Yet this backlash is itself dangerous. AI promises to change the world for the better, much as electricity or the steam engine did. Not long ago, the era-defining problem for the rich world was stagnant economic growth and the populism it unleashed. Now it has a technology that could power a surge in productivity and incomes, help find cures for untreatable diseases and improve everything from education to green tech.

All this could be lost if countries starve the technology of computing power or regulate it into uselessness. Look at mRNA vaccines research, which has been held back after a backlash during the covid-19 pandemic.

Scenarios in which some countries give in to popular rage but others forge ahead are also worrying. If America succumbs, it could cede the global ai frontier, and the attendant cyber and military capabilities, to authoritarian China. Europe and Canada are more risk-averse than America. If they choked off AI while the rest of the world kept pushing forward, their losses could be unrecoverable. More than two centuries after the Industrial Revolution, few countries have managed to catch up with the first movers.

So the stakes are high. Can governments do anything about it? Grand proclamations about the shape of a “social contract” for a post-AI world are good fodder for blog posts but offer little help today. Besides, the unknowns are still large enough to make the exercise almost futile.

Better to be incremental. 

Read it all.

Persuading voters that their interests are being served by AI’s disruption has become as important as making models better. The failure to do so would destroy vast opportunities for humanity https://t.co/5S9EGzPIHg

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) June 25, 2026

 Two-thirds of Americans surveyed in a June 1-15 Gallup poll say the cost of fuel has caused financial hardship for their household, similar to the level recorded when gas prices were similarly high in 2022 and at other times over the past two decades when gas prices were elevated — especially 2005, 2008 and 2011.

Although most people are feeling the pinch from high fuel prices, 17% of those experiencing financial hardship because of high gas prices call it “severe.” That is slightly lower than the 22% found four years ago.

Gallup’s trended data suggest that Americans are especially sensitive to average pump prices reaching new levels — often widely reported in the news. Each time a new threshold has been crossed for a sustained period, the share of Americans reporting financial hardship has risen sharply. This includes when prices went above $2 per gallon in 2005, above $3.50 in 2008, above $3.75 in 2011 and above $4 in 2022.

Read it all.

Gas Prices Hitting Americans' Finances, Travel Plans https://t.co/ddsER2mq8P

— Todd Nicolini Insights (@InsightsTodd) June 25, 2026

Child poverty is “not just an issue of economics, but a crisis of human dignity and a moral challenge to the kind of society we wish to build”, the Bishop of Peterborough, the Rt Revd Debbie Sellin, has said.

Speaking during a House of Lords debate last week on the Government’s Child Poverty Strategy, Bishop Sellin referred to research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation that “food is now the most common essential that low-income households are going without.”

A C of E primary school near Daventry had set up a community larder, she said, “providing affordable food to families struggling to make ends meet, along with ensuring that all children [have] a good breakfast each morning. Volunteer groups work hard to bring isolated families back into community life, but they find their efforts stifled by lack of investment in infrastructure.”

Read it all.

Child poverty is ‘a crisis of human dignity’ and a ‘moral challenge’ https://t.co/05zMjJPM8x

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) June 23, 2026

The news is full of how an ignominious peace deal with Iran exemplifies a decline in American power. That conclusion could hardly be more wrong. On June 12th the Trump administration ordered Anthropic to block foreigners from Fable and Mythos, its latest and most capable frontier AI models. In an instant, everyone learned that the American government can decide who may use the world’s most important technology. You don’t get much more powerful than that.

The administration was responding to a supposed jailbreak for Fable, meaning a prompt that circumvents defences against uses such as hacking computers or making bioweapons. The chances are that it wanted Anthropic to switch off the models for everyone, and that targeting foreigners was a means to an end. Sure enough, that is what Anthropic did, while claiming that the concern about its model was overblown. The legal basis of the order remains unclear, and the ban seems unlikely to last.

What matters, though, is the demonstration that global access to the best AI may come down to a decision in the Oval Office. The administration showed in March that it is prepared to trample on the frontier AI companies, when it designated Anthropic a “supply-chain risk”. Now it has shown that it is prepared to trample on users, too.

America must decide how to wield this vast new power. The rest of the world must decide what to do about it. Even as it plans for an unreliable America in everything from defence to trade, it now has to cope with a new way of being captive to the world’s biggest economy.

Read it all.

Even as the world plans for an unreliable America in everything from defence to trade, it now has to cope with America’s dominance in AI https://t.co/xrMSKZAFWb

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) June 18, 2026

The Christian faith is by nature conservative—in a theological sense. The Scriptures are replete with verses pointing to the unchanging and enduring nature of God and the Bible. Revelation 1:8 says, “‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, ‘who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty’” (ESV throughout). Malachi 3:6 says, “For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.” Isaiah 40:8 says, “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.” Hebrews 13:8 says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” These verses do not mean that the biblical text cannot be distorted or manipulated by self-serving people, but it does mean that the Bible is not a party platform that gets updated every four years.

