Are America's Best Days Behind Us?

Many posts have discussed civic culture.

In his 1992 address to the Republican National Convention, Ronald Reagan said:

Now let’s not dismiss our current troubles, but where they see only problems, I see possibilities — as vast and diverse as the American family itself. Even as we meet, the rest of the world is astounded by the pundits and finger pointers who are so down on us as a nation.

Well I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — America’s best days are yet to come. Our proudest moments are yet to be. Our most glorious achievements are just ahead. America remains what Emerson called her 150 years ago, “the country of tomorrow.”

Alas, most Americans no longer see it that way. Blen Wondimu at Pew:

Ahead of the United States’ 250th anniversary, 59% of Americans say the country’s best years are behind us, while 40% say its best years are ahead.

Americans are also much more pessimistic (44%) than optimistic (28%) when asked to think about what things will be like in the U.S. 50 years from now. Another 27% are neither optimistic nor pessimistic, according to a December 2025 Pew Research Center survey.

This research is part of an effort to study public perception on the direction of the U.S. ahead of the 250th anniversary of its founding. It coincides with our analysis about how the U.S. has changed since the country’s bicentennial in 1976.

Views on whether the country’s best years are behind or ahead of us differ somewhat across demographic and political groups.

Race and ethnicity: Majorities of Black (66%), Hispanic (64%) and White adults (57%) say the country’s best years are behind us, as do 53% of Asian adults.

Income: Majorities of adults with lower and middle incomes say the country’s best years are behind us (61% each). Upper-income adults are evenly split: Half say the nation’s best years are behind us and half say its best years are still to come.

Party: Democrats and those who lean toward the Democratic Party are more likely to say the country’s best years are behind us (64%) rather than ahead (34%). Republicans and Republican leaners are more evenly divided: 53% say the country’s best years are behind us, while 46% say they’re ahead.

 

Social Media Influencers in the CA Governor Race

Many posts have discussed social media. 

An unusually large number of social media posts support billionaire CA gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer.  Ben Wieder at LAT:

The posts include direct-to-the-camera appeals, with personal details interwoven into messages of support for Steyer. An influencer goes for a stroll as onscreen text touts Steyer’s policies. Some seek to convey authenticity, if occasionally ham-fistedly; one influencer mispronounces Steyer’s last name.

What they do not include is a disclosure that their creators were paid by the Steyer campaign to produce the videos, according to a complaint filed this week with California’s Fair Political Practices Commission and a Times review of the posts.

The complaint alleges that the Steyer campaign failed to notify the influencers it hired of their obligation to inform their audience when their posts have been sponsored by the campaign.

California passed a law in 2023 requiring that influencers disclose if they have been paid to create promotional content for or against a candidate or ballot measure, one of the few jurisdictions in the country with such a requirement. There is no such requirement at the federal level.

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Steyer’s campaign appears to have relied on paid influencers more than any candidate for governor, according to the most recent campaign finance filings.

That spending represents only a small fraction of the massive campaign war chest Steyer has seeded with nearly $180 million of his own money. But the complaint highlights the growing degree to which political candidates have come to seek out the authenticity that social media influencers seem to offer.

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While many of the new Steyer influencers have few followers, Steyer’s campaign disclosed in its most recent campaign finance report that it had paid thousands of dollars to numerous social media influencers with massive audiences, the Sacramento Bee reported.

Several of the videos produced by these popular social media personalities also failed to disclose that they had been paid by the campaign, according to the complaint and The Times’ review of the content.

But even accounts with few followers can still have a big impact if they are producing a steady stream of content supporting Steyer, said veteran California political strategist Mike Madrid.

“What they’re trying to do is trip the algorithm,” he said. “It looks like it has a bigger audience than it really does. It’s taking the concept of astroturfing into the digital age.”

ICE Loses in Court -- A Lot

Many posts have discussed immigration.

 Kyle Cheney at POLITICO:

Ten thousand losses.

That’s the Trump administration’s track record in court as federal judges grapple with the way ICE agents have swept through major U.S. cities and detained thousands of people in support of President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda.

More than 10,000 times, judges have said those detentions, typically carried out with no opportunity for detainees to plead their case, were illegal. That’s roughly 90 percent of all cases — a staggering rejection of a core piece of Trump’s immigration agenda.

Trump’s unprecedented detention policy, which is almost certainly headed to the Supreme Court, infuriated lower courts in ways no other modern issue has. It ruptured the relationship between the Justice Department and the judiciary; pitted the administration against itself; and upended innumerable lives — not just of the people swept up by immigration agents, but of their spouses and children, many of whom are U.S. citizens.

POLITICO is tracking the tens of thousands of detention cases that have flooded the system since ICE adopted its detention policy last July. Today we are releasing a full database of those rulings, giving the public an opportunity to see under the hood of our reporting — which has documented the courts’ lopsided results, ICE’s tactics for defying judges’ orders and the rising tensions between the judiciary and the Trump administration.

Public Opinion on Religion and Politics

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

Chip Rotolo and Gregory A. Smith at Pew:

Ahead of what the White House is calling a “large-scale revival” meeting on the National Mall devoted to “rededicating our country as One Nation under God,” a new Pew Research Center survey shows that a growing minority of U.S. adults say religion is gaining influence in American life. And more than half say religion plays a positive role in society.

