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From gas to groceries, has Trump kept his promise to tackle rising prices?

November 9, 2025

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President Donald Trump was swept to power for a second time on the back of a central campaign promise to tackle inflation.

The steep rise in the cost of living was top of voters’ minds, and Trump blamed President Joe Biden.

He also made sweeping promises to bring down prices for Americans “starting on day one”.

One year on from his victory, BBC Verify revisits some of the president’s claims.

Groceries

“When I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on Day One,” Trump declared at an August 2024 news conference surrounded by packaged foods, milk, meats, and eggs.

Official data – which includes a four-month period when Biden was still president – shows grocery prices rose by 2.7% in the 12 months to September 2025, with some items seeing significantly sharper increases:

Coffee: 18.9%

Ground beef (minced beef): 12.9%

Bananas: 6.9%

Since Trump took office in January, the data also shows that apart from one recorded fall in April, grocery prices have risen each month.

“The president of the United States has very little control over the price of food, especially in the short term,” food economics expert Professor David Ortega told BBC Verify.

Trump’s tariffs are driving up prices of certain foods, he said – a third of coffee consumed in the US comes from Brazil and therefore has a 50% tariff.

Trump’s illegal immigration crackdown may also have had an impact, Ortega adds, especially in farming, where as many as 40% of workers are estimated to be undocumented, which is close to a million people.

“As you know, farmers and companies have to raise wages in order to attract more labour. But trying to quantify those impacts in terms of price increase is almost impossible at the moment.”

Diane Swonk, the chief economist for KPMG, believes tariff and immigration policy changes have contributed to higher costs.

“There’s no question that those shifts are now starting to show up as inflation pressures,” she said.

But she adds that other factors, including weather events, have contributed.

“On coffee, you had climate issues for a very bad growing season, and that was exacerbated by a tariff on Brazil and also Colombia,” she said.

A White House official told BBC Verify President Trump did not control weather patterns in South America, and coffee prices hikes were a global phenomenon.

Data that tracks the cost of coffee shows prices have risen globally, peaking in February, but are now falling.

The same official said the president was addressing rising beef prices by temporarily increasing imports.

While grocery prices are up overall, not every item has become more expensive.

When Trump succeeded Biden in January, the price of a dozen large eggs was $4.93 (£3.79), rising to a record high of $6.23 (£4.78) in March following bird flu outbreaks.

Since then, prices have fallen to $3.49 (£2.68) a dozen.

“President Trump’s supply-side policies are taming Joe Biden’s inflation crisis,” White House Spokesman Kush Desai said.

Other items that have fallen in price over the past 12 months include: butter and margarine (-2%), ice cream (-0.7%), and frozen vegetables (-0.7%).

Electricity

During his campaign, Trump pledged to cut electricity bills sharply.

“Under my administration, we will be slashing energy and electricity prices by half within 12 months, at a maximum 18 months,” he told a rally in August 2024.

Since he became president, prices have risen.

The latest figures show average residential electricity rates reached 17.62 cents per kWh (kilowatt hour) in August 2025 – up from 15.94 cents per kWh in January 2025, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

“It was technically impossible [to halve prices] at the time he made the promise,” according to Professor James Sweeney from the Stanford Precourt Institute for Energy.

Electricity prices not only reflect the cost of generation but also the expense of delivering it through “the wires and the transformers and everything else”, he explained.

Prof Sweeney attributes the increase to both demand and supply issues.

“We have a surge in demand, mostly driven by data centres. People creating images using artificial intelligence are using significant amounts of electricity.”

He added that cuts to renewable energy subsidies and tariffs on imported steel – which raise the cost of building new power generators – have also pushed up prices.

Swonk agreed that the AI boom is pushing up prices, especially for those on lower incomes.

“It exacerbates inequality because consumers that have more access to solar panels and renewables tend to be wealthier households,” she said.

In response, a White House official said that Trump was expanding coal, natural gas and nuclear power, which was “the only viable way to meet the growing energy demand and to lower energy prices”.

Cars

At a campaign rally in September 2024, Trump extended his grocery pledge to cars, telling supporters: “We’re going to get the prices down… groceries, cars, everything”.

However, the average price of a new car topped $50,000 (£38,411) for the first time ever in September, up from $48,283 (£37,092) in January, according to Kelley Blue Book, a US vehicle valuation research company.

Car prices typically rise 2-3% a year, explained Erin Keating from Cox Automotive.

“Tariffs, which have been the biggest factor in the automotive industry over the last 12 months, have been nothing but inflationary.”

She explained new car prices are increasing by about 4% a year, with tariffs contributing at least one percentage point.

“We really think in 2026 that’s going to go higher because most of the manufacturers are holding their fire on raising prices directly due to tariffs, but they’re going to have to come in at some point.”

Keating did point to tax breaks for people in Trump’s spending bill, which she believes may incentivise people to buy new cars.

When asked about the rising price of cars, a White House official told BBC Verify the administration had taken historic regulatory actions to “reverse the left’s radical energy scam and save billions annually”.

Gasoline

Trump made a specific campaign pledge of “getting gasoline below $2 a gallon”.

On the day he entered the White House, the average price for a gallon of “regular” gas was $3.125 (£2.33) according to the American Automobile Association (AAA).

While a long way short of his pledge to get prices below $2, the price of a gallon of gas has fallen to a national average of $3.079 (£2.36).

In response, a White House official pointed us to a gas price comparison website, which had a slightly lower national average of $2.97 (£2.38) per gallon compared with the AAA’s data.

The official added that President Trump has quickly unleashed American energy to make gas affordable again for families across the country.