Thankfully, there are countless others who are faithfully preaching and teaching God’s word. These congregations are often small and do not receive any media attention. Many are led by pastors more concerned with preparing their members for eternity in heaven than getting souls to the polls on Election Day. Some of these churches have vibrant ministries for men, women, and families. They are committed to remaining faithful to biblical ethics regarding sex, sexuality, marriage, family, and the sanctity of life without any concern for whether elected Democrats—or Republicans—agree.

Liberation-minded pastors who reject the biblical definitions and descriptions of sex and marriage are incapable of doing the work needed to rebuild the Black family. They fashion themselves as brave prophets, but they make race and politics twin idols that draw their hearts—and pulpits—away from God.

Christians are often told to beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing. That is wise counsel, but what’s even more dangerous is a wolf in shepherd’s clothing. The former can devour a few sheep before the others scatter, but the latter can lead an entire flock over a cliff.

One ray of hope is the biblical theme of God’s mercy on those who turn from their wicked ways and trust him. The pattern in both the Old and New Testaments is quite familiar. God’s people rebel. He rebukes them. They reflect on their sin and repent. He restores them. This is my prayer because the Black family needs the church to function in its God-given role now more than ever.

Read it all.

“Instead, liberation theology has transformed the Black church from a religious institution dedicated to the pursuit of righteousness to the religious wing of the Democratic Party.”https://t.co/Bh1V8SBXWw

— TheQueenofLA 🇺🇸 (@Queenofla2) June 17, 2026

A ban on social media for under-16s, announced by the Government this week, will not guarantee child safety online, Bishops and safeguarding specialists have warned.

Two C of E Bishops — one in favour of the ban and the other opposed — nonetheless agreed this week that a ban in isolation was not enough, and that both scrutiny of big tech social media companies and investment in youth services was essential if children are to be protected from harm.

The Children’s Society warned against letting the tech companies off the hook, while Jim Gamble, the chief executive of INEQE, the safeguarding group currently auditing all Church of England dioceses and cathedrals, said that, while well intentioned, a ban was not practical.

Read it all.

A ban on social media for under-16s, announced by the Government this week, will not guarantee child safety online, Bishops and safeguarding specialists have warned#socialmediaban #under16s #churchnews https://t.co/Os2gr5VbRw

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) June 16, 2026

For his part, while Hamilton favored a more active role for government in promoting commerce, his ultimate aim was almost the same as Jefferson’s: securing the rights proclaimed in the Declaration. But by enhancing commerce, Hamilton aspired to enable ordinary Americans to emulate his path of rising to prosperity through their own initiative and industry.  

Both men would surely have been horrified by the enormous and intrusive bureaucracy that the progressive movement bequeathed to us. As Rosen puts it, “in the name of Jefferson’s commitment to equal economic opportunity, Roosevelt had buried Jefferson’s commitment to limited government” (though Rosen surely errs in calling his program “Hamiltonian”). Rosen does cite Ronald Reagan’s “Jeffersonian criticisms” of the Great Society “antipoverty” program of FDR’s successor Lyndon Johnson for undermining welfare recipients’ incentive to work, while also noting how the articles of impeachment that Congress drew against Richard Nixon, drawing on Federalist no. 69, finally “refuted” Jefferson’s charge that Hamilton had been a monarchist

Finally, in the area of constitutional interpretation, Rosen quotes Justice Antonin Scalia’s embrace of “the interpretative approach of the Hamiltonian justice Joseph Story” according to which the Constitution’s words should be construed neither broadly nor strictly, but rather taking them “in their natural and obvious sense” (though that phrase obviously leaves considerable room for dispute in particular cases). But Rosen departs from Scalia by insisting that “the central dispute on the Supreme Court” since the Founding “has not been between originalism and non-originalism, but between liberal and strict construction of federal power”: how would that distinction apply to decisions applauded by “living constitutionalists” like Roe v. Wade, which have no grounding in the Constitution’s text at all?  

Whatever one’s judgment of these controversies, it is impossible to differ with Rosen’s concluding judgment that “the greatest threat to the American Idea” throughout our history has come not from those who inconsistently apply Hamilton’s or Jefferson’s principles, but “from those who have rejected the principles entirely,” from Calhoun and others who renounced the claim of natural human equality as “a self-evident lie” to “progressive and conservative ideologues today” who would replace the Constitution entirely with a “resort to violence.” Taken as a whole, Rosen’s book offers a learned and sober account of the relevance of Hamilton’s and Jefferson’s principles to America’s past, present, and possible future. 

