elections, just completed, added five states that will be completely controlled by Democrats next year, i.e., legislature and governor. They are, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Every one of these is ripe for legalizing assisted suicide, as that policy is now part of the liberal/progressive issue agenda. Most have already seen serious efforts to legalize doctor-prescribed death — even when Republicans held some power. Indeed, the electorally late (defeated for reelection) Governor Joe Lombardo of Nevada vetoed a legalization bill a few years ago.

Every one of these is ripe for legalizing assisted suicide, as that policy is now part of the liberal/progressive issue agenda. Most have already seen serious efforts to legalize doctor-prescribed death — even when Republicans held some power. Indeed, the electorally late (defeated for reelection) Governor Joe Lombardo of Nevada vetoed a legalization bill a few years ago.

Other states that are already governed by a so-called Democratic trifecta, but which have not yet legalized assisted suicide, are Virginia, Maryland, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. Efforts have been made to legalize assisted suicide in all of these as well, with Massachusetts voters rejecting assisted suicide in 2012 — thanks in large part to the opposition by Ted Kennedy’s widow.

I think all of these states will see renewed legalization attempts in the next two years. 

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The other Democratic trifecta states have already legalized assisted suicide. But that is never the end of it. The first laws passed are not meant to be ceilings but launching pads. https://t.co/w842Yov8xR

— Wesley J. Smith (@theWesleyJSmith) November 5, 2026

But at least those young men had plenty of options for gambling online and buying legal weed. Here we come to the territory where the new right simply failed. Many of its tribunes had promised cultural renewal, a more assertive religious conservatism to counter progressivism’s moral framework, a war on porn and other digital addictions. This was the aspect of the new right that liberals attacked as theocratic or “integralist,” but they didn’t need to worry, because in the second Trump administration it only showed up in social media posts about Reformation Day and St. Michael the Archangel.

Otherwise, the new right in power was a force for libertinism, with corruption in Washington, D.C., going hand in hand with policies that favored vice. The pro-life movement vanished, the quest for pro-family policy was stillborn, and the idea of a new patriotic elite for a new America dissolved into a grifter’s mindset, leering side-eyed at Sydney Sweeney’s bust. Any religious revival in the wider culture probably helped elect religious Democrats, not a sinful-seeming GOP.

Nothing in this sad story means that the new right is simply finished. It’s not like there is some other form of conservatism more attuned to late-2020s reality waiting in the wings.

But the movement will be starting over. It needs leaders who either find a way to separate themselves from the Trump record or else were on the outside all along. It needs to repudiate corruption and stupidity. 

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Read @Douthat60 on how the new right failed.https://t.co/io5ZKvZWMU https://t.co/sTh251EKgl

— Oliver Wiseman (@ollywiseman) November 4, 2026

he architect of the Republican midterm collapse stepped out from the rubble on Tuesday night and insisted it wasn’t his fault.

“I wasn’t on the ballot,” President Donald Trump posted to social media. “And if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE.”

Except, of course, the Trump name was stamped on every brick. His war of choice in Iran drove up US gas prices and alienated supporters drawn to his pledge of no more foreign conflicts. Allegations of profiteering by the president and those close to him, and his obsession with gilding the White House, went down badly with voters struggling to pay their bills. His handpicked Senate candidates in ruby-red states like Texas and South Carolina proved so unpalatable that Democrats won for the first time in decades.

“The Democratic strategy was to nationalize the election and make it all about Trump. To tell voters they can end Trump and end Trumpism right now. That pitch resonated with people on the left,” said Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist. “This became a referendum on the president.”

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The architect of the Republican midterm collapse stepped out from the rubble on Tuesday night and insisted it wasn’t his fault. https://t.co/CgzEVvTdGk

— Bloomberg Government (@BGOV) November 4, 2026

In the end, it wasn’t just a wave. It was a wipeout.

A Democrat won a Senate seat in Kansas for the first time since the Herbert Hoover administration. The party picked up Senate seats in Texas, North Carolina and South Carolina. Republicans even fell short in House districts in the South where they had tried to give themselves an edge by drawing new, gerrymandered maps.

The sweeping Democratic victories on Tuesday night offered a decisive rebuke to President Trump and his aggressive, often chaotic second-term agenda.

The party seized control of both houses of Congress. Voters rejected Republicans in conservative states that supported Mr. Trump by double-digit margins just two years ago, in places that had not seen competitive elections for major seats in decades.

Even some Democrats were stunned by the extent of their wins, which included defeating Greg Abbott, the three-term Republican governor of Texas; and Susan Collins, the five-term Republican senator from Maine.

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NYT top #midtermelections this was all about a negative vote on the president and his policies #politics #usa https://t.co/OUkC2Lqi9p

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) November 4, 2026

America’s referendum on President Donald Trump’s second term is underway.

With polls set to open Tuesday morning for the US midterm elections and tens of millions of early ballots already cast, voters say they are frustrated by the high cost of living, fuel prices that spiked after the launch of the Iran war and uncertainty over where their jobs and the world’s largest economy are headed in the age of AI.

