But as the heartbreaking news about Charlie Kirk trickled in Wednesday, Kyle Smith, a film critic for The Wall Street Journal, imagined what the Kennedy coverage might have looked like today.

“John F. Kennedy, a divisive and polarizing figure, was shot in Dallas today. Let’s review some of his hateful anti-communist rhetoric while we try to understand why he inspired such committed opposition…”

— Kyle Smith (@rkylesmith) September 10, 2025

That was hyperbole, though not so far off from some of the comments on MSNBC that caused the left-leaning cable network to trend on X for a while — and later apologize.

Anchor Katy Tur and some of her guests seemed to struggle to refrain from the sort of rhetoric that is a hallmark of MSNBC, which is reliably antagonistic to Donald Trump and his supporters.

National conservatives urge prayer for Charlie Kirk after shooting death at Utah university

Utah leaders’ reactions to Charlie Kirk being shot at Utah event

Sometimes, they didn’t succeed, as when Tur said, “You can imagine the (Trump) administration using this as a justification for something.”

It was a shocking thing to see a network anchor politicize the shooting of a 31-year-old father of two whose career had been built on debating people who disagree with him.

It was even more shocking to hear an MSNBC guest, Matthew Dowd, accuse Kirk of hate speech, and say, “you can’t say these awful words and not expect awful actions to take place.”

Statement from MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler: “During our breaking news coverage of the shooting of Charlie Kirk, Matthew Dowd made comments that were inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable. We apologize for his statements, as has he. There is no place for violence in…

— MSNBC Public Relations (@MSNBCPR) September 10, 2025

MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler later apologized, saying in a statement, “During our breaking news coverage of the shooting of Charlie Kirk, Matthew Dowd made comments that were inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable. We apologize for his statements, as has he. There is no place for violence in America, political or otherwise.”

Dowd also said, even as the terrible video of Kirk being struck by the bullet was circulating online, that we shouldn’t rush to conclusions because “we don’t know if this was a supporter shooting their gun off in celebration.”

Hey @MSNBC I’m gonna go ahead and rule out that it was one of Charlie Kirk’s supporters that accidentally shot him with a celebratory gun shot. pic.twitter.com/8qdtH5XQj0

— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) September 10, 2025

It was later reported that Dowd is “no longer with MSNBC.”

The breaking news alerts that came across after Kirk was shot were telling, as well: which news outlet called him a “right-wing influencer” (The New York Times) and which called him a “conservative commentator” (Politico).

Most journalists and politicians, however, were able to put aside politics and see the afternoon for what it was: an unimaginable tragedy for Kirk’s family and friends, and a gut punch to the nation — to all of us.

“It’s a reminder that in a country like America, in a democracy, we only have a democracy if we settle our disagreements with words, not with violence,” Brian Stelter said on CNN.

“For the liberals, for the anti-Trump voices, for the anti-Kirk voices out there who feel despair about the direction of the country’s politics, the only way to address that is through words, not through violence. So whenever we see one of these appalling crimes, it is disturbing because it cuts to the core of how the American democracy functions.”

How Charlie Kirk became ‘too big to ignore’

"I'm trying to be proactive about encouraging dialogue between people who disagree."

That's what @CharlieKirk11 said when he invited me to have an "open (and fair) debate" a few years ago. pic.twitter.com/nCmlcwlqvb

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) September 11, 2025

Stelter’s colleague, Jake Tapper, later spoke with emotion as a photo of Kirk and his family aired on the screen. “Everybody demonizes everybody else. ... These are human beings ... Charlie had a wife. Charlie had two little kids. You could disagree with every word Charlie said and still think these kids deserve to have a dad.”

An uncharacteristically somber Scott Jennings talked about Kirk’s appeal to young Americans: “Thousands of people were showing up. Not for a rock concert, not for a sporting event, but for American politics. He inspired all these kids to be involved in their country. It’s unequivocally a good legacy.”

🙏 BREAKING: Scott Jennings offered a eulogy for Charlie Kirk live on air and it was a truly great moment. THANK YOU SCOTT. pic.twitter.com/5DJyVaigDP

"He inspired all these kids to be involved in their country...When he took a stand on an issue, you could bet that people would…

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) September 10, 2025

On NewsNation, Geraldo Rivera was blunt: “I feel like throwing up. It’s such a painful thing you hope doesn’t happen, and then when they tell you, your worst fears are realized. It’s horrifying. It’s horrifying. You know, I think it is appropriate for the president to be the voice that carries this awful news to the nation, and I want the nation to stand as one now, to recognize the contribution this young man made, and to honor his family and to think about his family at this moment. It is beyond, really, beyond commentary.”

In a perfect world, there would be no one talking dismissively about America’s “gun culture” on the air as a young father lay dying, or musing that “maybe everybody’s arming up,” as one commentator did.

What Charlie Kirk told me about his faith and legacy

Opinion: Charlie Kirk shooting is an unspeakable attack on freedom

“Right now, this is who we are,” one commentator said and I wanted to throw a shoe at the TV screen.

Because it’s not who we are.

Most of us are not people on the brink of murdering people with whom we disagree. We are fathers and mothers and daughters and sons who are wrecked for days when something like this happens. Who understand that this is a dreadful aberration and not a rule of American life, although the frequency with which political violence is occurring is disturbing to all of us.

Listen to Laura Coates, speaking on CNN:

“This umbrella of violence that might have an ideological spin is why you hear so many conversations about domestic terrorism — an act intended to try to influence a political action in some way. ... It’s the most dangerous as well because it is so particularly generalized in its application against people.

“It’s very terrorizing, to use the term precisely, because it is not indicating one particular victim, but also trying to influence a thought process. Here, if this is in fact tied to (Kirk’s) ideology, given the fact that he is quite the lightning rod in many communities, and has been accessible and yet controversial, you’ve got a very terrifying prospect for so many people who share his similar qualities, in the sense of a public figure who is unabashed about their views but alienates others that could specifically be a target for someone. It is horrific to think about this being a young father, a human being generally being targeted in this way.”

The news coverage today, including that of Deseret reporters and a photojournalist who were on the scene, has, for the most part, reflected the mood of the nation today: disbelief, horror and grief. There are no liberals declaring “We are all MAGA today,” but the New York Yankees holding a moment of silence for Kirk before their game came close.

When you witness trauma: After the shooting

Thank you so much to the New York Yankees for holding a moment of silence for Charlie tonight. 🙏🏼 pic.twitter.com/kwlRMmcz8t

— Ryan Fournier (@RyanAFournier) September 10, 2025

In Connecticut, a group of young Democrats and a group of young Republicans issued a joint statement condemning political violence and offering prayers for all impacted. On Fox, Dana Perino called this a “watershed moment,” and on X, Meghan McCain wrote, “This is a generational, paradigm shifting moment in American history.”

It’s not the Turning Point that Kirk founded, but today feels like a turning point of a different kind.

The order was hailed as historic by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who said prescription drug ads have had a “disastrous” impact on human health.

“Americans are led to believe that there’s a pill for every illness, and that you don’t have to exercise, you don’t have to pay attention to your diet... whatever goes wrong with you, you can fix with a drug,” Kennedy told Bret Baier of Fox News.