Read it all.

National Constitution Center President & CEO Jeffrey Rosen discusses his book, "The Pursuit of Liberty: How Hamilton vs. Jefferson Ignited the Lasting Battle Over Power in America."

Watch here: https://t.co/pYS9vkWqTb pic.twitter.com/jj7ARdujMR

— Washington Journal (@cspanwj) December 25, 2025

“It’s going to be an absolute nightmare,” says an executive at a big American tech company. He is talking about an emerging problem for businesses that use artificial intelligence. AI agents—bots that can read, interpret and act—use masses of processing power and have started to run up huge bills. As they proliferate, the problem will grow. Big companies, the executive points out, typically use hundreds of software programs. If each of those offer agents (as they probably will), AI costs could easily spiral out of control.

Budget management is a new worry for AI adopters. Not long ago employees were encouraged to binge on the technology, as bosses and investors saw spending as a sign of innovation. Burning through vast numbers of tokens—the chunks of text that models process, which are often used as a unit of pricing—became a badge of honour; techies dubbed it “tokenmaxxing”. Companies showed off staff’s AI use on internal leaderboards. Meta’s display awarded top users titles like “Token Legend”.

Such incentives partly explain the boom in AI spending. Another contributing factor is a change in the way enterprises use the technology. Token-heavy applications, such as reasoning models and agents, are growing more popular. In some cases agents build their own agents, sending costs higher still. Ramp, a corporate-credit-card provider, analyses its clients’ transaction data to shed light on how they use AI. It reckons their overall spending has risen 13-fold in the past year. In April Uber said that it had already spent its annual AI budget in four months. Other firms are experiencing similar problems. One reportedly spent $500m on AI tokens in a month. Sam Altman, the boss of OpenAI, has described mounting customer costs as “a huge issue”.

For now, the problem is concentrated. The top spenders tend to be tech firms….

Read it all.

Burning through vast numbers of tokens—the chunks of text that models process, which are often used as a unit of pricing—was once a badge of honour. Now budget management is a worry for AI adopters https://t.co/TZsf1H2BHC

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) June 16, 2026

Responding to the news that a Bill to permit assisted dying is to be reintroduced to Parliament, the Bishop of Newcastle, Dr Helen-Ann Hartley, has told the Church Times that she remains committed to scrutinising the legislation in the House of Lords — although MPs may use the Parliament Act to bypass the Upper House.

“The issues around workability and safety remain, as do the issues around the funding of palliative and social care,” she said.

The Bishop was speaking after the Labour MP for Rochester and Strood, Lauren Edwards, announced that she would use another Private Member’s Bill to reintroduce the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill into the House of Commons.

Read it all.

Responding to the news that a Bill to permit assisted dying is to be reintroduced to Parliament, the Bishop of Newcastle has told the Church Times that she remains committed to scrutinising it in the Lords—although MPs may use the Parliament Act https://t.co/uHGU8uJZkN

— James Macintyre (@James_Macintyre) June 15, 2026

A new parliamentary network of cathedral cities with a remit to make a “sustained appeal” to the Government for funding support was established this week.

Cathedral deans and their constituency MPs met in Westminster on Tuesday. MPs were urged to propose a motion for debate in Parliament on the value of cathedrals to the nation. The deans also urged the Government to call on the Church’s own National Investing Bodies to meet their obligations to cathedrals.

Parliamentary debates on cathedrals have been held every year for the past few years, covering their economic contribution, choral music, maintenance, and sustainability.

Read it all.

A new parliamentary network of cathedral cities with a remit to make a “sustained appeal” to the Government for funding support was established this week.#Cathedral https://t.co/1VMa9dOhhB

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) June 12, 2026

Mr. Bezos said he was spending a significant amount of time working on the company, which is based in San Francisco.

Dr. Bajaj is a trained scientist with significant experience in industry. After studying as a physicist and a chemist, he worked closely with the Google co-founder Sergey Brin at Google’s X, a research effort inside the tech giant often called “the Moonshot Factory.” Google X created ambitious projects that have since become their own companies under the umbrella of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, including the drone delivery service Wing and the self-driving car company Waymo.

In 2015, Dr. Bajaj helped found Verily, a research lab that focuses on the life sciences. Like Waymo and Wing, Verily is operated by Alphabet.

He later co-founded and served as chief executive of Foresite Labs, an effort to create A.I. and data science start-ups. He left that job to focus on Prometheus.

Mr. Bezos and Dr. Bajaj declined to reveal many details about how the company aims to build its new A.I. tools.

