Preview: Trump blasted Walmart after the retailer warned it would raise prices due to tariffs.

Preview: Trump told reporters on Friday that he would speak with Putin after the Russian president skipped peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in Turkey.

Preview: Moody's had been a holdout in keeping U.S. sovereign debt at the highest credit rating possible, and brings the 116-year-old agency into line with its rivals.

Preview: Elon Musk's Grok chatbot is showing yet again why generative AI has a trust problem with users.

Preview: President Donald Trump wants automakers to build more vehicles in the U.S. with American parts, but it's not as easy as it might seem.

Preview: "We appreciate those camels," Trump told the Qatari emir. "I haven't seen camels like that in a long time."

Preview: President Donald Trump's push to revive the coal industry is running up against the tech sector's environmental goals.

Preview: If Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang were a student again, he'd immediately learn how to ask better questions in order to craft the best AI prompts. Here's how you can do the same.

Preview: Activist Irenic has two paths to take at Couchbase to build value.

Preview: The 'Abbott Elementary' creator has won multiple Emmys, a Golden Globe and even a Peabody Award.

Preview: • Fox-Dominion trial delay 'is not unusual,' judge says • Fox News' defamation battle isn't stopping Trump's election lies

Preview: The judge just announced in court that a settlement has been reached in the historic defamation case between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems.

Preview: A settlement has been reached in Dominion Voting Systems' defamation case against Fox News, the judge for the case announced. The network will pay more than $787 million to Dominion, a lawyer for the company said.

Preview: • DeSantis goes to Washington, a place he once despised, looking for support to take on Trump • Opinion: For the GOP to win, it must ditch Trump • Chris Christie mulling 2024 White House bid • Analysis: The fire next time has begun burning in Tennessee

Preview: • 'A major part of Ralph died': Aunt of teen shot after ringing wrong doorbell speaks • 20-year-old woman shot after friend turned into the wrong driveway in upstate New York, officials say

Preview: Newly released body camera footage shows firefighters and sheriff's deputies rushing to help actor Jeremy Renner after a near-fatal snowplow accident in January. The "Avengers" actor broke more than 30 bones and suffered other severe injuries. CNN's Chloe Melas has more.

Preview: It's sourdough bread and handstands for Jake Gyllenhaal and Jamie Lee Curtis.

Preview: A tiny intruder infiltrated White House grounds Tuesday, prompting a swift response from the US Secret Service.

Preview: An arrest warrant has been issued for controversial Biden administration official Sam Brinton in connection with a second alleged theft at an airport in Las Vegas. Brinton, who works for the Department of Energy, was already placed on leave after he allegedly stole a woman’s luggage at Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP) International Airport late last month. ...

Preview: Inside the Illinois State Capitol sits a display of several religious exhibits for the holiday season, which includes a Jewish menorah, the Christian nativity scene, and the “Serpent of Genesis” from the Satanic Temple, as reported by local radio media. Consisting of a leather-bound copy of astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus’ “De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium” — which ...

Preview: The latest release of the “Twitter Files” Thursday evening revealed that leftists at the highest level of the company, who have all since been fired or been forced to resign, targeted one of the most popular right-wing accounts on the platform with repeated suspensions despite the fact that they secretly admitted that she did not ...

Preview: The second installment of the so-called “Twitter Files” was released Thursday evening after the company turned over documents to a journalist who then started to publish the findings on the platform. Musk released internal company communications through journalist Matt Taibbi on Friday about the company’s censorship of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story ...

Preview: The transgender community has turned on a once revered surgeon specializing in sex change surgeries after a patient posted graphic photos of an allegedly botched operation. Dr. Sidhbh Gallagher, a Miami-based surgeon specializing in double mastectomy surgeries for transgender-identifying patients, has been heavily criticized for performing the elective surgery on minors. She has also earned ...

Preview: Video emerged Thursday afternoon of Brittney Griner being swapped on a runway for convicted Russian terrorist Viktor Bout after Democrat President Joe Biden agreed to the trade. The video showed Griner, who is wearing a red jacket, walking across the tarmac with three men while Bout walked toward her with a man standing next to ...

Preview: After a woman claimed to be the daughter of a serial killer in a recent interview, a search of the supposed location of buried remains has turned up nothing. Federal, state, and local authorities did not find any evidence or remains after scouring the earth for several days in Thurman, Iowa, a small town just ...

Preview: A FedEx contract driver strangled a 7-year-old girl after hitting her with his van in Texas late last month, according to arrest warrant documents. Tanner Horner, a 31-year-old from Fort Worth, has been arrested and charged with capital murder of a person under 10 years old and aggravated kidnapping in the death of Athena Strand, ...

Preview: Disabled veteran Congressman Brian Mast (R-FL) took issue with fellow Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) over the way she chose to transport her American flag while she was moving from one office to another. Mast, who lost both legs and his left index finger in 2010 when he stepped on an improvised explosive device (IED) while ...

Preview: Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, slammed President Joe Biden Thursday for releasing notorious terrorist Viktor Bout in exchange for Brittney Griner. Griner, who has a criminal record in the U.S. stemming from a domestic violence incident several years ago, was arrested in Russia back in February on drug charges, ...

Preview: At least 28 killed, dozens injured as tornadoes hit Missouri and Kentucky... (Top headline, 1st story, link) Related stories: Millions without power... Apocalyptic 'wall of dust' swallowing Chicago... Drudge Report Feed needs your support!   Become a Patron

Preview: Millions without power... (Top headline, 2nd story, link) Related stories: At least 28 killed, dozens injured as tornadoes hit Missouri and Kentucky... Apocalyptic 'wall of dust' swallowing Chicago...

Preview: Apocalyptic 'wall of dust' swallowing Chicago... (Top headline, 3rd story, link) Related stories: At least 28 killed, dozens injured as tornadoes hit Missouri and Kentucky... Millions without power...

Preview: PANICKED TRUMP RAGES AT WALMART (Main headline, 1st story, link) Related stories: 'EAT THE TARIFFS' Drudge Report Feed needs your support!   Become a Patron

Preview: 'EAT THE TARIFFS' (Main headline, 2nd story, link) Related stories: PANICKED TRUMP RAGES AT WALMART

Preview: Iran's Khamenei Brands Trump a Liar in Escalation of Rhetoric... (First column, 1st story, link)

Preview: Pedro Pascal Speaks Out on Political Chaos: 'F*ck People That Try to Make You Scared'... (First column, 2nd story, link) Related stories: 'Fight Back. Don't Let Them Win'... Joaquin Phoenix Stars In Covid-era Thriller Set In 'Sick' America... Angelina Jolie Dazzles Cannes... Man badly hurt by falling palm tree at festival... Drudge Report Feed needs your support!   Become a Patron

Preview: 'Fight Back. Don't Let Them Win'... (First column, 3rd story, link) Related stories: Pedro Pascal Speaks Out on Political Chaos: 'F*ck People That Try to Make You Scared'... Joaquin Phoenix Stars In Covid-era Thriller Set In 'Sick' America... Angelina Jolie Dazzles Cannes... Man badly hurt by falling palm tree at festival...

Preview: Joaquin Phoenix Stars In Covid-era Thriller Set In 'Sick' America... (First column, 4th story, link) Related stories: Pedro Pascal Speaks Out on Political Chaos: 'F*ck People That Try to Make You Scared'... 'Fight Back. Don't Let Them Win'... Angelina Jolie Dazzles Cannes... Man badly hurt by falling palm tree at festival...

Preview: Angelina Jolie Dazzles Cannes... (First column, 5th story, link) Related stories: Pedro Pascal Speaks Out on Political Chaos: 'F*ck People That Try to Make You Scared'... 'Fight Back. Don't Let Them Win'... Joaquin Phoenix Stars In Covid-era Thriller Set In 'Sick' America... Man badly hurt by falling palm tree at festival... Drudge Report Feed needs your support!   Become a Patron

Preview: Authorities investigating an explosion in Palm Springs, California, that damaged several businesses, including a reproductive center on North Indian Canyon Drive.

Preview: Louisiana's historic Nottoway Plantation burned to the ground after a devastating fire broke out on Thursday. Iberville Parish President Chris Daigle calls it a "total loss."

Preview: Trump's DOJ ends ban on forced-reset triggers, sparking debate on gun rights and safety. The settlement marks a shift from Biden-era gun control regulations.

Preview: Manhunt continues for 7 inmates after daring New Orleans prison escape as authorities investigate inside job.

Preview: A New York University (NYU) student who blasted Israel’s war in Gaza as a 'genocide' during a graduation speech has had his diploma suspended.

Preview: Charges against ex-court clerk Becky Hill, including perjury, may affect Alex Murdaugh's chances for a retrial after his appeal was denied in the South Carolina Supreme Court last year.

Preview: Bryan Kohberger's defense team claimed Thursday there are "alternate perpetrators" in the Idaho student murders case. His trial is set to begin in August.

Preview: Testimony from John O'Keefe's niece highlights tensions with Karen Read before his death, as Read faces trial for the Boston officer's murder.

Preview: Stay up to date with the Fox News True Crime Newsletter, which brings you the latest cases ripped from the headlines, from crime to courts, legal and scandal.

Preview: Mykol Santos-Santos, a Guatemalan national and MS-13 member, was arrested by ICE in Virginia. His extensive criminal record includes assault and burglary.