Most Americans, however, will just be relieved not to have to sit through embarrassing ads on TV with their children or parents in the room if the order has the desired effect.

“People hate drug ads on TV,” Stat reported two years ago, looking at complaints consumers have lodged with the FCC. The complaints fell into four categories: the number of ads, the repetition, the inappropriateness for children and the oft-mocked list of side effects.

Ironically, it was a loosening of restrictions on side-effect disclosure that led us to the place where almost everyone knows the Ozempic song — a rendition of a 1974 song called “Magic.” This change occurred during the Clinton administration, in 1997.

In 1993, pharmaceutical companies spent $166 million on direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs. By 2005, that had increased to $4.2 billion, and it has reportedly doubled since then.

“Prescription drug brands accounted for 24.4% of ad minutes across evening news programs on ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and NBC this year through May,” The Wall Street Journal reported, citing data from iSpot.

'We're in a spiritual crisis' — RFK Jr.'s first message to America goes beyond physical health

The United States and New Zealand are the only countries that allow direct-to-consumer ads for prescription medicine. Critics say such advertising interferes with the doctor-patient relationship, and can lead to overprescribing and self-diagnosis. The American Medical Association has repeatedly called for an end to the ads.

Their defenders, however, say the ads are “commercial speech” protected by the First Amendment, and that they advance public health by educating consumers about disease and treatment options and encourage people to see doctors.

And the loss of these advertising dollars would be a blow to media outlets already struggling to survive.

BREAKING: RFK Jr. and President Trump just STRUCK a blow right into the heart of BIG PHARMA.

He called it a “historic change” in the way pharmaceutical ads are done on television.

Moments ago, Secretary Kennedy told Bret Baier he had just left an Oval Office meeting where… pic.twitter.com/a6N7ZSP5A6

— Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) September 9, 2025

The order that Trump signed Tuesday authorizes Kennedy Jr. and the FDA to take “appropriate action” to enforce existing laws governing pharmaceutical ads and to “ensure transparency and accuracy ... including by increasing the amount of information regarding any risks associated with the use of any such prescription drug required to be provided in prescription drug advertisements.”

In other words, the ads could become even more cumbersome than they already are.

In reporting on the loosening of restrictions in 1997, The Wall Street Journal described “mind-numbing commercials,” such as one for the birth-control injection Depo-Provera: “Fully half of the two-minute spot ... was dedicated to screen after screen of tiny print, detailing such possible side effects” such as convulsions, jaundice and irregular menstruation.

But Kennedy believes that returning to stricter rules of disclosure will result in fewer ads, and that’s cause for alarm for media companies that depend on pharmaceutical company dollars.

“If drugmakers were forced to include a comprehensive and complete list of side effects, one media executive says, the result would be ads that are unworkably long for TV, which is built around 15, 30, and 60 second commercials,” Alex Weprin wrote for The Hollywood Reporter.

MAHA will see you now: How conservatism became crunchy again

Kennedy, speaking after the signing of the order, said that some ads could last as long as four minutes if every potential side effect of a drug is listed.

The move may please legislators on both sides of the political aisle.

In June, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, working with Maine Sen. Angus King, proposed legislation that would ban prescription drug advertising on social media, TV, radio, print and digital platforms.

A month earlier, Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican, and Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, sponsored a bill that would have ended companies’ ability to write off direct-to-consumer drug advertising on their taxes.

She was No. 1 in another way that day, finishing the course in 2 hours, 19 minutes and 12 seconds and breaking a record for the U.S. women’s marathon that Deena Kastor had set in 2006.

News coverage of D’Amato’s triumph called it a “comeback” — she was 37 years old and had stopped competitive running because of an injury at the age of 23. After having two children, she started running simply to clear her head and lose some of the weight she’d gained during pregnancy. Her first time out the door, she ran for less than two minutes before quitting. She walked home and cried.

But she tried again two days later, and that time, was able to run for three minutes. She kept going, and little by little, she got faster and more fit. She decided to see how far being a “hobby jogger” could take her in between being a mom and selling real estate.

Pretty far, it turned out.

Even after breaking the marathon record, D’Amato didn’t rest on those laurels; she went on to set a record in the half-marathon in 2023 and now, with sponsors like Nike and Garmin, has new ambitions.

In “Don’t Call It a Comeback,” a memoir published Sept. 9 by St. Martin’s Press, D’Amato details the journey that led her from Virginia to Utah, where she’s now training with Brigham Young University coach Ed Eyestone.

Success came, she says, when she quit chasing after personal records and instead sought happiness, both in running and in her family. Her story has inspired many parents to lace up and get out the door, including a man who came up to her after a 10K race and said, “Keira, this is your fault. I’m doing this race because of you and I’ve lost 40 pounds.”

Everyone, D’Amato writes, has the potential to be a runner: “You haven’t run since the middle school fitness test? You’re a runner. You only chase your feral toddler? You’re a runner. My PR in the 5K doesn’t make me any more of a runner than you are,” she writes.

D’Amato, a newly single mother whose children are now aged 9 and 10, says that she doesn’t only run for herself, but to show others what’s possible even when they’re told that they’re old, too busy or not naturally gifted.

In an interview with the Deseret News, she talked about how her “toolbox of failures” helps to make her a better runner, what it’s like training on the BYU campus as a master runner, and why a self-professed “Richmond girl” has found a home in the mountains of Utah.

The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

'He's been in those gritty situations' — How Ed Eyestone shapes, builds and coaches champions

Deseret News: What did you want to accomplish by writing this book, and why now?

Keira D’Amato: I think I knew down to my bones that I would write a book at some point, but it was after I broke the American (women’s) marathon record in 2022 that people kept telling me you should write a book, you should write a book, you should write a book. But I combatted that by saying I don’t have my ending yet. So I deferred that dream. But then I started hearing the same questions over and over again: How did I balance it as a mom? How did I go from a good runner in high school and college to the best American runner while being a mother and a full-time realtor?

And I realized that I’d figured out a lot of life lessons to help me get to this point, and had a lot of fun doing it, and I really wanted to share that with the world. But it was also scary because I started writing the book when I didn’t have the ending yet, and then I stopped myself and said, this is what the whole book is about. Not knowing if you are going to fail. Not knowing the ending. But doing it anyway.

DN: At the end of the book, it’s July 2024 and you’re moving with your family to Utah to train with Ed Eyestone and his pro team. Is that where you are now?

KD: Yes, I live in Park City, and go to Provo three days a week. Tuesday, Thursdays and Saturdays, I’m up super early, usually at 5 a.m. to go down to Provo and meet the team for a workout. And Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I stay in Park City and do my runs up here.

I get my kids off to school in the morning and then at 3 o’clock when they come home, it’s back to being Mom again. I do feel like at the core of me, I’m a mom raising two incredible kids — it’s mom by day, a runner by night, I guess, but not really at night.

DN: Why do you think BYU’s runners have been so successful? Is it something in the water, or the Utah air, or is it just Coach Eyestone?