Read it all.

Jeff Bezos Wants to Build an "Artificial General Engineer"

As co chief executive of the start up Prometheus, the Amazon founder is using A.I. to improve how devices ranging from computers to jet engines are made.

This is how the acceleration escapes the screen and enters atoms. pic.twitter.com/ldKfFIi3Ib

— Dr Singularity (@Dr_Singularity) June 12, 2026

The leaders of Israel, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and the United States have one thing in common: None of them want a commission of inquiry looking into their performance in the latest Middle East conflict. So I have decided to do it for them, and I can summarize my conclusions in two words that apply to them all: “You lost.” There — I’ve saved you all the time and money of an internal investigation. You’re welcome.

This truly is the Middle East war that everybody lost. Even though it’s not over, I can see that. In fact, one reason this war may linger is because most of the leaders of these countries and militias know that history has its eyes on them and the minute the guns fall silent there will be a moral, political and economic accounting that will be devastating for each one of these fools.

Let’s go around the table. Hamas started this latest Middle East conflict on Oct. 7, 2023, with an invasion of Israel from Gaza in which in one day it murdered more than 1,200 people — men, women and children — and abducted more than 250. What was Hamas’s war aim? As far as we can tell, its fantasy was that by invading Israel it would spark a regional uprising in which “resistance” forces — including Hezbollah, Iran and even some Arab nations — would help it to annihilate the Jewish state.

Hamas did not launch this war with any peaceful intent — that is, with a gun in one hand and a peace map in the other showing how two indigenous people, Jews and Palestinians, might coexist between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. No, the only maps Hamas fighters carried showed them where to find the most Jews to kill in the border communities they invaded, including at elementary schools and a youth center.

Read it all.

Thomas L. Friedman

Everybody Is a Loser in This Middle East War
None of the participants in the recent wars of the Middle East can claim victory. All are to blame.https://t.co/jep7NyprVv

— Stuart Falk (@stufalk) June 10, 2026

The Bishop of Newcastle, Dr Helen-Ann Hartley, has welcomed a poll of more than 10,000 people which suggests that a majority in all 632 parliamentary constituencies oppose the proposed law on assisted dying being revisited without full scrutiny and approval by both chambers.

Dr Hartley was on the House of Lords select committee that examined the Private Member’s Bill brought by the Labour MP Kim Leadbeater in October 2024 (News, 18 October 2024), and spoke against it before it was defeated earlier this year in the Upper House (News, 1 May). She told the Church Times that the poll “confirms that the public does not support the suggestion of bypassing the House of Lords in order to force through an unsafe Bill”.

She said: “This would mean using a procedure never used for a Bill of this kind and acting against the advice of medical professionals, disability groups, and the concerns of all those who want to see legislation that is safe and workable.

“For a Bill of this magnitude in terms of societal change, the highest level of scrutiny is imperative.”

Read it all.

The Bishop of Newcastle has welcomed a poll of more than 10,000 people which suggests that a majority in all 632 parliamentary constituencies oppose the proposed law on #assisteddying being revisited without full scrutiny and approval by both chambershttps://t.co/1fB16bi9sv

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) June 10, 2026

Social Security is expected to deplete the fund that helps pay out retirement benefits by late 2032, the program’s trustees said Tuesday.

That is earlier than their projection last year of 2033, partly because the fund expects to collect less revenue after President Trump’s new tax law. Passed last summer, the law gave senior citizens an extra deduction that reduced taxes on benefits for many Social Security recipients. . .

Unless Congress shores up the retirement program, the depletion of reserves would trigger a 22% reduction in benefits in late 2032. Because incoming payroll tax revenue doesn’t fully cover promised benefits, the program is forced to make up the difference by pulling money from its two Social Security trust funds—one for disability benefits and the other for the larger program for retirees…

Read it all.

"Social Security Will Start Running Out Earlier Than Expected" https://t.co/c9X74I9lvM pic.twitter.com/fvWj2vcW9O

— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) June 9, 2026

“My Fellow Americans:

“Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our Allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus far.

“And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:

“Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.

“Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.
“They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest — until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men’s souls will be shaken with the violences of war.

“For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and goodwill among all Thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.

“Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.

“And for us at home — fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas, whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them — help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice.

“Many people have urged that I call the nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.

“Give us strength, too — strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces.

“And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be.

“And, O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee; faith in our sons; faith in each other; faith in our united crusade. Let not the keenness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment — let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.

“With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogances. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace — a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.

“Thy will be done, Almighty God.

“Amen.”

You can listen to the actual audio if you want here and today of all days is the day to do that. Also, there is more on background and another audio link there.–KSH.