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Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgkl25734go

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For Gen Z-ers, Work Is Now More Depressing Than Unemployment

November 9, 2025

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The older generation always discounts the workplace complaints of the younger generation. In my 20s, there seemed to be an endless supply of commentary about how we millennials were lazy and entitled, just like the members of Generation X before us were slackers. Members of Gen Z get the bad rap of being “unemployable,” because apparently, they do not prize achievement for its own sake, or they’d rather be influencers because the internet has broken their brains.

Gen Z-ers don’t even deserve this perfunctory slander, because the entire process of getting and keeping an entry-level job has become a grueling and dehumanizing ordeal over the past decade.

Certainly, the job market seems grim in this moment. Michael Madowitz, the principal economist at the Roosevelt Institute, described it as “an awful traffic jam.” “If you’re just out of college, you’re trying to merge into a freeway and nobody is letting you in,” he explained. Employers at companies like Airbnb and Intuit almost sound excited talking to The Wall Street Journal about staying lean and culling the number of employees they have, as long as it creates short-term profits.

But the whole experience of work for young people has been tortured for far longer than the economy has been stalled. Earlier this year, my colleague David Brooks spoke to a college senior who called young Americans “the most rejected generation,” describing the hypercompetition that has bled into all aspects of life, even for the most privileged college-educated strivers.

Because most job applications are submitted online, the bar to applying is so much lower than it was in the analog world decades ago, and so for any open role, applicants are competing with hundreds of people. The sense of scarcity and lack starts earlier, because so many selective colleges boast about their record-low admissions rates.

But now artificial intelligence is performing the first few rounds of culling, including early screening, which is further dehumanizing and gamifying the application process. Richard Yoon, who is an economics major at Columbia, told me that when his peers have multiple interviews for jobs in finance, he asks if they heard back from any of them. They tell him: “You don’t understand. Like 19 of those 20 interviews were with bots.”

It’s customary for job seekers to review their résumés for keywords they think A.I. likes, Yoon told me, so that they might have a chance of getting through the digitized gantlet and one day making human contact that could possibly lead to a job offer. Or at the very least, a real-life networking connection. Yoon called the process “dystopian.”

But once you actually have a job, the real dystopia begins. Young people feel as if jobs offer far less mentorship and more micromanaging. Stevie Stevens, who is 27 and lives in Columbus, Ohio, told me that she left a full-time job in July at an exhibition design and production firm because she felt hyperscrutinized and undersupported. “Managers expect you to do six jobs in a 40-hour workweek. My company had mediocre benefits and offered little to no professional growth or training,” she told me.

Stevens also said that what she calls “surveillance state technologies” — apps that synthesized her personal data to determine her level of effort — are part of that feeling of micromanagement. Though she doesn’t have benefits through work now and deals with more uncertainty as a freelancer, she is happier because she has autonomy and control over her time and her efforts.

For the past several years, employers have used “bossware” to track worker productivity. A Times investigation in 2022 found that across professional fields and pay grades, employers were tracking keyboard use, movements, and phone calls, and docking employees for time that they perceived to be “idle.”

That kind of tracking doesn’t account for things like conversations with peers, thinking — you know, with your brain — or, if you work in a warehouse, taking a rest so your body doesn’t fall apart. At least older workers knew a time before this tracking was ubiquitous, and at this point might be senior enough to have the leverage to push back against the most extreme types of surveillance.

It’s no wonder, then, that a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in July found that young worker despair has been rising in the United States for about a decade. Its co-authors, David Blanchflower and Alex Bryson, analyzed data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a yearly federal health survey of 400,000 Americans, focusing on how many bad mental health days — ones described as containing “stress, depression and problems with emotions” — a worker had in the past month. They then created a mental despair measurement using the number of bad mental health days, comparing mental despair across demographic, employment, and educational characteristics.

Blanchflower and Bryson found that for workers under 25, mental health is now so poor that they are generally as unhappy as their unemployed counterparts, which is new in the past several years. The rise in despair is particularly pronounced among women and the less educated. Last year, job satisfaction for people under 25 was about 15 points lower than it was for people over 55. This was true in the same year that satisfaction rose for every other age group, according to a survey from the Conference Board. The unhappiness of young workers seemed so pronounced in the past year, whether because of the rapid rise of A.I., the uncertainty of the market, or some other rancid combination of post-Covid malaise and general disaffection.

I called Bryson to find out more about why young workers are so unhappy. He has two hypotheses. One is that the perception of work satisfaction has changed: Young people expect to be happier than previous generations were, in part because they’re using social media to compare themselves to some of their peers, only to then find themselves disappointed by the tedium of their own 9-to-5s. But the other hypothesis is in line with what I’m hearing from young people: The workplace is markedly worse.

Eleanor Davis

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/05/opinion/gen-z-work.html

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Chimps Can Weigh Evidence and Update Their Beliefs Like Humans Do

November 8, 2025

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You generally have reasons, good or bad, for your beliefs. You can reflect on those reasons: “Why do I think there’s a serial killer in the attic? It’s because the floor creaked.” And, paragon of rationality that you are, you can also adjust your beliefs when additional evidence demands it: “Having scoured the attic, baseball bat in hand, I must conclude that it’s just an old, creaky house.”

This cognitive skill is known as belief revision. It’s long been considered a hallmark of human rationality that distinguishes us from other animals. It relies on a reflective awareness of our own thought processes—thinking about thinking, or metacognition—that other species don’t obviously possess. But a new study, published today in the journal Science, shows that our closest evolutionary relatives also reason in surprisingly sophisticated ways.

