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Have you seen this?

It’s one in a slew of pro-Trump ads that has been airing since last Wednesday. Set to the song “Love Me” by the singer-songwriter JMSN, the roughly 30-second spot shows a rapid progression of pictures and video of President Trump, as he touts his accomplishments and denounces “communism, socialism and Marxism.” As it ends, you are informed that it was “Paid for by the U.S. Government.”

Trump is deeply unpopular and running strange, propagandistic advertisements is not likely to change that fact. But the wisdom of the campaign notwithstanding, the real problem with this is more legal than political. It is against the law to use taxpayer dollars for propaganda and explicitly partisan purposes.

“This may be felony criminal theft and conversion of government property for political campaign purposes,” Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a Democrat, wrote on social media. “It is a Hatch Act violation for any government employees who worked on it or used government resources to make it. It is blatantly unethical under numerous federal ethics provisions proscribing the use of government resources for political campaigns.”

In a news release, The White House wrote that the ad is a public service announcement, “a reminder for Americans to love their country and know why it’s worth defending — at home, at the border, and abroad.” For his part, President Trump — who personally directed the chief of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, to use taxpayer funds for the ad campaign — says “these are ads for the country.” “I’m not promoting a candidate,” he added. “I’m not promoting myself because I’m not running for office. I’m promoting the country.”

But unlike a public service announcement, this ad — and others like it — aren’t promoting a government program or service. They exist to glorify President Trump: to love him, as the song suggests.

Richard Painter, a former White House ethics lawyer who served under President George W. Bush, gave The Associated Press a blunt assessment of the advertising campaign. “You watch all three ads, they’re sheer propaganda,” he said, adding that “This is increasingly looking like what authoritarian governments do to promote their leaders.”

Compared with the money used to build the president’s ballroom, this is not an expensive campaign. So far, the White House has spent about $5.5 million of a $20 million contract to produce and promote its pro-Trump propaganda. But again, it is less the cost than the fact that the president is showing his deep contempt for a fundamental norm of American democracy: We don’t use government to glorify our political leaders, at least not while they’re alive.

If future Americans want to vote to memorialize or otherwise praise past leaders, that is up to them. But it is not the place of the president to issue propaganda on his behalf, with money taken from the public till.

It is not clear that Democrats have the appetite to impeach Trump for a third time. Even if they did, there is almost no chance that they would have the votes to convict and remove him from office. And yet, this is exactly the type of offense that demands a response from the legislature. A president that shows this much contempt for the republican character of the American system — who seeks, at every opportunity, to set himself up as a strongman over the entire nation — is a president who must be sanctioned by the people’s representatives.

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Joseph Rushmore for The New York Times

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Babies who have a strong immune reaction in the first week of life seem to have triple the risk of developing an allergy or eczema by age 1, compared with those who don’t. But the long-term impact of this early immune response, now defined for the first time, seems to be modulated by the microbiome and how babies are fed.

“If you ask 100 immunologists, they would say that immune development begins at birth and continuously develops over time, without discrete phases,” says Petter Brodin at Imperial College London.

But at a talk at an immune conference in London earlier this month, Brodin challenged this idea. He revealed that he and his colleagues have found that if a baby has a strong immune response in the first week of life, this seems to have an oversized impact on how the infant’s immune system subsequently develops. “That’s a novel concept,” he said during the talk.

In ongoing research, Brodin and his colleagues have been studying nearly 600 infants in Sweden, collecting and analysing blood and stool samples from the infants throughout their first year of life. The analysis revealed that about half the babies had what the researchers termed a strong “seeding” immune reaction during the first week of life, marked by high levels of inflammatory molecules such as interferon gamma, which activates immune cells. The remaining infants had lower levels of these inflammatory molecules during the first week, which the team called a weak seeding reaction.

Further analysis revealed that babies with a strong seeding reaction had substantially more Bacteroides bacteria in their gut than those who had a weak reaction. “A high abundance of Bacteroides bacteria seems to drive seeding reactions to be very strong,” says Brodin – although it is also possible that the variation in levels of the bacteria actually resulted from differences in the severity of the seeding reaction. Babies can pick up these bacteria via interactions with their mother and family members, he says.

The researchers think the effects of the seeding reaction last for only about a week at the beginning of life because that is when the gut is especially leaky, enabling bacteria like Bacteroides to enter the bloodstream and activate immune cells. “Healthy infants are born with a leaky gut that closes up after about a week,” says Brodin.

But the seeding reaction may have lasting effects: by sifting through the infants’ medical records, the researchers found that 39 per cent of those with a strong seeding reaction developed either eczema or a food allergy by age 1. In contrast, just 12 per cent of infants with a weak seeding reaction developed at least one of these conditions, which are caused by excessive inflammation. “What we ideally want is a weak seeding reaction,” says Brodin.

Further analysis revealed that the infants with a strong reaction then followed one of three immune trajectories linked to two main factors: whether they were primarily fed breast or formula milk, and the abundance of bifidobacteria in their gut.