Preview: Explosion rocks building in Palm Springs  KTLA LIVE COVERAGE: Firefighters respond to explosion at building in Palm Springs  KESQ One dead after bomb explodes outside reproductive center in Downtown Palm Springs  The Palm Springs Post Loud boom rattles Palm Springs area. Desert Sun seeking information  The Desert Sun Explosion rocks Palm Springs, damaging buildings and sending debris into the street  Fox News

Preview: Dozens are dead after tornadoes sweep through Kentucky and Missouri  NPR 'The devastation is tremendous': St. Louis reeling after tornadoes  KSDK Photos: Deadly tornadoes hit Kentucky and Missouri  NPR St. Louis storm declared a tornado. Zoo butterfly dome damaged: Live updates  STLtoday.com Severe weather leaves at least 23 dead, including 14 in storm-battered Kentucky  AP News

Preview: Trump says he will call Putin to discuss stopping Ukraine war  BBC Trump to talk to Putin on Monday about Ukraine ceasefire proposal and trade  The Guardian Trump to speak to Russian, Ukrainian leaders on Monday after talks in Turkey  Reuters Trump says he'll speak separately to Zelenskyy and Putin on Monday about a potential Russia-Ukraine ceasefire  NBC News Trump and Putin Say They Will Discuss Ukraine Peace Proposals on Monday  The New York Times

Preview: Newly released audio appears to confirm Biden’s memory lapses in 2023  The Guardian ‘Watch Me,’ Biden Said. But Hearing Him in Hur Interview Is More Revealing.  The New York Times Leaked audio of Hur interview shines light on Biden mental fitness: What to know  The Hill Exclusive: Biden's reversal on classified document flustered his attorneys  Axios Trump says Biden's 'autopen' looks like a 'bigger and bigger scandal' after full special counsel Robert Hur audio leaks  New York Post

Preview: 10 escape from New Orleans jail through hole in cell wall while lone guard left to get food  AP News Louisiana State Police transport three recaptured jail escapees out of New Orleans  fox8live.com New Orleans Mayor speaks on manhunt more than a day after inmates escape  WDSU 7 fugitives remain on the run after NOLA prison break; inside job suspected  Fox News 7 men at large after escape from New Orleans jail, including 4 charged with murder  ABC News

Preview: Court lifts block on Trump order to strip federal workers of union rights  The Washington Post Appeals court lifts block on Trump executive order targeting federal worker unions  Politico Court gives go-ahead to Trump's plan to halt union bargaining for many federal workers  Reuters Donald Trump Scores Major Legal Win on Blocked Order  Newsweek Appeals court issues stay of judge’s decision blocking Trump’s anti-union order  Government Executive

Preview: Pope Leo’s grandfather was immigrant from Sicily, genealogists reveal  The Guardian Long Drives and Short Homilies: How Father Bob Became Pope Leo  The New York Times What the New Pope and I Have in Common  Politico Pope Leo XIV to celebrate inaugural mass Sunday, thousands expected to gather  ABC News Moving back in: Pope Leo expected to live at Vatican's Apostolic Palace  Reuters

Preview: Supreme Court Retains Temporary Block on Using Alien Enemies Act to Deport Venezuelans  The New York Times Supreme Court blocks Trump from restarting Alien Enemies Act deportations  CNN Supreme Court rules administration must give Venezuelans more time to challenge deportation under Alien Enemies Act  NBC News Supreme Court again bars Trump from removing Venezuelan nationals  SCOTUSblog Supreme Court rules against Trump administration in Alien Enemies Act case  CNBC

Preview: Trump’s immigration stance endangers one of the biggest revenue streams for Columbia University  Politico For Some International Students, U.S. Dreams Dim Under Trump  The New York Times International college students bring billions to the US. Here's why that may change.  USA Today Foreign Student Visas Need Limits  The Heritage Foundation Amid the Trump administration's attacks on international students, here is what has happened at Duke  dukechronicle.com

Preview: James Comey Is Questioned Over ‘86 47’ Instagram Post  The New York Times James Comey’s ‘weird’ social media approach lands him in hot water  CNN Comey is under investigation for posting ‘86’ in reference to Trump. What does it mean?  PBS The old slang term '86' probably started as restaurant-worker jargon. Suddenly it's in the news  AP News With Comey questioning, the Trump administration again targets speech  The Washington Post

Preview: President Trump has expressed frustration with the Supreme Court after it blocked his administration's efforts to deport migrants with alleged ties to Venezuelan gangs, and has accused the court of being "played" by the Radical Left.

Preview: Former Vice President Pence said during a recent interview that President Trump accepting a luxury jet from the Qatari government is “inconsistent” with the United States’ “security” and that he should turn down the gift.  “Well, I think first we got to remember who Qatar is. We’ve got a military base there. I have members...

Preview: Former President Biden has found his way back into the spotlight more than 100 days after President Trump reclaimed the White House. Audio, obtained by Axios, from Biden's October 2023 interview with special counsel Robert Hur about classified documents found in his private home from his time as vice president was published by the outlet...

Preview: President Trump's Golden Dome initiative aims to create a comprehensive integrated air and missile defense system for the United States, leveraging proven technologies and partnering with traditional defense actors in the industry to mitigate the odds of a successful nuclear or conventional attack on the U.S. homeland.

Preview: Scott Jennings, a CNN contributor and GOP political pundit, has been speculated as a potential Republican candidate to replace former Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, although he has not officially announced a bid.

Preview: Public education needs to be transformed to better serve children, and while Democrats often talk about equity and accountability, they need to stop playing political games and start listening to families and fighting for the kind of public education that is excellent, equitable and accountable.

Preview: Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem confirmed that the Secret Service interviewed former FBI director James Comey after he posted a social media post that some interpreted as a threat against President Trump.

Preview: Republicans are increasingly concerned that a bitter Senate primary in Texas next year could make it harder to defend their majority in the upper chamber. Earlier this week, the Senate Leadership Fund rolled out a poll showing Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) trailing Attorney General Ken Paxton by 16 points. But in a hypothetical general election...

Preview: Hating on Trump and creating as much self-serving publicity as possible are neither policies nor strategies.

Preview: Many of the features you see in the national parks today look the same as when your ancestors visited, even if the way we visit these lands has changed.

Preview: Kentucky authorities said there were also severe injuries when a twister tore across Laurel County late Friday.

Preview: The baseball broadcaster refused to dump on the "unforgettable" graphic as he bid farewell to an on-screen "legend."

Preview: The responses from Biden, whose team pushed back at Robert Hur's report as a partisan hit, are punctuated by long pauses and put his health back in the spotlight.

Preview: The president bizarrely used the shorthand to stand in for another word he described as "very nasty" in "a lot of ways."

Preview: Harry Enten said the president may have "some pretty good political instincts" after backing off on one issue.

Preview: The new requirement adds to a list of labor complaints Starbucks workers have levied against the coffee chain.

Preview: Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson says there are indications that the 10 people who escaped from a New Orleans jail received help in their escape from people in the department.

Preview: "I think it's just a bad idea," Pence told NBC News' Kristen Welker. "And my hope is the president will think better of it."

Preview: British academics who identified the faded manuscript as an original hailed it as “one of the world’s most valuable documents.”

Preview: The high court had already called a temporary halt to the deportations from a north Texas detention facility in a middle-of-the-night order issued last month.

Preview: “I also have $300,000 in a 401(k). My wife has a 403(b) that currently sits at $650,000.”

Preview: “I previously drove a fully loaded BMW X7, and driving a used Lexus feels like a big drop.”

Preview: “I sent a ‘thank you’ card and asked what it was for, but I got no answer.”

Preview: New research raises concerns about the way these investment funds balance care and the pursuit of profits.

Preview: AI boosters cling to fanciful forecasts — even if meaningful revenue and productivity has yet to materialize.

Preview: Farmland, timber and other alternative assets can stabilize your portfolio when the stock market wobbles.

Preview: The new reconciliation bill doesn’t go nearly far enough

Preview: One of the biggest breaks for the wealthy is still up in the air, which means planning for contingencies

Preview: Trump campaigned on a pledge to eliminate taxes on Social Security — but this isn’t that.

Preview: President Trump’s move to defuse an ugly trade war with China not only sparked a massive stock-market rally, but also drove down the chances of recession — for now.

Preview: President Donald Trump is denying a central cynical truth about the Russia-Ukraine war, and the U.S.'s efforts to help resolve it.

Preview: A brain-dead woman in Georgia is being kept alive by ventilators and forced to carry her pregnancy to term due to the state's strict abortion law.

Preview: Qatar offering Donald Trump a $400 million Boeing 747-8 is better understood when considering the country's small size and proximity to much stronger neighbors.

Preview: Earlier this week the White House published evidence that the president's "big, beautiful bill" hikes taxes on the poor to cut taxes for the rich.

Preview: Donald Trump post about 'hot' Taylor Swift and 'dumb' Bruce Springsteen (who is currently on his European tour) is a gift to the all-American New Jersey rocker

Preview: After Walmart announced it would raise prices due to Trump's tariffs, Claire McCaskill explains how the GOP is punishing a key part of their base, rural voters.

Preview: If the Episcopal Church had agreed to resettle South African Boers, then it would have elevated a lie that will affect refugee resettlement for years to come.

Preview: After a Northeastern college student demanded answers about her professor using ChatGPT in class materials, it's time to talk about what professors are up against.

Preview: We now know how comedy factors into the Trump administration’s apparent attempt to turn the American armed forces into a safe space for bigoted stupidity.

Preview: The Department of Homeland Security is in talks with a reality T.V. show producer about a game show in which immigrant contestants would compete for U.S.

Preview: Belichick joked he's "trying to stay young" after being asked a lingering question about his romance with Hudson.

Preview: A transgender woman has claimed that a popular women’s only gym discriminated against her by denying her a membership – with the fitness chain now speaking out and seemingly standing by its decision.

Preview: The MSM didn’t see it or refused to tell the American people the full story in real time for reasons we can all debate. But Wall Street did tell the story long before these after-the-fact ­accounts.

Preview: The top-seeded Winnipeg Jets will enter Saturday's elimination game in Dallas with heavy hearts following the unexpected death of the father of forward Mark Scheifele.

Preview: Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) huddled with White House officials and Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought on Saturday to voice those concerns -- but didn't commit to backing the legislation before the Budget panel reconvenes Sunday at 10 p.m.

Preview: Sometimes the journey is more important than the destination.

Preview: Maybe the 50-year bond isn’t so dead.

Preview: Nick Pivetta will lead the host Padres past the Mariners on Saturday night, Stitches predicts.

Preview: One of the world’s most well know adult film stars has revealed the one sex act that she is yet to tick off of her bucket list.

Preview: “The team really is best friend vibes! They just wanted to celebrate together and they really love each other," a source exclusively tells Page Six.

Preview: The Trump administration’s aggressive push to deport migrants has run up against resistance from the judiciary.

Preview: A raid on Abby’s Bakery in Los Fresnos heralded the crackdown to come. Ahead of the owners’ trial for “harboring” undocumented workers, the community is seeing the impact of the president’s policies.

Preview: Whether the ultraconservatives dig in and force big changes to the megabill carrying President Trump’s agenda or capitulate, as they have in the past, will determine the fate of their party’s signature legislation.

Preview: President Trump announced plans for the call after a Russian drone attack killed nine on a civilian bus in northeastern Ukraine.

Preview: Many Russian soldiers say they would see a cease-fire along the current front lines as a failure, hinting at the nationalist discontent the Kremlin could face in accepting a cease-fire.

Preview: A résumé of deep religious education, frontline pastoral experience, parish management and Vatican governance — along with a nudge from Pope Francis — put Robert Prevost on the fast track.

Preview: Online genealogists found that Pope Leo’s paternal grandparents in Chicago were accused of having an “illicit affair” in the 1910s, adding another layer to the pope’s complex family history.

Preview: In Missouri and Kentucky alone, tornadoes killed at least 25 people, officials said. The spring storm season has been a brutal one for the region.

Preview: The U.S. forecasting agency was working on streamlining itself for the modern era. Days away from hurricane season, it’s now struggling to keep offices open.

Preview: The office in Jackson, Ky., is one of several left without an overnight forecaster after hundreds of jobs were recently cut from the National Weather Service.

Preview: He says he can't help it. I'm not so sure.

Preview: “Tell me about a time when—when—let’s. Let’s circle back. Tell me about a time when—when—let’s.”

Preview: Be careful what you wish for …

Preview: Why is this my responsibility?

Preview: I can't do that again.