In a series of experiments, researchers tested chimpanzees at the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Uganda to see how the animals juggled different sources of evidence. Each experiment revolved around food hidden in one of several boxes: The chimps would pick the box they thought was most promising based on an initial clue. Then they’d get another clue that sometimes conflicted with the first. Given the chance to update their decision, they almost always chose the box predicted by a rational-choice model and only changed their mind when the new information was stronger than what they already knew. “The chimps knocked it out of the park,” says Brian Hare, an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University, who was not involved in the study. “It’s obvious this is so easy for them.”

Most impressively, the animals even accounted for clues that undermined earlier evidence. If they heard something bouncing around inside box 1, they would assume, at first, that it was an apple—but then the experimenter would pull out a stone. Realizing they had been misled, the chimps would immediately opt for box 2, even though it appeared uninspiring a moment before. This was “the cherry on top,” says study co-author Jan Engelmann, a comparative psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley. “None of us thought they could do it because it’s just so complex.”

Of course, lots of animals obey reason without reflecting on it; an amoeba is acting rationally, in some sense, when it follows chemical signals toward food. This “unreflective responsiveness to evidence,” as it’s been called, is a mere shadow of human rationality. But Engelmann argues that chimpanzees’ ability to scrutinize evidence and gauge the certainty of their own knowledge comes much closer to the real thing. “It’s very hard to explain the chimps’ behavior without appealing to some notion of reflection,” he says.

Christopher Krupenye, who studies animal cognition at Johns Hopkins University and was not involved in the study, agrees. He’s agnostic about the content of that reflection—without language, it’s unclear how animals could mentally represent the propositions that make up human beliefs (“I hear rattling, so there’s probably an apple in the box”). It’s possible the chimps think primarily in pictures. Regardless, Krupenye says, “all of this suggests they’re not just driven by simple, emotional responses. They have rather complex awareness.”

Clearly, however, there’s still more to human rationality. According to study co-author Hanna Schleihauf, a comparative psychologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, the crucial ingredient may be social interaction—we’re able to sharpen our beliefs through discussion. “This is really what makes humans so special,” she says. “We give and ask for reasons.” Indeed, some cognitive scientists think our reasoning skills evolved so that we could argue with one another.

This study reminds us that those skills evolved from somewhere—namely, from cognitive abilities that were already present in the common ancestor we share with chimpanzees and bonobos. More than 150 years ago, Charles Darwin predicted that our extraordinary mental powers would turn out to be extensions of capacities found throughout the animal kingdom. If chimpanzees are truly capable of reflection, the gap between us and our primate cousins narrows a bit further. As Hare puts it, there’s no need to search the stars for intelligence akin to our own. “We already know we’re not alone,” he says. “There are beings here, considering the world in a way that we think of as being rational.”

Chimpanzees show the capacity to revise their beliefs when presented with new evidence. Innocent Ampeire/Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/chimpanzee-metacognition-allows-humanlike-belief-revision/

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1 in 3 New Moms Don’t Have Their Mothers by Their Side—And It’s Taking a Toll

November 8, 2025

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Traditionally, a new mom’s own mother serves as a sturdy pillar and soft place to land, all wrapped into one. But new data suggests that’s not the case for many. A third of new moms enter motherhood without their mother by their side, according to a report from The Motherless Mothers (TMM) and Peanut, an app connecting people at every stage of parenting.

The findings also suggest that rates of depression and other perinatal mental health conditions are higher in those who are mothering without their mothers because of death, illness, or estrangement.

“Moms usually offer a kind of comfort that’s hard to replace, especially when everything feels new and overwhelming,” says Nona Kocher, MD, MPH, a Miami-based board-certified psychiatrist. “During pregnancy and early motherhood, that kind of support matters more than ever.”

Troublingly, many mothers reported not feeling supported in their struggle, particularly during health care visits. The report says maternal well-being can be helped with one question during check-ups: “Do you have support from your mother or a maternal figure?”

But there are ways for these news moms to find support elsewhere and improve their postpartum experience, experts share.

Why Mothering Without a Mom Can Be So Hard

The worldwide report of more than 2,300 respondents found pronounced effects of mothering without a mother.

81% of respondents report having a perinatal mental health condition, which is more than four times the U.S. average of 20%.2

In particular, motherless mothers in the U.S. are 5.4 times more likely to experience perinatal depression than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-reported national average of 12.5%.

85% of respondents say that motherhood reopened their grief.

These feelings are understandable—expected even—as mothers are often emotional anchors for their daughters during this transition period, says Kiana Shelton, LCSW, a licensed therapist with Mindpath Health.

“During pregnancy and postpartum, a mother can provide normalization when everything feels uncertain,” Shelton explains. “When that maternal presence is missing, there’s not just a lack of support, but a loss of grounding. This absence can intensify feelings of isolation, anxiety, and identity confusion, all of which can increase the risk of perinatal/postpartum depression.”

Catherine M. Cunningham, MD, the section chief of psychiatry at Hackensack Meridian Ocean University Medical Center, agrees, saying perceived loss or a lack of social support is one of the strongest indicators for postpartum depression. And parenting without a mom leaves a gaping hole for many since mothers often provide instrumental support and emotional scaffolding needed in the postpartum period.

“Instrumental support involves practical help with newborn care, meals, and other household tasks to buffer stress and reduce sleep deprivation,” explains Dr. Cunningham. “Emotional scaffolding includes reassurance and validation, modeling of the maternal caregiver role, and a sense of community and family identity.”

When that maternal presence is missing, there’s not just a lack of support, but a loss of grounding. This absence can intensify feelings of isolation, anxiety, and identity confusion, all of which can increase the risk of perinatal/postpartum depression.