For instance, 50 per cent of babies who had a strong seeding reaction and were breastfed – but had low levels of bifidobacteria – developed eczema or food allergies. Breastfed infants who had a strong seeding reaction and had high bifidobacteria levels were less likely to develop eczema or food allergies, with 25 per cent of them doing so.

The researchers also found that 33 per cent of infants who had a strong seeding reaction and were fed formula milk developed eczema or an allergy by age 1. In the work presented at the conference, the team didn’t give details of bifidobacteria levels in the guts of these formula-fed babies.

Brodin says the bifidobacteria may be important because they break down certain sugars in breast milk, known as human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs), to produce anti-inflammatory molecules called short-chain fatty acids. In turn, these can prevent the immune system from overreacting, he says. The researchers plan to explore why exactly the other links may have emerged in future research, says Brodin.

“This is a really important piece of work. Only a few studies have looked at immune development during the first week after birth,” says Lucy Crouch at the University of Birmingham in the UK. The research could reveal ways to develop personalised medicine for infants, she says.

For instance, you could imagine measuring whether a baby has a strong or weak seeding reaction, then, depending on whether they are breastfed or not and their levels of bifidobacteria, you could give them a probiotic that boosts these microbes to cut their allergy or eczema risk, she says.

But further research is needed to establish whether the seeding reaction has effects beyond the first year, says Crouch. Studies should also explore whether the links made in the study really are causal, she says, which could be done by tracking how immune cells within gut organoids – clumps of lab-grown cells that are used to mimic the intestines – react to bacteria in the presence or absence of HMOs.

“The reported differences in allergy and eczema risk are striking, but they show associations rather than demonstrating that particular microbes or immune responses directly cause the later outcomes,” says Lindsay Hall, also at the University of Birmingham.

For now, parents shouldn’t alter how they feed or interact with their infants based on the results. “It is much too early to suggest that the findings should change advice to parents,” says Hall.

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The United States rushed over the weekend to withdraw all 12 B-1 Air Force bombers from an air base in southern England after commanders received new threats about an Iran-backed plot against the installation, two U.S. officials said on Sunday.

The withdrawal was highly unusual: Such moves are rarely made so quickly from an allied air base in a peacetime country thousands of miles from a combat zone.

The need to move the bombers out of the base, R.A.F. Fairford, was deemed so urgent that some of the planes and their flight crews left while aerial refueling aircraft were still being scrambled to support their flights to the United States. At least three of the planes had landed at their home base in South Dakota by Sunday, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.

The Pentagon’s European Command confirmed on Sunday that the bombers had left England but declined to comment on any new warnings.

“We can acknowledge now that all U.S. bombers that were deployed to R.A.F. Fairford are redeploying to their home stations in the United States,” the command said in a statement. “U.S. Air Force bombers routinely operate around the world to support global force readiness and operational requirements.”

The British Ministry of Defense declined to comment on the movements of U.S. military assets.

American officials on Sunday declined to specify the nature of the new information that prompted the rapid withdrawal of the Air Force bombers, some of which had just arrived in the past week as part of a normal rotation of forces. One U.S. official said the new information was part of the same threat warnings that surfaced three weeks ago, but specific details and a sense of urgency spiked in the past 24 hours, alarming commanders.

The sudden pullout of the bombers came a week after the British police arrested five men who had been traveling last Sunday morning in white vans near the base, which has been used by American bombers in the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. The men were released on bail a day later after the authorities did not discover explosives in the vans.

But the police have repeatedly said the men remain under investigation, and a dual British-Iranian national was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham said last week that the British government believed Iran played a part in planning those events. U.S. and British officials, as well as those in Germany and Israel, believe the operation is connected to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps or a separate military headquarters in Tehran. Iran has denied the accusations.

The episode has presented the authorities with myriad puzzles as they try to sort out the events over the past week, including the arrests, the frantic evacuation of 85 homes, a bomb disposal robot searching the vans for explosives and a national security meeting convened by Mr. Burnham.

In July, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards issued a statement warning that allowing the United States to use the base “makes London responsible” for U.S. actions. “Any base used to launch attacks on Iranian territory,” the statement said, “is a legitimate target for our forces.”

In September, U.S. military commanders received a chilling warning from American and other Western intelligence agencies, according to U.S. officials briefed on the information. R.A.F. Fairford was the target of a potential Iran-backed attack.

The murky outlines of a plot had been pieced together through a combination of intercepted communications, informants and other intelligence. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said his intelligence officials also warned their British counterparts of a probable Iranian-sponsored attack, though they did not provide a specific target. Follow-up attacks were likely to include drones, the confidential assessments warned.

After that initial warning last month, concern among officials across Europe surged. According to a senior U.S. official, Israel warned Germany that American bases there were at heightened risk, noting Spangdahlem and Ramstein in particular.