KD: I think it is Ed Eyestone. He is legendary. He’s been there, he’s done that, he’s a two-time Olympian, he has accolades that could go on for days if you start listing them. I think also he’s a competitor, but I think he structured his life with gratitude and community focus and around family; so I think his perspective is incredible. He’s such a good teacher and such a good adviser — he has to be a psychologist of sorts — but it’s not overly emotional, which makes him a really strong coach.

And I do think there is something in the air of Utah — training at altitude is definitely helpful. But I think he’s just created this team that is almost a self-propelling machine now. He’s created these athletes with such good mentalities; they mentor the other athletes to have a similar good mentality, so he’s created such a special thing in Utah. I love the idea of being part of the team that he has with Conner Mantz and Clayton Young, to name a few, and of course the opportunity to train at altitude. It felt like this grand adventure where I can be supported and inspired and encouraged in a way that I never had in running before.

DN: You said in the book that it didn’t bother you when your marathon record was broken in the same year that you had set it, but it bothered me — I thought you should have gotten to hang on to the record for at least a couple of years. How do you have such a good attitude about that, and is it a goal of yours to break it again?

KD: One hundred percent, I want to break it again. But for me, it was the pursuit of the record, it wasn’t holding onto it. Moving that bar forward, helping other women feel if Keira can do it, I can do it. It’s not what I can do, it’s what we can do — what women can do, what mothers can do, what older runners can do, what people with a busy life can do.

I feel like I was showing other people what we are capable of, and if I empowered Emily (Sisson) even less than 1% for her to go after it and move the bar forward, I feel really proud of that. And I felt connected to her, because I went through some deep, dark places when I broke the American record, and I thought, wow, she went through the same things.

I’d already respected her as a runner, but I also felt an immediate kinship with her, that we had both struggled and overcome a lot, even just to get to the starting line.

I’m proud to be part of the history and move it forward, but it wasn’t my record to own for the rest of my life.

DN: In the book, you talk about the pain you went through as early as mile 20. What got you through those remaining 6-plus miles, and are there any lessons from that experience that are applicable to you today, and to other people?

KD: I think it’s important to run the mile you’re in. So, during that race, I was taking it mile by mile, water stop by water stop. I wasn’t thinking I had six more miles to go or 10 more miles to go. I was thinking, let’s see if I can get through this mile and then we’ll get through another one. That helped. The finish line or the top of the mountain is intimidating, but if you look down and work through the now, that makes it easier.

But also, the notion of ‘sticking it to the man’ was really powerful to me. People ask me ‘who’s the man?’ But take aging — people were telling me that I was too old to accomplish something like that. Or people would say my life was too busy, or a mother can’t put in the time to do something like that. So, again, I feel like I was trying to show what we are all capable of, and running for a collective ‘we’ gave me a lot of strength.

And I have this toolbox of failures and lessons learned, and I pulled out all the tools. It was through a series of failed races, coming up short, not doing my best, that I learned how to do my best on that day.

Sometimes the fear of failure can prevent us from starting. But I think that we need to accept that a lot of times we’re going to come up short. We can learn our lessons, we can grow, we can get better, and then go out there and be an upgraded version of ourselves. In running, as in life, a lot of races that we do are sub-par performances. … Something that I talk a lot about is, it’s not win or lose, but win or learn. People who are really successful have a lot of failures along the way that maybe you don’t see, but it’s part of the process; it’s part of how we learn and grow.

DN: In the book, you share an encouraging text you got from Joan Benoit Samuelson, who won the gold medal for the marathon at the 1984 summer Olympics. What other advice have you been given, either by runners or non-runners, that has made a difference in your life and career?

KD: During the race when I was breaking the American record, my pacer said, ‘This is what it feels like.’ It was very powerful because he was saying, no American woman has ever done this before — it’s going to feel hard, it’s going to feel tough, but you’re doing it, and this is what it feels like on the way to that goal. And I feel that a lot in life. Sometimes you go through hard things, and you go, yeah, this is what it feels like to grow and to improve.

DN: You mentioned Deena Kastor’s memoir. What other running books have you read that have been helpful to you?

KD: I loved Deena’s, which was “Let Your Mind Run.” Lauren Fleshman’s “Good for a Girl: A Woman Running in a Man’s World.” And Meb Keflezighi’s books, especially “26 Marathons.” I think I’ve read all the running books. I’m a big reader. I listen to audiobooks while I run.

DN: What does the future look like for you? Do you intend to stay in Utah, or is this temporary while you’re training?

KD: We don’t have any plans to move from Utah. I feel centered here in a way that I’ve never felt before. Just with the community, and the people and the mountains and everything to do outside — we’re really loving the Utah area.

On Sept. 14, I’m racing the Copenhagen Half Marathon in Denmark. So I’ll leave next week for that, and I’ll do a fall marathon a bit later and see if I can run my fastest time ever, that would be pretty cool.

With running, I really want to see if I can run my best times ever now. I just turned 40, so I’m a master now, and I want to continue to move the bar forward for older runners and people who have been told you have to slow down in your 40s. And yeah, maybe the times will slow down a little bit, but I think there’s a way to find our best in this decade, so I want to show everyone what’s possible. Personally, I just want to be an awesome mom. I’m so excited to watch my kids grow and develop as people. That’s my top priority: being the best mom to Thomas and Quin.

DN: Do you run with your kids? And how do you encourage them to be active without pushing them too hard?

KD: They sometimes ride their bikes while I run. But I think for them, one of the biggest lessons I want to teach them is to have the courage to try something new. For example, my daughter just started playing lacrosse, and I think it takes a lot of courage for kids to try new things. At dinner we have a rule that’s called the “No thank you bite.” If you don’t like what I’ve put on the plate, you have to take at least one bite and then you can say “no, thank you.” And that’s how I feel about activities, too.

I played every sport I could growing up, and my son, when he was 4 or 5, said, ‘Hey, Mom, I’m not into team sports.” So he just needs to find his thing — he’s really into chess, he’s really into bike riding, he’s playing tennis, so he’s doing other activities. If he wants to be a drama kid, then I’ll be a drama mom. Most of the time I’m doing the best I can, but I’m not writing a book on parenting, let’s put it that way.

DN: What’s the No. 1 thing that you want people to take away from your book?

KD: For me, my book is not a book about running. In the same way that you watch “Ted Lasso” but you don’t have to be a soccer fan, I’m hoping people who aren’t necessarily runners — you know, the runners who haven’t run yet — I hope they can read it and apply some of what I’ve learned through running to whatever their passion is. It’s a book about chasing happiness and finding the happiest version of myself through setting big goals and working hard and going through a grind. So I hope it will help people be a happier version of themselves.

Women athletes — when to run on and when to move on

But, according to a new survey, most of the people who think that identify as liberal.

The survey, conducted by The Argument, an online magazine that promotes liberalism, found a significant partisan divide in answers to the question “Do you think having opposing political views is ever an acceptable reason to cut off contact with a family member?”

While the majority of respondents, regardless of political affiliation, said no, people who voted for Kamala Harris were the most likely to say yes — 40%. Conversely, 11% of Donald Trump voters said it’s OK to cut off contact with a family member over politics, compared to 18% of nonvoters and 25% of all respondents.

