May 14, 2026

Polls

Generic Ballot polling trend among Independent voters by Cygnal (A) Oct. 2022 Republicans: 51% (R+9) Democrats: 42% April 2026 Democrats: 48% (D+23) Republicans: 25%

The Hill - Secretary of State Marco Rubio is gaining traction inside Republican circles amid growing chatter about who could emerge as the leading contender in the 2028 presidential race. A poll out this week showed him outperforming Vice President Vance in a 2028 potential match-up.|

Deep State Tribunal - Xavier Becerra catapults to the top of California’s 2026 governor primary poll, upending expectations just weeks before voters decide the top-two contenders... Becerra dominates Democrats at 31%, fueled by Eric Swalwell’s late April exit that consolidated votes.

Layoffs by state

Newsweek

Red Flag warnings

Newsweek - Millions of Americans across a wide span of the central U.S. are under “Red Flag Warnings” on Thursday. The National Weather Service warns that any spark could rapidly turn into a fast-moving wildfire, and is, therefore, advising residents to avoid any outdoor burning until conditions improve.

Money

Newsweek - More Americans are relying on personal loans to pay for routine living expenses, as inflation, high housing costs and rising debt burdens continue to squeeze household finances, according to a new report from LendingTree.

The report, compiled from online inquiries about personal loans on the LendingTree platform from April 2025 through March 2026, found that 8.2 percent of personal loan requests on the platform are now being used for everyday bills, making it the fourth most common reason people seek a loan.

That figure has more than doubled from 3.4 percent in 2023, when everyday expenses ranked as only the 10th most common borrowing reason.

The findings point to growing financial strain among borrowers who are increasingly turning to loans not for large purchases or debt restructuring, but to cover basic essentials such as groceries, utilities and rent. It comes at a time when the U.S. has recorded its highest inflation in four years—3.8 percent in April—mostly driven by high fuel and energy costs.

The report found those borrowers seeking loans for everyday bills requested an average of $4,317, among the lowest loan amounts tracked in the report. They also had relatively low credit scores, averaging 574, compared with the average U.S. consumer FICO score of 713, according to Experian data cited in the report.

.Younger borrowers are the most likely to seek personal loans for routine expenses. Among Generation Z borrowers ages 18 to 29, 10.5 percent of loan requests were for everyday bills.

.... Ali Zane, personal finance expert and CEO of IMAX Credit Repair Firm, said the figures show there are broader economic pressures facing younger Americans, rather than irresponsible spending habits.

"There is nothing about Gen Z being spendthrift and careless in the data stating 10.5 percent of Gen Z personal loan requests go for everyday expenses against 5.6 percent of such loans for baby boomers," Zane told Newsweek.

Young less fond of AI than it might appear

Yahoo - Adults might assume that young people are using AI at record levels to do their homework, that they actively avoid any semblance of critical thought. And while those concerns might be well-founded, that view greatly misunderstands our younger generation’s shifting attitude towards AI.

Even though young people use AI tools quite readily, with 85% of teachers and 86% of students having used one in the 2024-25 school year at some point—many aren’t fond of it at all. Per a Gallup poll, young people’s resentment has grown significantly in the past year, with 48% of Gen Zers thinking the risks of AI in the workforce outweigh its benefits.

It’s part of a broader cultural backlash against AI, with many Gen Zers feeling genuine contempt for the AI-centric future that awaits them.

Drug overdose deaths down

Independent, UK - Drug overdose deaths in the United States saw a significant decline last year, with approximately 70,000 Americans succumbing to overdoses – a 14% reduction from the previous year. This marks the third consecutive annual drop, representing the longest such decline in decades, according to preliminary federal data released on Wednesday.

The 2025 total is comparable to the figures recorded in 2019, prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that decreases were observed across various drug types, including fentanyl, cocaine, and methamphetamine. While the vast majority of states experienced a fall in overdose fatalities, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico notably saw increases.

Gen Z

Democratic Values - A few weeks ago, Donald Trump signed a defense bill to bring back automatic draft registration. Starting this December, young men ages 18 to 26 will be automatically added to the Selective Service system without their consent.