Preview: Take a quick break with our daily 5x5 grid.

Preview: If the bill passes, that old Playboy mildewing in your garage could be white-hot contraband.

Preview: We’re heading into the turbulent final stages of the Medicaid fight. Buckle up!

Preview: Candice Lim and Kate Lindsay dive into platforms like r/Tragedeigh, which document ridiculous influencer baby names in the wild.

Preview: One thing you can predict is that the stock market is unpredictable.

Preview: Justice Kagan hits the nail on the head: "nationwide injunctions" are an indispensable tool by which courts rein in unlawful executive action

Preview: 5/17/1954: Brown v. Board of Education and Bolling v. Sharpe are decided. The post Today in Supreme Court History: May 17, 1954 appeared first on Reason.com.

Preview: "If a Greek family starts a pizzeria, if a Chinese family straight from Beijing opens a hot dog shop, are they appropriating or are they just smart?" says the Food for Thought author and former Good Eats host.

Preview: The ruling held that migrants detained under AEA had not been given adequate notice of their potential deportation. It also reflects the Court's growing distrust of the Trump Administration.

Preview: None of the usual rules will apply when the ACLU says there is an emergency.

Preview: A lot of conservatives are falling prey to the same snowflakery they criticize.

Preview: What's on your mind?

Preview: A majority of the justices seem unconvinced the Administration was prepared to provide the process that was due. Justices Alito and Thomas dissent.

Preview: The Big Sky State becomes the first to close the "data broker loophole" allowing the government to get private information without a warrant.

Preview: Ozturk is here on a student visa, and she has been detained while the Trump Administration is trying to deport her.

Preview: See who's running

Preview: All four cases explained

Preview: The Crossword

Preview: Start the day smarter ☀️

Preview: After Hurricane Idalia made landfall on Wednesday, Florida communities are emerging to see its destruction with hopes and plans to recover.

Preview: Downgraded to a tropical storm, what had been Hurricane Idalia powered across Georgia and the Carolinas on Wednesday evening.

Preview: The 81-year-old Republican Senate minority leader struggled to answer reporters' questions in Kentucky, requiring help and drawing questions about his health

Preview: Nebraska volleyball set a women's sports attendance record Wednesday night as 92,003 fans descended on Memorial Stadium to watch the match vs. Omaha.

Preview: At least 73 people died when a fire ripped through a multi-story building in Johannesburg overtaken by homeless people, authorities said Thursday.

Preview: As the storm moves away from the shore, it can cause an additional life-threatening hazard: inland flooding. Georgia and the Carolinas are at risk.

Preview: The Trump administration has proposed major cuts to naloxone distribution, which could take the most potent tool for stopping overdose deaths out of the hands of those who need it most. | Michael Siluk/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images In 2020 and 2021, before I came to Vox, I worked as the future correspondent at Axios — yes, that was the actual job title — and I found myself writing almost solely about the Covid-19 pandemic, or major trends that appeared to be driven by the pandemic. One of those trends was an alarming rise in drug overdose deaths. The trajectory was already bad before Covid: Between the widespread prescription and misuse of legal opioids and then the introduction of the ultra-powerful drug fentanyl to the illicit drug supply, overdose deaths in the US began taking off in the early 2010s. But the closure of treatment facilities during the pandemic and the isolation of users led to a sudden spike in deaths: In the year leading up to September 2020, as I wrote in April 2021, more than 87,000 Americans died of drug overdoses, a higher total than any 12-month period of the opioid epidemic up to that point.  Despair, and then hope After publishing that piece, I received a letter from a reader, who said her son had been one of those 87,000 deaths. She begged me to give this issue more coverage, to remind my readers that behind the Covid pandemic, there was a shadow epidemic of drug deaths, of lost sons and daughters and husbands and wives. People had to stop closing their eyes to the toll of death and pain. In the years that followed, the toll only continued to grow, however, with deaths reaching 110,000 in 2023. There seemed to be no answer for one of the worst public health crises in a generation.  But now, at long last, we finally appear to be turning the corner on the drug overdose crisis.  Provisional figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Vital Statistics System released this week show that some 27,000 fewer Americans died of a drug overdose in 2024 than in 2023. That year-on-year drop is the steepest single-year decline since the government first began keeping track of overdose deaths 45 years ago. It means that drug deaths are now finally coming back down to pre-pandemic levels — and that we can make progress on what can seem like the most intractable social ills. 27,000 lives To put that 27,000 drop in deaths into perspective, think of it this way: It adds up to three lives saved every hour for an entire year.  What’s remarkable about the rapid drop in overdose deaths is just how widespread the trend is. Forty-five states recorded declines in deaths, with Ohio and West Virginia — two states that have suffered more than almost any other from the opioid epidemic — leading the way. Only a handful of states, mostly in the Northwest, where the epidemic started later, experienced increases.  While synthetic opioids, which mostly means fentanyl, are still responsible for the vast majority of overdose deaths, deaths from such drugs are falling faster than any other, declining by 36 percent year over year.  Reversing the overdose epidemic One of the biggest factors behind the decline is the growing availability of naloxone, an opioid antagonist. If administered in the immediate aftermath of an overdose, naloxone has been shown to be close to 99 percent effective in preventing death. The key is speed — even the fastest emergency medical responders may not make it to the scene in time to save someone suffering an overdose. But recent policies to make naloxone available over the counter, and to advise users to have it on hand, have made it possible to bring back thousands of people who otherwise would have died. While the pandemic directly led to a significant spike in overdose deaths, policies that came out of Covid have helped curb the toll, including telehealth access to medicine-based treatment options for addiction like buprenorphine. All of these programs have been paid for in part by the billions of dollars in opioid-settlement cash from drug companies like Johnson & Johnson, which began flowing to state and local governments in 2024. Tougher enforcement on fentanyl has played a role as well.  Lastly — and less positively — the sheer number of overdose deaths in the past few years has depleted the number of people at highest risk. Like an infectious disease epidemic that slows down as it begins to run out of new people to infect, the overdose epidemic burned so hot and killed so many that drug users who were left were less vulnerable to fatal overdoses. What comes next The news isn’t all good. While synthetic opioids like fentanyl appear to be in a steep decline, deaths actually rose last year from stimulants like meth and cocaine, with production of the latter surging to new highs. The increase in deaths in a handful of states like Alaska and Washington demonstrates that in some parts of the country, at least, there are still populations that remain highly vulnerable to fatal overdoses. Most worryingly, the Trump administration’s draft budget proposes major cuts to naloxone distribution, which could take the most potent tool for stopping overdose deaths out of the hands of those who need it most.   Still, we should recognize this new data for what it is — evidence that, with effort, we can reverse the course of one of the biggest public health threats the US faces. Thousands of people are alive today who, if nothing had changed since I was writing about this epidemic in 2021, might have suffered a worse fate.  Drug addiction is a horrible disease that can destroy futures, families, and lives. But where there is life, there is hope. Every overdose victim brought back by a spray of naloxone has another chance to change their future, and ensure that they won’t become another statistic.  A version of this story originally appeared in the Good News newsletter. Sign up here!

Preview: In Barnes v. Felix, the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision rebukes a federal appeals court’s bizarre approach to police violence cases. | Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images The most closely watched news out of the Supreme Court on Thursday was the argument in Trump v. CASA, a case asking whether President Donald Trump has power to cancel many Americans’ citizenship. The justices appeared skeptical that Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship is constitutional, but may hand him a temporary victory on a procedural question about whether a single trial judge may block his order nationwide. Just minutes before that hearing began, however, the Court also handed down an important — and unanimous — decision rebuking a federal appeals court’s bizarre approach to police violence cases. That case is known as Barnes v. Felix. Barnes arose out of what began as a routine traffic stop over “toll violations.” Shortly after Officer Roberto Felix Jr. stopped driver Ashtian Barnes in Houston, Barnes started to drive away while the officer was still standing next to his vehicle. Felix decided to jump onto the moving car, with his feet resting on its doorsill and his head over the car’s roof. After twice shouting, “don’t fucking move” while clinging to Barnes’s car, Felix fired two shots, killing Barnes. The ultimate question in this case is whether Felix used excessive force by blindly firing into the car while he was precariously clinging to the side of a moving vehicle. But the Supreme Court did not answer this question. Instead, it sent the case back down to the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to reconsider the case under the proper legal rule, in a victory for Barnes’s family — albeit one that may not amount to much in the long run. The Fifth Circuit is the most right-wing appeals court in the federal system, and it is known for handing down slapdash opinions that are later reversed by the Supreme Court. Barnes fits this pattern.  The admittedly quite vague rule courts are supposed to apply in excessive force cases against police officers requires courts to determine whether the use of force was justified from “the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene.” This inquiry, as Justice Elena Kagan explains in the Court’s Barnes opinion, requires judges to consider the “totality of the circumstances” that led to a shooting or other use of force. But the Fifth Circuit applies a different rule, holding that its “‘inquiry is confined to whether the officer’ was ‘in danger at the moment of the threat that resulted in [his] use of deadly force.’” This rule requires judges to disregard the events “leading up to the shooting,” and focus exclusively on the moment of the shooting itself. In a case like Barnes, in other words, the Fifth Circuit told judges to act as if Felix magically found himself transported to the side of a moving vehicle, forced to make a split-second decision about how to extract himself from this situation without being injured or killed. The question of whether it was reasonable for Felix to jump onto the side of a moving car in the first place is irrelevant to the Fifth Circuit’s inquiry. Kagan’s opinion holds that this was wrong. “The ‘totality of the circumstances’ inquiry into a use of force has no time limit,” she writes, noting that “earlier facts and circumstances may bear on how a reasonable officer would have understood and responded to later ones.” The problem with the Fifth Circuit’s rule wasn’t that it was too pro-police. It was that it simply did not make sense. As Kagan notes, a wider lens will not necessarily favor either police or people who are injured by police. “Prior events may show, for example, why a reasonable officer would have perceived otherwise ambiguous conduct of a suspect as threatening,” she writes, “or instead they may show why such an officer would have perceived the same conduct as innocuous.” Indeed, Kagan compares this case to Plumhoff v. Rickard (2014), a harrowing case where a suspect led six police cruisers on a high-speed chase that exceeded 100 miles per hour. After the car collided with one of the cruisers and briefly came to a near stop, the driver put the car into reverse and attempted to resume his flight, but the chase ended after police shot him and he crashed into a building. The Supreme Court held in Plumhoff that the shooting was reasonable, because the driver showed that he was “‘intent on resuming’ his getaway and, if allowed to do so, would ‘again pose a deadly threat for others.’” But, under the Fifth Circuit’s “moment of the threat” test, it’s unclear that Plumhoff would have come down the same way. Judges would only ask whether it was reasonable to shoot someone who was reversing away from a crash after colliding with a police car, without considering the high-speed chase that led up to that crash. It’s also far from clear that the courts will ultimately determine that Felix acted unreasonably in Barnes. Notably, a total of four justices joined a concurring opinion by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, which reads like a paean to the peril faced by police during traffic stops. When a suspect flees such a stop, Kavanaugh writes, “every feasible option poses some potential danger to the officer, the driver, or the public at large—and often to all three.” Still, Barnes wipes away a Fifth Circuit rule that all but ensured absurd results. It makes no sense to evaluate a police officer’s use of force — or, for that matter, nearly any allegedly illegal action committed by any person — by divorcing that use of force from its context.