Harris voters were even more receptive to cutting off friends over politics, The Argument’s report said. Nearly 50% said that’s OK. And the divide is most stark when looking at young adults: nearly three-quarters of liberals under 45 find it acceptable to end a friendship over politics.

Given that the publication’s point of view — it aims to “make a positive, combative case for liberalism through rigorous, persuasive journalism” — The Argument could have found a way to sugarcoat these findings.

But Lakshya Jain, director of political data and founder of the election analysis firm Split Ticket, sees it as a troubling trend.

“Ideological segregation is a real problem for liberalism, and every indication is that it’s getting worse,” Jain wrote in an analysis of the findings.

For @TheArgumentMag, I wrote about something from our survey that scares me: the ideological segregation of liberalism and of younger voters in general. And every indication suggests it’s about to get worse, not better.https://t.co/VFitKe65yc

— Lakshya Jain (@lxeagle17) September 4, 2025

The online survey of 1,562 registered voters, fielded Aug. 8-17, reflects a moment in time and is not necessarily predictive of where we will be in four years or 10. But it’s instructive to know what factors might be contributing to these findings — and also why one expert in conflict says that cutting ties over politics could be a “strategic mistake.”

Which is the party of free speech?

The question about cutting off family and friends was part of the survey’s larger theme of free speech. Other questions included whether it would be OK for certain people (such as a white supremacist or a transgender rights activists) to give a speech on a college campus and whether it’s OK for people in various professions (including teachers, athletes, news anchors and federal judges) to express support for presidential candidates.

“Neither (political) party is a consistent free-speech defender,” Jain said in his analysis, while observing that large shares of respondents objected to certain speakers at colleges. (Nearly 50% of Trump voters wouldn’t want a transgender rights activist giving a speech on a campus, and 55% of Harris voters said they wouldn’t want Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak there.)

But the “free speech for me and not for thee” dynamic wasn’t as troubling to Jain as was the finding about severed relationships, about which he wrote, “Nobody in America takes politics more personally than young liberals.”

'We are forgiveable people' — navigating conflict when your child has gone 'no contact'

Matthew Levendusky, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the Stephen & Mary Baran Chair in the Institutions of Democracy at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, said as much.

“It’s a bit hard without having the actual data myself to dig into this a bit more, but honestly, I’m not surprised that Harris voters are more likely to say that than Trump voters are,” Levendusky said in an email. “I suspect that part of this is an age/education effect, in that younger voters and better educated ones are more likely to hold a totalizing view of politics — your politics tells me who you are at a very deep level, so if you have the wrong politics, I don’t want you in my life."

He added, “There’s likely a Trump specific factor as well — many on the left are uniquely angry at Trump given his brand of politics and his administration’s actions during the second term. But the point is a more general one — had, say, Nikki Haley been the nominee, I suspect we still would have seen an asymmetry, it just would not have been as stark."

How do we remain bridge-builders during times of war? A conversation with Amanda Ripley

Jain also believes the findings are influenced by the Trump presidency, writing on X that in decades past, “Liberals used to have more diverse friend groups than conservatives.” He cited a 2014 report from Pew Research Center that found 63% of “consistently conservative” respondents agreed with the statement “Most of my close friends share my political views” compared to 49% of “consistently liberal” respondents.

In 2014, “People on the right and left also are more likely to say it is important to them to live in a place where most people share their political views, though again, that desire is more widespread on the right (50%) than on the left (35%),” the Pew report said.

In an interview, Jain said that while older liberals generally have no problem with being friends with conservatives, many liberals in Gen Z have said they wouldn’t even go to a restaurant if it was owned by a Trump voter.

“Us Democrats are more likely to view politics as an expression of our value system. It makes sense from an individual level that if you view someone as racist or homophobic, there’s no reason to spend your precious time with them,” he said.

But, he added, “What’s good for the individual isn’t necessarily good for the group. The entire basis of liberalism is to make the world more accepting for people, and a lot of that relies on persuasion. And if you’re not willing to talk to them, how are you going to persuade them? And that’s what worries me.

“We’re a minority in this country. Trump won the popular vote. Ideological silos don’t help anyone. … We’re already behind the eight ball as it is,” Jain said.

Why liberals cut conservatives off

The Argument’s findings are in line with similar research in the past.

New York psychologist Chloe Carmichael, writing for Evie magazine, said, “Studies consistently show that liberals are more likely than conservatives to cut ties with people over political disagreements —whether that’s unfriending on social media, ghosting a friend, or cutting off a relative entirely. Conservatives, while far from immune to strong feelings, tend to remain more relational even across political divides."

Carmichael, the author of the forthcoming book “Can I Say That? Why Free Speech Matters and How to Use It Fearlessly,” says there are “five Ds” that show up: defriending, divorcing, declining to date, disinviting a speaker, decreasing contact, or dropping a relationship altogether. (The website Oprahdaily.com offered another one earlier this year, in an article entitled “How to demote a family member without cutting them off.”)

In an interview, Carmichael said that research shows that people who are liberal tend to identify with a collectivist mindset, while people who are politically conservative more often have an individualist mindset.

“On the liberal side, it makes sense that maybe you would be more aware of what other people around you are believing and feel like it affects you more personally, while people with an individualist mindset may be more able to enjoy those connections without feeling like there’s any boundary issue. ... They want to live and let live in their own way.”

Young liberals may also be driven to cut off relationships because they see the stakes as higher. For example, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to believe “democracy is under serious threat,” according to an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll released in July.

And Carmichael noted that more Democrats say that Republicans are racist than the other way around, one finding of a YouGov poll in 2024.

“I can understand where if you view someone that way — if you think they are truly racist — you may be more inclined to want to distance. That might be a motivation for some of the five Ds behavior," Carmichael said. She says that there are cases where cutting someone off makes sense — if, for example, if abuse or addiction is involved. But ending a relationship over “ideological discomfort,” can be damaging for both parties.

“We need disagreement to grow, and we need relationships to stay emotionally stable. When you sever ties with someone over who they voted for, you don’t just lose a viewpoint, you lose history, identity, emotional support, and often, a chance for mutual growth,” Carmichael wrote.

Why cutting people off can be a mistake

People end relationships for reasons other than politics, of course. A HarrisX/Deseret News poll in 2022 found that 1 in 4 Americans were estranged from family members. And as Valerie Hudson wrote for the Deseret News last year, the number of adults who have gone “no contact” with a parent has increased in recent years.

Has boundary setting gone off the rails? The case for healing a relationship this holiday season

Amanda Ripley, author of the book “High Conflict” and founder of Good Conflict, which trains people to resolve conflict, said in an email that she has seen the trend, both in research and her own conversations, but that cutting people off “is a strategic mistake — and probably a spiritual one, too."

“If you care about persuading people to think differently and be more compassionate (as many of these voters probably do), there is only one proven path forward. The most well-studied strategy to reduce prejudice between humans is through meaningful conversation.”

“Contact theory” proposes that interpersonal contact between opposing groups can reduce prejudice and tension. This has been shown to be effective in more than 500 different experiments around the world, Ripley said.

“Relationships change people much faster than facts. So if you want to reduce intolerance in the world, just know that you will not get there through estrangement, mockery or shunning. That’s just not how people work,” she said.