At the same time, most people want churches and other houses of worship to stay out of day-to-day politics and not endorse candidates.

The new survey also finds growing familiarity with the term “Christian nationalism.” Most Americans surveyed now say they have heard at least a little about it.

Support for ideas that are sometimes associated with Christian nationalism is mostly unchanged in recent years. For example, there has been no growth in the shares of Americans who want the government to stop enforcing separation of church and state or who believe that God favors the United States over all countries.

There has, however, been a small uptick in the share of U.S. adults who say the federal government should declare Christianity the nation’s official religion: 17% now say this, up from 13% in 2024.

On many of these issues, there are sharp partisan divides. For example, Republicans are considerably more likely than Democrats to say religion has a positive influence on American life and to support religion having a prominent role in government and lawmaking.

 

GOP v. Trends in Higher Ed

Many posts have discussed the politics of colleges and universities in the United States.

Schickler E, Rodriguez EM. The College Campus and the Culture War: The Development of Party Polarization on Higher Education, 1980–2025. Studies in American Political Development. Published online 2026:1-21. doi:10.1017/S0898588X26100327

Abstract

We draw on a dataset of 1,044 state and national party platforms from 1980 to 2025 to track the evolution of Democratic and Republican positions with respect to higher education. The sector enjoyed considerable bipartisan support in the 1980s and early 1990s, with both parties generally expressing the view that 4-year colleges and universities contribute to economic vitality and student advancement. Starting in the mid-1990s, Republicans’ position gradually became more critical—even so, there is considerable diversity in views across states as late as 2010. In recent years, the party’s platforms have become almost uniformly negative toward higher education. The first line of GOP criticism focused on concerns about speech and alleged liberal bias. In the past decade, the party increasingly focused its criticism on higher education’s approach to racial and gender/sexuality issues—just as the intensity of opposition ramped up. Democratic platforms show much more stability but have expressed increased concern about college costs since the 2010s. Democrats also became more likely to express a liberal position on race and gender/sexuality policies just as the GOP became more vocal in criticizing these policies from the right. Our evidence suggests that the shift in the GOP’s positioning began at the national level and was instigated by nationally oriented ideological activists rather than mass-level demands. In a highly polarized and nationalized two-party system, the case of higher education illuminates the dangers that exist for any civil society institution when one party becomes hostile to its purposes and orientation.

Foreign Influence and a Mayor

Many posts have analyzed how foreign governments try to influence American politics and policy. Russia and China are prominent influencers.

Brittny Mejia and Rebecca Ellis at LAT:

Eileen Wang, an Arcadia city leader facing charges of acting as an illegal foreign agent of China, resigned Monday after reaching an agreement to resolve the federal case.

Wang, who served as mayor of the San Gabriel Valley suburb, entered into a plea agreement with prosecutors over charges that she acted under the control of the People’s Republic of China to promote propaganda in the U.S. between 2020 and 2022, according to court filings.

Wang, who was previously elected to the City Council in November 2022, stepped down as mayor on Monday hours after the plea agreement was unsealed. Arcadia officials and Wang’s attorneys said the conduct described by federal authorities occurred before Wang was elected.

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From late 2020 through at least 2022, Wang worked with Yaoning “Mike” Sun, her former fiance, to run a website called U.S. News Center that branded itself as a news source for Chinese Americans, according to the plea agreement unsealed Monday. Both Wang and Sun “executed directives” from Chinese government officials, posting requested articles and reporting back with screenshots showing how many people viewed the stories, the agreement says.

On June 10, 2021, the agreement says, Wang received a message from a government official about “China’s Stance on the Xinjiang Issue,” which included a link to a letter to the editor in the Los Angeles Times from the consul general of the People’s Republic of China in Los Angeles. The consul general had been responding to a Times editorial supporting a boycott of products made with cotton produced in the Xinjiang region of China.

At the time, news reports were highlighting the Chinese government‘s campaign of incarceration, persecution and “reeducation” of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang province.

“There is no genocide in Xinjiang; there is no such thing as ‘forced labor’ in any production activity, including cotton production. Spreading such rumor is to defame China, destroy Xinjiang’s safety and stability,” read the message from the Chinese government official, according to the plea agreement.

Minutes after receiving the link, Wang posted the article on her website and responded to the Chinese government official with a link to the article on her website, according to the court filing.

“So fast, thank you everyone,” the government official responded, the court records show.

Prosecutors also say Wang edited articles at the request of officials and shared information showing the reach of the posts.

“Thank you leader,” she wrote on Aug. 20, 2021, after being complimented for a post that was viewed more than 15,000 times, according to the plea agreement.

Regulating the Internet

 Bruce Mehlman:

National governments are also considering AI oversight and regulation, but the past three decades of internet policy have shown profoundly different goals & approaches. The U.S. has prioritized innovation, the EU consumer protection, China governmental control. As a result, America has enjoyed the most tech entrepreneurship by a wide margin, but we lack many rules to protect children, contain misinformation or fight fraud

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