Right now, Trump is continually escalating our nation’s tensions with Iran. He’s refused to rule out boots-on-the-ground military involvement, and tens of thousands of American troops are currently stuck in limbo in the Middle East.

At the exact same time, Republicans are pushing laws like the SAVE Act to make voting harder for young people. This should outrage every American. Plain and simple: they’re making it easier to send Gen Zers to war than to let them vote.

Senate

The Hill - The Senate on Thursday unanimously approved a resolution sponsored by Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) to suspend senators’ pay during future government shutdowns, a new rule that could give lawmakers in the upper chamber a powerful incentive not to block funding bills ahead of key deadlines. The Senate adopted the resolution by voice vote. It will go into effect after the November midterm election so it could apply to a potential end-of-year government shutdown, but not if one occurs ahead of the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year.

Kamala Harris

Deep State Tribunal - When a former vice president calls the American Dream a “myth,” she’s not just describing voter frustration—she’s auditioning to lead the next argument about what America owes its working families. Kamala Harris told a Democratic audience that for many Americans the Dream feels “more myth than reality,” and she put responsibility on both parties for eroding trust.

She tied today’s pessimism to concrete pressures: AI-driven job disruption, social-media-fueled division, and concentrated elite power. Polling cited alongside the speech showed nearly half the country doubts the Dream still exists, with skepticism higher among Democrats and younger voters.

China

Robert Reich - The American CEOs traveling with Trump to China don’t think of themselves as being in competition with China. In fact, they’d like nothing better than to make more money for themselves and their shareholders by setting up more lower-cost, highly productive factories and research facilities in China and hiring more Chinese talent.

It’s an important distinction. The CEOs of Chinese companies are in business not only to make money but also to strengthen China’s geopolitical power in the world. The CEOs of American companies want to make gobs of money, of course, but they couldn’t give a rat’s ass about strengthening America’s geopolitical power in the world.

The Guardian

On the western edge of Tiananmen Square in Beijing, in the imposing Mao-era Great Hall of the People, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping sat down for two hours of talks. After the meeting, China’s foreign ministry published Xi’s remarks. He said Taiwan was “the most important issue in China-US relations” and warned of “clashes and even conflicts” with the US over its future.

Beijing wants the US to reduce its levels of support for Taiwan, a self-governing island that China claims as part of its territory. Xi has made “unification” with Taiwan a core priority for his legacy and has not ruled out the use of force.

The Chinese government said the two leaders discussed the war in the Middle East, the Ukraine conflict and issues on the Korean peninsula. As my colleagues Amy Hawkins and David Smith have written, the US is entering into talks with its superpower rival from a vulnerable position.
Follow our live coverage of the summit here.

Donald Trump

The Hill - A comment from President Trump dismissing the pocketbook concerns of millions of Americans is threatening to upend his party’s midterm messaging on affordability. Trump told reporters on Tuesday that he does “not even a little bit” think about Americans’ financial situation when dealing with Iran, saying he only thinks about not letting Tehran have a nuclear weapon.

The comments could not come at a more politically inconvenient time for Trump. The Labor Department reported Wednesday that wholesale inflation spiked to 6 percent in April, up from 4 percent in March, as a result of the Iran war. That data came after the department reported Tuesday that the consumer price index increased 3.8 percent over the past 12 months.

The economic indicators are forcing Republicans battling to hold on to their House and Senate majorities to answer for the Trump economy, while more and more Americans grow frustrated over rising costs.

Gen X

Independent Pollster - Gen X [born 1965-1980] is the dominant generation among Independents at 36% — more than a third of the entire sample. More than three in five Independents are 45 or older. Gen X has lived through five presidents across three decades of varying cultural, political, and economic dysfunction. Their Independent tendency is the accumulation of a generation that entered the political system only to watch it repeatedly fail to deliver, resulting in a moving away from both parties.

Word

Robert Reich - Remember: Wealth cannot be separated from power. We're seeing in real time how the extreme concentration of wealth is distorting our politics, rigging markets, and granting unprecedented power to a handful of people. Taxing the rich isn't just an economic issue, it's a defense of our democracy.