An Iran-backed plot to commit an attack in Britain would be a major escalation by Tehran against a Western country in apparent retaliation for the American-and Israeli-led war against Iran.

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A B-1 bomber at R.A.F. Fairford in Britain taking off on Sunday. All 12 B-1s were moved from the base in a highly unusual withdrawal. Credit…David Bown/Getty Images

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Although it not always obvious, sound guides how we experience the world around us. And the latest archaeoacoustic techniques show that even the world’s earliest architects understood this.

The ancient pre-Roman society of Etruria in central Italy, for example, embedded sound throughout its culture, using ritual calendars dedicated to recognising key noises of nature, such as thunder. They were also early pioneers of musical instruments in the southern Mediterranean region.

Surviving Etruscan painted tombs in towns such as Tarquinia, Chiusi and Orvieto are known for their dynamic scenes of music, feasting and the afterlife. But our latest research shows how these tombs – built for Etruscans of higher socioeconomic and political status—were designed to offer sophisticated sensory experiences.

This study springs from our existing research involving artificial intelligence (AI) and acoustics. This includes the University of Oxford-led Sounds of Silence project, which has used new acoustic techniques to investigate the soundscapes surrounding these Etruscan tombs. At Duke University, meanwhile, the Neuroartifact project is using neuroscience and AI to better understand the cognitive impact of archaeological artifacts.

We have combined all these techniques to shed fresh light on two 5th-century BC Etruscan painted tombs: Tomba dei Demoni Azzurri (Tomb of the Blue Demons) and Tomba del Gallo (Tomb of the Rooster).

Our research suggests these tombs were designed and constructed not simply to house the dead, but to affect the living through a sensorily immersive environment similar to a modern 3D film experience.

Archaeologists have tended to look at the paintings in these burial chambers as two-dimensional images to analyze. Our goal was to capture the “performing power”of these ancient monuments, using a combination of acoustic, visual and AI technology.

Upon walking into the Blue Demon tomb for the first time, I (Jacqueline) was immediately struck how the paintings seemed to confront me wherever I turned. Merry banqueters on the rear wall appeared unaware of the demons crawling up the side wall, as though ready to burst into the chamber itself.

My experience was, though, shaped by modern LED lighting. Ancient viewers would have relied on beeswax and tallow candles, incense burners and torches. The dim lighting would have both constrained their movement through the tomb and heightened their experience of what they were seeing.

How senses were heavily manipulated

Our research presents the first investigation of subterranean funerary spaces in Etruria as “transitional spaces” between life and death.

The senses of anyone entering these tombs were heavily manipulated. Intense sound effects—such as the exceptionally long reverberation and echoes inside the Blue Demon tomb—gave a dramatic soundtrack to this intense, immersive experience.

Torchlight or candles flickering across painted figures would have created movement amid the shadows. Incense and the smell of libations (ceremonial liquids) added yet another sensory dimension.

Our reconstructions support the idea that some Etruscan painted tombs were used and reused to perpetuate the legacy and power of their families or clans. They may have been kept open throughout the year for rituals commemorating important dates and festivals, as well as the worshipping of the dead.

The sophisticated design of these tombs is striking. While the Blue Demon induces perceptual disorientation, the Rooster privileges visual attention and the architectural discipline of gaze.

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Sailko via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-ND

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Investors hear a common refrain year after year: “It’s better to buy and hold and ride out the downturns. Missing only the 30 best days of market returns can meaningfully lower your portfolio value.”Using the S&P 500 Total Return Index since its base date of January 4, 1988, a buy-and-hold investor earned an 11.46% annualized return through July 31, 2026, turning $1 into $65.48.

Missing only the market’s 30 best days over that same span cuts the annualized return to 6.32%, leaving that $1 at just $10.60. That’s a loss of roughly 84% of the wealth a buy-and-hold investor would have built.

That fact is frequently highlighted to support the case for staying invested through downturns. It is also only half the picture.

Run the same exercise on the market’s 30 worst days instead, and a $1 investment that avoided them would have delivered a 17.41% annualized return and grown to $487.56. That’s more than seven times what buy-and-hold produced.

Challenging the conventional narrative

What should an investor make of this information?

It is remarkable that just 30 out of 9,716 market days can create such an extreme impact on wealth creation. While no one can predict the future, thoughtful portfolio construction and the inclusion of risk management strategies can allow an investor to avoid the futility of prediction altogether.

The best and worst days do not scatter randomly across the market’s history. Since 1988, a best or worst day has occurred within 21 trading days of another best or worst day more than 70% of the time.

The single most common gap between them was one day, meaning an extreme day was often followed immediately by another one.

Notably, nearly all of these days showed up during bear markets: On average, the S&P 500 had already fallen 29.17% from its prior peak by the time one of these best or worst days occurred.

Unless investors have tremendous luck or impossible foresight, conventional wisdom suggests that we simply have to take the bad days with the good.