Democrats are expected by many to take control of the House of Representatives, with opinion polls signaling for months that the party has a wide enough advantage with voters to overcome headwinds from Republican-led redistricting efforts.

Winning the Senate is more uncertain but has shifted from being a Democratic pipe dream mere months ago to a real possibility, with the GOP unexpectedly playing defense in traditionally safe bastions like Kansas, Texas, Alaska and South Carolina.

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Trump isn’t on the ballot Tuesday, but his policies and record are front and center as US voters decide control of Congress https://t.co/zYDJPfcizp

— Bloomberg (@business) November 3, 2026

The economy, healthcare and the situation in Iran lead in importance to U.S. voters in this year’s election, among 11 issues rated. Half of registered voters say the economy and healthcare are extremely important to their vote, and 47% say the same about Iran. Roughly four in 10 rate income and wealth distribution (44%), gas prices (42%), immigration (40%) and abortion (38%) as extremely important.

About a third rate crime and the Israeli-Palestinian situation (35% each) as extremely important, while construction of AI data centers (30%) and climate change (29%) rank lowest.

These results are based on registered voters interviewed in an Oct. 1-19 Gallup survey, which asked Americans to say whether each issue is extremely important, very important, moderately important or not that important to their vote for Congress this year. Majorities of voters rate every issue except climate change as at least very important.

The 50% of voters rating the economy as extremely important this year is essentially unchanged from 49% in the 2022 midterms amid high inflation, but well above the 34% recorded in 2018, when 55% of Americans rated economic conditions as excellent or good.

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The Issues Voters Say Matter Most This Midterm https://t.co/9JCE1hHYMv

— james starosta (@jimjudistar) October 29, 2026

The Iran war has triggered the largest energy crisis in history, or so the conventional wisdom says. Epochal stuff — but only half-true, because oil is only half the story.

Thanks to the shale revolution and an enviable geological endowment, US and Canadian natural gas consumers are dodging the economic fallout of the Iran conflict. For America, long worried about its reliance on foreign fossil fuels, it’s an embarrassment of riches.

While European and Asian consumers are now paying north of $30 per million British thermal unit for their gas, US buyers pay around $3 per mBtu. Last week, US gas prices briefly touched a two-year low of $2.5 per mBut — in the middle of an energy crisis. Canadian costs are even lower, at about $1.5 per mBtu.

The price difference between gas in Europe and Asia versus North America, reaching now a ratio of 12 times, has never been wider; not during the 2022 gas shock following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, nor in 2011-2012 after the Fukushima nuclear accident, which forced Japan into gas to keep the lights on.

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@iribnews_irib It’s never been this profitable to export US natural gas. America is making a fortune in the energy crisis. https://t.co/0LLrPkUHno

— Sister Rosetta (@rosetta_sister) November 2, 2026

American spy agencies had gathered striking intelligence.

A top executive at a Singapore-based data center company was under scrutiny for possibly steering advanced Nvidia A.I. chips to China. And now American officials had concluded that she was a Chinese intelligence asset, funneling information to Beijing.

But what came next was even more alarming. Surveillance of the executive, Alice Huang or Huang Le, a Chinese citizen, revealed that she had developed a close relationship with Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive.

For years, Washington has worked to deny China the technology needed to match or surpass the United States in the intense global competition for superiority in artificial intelligence. The discovery that Beijing was getting reports from someone with direct access to Mr. Huang, one of the most powerful figures in the A.I. revolution as well as an influential ally of President Trump’s, set off alarms at the White House.

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Wow.https://t.co/ovzrTKn4CR https://t.co/VlJTst2k4X

— Ryan Mac 🙃 (@RMac18) October 29, 2026

After a prolonged decline, religion in the United States has shown signs of strength and stability in recent years.

Since 2020, steady percentages of U.S. adults have said they identify with a religion, pray daily, consider religion to be very important in their lives and attend religious services at least monthly, according to the newest Pew Research Center surveys.

And the percentage of Americans who say they went to religious services in the last month continues to climb following a pandemic-era low point.

In a June 2026 survey, 34% of U.S. adults say “yes” when asked whether they went to religious services in person during the last month, and a total of 45% say they either attended religious services in person or watched them online or on TV in the last month. Both numbers are at their highest levels since the Center started asking these questions in July 2020, during the early months of the COVID-19 outbreak

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We analyzed how the same 5,835 U.S. adults changed religiously between 2020 and 2025.Most Americans gave the same answers to our core questions about religion in 2025 that they gave in 2020. https://t.co/9pHddObAZC

— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) October 28, 2026

The U.S. has told several Gulf Arab countries to be prepared for a short, intense military campaign after the U.S. midterm elections, people briefed on the conversations said.

The communications through diplomatic and military channels are among a growing number of indications that the U.S. and Israel are readying to launch a new round of heavy combat operations against Iran, risking a major escalation in hopes of degrading Tehran’s strength and pushing it toward negotiations. 