Huge datacenter in Utah

The Guardian - In Utah, the approval of one of the world’s largest datacenters – spanning an area more than twice the size of Manhattan – has sparked a public backlash over the center’s vast energy and water demands. The footprint of the Stratos artificial intelligence datacenter will cover more than 40,000 acres over three sites, and it require about 9GW of power, more than the entire state of Utah currently consumes.

Middle East

The Hill - Republican senators are warning that any request from President Trump for tens of billions of dollars to pay for the Iran war will have a tough time passing the Senate, as patience wanes over what they say is a lack of a clear plan to end the conflict. GOP senators say additional funding likely won’t have the votes to pass unless Trump comes to Congress with a formal request for authorization, or at least a clear plan to end the war soon.

The big problem is that Trump seems to have no easy way of ending the war while Iran has a choke hold on the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of global oil supplies travel.

The Guardian - In a 50-49 vote, the Senate on Wednesday narrowly rejected a seventh attempt by Democrats to force an end to the US war on Iran, as a third Republican voted in favor.

Time - Senate Republicans on Wednesday narrowly blocked the strongest congressional effort yet to force an end to the war with Iran, as three Republican senators broke with their party over President Donald Trump’s handling of the conflict.

The measure, brought under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, failed by a single vote, 50 to 49. It was the seventh attempt in the Senate to pass such a measure since the war began in late February, and the first time Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, voted for it.

Murkowski was joined by Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky in backing the resolution. Collins first broke with Republican leadership on the issue last month, shortly before the expiration of a 60-day legal window that some legal experts argue required the Administration to seek congressional authorization for continued military action. Paul, a longtime critic of expansive presidential war powers, has voted for all seven attempts.

...The deciding vote was cast by Senator John Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Democrat and staunch supporter of Israel, who again crossed party lines to side with Republicans and oppose the measure.

Under the War Powers Resolution, presidents may introduce U.S. armed forces into hostilities for 60 days without congressional approval, after which authorization from Congress is required for military operations to continue. That clock began on March 2, when Trump formally notified Congress of military action against Iran, following joint U.S.-Israeli strikes launched days earlier.

Weather

Newsworthy News - The American West is draining its water reserves at a pace that can’t be sustained — and a decades-old weather technology may be one of the most practical, cost-effective tools available to help slow that drain.

Cloud seeding — dispersing silver iodide into clouds to trigger rain or snow — costs as little as $5 to $10 per acre-foot of water produced, a fraction of what new reservoirs or desalination plants cost. A landmark 2020 study confirmed unambiguously that cloud seeding increases snowfall, giving the technology its strongest scientific validation to date.

The technique requires specific meteorological conditions, meaning it can supplement water supplies but cannot manufacture rain from a clear sky. Western states facing a two-decade drought are already expanding cloud seeding programs as a low-risk, low-cost option while larger infrastructure solutions lag behind.

Grocery prices

Consumer Affairs - Grocery prices rose 0.7% in April, led by sharp increases in fruits and vegetables, beef, and nonalcoholic beverages. Fresh produce prices jumped 1.8% in a single month and are now up 6.1% over the past year. Beef prices surged 2.7% in April, helping push the meats, poultry, fish, and eggs category up 1.3%.

May 13, 2026

Donald Trump

BMJ - As the oldest person to be elected president of the United States, Donald Trump has faced questions about his health throughout his presidential career. But in addition to general concerns about the health risks that increase with age, some doctors have been asking broader questions about Trump’s mental health.

Such questions have only escalated in the rollercoaster 15 months of his second presidency,1 including a full scale war in the Middle East that, at the time of writing, was still having political and economic consequences.

Concerns about Trump’s mental health were raised during his first presidency (2017-2021). In April 2017, a conference was held at Yale University at which a group of psychiatrists discussed Trump’s mental health and the “duty to warn” others about the risks his health posed.

The following month Bandy Lee, then assistant clinical professor at the Yale School of Medicine and conference organiser, declared: “We have an obligation to speak about Donald Trump’s mental health issues because many lives and our survival as a species may be at stake.”