82 years ago #OTD 6 June 1944, the D-Day Landings had just begun, and the Liberation of Europe was underway. Part of the memorial in English, French and German outside the D-Day Story, Portsmouth. When I visited I found myself unexpectedly very moved, especially by the walls of… pic.twitter.com/T9xRmE3Pqo

— Simon Knott (@SimoninSuffolk) June 6, 2026

A new style of architecture is rising in the sprawling suburbs of the Sonoran Desert: windowless data centers that hum 24 hours a day and guzzle as much electricity as a midsize city.

As Microsoft and other tech giants expand their footprints in one of the nation’s largest data-center markets, a high-stakes battle is unfolding over how to pay for the massive power-grid upgrades needed to drive the AI revolution. 

Arizona Public Service, the state’s largest utility, sits at the center of the firestorm. APS is proposing a 45% electricity-rate increase for “extra-large energy users,” primarily data centers, and a roughly 14.5% increase for residential customers.

Nearly everyone is unhappy.

Consumer advocates warn the plan would shift the financial risks of the AI build-out to households already struggling with high summer electricity bills and temperatures that often hit triple digits. If the AI boom fizzles or the energy consumption of data centers wanes, they worry residents could be left paying off the infrastructure upgrades years from now.

Read it all.

Phoenix Is a Data-Center Mecca—and Test Case for How to Pay for AI’s Power Needs
State’s largest utility is proposing a 45% electricity-rate increase for data centers and a 14.5% hike for households. No one is happy.https://t.co/m1xMQtoJsq

— Giovanni Staunovo🛢 (@staunovo) June 4, 2026

Something new is stirring on the left. A fresh crop of socialists want to remake the economy with price controls, hefty wealth taxes and a spree of nationalisations. Supercharged by fury over Gaza, they are winning voters at a formidable pace. Many rose to prominence only recently, like Zack Polanski, who leads the Green Party in Britain, or Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York. Others are long-standing political fixtures: the septuagenarian Jean-Luc Mélenchon is on his fourth swing at the French presidency, but thumping support from the 20-somethings of “Generation Z” has put the Elysée back in his sights again.

Call it Gen-Z socialism. Not because all its adherents are young—or because it is new for young people to lean leftward—but because it is the brand of leftism, made for the TikTok era, that today’s young revolutionaries support.

Forget weighty collectivist ideals or seizing the means of production. Gen-Z socialism is a me-first doctrine. Climate change and race, preoccupations of the 2010s and early 2020s, are now much more peripheral concerns. So are social issues, barring Gaza. Angst about inflation, housing and artificial intelligence have replaced all that with something cruder. “This country is awash in wealth,” says Avi Lewis, freshly elected leader of the New Democratic Party in Canada, a country where productivity has been all but flat for a decade. “We can have nice things.” Saying that prices should be capped to keep your bills down while someone else pays for your public services is a seductive, shareable message.

Read it all.

Gen-Z socialism is wrong about how to fix the problems of capitalism. It must be resisted, because it is a profound threat to prosperity https://t.co/6n1i5xrJV2

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) June 4, 2026

ust 16% of U.S. adults and 12% Canadian adults are financially fulfilled, according to analysis of the inaugural Edward Jones and Gallup Money and Meaning: Understanding Financial Fulfillment study. Financial fulfillment is a state where people’s personal finances support the life they want to have.

In contrast, 32% of U.S. adults and 41% of Canadian adults experience consistent financial stress, characterized by straining to meet obligations, needing to make trade-offs between financial and life goals, and feeling they lack control over their financial situation. The largest share in each country, described as “financially conflicted,” experience some progress but still contend with ongoing financial strain.

These findings are based on web interviews conducted March 20-April 6, 2026, with 5,075 U.S. adults aged 21 and older who are members of the probability-based Gallup Panel and March 25-April 3 with 2,117 Canadian adults aged 21 and older from a nonprobability online panel. Both samples were weighted to represent the adult population in each country on key demographic characteristics.

The financial fulfillment measure is derived from a statistical analysis of 37 items that measure financial wellbeing, the emotional aspects of financial life, and how closely financial decisions align with people’s values.

Read it all.

Half of U.S. adults (51%) are financially conflicted — not in crisis, yet lacking financial security.