The U.S. military is sending an additional Patriot system to Israel from Texas to beef up its missile defenses in the country, according to flight tracking data and two officials with knowledge of the movement. The U.S. has also moved troops off bases in the Middle East where they were vulnerable in preparation for an escalation, The Wall Street Journal has reported.

U.S. forces in the region have been restocking their munitions, and bomber aircraft and jet fighters are preparing for strikes, some of the officials said. An additional aircraft carrier strike group and Marine expeditionary unit are also poised to join an armada of roughly 20 other warships operating in the Middle East next month, although some ships could rotate out.

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This is what I’ve been hearing as well: "The US has told several Gulf Arab countries to be prepared for a short, intense military campaign after the midterms." https://t.co/ukJkDMOeHn

— Gregg Carlstrom (@glcarlstrom) October 28, 2026

On July 5 the Northwest Chinese Baptist Church in Phoenix opened its weekly Mandarin service with a verse from the Old Testament. A pianist, a guitarist and a drummer prepared to lead the 100 congregants in song. The deacon read out the preamble to the Declaration of Independence — “We hold these truths to be self-evident” — and then invited the congregation to rise and sing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” It was a good moment to exalt American ideals. The prior night, fireworks marked America’s 250th anniversary of independence.

The next speaker was a guest, Timothy Cheng, the chief executive of a Christian media company. Flicking through a slide presentation, he spoke about the significance of semiconductors, noting that chips made in Taiwan are the lifeblood of the American economy. He clicked to the next slide. The faces of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Jensen Huang appeared on the screen.

“In earlier years, Western missionaries brought knowledge, education and English to the East,” Mr. Cheng said. “They brought the Gospels and Western medicine. Now that Taiwanese have become fortunate and strong, why should they not transfer knowledge to the United States to make it powerful?”…

The parents are more concerned. Not about food fights — though the idea perplexes them — but about the laxity of education. Arizona’s public schools rank among the lowest in the country for graduation rates and the third-lowest in spending per pupil.
Taiwanese families were enticed to the United States in substantial part by the promise of sending their children to American colleges. Now parents fret that the Arizona educational system won’t help their kids get there. They’re nonplussed that teachers sometimes wave off assigning homework to high school seniors; some schools allow seniors to take Friday afternoons off. The idea astonishes parents used to spending big sums on extracurricular prep.

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I went to Phoenix to spend time with the Taiwanese community. TSMC will invest $265 billion and send thousands of engineers and their families, which marvel at their new lives in the SunbeltMy first feature as a contributing writer to the New York Times: https://t.co/n73RydKBiD

— Dan Wang (@danwwang) October 23, 2026

Of all the predictions Alexis de Tocqueville made while surveying the youthful United States, one of the boldest concerned religion. Notwithstanding Protestantism’s apparent American dominance, the Frenchman prophesied that Roman Catholicism would be the long-term victor in a democratic age. “Our posterity will tend more and more to a single division into two parts,” he wrote in Democracy in America, with “some relinquishing Christianity entirely, and others returning to the bosom of the Church of Rome.”

The last few years have given that prediction new life. From the spate of traditionalist-inclined college converts to the heretofore secular humanists who have thrilled to Pope Leo XIV’s critique of artificial intelligence, it often feels like Catholicism is the strongest religious alternative to post-Christian tribalism, nihilism, and transhumanism. Writing for the Catholic magazine Commonweal, Wesleyan University’s Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, himself a non-Catholic, envisions “a Catholic century,” in which the church’s thought becomes a “default option” for people seeking the common good amid liberalism’s crisis and AI-driven dehumanization.

As a Catholic I have a similar reading of the intellectual situation. But it’s also essential to look beyond the intelligentsia to assess the health and future of religion. And in the wider culture, the form of Christianity that’s most adapted to late-modern America is clearly not the Church of Rome. It’s evangelical Protestantism. The vibes of a Catholic moment are real enough, but evangelicalism’s resilience is our era’s more fundamental fact.

You can see that resilience across almost every means of measurement: conversion rates, retention rates, identification rates, church attendance, intensity of belief. A recent overview from Ryan Burge, the religion data analyst, showed that evangelicals have maintained a roughly steady share of the U.S. population since the 1970s, while both Catholicism and the so-called “mainline” denominations (Congregationalist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and so on) that once dominated American Christianity have seen marked decline. In the 2020s, evangelicals are more than twice as likely to attend church weekly as Catholics. They are also twice as likely to describe religious faith as “very important” in their lives.

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For all the buzz around a ‘Catholic century,’ evangelicalism is the denomination best placed to thrive in contemporary America. https://t.co/e3hTYPNEmb

— The Free Press (@TheFP) October 22, 2026

Meanwhile, the publication itself sent out a news release earlier this month headlined “Christianity Today Announces New Editorial Leadership Team as the Ministry Celebrates Its 70th Year.