She said that Trump displayed symptoms of mental issues. “He has a great need for adulation. He is angry if reality does not meet his needs. People have been expecting him to settle into his role and become normal or more ‘presidential,’ but that does not ordinarily happen among those with such personality traits. In fact, what we’re seeing is a creation of his own reality, a reality that will meet Trump’s own emotional needs and the need to impose that reality on others.

Independent, UK - Former FBI Director James Comey has questioned Donald Trump’s mental fitness, arguing that both the president and Department of Justice are operating at a level of chaos and disregard for the rule of law that exceeds even his first term. “He doesn’t seem okay to me,” Comey, who was fired by Trump as FBI chief in 2017, told CNN Tuesday. “There was always something wrong with the man in that he lacks a moral center, but this seems off. This middle of the night obsessive truth after truth…retruthing and retruthing on his platform, seems crazy to me.”

Newsworthy News - President Trump praised Senator J.D. Vance and Senator Marco Rubio as a “dream team” and “perfect ticket” for 2028.... The claim resonated quickly across social media among Trump supporters, who have long viewed Vance and Rubio as strong, younger standard-bearers for the movement.

Heather Cox Richardson -- This morning, [Trump] started in again with a long screed attacking the New York Times for its coverage of his alterations to the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and insisting that Democratic presidents Obama and Joe Biden had “botched” renovations that he was now fixing for “a ‘tiny’ fraction of the cost!” He posted an AI image of Obama, Biden, and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) apparently swimming in a filthy version of the reflecting pool with the caption: “Dumacrats Love Sewage.” Then he posted an image of himself on the $100 bill. And then he was back to calling House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) “Low IQ.”

After posting a number of AI images showing the U.S. military destroying the Iranian military, Trump posted: “When the Fake News says that the Iranian enemy is doing well, Militarily, against us, it’s virtual TREASON in that it is such a false, and even preposterous, statement. They are aiding and abetting the enemy!”

Then he posted an image of a map with Venezuela overlaid with the U.S. flag. The caption read: “51st State.”

Trump seems to be comforting himself by lashing out at his perceived enemies and insisting he is competent and popular. Before he left for China today, he claimed: “We have Iran very much under control. We’re either going to make a deal or they’re going to be decimated. One way or the other, we win.”

The decline in education

NY Times - Almost everywhere in America, students are performing worse than their peers were 10 years ago, according to new, district-level test score data released Wednesday by the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford.

Compared with a decade earlier, reading scores were down last year in 83 percent of school districts where data was available. Math scores were down in 70 percent. The declines have affected both rich and poor districts, and crossed racial and geographic divides.

The new data provides the first national comparison of school districts through 2025, and offers a detailed picture of how individual school districts have performed over time. It underscores that many districts have experienced a long-term slump in student achievement, not just a blip during the pandemic.

From 2017 to 2019, students lost as much ground in reading as they did during the pandemic, and reading scores continued to fall at a similar rate through 2024....

In one in three school districts in the United States, students are reading a full grade level lower than they were in 2015. Only a few states, like Mississippi, have avoided the plunge.

Immediately after the pandemic, there was hope that students would recover quickly. The new data shows that scores inched upward in reading last year, and have climbed more steadily in math since 2022. But it has been nowhere near enough to make up for lost ground, researchers said.

Donald Trump

independent, UK - Former FBI Director James Comey has questioned Donald Trump’s mental fitness, arguing that both the president and Department of Justice are operating at a level of chaos and disregard for the rule of law that exceeds even his first term. “He doesn’t seem okay to me,” Comey, who was fired by Trump as FBI chief in 2017, told CNN Tuesday. “There was always something wrong with the man in that he lacks a moral center, but this seems off. This middle of the night obsessive truth after truth…retruthing and retruthing on his platform, seems crazy to me.”

Then he posted an image of a map with Venezuela overlaid with the U.S. flag. The caption read: “51st State.”

Health

Obesity rates in some countries levelling off or potentially falling, study finds

Netflix sued for secretly harvesting user data

Deep State Tribunal - Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a bombshell lawsuit accusing Netflix of secretly harvesting user data—including from children’s profiles—and selling it to data brokers for billions, contradicting years of public claims that the streaming giant “doesn’t collect anything.”