Preview: The Voice of America (VOA) sign is displayed on its building on March 17, 2025, in Washington, DC. | Alex Wong/Getty Images This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here. Welcome to The Logoff: Today I’m focused on the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine Voice of America, a US-funded news network that brings information to people around the world — including people living under repressive regimes. What’s the latest? The administration fired about 600 contractors Thursday who work for the network, more than a third of the organization’s staff. What about the rest of the staff? In March, the administration put almost the entire staff on leave, but they successfully sued to block those de facto firings, at least temporarily. Litigation is ongoing over whether the administration has the authority to cut the agency, which is funded by Congress.  What else are they doing? The organization’s domestic website has not been updated since mid-March. The administration is proposing to replace some of Voice of America’s content with programming from the One America News Network, a far-right outlet closely aligned with the administration. Why is the administration doing this? Voice of America is, by law, editorially independent, meaning the Trump administration cannot control the network’s content. That means it sometimes publishes news that reflects poorly on the president or his policies — something this administration cannot abide. What’s the big picture? Like any outlet, Voice of America has its shortcomings, and there are legitimate disagreements over how it covers the news. But for millions of people whose governments block access to the news, Voice of America and its affiliates are their best chance of learning about what’s happening in the world around them — including what their own governments are up to. Now, Trump is trying to take that away. And with that, it’s time to log off… Here’s an award-winning Voice of America story about what happens to accountability here in the US when local news organizations are driven out of business. It’s a great piece, but if you want to save it for a non-Friday afternoon, there’s always the glorious livestream of a bald eagles’ nest. Thanks so much for reading, and I’ll see you back here Monday.

Preview: A lesser prairie-chicken doing its mating dance in northern Oklahoma. | Nattapong Assalee/Getty Images/iStockphoto The bird above is not your typical charismatic species. It’s no bald eagle, no peregrine falcon.  It’s a groundbird known as the lesser prairie-chicken that lives in the southern Great Plains. It’s not even the greater prairie-chicken, another, related avian species, that’s a bit larger.   Today, however, this bird is very much worth paying attention to.  In 2023, lesser prairie-chickens — which are actually fascinating birds, not least for their ridiculous mating rituals — were granted protection under the Endangered Species Act, the country’s strongest wildlife law. Scientists say this protection is justified: The population of lesser prairie-chickens has crashed since the last century from hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of birds to roughly 30,000 today.  Now the Trump administration is trying to axe those extinction-thwarting protections. In a motion filed earlier this month in a Texas court, the administration argued that federal officials made an error when listing prairie-chickens under the Endangered Species Act. The listing — which makes it illegal to kill or harm the birds, with a number of exceptions — should be tossed out, the administration said.  The move isn’t totally unexpected. Prairie-chickens overlap in some areas with oil and gas drilling. And President Donald Trump has signaled that he will prioritize drilling over environmental safeguards.  Yet it reveals that his administration will take extreme steps to undo wildlife protections if they stand in the way of his agenda. If his administration is successful in delisting the bird, it will signal that no endangered species is safe — especially those, like these chickens, that happen to live where fossil fuels are buried. Send us a tip Do you have a story idea or a tip to share? Reach Benji Jones at benji.jones@vox.com or at the secure encrypted address benjijones@protonmail.com. You can also find him on Signal at @benji.90. The dance of the prairie-chicken Male lesser prairie-chickens are extremely extra. Each spring, they come together in breeding grounds called leks to dance for females, hoping to attract them as mates. They inflate large sacs on their neck, flare yellow combs above their eyes, and raise wing-like feathers behind their heads. Then they stomp their feet and start booming, producing a noise that sounds like sped-up yodeling. (These are not to be confused with the greater sage-grouse, a bird in the same family that has a similarly spectacular display.) The Great Plains were once filled with these unusual dancing birds, which play important roles in grassland ecosystems: They provide food for raptors, spread seeds, and control insects. But in the last few centuries, prairie-chickens lost most of their habitat — largely to the expansion of oil and gas, commercial farming, housing developments, and, more recently, wind energy. Scientists estimate that the range of lesser prairie-chickens has shrunk by 83 percent to 90 percent since European settlement. “Grasslands are the most threatened ecosystem on the continent and in the world, and nowhere more so than in the southwestern Great Plains,” said Ted Koch, executive director of the North American Grouse Partnership, a bird conservation group.  Facing extinction as a result of powerful industries, the prairie-chicken has been caught up in a game of political ping pong.  The government first granted them federal protection in 2014. Then, in response to a lawsuit filed by an oil-industry trade group and several counties in New Mexico, the Texas court tossed out the listing in 2015. They were officially delisted in 2016. The suit argued that in granting federal protections the government didn’t adequately consider existing voluntary efforts, such as habitat conservation, to conserve the birds. Shortly after, the Interior Department — the government agency that oversees endangered species listings — reevaluated the bird and once again determined, under the Biden administration, that it is at risk of extinction, even with those voluntary efforts in place. In 2023, Interior added the chickens back on the endangered species list.  That brings us to the present day, when these forsaken birds could once again lose protection.  Trump moves to strip endangered species protections on a technicality The Trump administration is arguing that the Interior Department made a mistake when it recently listed the birds again.  It comes down to a somewhat wonky technicality. Briefly, the Endangered Species Act allows the government to grant formal protection to a species or to a population of a species — if those populations are important on their own, and at risk. That’s what the Biden administration did: It determined that there were two distinct populations of lesser-prairie chickens and it granted each of them slightly different protections. One of the populations is in the northern end of the birds’ range, including Oklahoma and Kansas, and the other is in the southern reaches of its range, in Texas and New Mexico.  Under the Trump administration, Interior claims that it didn’t provide enough information to show that the two bird populations are distinct. That’s reason enough to delist the birds, the administration argues, while it reviews their status over the next year. If the species is delisted — even temporarily — the government would be able to permit activities, such as energy projects, even if they might harm the bird and the endangered grasslands it’s found in.  Avian experts, meanwhile, say the reasoning behind the original listing — which was the result of months of work and more than 30,000 public comments — is sound, and these birds are very clearly in trouble. “The North American Grouse Partnership agrees completely that listing of chickens is warranted,” said Koch, a former biologist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the division within Interior that implements the Endangered Species Act. The move to delist prairie-chickens appears to be an effort by the Trump administration to skirt wildlife regulations that some perceive to stand in the way of the oil industry, said Jonathan Hayes, executive director of Audubon Southwest, a regional office of the National Audubon Society, a large environmental nonprofit.  “Whether it’s true or not, this chicken symbolizes a challenge, or an impediment, to oil and gas development for industry,” Hayes told Vox. “We would expect this administration to push back on regulations that may or may not impact oil and gas. That’s what it feels like is happening here.”  In a statement to Vox, the Interior Department said it has an “unwavering commitment to conserving and managing the nation’s natural and cultural resources…and overseeing public lands and waters for the benefit of all Americans, while prioritizing fiscal responsibility for the American people.” The new administration can quibble with the technical points of the listing, Koch said, but that will do nothing to change the reality: The bird is at risk of extinction and needs to be protected.  “Whether somebody wants to engage in debate on technicalities is up to them, but simply and fundamentally lesser prairie-chickens are threatened with extinction,” Koch said. “Delisting lesser prairie chickens on a technicality is going to do nothing to address the underlying threat to these ecosystems.” The future for threatened species in the US  There’s no guarantee that prairie-chickens will lose protection.  The Trump administration’s motion to delist the birds came in response to a pair of lawsuits filed by both the state of Texas and groups representing the oil and livestock industries. The suits allege that the Interior Department made a mistake in splitting the birds into two distinct populations and failed to follow the best available information. (Interior’s spokesperson told Vox they will not comment on ongoing litigation.) Before Trump took office, the government was planning to defend its decision to protect the birds — and to split them up — in court, in response to those lawsuits. Now it’s reversing course and agreeing with Texas and the oil industry to toss out the listing. It’s possible that the judge overseeing this case could agree to remove protections, said Jason Rylander, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. In that case, groups like his would try to appeal to block the delisting.  The court could also tell the government to review the bird’s status while keeping existing protections in place, Rylander says.  What’s key here is that the decision to list lesser prairie-chickens involved a formal rulemaking process with public input. It’s not clear that the government can simply reverse its decision and yank federal protections without going through that process again. “The government can’t act in a capricious way,” Hayes of Audubon said. “It can’t just blow with the wind, and that’s exactly what it did here. They just changed their minds when the administration changed. I’m not sure how they will legally defend their complete 180.” But no matter how this plays out, this effort to delist lesser prairie-chickens puts other threatened species in an even more precarious spot, especially those that live in regions with oil and gas. One example is the endangered dunes sagebrush lizard. It’s a small, scaly reptile that lives in the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico, the largest oil-producing region in the country. The state of Texas similarly sued the government after it listed the dunes sagebrush lizard as endangered last year. The suit — which asks the court to vacate the endangered listing — alleges, among other things, that the government didn’t rely on the best available data to evaluate the lizard’s extinction risk. That case is still pending, though environmental advocates fear that the Trump administration could side with Texas and claim it made a mistake when listing the lizard.  Then there’s the beloved monarch butterfly.  Following decades of population decline, the government proposed federal protections for the iconic insect late last year. Monarch habitat similarly overlaps with the oil and gas industry, as well as commercial farmland. Fossil-fuel groups have already asked the Trump administration to reconsider the listing.   “As the Trump administration is in power, we can expect that endangered species protections are going to be under attack,” Rylander said. “I think there’s a chance we can stop this in court,” he said of efforts to delist the prairie-chicken, “but I think if we don’t, we will see more efforts to remand and vacate listings that they [the Trump administration] don’t want to have in place anymore.”  It’s important to remember that wildlife protections benefit people, Koch said. And prairie-chickens are a good example. Most of the remaining birds live on sustainably managed, private ranchlands in the Great Plains, he said. Those lands — those working grassland ecosystems — are under threat from energy development and other industries that are more profitable.  Saving prairie chickens means saving those lands. And saving those lands benefits the ranchers that live on them, he said. “The purpose of the Endangered Species Act is to conserve the ecosystems upon which we and all other species depend,” Koch said. “People depend on grassland ecosystems, and so do lesser prairie-chickens. We need to save grasslands for both of us.” Clarification, May 16, 3:30 pm ET: This article was originally published on May 15 and has updated with more information about where the dune sagebrush lizard lives.