However, the path dependency of returns and the asymmetric nature of drawdowns vs recoveries mean that passively holding through these periods can be far more consequential than the conventional narrative implies.

Consider that a -10% drawdown requires an +11.11% rally to get back to even, a -25% drawdown requires a +33.33% rally, a -40% drawdown requires a +66.67% rally, and a -50% drawdown requires a +100% rally just to break even.

For an investor with a real deadline — retirement in five years, a child’s tuition bill, a home purchase — the amount of time it takes to recover from these drawdowns presents material consequences for their lives.

A downturn that hits at the wrong moment can force a retiree to withdraw a larger share of a smaller portfolio to cover the same living expenses, extending the damage well beyond the market’s own recovery.

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(Image credit: Getty Images)

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The lightest punishment called for writing a paper and completing training. The most severe was expulsion from the school.

After a woman attending Cornell University accused seven fraternity members of sexually assaulting her in 2024, the university convened a closed proceeding to determine what had occurred and whether those men should face discipline.

Since then, the sanctions imposed on each of the men, and the reasoning behind those decisions, have remained secret. The school has said little.

But detailed summaries of the punishments obtained by The New York Times provide the first look at how Cornell administrators apportioned blame for the alcohol and drug-fueled gathering that the woman has said left her shattered and degraded.

Two of the fraternity members were expelled. Another, who had already graduated, was barred from campus. Two more were suspended. The remaining men were handed lighter punishments, the summaries show.

All of them have denied any wrongdoing, and the Tompkins County district attorney declined to prosecute in 2024. None of the men have been charged with a crime. Their fraternity, Chi Phi, has been banned from campus.

Still, since allegations from the woman who has become known as Jane Doe surfaced in a lawsuit on Sept. 16, they have touched off intense anger over sexual abuse on campus and why more is not done to punish those responsible. Others have criticized what they see as a rush to judge the seven men involved.

In her lawsuit, Jane Doe claimed that, from the start of her encounter involving the seven fraternity members, she was incapable of consent because she was severely intoxicated. The lawsuit inflamed particular ire by stating that the defendants were all “afforded the opportunity to mitigate their conduct by submitting essays to Cornell,” an assertion Cornell has said did not accurately reflect what occurred.

Combined with more than 1,000 pages of interview transcripts, police reports and other records gathered by Cornell investigators and previously obtained by The Times, the discipline summaries show that the university based its decisions on a broad and complicated body of evidence.In the end, the punishments handed out by the three-member panel, which met on Zoom over 12 days in May 2025, varied widely. The panel, which enforces federal civil rights at the university under Title IX provisions, did not conclude that Jane Doe was sexually assaulted by all the men she had accused, according to the discipline summaries.

The university investigative files outline in excruciating detail what the fraternity members were accused of doing on the night of Oct. 19, 2024.

It was Matthew Ingalls whom Jane Doe originally went to visit at the Chi Phi fraternity house at about 11 p.m. She walked there alone from a bar to see him, with her intoxication level from drinking through the evening at about a 5 out of 10, she told investigators.

After she arrived, Mr. Ingalls asked her if she wanted to have a threesome with Jonathan Newell, Jane Doe said. During that encounter, she said, the men gave her ketamine and alcohol. Eventually, other men engaged in sex acts with her without her consent and while she was incapacitated, she said.

At the end of the night at the fraternity house, when Jane Doe was near hallucinating, there was more sex, she told investigators.

Expulsions were handed to Mr. Ingalls and Mr. Newell — the man who sent a Snapchat message to other fraternity members encouraging them to enter the bedroom where Jane Doe was undressed, the discipline summaries show.

The discipline summaries show that the panel found Mr. Ingalls responsible for sexual assault, judging that he was willing to manipulate, exploit and endanger Jane Doe for his own self-interest and the entertainment of others.

A lawyer for Mr. Ingalls declined to comment.

Mr. Newell was also accused of sexual assault, the university files show. Jane Doe told police on Nov. 14, 2024, that he had struck her buttocks with enough force during intercourse to leave bruises, and that he had manipulated her to ingest ketamine.

It was not clear whether Mr. Newell had hired a lawyer, and he did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Suspensions and disciplinary probation were given to Winston Lee and Gillio Lopes. Jane Doe had accused Mr. Lee of inhaling ketamine off her body and forcing oral sex on her. She alleged that Mr. Lopes had sex with her without her consent.

Mr. Lee was suspended for two years, with several semesters of disciplinary probation upon his return; Mr. Lopes received a three-semester suspension and two years of probation, the discipline summaries show. Both men also were ordered not to contact Jane Doe, and were required to study sexual harassment and to write reflection papers.

Lawyers for Mr. Lee and Mr. Lopes did not respond to requests for comment.

A persona non grata order was issued to Diego Sarabia, who had graduated by the time of the discipline panel’s ruling. Mr. Sarabia, whom Jane Doe accused of forcibly kissing her, was barred from campus for three years.