But, she added, it’s work, and it isn’t easy. Outcomes are best, for example, when all the parties involved have equal status and they’re not just talking about their differences, but working together on a shared problem, she said.

“The good news is that you can get much better at this, if you want to. I am living proof of this. I engage in a totally different way now than I did 10 years ago, before I started writing about conflict. I have good days and bad days, but in general, I am now much more focused on trying to understand the other person (and trying to be understood) versus trying to ‘win.’ This is way more effective — and just a healthier way to live, in my experience."

For another example of people who were able to set aside their differences and restore a broken relationship, look to Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.

As Betsy Sinclair, a professor and chair of political science at Washington University in St. Louis wrote for The Conversation earlier this year, the men’s relationship was strained for 11 years, but then Adams wrote to Jefferson, “You and I, ought not to die before we have explained ourselves to each other.”

With that, they resumed writing to each other and remained friends until they died within hours of each other on July 4, 1826.

“California is a premium state with premium ideas,” the narrator says. “We’ve got the highest housing prices, gas and taxes of any state, and more is always better.”

It was but one effective salvo the Babylon Bee has tossed in the direction of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who, despite his efforts to reach out to conservatives, remains a popular target of the right. And the Bee now has a new win in its column, with a federal judge ruling that a California law that prohibits some deepfake images and videos of politicians is unconstitutional.

The fact that the latest ruling seemed to call the Babylon Bee’s style of humor “lowbrow” will no doubt become a badge of honor for the brand, much like the attempted insults “garbage people” and “deplorables” were embraced by Donald Trump supporters.

“Our job is hard enough when our jokes keep coming true, as if they were prophecies,” The Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon said in a statement issued by the Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented the Bee and other parties on the suit. Dillon added: “We’re pleased the court recognized the First Amendment secures our right to tell jokes, even ones the government doesn’t like.”

California has long straddled the line between being a cutting-edge state and a wacky one. Newsom himself teeters along that line as governor — on one hand, proposing serious thinking about the troubles of boys and young men; on another, engaging in slapstick-style comedy on social media, mimicking Donald Trump’s tweets in a way that was genuinely funny, at least for the first couple of days.

The impetus for legislation appears to have been a doctored video of Kamala Harris that Elon Musk shared without noting that it was parody. It’s hard to imagine that anyone would think the fake “campaign ad” was real — it’s about as believable as those “baby Trump” videos on X.

But, per The Center Square, California enacted two laws: AB 2839, which banned “materially deceptive” content about candidates and election officials 120 days before and 60 days after elections, except for cases of parody in which “parody” was clearly marked on the content; and AB 2655, which required internet platforms with more than 1 million users in California to take down such content.

Kamala Harris Campaign Ad PARODY pic.twitter.com/5lBxvyTZ3o

— Mr Reagan 🇺🇸 (@MrReaganUSA) July 26, 2024

The creator of the Harris video, Christopher Kohls (who goes by name Mister Reagan on X) challenged the legislation, the first of which was struck down by a federal judge last month.

Friday’s ruling did not garner nearly so much attention save for this subtle dig: “Novel mediums of speech and even low-brow humor have equal entitlement to First Amendment protection and the principles undergirding the freedom of expression do not waver when technological changes occur.”

It's now a matter of court record that our Babylon Bee jokes are "low-brow humor" 😂 https://t.co/LwCE9WChfK

— Kyle Mann (@The_Kyle_Mann) September 2, 2025

The business of deepfakes, and the potential for bad actors to do serious mischief is real, whether in politics, business or our personal lives. As the decision said, “political deepfakes pose a risk to election integrity and California has a compelling interest in regulating this arena.”

But, it went on to say, “the tools (the state) deploys to achieve its interest must be the least restrictive means of achieving such goal when significant speech issues are at stake.”

In other words, even in California, Americans have the capacity to figure out when something is a joke or not. But just to be on the safe side, let me just say:

That “Visit California” ad? It’s totally fake.

Visit California: It's America's Future pic.twitter.com/pGtIBsxFE4

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) June 10, 2025

Van Jones is making sense on CNN

Other than both having worked in the White House, Van Jones and Scott Jennings don’t seem to have a lot of common politically.

But both men are now frequently seen on CNN, putting their collective experience in politics to use, Jones having worked for Barack Obama, and Jennings, for George W. Bush.

Jennings is evolving ever more into a firebrand, though maybe not as extreme as Jones used to be. (Some might remember that, pre-White House, Jones once used an expletive to refer to Republicans.)

It’s refreshing to see, then, Jones’ comments over the weekend about how political the workplace has become — and his argument that we need to move past this.

“This is not going to make me popular,” he said, adding that the constant parade of controversies had gotten “ridiculous.”

“If I’m an employer and at a certain point, your Slack channel just turns into Vietnam every other day because something happened that had nothing to do with the workplace ... and then people would not speak and got mad and you have to bring in all kind of counselors. This is not camp, guys, we’re trying to make money.”

Some Democrats are urging companies to ditch D.E.I. once and for all.

Former Obama Advisor Van Jones admits woke activism at work got a little ‘ridiculous’ and that ‘we need to move on’.

Share your thoughts below ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/CueBnkrHmH

— Outnumbered (@OutnumberedFNC) September 2, 2025

He concluded, “I enjoyed the moment for a while when we having our reckonings about everything, but we done recked. ... We need to move on.”

An apology done wrong

Meanwhile, former talk show host Rosie O’Donnell had her own reckoning over the weekend, apologizing for surmising that the Minneapolis shooter was “a white guy, Republican, MAGA person” and a white supremacist."

“I did not do my due diligence before I made that emotional statement, and I said things about the shooter that were incorrect,” O’Donnell said in an apology posted to TikTok Sunday.

She went on to say, “the truth is, I messed up, and when you mess up, you fess up. This is my apology video, and I hope it’s enough.”

It wasn’t, because while apologizing, O’Donnell compounded her initial statement by saying, “I assumed, like most shooters, they followed a standard MO and had standard, you know, feelings of… you know, NRA-loving kind of gun people" — slamming millions of God-fearing, law-respecting Americans who own guns and belong to the NRA.

It’s deeply unfortunate that O’Donnell chose to politicize a day that gutted the nation. Those of us who sit beneath stained-glass windows every Sunday will not soon forget it. And yes, we will continue to offer our thoughts and our prayers.

Recommended reading

Deseret News Editor Sarah Jane Weaver had an experience we all dread: someone shouting “There is a shooter” amid chaos in her neighborhood. She recounted this personal story as an online debate swirled about “thoughts and prayers” in the aftermath of the Minneapolis church shooting.

“As commotion buzzed around me, I stood behind the police tape doing the only thing I could. I prayed. That is what Kathy and those sitting on her floor did too. And it is what dozens of my neighbors did as they searched for their children and tried to make sense of the violence that had robbed us of peace.”

When a shooting happened in my neighborhood, prayer and action both saved us

Economics professor Michael Kofoed says that monetary policy and politics don’t mix and warns that history shows the folly of trying to combine them.