Loss Doesn’t Just Mean Death

Importantly, Peanut and TMM, a registered charity and community for mothers navigating parenthood, define the loss of a mother broadly to include death, illness, distance, and estrangement. The latter is critical to acknowledge, as research shows about 6% of adults are estranged from their mothers.

“Estrangement is different from separation due to death or illness, because it involves a choice, whether from the daughter, the mother, or both,” says Geralyn Fortney, LPC, PMH-C, a licensed professional counselor and regional clinic director with Thriveworks. “With that comes questions, and sometimes guilt, shame, or blame.”

After birth, some may experience a strong desire to reach out to their estranged mother, “even if the person knows that it might not be in their best interest,” says Fortney. “People yearn for that connection, which can be overwhelming.”

As for illness, it presents a gray area that’s significantly challenging for a new mother to navigate, especially if she’s assisting with her parent’s care. “If illness is severe, anticipatory grief may be present as well,” adds Fortney.

Death, of course, is permanent, and Fortney isn’t surprised to learn that the perinatal stage rekindled grief in moms.

“People often think they have ‘moved on,’ but are retriggered by the birth of their child,” Fortney says. “The desire to reach out, to share this milestone, to have their mother present can be overwhelming.”

Unsurprisingly, Moms Aren’t Finding Enough Support

Mothering without a mother figure is challenging enough. But the women who took the new Peanut and TMM survey shared that they aren’t receiving support from people involved in their care. About 74% said their health care providers never asked if they had maternal support, and only half of those who were asked said they received meaningful help.

“The grief of mothering while motherless is rarely acknowledged in our culture,” says Emily Guarnotta, PsyD, PMH-C, psychologist and founder of Phoenix Health. “When a new baby arrives, society focuses its attention on the new baby, not the mother. Our culture also has a lot of discomfort when it comes to grief and family issues.”

Photo: Parents/GettyImages/PeopleImages

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.parents.com/mothering-without-your-mom-11835518

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Trump’s Latest White House Makeover: The Lincoln Bathroom in Marble and Gold

November 8, 2025

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President Trump is not stopping with the East Wing.

On Friday, Mr. Trump said he had renovated the bathroom in the Lincoln Bedroom, posting two dozen photos on social media as he continues to remodel the White House in his own style.

Mr. Trump said the new design of black and white marble with gold faucets and light fixtures was “very appropriate for the time of Abraham Lincoln.”

The White House did not say, in response to questions, who paid for the renovation, how much it cost or which contractor built it.

The bathroom is only the latest remodel that Mr. Trump has undertaken at the White House, including the demolition of the East Wing. He has wide latitude as president to make changes, although critics have raised questions about the funding and lack of transparency.

President Harry Truman redid the bathroom in 1945, and Mr. Trump has repeatedly criticized its style.

Speaking to donors this month, Mr. Trump called the bathroom’s style “not good.”

“Art Deco doesn’t go with, you know, 1850 and civil wars and all of the problems,” Mr. Trump said. “But what does is statuary marble. So I ripped it apart and we built the bathroom. It’s absolutely gorgeous and totally in keeping with that time.”

Edward Lengel, who served as the chief historian of the White House Historical Association, said of the photos Mr. Trump posted: “It doesn’t look anything like 1860s interiors to me.”

Michael F. Bishop, the former executive director of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, said the bathroom was a sitting room in the president’s day and was unlikely to have included marble.

“The present-day bathroom only takes up a portion of the Lincoln sitting room,” Mr. Bishop said. “They created a bathroom in the corner of this room. Trump’s change to the bathroom is not remotely a crime against historical preservation or anything like that. It was just a fairly dated-looking bathroom.”

The historian Harold Holzer, the author of many books about Mr. Lincoln, said that when Mr. Lincoln moved into the White House in 1861, there were two water closets on the second floor, including one adjacent to the rooms where he lived with the family.

When Mary Todd Lincoln complained about the overall poor condition of the White House, Mr. Holzer said, he reminded her that it was better than any other house they had ever lived in.

“Lincoln had an outhouse in Springfield, and heaven knows what when he lived in log cabins with his parents, so the plain bathroom was fine with him,” Mr. Holzer said. “He thought it was a majestic step up.”

During his second term, Mr. Trump has wasted no time making changes to historical elements of the White House, arguing that parts of it are dated or too small. He tore down the entire East Wing, which had stood for more than a century, to make way for a planned 90,000-square-foot, $300 million ballroom that he said was necessary for receiving dignitaries.

His plans for the size of the ballroom continue to expand.

Mr. Trump has said that he and a group of donors — not the taxpayers — are footing the bill for the ballroom. His staff has released a list of donors, but has not said how much each one has given. The money is being deposited in the Trust for the National Mall, a nonprofit, tax-exempt entity that is not subject to transparency laws.

He also has added gold moldings and gold decorations throughout the Oval Office, and gold ornaments to the Cabinet Room. He cut down the White House’s historic magnolia tree, which President Andrew Jackson planted in 1829 in memory of his wife, Rachel.

He removed a photo of Hillary Clinton and replaced it with an image of his own face colored with the American flag. He added marble floors and a chandelier to the Palm Room.

He paved over the Rose Garden grass to add a patio. Along the West Wing colonnade, he added gold-framed photos of every American president except his predecessor, Joseph R. Biden Jr., whom he depicted as an autopen.

Mr. Trump and White House staff members say the president is granted wide latitude to make renovations on the property. Mr. Trump has said he is not subject to zoning regulations or permitting requirements.

The Lincoln bathroom has been renovated to include marble walls and gold fixtures. The view remains the same. Credit…Donald Trump, via Truth Social

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/31/us/politics/trump-lincoln-bathroom-white-house.html

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Resuming U.S. Nuclear Tests Is Reckless and Dangerous, One Expert Says

November 7, 2025

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Ahead of a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday, President Donald Trump said the U.S. will resume nuclear testing, ending a 33-year moratorium.

“Because of other countries’ testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis,” Trump announced on his social media platform, Truth Social.

The U.S. last tested a nuclear weapon in an underground experiment in the Nevada Test Site in 1992, a marker of the end of the cold war. That last test concluded a decades-long testing program that included more than 1,000 detonations conducted by the civilian Department of Energy, which oversees the U.S. nuclear stockpile.

The Project 2025 report, now acknowledged by Trump as an indicator of his administration’s policies, had called for resuming U.S. nuclear testing to ensure the performance of the nuclear stockpile. Trump’s announcement follows recent Russian tests of a nuclear-powered cruise missile and a nuclear-capable underwater drone, but there have not been any known nuclear detonations recently made by either Russia or China. Both of those nations are signatories to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), which the U.S. has signed yet never ratified. (China also hasn’t ratified the treaty, and Russia revoked its ratification in 2023, however.) China last tested a bomb in 1996, and the Soviet Union last tested one in 1990. Both countries have expressed concern about Trump’s announcement, and Russia has threatened to start its own tests.

To ask what is at stake in Trump’s call to resume U.S. nuclear tests, Scientific American spoke with Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on the geopolitics of nuclear weaponry at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

We haven’t done a nuclear test since 1992. So what is the argument for doing this? Are there any technical benefits to resuming testing?

The question is: What sort of testing are we talking about? The U.S can presently test nuclear weapons in every way, shape or form—except for doing explosive tests that create yield. The U.S. now does so-called subcritical tests about 1,000 feet under the Nevada desert. And so it’s very unclear what the president means.

Are we talking about a full-yield test out in the desert? Or are we talking about small lab experiments that produce much less yield? It’s very unclear. And all of those [tests] have different yields [that have] different purposes.

But if I were to back up to issue one sweeping statement, it would be: No, [there aren’t any benefits to resuming testing] because the U.S. already conducted more than 1,000 nuclear tests. It has a vast trove of data that underlies the most sophisticated computer models imaginable. The U.S. knows more about its nuclear weapons today than it did in the period when it was testing them. The only countries that will really learn more if testing resumes are Russia and, to a much greater extent, China.

Project 2025 called for resuming underground nuclear tests, though. Would Trump’s announcement seem to point in that direction—basically, to the U.S. once again blowing up such weapons underground?

During the last [Trump] administration, [officials] spoke of being ready to resume nuclear testing. And they discovered that it would be a couple of years before they could do it. Then they started talking about doing uninstrumented tests, which are literally pointless.

You get no data from an uninstrumented test. It’s just a demonstration. All you do is demonstrate that we have functional nukes. It’s really unclear why you would do that.

What would this do to the nonproliferation movement, with the whole idea of a testing moratorium going out the window?

It’s possible the test ban collapses. But it is also possible that the nonproliferation treaty [the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which entered into force in 1970] collapses because that requires the U.S., Russia, and other nuclear-weapon states to make good-faith efforts to work toward the elimination of nuclear weapons.

But non-nuclear-weapon states have made it clear that this test ban is literally the bare minimum. And most of those countries aren’t very happy that the U.S hasn’t ratified the [CTBT]. But the fact that there has at least been an end to nuclear testing has been really important to sustaining a sense around the world that nonproliferation is a common good rather than just an effort at a nuclear monopoly by a few countries.

Normally, I am not one of those people who believes in that kind of symbolic stuff. But so much of [the Trump administration’s] foreign policy seems to be about being transgressive. Whatever effect a resumption in testing would have on our domestic politics, it also affects how people abroad see us. It becomes difficult to persuade people to do the things we want them to do when we seem reckless and selfish.

There’s also this matter of modernizing the U.S nuclear program, a long-running effort that’s over budget and delayed. How would new nuclear testing play into that?

If there were a technical reason to resume testing, you could imagine that would reduce the need for modernization, because successful testing would suggest that the existing systems are in excellent shape.

That said, I don’t think this is a sincere effort to get additional data to be more informed about the state of the U.S. arsenal. I think this is intended as a transgressive act that’s supposed to bully the Russians and the Chinese and aggravate the president’s domestic enemies.

So why do it?

Well, the real fundamental question here is: What the hell does [Trump] mean in that Truth Social post? Because Russia hasn’t conducted a nuclear test, it’s tested nuclear-capable or nuclear-powered assets.

And the Russians and Chinese aren’t accused of doing clandestine things at their test sites—or, at least, they haven’t been accused of that on an unclassified basis. And the Department of Defense doesn’t have any role in this, really, because nuclear testing is handled by the Department of Energy. So you just kind of stare at Trump’s statement, and you’re like, “What?”

I just don’t know what any of this means. I thought I was an expert, and I can’t parse the words he’s using.

The crater-scarred landscape of the Nevada Test Site. Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trumps-baffling-call-for-resuming-u-s-nuclear-tests/

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Prime Video: The 30 Absolute Best Shows to Watch

November 7, 2025

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Have you run out of TV series to tackle on Prime Video? Chances are, you’re leaving some great options unwatched.

You might know Amazon’s streaming service best for shows like The Boys and Fallout — and both are great — but you shouldn’t stop there if you have a subscription. The streamer is home to lesser-known series like The Devil’s Hour and continues to add excellent options, such as the new college-set comedy Overcompensating.