The remaining two men, Scott Norris and Scott Kretzschmar, were ordered not to contact Jane Doe, to study sexual harassment, social media use and bystander intervention, and to write “reflection papers.” They were accused of being part of a group of men who entered the room after reading Mr. Newell’s Snapchat message.

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Of the seven fraternity members accused of assaulting Jane Doe at a Cornell University fraternity house, two were expelled, two were suspended and the other three received lesser punishments. Credit…Heather Ainsworth for The New York Times

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The most potent of the drugs currently approved for inducing weight loss has an even stronger effect when combined with another hormone-targeting treatment. The findings suggest that combining the two could lead to more potent weight-loss therapies, an approach that could become available for wider use in the next few years.

“It’s a pretty astonishing degree of weight loss,” says David Preiss at the University of Oxford, who wasn’t involved in the latest research.

Tirzepatide, sold under the brand names Mounjaro and Zepbound, is the most potent approved weight-loss drug. Throughout the world, it is used to treat adults who have type 2 diabetes or obesity, or who are overweight and have at least one weight-related condition, such as high blood pressure. The drug is administered through weekly injections and mimics two appetite-suppressing hormones: GLP-1 and GIP.

Searching for an even stronger alternative, Dan Skovronsky at Eli Lilly in Indiana and his colleagues recruited 367 people from the US and Argentina who were overweight or who had obesity, all of whom had type 2 diabetes.

They randomly split the participants into groups, then gave some a high, 15-milligram dose of tirzepatide each week. Other groups received varying doses of tirzepatide in combination with eloralintide, a drug that targets a different appetite-suppressing hormone, amylin, and was delivered via a second weekly injection. The team named this dual approach EloraTZP. The remaining participants received placebo injections.

Eleven months later, participants receiving only the 15-milligram tirzepatide dose had lost 15.6 kilograms, or about 14.8 per cent of their body weight, on average. In contrast, those who received the highest dose of eloralintide and the 15-milligram dose of tirzepatide lost about 24.5 kilograms on average, equivalent to 23.3 per cent of their body weight. The placebo group lost just 3 per cent of their body weight, on average.

The findings were presented at the 62nd Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes in Milan, Italy, on 30 September.

“Adding a drug acting like amylin [alongside tirzepatide] effectively brings a third appetite-regulating pathway into play, which may explain why the combination appears to deliver substantially greater weight loss,” says Lora Heisler at the University of Aberdeen, UK, who also wasn’t involved in the work.

The tirzepatide group also experienced a 2.4 per cent reduction, on average, in their blood sugar levels. The same figure was 2.9 per cent in the high-dose EloraTZP group and 0.3 per cent among those on the placebo. “These are massive reductions [with EloraTZP],” says Preiss. “You would imagine that this [and the weight loss] would reduce the risk of cardiovascular complications, high blood pressure,” he says, although further studies exploring this are needed.

However, mild to moderate side effects, such as diarrhoea, nausea and vomiting, were more common in the EloraTZP groups than those on tirzepatide alone or the placebo. This is probably why up to 27 per cent of those in the EloraTZP groups dropped out of the trial, whereas the dropout rate was just 3 per cent in the tirzepatide group and 17 per cent in the placebo group, says Preiss.

The increased risk of such side effects may put some people off the combined treatment approach, even if it carries the potential for greater weight loss, says Heisler. “They might find the combination more difficult to tolerate. If the patient’s already doing well on a drug like tirzepatide, then additional benefit may not outweigh the added treatment burden or side effects.”

What’s more, some people would only benefit from losing small or moderate amounts of body weight, and so EloraTZP may not be the right approach for them, says Preiss. Still, a larger trial of EloraTZP, delivered as a single weekly injection, is set to launch by the end of the year, the team wrote in a press release. If all goes smoothly, the US Food and Drug Administration could approve the approach for wider use in the next few years, says Heisler.

Although the latest trial was based on people with type 2 diabetes, weight-loss drugs consistently have larger effects in people who don’t have the condition, but have obesity or are overweight. It is unclear why this is the case, says Preiss, but it suggests the benefits of EloraTZP could be even greater for such people, although further trials are needed to verify this, he says.

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One summer morning, the Rev. Melissa Wagner stepped into the pulpit of her church and delivered a sermon that no pastor ever wants to give.

Wagner fought back tears as she spoke in her stately United Methodist church that had stood in Belding, Michigan, for 120 years. To celebrate their faith and prosperity, the town’s leaders had built a grand edifice with a soaring domed ceiling, massive stained-glass windows and an 8-foot painting of Jesus overlooking the altar.

But on that Sunday in 2024, Wagner spoke to a nearly empty church — about 12 elderly members, sitting far apart from one another in a sanctuary built for a thousand people. Wagner stood alone in the pulpit. There was no choir, no church organist, and no children or young families.

She was delivering a eulogy — not for a person, but for her congregation. She was announcing that their church would close because of dwindling membership.