That release noted:

CT president and chief executive officer Nicole Martin announced the appointment of Erik Petrik as chief content officer and incoming editor in chief. Petrik, who previously served as chief creative officer at CT since 2020, is the founder of CT Media, where he executive produced CT’s acclaimed podcast series The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. Petrik’s stint at CT has also included developing other popular podcast programs, including The Bulletin, Be Afraid, Wonderology, Being Human, and more; leading CT’s award-winning visual rebrand; and expanding the organization’s work across print, digital, audio, and video.

Petrik’s background spans journalism, film, pastoral ministry, and entrepreneurship. Study at Dallas Theological Seminary under evangelical stalwarts like Howard Hendricks and Darrell Bock informed his time as an ordained clergyman. Later at DTS, he helped pioneer spiritual formation as a field of study. Petrik has written, produced, and directed thousands of creative projects and is one of the founders of bulb Digital Portfolios, providing multimedia digital portfolios for the education market. He and his wife, Kelli, live in Colorado and have five adult children.

“With a media landscape dramatically changed over the last decade and promising more changes ahead, it was hard to imagine that we could find a leader with expertise in print, film, podcasts, church engagement, and art direction. But that’s what God has given us in Erik Petrik,” Martin said.

This transition follows the leadership of Marvin Olasky as editor in chief. Olasky, who stepped out of a previous retirement to serve the ministry at a crucial season of transition, will retire from CT in mid-October.

“When we asked Marvin to help as editor in chief last year, I was hoping he would give us at least six months of his one-of-a-kind expertise,” Martin said. “I was overjoyed that he instead gave us eighteen and that he accomplished so much in that time.”

While the release touted a “new editorial leadership team,” Petrik was the only person mentioned by name. The magazine’s positive spin on the changes failed to mention the layoffs of key journalists such as Olsen and the talented Harvest Prude, Christianity Today’s national political correspondent for the past three years.

Daniel Silliman, Christianity Today’s former senior news editor, left the magazine late last year, publicly voicing “both practical and philosophical” disagreements with its leadership. 

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(Weekend Plug-in/@bobbyross) 🗒️ Does Old-Fashioned Reporting Matter To Christianity Today? Some Say No 🔌 https://t.co/Q4EOF2Og50

— Religion Unplugged (@ReligionMag) October 16, 2026

Whatever Christian nationalism is, it takes its form and energy from its context. Over the past 12 months, the think tank Theos has been researching the apparent rise of Christian nationalism in Europe, with studies under way in France, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Romania, and the UK.

What is clear, even at this stage, is that the nature of this phenomenon alters depending on whether, for example, you are living in a once Roman Catholic but now firmly and formally secular polity (like France), a nation that has self-consciously seen itself as the gatehouse for Christian European Civilisation (like Hungary), or a country, such as Britain, that has a remarkably deep Christian history, a formally Christian “constitution”, but very low levels of church attendance. All these factors pour into and colour the phenomena of Christian nationalism.

The UK research, which has just been published in the report Beyond “Christian Nationalism”, shows that there is something that could legitimately be termed “Christian nationalism” in today’s Britain. But it also shows that the concept of Christianity that you have in mind (belief? practice? ethics? identity?), and the concept of Britishness (civic/political? cultural? ethnic/natal?) will, not surprisingly, shape the way you think about how the two relate to each other….

Finally, for all that this group are strongly Christian — 81 per cent claiming affiliation, 81 per cent being baptised/christened, 49 per cent definitely believing in God or some “higher power” — they are not strongly church-attending: only 13 per cent attend weekly, compared with a sample average of 11 per cent. Nor do they show particularly strong levels of prayer.

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📈 Analysis: Defining Christian nationalism depends significantly on context, ✍️ Nick Spencer @theosnick #ChurchTimes #Analysis https://t.co/Nmnx8EkQRD

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) October 20, 2026

As Gallup recently reported, Americans’ use of alcohol is at its lowest point in history.

The question that follows, of course, is “Why the change?” There are numerous possible explanations. One of these involves religion.

At first glance, Gallup data on religion and drinking are counterintuitive. The country has become less religious overall. Yet, as I noted in a 2019 analysis, less religious Americans have historically been the most likely to drink. If changes in Americans’ religiosity were a primary driver of alcohol use, we should have seen an increase in drinking, not a decrease.

That hasn’t happened. Alcohol use is down despite the increasing numbers of less religious (and historically more likely to drink) Americans.

The explanation for these trends lies in changes in drinking patterns among those who are less religious. Those who attend religious services less than weekly — a growing group that constitutes the significant majority of all Americans — are now reporting their lowest use of alcohol in our Gallup timeline.

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Just 21% of U.S. adults attend religious services weekly, down from 30% about 15 years ago.While frequent religious service attendance has historically been associated with lower alcohol consumption, Americans are drinking less overall, including those who attend services less frequently.Full story: https://t.co/1NFtPa2KZK

— Gallup (@Gallup) October 16, 2026

Nearly five years into its fight for national survival, Ukraine has entered a moment of intense vulnerability, under growing pressure not only from Russia but also now from the United States.

A double blow came overnight on Wednesday.