Preview: Planes on the tarmac at Newark Liberty International Airport on May 14, 2025 in Newark, New Jersey. | Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images Air travel is remarkably, astonishingly safe.  Every year, commercial US airlines take more than 800 million domestic passengers to their destinations, and in a typical year, zero of them are killed and very few are injured. It’s a track record made possible by a fairly intense commitment to safety.  But increasingly over the last few years, we’ve been testing these limits. This story was first featured in the Future Perfect newsletter. Sign up here to explore the big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them. Sent twice a week. Right now the example in the headlines is New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport, which had three air traffic controllers on duty when it was supposed to have 14 and which over the last couple of weeks suffered three “communications blackouts” where air traffic controllers couldn’t communicate with approaching planes. But it’s not just Newark. There has been an alarming rise in near-misses, communications blackouts, and other serious problems over the last few years at airports across the country, often a consequence of understaffing and high traffic. The midair collision near Reagan National Airport in Washington earlier this year that killed over 60 people was the deadliest air crash in the US since 2001. Even with the Washington disaster, very few of these incidents, thankfully, get anyone killed. That’s because the US achieves the astonishing safety of our air travel system with defense in depth, which means a bunch of different things have to go wrong for a crash to happen. Planes have on-board systems that should alert them if they’re too near another plane, even if air traffic control is sleeping on the job. There are backup emergency frequencies in case a communications blackout occurs. There are pre-published procedures for what to do in the event of a landing that looks unsafe, so if the pilots find themselves abruptly entirely out of contact with the ground, or coming in for a landing on a runway that they realize too late isn’t clear, they have been trained on precisely how to respond. Pushing our defenses against disaster to the limits In the risk analysis world, this is called the “Swiss cheese” model of how to prevent a disaster.  Every layer of a system made up of humans — with all our flaws — is going to have some gaps. Air traffic controllers will have a bad day, or be tired, or let something slip their mind. Technological solutions will have limitations and edge cases. Pilots will make mistakes or have a medical emergency or get confused by unusual instructions.  So each layer of the defenses against disaster has “holes” in it. But so long as the holes don’t all line up — so long as there isn’t a gap in every single layer at the same time — the defenses hold, and the planes land safely.  All of this means that despite the absurd strain on air traffic controllers, flying out of Newark is still almost certainly going to go fine.  But to achieve and maintain the exceptionally low accident levels that we’ve taken pride in over the last 20 years, “almost certainly” isn’t good enough. If you want not just 99.9 percent of planes but every single plane, every single year, to land safely, you can’t afford to let one of the layers of our defenses get more and more full of holes. A “near miss” where several layers of defenses fail should be taken incredibly seriously and prompt changes, even if one other layer sufficed to save us. Any event which would have been a mass casualty event if not for the good judgment and quick thinking of the pilots, or if not for good weather, or if not for an activation of the automatic TCAS collision avoidance system, needs to be treated as a major emergency. If we let near-misses become business as usual, then it’s inevitable that some percentage of them will convert into actual mass disasters — as happened in Washington this January, where a helicopter and plane collided in an airspace that was known to have risky amounts of helicopter traffic and a bunch of alarming near-misses. This is, of course, important in its own right, since every single commercial plane crash is a preventable tragedy. But it’s also, I sometimes fear, a symptom of a broader cultural malaise.  Plane crashes used to be horrifyingly common. We made them rarer through a comprehensive, aggressive program to add layers of defense against human error, revising our procedures through tragedy after tragedy. And we succeeded. If you read the description of almost any plane crash that occurred in the 1970s, one thing stands out: It could not have happened today. Through mechanical improvements, procedural improvements, training improvements, and backup systems, we’ve built planes that are much, much harder to crash.  But then, as frequent deadly plane crashes became a distant cultural memory, we immediately started testing how far we could underresource those systems. We ignored near-misses and staffing shortages; we failed to heed warnings that our systems are in trouble and our procedures need changes. Boeing pushed out a dangerous new plane, hoping that other layers of our collective defenses against crashes would suffice to keep them in the air; in the US, those other layers were sufficient, but in poorer countries, they were not.  We’ve lost our fear The parallels to other areas of modern life stand out. It used to be that half of children were dead before age 5; vaccination changed that, but in the world made safe by vaccination, parents grew skeptical of it. Now kids are dying of measles again.  It’s been observed that “what if we hike tariffs?” is an idea that comes around once a century or so, and goes badly enough we’re warned off it for a while. We have to touch the hot stove ourselves to learn that it burns us, it seems: The cultural memory doesn’t last for all that long. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, by itself. I wouldn’t want to live in a world where caution only ever ratchets up; safety is a trade-off, and it’s reasonable to relax precautions if we still get good results without those precautions.  But in some cases — like understaffing air traffic control or not vaccinating against measles — the precaution in question passes any reasonable cost-benefit calculation. Our “lesson” is taught by the deaths of innocent people.  And more terrifyingly, it’s not clear we’re even learning from our brush with reality. Were the deaths of children in Texas enough to turn around measles vaccination rates? Did the crash over the Potomac teach us to start paying more attention to near-misses?  It’s too early to say, but it doesn’t look good so far — and that is what really scares me. A version of this story originally appeared in the Future Perfect newsletter. Sign up here!

Preview: Inviting people over to hang out at my house is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, I don’t need to leave home. On the other, I’m plagued by anxiety, not because I don’t enjoy seeing my friends, but because of all the tidying and cleaning I feel pressured to do even for a casual evening of watching TV.  In an instant, I transform into my mother, frantically scrubbing and organizing. To welcome guests into a house that shows signs of life — a pile of unopened mail sitting on the dining room table or crumbs in the couch cushions — is to open yourself up to judgment.  It’s a common sentiment among those of hosting age: the manic cleaning that precedes the arrival of guests, memed and parodied ad infinitum. Of course these concerns primarily afflict women — centuries of socialization have reinforced the notion that the condition of a home is a woman’s business. (A 2019 study found that women are held to higher cleanliness standards than men and are more likely to face negative social consequences for failing to meet that standard.) Mothers, who are somehow expected to be the primary caretaker and keep the house spotless on top of everything else, carry an even heavier domestic burden.  Whenever Ciara Bogdanovic’s clients come to her with these concerns, she can’t assure them that no one is judging the state of their home. But she can promise them that the majority of people aren’t. “Often,” Bogdanovic, a licensed marriage and family therapist, says, “we project our own beliefs about ourselves onto what we believe others are thinking.” But here’s the thing about hanging out at home: It’s free, low-key, and convenient. And we should be looking for more ways to find connection, not less, given the negative physical and mental health consequences of loneliness and social isolation. Many people crave more time with their friends, yet the anxiety of hosting what should be an undemanding get-together may preclude them from seeing their buds more often.  So the only rule you really need to keep in mind is to make sure your house is just tidy enough for guests to relax, experts say. Fear of having a space that looks like people live there shouldn’t hold you back from spending time with friends. If they’re judging you, that’s a reflection on them.  The fear of judgment Personal standards for how a home “should” look before hosting are shaped by past experiences, Bogdanovic says. Many people either had a relative who stressed the importance of cleaning up for guests or saw the caricature depicted in culture — or online.  Across social media, images of uber-organized homes and performative cleaning videos create the false perception that the average home looks like a magazine. We also have a tendency to compare our spaces to those of our friends. “You’re comparing your behind-the-scenes with someone else’s highlight reel,” says KC Davis, a therapist and author of How to Keep House While Drowning. “When you’re at home, you’re looking at your home the way it really looks in the midst of living there. When you go over to other people’s homes, most people are cleaning before you get there.”   This tendency to compare is also why you might find yourself subconsciously spotting dust bunnies in a friend’s home. “There might be some conclusions we’re trying to draw,” says licensed clinical social worker Alyssa Petersel. “Is this person doing better or worse than I am in life, financially? Is their style more or less like what I want my style to be?” These observations impact how we view ourselves. Assuming you don’t want to be critiqued about your own home, it’s always best to suspend judgment about how others live. Unless the state of their home poses a danger to those living there, what they choose to clean — or not — before you come over is not worth commenting on. “What is important to you in a friendship?” Bogdanovic says. “Is cleanliness and perfection really the most important thing? Or would you prefer someone who listens to you and you have fun with?” Aim for clean enough The primary goal of a host should be to pay attention to guests, not a stray toy. Davis says to focus your efforts on making the room where you’ll be hanging out comfortable for guests. Think practically: providing a place to sit (that isn’t covered in pet hair), making sure the floor is clear so people can walk around, offering drinks and snacks on fresh dishes, ensuring the bathroom is clean. The dishes in the sink or your disorganized bedroom? Not so much a priority. “As long as things are sanitary, people aren’t going to remember what it looks like,” Davis says. “They’re going to remember the way that they felt and the time that they had while they were there.” Whatever you do, don’t apologize for the state of your house, experts say. If you feel awkward when you notice a guest eye your disorganized coat rack, you can cut the tension with a quick joke, like, “Come on in, we live here!” or, “The kids have taken over with their jackets.”  If you’re still feeling self-conscious, Bogdanovic suggests observing your friends’ actions and body language. Are they looking around your house or sitting rigidly trying to keep as little of their body from touching your sofa as possible? Or are they lounging and engaging in conversation? Take stock of what’s actually happening, not what you’re imagining is happening.  Unless you truly value spending hours cleaning, focus on your priorities, Bogdanovic says, which is probably spending quality time with your friends — an activity that contributes to happiness more than a clean house. Letting friends into your space, mess and all, breaks the cycle of perfectionism. Once you ditch the expectation that homes should look like furniture showrooms, your friend group may feel more comfortable hosting despite the chaos in their kids’ rooms, too.  “In the moments where we are a bit imperfect or we’re a little raw or we’re a little unpolished,” Petersel says, “we’re actually giving other people permission to show up as their full selves.”