New research from Edward Jones and Gallup shows how finances affect people’s health, relationships and confidence in their future. Representing 133 million Americans, the… pic.twitter.com/3GEhhJK3zp

— Gallup (@Gallup) June 2, 2026

‘The Iranian regime, which ISW-CTP continues to assess is dominated by Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Commander Major General Ahmad Vahidi and his inner circle, suspended US-Iran negotiations on June 1. Vahidi and his inner circle likely calculate that the status quo, in which Iran has neither made concessions to the United States in a diplomatic agreement nor is engaged in a full-scale conflict with the United States, is a favorable situation that advances their objectives. IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News Agency announced on June 1 that the regime has suspended negotiations, ostensibly in response to Israeli operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon…

The Iranian regime has likely focused on the Lebanon issue, as opposed to another key sticking point in negotiations, to try to curb Israeli operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon as part of the regime’s broader objective to preserve Hezbollah. The regime also likely seeks to drive a wedge between the United States and Israel by falsely blaming Israel and its operations in Lebanon for the collapse of the US-Iran talks. Vahidi and his inner circle also likely calculate that the status quo will help them advance several other objectives, such as solidifying Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz and maintaining the Iranian nuclear program.’

Read it all.

Iran and the IRGC "likely calculate that the status quo, in which Iran has neither made concessions to the United States in a diplomatic agreement nor is engaged in a full-scale conflict with the United States, is a favorable situation that advances their objectives." https://t.co/OcS9bEjAIh

— Ashley 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@NAFOteacher) June 2, 2026

Bullets and bombs killed nearly three-quarters of a million people in wars between 2021 and 2024. Many more died from the indirect effects of conflict, such as hunger and disease. Combat deaths in the past four years have been the highest since the end of the cold war. And for what purpose? Not even the leaders who started recent wars can be pleased with the results. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has become a humiliating quagmire for Vladimir Putin. President Donald Trump’s war on Iran has gone badly awry. These two wars of choice exemplify two new battlefield truths. Technology has made it harder for any army to advance on the ground. It has also made it easier for weaker powers, when attacked by stronger ones, to cause havoc.

In a valedictory essay this week, The Economist’s defence editor reflects on how war has changed over the past decade and how it might evolve in the future. The first big shift is that soldiers are more exposed on the battlefield. Sensors and satellites can see them; small, cheap drones can kill them. Armies have to work harder than before to hide, move and survive. Ukraine’s expanding front-line “kill zone”, where soldiers move in small groups and ground robots evacuate casualties and deliver supplies, embodies this shift.

Technology quickly spreads. Israeli soldiers in Lebanon now face the same kind of drones that were pioneered in Ukraine. Iranian missiles are far more accurate than the Iraqi Scuds fired during the first Gulf war. Were China to attempt to invade Taiwan, its landing forces would be met with a blizzard of drones. Air superiority is now harder to achieve and buys soldiers less protection than before, thanks to the new drone-saturated layer of airspace.

Some experts draw the lesson that manoeuvre—attacking an enemy’s soft spots through shock and rapid movement—is no longer possible. But war is a Darwinian environment, driving constant adaptation, and the battlefield is never frozen for long….

Read it all.

In future wars involving long-range drones and missiles, Western civilians will not enjoy the sanctuary they have come to take for granted. The laws and technology of armed conflict have changed https://t.co/MaIcvygB4S

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) May 28, 2026

Between July 1, 2024, and July 1, 2025, South Carolina’s population grew at a rate of 1.5 percent, faster than any other state in the country, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.[1]

South Carolina has consistently recorded rapid population growth, ranking in the top six among all states in each of the last five years for percentage change. Within the last five years, South Carolina’s population growth peaked at a rate of 1.9 percent between July 2022 and July 2023, which was also the third fastest growth rate in the country.

There are three major components to state population growth: natural change, which is calculated by subtracting the number of deaths from the number of births; international migration, which is the number of people moving from outside the country; and domestic migration, which is the number of people moving from another state within the country.  

From July 2024 through July 2025, South Carolina’s population increased by nearly 80,000 people. Births in the state exceeded deaths for the first time in the last five years, by 564 people, therefore having a small effect on the natural growth of the population. 

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Where Americans moved to and from in 2025.

Massachusetts experienced the most loss of any state, Kansas the most of any Republican state, and South Carolina grew the fastest of any state. In contrast, Delaware grew the fastest of any Democrat state.

Republican states dominated… pic.twitter.com/XiJnads08m

— AF Post (@AFpost) May 25, 2026

Central Africa has extensive experience dealing with Ebola. Both Uganda and the DRC have faced multiple localized outbreaks in the past decade and have successfully contained and ended them. Medical professionals on the ground are familiar with these situations and have real expertise in responding.

But politics play a role in infectious disease response, as was evident during the COVID-19 pandemic. The DRC is no different, and public confidence in governing authorities is particularly fragile right now, as President Félix Tshisekedi flirts with a third term in office; large swaths of eastern territory remain under the control of M23, a Rwandan-backed Congolese insurgent group; and murky security-for-minerals deals fuel uncertainty and suspicion.