Ukraine said that its military, with no warning, had lost some critical access to a military version of Starlink, a pillar of its battlefield communications. Kyiv relies on the satellite internet network, known as Starshield, which is paid for by the Pentagon. That led Ukrainian officials and analysts to surmise that the restrictions had come from Washington, as President Trump is locked in his latest feud with Ukraine’s leadership.

At the same time, Russia unleashed dozens of ballistic missiles in a broad attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure early Wednesday, cutting power to 600,000 people in the capital, Kyiv. It was a dark omen for a rapidly approaching winter in which Russia is gearing up to try to push Ukraine to the breaking point as Kyiv runs low on lifesaving air defenses.

It was unclear how long the Starshield restrictions would remain in place. Still, the Trump administration’s treatment of Ukraine has caused outrage in a country already reeling from a string of challenges.

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Ukraine’s Vulnerability Grows as Starlink is Restricted and Russia EscalatesKyiv has found itself increasingly vulnerable. A huge attack cut power to 600,000 people there, and a Pentagon-funded satellite program appeared to be curbed without warning. https://t.co/igpM7s86S9

— Sjoerd Nolf (@SjoerdNolf) October 14, 2026

ESPN wanted nothing to do with sports gambling. That stance had softened a bit as of 2018, when the Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on bookmaking, but the following year, Bob Iger, who was then the CEO of ESPN’s parent, Disney, told investors: “I don’t see the Walt Disney Company, certainly in the near term, getting involved in the business of gambling, in effect, by facilitating gambling in any way.”

So it came as a shock to many people, including Nicole Noren, a longtime ESPN producer, when ESPN licensed its name to a gambling app in 2023. By then, ESPN, like so many sports outlets, was promoting betting at virtually every opportunity; now it would encourage fans to use ESPN Bet. The app, which stood to generate a billion and a half dollars for the network over ten years, proved to be an embarrassing flop. But it was promptly replaced by a partnership with DraftKings, the sports gambling giant. These days, DraftKings ads blanket ESPN coverage, and this past March the companies enabled customers to link their ESPN and DraftKings accounts. It’s a partnership, a press release explained, “that goes beyond a traditional marketing arrangement, redefining how fans engage with sports.”

For Noren, ESPN Bet was the last straw. “I was out,” she told me. “I’m not going to work for a gambling company and have blood on my hands.” ESPN wasn’t an easy place to leave. Noren had worked there for twenty-four years, winning Emmy, Murrow, and Peabody awards, mainly for her work on Outside the Lines, the investigative newsmagazine. She was entrusted with some of the network’s most serious and sensitive reporting, involving topics such as gender-based violence, the mental health of college students, and concussions. With the NFL back in full swing—and ESPN preparing to carry its first-ever Super Bowl, in February—Noren spoke publicly for the first time about her own family’s experience with compulsive gambling. “Addiction dictated every part of our life,” she said. “It’s very, very personal to me.” Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

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An award-winning ESPN producer resigned after 24 years over the network’s embrace of sports betting: “I’m not going to work for a gambling company and have blood on my hands.” https://t.co/LWbFKC6Vp6

— McKay Coppins (@mckaycoppins) October 14, 2026

Most adults worldwide use social media, and among younger adults, nearly everyone does. Across 97 countries surveyed by Gallup so far in 2026, a median of 81% of adults say they have used some type of social media in the past seven days, rising to 95% among those aged 15 to 29.

Findings from the latest State of the World’s Emotional Health report challenge some assumptions about what that widespread use means for wellbeing. The analysis reveals a modest, complicated relationship that varies by time spent using social media, age and where people live.

With social media so embedded in daily life, the findings are particularly relevant at a time when the world’s emotional health is under considerable strain. Worry, stress, sadness, anger and physical pain all remain well above the levels Gallup measured two decades ago. What is less understood is how much social media is associated with this rise in negative emotions.

For this study, Gallup classifies adults as low use (no use or less than 30 minutes a day), moderate use (30 minutes to less than two hours) or high use (two hours or more). After accounting for factors that can influence wellbeing metrics such as these, moderate use is associated with fewer negative emotions than high use and more positive experiences and higher life evaluations than low use. As with many things in life, moderation appears to yield more optimal wellbeing outcomes.

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As part of the World Health Summit, Gallup has released new data from 97 countries on social media use and wellbeing.Globally, there is no substantial relationship between time spent using social media and wellbeing.This finding is remarkably robust. It is true for youth populations (N=26,700 youth 15-29) and for all ages pooled (94,460 adults 15+). It is true with or without extensive controls for internet use, employment status, physical health, age, gender, country effects, education, income, social support. It is true for linear and quadratic use effects. It is true for heavy use, defined several ways. In fact, in some models no use or light use predicts the worst outcomes, but the effects are always very small.However, associations vary widely across countries. In most countries, there is no effect. In Africa, associations between social media use and wellbeing are insignificant or even positive! In USA, CAN, AUS, ISR, & parts of Europe, social media use predicts negative wellbeing.Effects of social media among the youth are among the worst in the USA, raising interesting questions about differences in content and underlying mental health across youth populations.