Preview: When we look at the relationship between 73-year-old legendary football coach Bill Belichick and his girlfriend and business partner, 24-year-old Jordon Hudson, it’s hard to know exactly what we’re seeing. Two grown-ups in love forging a dynamic business partnership? Elder abuse, as some have wildly speculated? Or is it, as the vitriolic comments in Hudson’s social media posts would have it, good old-fashioned gold digging?  Gold digging is a misogynistic and retro term, but this scandal is a retro one. It’s a bizarre, slightly off-putting mystery that fits remarkably well into our current age of newly regressive gender politics. Hudson and Belichick, the six-time Super Bowl-winning former NFL coach, met on a flight in 2021 and went public with their relationship last December. While their nearly 50-year age gap has raised eyebrows amid observers, the scandal has only grown as Hudson has taken on an increasingly central role in Belichick’s professional world.   It’s a bizarre, slightly off-putting mystery that fits remarkably well into our current age of newly regressive gender politics. Belichick requested Hudson be cc’ed on all publicity and media emails about him at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he is now a college football coach. In public records, she’s listed as the manager of several companies that appear to be tied to Belichick. Insider accounts say she essentially cast herself in a Dunkin Donuts commercial in which Belichick appeared, and that she blocked a docuseries about Belichick’s career.  But speculation around the relationship reached a fever pitch when Hudson interrupted during Belichick’s interview on CBS Sunday Morning in April. “How did you guys meet?” host Tony Dokoupil asked Belichick, referring to Hudson. “We’re not talking about this,” Hudson cut in tersely from off-camera. “Jordon was a constant presence during our interview,” Dokoupil informs viewers in voiceover, in a moment that launched a thousand TikTok reaction videos.  In the midst of this controversy, the couple has been manufacturing social media content about their relationship that isn’t alarming so much as it is lightly uncanny, especially given Belichick’s famously gruff public persona. On Hudson’s Instagram account, she has posted beachside pictures of herself balancing athletically on Belichick’s outstretched legs, and of Belichick, dressed as a fisherman, reeling in a mermaid-tailed Hudson from the surf. (“Ouucchhhh!!!” goes the caption on that one.) A few have defended the relationship between Belichick and Hudson. Sports media personality Colin Cowherd has said that Hudson’s choice to hop into Belichick’s interview was normal for PR directors, if “kind of a cringy thing.” Right-wing sports outlet The Outkick has rallied to Hudson’s side on the grounds that she triggers the libs, saying, “If Jordon wants to spend her weekends at Bill’s house on Nantucket, soaking up the sun and enjoying Cisco Brewery on Bill’s dime, I say GO FOR IT.”  But the most common reaction to the spectacle of Hudson and Belichick’s relationship is the one outlined by sports media personality Katie Nolan on a podcast in February: This is weird and seems like it has sinister undertones. “We’re already going, ‘You’re how much younger than him?’ And then you show up in a commercial. And then you hear that she’s in charge in his career.” Nolan said. “It seems like you could be taking advantage of the guy. And he’s obviously taking advantage of the girl.”  Notably, it doesn’t appear to be much of a head-scratcher why a powerful septuagenarian would choose to be with a recent college graduate and pageant contestant. But the nefarious reason implied about why Hudson wants to be with Belichick is the one people are misogynistically and freely throwing around: gold digger. The resurgence of the gold digger  I don’t know anything about Hudson and Belichick’s private relationship, and most likely, neither do you. I don’t want to make any claims about who is using whom or what their private life is like. But as a feminist pop culture critic, I am interested to see the term “gold digger” swim back up from the collective unconsciousness again, ready and willing to go to work.  There’s something almost old-fashioned about it. The last time “gold digger” was thrown around in pop culture so much was when teenager Courtney Stodden skyrocketed to fame in 2011 after they got married at age 16 to 51-year-old actor Doug Hutchison. Stodden would later describe their marriage as one characterized by grooming and sexual assault.  Before that, the great pop culture gold digger was Anna Nicole Smith, the model turned paparazzi obsession who married oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II in 1994. Since Smith’s untimely death in 2007, she’s found a place in the pantheon of wronged women of the 1990s, someone we came to believe over the last decade was publicly mistreated — in part by her tarring as a gold digger.  “It’s a bit provincial to look down one’s nose at a woman wanting something from a man and give a pass to a man who arguably would have never given her a second glance had she not been a beautiful, blonde Playboy Playmate,” essayist and sex work activist Laura LeMoon argued in 2023, writing about Smith in Salon. “Rather than singling out and condemning Anna Nicole Smith, we should be pointing our fingers at the inequities and systemic failures that put people like me and Smith in positions where obtaining money and resources from men, directly or indirectly, is our best option for survival.” “Gold digger” is a euphemism that allows us as a culture to talk around those systemic failures. It’s a way to deride women when they take seriously the idea that their financial well-being should depend on their relationships with men. So it’s odd to see the term becoming so popular during a moment when popular culture has become rather infatuated with the idea that life is most pleasant, simple, and straightforward when women’s finances do depend on romantic relationships with men. TikTok is full of tradwives explaining how their lives became better once they got out of the 9-to-5 grind to make cereal from scratch for their children and let their husbands do the breadwinning. (That the most successful of the tradwife influencers are actually the primary breadwinners in their homes is an irony the influencers themselves seldom discuss.) Or there are the stay-at-home girlfriends cooing over how taking care of their boyfriends without even the financial safety net of a marriage contract has been their ticket to the soft life.  The gold digger is the tradwife as seen through a funhouse mirror: a woman living off her ability to attract a man, only here done crassly. Meanwhile, some of President Donald Trump’s most vocal supporters are arguing that his tariffs will force women out of the workforce and make them once again financially dependent on men, either through marriage or through sex work, life paths these men treat as equivalent. Trump’s appeal to the dream of a lost American manufacturing economy is a nostalgic one. It’s an appealing fantasy to some of his more incel-adjacent fans: that under this economy, the sexes will revert to an older, allegedly more natural economic relationship, one in which women trade their sexuality and childrearing capabilities to men in exchange for financial security.  The gold digger is the tradwife as seen through a funhouse mirror: a woman living off her ability to attract a man, only here done crassly, without the show of love to soften the crude edges of the transaction. The gold digger is simply a figure we can blame for how uncomfortable this dynamic makes us feel, without having to think through just what is so uncomfortable about it.  So if we’re angry at Jordon Hudson, it’s worth asking the question: Are we angry with her, or with the fact that powerful people want to make gold digging one of a woman’s most viable career paths again?