“Inflation is a result of expectations for the future. If firms think their costs will rise tomorrow, then they will begin to increase their prices now. If consumers think dishwasher or car prices will go up, then they will try to move future purchases to the present, pushing demand up, and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

History’s stark warning to U.S. manipulation of monetary policy

A few years ago, Dunkin’ Donuts managed a major rebrand without revolt from its customers. Why couldn’t Cracker Barrel do the same? Keira Farrimond offers a postmortem on the “master class in marketing missteps.”

“It also helped that consumers already used the nickname Dunkin’ for the store. Similarly, Kentucky Fried Chicken was already known by KFC before the company made its change.”

‘History is rife with bad rebrands’ — How Cracker Barrel’s attempt went wrong

End notes

Over the past few months, I’ve been watching as the much-talked-about struggles of boys and men has moved from the space of social science into politics. Could this shift mean that some real change might be coming? The experts in the field are hopeful. Read more here:

The ‘war on boys’ led to a ‘masculinity crisis.’ What’s new in the effort to help America’s struggling young men?

Another fascinating story was the child born in July after being frozen as an embryo for more than 30 years. There are so many mind-boggling aspects to this story — I can’t stop thinking about the divorced father who created the embryo with his then-wife in 1994 now seeing a photo of his biological son being born to a couple in Tennessee.

But I was equally interested in how a doctor with a thriving fertility practice near Washington D.C. had a change of heart brought on by thoughtful questions from his wife — and made the decision to move to Tennessee and start the clinic that brought this “world’s oldest baby” to life.

Read more here, and see some fantastic photographs showing the work that goes on at Rejoice Fertility:

The ‘world’s oldest baby’ is challenging what we think we know about IVF

As always, thank you for being part of the Right to the Point community. You can email me at Jgraham@deseret.com, or send me a DM on X, where I’m @grahamtoday. And if you, too, celebrate summerfall, send me a picture.

Born from a frozen embryo the Ohio couple adopted, Thaddeus Daniel Pierce is being called “the world’s oldest baby” because he is the oldest known frozen embryo to be brought to term. As explained in MIT Technology Review, Thaddeus was conceived through in vitro fertilization in 1994; he has a biological sister who is 30 years old.

The circumstances of his birth challenge what we think we know about IVF — what the limits are, in medicine and in morality.

The world’s oldest baby, Thaddeus Daniel Pierce, was born on July 26, 2025, from an embryo frozen in 1994 —

making him over 30 years old at birth. pic.twitter.com/AY4tyxpImz

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) August 4, 2025

Since Louise Brown, the world’s first “test tube baby,” was born in 1978, the technology has enabled millions of people to become parents — but also created a vexing moral dilemma: what is to become of all the embryos created through IVF that are not used?

For people who believe that human life should be treasured and protected from the moment of conception, discarding these embryos amounts to taking a life which is one reason that many people of faith oppose IVF.

And yet the number of embryos in cryostorage — thought to be more than a million in the U.S. alone — exceed the number of couples seeking to adopt them. And even when a couple decides to adopt an embryo, not every doctor is willing to work with one that is decades old.

That’s why the founder of a fertility clinic in Tennessee has stepped into this complicated space.

Dr. John Gordon, a reproductive endocrinologist who formerly practiced in northern Virginia, came to the work after some soul-searching, the kind that many others are doing as the choices offered by reproductive medicine are expanding, to including testing for both physical traits and diseases.

The questions before us include not just the moral worth of an embryo, but what we believe about the meaning of life and the very purpose of children.

Is adoption the answer to unused frozen embryos?

How long can a human embryo be frozen?

Thaddeus Pierce, “the world’s oldest baby,” began life through an IVF procedure that created four embryos in 1994. One, a girl, was brought to term and raised by parents who later divorced.

The mother, Linda Archerd, was awarded custody of the three remaining embryos, and at first thought that she might get pregnant again some day. She paid hundreds of dollars every year for their storage until she eventually donated them to Nightlight Christian Adoptions, which has a program for embryo adoption called “Snowflakes.”

Archerd’s embryos were considered “hard to place,” because of their age. But they weren’t too old for Gordon, who left a thriving practice near Washington, D.C. after a hard conversation with his wife.

In 2018, the couple was preparing for a vacation in Italy when Gordon’s wife — who has a Ph.D. in engineering — broke her ankle. While she was recovering, she spent time studying scripture (they are members of the Presbyterian Church in America), and became convinced that the way Gordon was practicing “wasn’t honoring God and wasn’t the right thing to do.”

She was troubled by the number of embryos that were being created and not used, and also by the losses of embryos when storage procedures failed in Ohio and California.

Gordon recounted the conversation they had.

“She said, are you trying to deal with this problem? ... If you’re not worrying about this problem and trying to fix it, then nobody’s going to be dealing with it. You need to fix this and or at least think about what you’re doing.”

That was fair criticism, he acknowledged.

“This is a field in which we’ve walked into some moral peril, and I took the charge seriously and I dove deep and reached out to a lot of different individuals.”

One person he talked with was a Jesuit priest who told him to think about it like this: You’re sitting by a river and see a basket floating down the river with a baby in it. You bring it to shore, and then you see two more baskets with babies floating by. You bring them to shore, and then you look up the river, and all you see, from riverbank to riverbank, are baskets with babies floating toward you.

“This is what you have created in the field of reproductive medicine. This is the problem you have created with all these frozen embryos,” the priest told him.

He started thinking about how he could practice in a way that reflected his values, still helping couples overcome infertility while creating fewer “excess” embryos.

“If you’ve got 27 embryos, how do you prioritize? I would say it’s better to not make 27 embryos in the first place.”

At a friend’s recommendation, Gordon decided to relocate to Knoxville and to open a practice with the goal of every viable embryo getting a chance at life. The clinic has a “no discard” policy, and Gordon says, “The only embryo that can never result in a healthy baby is the one you fail to transfer.”

Rejoice also doesn’t do genetic testing on embryos, or do IVF with donor egg and sperm.

However, Gordon said, “I wouldn’t fault anyone for practicing differently, whether they’re believers or nonbelievers. However they practice, that’s up to them. But for myself, this is how I want to practice. And that’s what I tell the patients. And they seem open to that, and many have sought me out because of it.”

Some people have told Gordon they had previously been reluctant to pursue IVF because of their discomfort with creating embryos that would be frozen indefinitely.

And so far, there appears to be no limit to how long these children-to-be can be frozen, despite concern about the practice worldwide.

Which is why we now live in a world in which a 30-year-old father and the infant son whose embryo he adopted could have been conceived in the same calendar year.

Does the U.S. regulate IVF?

While some countries have limited the number of embryos that can be created in an IVF cycle and others limit the number of years that embryos can be stored, according to a 2024 review by the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the U.S. has relatively few restrictions regarding IVF, and they vary by state.

Louisiana, for example, has a law prohibiting the destruction of embryos but they can be shipped out of state. The American Society of Reproductive Medicine and other professional groups have guidelines for practitioners “but there’s no real enforcement mechanism and they truly are recommendations,” said Matthew Eppinette, executive director of The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity at Trinity International University in Deerfield, Illinois.