“You are still the church,” Wagner said as one elderly woman dabbed her eyes with tissue. “And while where you worship will change, the one you worship does not.”

What Wagner experienced with her shrinking congregation is arguably the most urgent challenge facing churches across America. Experts project an estimated 100,000 churches in the US will close or be repurposed over the next decade. Many churches will be unable to escape this “tsunami” of closings — a grim trajectory one pastor described as, “Every year the pews are getting emptier and the collection plates getting lighter.”

This is the challenge that “Christianity at a Crossroads,” a new TV documentary series, examines. The comprehensive four-part series, which premieres Thursday on PBS stations, features heart-wrenching scenes like the last days of Belding United Methodist Church. It also shows how mass church closures will hurt communities across America — including people who don’t attend church or care nothing for organized religion.

The filmmakers talk to an astonishing range of churchgoers from leaders such as the Rev. Robert Jeffress, a vocal supporter of President Trump, to the Rev. Adam Hamilton, the Democratic Senate candidate in Kansas, to people who attend a virtual reality church as avatars.

The shadow that hangs over the entire series, though, is the perilous future of the church. Christian leaders have been warning about the decline of American churches for decades. What’s new about the PBS series is that it presents portraits of the people and congregations behind this decline, along with specific numbers and a timeframe for the expected church closings.

At the same time, the series offers Christians glimmers of hope: stories of churches that are bucking the trend by adapting, embracing technology and growing their congregations.

Why church closings affect more than just churchgoers

Despite churches’ struggles, Christianity remains the dominant religion in America. It’s woven into the fabric of American history as well as the nation’s political and civic culture. About 62% of adults in the US identify as Christian, and the series says that an estimated 30% of Americans — about 100 million people — still attend church every week.

There are recent signs that the gradual decline in church attendance has leveled off. For the first time in 25 years, the number of people attending in-person worship in the US has increased, according to a new study from the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. Worshippers are showing up in greater numbers, giving more money to congregations and volunteering more, the study found.

But there will be no return to the glory days of the mid-20th century, when almost half of Americans routinely attended a church, synagogue or mosque, the same study concluded.

The filmmaker behind “Christianity at a Crossroads” agrees with that assessment.

“The tsunami is going to continue for a while, says Martin Doblmeier, the founder and president of Journey Films, a production company specializing in movies and TV series about faith.

The docuseries, though, also looks at churches that defy this trend. They include thriving immigrant churches like Korean Central Presbyterian Church in Northern Virginia. Others like Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia, have about 10,000 members and expanded their congregation in recent years by making their church a more attractive destination for people outside their church walls.

“They still have a packed house but now also have about 15,000 people who view them online,” Doblmeier tells CNN. “It’s no longer an in-person church with an online option. It’s an online church with an in-person option. That’s quite intentional, and a sign of the future.”

Some churches have rightly been accused of being partisan, hypocritical and discriminatory toward women and minorities. But film argues that most American churches are “engines of social good.” At a time when the social safety net is fraying and affordability is a midterm-election mantra, churches are stepping into the void.

Various studies show that regular churchgoers donate more to charity, are more active in politics and more likely to join civic groups. Volunteerism has declined for years in America, but churchgoers step into the gap.

When pews go empty, those outside a church’s walls also suffer, the Rev. Jacqueline J. Lewis, an author, activist and senior pastor at Middle Church in New York City, says in the film.

“In so many neighborhoods, the church is the food pantry, the immigration station,” she says. “This is the place that is (there) for the outsider, the stranger.”

A Maryland church makes a tough decision

The film explores the reasons that church attendance began declining around the 1960s. Some are well-documented: declining trust in institutions, debates over homosexuality, clergy sex-abuse scandals and the rise of “nones,” those who describe their religious beliefs as “nothing in particular.”

A result of this trend is that thousands of churches across America are now like the United Methodist church in Belding, Michigan. Their peak days are in the rear-view mirror. They often face brutal choices: whether to close or limp along, living off endowments and the tenacity of a few dedicated worshippers.

This was the situation facing the Rev. Matt Braddock, senior pastor at Christ Congregational Church in Silver Spring, Maryland. Membership had dwindled below 100 people, while the sanctuary cost about $400,000 a year to insure and maintain. The pressure to keep the church open became so acute that Braddock developed a migraine headache that lasted for six months.

“Every year was so stressful because we were always cutting corners in every budget to pay for the building,” Braddock tells CNN.

His church, which is featured in the PBS series, made the difficult decision several years ago to close its building. But they continued to worship by moving into the basement of another church, where Braddock discovered some surprises. He found that he liked the intimacy of worship in small spaces. The church saved enough money to hire staff. Membership stabilized, and pledges are now strong, he says. His headache is now gone.

He says the experience has made him, and his congregation think anew about how the “church” should be defined.

“It was important for me to remind everyone that the church isn’t a building, and it never was,” Braddock says. “It’s the gathering of God’s people. Where we are gathering, God’s always with us, wherever that is. I understand the attachment to a building, but I question whether we should have been attached to the building in the first place.”