Preview: When you picture a volcano, what do you see? I personally imagine a mountain sticking up into the sky. At the top of that mountain, I see a crater with a fiery hot lake boiling and roiling in it, or lava pouring down a slope like bright red candle wax, or massive clouds of grey ash exploding into the air.  It’s all incredible, powerful imagery, but it’s also really just the tip of the volcano-berg.  If I were to descend down through my imaginary volcano, moving down through layers and layers of earth, I’d find what might be an even more incredible feature: my volcano’s pulsing, fiery furnace of a heart, also known as its “magma chamber.” This is the reason that hot ash comes bursting up through the surface. It’s the original source of my lava and my crater lake. It’s where much of the important action in a volcano unfolds — and could hold secrets to help us better predict when a devastating eruption will occur.  The problem is that we know much less about magma chambers like this than we’d like to. We’re not even good at depicting them.  “We draw them as red balloons,” says Mike Poland, a geophysicist and scientist-in-charge at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. “They are not. But it’s a very difficult thing to represent.” Magma chambers are so hard to represent because they’re so complex. They can be thousands of degrees Fahrenheit and have blends of solid material and hot liquid rock. These chambers have different temperatures in different spots, and different minerals melting at different heats or moving around in different ways. And, making things even more complex, there’s a multitude of different gases that might make pressure build up before an eruption.  But if we could better represent magma chambers — and just generally better understand exactly how they work — Poland says we might be able to dramatically improve our understanding of how volcanoes operate, and therefore be better able to anticipate what to expect from an impending eruption. But right now, because these chambers are so hot and so deep underground, it’s hard to plumb their secrets. “We don’t have, like, the glass-bottomed volcano where you can just sort of look into and go like, Oh, that’s what’s going on,” Poland jokes. But what if we could have a glass-bottomed volcano that we could sort of look into and go like, Oh, that’s what’s going on? What if we could build, say, a little observatory deep down under the ground, right in the hot little heart of a volcano? It sounds absurd, and yet…  “ There’s a project in Iceland,” Poland tells me, “They want to build a magma observatory. They want to drill into a magma chamber and put some monitoring equipment in the hole. … That would give us some idea of what’s going on in there.” The project is called the Krafla Magma Testbed, or KMT,  and the researchers working on it think it could revolutionize volcanology — and how we forecast eruptions.  But first, what’s missing from our volcano forecasts? One of the key motivations for building an observatory like this is that volcanology has a prediction problem. On the one hand, volcanoes are much more predictable than, say, earthquakes — they tend to give us some warning signs before they erupt. But on the other hand, it’s hard to perfectly interpret those warning signs, which means the predictions volcanologists can make with our existing technology can be both incredibly helpful and frustratingly imprecise. For example, for the last year or so, a potential eruption has been brewing at Mount Spurr, a volcano near Anchorage, Alaska. Twice in the last 100 years, eruptions from Mount Spurr have rained ash down on the city, clogging up roadways, shutting down the local airport (one of the busiest cargo ports in the world), and settling like a fine dusting of gritty, gray, unmelting snow on cars and lawns and leaves of trees.  People are understandably worried about a repeat performance, and the Alaska Volcano Observatory is monitoring the situation closely. Matt Haney, the scientist-in-charge at that observatory, told me while he can be sure that the volcano is displaying several key warning signs, he can’t be sure exactly what the upcoming volcanic activity might look like — if there will be one eruption or many, exactly how intense they will be, or when they’ll occur. “That is not possible in the current levels of technology that we have,” he said. “There’s no definitive time frame, like, Oh, it’s going to do exactly this, like it did in 1992. It’s not the precise same playbook.”  Even with 11 seismic stations gathering real-time data about the Alaskan volcano — even with devices measuring how it is changing shape in response to incoming magma, with planes circling in the sky to understand the venting of gases, and with an enormous amount of truly impressive work — these volcanologists still can’t give us as clear a picture of the future as we might like them to.  That’s tricky enough when you’re dealing with the prospect of a clogging and choking coating of volcanic ash, but it gets even more complicated when you’re trying to make determinations about people’s lives.  “This is the problem. How do you know how big an eruption’s going to be?” Mike Poland, geophysicist and scientist-in-charge at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory Look, for example, at the case of Soufrière de Guadeloupe, a volcano on the Caribbean island of Basse-Terre. In the mid-1970s, it started venting steam. That, paired with increased earthquake activity, had people worried that a dramatic eruption might be brewing.  And they had very good reason to worry: In 1902, another Caribbean volcano eruption sent a deadly mix of hot gas and ash and rock careening through a nearby city at 300 miles an hour, killing 27,000 people. So, hoping to avoid a repeat of this devastating event, the governmental authorities decided to go ahead and evacuate. More than 70,000 people left Basse-Terre.  But the subsequent eruption was minor. As one report put it, the “explosive emission of steam and debris was certainly impressive to those who had the misfortune to view it at close quarters. But from a volcanological point of view, it represented a rather trivial outburst.” If anything, the biggest impact on the volcanic activity was the evacuation itself — it hurt the local economy and disrupted kids’ schooling.  Sometimes, though, evacuations are extremely necessary. In 1991, at Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, volcanologists once again read the volcanic tea leaves — stuff like seismic activity and steam explosions — and predicted a big eruption. Once again, people were evacuated. But this time, the decision to abandon the area saved thousands of lives — the ensuing eruption was one of the biggest in the 20th century.  “This is the problem,” Poland says. “How do you know how big an eruption’s going to be?” You don’t want to evacuate too little, or too late, at the cost of human lives, he says. But equally, you don’t want to be the boy who cries wolf, or the volcanologist who cries, “ERUPTION!”  “ It erodes trust in the scientists,” he says. Volcanology has come a long way since the 1970s, or even the 1990s. Scientists have much more monitoring equipment set up on volcanoes, and they have made better equipment over time. Their ability to make predictions about volcanoes has improved dramatically as a result. But as the case of Mount Spurr shows, even now — in 2025 — the field still grapples with the same fundamental problem of precision in their predictions. So how do these predictions get better? How could volcanologists further improve their predictions in order to help people make decisions about how to prepare for eruptions? Poland has spent a fair amount of time thinking about the answers to this question. He wrote a whole paper about it, in fact. And he thinks that improving volcano forecasting is not just about continuing to improve our monitoring equipment. Instead, he says, what we really need is better information about volcanoes themselves, and the hot molten rocks that power them.  What can molten rock teach us about eruptions? Let’s talk about how we currently forecast volcano eruptions. A lot of volcano prediction involves making very informed guesses about what a volcano might do in the future based on what that volcano has done in the past — what Poland calls pattern recognition.  Take, for example, gas emissions or earthquakes. Essentially, he says, researchers will take a lot of very, very precise measurements of those phenomena that will allow them to then say ‘Alright. X is happening. And when X happened before, Y happened afterward, so maybe now Y will happen again soon.’  “It’s not necessarily based on any special understanding of the physics of volcanic activity or that particular volcano,” Poland says, “It’s more based on…We’ve seen this movie before, and we know how it’s likely to evolve over time.” This approach has been incredibly useful. It’s saved a lot of lives and helped scientists make some really good predictions about how a volcano might behave, broadly. But Poland likes to draw a comparison between this approach and with how we forecast the weather. Because in the past, weather scientists also relied heavily on pattern matching. If the pressure was dropping and it was getting colder, say, they might expect a storm to come through.  But then, weather forecasting went through a kind of revolution. Scientists used satellites and other instruments to collect information about clouds and winds and rain. They collected huge amounts of data about the atmosphere, and people even flew directly into the eyes of phenomena like hurricanes to measure what was happening inside of those storms. “This really abundant information was then used by modelers…to work out the physics of what’s going on,” Poland says.  Weather scientists still use a lot of historical data to inform their understanding of the future (and now, with AI, are actually turning back to their massive bodies of data to try some more advanced pattern recognition), but they have also built really sophisticated models of the physics of the atmosphere that help them make their predictions. And it has paid off: Last year, according to the National Hurricane Center, hurricane forecasters set new records for accuracy in their predictions for the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season.  “We can now forecast, with some degree of accuracy, whether a hurricane will form, how intense it is going to be, where it’s going to go,” Poland says. “Obviously not every forecast is perfect. And that’s because our knowledge is still imperfect. But they know enough.” Poland wants volcanologists to build similar models of the underlying physics of volcanoes, which would mean building models of magma chambers. Scientists have been working on making models like this — and have even been working on applying them to forecasting. But if the weather scientists built their models by flying directly into things like hurricanes and taking measurements, volcano researchers have had a bit of a harder time doing the equivalent for magma chambers. They can’t take direct measurements, so they’ve used seismic and electromagnetic imaging to take the equivalent of X-rays of the Earth, and they’ve studied places where ancient volcanoes have eroded away, bringing their cooled, frozen magma chambers up to the surface. They’ve even read the layers of volcanic crystals as though they were tree rings.  This has been helpful, but it’s kind of like studying your neighbors by eavesdropping on their conversations through the wall and going through their trash instead of just talking to them directly.  So that’s why some researchers are hoping to talk to volcanoes directly — to observe their magma chambers in real time.  Introducing KMT: The Krafla Magma Testbed In some ways, the dream of a magma observatory started with an accident. Or to be a little more specific, it started with three different accidents in three different countries, each more than a decade ago. In each case, people set out to drill a deep hole into the rock near a volcano, and in each case, they accidentally drilled right down into the magma chamber.  These accidents were a big surprise to the people doing the drilling, but to John Eichelberger, they were a big opportunity.  Eichelberger has been studying volcanoes for around five decades. For much of that time, he’s been curious about magma chambers. He thinks that knowing more about them could not only help us forecast volcanoes better, but also maybe tap into them for geothermal power. Unfortunately, he says, for a long time, it was difficult to find a way to drill into magma chambers and find out more about them, because people were not sure what would happen if you did. What if you triggered an eruption?  “Really the only way [drilling down to a magma chamber] could happen was by serendipity,” Eichelberger says.  Serendipity like these three drilling accidents. They provided some real-world examples of what would happen if you drilled down to a magma chamber. And the answer was, it turns out, not all that much. In each of these three cases, the drilling companies hit the magma chamber and instead of like hot rock shooting out of their hole in a hot plume of fire, the magma basically climbed a little ways up the hole, and then cooled off into a plug of dark obsidian glass.  This was very good news for Eichelberger. As he remembers it, he wound up meeting someone from a power company that was involved in one of these accidents. That representative let him know that they would be open to letting Eichelberger and other researchers do some more research near their power plant in the Krafla volcanic region of Iceland. And so, in 2014, Eichelberger gathered researchers together for a consortium – including a researcher named Yan Lavallée, now at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. “Fifty or 60 of us spent the best part of a week together browsing ideas as to…what could we learn if we were to do this?” Lavallée syas, “What could we learn if we were to drill back in the magma?” This was the start of the dream of KMT: The Krafla Magma Testbed, named for the volcanic system in Iceland. It’s a dream that Eichelberger, Lavallée, and their collaborators are still trying to get funded, but they have a clear idea of how they’d make it a reality.  “First, we’re going to install a drill rig at the Earth’s surface, and we’re going to start drilling,” Lavallée tells me.  As they drill down, things will get hotter and hotter. They will pump fluid through, which will cool things down. Eventually, as they start to approach the magma of the magma chamber, the fluid will even start to cool down a little bit of that magma, too.  “It will vitrify to a glass,” Lavallée says. This glass will likely not be transparent like a window. Instead, it will be obsidian — dark black and full of minerals.  The researchers will then continue to keep things cool while they carve into that black glass, creating something like a pocket within it. Once that pocket is made, they hope to drop measuring devices into it. Lavallée works with tools in his lab that are made of the same kinds of heavy-duty materials that we put into things like jet engines and other materials that can withstand extremely high temperatures.  Once everything’s in place, they will stop cooling things down. Then the heat of the surrounding molten rock should start warming the obsidian of the glass pocket back up again slowly, until it melts back into magma and flows back around the instruments, submerging them fully in the magma of the chamber.  Then, hopefully, the researchers will finally have their observatory: a set of measuring devices feeding them real-time data about an active magma chamber.  If this first project succeeds, then Eichelberger and Lavallée are brimming with ideas for further drilling projects that could help them tease out more information about volcanoes. They both hope this research could help the world tap into volcanoes as a source of power, but also that it could help with forecasting — to help us build the models of volcanoes’ hearts that will give us the tools to predict their behavior as effectively as we predict hurricanes. And overall, Lavallée thinks that if this dream of theirs succeeds, it might revolutionize volcanology. “I don’t think we can really fully conceive how it’s going to change things,” he says.  Obviously, Lavallée has a clear reason to think this way, but when I asked Poland, who has no involvement with this project, what he thought, he was also pretty enthusiastic. “I am excited to hear what they can come up with,” Poland said, “I mean, you go into a magma chamber, you’re going to learn some things.”

Preview: Students sing before Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida spoke during a convocation at Liberty University on April 14, 2023. | Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images Among the persistent mysteries of the 2024 election is the roots of the modern political gender gap, particularly among young people. Though their final vote choices were a bit more nuanced than some pre-election polls suggested, young men and women, aged 18 to 29, had the largest divergence in their vote among the age groups. Gen Z men supported Donald Trump by 14 percentage points; Gen Z women supported Kamala Harris by 17 points, per one post-election analysis. Those dynamics, particularly the aggressive rightward shift of young men, have raised some interesting questions: What was driving this divide? Was something in particular moving young men to the right while pushing young women to the left? Could it be the manosphere, economics, or old-school sexism? Or could it be something else, like the apparent resurgence of organized religion? As I’ve reported, the rapid decline of religiosity within the United States has been slowing down over recent years. Particularly since the pandemic, data shows Gen Z is no longer continuing the rapid decline in religious affiliation, particularly Christianity, that started with previous generations. If anything, religious belief has seen a small revival with that youngest cohort. That shift suggests a curious dynamic at play among America’s youth. As Gen Z has been getting more politically polarized along gendered lines, so too has their religious affiliation. Those trends suggest that modern politics and religious beliefs may be having a bit of self-reinforcing effect on each other: As young men find faith and religious belonging, their politics are drifting to the right too, in turn reinforcing their existing beliefs. The opposite seems to be true with young women: Religious customs are not jibing with their political and social beliefs, pushing them out of churches, and reinforcing that drift away from some organized religions. Those religious trends matter. As religious and political beliefs of young men and women move away from each other, it stands to complicate not just electoral choices, but the future of family life, dating, and social belonging. The religious gender gap is changing   The last 10 years have seen American Christianity bottom out. After a steady decline in Christian religiosity since the 1990s, Christian belief began to stabilize at around 60 percent of the American adult population — still a historic low point — sometime around the turn of the 2020s. A key contributor to this slow-down appears to be Gen Z. After years of successive generations losing their religion, Gen Z seemed to get as irreligious as it could be. Now, what we’ve seen since 2020 is a kind of dead cat bounce: a slightly higher level of Christian religious affiliation among the youngest adults. Among the youngest cohort of Gen Z, those born between 2000 and 2006, the share who identify as Christian has increased since 2023, from 45 percent to 51, per the Pew Research Center. And overall, Gen Z seems to be more Christian than past trend lines predicted they should be: at 46 percent compared to a projected 41 percent.  At the heart of that halt and slight reversal is a dual dynamic: Young women are leaving religious congregations, while young men’s religious identification and practice rises. These changes come across in a few ways.  First, the gender gap in religious participation has not just evaporated in recent years, but reversed. The religious researcher and data scientist Ryan Burge has found in his analysis of survey data from the Cooperative Election Study that while women used to attend religious services more regularly than men, the reverse is now happening. Among the cohort born in the 1990s and 2000, it’s men who are now outpacing women in weekly attendance. Looking at other reference points suggests something similar. Young women are more likely than young men to say they are religiously unaffiliated, according to the American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life research. Young women are now as likely as young men to say religion is “not that important” to them — a significant development since women have traditionally been more fervent believers. And the religious gender gap among the youngest cohort appears to be narrowing in other ways, too: Regardless of which religion they identify with, young women and young men report about the same rates of daily prayer. For older generations, women greatly outpace men in praying daily. Is religion making men more conservative?  We could still stand to get better data about what is happening. It could be that young men simply remain as religious as older generations of men are (while women lose religion), or that men are getting more religious in general, or that men are particularly loyal to organized religion. Some data suggest young women remain religious or spiritual but just don’t identify with organized churches in the same way men do. But the religious gender gap still appears to be changing among Gen Z. But is politics driving these changes in religious behavior and belief? Or is religion driving stronger political beliefs? The data is a little less definitive here, but two things seem to bear out: According to AEI’s Survey Center, young women who are leaving churches report doing so because their congregations’ beliefs are more conservative than the beliefs they hold. Churches are out of step with where most young women are.  Additionally, young Christian women who remain in their churches are still more likely to be liberal and hold progressive beliefs than young Christian men. Even as they remain Christians, they are becoming more politically liberal. Underlying all of this is the fact that Gen Z women are more likely to identify as feminists, as LGBTQ, and as supportive of abortion rights. According to the Pew Religious Landscape Survey, young Christian women are 13 points more likely than young men to say that abortion should be legal. They are 18 points more likely to support gay marriage and 26 points more likely to accept LGBTQ people. As the researcher Daniel A. Cox of the AEI’s Survey Center points out, these are all shifts from what young Christians believed 10 years ago. “The gender gap in views of abortion has since quadrupled,” he notes in a recent analysis, but when it comes to views on homosexuality and gay marriage, it seems like young men have moved right. “Young Christian women have hardly changed their views over the last decade, while young men have become less supportive.” On a range of other views of government, political parties, and ideology in general, what’s happening with nonreligious young people is also happening among believers. Young Christian women are much more liberal, and more likely to be Democrats, than young Christian men. Cox notes that it might not be religion making these political views so different but the degree to which young Christian women have more connections and exposure to diverse communities and are consuming different kinds of media. Religious young men seem to be stuck in more homogenous environments, both in the digital and in the real world, he suggests. Still, while we can confidently say young women are becoming more liberal and less religious in that process, we can’t say the same for men. Religion may or may not be making young men more conservative, but it does seem likely that their conservative religious and political beliefs are at least keeping young men in churches. It appears to be slowing down their drift away from organized religion. All of which stands to complicate the future of not just Gen Z’s social and cultural bonds to each other but also those of future generations. It’s the youngest cohort of Gen Z, those born between 2000 and 2006, that is narrowing religious gender gaps while widening political ones. That poses issues for their social, romantic, and familial futures. Gen Z already reports struggles with socializing, dating, maintaining healthy relationships, and combating loneliness. Marriage rates continue to fall. So as young men and women drift away from each other, it’s hard to see how prospective partners breach these divides. And these dynamics may very well end up having electoral effects.