“It’s not uncommon in ethics circles to hear the phrase ‘wild, wild West’ being used about the state of reproductive technologies in the United States,” Eppinette said.

The ethics of assisted reproductive technology is such a broad subject that it will comprise two of five sessions in an online course Eppinette is leading next month on “The Ethics of Life and Death.”

In the U.S., assisted reproduction was caught up into politics after a 2024 ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court that said “an unborn child is a genetically unique human being whose life begins at fertilization.” The decision allowed parents to sue a fertility clinic for wrongful death after frozen embryos were accidentally destroyed.

Seeking to assuage concern that IVF would be unavailable when embryos are granted personhood, President Donald Trump issued an executive order this year affirming IVF for couples who are unable to conceive, and pledging to provide “support, awareness, and access to affordable fertility treatments ... (to) help these families navigate their path to parenthood with hope and confidence.”

Eppinette said he would like to see better tracking of the numbers of embryos being kept indefinitely in storage. There is no mandatory reporting, which is why estimates range between 1 and 10 million. “That’s a good first step” in grappling with the issue.

The path forward on IVF

But he he also said there hasn’t been enough deep and thoughtful discussion about the moral issues involved, beginning with the fundamental question: What do we think about children?

“Are they projects of our design or gifts to be received? Those are extreme examples, but what do we think about when we think about welcoming new life into the world, and what do we mean by welcoming?” he said.

With regard to embryos, “Are they tissue to be screened or human lives to be respected, cherished and cared for? And those views lead to significantly different ways of acting and thinking about these very early forms of human life.”

The moral status of embryos

Meanwhile, the ethical questions posed by assisted reproduction technology continue to expand, as new companies such as Orchid screens embryos for health risks and some fertility clinics offer testing to screen for physical traits like eye color.

Orchid founder Noor Siddiqui, in conversation with New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, explained how an Orchid “genetic counselor” meets with couples and goes through the risks of each embryo, which is evaluated for the likelihood of developing more than 1,200 conditions, which include Down syndrome, autism, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and Celiac disease. The cost is $2,500 per embryo.

In the conversation, Douthat pressed Siddiqui to answer whether an embryo has any moral status, a question which she did not clearly address.

Various religious traditions have also grappled with the question, not only as it relates to IVF, but also to research and abortion.

In 2024, Southern Baptists meeting in Indianapolis adopted a resolution affirming “the right to life of every human being, including those in an embryonic stage, and to only utilize reproductive technologies consistent with that affirmation.”

The Catholic Church teaches that IVF generally is “morally unacceptable.”

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints "discourages artificial insemination or in vitro fertilization using sperm from anyone but the husband or an egg from anyone but the wife. However, this is a personal matter that is ultimately left to the judgment and prayerful consideration of a lawfully married man and woman,” according to the church’s handbook on church policies and guidelines.

Gordon said the dilemma that Linda Archerd faced decades ago — what to do about her frozen embryos — is one that the entire country is now facing writ large.

“No one, when they’re going through infertility, ever thinks that they can have too many embryos, because they’re worried (IVF) won’t work, and they want to have a backup plan. They can’t even imagine the flip side of that.”

Correction: A previous version of this article said the Gordons are members of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America. They are members of the Presbyterian Church in America.

Speculation is rampant that a prenuptial agreement is forthcoming, or maybe even already drafted, given the estimated net worth of the bride ($1.6 billion) and the groom ($90 million). Some attorneys are making suggestions on social media about what such an agreement would look like. The American Bar Association is even weighing in.

Musician Taylor Swift has announced her engagement to Kansas City-based podcaster and NFL athlete Travis Kelce. There's no better time to take a look at the most romantic part of any marriage, the prenup: https://t.co/GuvldIw5V1 pic.twitter.com/x1duRjm259

— American Bar Association (@ABAesq) August 26, 2025

In another era, such a document might be seen as evidence that the relationship is already on shaky ground. Why would a couple about to vow “until death do us part” need to contemplate what will happen if they split up? Whatever happened to “divorce is not an option”?

As Russell Moore, editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, wrote back in 2009: “A couple that begins preparing for the possibility of divorce is headed toward it.”

But even proponents of lifelong marriage say there are circumstances in which a prenup makes sense, if done in the right spirit and for the right reasons.

Talk-show host Dave Ramsey, who encourages couples to combine their assets when they get married, has said that he used to be against prenups, but now sees their value in some circumstances.

“I used to say if you don’t love the person more than your money, then you shouldn’t get married,” he told a caller on his talk show. “And I changed that after about a decade of coaching people, because where I ran into extreme wealth ... I found not that the person that you’re marrying is usually the problem, but if you don’t have a prenup as a boundary, the crazy people in their family come out of the woodwork.”

Similarly, the Focus on the Family ministry says on its website, “a prenuptial agreement could be a wise way to avoid future financial and legal headaches, particularly where extended family is involved.”

How a prenup can be ‘marriage friendly’

Laurie Israel, a Massachusetts attorney who specializes in mediation and prenuptial agreements, believes that the collaboration involved in preparing a prenup can benefit the marriage.

In an interview, Israel, the author of “The Marriage-Friendly Prenup“ among other books, offered advice for Swift and Kelce, who are both 35 years old and have never been married.

They both have plenty of money — so much that at some point they will likely have to give much of it away. “If they keep it all separate and don’t share money at all, I think it will weaken their marriage,” she said.

So Israel recommends what she calls a “snapshot” prenup. She describes it this way on her blog, when looking at the case of LA Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford and his wife, Kelly.

“At the time of the marriage, a ‘snapshot’ is calculated of all the asset values of the premarital property. This amount becomes the separate property of the spouse who owns it. But any gain in this property, plus all other property accumulated during the marriage, will constitute marital property (called ‘community property’ in California and the several other community property states).”

In other words, Swift would own her $1.6 billion, Kelce his $90 million, and everything else they earn within the marriage would become their money together — what the court calls “marital” or “community” property if a division should ever be necessary.

“If they don’t share money, they’re going to lose a lot of the connection of a marriage, I think,” Israel said. “If they stay married, they’re probably going to give away money and start foundations and they can do that together. They’ll be partners in each other’s careers and everything else. Marriage is so much more than money.”

Israel said a good prenup should also encompass estate planning for when either the wife or husband dies, and stipulate that if the marriage fails, the couple doesn’t go to court, but instead goes through mediation and collaborative law to end the marriage and then, if needed, binding arbitration, which is confidential, quicker and less expensive than a court-ordered divorce.

Mediators should also be used to start a prenup, she said, because done poorly, and in an adversarial manner, prenups can destroy a relationship.

“I’ve seen it happen over and over again. I’ve had people come to see me because they broke up their engagement because of (a prenup), and now they want to try again.

“Prenups can be very dangerous. Partly it’s the process — two attorneys duking it out, usually not caring about the marriage, but caring about money and getting the best deal for their clients and having the other person give up as much as possible. That’s not a good way to start your marriage,” she said.

“And what’s in the prenup can be very problematic, too,” she added.

Good reasons to get a prenup

Alan J. Hawkins, manager of the Utah Marriage Commission and a proponent of premarital education for couples, believes prenuptial agreements are generally a good thing, so long as couples are also taking steps to help ensure their marriage’s longevity.