— Jonathan T. Rothwell (@jtrothwell) October 12, 2026

Given the lack of evidence of any mass radical ideology of Christian nationalism, then, why does that narrative gain so much traction in today’s discourse? We can point to a few reasons. 

First, as the country has become more progressive in many ways, those who support the idea of a Christian nation are now further from the mainstream and thus look more extreme than they used to even if their views haven’t much changed. 

Second, there is a group of politicians, theologians, and right-wing influencers who really do advocate for radical ideologies that can be reasonably labeled “Christian nationalist” in the most alarming sense of the phrase. It’s easy to confuse those very visible cases with the more moderate expressions we find in population data. 

Third, it’s fair to say that the image of right-wing politics has gotten uglier over the past decade, meaning politically conservative Christianity suffers from guilt by association.

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Racist theocrats do exist in America. But most conservative Christians—even those who want a “Christian nation”—don’t share their beliefs or goals.Sociologist of religion Jesse Smith examines 3 myths about Christian nationalism: https://t.co/xMKPQy6JJ4

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) October 12, 2026

Americans’ confidence that food sold at most grocery stores is safe to eat has fallen to its lowest level Gallup has recorded, with 65% now very or somewhat confident. That is down from 73% last year and 72% in 2024, and well below the 81% recorded in 2019.

The overall 16-percentage-point decline in confidence since 2019 reflects decreases in both the “very confident” group, from 31% to 23%, and the “somewhat confident” group, from 50% to 42%. Meanwhile, the share who are “not too confident” or “not at all confident” has risen from 18% to 34%.

This year’s survey was conducted as a major U.S. cyclospora outbreak that began in June started to wane and officially ended on Sept. 11. Likewise, the 2024 reading came amid numerous food recalls and serious illnesses linked to contaminated produce and other foods.

Although much of the news coverage of the recent food scare focused on produce at certain restaurants, Americans rate the safety of restaurant and grocery food similarly. In Gallup’s first measure of restaurant food safety, about two-thirds are very (20%) or somewhat (46%) confident that food at most restaurants is safe to eat, while 33% are not too or not at all confident.

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Americans’ confidence that food sold at most grocery stores is safe to eat has fallen to its lowest level Gallup has recorded, with 65% now very or somewhat confident. https://t.co/U7n7giSGA9

— Gallup (@Gallup) October 9, 2026

Eating out less? Fine. Putting off a haircut? They’ll survive. Living with parents a little longer? Apparently doable.

Gen Z is cutting back, but not necessarily to save for the house, car, and family that once defined the American Dream. For many young adults, the thing worth protecting is travel—even as trips get more expensive. Average U.S. travel costs in August were 9% higher than a year earlier, according to NerdWallet’s Travel Price Index, with airfares up 23.4%.

Yet nearly 44% of U.S. Gen Z travelers say they frequently or very frequently take spontaneous leisure trips, compared with 25.2% of American travelers overall, according to Future Partners. If travel is getting more expensive but remains a priority, something else has to give.

Housing, the centerpiece of the old American Dream, may be where that shift is clearest.

Among Gen Z renters, 83% say renting allows them to save for life experiences rather than tie up money in homeownership, according to a January 2025 survey of roughly 2,000 Gen Z renters by property management software company Entrata and Qualtrics.

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Owning a Home Feels Out of Reach — So Gen Z Is Spending Big in Another AreaRead more: https://t.co/xU7REuCLoq

— Entrepreneur (@Entrepreneur) October 7, 2026

As the United States and China vie for A.I. dominance, the Trump administration has made it more difficult for companies to hire foreign researchers, while China has made recruiting the world’s best scientists a national priority.

Over the past two years, China has flung open its doors to international researchers, introducing a visa for scientists and offering lucrative research grants.

Despite those efforts, foreigners are not coming.

Worse still for China’s ambitions, the number of Chinese scientists working in the United States has risen rather than declined, according to a new study about global A.I. research.

For every 30 Chinese researchers in the United States working on artificial intelligence in 2025, only one in China made the opposite journey, according to the study, conducted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank.

Read it all.

In Race With U.S., China Struggles to Recruit Foreign A.I. Researchers https://t.co/GRZEJwCxsX "Worse still for China’s ambitions, the number of Chinese scientists working in the United States has risen rather than declined, according to a new study about global A.I. research."

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) October 6, 2026

 The percentage of U.S. adults aged 18 to 29 who evaluate their lives well enough to be considered “thriving” in Gallup’s Life Evaluation Index is 44% thus far in 2026, which is on pace through the first three quarters of the year to be 20 percentage points lower than the high of 64% measured in 2010. Most of the erosion has occurred since 2019. Following a modest decline over the course of the 2010s to 57% in 2019, a major drop to 39% occurred amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. After hitting that low point, the thriving rate for this group partially rebounded to 51% in 2023 before falling again.