What unites churches that thrive

But many declining churches don’t adapt. Its leaders don’t demand change, and its members don’t pursue it until it’s too late. Doblmeier, an award-winning filmmaker who has been making documentaries about faith for decades, thinks he knows why.

The same reason many go to church is the same reason why many churches struggle to survive: the allure of the familiar.

“Church is the place you go to because you feel as though it’s not changing,” he says. “People look forward to the same rhythms, prayers and rituals that they’re so used to … This is the one place where they can have comfort and stability.”

The PBS series spotlights churches that have successfully defied the wave of closings. One example is the Church Project in Texas, a faith community that has returned to the practices of early Christianity by primarily meeting in small groups in members’ homes.

What unites churches that grow?

As the documentary series shows some shared traits — accessible parking, lively music, powerful preaching and efforts to shower visitors with hospitality — seem mundane. But they are non-negotiable elements for growth. The film also spotlights the Church of the Nativity in suburban Baltimore, Maryland, which has learned another key to expansion: make church fun for young people. It draws about 800 kids and youths for its Sunday services.

“They saw early on that if the children want to come, they will bring their parents,” Doblmeier says.

One of American church leaders’ biggest fears is that their country will become more like Western Europe — a “post-Christian” landscape filled with empty cathedrals and church buildings converted to condos.

Yet Braddock, the Maryland pastor, has faith. He says humans need community.

“People can get together for other reasons,” he says, “but there’s something important to people with similar spiritual questions and hungers getting together and finding meaning. That doesn’t go away. Having vitality doesn’t mean numerical growth. Churches can still be full of life without having to be megachurches.”

The first Christians worshipped primarily in each other’s homes. They didn’t define the church as a building — it was a “body of believers — it was wherever Christians gathered in Jesus’ name.”

That belief is part of why Christians’ faith lived on, despite persecutions and scandals through the centuries. This is the faith that Wagner, the pastor in Belding, alluded to when she looked out on her mostly empty church and told its remaining members, “the one you worship does not change.”

This is the faith that many churches in America hold onto today. And it also poses their biggest challenge.

How do you hold onto “God’s unchanging hand” but change just enough to keep filling the pews and collection plates?

In the years ahead, every church will have to answer that question.

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President Trump personally instructed his budget director to use taxpayer money for TV ads praising him and his presidency, setting in motion a $20 million contract that used funds from the Department of Homeland Security, according to people familiar with the matter.

The ads have run across cable and network television — on Fox News, CNN and MS Now, with football games on Fox and with national newscasts on CBS, ABC and NBC, including “Meet the Press,” which Mr. Trump is known to watch.

Mr. Trump was eager to see the laudatory ads on the air and told Russell T. Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to come up with the money from within the government, the people said. Mark Paoletta, the budget office’s counsel, and Will Scharf, the White House counsel, both said it would be legal to use D.H.S. funds. The president and Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, both spoke with Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, about the ads.

On Sept. 20, U.S. Customs and Border Protection — which falls under D.H.S. — awarded the contract to LMD, a Maryland marketing firm, federal records show.

This article is based on interviews with 12 people familiar with the president’s interest in the ads and how they came to be. They spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the president’s demand.

The taxpayer-funded ads have been criticized by Democrats and even some Republicans as a possible violation of federal laws against using taxpayer dollars for “publicity or propaganda purposes.” And they come as the president is also directing spending from his super PAC — MAGA Inc., which entered the fall with $400 million — for which he has been raising money since he won re-election in 2024.

It was not clear why taxpayer funds, and not money from the super PAC, were used for the spots.

The White House has called the ads public service announcements and said they are appropriate because there is no “call to action” to vote for any candidate. Some of his aides also noted that Mr. Trump is not running for office now, in an attempt to blunt criticism of the ads as violating federal laws about the use of public money.

When pressed by a reporter on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said: “If somebody said that that’s wrong, I’ll gladly pay the money.”

“But these are ads for the country,” he added. “You have to understand. I’m not promoting a candidate. I’m not promoting myself because I’m not running for office. I’m promoting the country.”

At least four spots have run so far, at a cost of about $5.5 million, and that is expected to grow, according to the media tracker AdImpact and people familiar with the spending. One played images of Mr. Trump to the song “Love Me” by Christian Berishaj, who performs as JMSN. (The artist has protested the use of his song.)

Another was identical to a Trump campaign video from 2024 that condemns “villains” whom the president perceives as enemies. The use of material originally made during Mr. Trump’s political campaign has given fuel to critics who reject the White House claim that the ads are simply public service announcements.

A third ad, about the Iran war, features remarks from both Mr. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Such public service spots typically say which agency paid for them. In this case, all of the ads had an unusual tagline: “Paid for by the U.S. government.”