On social media, conspiracy theories abound, suggesting the outbreak is a distraction, a hoax, a money-making scheme, or a pretext for some other nefarious agenda. The profound mistrust of authorities and of outsiders that permeates Congolese society after generations of exploitation creates a particularly difficult backdrop for this Ebola response.

All of this is unfolding in the context of profound insecurity. Eastern Congo has been plagued by conflict for decades, and scores of armed groups operate in the region, as do foreign military forces from Burundi, Rwanda, and Uganda. Nearly one million people in Ituri, where the outbreak is worst, are displaced. Transportation and communications infrastructure is poor. It is not an environment in which it is easy to quickly establish new facilities, distribute health-care supplies, or even obtain accurate, timely information about what is happening in different communities.

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Until last year, the USAID was part of a time-tested system for dealing with Ebola.

In its absence, a dozen former federal employees tell NBC News that the U.S. response to the growing outbreak has been slow and disjointed. https://t.co/IYVqQSknjE

— NBC News (@NBCNews) May 20, 2026

Elon Musk’s SpaceX pulled back the curtain on a business empire that has racked up ballooning losses and debt after acquiring a cash-hungry startup, and pumping billions of dollars into futuristic endeavors ranging from AI to a Mars rocket.

The prospectus that SpaceX filed Wednesday for an IPO of unprecedented size boiled down to a well-worn strategy that entrepreneurs commonly hawk up and down Wall Street: in order to make money, we need to spend money. And nowhere are the outlays larger than in space and artificial intelligence.

“The big takeaway for me is that SpaceX is now an AI company,” said Chad Anderson, an early SpaceX investor and founder of Space Capital.

Musk is seeking to pull off the unprecedented feat of achieving a $2 trillion valuation from the outset, an audacious plan that’s set to transform both the public and private markets if it succeeds. At the same time, the prospectus lays bare concerns over whether private companies with limited financial disclosures and largely illiquid shares are reaching unjustified valuations in venture capital-led funding rounds.

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Elon Musk is seeking to pull off the unprecedented feat of achieving a $2 trillion valuation from the outset, an audacious plan that’s set to transform markets if it succeeds. Read more: https://t.co/9IYTIOGzoh

📷: Brandon Bell/Getty Images pic.twitter.com/1EFis4o0TP

— Bloomberg (@business) May 21, 2026

The United States has the largest gap of any country in job market perceptions between younger and older adults, with the former feeling much less positive. In 2025, 43% of Americans aged 15 to 34 said it was a good time to find a job locally, 21 percentage points lower than for Americans aged 55 and older.

It is rare for younger adults to be significantly less positive about local job conditions than the oldest age group. In only five other places — China, Serbia, the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong and Norway — does this pattern hold, in which younger adults lag by at least 10 points.

Globally, a median of 48% of adults aged 15 to 34 said it was a good time to find a job locally in 2025, compared with 38% of adults aged 55 and older, a gap of 10 points in the other direction.

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Young Americans' job market optimism falls as older adults stay upbeat, new Gallup poll finds https://t.co/FoXt6CXwKa

— Drmikemyers (@drmikemyers) May 11, 2026

Workers who enjoy what they do each day rate their lives more than a full point higher on Gallup’s zero-to-10 life evaluation scale than those who don’t enjoy what they do, according to a new Gallup analysis of more than 350,000 employed adults across 149 countries from 2020 to 2025.

But the analysis also reveals that job choice and purpose play an outsized role among specific populations, including full-time employees, workers in their peak career-building years and those living in lower-income economies.

Data from the Gallup World Poll show that, of three aspects of the work experience measured globally, enjoyment of daily work has the strongest and most consistent relationship with broader wellbeing outcomes. This pattern holds across most countries, age groups and employment types — though the relative importance of purpose and choice varies by context.

Work occupies a central place in people’s lives, shaping not only economic outcomes but also how people experience and evaluate their lives overall. To better understand this connection at a global level, Gallup, in collaboration with the Wellbeing for Planet Earth (WPE) Foundation and Persol, measures three core aspects of workplace wellbeing: enjoyment, purpose and choice. These dimensions reflect how work is experienced on a daily basis, whether it is seen as improving the lives of others, and the degree of freedom people have in what they do. These dimensions are closely connected: Having greater choice in one’s work can shape both the enjoyment people experience day to day and the sense of purpose they derive from it.