Adults aged 30 to 44 show a similar decline. The percentage who are thriving among this group is 45% through the first three quarters of 2026, compared with a high of 62% in 2016 and 2017. Those aged 45 to 64 have not dropped as much as younger groups, but their 46% thriving rate to date in 2026 matches their low from 2008.

In contrast, Americans aged 65 and older show higher life evaluations than in the past, climbing fairly steadily from 38% in 2008 to 53% thus far in 2026, matching their record high from 2021.

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Timely numbers on just how miserable young people are in America today https://t.co/UuzfQKIV6Z https://t.co/Ow2XAZri5B https://t.co/BYJ07iSoKt

— Nick Field (@nick_field90) October 5, 2026

The late conservative icon William F. Buckley released God and Man at Yale in 1951, at age twenty-four. This polemic, released as Yale turned 250 years old, wielded the unique knowledge of a recent graduate to contend that that the Yale faculty were actively inculcating students in secularism while dismissing religion as “superstition”; that this malfeasance went far beyond mere open-mindedness (and that it would be undermining even if relativism were its end); and that Yale faculty were simultaneously indoctrinating students in an anti-capitalist economic ideology that threatened America’s system of limited government while instigating admiration for collectivism and ultimately, socialism. 

By the time I was enrolled as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania in the 2000s, the notion that the “tenured radicals” comprising an ivy league faculty would so much as pretend to conceal their investment in secular orthodoxy—or profess anything other than collectivist economics (which they, of course, do not practice)—seemed implausible on its face. 

By then, the venal bargain that Tyler Austin Harper lambastes in his recent essay in The Atlantic had long since been made, albeit in a less extreme form: influential faculty in the humanities and social sciences “discover” and “study” wild theories about race, sex, and gender—the crazier and more inexplicable to normal people the better—all while ratcheting up student debt and outsourcing ever more teaching to poorly paid adjunct instructors without benefits.  

Yet meanwhile—at least during my time at Penn—most of the students, even the ones majoring in the humanities, intended to go into business or some other lucrative field anyway. The real goal was not self-sacrificial do-gooding or a restructuring of society to better serve the poor, but fluency in an esoteric, elite language in which to express the most sophisticated brand of virtue-signaling available.  

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“I believe that if and when the menace of Communism is gone, other vital battles, at present subordinated, will emerge to the foreground. And the winner must have help from the classroom.”William F. Buckley Jr., God and Man at Yale [1951] https://t.co/ciHjFOkJZU

— Mark W. (@DurhamWASP) October 2, 2026

Best-selling British author Os Guinness never planned to be a writer. America helped make him one, with a little help from Switzerland. Since then, hundreds of thousands of readers have turned to the Christian public intellectual to understand both their walk with God and their place in the world.

Guinness’s 1998 title The Call, perhaps his most widely recognized book, helps believers discover their God-given purpose in life. The Global Public Square (2013) addresses religious freedom and the role of faith in society. And A Freedom Like No Other, published this year, continues his esteem of the American republic and its constitutional liberty.

But this liberty is also at risk, Guinness cautions. A visit to the US in 1968 began his intellectual relationship with America, as he traveled from Harvard to Berkeley amid political assassinations, race riots, and a liberal counterculture upending traditional values. And as he interviewed leading figures from the right and the left, he came to a startling conclusion.

“I hardly met any evangelicals who really understood what was going on,” he said in a 2025 interview.

Guinness’s travels led to his first book in 1973, The Dust of Death, a critique of cultural trends in the 1960s. For a man who never planned to be a writer, he proved prolific in the decades that followed, penning more than 30 titles.

Read it all.

Os Guinness Still Challenges Christians to Think

The tumult of the 1960s sparked a literary journey that hasn’t stopped for the prolific social critic.https://t.co/XnmWTZZodU

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) September 30, 2026

In short, The Death of Religion? insists that religion is not dying; it’s merely changing. Christianity may be declining in the West but it’s growing elsewhere. “The fastest-growing areas of Christianity are in the Global South,” the authors state, “particularly sub-Saharah Africa and the Asia-Pacific region.” For those who are Christians, this is an important reminder that the work of God continues throughout the world, with Christianity continuing to advance in many places—and this is reason to celebrate.

In fact, Johnson and Kidd project that Pentecostals will continue to experience significant growth and may surpass a billion adherents by 2050, asserting that in this competitive religion economy, these are the groups that have managed to thrive. And while there are good reasons to criticize the consumeristic mindset of some Christian groups, “at some basic level, churches still have to account for congregants’ perceived needs.” Pentecostal congregations, apparently, do just that.

The authors acknowledge, however, that “the most salient story of Christian decline in American history has been the shocking collapse of the mainline denominations since the 1960’s.” They discuss the decline of several different denominations in American and around the world. The Methodist church, for example, has been deteriorating in the U.S. since the 1960s, but globally the denomination is doing very well. The Episcopal Church has a similar story. The denomination has not died yet, but “it is about as close to death as a well-heeled, historically influential denomination can get in contemporary America.” But like Methodism, the worldwide Anglican church, of which the Episcopal Church in America is but one part, appears to be growing in the Global South, and conservative Anglicans have formed new denominational structures such as the Anglican Church in North America that are trying to partner with like-minded groups around the world.