‘Love Me’

On Aug. 7, Mr. Trump was in the Oval Office with a group of Republican strategists working with his team, along with James Blair, his top political adviser, and Ms. Wiles. Natalie Harp, his ever-present assistant and provider of positive news about himself, was there as well.

At the time, Mr. Trump’s advisers were waiting for him to sign off, finally, on spending from his super PAC for midterm candidates, after months of anxiety from Republican candidates about whether he would help them financially in tight races.

But during that meeting, the president was much more interested in looking at videos of himself.

He turned to Ms. Harp and asked her to show the group the type of imagery he favors.

Ms. Harp pulled up a series of videos made by the White House digital team on her tablet: Mr. Trump standing in front of vast crowds; Mr. Trump beside Marine One; Mr. Trump with fighter jets streaking overhead.

One video showed Dana White, the U.F.C. president, at the 2024 Republican convention, calling Mr. Trump “the toughest, most resilient person that I’ve ever met.” Mr. Trump has talked with delight about that quote repeatedly ever since.

Mr. Trump made clear he planned to travel to support candidates in the midterms, but also that his presidency needed to be promoted, front and center, in the commercials his advisers were making.

Later that month, The Atlantic reported that MAGA Inc. was planning a blitz of midterm ads, with Trump as the centerpiece.

Instead, a Trump-linked nonprofit called Securing American Greatness aired a spot featuring the Dana White quote, spending just under $60,000, according to AdImpact. The ad primarily aired over Sept. 2 and Sept. 3 around Washington, where Mr. Trump was sure to see them.

But then, weeks later, several ads glorifying Mr. Trump began appearing across the country — this time paid for by taxpayers, by way of Customs and Border Protection.

The ads included the “Love Me” spot, in which Mr. Trump says in a voice-over that “America will never be a communist country.”

As the taxpayer-funded spots began running, MAGA Inc. has spent directly to help out in one specific race, putting more than $20 million into the Texas Senate campaign. Two other new groups linked to MAGA Inc. — No Going Back PAC and Safety and Affordability PAC — were recently created and have spent and reserved more than $163 million on spots in races across the country.

But those ads feature Mr. Trump only sparingly.

Asked to comment for this story, the White House press office sent an unsigned statement saying, “These public service announcements are about reminding Americans to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending, at home, at our borders and abroad.”

The White House has said there is precedent for using taxpayer money for the ads. “Don’t let the Fake News get away with their lies about our epic Public Service Announcements that have been running on tv,” Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, posted on X on Sept. 27.

His office sent out an email stating that “presidential public service announcements are nothing new,” comparing the spots to efforts to promote health care policy in past administrations, or President Woodrow Wilson’s World War I propaganda campaign.

The Government Accountability Office has found likely or confirmed violations of the anti-propaganda rule before, including during the tenures of both President Barack Obama and President George W. Bush. Those cases concerned publicity campaigns related to policies, not ads focused on the presidents themselves.

‘This Is My Money’

The money for the ads was freed up on Sept. 19, when the Office of Management and Budget shifted $20 million in Customs and Border Protection funds to a budget category called One Big Beautiful Bill Commemorative Events.

The next day, C.B.P. awarded a $20 million contract to LMD, a marketing firm based in Columbia, Md., that federal records show had past work as a government contractor. The actual purchase of the airtime was made by a second firm, LMO, according to a person familiar with the events, who wasn’t authorized to discuss them publicly.

A spokeswoman for the Office of Management and Budget declined to comment on the reporting for this story. A spokesperson for the Homeland Security Department would only say, “D.H.S. follows all applicable rules for contracting decisions and keeps all decision makers informed. All contracting decisions are made in accordance with applicable law.” Officials with LMD and LMO did not respond to requests for comment.

The spots started out airing narrowly but soon ran in heavy rotation not just on cable channels, but on broadcast networks as well. They ran heavily on the network morning programs like “Good Morning America” and “CBS Mornings,” according AdImpact, and appeared in entertainment shows including “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and “The Amazing Race.” One aired repeatedly during weekend football broadcasts on the Fox network.

The ads are not the first costly television campaign under Mr. Trump, nor are they the first controversial ones. In 2025, Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary at the time, appeared in a $200 million-plus government ad campaign. The ads, which showed Ms. Noem on a horse at Mount Rushmore, ultimately drew the president’s disapproval, and became the justification for replacing Ms. Noem.

The latest ads promoting Mr. Trump come as his standing with the public has dropped. His approval rating sits at around 37 percent, a number that has been low and steady for months, according to a polling tracker by The New York Times. Republicans are increasingly fearful of a Democratic sweep of both House and Senate, and losses in state legislatures.

Mr. Trump has remained a prodigious fund-raiser for his various construction projects around Washington and at the White House, as well as his future presidential library. Last month, he promised to spend “probably” $400 million to $500 million on midterm election races, but he made clear who holds the purse strings to his super PAC.

“This is my money that I control,” Mr. Trump said.

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An ad that was approved by President Trump and paid for by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Credit…via YouTube

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