The 59-page lawsuit claims Netflix collects viewing habits, device data, and behavioral information, then sells it to data brokers and ad tech firms without consent. AG Paxton seeks to disable addictive features like autoplay on kids’ profiles, purge collected data, and impose fines up to $10,000 per violation.

Netflix denies the allegations, claiming full legal compliance and “industry-leading parental controls,” but the suit highlights a broader erosion of trust in Big Tech’s promises.

FBI

NOTUS - Kash Patel’s “payback squad”: Inside the FBI is a team of agents willing to pursue political targets set by Donald Trump’s administration. They are tasked with building cases similar to the recent criminal prosecution(s) of former bureau Director James Comey. They’re colloquially known as the “payback squad,” NOTUS’ Jose Pagliery reports, but one of Jose’s multiple bureau sources for the story said the moniker is likely a reference to an effort associated with the Director’s Advisory Team that Patel set up last year.

What they’re up to: The team is building criminal cases that seek to charge former top government officials with a “grand conspiracy” against Trump, Jose writes. They expect their work to soon result in an indictment of former CIA Director John Brennan.

Middle East

The role of Jared Kushner in Iran

Axios - Classified intelligence assessments from earlier this month indicate that "Iran has regained access to most of its missile sites, launchers and underground facilities," the N.Y. Times' Adam Entous, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan report.

"The findings undercut months of public assurances from President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who have told Americans that the Iranian military was 'decimated' and 'no longer' a threat," The Times notes.

The assessments say there's evidence that Iran restored operational access to 30 of the 33 missile sites along the Strait of Hormuz. They suggest Iran has retained roughly 70% of its prewar missile stockpile and 70% of its mobile launchers. It has regained access to about 90% of its underground missile storage and launch facilities. MORE

The Congressional Insider - Israel’s prime minister just floated a once-unthinkable idea: ending U.S. military aid—forcing Washington to ask whether “forever funding” allies has become a default setting instead of a strategy. Benjamin Netanyahu told CBS’s “60 Minutes” he wants to phase out the financial component of U.S. military aid to Israel to zero over the next decade, starting immediately. The current U.S.-Israel aid framework is governed by a 2016 memorandum committing $38 billion from 2018–2028, including roughly $3.8 billion annually.

As of May 2026, there are no formal negotiations to implement a phase-out, and aid continues to flow under the existing agreement. The proposal lands amid U.S. domestic frustration over spending, “forever commitments,” and a broader belief—left and right—that Washington’s priorities often serve elites more than citizens.

Co-op grocers

National Cooperative Business Asn - National Co+op Grocers (NCG) has released their 2025 Food Co-op Impact Report, highlighting how community-owned grocery stores continue to thrive by supporting local farmers and suppliers, offering more organic and responsibly sourced food, and investing in the health and well-being of their communities.

“The report underscores that community owned food co-ops are succeeding by offering a different kind of model—one where shoppers own the store, farmers get more stable markets and profits stay local,” said Allie Mentzer, NCG’s Chief Public Policy Officer for Advocacy & Sustainability.

...NCG food co-ops, which operate 244 stores, experienced sales growth of 6.2% in 2025, more than double the sales growth of the average U.S. grocery store benchmark of 2.9%, according to data obtained from RetailStat.com.

GOP Senators balk at $1B in security for White House ballroom

The Hill - A proposal to provide $1 billion in federal funds to provide security for a new White House ballroom is in danger of being stripped from a budget reconciliation package after Republicans responded skeptically to the idea. “I don’t have the details I need to support it. It was one thing when private dollars were building it. If you’re asking me for a billion dollars, I have some really hard questions,” Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) said before a Tuesday meeting with Secret Service Director Sean Curran.

GOP senators had lunch with Curran in the Capitol’s Mansfield Room on Tuesday as he pitched them on the need to spend $1 billion — substantially more than the ballroom was initially projected to cost — on security enhancements to the ballroom and the White House grounds more generally.