Read it all.

Is religion dying?

It's easy to think so, but the story is more complicated.

A new book by sociologist Byron Johnson and historian @ThomasSKidd argues that the decline of religion has been greatly overstated. @sopresley reviews "The Death of Religion?" and explores why… pic.twitter.com/qXrsphf7TQ

— Acton Institute (@ActonInstitute) September 30, 2026

Three in 10 Americans (31%) think a college education is “very important,” four percentage points below last year’s reading, the previous low among the seven times Gallup has asked this question since 1978. As recently as 2013, more than twice as many U.S. adults (70%) said college was very important.

At the same time, the percentage of U.S. adults who say a college education is “not too important” has risen from 6% in 2013 to 29% today, while the percentage saying it is “fairly important” has increased from 23% to 39%.

In the earliest years of Gallup’s trend on this question, those considering a college education to be very important increased sharply from 36% in 1978 to 64% by 1985. In the past decade, the perceived importance of college has plummeted, with those saying it is very important now slightly below its 1978 starting point.

This year, Gallup’s Aug. 3-24 poll finds that the percentage of U.S. adults viewing college as “not too important” nearly matches those rating it “very important.” The 64-point gap between them in 2013 has shrunk to just two points today.

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EDITORIAL | WHY WE’RE LOSING TRUST IN HIGHER EDUCATION

The American public is losing trust in the institution of higher education. This trend has made headlines since 2015 — when Gallup first began tracking the issue — and the discourse seems to be revived with every follow-up… pic.twitter.com/YvalzxZPcY

— FXHedge (@Fxhedgers) October 1, 2026

Thirty years ago in Seattle, I was sad to see a homeless man sleeping in a park at the top level of a double slide. It was a nice playground—I could imagine little brothers enjoying a race down that slide—but as things were, parents and kids stayed away. 

What I witnessed then was nothing compared to what Michael Powell recently reported in The Atlantic about that same park today: 

As I arrived, a drug user squatted next to a child’s slide and relieved himself. Others had set up tents and colonized the park pavilion, where they heated fentanyl on tinfoil and inhaled the fumes with glass pipes. A few went old-school and injected it.

Likewise, I remember Burlington, Vermont, as a beautiful city. But Powell reported the view from City Hall now: “At least 70 users and dealers, many looking hyperkinetic in the way of the strung out.” 

He quoted Shabnam Nolan of the King Street Center, where poor children get tutoring: Why does drug users’ “right to ‘dignity’ violate children’s right to come to our center without seeing blood and needles?”

The Burlington Mayor’s Office website warbles about “harm reduction,” which means opening a $2 million center (with funding from the state legislature) so addicts can use their drugs in private. And yet, Powell talked with one mother of three young children who has a fentanyl dealer for a next-door neighbor. “Everyone talks about needle exchange and harm reduction,” she said. “I mean, okay. But it’s like my children and I are living in the zombie apocalypse.”

Read it all.

What Went Wrong in America’s Addiction Recovery Policy?

From west to east, many cities are enabling the slow suicide of vulnerable people. How did we get here?https://t.co/AwLD8K0Zkn

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) September 30, 2026

The federal government’s budget deficit is the amount by which spending exceeds revenue; in 2026 that is projected to be $2.1 trillion. The government’s budget debt is the total amount owed to creditors; in 2026 that is projected to be $32 trillion. Those are big numbers. If you personally owed someone $32 trillion, you (and your creditor) might be a bit concerned. 

Obviously, the U.S. government has more resources than you do, so we need a different gauge. The most often-used measure compares the size of the debt to GDP, which measures the total amount of production in the country. The CBO estimates that in 2026, the debt-to-GDP ratio will be around 101 percent. (The only time it was higher—106 percent—was at the end of World War II.) If the U.S. government wanted to pay off its entire debt right now, it would need all of the income generated in the entire economy this year. That seems very alarming until you remember that the government doesn’t have to pay off its entire debt this year. If you have a home mortgage, it is likely that the value of your debt exceeds your current income, but you aren’t worried because you do not have to pay off the entire debt today. 

Nevertheless, when the size of government debt is equal to the size of the GDP, many people get worried. Reinhart and Rogoff, for example, showed that when debt-to-GDP ratios are higher than 90 percent, economic problems arise. But a country with the economic size and power of the current United States can presumably weather a higher ratio than the norm. Theoretically, there is a debt-to-GDP ratio that will create problems even in the largest economy in the world, but we have no way of precisely determining that limit from the experience of smaller countries in the past. 

While it is hard to estimate the effect of the existing debt-to-GDP ratio, the trajectory of that ratio is noteworthy.

Read it all.

Bad news – we cannot grow our way out of the debt. pic.twitter.com/5fWs28zRIX

— Marc Goldwein (@MarcGoldwein) September 24, 2026