Preview: Protesters outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on May 15, 2025, as the court hears arguments over an executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship. | Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here. Welcome to The Logoff: The Supreme Court heard arguments about a birthright citizenship case today that are really about two questions: Does President Donald Trump have the power to end a core American ideal? And how much power do lower court judges have to block Trump’s agenda? What’s going on with birthright citizenship? On his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order aimed at ending birthright citizenship, the principle that people born in the US (almost always) immediately become US citizens. Trump’s order is an obvious violation of the 14th Amendment, and states successfully sued in multiple lower courts to block it, starting a process that brought it to the Supreme Court today. Is the Supreme Court going to uphold birthright citizenship? None of the justices defended Trump’s anti-birthright order during arguments, and several of them suggested it was blatantly unconstitutional. So what’s the issue? The hearing was less about whether the order was constitutional than about whether lower court judges had overstepped their authority when they blocked the policy nationwide. Multiple Supreme Court justices today seemed sympathetic to that argument, suggesting some limits on these nationwide injunctions could be coming. But we won’t know for sure until the ruling comes down, which could take weeks. What’s the big picture? Long-term, birthright citizenship appears almost certain to survive. That’s important, because birthright citizenship is critical to the concept that America is held together by a shared commitment to our democratic system, rather than by genetic inheritance. But if the Supreme Court limits the scope of the judges’ order, it may mean that some of Trump’s policies — even ones that are eventually found unconstitutional — get to go into effect while they work their way through the legal system. And with that, it’s time to log off… Yesterday I wrote about how we can make life better and are doing so all the time. Today I’m excited to surface another example: a new “gene-editing therapy” treatment that has given this baby a second chance at life in what the New York Times describes as “medical history.” As one doctor put it: “It really is sort of limitless in terms of what the possibilities are.” And that’s something worth celebrating. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you back here tomorrow.

Preview: Banks are hoping to sell the X debt at around 90 to 95 cents on the dollar.

Preview: The Canadian government said it would provide extraordinary financing to Canada Post to avoid insolvency at the state-owned mail service.

Preview: Amazon.com said it is open to talks with officials from the Canadian and Quebec governments about the decision to shut down operations in the country’s French-speaking province, which would lead to 1,700 people losing their jobs.

Preview: Once a stalwart supporter of Black and LGBTQ rights, the retailer joined corporate America’s retreat from DEI initiatives.

Preview: Find insight on Cnooc, YTL Power International, Ampol, and more in the latest Market Talks covering energy and utilities.

Preview: Find insight on CSX, Givaudan, Rio Tinto and more in the latest Market Talks covering basic materials.

Preview: Read about CSX, Magna International, Alaska Air and more in the latest Market Talks covering the auto and transport sector.

Preview: Find insight on Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena’s bid for Mediobanca, Travelers and more in the latest Market Talks covering financial services.

Preview: Novo Nordisk shares rose sharply after the Danish pharmaceutical giant said an experimental weight-loss shot helped patients lose 22% of their body weight in a clinical trial.

Preview: The European Commission said that the parties’ offer to sell five of International Paper’s plants in Europe fully addresses its competition concerns over the deal.

Preview: President Trump demanded that Walmart absorb the cost of his tariffs to avoid hiking prices.

Preview: A second suspect was arrested Saturday on arson charges in connection with a series of fires targeting property linked to U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, police said.

Preview: Democratic Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota assailed Donald Trump in a law school graduation speech Saturday, accusing the Republican president of creating a national emergency by repeatedly violating the rule of law.

Preview: Iran's president said his country will continue talks with the United States over its rapidly advancing nuclear program but will not withdraw from its rights because of U.S. threats.

Preview: Oklahoma high school students studying U.S. history learn about the Industrial Revolution, women's suffrage and America's expanding role in international affairs.

Preview: There have been 1,024 cases of measles confirmed in the U.S. in 2025, reported the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Preview: Gary Fleder's quirky crime drama was a bust at the box office back in 1995 and now looks for appreciation through the ultra-high definition format in "Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead."

Preview: Jasmine Paolini took advantage of the crowd's support and beat Coco Gauff 6-4, 6-2 to become the first home player to win the Italian Open in 40 years on Saturday.

Preview: The Baltimore Orioles fired manager Brandon Hyde on Saturday after a dismal start to the season by a team coming off two consecutive playoff appearances.

Preview: Kristen Stewart has been talking about directing as long as she's been acting. Not many people encouraged it.

Preview: The Bible is full of fantastic accounts of healing miracles where people were instantly cured of leprosy, blindness, and even being lame. But there are even more Biblical healings you may not have heard of.

Preview: U.S. — A hot new clothing subscription service continued to build buzz, gaining popularity among men across the country, claiming to service all of men's clothing needs by sending them a single pair of new cargo pants every 9 years.

Preview: COOPERSTOWN, NY — In a shocking new report, a team of amateur ghost hunters working near the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum caught the ghost of Pete Rose placing bets on his Hall of Fame induction.

Preview: U.S. — A newly released Harvard study on human intelligence has provided conclusive evidence that while nobody thinks they're stupid, many are.

Preview: DUBAI — Nearing the end of his highly publicized Middle East tour, administration sources reported that President Donald Trump had asked dignitaries when he would get to see the elves and hobbits.

Preview: NEW YORK, NY — In a concerning new report, experts said that America is still just as unprepared today for a giant monkey climbing skyscrapers as we were back in 1933.

Preview: U.S. — Former FBI Director James Comey found himself in hot water this week for posting what he claimed was a natural rock formation that appeared to spell out "EXPLODE TRUMP'S HEAD WITH A BOOMERANG."

Preview: A Wisconsin man has voluntarily been bitten by snakes hundreds of times, with scientists now studying his blood in hopes of creating better treatments for snake bites. What do you think? The post Scientists Studying Man Who Let Snakes Bite Him Over 200 Times appeared first on The Onion.

Preview: Supporters of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are cheering on the Health And Human Services secretary’s plans to “Make America Healthy Again.” Here is everything you need to know about the MAHA movement. Q: What is MAHA? A: It’s like MAGA but with food dye instead of immigrants. Q: What is their official motto? A: Rub […] The post What To Know About The MAHA Movement appeared first on The Onion.

Preview: NEW YORK—After months of closing in on the former news anchor’s legendary record, Michael Strahan surpassed Diane Sawyer on Friday as Good Morning America‘s all-time sack leader. “Throughout his career on GMA, Strahan has led the show in tackles, forced fumbles, interceptions, and, most importantly, sacks,” said producer Greg Emerson, adding that Strahan’s speed, strength, and ability to […] The post Michael Strahan Surpasses Diane Sawyer As Good Morning America’s All-Time Sack Leader appeared first on The Onion.

Preview: WASHINGTON—Sitting in the front row and snapping his fingers in time to the 1980 musical’s overture, President Donald Trump rehearsed his Cabinet for a Kennedy Center performance of Les Misérables amid an escalating boycott by the show’s usual cast, sources reported Friday. “Marco, I want you in there as Jean Valjean, and give us your […] The post Trump Casts Cabinet In ‘Les Misérables’ Amid Kennedy Center Boycott appeared first on The Onion.

Preview: The post Any Deport In A Storm appeared first on The Onion.

Preview: NDIANAPOLIS—In an effort to curb unauthorized traffic to adult websites within the state, Indiana lawmakers passed new legislation Thursday requiring all potential viewers of online pornography to register as sex offenders before they could access sexually explicit material.  “This law will ensure that no resident of Indiana encounters harmful, X-rated content on the internet without […] The post New Indiana Law Requires All Porn Viewers To Register As Sex Offenders appeared first on The Onion.

Preview: CHICAGO—Insisting that a demonstration of the form was necessary to display its full force and power, elderly salsa instructor Hector Moreno announced his plan during a Thursday evening introductory class to dance with your girlfriend. “No, no, no—you must do it with passion, great passion,” said the 83-year-old man, who reportedly placed a hand around your […] The post Elderly Salsa Instructor Announces Plan To Dance With Your Girlfriend appeared first on The Onion.

Preview: The post Grocery Store’s Meat Section Misted With Fresh Blood Every Few Minutes appeared first on The Onion.

Preview: Known for being an adventurous risk-taker, Luke Platt, 36, died Thursday after brazenly wearing regular shoes on the bowling alley floor. The post Luke Platt appeared first on The Onion.

Preview: Cannes Film Festival issued an updated red carpet dress code that effectively bans full nudity and “voluminous” ensembles, citing “decency reasons.” What do you think? The post Cannes Bans Nudity On Red Carpet appeared first on The Onion.