War and God

Many posts have discussed the role of religion in American life.

Michelle Boorstein at WP:

Every month at the Pentagon, Hegseth hosts evangelical worship services that legal experts say are unprecedented. His social media profile and public comments routinely espouse his understanding of Christianity, which is one that would dominate American life and cast those who disagree with him as God’s enemies. He has brought clergy from his small Christian denomination to preach at the Pentagon, including a prominent pastor who says women shouldn’t have the right to vote.

And in recent weeks, the war with Muslim-majority Iran has only made Hegseth’s approach more stark.

On Wednesday at the Pentagon, Hegseth prayed for U.S. troops to inflict “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy … We ask these things with bold confidence in the mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ.” Later that day, his department announced military chaplains would no longer wear their rank on their uniform and instead would wear religious insignia.

A gentleman from Chicago has a different point of view:

 

This is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: “Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood” (Is 1:15).

— Pope Leo XIV (@Pontifex) March 29, 2026

News About Nones

Many posts have discussed the role of religion in American life.

I've got brand new data about American religion that was collected in October of 2025.

And, folks...

The share of Americans who are non-religious has dropped for the third year in a row.

Atheists and agnostics are down to 5% each.

Those are 2014 levels. pic.twitter.com/SDe2VXYFUx

— Ryan Burge 📊 (@ryanburge) March 26, 2026

War, Iran, Quantity, Attrition

Many posts have discussed war powers and the US military.

Michael Raasch at The Daily Mail:

Now, officials are urgently discussing whether Tomahawk missiles in other theaters, like the Indo-Pacific, may need to be shipped to the Middle East as the US continues its offensive against the Islamic Republic. Tomahawk cruise missiles have been a staple of American military might since they were first used in the Gulf War by George H W Bush. But the widespread usage of the bespoke military tech in the US war in Iran has rattled some Pentagon officials who are now sounding the alarm about the depleted Tomahawk stockpiles. The Pentagon hit back against the unnamed officials' concern in a statement to the Daily Mail.

John G. Ferrari and Dillon Prochnickiat AEI:

The parallels to the present are uncomfortable. After the Cold War, the Pentagon actively encouraged the consolidation of the defense industry. In 1993, Secretary of Defense Les Aspin and his deputy, William Perry, hosted a now-infamous dinner with the heads of the major defense contractors and told them bluntly that the post–Cold War budget would not sustain them all. The message was clear: Merge or be left behind. The industry obliged. Dozens of firms collapsed into a handful of prime contractors. The dinner became known as “the Last Supper,” and its legacy is the narrow, concentrated industrial base the United States is now trying to surge in wartime. Then came the Budget Control Act of 2011, which imposed automatic spending caps on the federal budget, resulting in defense cuts, as part of a deficit-reduction deal in Congress. Even after the caps were partially lifted in subsequent years, the damage to procurement pipelines, production lines, and inventory depth persisted. The combination of industrial consolidation and fiscal austerity produced the same trade-off the Truman-era Pentagon had made: fewer, more expensive systems and the assumption that wars would be short enough that depth would not matter. Now, as in 1950, a real war is exposing the consequences.

The logic behind that trade-off was not irrational. Precision, stealth, networking, and cutting-edge technology give the American military decisive advantages in short campaigns. The assumption was that the United States would fight brief wars, dominate quickly, and rely on technological overmatch to compensate for smaller inventories. But high-end capability without industrial depth is a fragile foundation for fighting an actual war. When a single interceptor costs millions of dollars and requires long lead times to produce, replenishment becomes a multiyear effort. When cruise missiles are built in limited quantities optimized for peacetime budgets rather than wartime demand, stockpiles evaporate quickly under sustained fire. When the industrial base has consolidated to a handful of suppliers with narrow surge capacity, scaling production becomes an exercise in wishful thinking.

The war with Iran is demonstrating that quantity and attrition still matter. Adversaries understand this well. Iran’s strategy is not to outmatch the United States technologically. It is to impose costs, stretch supplies, and exhaust American magazines beyond our ability to reconstitute them. In a broader strategic sense, China’s military modernization emphasizes mass production of missiles and drones precisely because China understands that sustained combat favors the side that can regenerate combat power quickly. Ukraine and Russia have learned the same lesson in their own war: Modern conflict demands weapons built at the nexus of quality and quantity. The United States must internalize this reality.

Bad Newspaper News

Many posts have dealt with media problems such as ghost newspapers and news deserts.

Taylor Herzlich at NY Post:

The Washington Post suffered the worst decline in print circulation among the top 25 newspapers in 2025 ahead of bloodbath layoffs earlier this year, as Jeff Bezos’ cancellation of a Kamala Harris endorsement outraged loyal readers, according to new data.

Average daily print circulation at the broadsheet tanked 21.2% in the six months through the end of September 2025 — down to 87,576 from 111,171 the previous year, according to a Press Gazette report citing data from the Alliance for Audited Media.

The Los Angeles Times, owned by billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, saw the second-largest drop in average print circulation, falling 19.8% to 63,492,according to the data.

It was another rough year for print papers across the industry, as the combined average daily print circulation of the top 25 largest newspapers fell 12.5% over the same period, and all but one of the top 25 saw declines.

But WaPo and the LA Times were hit especially hard following significant subscription cancellations after the papers’ editorial boards were blocked from printing endorsements of Harris ahead of the 2024 presidential election, according to the Press Gazette report.

Last month, the Washington Post axed a third of its newsroom — more than 300 journalists, including its entire sports desk — ignoring reporters’ impassioned pleas to Bezos.

Alice Brooker at PressGazette:

The combined average daily print circulation at 25 of the largest audited newspapers in the US fell by 12.5% in the six months to the end of September 2025, according to new data from Alliance for Audited Media (AAM). Figures supplied exclusively to Press Gazette show that only one title among the top 25 by combined print and digital circulations saw a rise in print circulation year on year. However, AAM has flagged that its circulation data does not include all digital newspaper subscriptions, and the non-profit organisation rolled out new digital reporting rules in February 2026.

America Is Getting Older and More Demographically Diverse

 Many posts have discussed demographic trends, especially the decline of births and the aging of the population.

Pew:

War Crimes

The Trump administration has allegedly committed and endorsed war crimes.

Thomas Gibbons-Neff and John Ismay at NYT:

President Trump’s threat to “obliterate” power stations in Iran if its leaders failed to open the Strait of Hormuz suggests that the United States is willing to violate international humanitarian law as part of its military campaign, according to current and former human rights officials.

“If Iran doesn’t FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!” Mr. Trump wrote on social media on Saturday.

He later extended the deadline to Friday.

The president’s threat appears to be part of his erratic messaging campaign, which is often construed as bluster or misdirection.

“Trump is openly threatening a war crime,” said Kenneth Roth, a former executive director of Human Rights Watch. “And people aren’t saying anything because they’re numb to it.”

By threatening to attack civilian infrastructure, Mr. Trump has once again pushed the United States into territory more familiar to its enemies than its allies.

In 2024, the International Criminal Court issued four arrest warrants to Russian military officers and officials charging them with war crimes for attacking “Ukrainian electric infrastructure.”

International law, specifically Article 52 of the first additional protocol of the Geneva Conventions, prohibits attacks on civilian objects. These laws are meant to protect civilians and those who can no longer fight, such as wounded soldiers, from the “barbarity of war.”

Breaking News and Age

 From Pew: