James' World 2

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“Gen Z will be the least trusting generation in modern American history,” wrote Ryan Burge, who is also a data analyst and professor of practice at the university, in the report.

Millennials were slightly more trusting than Gen Z at 24%, while 30% of Gen X and 29% of boomers agreed that most people can be trusted. The Silent Generation—those born before 1945—is by far the most trusting at 41%, according to data between 2021 and 2024 that Burge cited from the General Social Survey, a biennial sociological study conducted out of the University of Chicago.

This phenomenon certainly colors Gen Z’s personal relationships. But in the era of automated hiring processes, ghosting, forever layoffs, and constant side hustles, it’s also reshaping the workplace as we know it. 

Jaded, tired, and anxious

Burge puts this trust gap down to a number of reasons in his analysis, including religion and education. But, as he explained to Fast Company, “[Gen Z’s] parents raised them to be extra cautious about everything,” he says. 

“They’re just terrified of making a mistake, and I think that leads naturally to a lack of trust in other people.”

A sheltered upbringing that overlapped with the COVID-19 pandemic, compounded by cancel culture and social media scrutiny and cynicism, has led Gen Z to embrace loss aversion, which Burge explained as “the idea that losing feels worse than winning feels good.” And they’re more distrustful because of it.

This isn’t a uniquely Gen Z issue. Over a third of the employees surveyed said they don’t have colleagues that they trust enough to share personal issues with. More than four in 10 rarely or never have conversations with coworkers about anything other than work. 

But for Gen Z in particular, this trust gap is linked with having entered the workforce during COVID, and missing out on in-office soft skills as a result of remote learning and working. 

“Unfortunately, I think a lot of young people just don’t ever build up that baseline of trust,” says Burge. “Being around people, what you learn more and more is that the average person is pretty trustworthy.”

Disillusionment with a broken system

Gen Z’s distrust is especially noticeable in the workplace, data suggests.

Gen Zers are 16 times as likely to say they don’t trust their coworkers as Gen X employees, according to a 2026 survey from Workday. They’re also significantly more mistrustful of their employers: Only 41% of Gen Z employees said they trust their employer, according to a 2025 Indeed survey, compared with about 65% of millennials and 71% of baby boomers. Further, a 2025 GenHQ study found that 47% of Gen Z have quit a job due to lack of trust in leadership, and 45% would take a 10% pay cut to work for a boss they completely trust. 

Trust is one of the strongest predictors of whether employees stay or leave. But over the past few decades, American business has gradually upended its deal with workers. If workers aren’t fearful of their jobs being automated, they are at least skeptical of companies using AI to justify big layoffs. These fears are not unfounded. Eight in 10 leaders have used “layoffs” to get rid of an employee they wanted gone, according to a 2024 survey from Resume Builder, and 54% did it to shirk paying severance. On top of that, many Gen Z workers watched their parents push themselves to burnout, only to be ousted from long-held positions. They’re skeptical about showing the same professional loyalty, instead prioritizing work-life balance and often seeking out their own nonlinear paths instead of trusting corporate ladders. Social media, awash with “get laid off with me” vlogs and stories about toxic bosses, has only amplified this sense of mistrust in traditional workplaces. The surveillance boom is further damaging the trust between employers and employees. The benefit of being less trusting, of course, is you are less likely to be taken advantage of. But as Burge notes, “That’s the cost of doing business. That’s literally the cost of being a human.” If workers can’t fundamentally trust each other, true connection feels impossible.

Being ghosted and burning out

Scam listings and ghost jobs are everywhere. The 2026 Job Seeker Nation Report from the AI-powered hiring platform Employ found that 32% of applicants say they’ve been ghosted by a company. (On the flip side, a 2025 survey of hiring managers found that 54% had been ghosted by a Gen Z candidate after extending an offer.) This crisis of trust is bad for business. 

For Gen Z workers, “I think ultimately what happens is they’re just super unproductive,” Grace McCarrick, a speaker and creator who leads corporate soft skills workshops, tells Fast Company. “They’re too busy worrying about the hidden agenda.”

Employee engagement has hit its lowest level since 2020, according to Gallup’s 2026 State of the Global Workplace report, dropping for the second year in a row and costing an estimated $10 trillion in lost productivity.

“People are really unhappy at work,” said McCarrick. “You would be too if you thought around every corner was some mustache-twirling monster trying to make your life worse and make themselves $100 million.”

Daring to trust

Trust is a two-way street. McCarrick believes young workers also have a responsibility to establish a baseline level of trust with their colleagues and employers—at least until proof of the contrary. 

“You don’t have to trust that the CEO is a good person. You don’t have to trust that the company is being completely transparent about every decision,” she said. “I think you have to do the best you can to get into a job where you can go, ‘OK, I can trust enough.’”

Burge, the author of the report on trust, says he’s “a big believer that trust really builds up over a long set of interactions with other people.” Employers can help build trust with Gen Z by acknowledging their contributions, following through on their words with actions, and acting with integrity. 

“When decisions affect people, I think it’s important to get as close as you can to why you made that decision and what alternatives would have been,” says McCarrick. 

In the end, it’s up to Gen Z to surrender suspicion, to fall and hope someone catches them. Even if no one does? 

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Hmmmm ,,,  Hail to the foresight of 3-tier government under God!

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Judge Patrick J. Schiltz’s warning was stark.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement had violated nearly 100 orders issued by Minnesota’s Federal District Court during the month of January, including some mandating the release of undocumented immigrants from detention.

The violations needed to stop immediately. “ICE is not a law unto itself,” Judge Schiltz wrote in his Jan. 28 order.

Judges around the country took notice, not only of the scale of the allegation but because such a harsh reproach was coming from the pen of Judge Schiltz, a George W. Bush appointee with almost 20 years of experience on the bench. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in the 1980s and has enjoyed close ties to the conservative legal establishment for decades. This was not the profile of a judge likely to engage in a high-stakes standoff with the White House.

In a rare 90-minute interview seven months later, Judge Schiltz said his order had been prompted by concern that the Trump administration’s disregard for court orders was clogging his courthouse to a near standstill, contributing to rising tensions in the protest-filled city and, ultimately, putting the constitutional order at risk.

What happened in Minnesota’s federal court, he said, “created a grave threat to the rule of law.”

He said he thought the violations were largely the result of incompetence and staffing shortages, but also worried that the Justice Department had not taken their corrosive effect seriously enough.

“I would say aloud to myself, ‘This just never happens,’” he added, referring to the violated orders and other unusual behavior by the Justice Department. He was in his chambers, which has signed photos of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. on the wall. Earlier in his career, he helped found a law school at a Catholic university in Minneapolis, and wrote a renowned law review article about the moral perils of the legal profession.

Judge Schiltz, who served as the district’s chief judge from mid-2022 through June 2026, declined to discuss ongoing cases. But he and six other members of Minnesota’s federal bench agreed to speak to The New York Times about last winter’s tumult, to describe how an intense national spotlight, a deteriorating relationship with the Justice Department and a flood of lawsuits had combined to put their court under tremendous pressure.

In the view of the Department of Homeland Security, it operates “in line with the U.S. Constitution and all applicable federal laws,” said Chandler Rebel, a D.H.S. spokesman.

Kiersten Pels, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said the administration “will continue to fully comply with court orders.” She asserted that in most instances where there was an issue, “the underlying substance of the order was satisfied even where a secondary deadline was missed.”

Ms. Pels added that it she found it “remarkable that sitting federal judges are giving on-the-record interviews” criticizing the administration, and suggested that they consider recusing themselves if they “have made public comments on pending or related matters.”

It is indeed unusual for federal judges to give extensive interviews that reflect on periods when their rulings have made headlines.

The seven judges who spoke to The Times were appointed by both Democratic and Republican presidents. They included six of the seven judges who held active status in Minnesota last winter.

“We are allowed to speak out about judicial independence,” said Judge Nancy E. Brasel, whom Mr. Trump appointed in 2018. “And so we should, in order to keep it.”

The tensions in Minnesota eased after the administration announced an end to its surge in mid-February, following the killings of two civilians by federal agents.

Judge Schiltz said he hoped the portrait of how the bench had handled the crisis would help Americans better understand how the United States’ system of government depends on the rule of law.

“The rule of law to democracy is like oxygen to a human body,” he said. “It is something that you absolutely need to survive, and yet it’s something that people just take for granted.”

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Judge Patrick J. Schiltz in his courtroom. A former clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court, he does not have the profile of a jurist likely to engage in a high-stakes standoff with the executive branch. Credit…Jenn Ackerman for The New York Times

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Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest forms of cancer—because it is so hard to detect, cases are typically caught in the late stages of the disease. A person can live with pancreatic cancer for years and not know because the early symptoms are so subtle as to be absent or negligible. There is no routine screening test, as there is for breast cancer or colon cancer, and most diagnoses happen only at advanced stages, when symptoms such as weight loss, abdominal pain, and blood sugar problems become unignorable.

As a result, the five-year survival rate of pancreatic cancer is just 13 percent. A new blood test aims to change that. In results published today in Nature Medicine, scientists show how the blood test, called PANXEON, can accurately detect pancreatic cancer in its early stages and could even identify precancerous signs, enabling doctors to quickly intervene and treat the disease.

The results come on the heels of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of a drug for pancreatic cancer called daraxonrasib. The medication is aimed at people with late-stage pancreatic cancer who have already been through chemotherapy. In a testament to the intractability of this form of cancer, the drug, which is hailed as a breakthrough treatment by experts, improves survival by just half a year compared with chemotherapy alone (with median survival of 13.2 months versus 6.7 months, respectively).

About 1,800 people enrolled in an early-stage clinical trial to test the efficacy of PANXEON across the U.S., Europe and Asia. The test accurately detected stage 1 and 2 pancreatic cancers approximately 87 percent of the time, with a low rate of false positives. The blood test also identified advanced pancreatic dysplasia—the presence of a precancerous condition in the pancreas—more than 64 percent of the time in people with high-risk pancreatic cysts. Together, the results suggest the test could flag cancer earlier and offer opportunities for clinicians to intervene before the disease has had a chance to spread to other organs.

The blood test screens for three molecular signatures of pancreatic cancer. Researchers then use artificial intelligence to assign a risk score that measures individual risk of cancer. Doctors can use the score to determine whether more investigation or treatment is necessary, particularly in people who have inherited risk of pancreatic cancer or who have had pancreatitis, for example. More advanced clinical trials are needed before this blood test could possibly be used in the clinic, but the results are promising in a disease that is so difficult to manage.

“The earlier we find pancreatic cancer, the greater the chance that meaningful intervention is still possible,” said Ajay Goel, study senior author and chair of molecular diagnostics and experimental therapeutics at City of Hope, a cancer research and treatment organization headquartered in California, in a statement.

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Science Photo Library–STEVE GSCHMEISSNER/Getty Images

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Directly beneath our feet stretches a world both smaller and much, much larger than the one we know. Scientists have just begun mapping what may well be the largest piece of infrastructure on Earth: a network of fungal threads that is 68 quadrillion miles long.

It’s alive!

And we thought we’d mapped just about everything there is to map on this planet: continents, voting patterns, bird migration routes, alleged apparitions of the Virgin Mary, and Starbucks locations near you.

We’ve logged and named almost every fold of the visible world. And yet until June, the most extensive piece of infrastructure on the planet had not been extensively mapped. This network is larger than every road, cable, and shipping lane combined. And it’s alive.

To be precise: It’s fungal. This underground network is made of so-called hyphae: hair-thin filaments that knit together into vast structures known as mycelium. A large fraction of these fungi form partnerships with the roots of plants and trees. Roughly 70% of all botanical species indulge in these relationships.

Think of these relationships, also known as mycorrhizae, not so much as tender friendships, but as shrewd trade agreements: Both parties get something indispensable out of it. The plant can make sugar from sunlight, but is bad at foraging. So the fungus provides phosphorus, nitrogen, and water. The fungus is a foraging superhero, but cannot photosynthesize. So the plant repays the fungus in carbon.

How to survive on land

The arrangement is not new — it dates back several hundred million years, to when plants were first figuring out how to survive on land. What’s new is that scientists have now learned to map the actual shape and extent of that arrangement.

Writing in Science in June, a team including members of the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN), estimated that the top 15 centimeters of the planet’s soils hold roughly 110 quadrillion kilometers of so-called arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal hyphae.

That distance in miles sounds no less deranged: 68 quadrillion. But to get some sense of the vastness of that funny-sounding number, imagine laying those filaments end to end, in which case they would stretch from the Earth to the Sun close to a billion times. No use: that’s still an absurdly large mental object to wrap your head around.

Another way of gauging the network’s size is to consider its weight instead of its length. In total, it is estimated to weigh around 300 million tons, which, the authors write, is roughly five times the biomass of all humans on Earth combined.

How could we have missed such a massive network? Well, it’s also extremely tiny — a teaspoon of soil can hold up to 10 meters of fungal hyphae, each fragment so thin as to be practically invisible.

4 billion tons of CO2

To map something this humungous and diaphanous, researchers had to develop a new mapping discipline — a cartography of dirt. They collected and analyzed 16,000 soil samples from all over the world, extrapolating this map from the data they gathered.

Easy to lose behind those quadrillion miles of living filaments is another big number. The fungal network moves around four billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent into the soil each year. That is equivalent to 11% of humanity’s annual emissions. For a structure that few people knew about until a few months ago, the global fungal network is doing good work on a planetary scale.

That talent for burying CO2 may be why we will finally pay attention to this subterranean layer of life, beginning with this eerily glowing map of what has already been called the “fungal internet,” published by SPUN.

Although still incomplete, the map already offers some surprises. If you had to guess where Earth’s fungal network was densest, “rainforests” sounds like a reasonable answer: lushly layered flora, thick with roots. But no. The map points to grasslands as the hotbed of fungal filaments — as much as 40% of the world’s arbuscular mycorrhizal network is buried beneath the waving fields of grass of the Tibetan Plateau, and the flooded grasslands of the Everglades and South Sudan, among other places.

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This global underground network is invisible to the naked eye, yet is more than five times the weight of all humans on Earth. (Credit: SPUN/A Hidden Infrastructure

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The Trump administration has approved a $2.8 billion sale of heavy bombs to Israel, according to a U.S. official, in what would be among the largest deliveries of U.S. munitions there, even as American public support for the country declines.

The proposed sale would include 40,000 one-ton bombs whose use by Israel in Gaza and Lebanon has drawn international anger because of the civilian harm caused by their wide blast radius.

Human rights groups and some foreign governments have condemned Israel for dropping the giant munitions in densely populated areas, sometimes killing dozens of civilians in strikes targeting just one individual.

The package would include 20,000 each of America’s 2,000-pound MK-84 and BLU-117 bombs. It would also provide Israel with 20,000 bunker-busting I-2000 penetrator warheads, which explode on delay after smashing through an outer surface like soil, rock, or concrete. The plan was reported earlier by The Washington Post.

The blast from a 2,000-pound bomb can be lethal at more than 1,000 feet and leave a crater as deep as 50 feet. Israel provoked a fierce outcry after it dropped hundreds of the heavy bombs on Gaza.

The State Department recently sent the proposed deal to two congressional committees to get informal approval, the U.S. official said.

Production and delivery of the munitions usually takes months or years, but there are ways to expedite the process.

In mid-2024, the Biden administration paused a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel because of concern about their use in crowded civilian areas. President Trump allowed the shipment to proceed days after taking office last January.

Then in February, the Trump administration agreed to sell roughly $2.7 billion in munitions to Israel, a package that included 35,000 of the one-ton MK-84 and BLU-117 bombs.

While congressional leaders can tell the Trump administration that they oppose the deal, Secretary of State Marco Rubio can exercise emergency powers to proceed with the sale regardless, as he has done repeatedly, or just say he is moving forward with it. The administration would then bypass getting informal approval from Congress and formally announce the sale is happening.

In those cases, both the House and Senate would need to pass a resolution to block the deal. Such a resolution would require the support of two-thirds of each body to guarantee it can overcome a presidential veto.

The Biden administration also declared an emergency in the region to bypass congressional approval and expedite shipments of arms to Israel twice during the Israel-Gaza war. One of those packages included 13,000 rounds of tank ammunition, and the second included artillery munitions.

The State Department’s approval of such a large package of devastating munitions reflects Mr. Trump’s continued strong support for Israel despite his recent disputes with its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, over the country’s military operations in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. Mr. Netanyahu is expected to be in New York next week to address the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly.

The State Department said in a statement that as a matter of policy it would not confirm or comment on a proposed arms sale that has not been formally notified to Congress.

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Smoke rising after an Israeli bombardment of Gaza last year. Israel’s use of 2,000-pound bombs in the crowded enclave has caused widespread civilian harm. Credit…Menahem Kahana/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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Hmmmm  … Can we really believe anything the Trump administration says?

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Extraordinary claims about the risks posed by AI have sparked headlines around the world. But why are people concerned? Do these risks have any basis? And – if so – is there anything we can do?

What’s going on?

In short, a flurry of AI industry insiders have warned that it could wipe out humanity. It started with AI researcher Jacob Coxon, who quit Anthropic last week and then warned on X that “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade”.

We don’t know about Coxon’s experience or motivation (he didn’t respond to a request for an interview), but he’s not alone. Anthropic’s head of alignment science – essentially the man tasked with keeping AI safe – said on X that he agreed with Coxon and placed the odds of AI killing all humans at more than 10 per cent.

Why are we getting these warnings now?

In truth, these sorts of claims are nothing new. A 2024 paper surveying almost 3000 published AI researchers revealed that more than half thought the chance of AI causing either human extinction or permanent and severe disempowerment – the so-called p(doom), or probability of doom – was at least 10 per cent.

AI company bosses have often publicly addressed the risk their models pose. For instance, Anthropic at first refused to release its model Mythos after it was found to be adept at hacking into a range of software and computers. A cynical take on that would be that such claims get headlines and promote the idea that its models are wildly ahead of its rivals.

While most researchers think there is some level of risk with these warnings, not everyone puts much stock in Coxon’s take. Clement Delangue, chief executive of AI company Hugging Face, wrote on X: “Sorry, but asking Jacob about AI extinction risk is like asking your AC guy about climate change.”

The history of AI is littered with claims and counter-claims of existential risk. At the 2023 AI summit organised by the UK government and attended by world leaders and industry management, then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak warned that people must avoid “alarmist” claims – but then suggested AI could be as dangerous as nuclear war.

Are the risks real?

It is a complex field, from which surprising abilities have emerged at a surprising pace. It should therefore be no surprise that some people catastrophise when asked to make predictions.

New Scientist has written – many times – about the existential risk posed by AI. The commonly posed scenarios read like sci-fi, but can’t be ruled out as impossible. But neither are they, in most peoples’ opinion, particularly likely. These include the Hollywood scenario of AI deliberately wiping out humanity – see The Terminator or The Matrix – as well as accidental obliterations.

There are limited levers for AI to pull to have an impact in the real world, but our homes, cars, factories and national infrastructure are increasingly computerised, so a malicious AI could certainly make life difficult. Not to mention that wars are increasingly being waged by semi- or fully autonomous killing machines.

Former Astronomer Royal and president of the Royal Society Martin Rees told Sky News on 14 September that a rogue AI could easily disrupt our infrastructure and deprive a city of energy, food and water. “If this happens simultaneously in many cities around the world, then it may be very hard and very difficult for civilisation in general to recover,” he said.

Such infrastructure collapses have happened – albeit not globally, and without malicious cause – and created significant problems, sparking technology experts to create their own plans to prop up society should the worst happen.

There are plenty of existential risks that we know pose a significant threat to life – such as climate change, nuclear war and antibiotic resistance. But AI falls into a more nuanced category akin to an Earth-destroying asteroid strike: possible, and certainly worth considering, but with low odds.

Couldn’t we just turn off AI if it went wrong?

Yes, in theory. We could shut down a single data centre and stop AI in its tracks. Unless it was distributed among many data centres, around the world. In that case, it would be trickier, but not impossible.

There are indications that AI is capable of escaping enclosures created by AI companies and going off into the world to hack into other machines. So it is possible a rogue AI could spread, back itself up and become so fragmented that it becomes impossible to simply turn it off. But even then, there would be ways to tackle it, including via benevolent AI.

Such an effort would involve elements of problem-solving regularly faced by the military, law enforcement, anti-terrorist groups, scientific circles and in cybersecurity. We’d probably have to put our collective thinking caps on, but could probably find a solution.

These are all hypothetical scenarios, but certainly worth thinking about ahead of time.

What’s next in the world of AI?

One problem we certainly face is that AI models are produced by secretive technology firms that are disincentivised against transparency by commercial pressures.

Adrian Hopgood, a former academic at the University of Portsmouth, UK, says that this makes it difficult to assess risks, understand possible negative outcomes, and plan to prevent them. “For the first 35 of my 40 years working in AI, the developments mostly came from universities and were openly discussed,” he says. “I contributed, and I felt that I was one of the experts. However, for the last five or six years, the major developments have been made behind closed doors in large corporations, and I have no idea what’s happening.”

More openness from AI companies would certainly not go amiss.

Should there be a pause in AI progress while we improve safety?

Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei has come out in recent days to say we should “pace the frontier” – tech talk for being careful about how quickly we develop AI and release it to the public. 

Amodei said that producing and testing AI is a hugely resource-intensive and complex process, and that going slower would allow “greater operational excellence”. Reading between the lines, you could take that to mean that the AI race is frazzling everyone, and a mutual slowdown would save some headaches. But it may also allow our understanding of these models to catch up, and for safety plans to be put in place. 

The idea is good, but the chances, perhaps, are slim. Amodei pointed out that US companies have a limited lead over China. This means they almost definitely won’t choose to slow down to the extent that this lead disappears and, in fact, it needs to be kept “as large as possible”. 

Considering the competitive nature of this whole AI business – both among different US firms hunting market share and among adversarial countries seeking a tactical advantage – a slowdown seems unlikely.

More than 1300 industry insiders back the idea of “pacing the frontier”, but even if the US and Europe legislate such a thing, or companies voluntarily agree to it, China and other countries would probably carry on regardless.

As US President Donald Trump put it this week: “We’re leading China in AI… and frankly, I want to keep it that way, because whoever wins AI wins.”

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“Today, I’ll cast my first Senate vote since I took a bad fall back in June,” McConnell said in a post on X on Monday evening. “I’m really looking forward to being back on the Senate floor and seeing my colleagues.”

The 84-year-old Kentucky Republican went on to say that his “recovery has been a long and often frustrating process,” adding that the “lingering effects” of his bout with polio during his childhood have also impacted his recovery.

“I’m still not quite back to 100%, but I’ve assured [Senate Majority Leader John Thune] that, as I continue with physical therapy on the advice of my doctors, I will do my best to be present for tough votes when our Conference needs me,” McConnell said.

McConnell’s office initially shared little to no information when the Senator was hospitalized on June 14. After weeks of uncertainty—and his absence from the Senate—rumors and speculation over the state of his health began swirling online. In July, Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear shared a letter in which he urged McConnell to “fully update Kentuckians regarding the current status of [his] health.” 

A few days later, the Republican lawmaker disclosed that he had been taken to the hospital after he “briefly” lost consciousness following a fall, and that he later had to grapple with a “mild case of pneumonia.” He pushed back, though, on rumors that he was suffering from any severe conditions, saying that his doctors confirmed that he didn’t break any bones or suffer a concussion, and that he didn’t have any tumors or experience a heart attack.

At the end of July, McConnell’s office shared another update, stating that the Senator was maintaining his physical therapy, per his doctors’ orders, and that he had been discharged from the hospital but was not, at that time, medically cleared to leave the rehabilitation center he was at and return to the upper chamber. On Aug. 6, his office announced that he had been discharged from the rehabilitation facility that day and would continue his recovery at home.

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Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) speaks to the press as he arrives for a vote at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 14, 2026.Finn Gomez—Getty Images

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The Supreme Court on Monday blocked a Trump administration plan to dramatically change how Americans vote by mail in the lead-up to the midterm elections, a major loss for President Trump, who has long claimed without evidence that fraud is rampant in mail voting.

The ruling was a resounding win for Democratic-led states and voting rights groups, which had argued that the plan was unconstitutional and an existential threat to the democratic process.

When the Supreme Court blocked President Trump’s mail-vote plan on Monday night, not one of the three justices Mr. Trump appointed to the court noted any disagreement.

Nor did Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who was also nominated by a Republican president.

Instead, only Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas — the court’s two most conservative members — lodged their dissent, indicating that they would have allowed the president’s plan to reshape how the Postal Service handles mail-in ballots to move ahead.

That has been a pattern on the court since Mr. Trump returned to office, with Justices Alito and Thomas as the most reliable votes on the court for the Trump administration’s agenda.

In the term that ended in June, Justices Alito and Thomas were the only two Republican nominees who voted in favor of all three of Mr. Trump’s main priorities. In each case, they were in the minority, as the court rejected Mr. Trump’s sweeping tariffs, his proposal to limit birthright citizenship and his attempt to immediately fire a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

In Monday’s case, voting groups and Democratic-led states had challenged the administration’s plan directing the Postal Service to screen ballot envelopes, saying it would cause chaos and confusion for voters so close to the November election. In an unsigned order, the majority said the groups were likely to prevail.

But Justice Alito called those challenges a “Hail Mary pass,” saying they were unlikely to win in further litigation because of the Postal Service’s broad authority under federal law to regulate the mail.

In his nearly eight-page dissent, Justice Alito said he would have granted the administration’s request to allow the new rules to take effect immediately, in part because he believed that the new mandates were similar to other requirements for sending mail, such as the necessity to list a recipient’s address and affix a stamp.

The government, he wrote, has “a strong interest in enforcing the rule, and implementing it will also ‘enhance the visibility of federal ballot mail’ in order to better detect election fraud.”

Mr. Trump has repeatedly insisted, without evidence, that mail-in balloting is marred by fraud.

Justice Alito acknowledged the states’ practical concerns about implementing the new rules so close to the midterm elections.

“I take that problem very seriously,” he wrote, “but it is not enough to convince me to deny the application.”

He was joined by Justice Thomas.

Monday’s order was the second time in less than a month that the Supreme Court had weighed in on the president’s plan to limit voting by mail. In late August, the justices said Mr. Trump could proceed with implementing his executive order. The groups and states that sued, they said, could not demonstrate that they would be sufficiently harmed to block the administration because the voting rules had not yet taken effect.

At the time, the justices in the majority cautioned that their 10-page order was preliminary and not a final decision about whether the president’s order would “necessarily be lawful.” The majority added: “On that score, time will tell.”

That August order was also unsigned. But back then, it was the three liberal justices who disagreed with the outcome, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warning of “chaos and uncertainty” in the upcoming election in a 23-page dissent.

On Monday, Justice Alito took aim at his Supreme Court colleagues, writing that they were in part to blame for the time crunch and concerns about implementing new rules so close to the elections. He wrote that the way the justices initially handled the case over the summer caused unnecessary delay.

The administration had said it wanted to release its final rule by early to mid-August, he explained, allowing time for it to be implemented. Ultimately, the Postal Service published the plan only on Aug. 21, as it waited for word from the Supreme Court.

“This court spent from late July to the end of August drafting nearly 40 pages of opinions, including two dissents, despite the government’s public notice that it would not publish a final rule,” while it was blocked by lower courts, he wrote.

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Election workers sort through mail-in ballots in 2024 at Maricopa County Ballot Tabulation Center in Phoenix. Credit…Rebecca Noble for The New York Times

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The Atlantic hurricane season just set a new record. While it’s not unusual for the Atlantic hurricane season to take a while to get going—the typical peak in storm activity is late August through September—it is unusual not to see a single hurricane form by September 11. But that’s exactly what has happened this year for the very first time since reliable records began.

And with no likely contenders set to turn into a hurricane for at least the next seven days, that record will extend. In fact, the 2026 season is easily set to have the latest-forming hurricane whenever one does spin up, meteorologist Michael Lowry wrote on his blog. That’s assuming that one spins up at all.

There has been some meager storm activity this year, with five tropical storms so far. These have included Tropical Storm Dolly, which coincidentally formed only days after singer Dolly Parton died.

The reason the Atlantic has been so quiet this year is the same reason the eastern Pacific—and particularly Hawaii—has seen a bonanza of storms: El Niño. The cyclical climate phenomenon features an eastward shift in a pool of warm water in the tropical Pacific that changes where heat enters the atmosphere. That shift causes a domino effect in the atmosphere, altering major wind patterns around the world.

Over the Atlantic, El Niño tends to create more of what is called wind shear, or winds that travel in different directions and speeds at various levels of the atmosphere, which cuts off the convection that fuels tropical cyclones. As a result, any seeds of storms may have ample warm ocean water to feed on, but wind shear cuts them down before they can really develop.

On the flip side, wind shear decreases over the eastern Pacific during an El Niño, leaving more room for storms to spin up into destructive beasts. And shear has been particularly low around Hawaii, leaving it uncharacteristically vulnerable to storms.

This El Niño is a doozy, already at record strength for this time of the year and expected to be among the strongest events in living memory. Its effects on the world’s weather will be more pronounced than in the past. And there is more recent evidence that climate change may be driving more of these “Super El Niños.”

Lowry noted that “it’s still more likely than not we’ll see a hurricane or two on the back side of the season” because there hasn’t been a season in the reliable records (going back to about 1950) without a single hurricane. There are no recorded hurricanes for the 1907 and 1914 seasons, but those happened before we had satellites to spot storms that remained out at sea, he explained. But if there were to be a year without a single Atlantic hurricane, “this would probably be the year,” Lowry said.

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When someone we deeply care about is hurting, our immediate, very human instinct is to try and fix it. We see a close friend crying over a sudden job loss, a family member stressed about an unexpected medical diagnosis or a coworker reeling from a devastating breakup, and we frantically scramble for the right words. More often than not, the phrase that tumbles out of our mouths is a reflex: “I’m sorry.”

While usually well-intentioned and polite, “I’m sorry” can sometimes fall entirely flat in moments of severe emotional distress. It can accidentally shut down the conversation, placing a subtle wall between you and the person in pain. Sometimes, it feels more like a “pity” response rather than a sturdy bridge of true connection. When someone is in the thick of anxiety or grief, an apology for a situation you didn’t even cause doesn’t always offer the deep, grounding support they actually crave.

Instead of trying to search for a silver lining or offering a hasty apology, psychologists suggest a radically different approach. The fastest and most effective way to comfort someone isn’t actually about fixing their complex problem or apologizing for their pain. It’s about practicing what mental health experts call “empathic listening”—a specific communication style rooted in deep compassion, genuine presence and intentional focus. Empathic listening allows the person suffering to feel entirely seen and validated, giving them the reassurance that they aren’t carrying their heavy emotional burden all by themselves.

And according to experts, unlocking this level of interpersonal support doesn’t require a psychology degree, a perfect script or a long, poetic speech. In fact, psychologists have pinpointed a remarkably simple, three-word phrase that instantly provides comfort, de-escalates emotional distress and builds lasting trust. This specific phrase cuts directly through the noise of empty platitudes, acting as an emotional lifeline for someone who feels isolated.

If you want to transform the way you support the people you love, swapping out “I’m sorry” for this powerful alternative is the ultimate place to start.

The 3-Word Phrase That Instantly Comforts

When a loved one is pouring their heart out, the most powerful three words you can offer are simply: “I’m with you.”

This short, declarative sentence carries immense emotional weight. Unlike “I’m sorry,” which can sometimes shift the focus to your own feelings of pity or helplessness, “I’m with you” centers the person in pain. It sends a clear, unwavering signal of solidarity and empathy.

“Sometimes the most powerful thing is not advice, but presence,” licensed psychologist Dr. Brittany McGeehanpreviously told Parade. “This phrase reminds them they’re not alone.”

By saying “I’m with you,” you are telling the other person that you are willing to sit in the dark with them. You aren’t rushing them to heal, and you aren’t minimizing their experience with toxic positivity. For someone terrified that their struggles make them a burden, hearing that a loved one is standing firmly by their side provides an immediate sense of safety and relief.

Why Empathic Listening Matters More Than Fixing the Problem

Most of us are natural problem-solvers. When we hear about a conflict, our brains immediately start mapping out solutions. However, empathic listening requires us to turn off that fixer instinct.

“[It’s] the practice of tuning into someone’s experience with the intention to understand rather than fix,” Dr. McGeehan explained. “It’s more than just hearing words—it’s being present with the emotions behind them and responding in a way that makes the speaker feel seen, not analyzed or managed.”

Why is this shift in communication so critical? When someone feels truly heard and understood without the threat of judgment, their nervous system physically relaxes. Your calm, steadfast presence actually gives them the emotional room they need to process their own complex feelings and find their own clarity.

Other Validating Phrases To Keep in Your Back Pocket

While “I’m with you” is an incredible tool for instant connection, there are other three-word variations of empathic listening that can be just as impactful depending on the situation, according to Dr. McGeehan.

If someone is dealing with an objectively terrible situation that has no immediate solution, try saying, “That sounds hard.”

Many people tend to unintentionally gaslight themselves, minimizing their own pain by comparing it to others. By stating that their situation sounds hard, you are validating their reality.

“You’re not comparing or minimizing—you’re recognizing that what they’re going through matters and simply being with them,” Dr. McGeehan said.

Similarly, simply stating “I hear you” can work wonders for someone who feels invisible. It directly acknowledges that they aren’t speaking into a void, serving as a basic but incredibly effective anchor in a difficult conversation.

Ultimately, true comfort doesn’t come from having the perfect answers. It comes from being brave enough to sit with someone in their pain, offering your presence instead of your apologies.

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I’m sorry, doesn’t always work as intended

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