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Globally, workers who do enjoy their daily work rate their lives more than a full point higher on a zero-to-10 scale than those who don’t enjoy it. pic.twitter.com/od3kRncXlC

— Gallup (@Gallup) May 6, 2026

Ben Sasse: The Senate needs to be less like Instagram. The Senate needs to be more deliberative. And that means less smack-down nonsense. One of the fundamental mistakes we’ve made over the last 30 or 40 years is putting cameras everywhere in Washington, D.C. This is not an argument against transparency. We should have reporters around. We should have pen and pad. We should have people recording what’s happening. But we should make the Senate less of an institution that is built as a backdrop platform for people to get sound bites. That’s not what the Senate is for. The Senate should be plodding, and steady, and boring, and trustworthy.

Scott Pelley: To be too frank, you were expected to be dead by now.

Ben Sasse: That’s frank. I like it. Let’s be blunt.

Scott Pelley: What changed?

Ben Sasse: Let’s go with– providence, prayer, and a miracle drug. In mid-December I was given a three- to four-month life expectancy. I am on extended time already. I have pancreatic origin cancer that has metastasized a number of places. So, I’ve got lung, vascular, liver, other. Liver’s pretty far along…

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I heartily recommend the full 40 minute interview which may be found

there.

“Many senators I know would not be able to breathe without that job. It would kill them to leave,” says Scott Pelley.

“I don't want what you said to be true. But I fear that that is true. And that is a sign of a much, much deeper problem,” responds former Sen. Ben Sasse.… pic.twitter.com/lXfzeDWr7Y

— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) April 26, 2026

President Trump sought to reassure skeptical Americans that the war in Iran is in the national interest, arguing that the operation was necessary to decimate a regime threatening the U.S. and insisting that economic pain would be short-lived.

In a 20-minute address from the White House, his most direct sales pitch to the nation since the war began a month ago, Trump said the U.S. had succeeded on the battlefield and declared that U.S. military objectives would be completed “very shortly.”

Trump said he still aims for a diplomatic agreement to end the war. But in the meantime, he vowed to hit Iran “extremely hard” in the coming weeks and pummel the country “back to the Stone Ages, where they belong.”

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President Trump sought to reassure skeptical Americans that the war in Iran is in the national interest, arguing that the operation was necessary to decimate a regime threatening the U.S. https://t.co/k1db0hosas

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) April 2, 2026

President Trump told aides he’s willing to end the U.S. military campaign against Iran even if the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed, administration officials said, likely extending Tehran’s firm grip on the waterway and leaving a complex operation to reopen it for a later date.

In recent days, Trump and his aides assessed that a mission to pry open the chokepoint would push the conflict beyond his timeline of four to six weeks. He decided that the U.S. should achieve its main goals of hobbling Iran’s navy and its missile stocks and wind down current hostilities while pressuring Tehran diplomatically to resume the free flow of trade. If that fails, Washington would press allies in Europe and the Gulf to take the lead on reopening the strait, the officials said.

There are also military options the president could decide on, but they are not his immediate priority, they said.

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My war, your Hormuz problem:

“..: President Trump told aides he’s willing to end the U.S. military campaign against Iran even if the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed, administration officials said…” — @WSJ https://t.co/PkwPlwgPGy

— Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) March 31, 2026

 Gulf allies of the United States, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are urging President Donald Trump to continue prosecuting the war against Iran, arguing that Tehran hasn’t been weakened enough by the monthlong U.S.-led bombing campaign, according to U.S., Gulf and Israeli officials.

After private grumbling at the start of the war that they were not given adequate advance notice of the U.S.-Israeli attack and complaining the U.S. had ignored their warnings that the war would have devastating consequences for the entire region, some of the regional allies are making the case to the White House that the moment offers a historic opportunity to cripple Tehran’s clerical rule once and for all.

Officials from Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain have conveyed in private conversations that they do not want the military operation to end until there are significant changes in the Iranian leadership or there’s a dramatic shift in Iranian behavior, according to the officials, who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

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“Officials from Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain have conveyed in private conversations that they do not want the military operation to end until there are significant changes in the Iranian leadership…” https://t.co/WRh4iTIwx5

— Michael Weiss (@michaeldweiss) March 30, 2026

The Israeli military is increasingly sceptical that regime change in Iran will be possible in the coming weeks, casting doubt on one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s core war aims as the Islamic republic shows its ability to endure intense bombardment.

Two people familiar with the matter said the prevailing view within military intelligence was that the war had not created the conditions for ousting the Islamic regime in the near future. One of them, who is familiar with briefings from the Israel Defense Forces’ intelligence directorate Aman, said it appeared that the aerial campaign had yet to measurably erode the Iranian regime’s hold on power since the US and Israel launched the war on February 28.

Both people spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the evolving thinking within the IDF, rather than an official assessment.

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Israeli military doubts war will topple Iranian regime https://t.co/hphrOjqqGv

— Financial Times (@FT) March 26, 2026