GOP senators said they wanted more details to justify the project, which is now estimated to cost several times more than the $200 million renovation President Trump announced in July.

It's not just blacks who are being targeted

Hartmann Report - The same outfit that wrote Project 2025 and watched the Trump administration follow their playbook virtually to the letter, has been busy assembling a 90-page tract called “Saving America by Saving the Family.”

It maps out a future in which American women are stripped of their right to vote without their husbands’ paperwork, denied access to contraception and abortion, pushed back into the home, and reduced to what Heritage’s new American Citizenship chair Scott Yenor calls the “heroic feminine” of motherhood and wifeliness. It’s quite a Mother’s Day card from the people who claim to revere motherhood the most.

Scott Yenor wants:

— To make gay sex illegal in America again,
— Divorce to be “difficult to get or proscribed,”
— Adultery and sex between unmarried consenting adults (he calls it “fornication”) criminalized, and
— The Civil Rights Act to be “scaled back” so that businesses, schools, and “every other institution in the country” can once again discriminate against women, queer people, and minorities the way they used to.

And just a few months ago, the Heritage Foundation, the same outfit that wrote Project 2025 and watched the Trump administration follow their playbook virtually to the letter, hired Yenor to chair its American Citizenship Initiative.

New York City

The Congressional Insider - New York City public schools are on track to lose 153,000 students over the next decade, draining the tax base while spending skyrockets to $42,000 per pupil—yet graduation rates have plummeted to a 20-year low.

Per-pupil spending surged 35% to $42,000 annually, while high school graduation rates fell to 81%, the lowest in two decades. Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx lost a combined 123,000 students since 2019-20, with families fleeing to Florida and New Jersey. Critics tie the exodus to Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s progressive agenda and high living costs, as families with young children leave at twice the rate of others.

Household debt

WalletHub - Q1 Results: Total household debt decreased by $339 billion during Q1 2026. That is 351% more than the decrease in Q1 2025.

Household Average: The average household owed a total of $155,607 at the end of Q1 2026, which is $14,804 below the all-time high.

Total Debt-to-Assets: The ratio between total household debt and assets, at 8.97%, continues to be at a very healthy level.

May 12, 2026

Polls

Newsweek - In the YouGov and Ipsos poll, Trump’s economic standing has dropped from net-positive territory early in his second term to deeply negative ratings, representing declines of more than 30 points in each case. In the CNN poll, Trump's rating is at its lowest point, underscoring the breadth and depth of the downturn.

AtlasIntel Poll: Which party do you trust more to handle the following issues?

Environment: D+27

Education: D+21

Healthcare: D+20

Economic Inequality: D+20

Jobs: D+17

Inflation/Cost of Living: D+16

Democracy: D+16

Trade/Tarrifs: D+13

Foreign Policy. D+11

Immigration: D+9

Taxes: D+9

Defense: D+7

Crime: D+3

Interactive Polls

AtlasIntel Poll: Primary votes

AOC: 26% (+10)

Buttigieg: 22% (+7)

Newsom: 21% (-14)

——

Rubio: 45% (+22)

Vance: 30% (-17)

DeSantis: 11% (-2)

Interactive Polls

Newsweek - The president has touted winning all of the swing states during the 2024 presidential election, and the projection shared by The Economist shows he is underwater in all those states: Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina and Nevada.

The states in which Trump has a positive net approval rating projection are Idaho, North Dakota, Wyoming, West Virginia, Tennessee and Oklahoma. He won all of these states versus former Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential election.

Mediaite - A shocking new poll from AtlasIntel suggests that there may be a new favorite to win the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 2028. According to the survey, which was conducted between May 4-7 and included a sample size of 2,069 American adults, a plurality (45.4%) of Republican respondents now identify Secretary of State Marco Rubio as their preferred choice to carry the GOP’s banner two years from now. Vice President JD Vance, who has long held the pole position in the race, finished in second with 29.6%, followed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) at 11.2%.

The Hill - A new CNN poll shows that 77 percent of Americans think President Trump’s policies have raised their costs of living. That includes a majority of Republicans. Trump’s approval rating on the economy sank to 30 percent in the poll, the lowest it has ever been.