Note that Prime Video is ad-supported and charges an extra fee to remove commercials. Read on for this month’s new releases and a collection of the best shows on the streamer.

What’s new on Prime Video in November

Note: These descriptions are taken from Prime Video press releases and lightly edited for style.

Nov. 7

Maxton Hall: The World Between Us, season 2 premiere (2024- ): Teen drama series. In season 2, everything seems to be going perfectly for Ruby. But a stroke of fate in James’ family changes everything.

Nov. 10

Bat-Fam, season 1 premiere (2025- ): Animated series. It’s a follow-up to the film Merry Little Batman and revolves around Batman, Alfred, and young Damian Wayne — now having taken on the mantle of “Little Batman” — as they welcome a few new residents to Wayne Manor.

Nov. 14

Malice, season 1 premiere (2025- ): Thriller series. It’s about a charming tutor who infiltrates the brash, wealthy Tanner family, in order to destroy them.

Nov. 19

The Mighty Nein, season 1 premiere (2025- ): Adult animated series. When a powerful arcane relic known as “The Beacon” falls into dangerous hands, a group of fugitives and outcasts must learn to work together to save the realm and stop reality itself from unraveling.

Best Amazon Prime Video original TV shows

This list focuses on shows that have premiered a new season since 2022.

Comedy

Overcompensating (2025- )

If the news of Max’s Sex Lives of College Girls getting canceled left you aching for a new collegiate comedy to obsess over, don’t skip Overcompensating. The series’ first episode follows university freshmen Benny and Carmen, who feel the pressure to do the deed on night one, lest their social statuses plummet. However, former high school football star Benny is attracted to guys and closeted. Authentic and funny, this series from comedian Benito Skinner is one of Prime’s best new shows.

The Outlaws (2021- )

Seven strangers are assigned to the same community payback sentence in this appealing comedy thriller set in Bristol, England. The six-episode show is fun, dark and touching, offering an engaging look at its rule-breakers backgrounds and the relationships that form between them. The plot thickens when some members of the group come across a bag of cash. If you need another draw, the show is co-created by Stephen Merchant, who co-created the UK version of The Office.

Undone (2019-22)

This unique series uses the Rotoscoping animation technique to tell the story of a young woman who, after suffering a near-fatal car accident, discovers she can manipulate time. Intriguing, right? It gets better: Bob Odenkirk plays Alma’s dead father, who enlists her help in investigating his murder. Bending both time and space, Undone is surreal and beautifully existential for those looking for deep material.

The Kids in the Hall (2022)

Prime Video has resurrected The Kids in the Hall, the Emmy-nominated Canadian sketch comedy show that originally ran from 1988 to 1995. (By “resurrects,” I mean the show literally exhumes members of the comedy troupe from a grave they were buried in at the end of the original show. That’s just the beginning of the fun.) Follow the comedians as they freak out over mislabeled desserts, fight over imaginary love interests, and write Earth’s last fax. Be warned: Some of these sketches are highly NSFW.

The teen drama Maxton Hall will premiere its second season on Nov. 7. Stephan Rabold/Prime Video

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/best-shows-on-prime-video-nov-2025/

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Republicans Point Fingers After Their Losses, but Not at Trump

November 7, 2025

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Republicans were left reeling on Wednesday after voters swung decisively against them, setting off fears that President Trump and his low approval ratings would again drag down the party’s midterm candidates.

As the scale of their electoral defeats set in, Republicans sought to find culprits, blaming their candidates, the government shutdown, a misguided focus on demonizing transgender issues, and a weak economic message.

Speaker Mike Johnson used a news conference to cast Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of New York City and a proud democratic socialist, as the new leader of the Democratic Party. In emails and group chats, Republican officials slammed their nominee for governor in Virginia as a fatally flawed candidate and chided their donors for not opening their wallets wide enough. And on Fox News, other Republicans argued that Democrats had prolonged the government shutdown for their own advantage.

The one person no Republican dared to blame: Mr. Trump.

Democrats benefited from the president’s role in the elections. He loomed over them but did not do much to actually help Republicans, hosting no fund-raisers or in-person rallies, merely phoning into campaign calls intended to turn out supporters in New Jersey and Virginia. He did not even say the name of Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears of Virginia when he endorsed her for governor in a conversation with reporters aboard Air Force One.

Democratic voters, as they have done in nearly every election since Mr. Trump first took office, surged to the polls to express their discontent with his handling of the presidency. And Republicans again struggled to turn out their MAGA base without the president’s name on the ballot.

In his own understated way, Mr. Trump seemed to acknowledge the problems with Republican turnout.

“They say that I wasn’t on the ballot and was the biggest factor,” he told reporters at a Wednesday breakfast with Republican leaders. “I don’t know about that. But I was honored that they said that.”

In Virginia, not only did Abigail Spanberger win the governor’s race by a margin not seen for a Democrat since the segregationist Albertis Harrison was on the ballot in 1961, but Democrats also flipped at least 13 seats in the state House of Delegates, wiping out a generation of suburban Republicans.

In New Jersey, Democratic turnout surged as Representative Mikie Sherrill, the party’s nominee for governor, received 26 percent more votes than Democrats won in 2021. Republican turnout increased only modestly.

And early county-level results suggested that Republicans did not hold the gains that Mr. Trump made in 2024 with young men and Latino and Black voters. Places like Perth Amboy, N.J., a heavily Hispanic city Mr. Trump lost by just nine percentage points last year, delivered a 50-point margin for Ms. Sherrill.

The governor’s races in liberal-leaning New Jersey and Virginia were always long shots for Republicans with Mr. Trump in the White House, but the party’s defeats still underscored its central political conundrum ahead of the midterm elections.

If Republicans break with Mr. Trump, they risk a public flogging that could depress turnout with the party’s base or cost them in future primary races. But if they defend him, they energize Democrats and independents who are furious with his handling of the federal government and increasingly disenchanted with his stewardship of the economy.

Structurally, the midterm map still favors Republicans. A chain of redistricting efforts across the country is likely to give Republicans an advantage in the contests that will determine whether they maintain control of the House. On the Senate side, all but two of the 22 Republican seats up for election are in states that Mr. Trump carried by at least 10 percentage points in 2024.

Republican strategists say they see a path to keeping control of Congress, albeit a difficult one.

“It centers around three things,” said Corry Bliss, who led the party’s House super PAC for the 2018 election. “The economy being good, the president being motivated and engaged, and the Democrats continuing to be crazy.”

Still, there was clear evidence on Tuesday that Mr. Trump’s actions were acutely damaging to Republican candidates. His approval rating hit a second-term low of 37 percent in a recent CNN poll, and more than six in 10 voters disapproved of how he was handling the shutdown.

Republicans have a favorable midterm map, but this week’s elections provided new evidence that President Trump’s leadership in Washington is causing a backlash from voters. Credit…Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/05/us/politics/republicans-elections-trump.html

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COVID During Pregnancy May Raise Autism Risk, Study Suggests

November 6, 2025

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People who catch COVID while pregnant might have a higher likelihood of having a child who is later diagnosed with autism or another neurodevelopmental condition, a new study has found. The results add to previous research showing that, among other factors, infections in general during pregnancy are linked to autism risk for the child. They do not, however, suggest that everyone who has COVID while pregnant will have a child with autism.

“Even though there’s an increased risk for autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders, the absolute risk still remains relatively low, especially for autism,” says study senior author Andrea Edlow, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital, referring to having COVID during pregnancy.

For the study, published Thursday in Obstetrics & Gynecology, Edlow and colleagues looked at electronic health records of more 18,000 births that occurred between March 1, 2020, and May 31, 2021, during the first year of the COVID pandemic. They compared the likelihood of a neurodevelopmental diagnosis in children born to individuals who had a positive COVID PCR test during pregnancy with those who didn’t.

Of the 861 children born to people who had COVID during pregnancy, 16.3 percent went on to receive a neurodevelopmental diagnosis by age 3 compared with 9.7 percent of the 17,263 children born to people who hadn’t had COVID. The diagnoses included not just autism but also speech and language disorders, motor function disorders, and other conditions. When the researchers controlled for various confounding factors, COVID infection during pregnancy was linked to increased odds of these conditions of nearly 30 percent.

The findings add to a body of evidence—mainly in animals but also in humans—suggesting that various infections during pregnancy, such as influenza or rubella, are linked to a higher risk of having a child with autism or a similar condition. Because SARS-CoV-2 rarely crosses the placenta, scientists hypothesize it’s not the virus itself upping the risk. Rather, they suspect immune activation in the pregnant person could be responsible.

The new study and previous animal studies together suggest that many types of maternal infection or inflammation can send a signal to the fetus, affecting its brain development, says Kristina Adams Waldorf, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology and adjunct professor of global health at the University of Washington. Adams Waldorf co-authored a study of 1.7 million people born in Sweden who were followed for up to 41 years that found higher rates of autism and depression in those who had been exposed to an infection in utero.

The strongest associations in the new study were for COVID infection in the third trimester and for male offspring. (The increase in odds was not significant for female offspring.) The third trimester is a critical time for fetal brain development, and boys are diagnosed with autism at higher rates than girls in general.

The study has limitations, however. The researchers did not control for maternal health, says Brian Lee, a professor of epidemiology at Drexel University, who has studied the link between infections during pregnancy and autism. People with worse physical health and mental disorders are more likely to have children with neurodevelopmental conditions and are also more susceptible to severe COVID infections, he says.

The study also didn’t specifically control for vaccination status, although very few individuals had been vaccinated during the study period because the COVID vaccine wasn’t widely available at the time. Previous research has shown that vaccination protects pregnant people—who are more likely to get very sick and die from COVID—and their fetuses from the disease.

The study findings come on the heels of controversial statements made by President Trump and Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., linking Tylenol (acetaminophen) to autism, which the best available evidence does not support. Numerous studies have also shown that vaccines do not cause autism.

It’s important to note that autism is a complex spectrum of conditions—not all of which cause disabilities—with many contributing factors. Genetics is thought to have the biggest influence, but environmental factors such as infection may also play a role.

BSIP/UIG/Getty Images

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-during-pregnancy-may-raise-autism-risk-study-suggests/?_gl=1*wue71y*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTMzMzkxNDgxOC4xNzYyMzg1NzE5*_ga_0P6ZGEWQVE*czE3NjIzODU3MTgkbzEkZzAkdDE3NjIzODU3MTgkajYwJGwwJGgw

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A Compelling Case for Why Property Investing Reigns Supreme, From a Real Estate Investing Pro

November 6, 2025

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As an experienced real estate investor who has witnessed countless market cycles and navigated the intricacies of tax-advantaged investing, I can confidently assert real estate investing offers superior returns compared to traditional investment vehicles.

While financial advisers routinely recommend diversified portfolios of stocks and bonds, groundbreaking research and decades of tax policy innovations have created a compelling case for making real estate the cornerstone of any serious investment strategy.

The data speaks: Real estate’s historical dominance

The most comprehensive analysis of investment returns ever conducted, titled The Rate of Return on Everything, 1870-2015, revolutionizes our understanding of asset class performance.

This Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco study examined over 145 years of investment data across major asset classes, revealing findings that challenge conventional wisdom about portfolio allocation.

The research found that residential real estate delivered superior risk-adjusted returns compared to stocks, while demonstrating significantly lower volatility.

Over the entire study period, real estate achieved returns exceeding 8% annually after inflation, outpacing stocks while maintaining half the volatility of equity markets.

This “having your cake and eating it too” scenario represents the holy grail of investing: higher returns with lower risk.

Even when limiting the data to the modern era, post-World War II, real estate continued to demonstrate its superiority. Housing consistently outperformed bonds and Treasuries by substantial margins, while matching or exceeding stock market returns.

This consistency across different economic periods underscores real estate’s fundamental strength as an investment vehicle.

The study’s findings become even more compelling when considering real estate markets remain largely uncorrelated globally, unlike increasingly interconnected stock markets.

This insulation provides additional portfolio protection during market downturns, as property values in different geographic regions don’t move in lockstep like international equity markets tend to do.

The power of leverage: Amplifying returns through strategic financing

While the San Francisco Fed’s study examined unleveraged real estate returns, the true power of real estate investing emerges when incorporating strategic leverage.

Unlike stock market investing, where margin loans carry significant risks and limitations, real estate allows investors to safely amplify returns through mortgage financing.

Consider a property generating 8% annual returns, purchased with 75% financing at 6% interest. The investor’s actual return on invested capital reaches about 14% annually, significantly outpacing what’s achievable in traditional markets without assuming excessive risk.

This leverage advantage remains sustainable because real estate provides steady cash flow to service debt obligations while appreciating in value over time.

Moreover, real estate leverage is non-recourse in most cases, meaning lenders can claim the property itself only if problems arise, protecting investors’ other assets.

This contrasts sharply with margin investing in stocks, where losses can exceed initial investments and trigger devastating margin calls, a phenomenon that can wipe out even the savviest of accredited investors (and the examples of this are many — such as when Long-Term Capital Management collapsed and Credit Suisse’s Archegos Capital Management defaulted).

Tax advantages: The real estate investor’s secret weapon

While pretax returns favor real estate, the post-tax comparison reveals an even more dramatic advantage.

Real estate enjoys numerous tax benefits unavailable to stock and bond investors, creating superior after-tax returns that compound over time.

Annual depreciation deductions shelter rental income from taxation, effectively providing tax-free cash flow during ownership.

This phantom expense reduces taxable income without requiring actual cash outlays, creating an immediate advantage over dividend-paying stocks that generate fully taxable income.

Capital gains treatment provides favorable tax rates upon sale, but real estate’s true tax advantage lies in strategies unavailable to traditional investors.

These preferential treatments transform good pretax returns into exceptional after-tax wealth accumulation.

The 1031 exchange: Deferring taxes to infinity

The most powerful tool in real estate investing remains the Section 1031 like-kind exchange, which allows investors to defer capital gains taxes indefinitely by reinvesting sale proceeds into replacement properties.

This strategy, often called “defer till you die” or “swap till you drop,” enables investors to compound their returns without tax drag, potentially over multiple decades.

Consider an investor who purchases a $200,000 property that appreciates to $400,000 over 10 years. Rather than selling and paying $40,000 in capital gains taxes (assuming a 20% rate), a 1031 exchange allows the entire $400,000 to purchase replacement property.

Over multiple exchange cycles, this tax deferral creates exponential wealth accumulation that’s impossible through traditional investing.

The mathematics are compelling. An investor executing 1031 exchanges every seven years over a 30-year period can accumulate about 40% more wealth than someone paying taxes on each transaction.

This advantage compounds over time, creating generational wealth that far exceeds what’s achievable through traditional buy-and-hold stock investing.

Multiple exchanges magnify this benefit. Sophisticated investors often execute three to five exchanges over their investing careers, each time upgrading to larger, more valuable properties while deferring substantial tax obligations.

The stepped-up basis provision means heirs inherit these properties at fair market value, permanently eliminating the deferred tax liability.

Qualified opportunity zones: Accelerating after-tax returns

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) in 2017 created qualified opportunity zones (QOZs), offering additional advantages for real estate investors willing to invest in designated economically distressed areas.

These zones provide a pair of distinct tax benefits that further enhance real estate’s appeal.

First, investors can defer capital gains taxes from any source by investing proceeds into QOZ properties, providing flexibility beyond traditional 1031 exchanges. (Current law defers these capital gains taxes until December 31, 2026, although proposed legislation may extend that deadline.)

In addition, and even more significantly, any appreciation within the QOZ investment itself becomes permanently tax-free if held for 10 years.

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.kiplinger.com/real-estate/real-estate-investing/why-property-investing-reigns-supreme

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When that maternal presence is missing, there’s not just a lack of support, but a loss of grounding. This absence can intensify feelings of isolation, anxiety, and identity confusion, all of which can increase the risk of perinatal/postpartum depression.

Loss Doesn’t Just Mean Death

Unsurprisingly, Moms Aren’t Finding Enough Support

What’s new on Prime Video in November

Nov. 7

Nov. 10

Nov. 14

Nov. 19

Best Amazon Prime Video original TV shows

Comedy

Overcompensating (2025- )

The Outlaws (2021- )

Undone (2019-22)

The Kids in the Hall (2022)

The data speaks: Real estate’s historical dominance

The power of leverage: Amplifying returns through strategic financing

Tax advantages: The real estate investor’s secret weapon

The 1031 exchange: Deferring taxes to infinity

Qualified opportunity zones: Accelerating after-tax returns

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