“If you’re prepping for potential failure, are you also prepping for success? Are you doing those things up front that will minimize the chance that problems will occur that might get you thinking about divorce?” he said.

Prenups can be especially useful when people are getting married later in life and have situations such as remarriages and blended families, he added.

“I can get on the pro-prenup bandwagon pretty easily when you think about all of the later-life couples who are choosing not to marry because they don’t want to deal with the legal hassles of what marriage implies, and finances and inheritances, all those kinds of things. So I say hip-hip-hooray for prenups,” he said.

Perspective: Parents, encourage your engaged children to invest in premarital education

Why do we care about Taylor Swift’s prenup?

Because prenuptial agreements governing the famous and wealthy are typically sealed, details are hard to come by, and reporting on them is peppered with words like “reportedly” and “rumors.” Even the existence of prenups are rarely confirmed.

When the American Bar Association website published an article on celebrity prenups, it included Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan in the list of couples, while saying “there is no confirmation that they signed a prenup.” There was an astounding amount of speculation, however. The Reuters article on their wedding was headlined “Zuckerberg weds longtime girlfriend, no word on prenup” — as if we were owed it.

In fact, these sorts of details are none of our business, just like we didn’t need to know of the engagement the day it happened. (Kelce actually proposed two weeks ago, as it turns out, which is nice — the couple deserves whatever space they can carve out for themselves.)

Writing for the Free Press, Will Rahn confessed that he had zero interest in either Swift or Kelce until he was compelled, for professional reasons, to watch the Kelce brothers’ podcast in which Swift appeared. He emerged from it smitten, writing, "Gosh, I thought. I think I like these people."

He later went on to say, “They seem fun and, against all odds, relatable. And if they aren’t really in love— as the haters claimed when they first got together — they’re doing a tremendous job pretending otherwise."

Talk of a prenup goes against this happy grain, as seen on Fox News when Jonathan Hunt brought the subject up and was effectively silenced by the anchors. He apologized, saying, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to harsh the vibes. It’s the news America needs.”

It is indeed. And if a marriage-friendly prenup can help keep the happy couple together, we’ll all be the better for it.

Perspective: Dear Taylor and Travis, here's why we dream about you getting married

Both men are 25 years old and college graduates, which sets them apart from many of their peers, since the number of American men going to college has been steadily shrinking. But their stories are part of a larger problem: Too many of America’s young men are struggling in ways that their fathers and grandfathers didn’t in generations past.

Unemployment among young men is rising, in large part because of a changing job market, made even more uncertain by the rapid growth of artificial intelligence. Some, growing discouraged, are becoming part of a group called NEETs — which stands for “not in employment, education or training.”

Loneliness and suicide among young men are rising — young men are now more at risk of suicide than middle-aged men. Many want a family, but nearly half aren’t dating. They are living with their parents longer, and despair of being able to afford a house and provide for a family. They are being written off, even scorned, by young women, whose political leanings are often different from their own.

And their increasing isolation is part of a wider societal trend accelerated by COVID-19: All Americans are less likely to leave their house for entertainment and dining, and even to go to a job or to church.

But there are rumblings of hope coming from an unlikely place: the world of politics.

After years of the “boy crisis” being discussed in academia and social science, it’s becoming a priority for governors — among them, Utah’s Spencer Cox, California’s Gavin Newsom and Maryland’s Wes Moore.

“Could the suddenly everywhere ‘boy troubles’ become a surprise political issue for the midterms?” Richard Whitmire, the author of the 2010 book “Why Boys Fail,” recently asked on social media.

“That’s my prediction,” Whitmire added. “The fun part: Either party could seize it.”

While politicization of any issue is not often seen as a good thing, in this case, it might be, Whitmire said in an interview. He has long been a proponent of sweeping changes in education to help boys become more proficient at reading at an earlier age, and he wants to see a courageous politician take up that banner.

Other solutions being proposed across the country include programs to get more young men in higher education and apprenticeships, providing more role models and mentors for boys, expanding mental health supports, and curbing the amount of time that boys and teens spend online in addictive and destructive behavior.

These initiatives are being developed with the understanding that success is not a zero-sum game — no one wants to erase the gains that girls and women have made, both in education and the workplace, as Newsom said in his recent executive order on supporting boys and men. But there is a new bipartisan consensus that boys and men need attention.

In February of 2012, the Deseret News published a deep dive on the “War on Boys,” examining how young men were losing ground in education, health and jobs. There is a straight line that leads from that “boy crisis” to what’s been called a “masculinity crisis” plaguing young men today.

The good news is, suddenly lots of hands are coming on deck. And one reason is the reelection of President Donald Trump, an event that has caused soul-searching in the Democratic Party about what is happening with America’s young men.

From pointing fingers to helping hands

Whitmire, writing recently for the education website The74million.org, said the issue is “the plumpest political opportunity you could imagine,” one that is ripe to engage parents.

In the piece, he noted that Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin got elected in 2021 by “by stirring up parents in places such as prosperous Loudoun County over discipline, masking and transgender students’ bathroom and locker room use. That’s small potatoes compared to the broader boy problems,” he wrote.

Those broader problems include the number of men living with their parents in adulthood; an increase in the number of men who say they don’t have a close friend; and a higher rate of unemployment than women, even among men who have college degrees. Men with college degrees now have roughly the same unemployment rate as men who don’t.

In school, girls perform better than boys across many academic measures; boys are more likely to get suspended. And 47% of young women hold college degrees compared to 37% of men.

The war on boys: Young men losing ground in education, emotional health and jobs

Speaking at the Deseret News three years ago, Richard Reeves, founder and president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, said, “There’s a lot of fingers being wagged at young boys and men, but not many helping hands being extended.”

But in an interview last week, Reeves said “the ground is really shifting quite quickly” in this space, and in promising ways.

For one thing, he said that the governors getting involved in the issue — including Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer — are doing so in a serious way.

“In each case, they’ve clearly decided that these are serious issues and they should govern on them, rather than just podcast on them. ... It hasn’t felt like a culture-war move,” Reeves said.

While Gavin Newsom did, in fact, focus on the issue on his podcast on the same day that he issued an executive order to take steps to help men, Reeves said he is encouraged by a “seriousness of intent around this issue, which was reflected in the news coverage, which was respectful, not sensational, and focused on solutions.

“They didn’t try to win a news cycle with this stuff. And for me, that’s incredibly important and incredibly encouraging,” Reeves said.

“I want to spend less time talking about whither masculinity and what does it mean for politics and the cultural stuff and what do you think about the Netflix series ‘Adolescence’ and a lot more talking about ‘here’s a really good program to get more male teachers,’ ‘here’s a successful way to get more men into mental health care and reduce suicide’ and ‘here’s a really good apprenticeship to improve the outcome for boys coming out of high school.’

“I’m pleased that this seems to be moving inch by inch out of the culture war and into the wonk-osphere,” he said.

The American Institute for Boys and Men has been talking with some of the governors, Reeves said — they helped draft Newsom’s executive order, for example, and the institute is in the process of hiring a fellow who will work with the Maryland governor’s office. Other states have reached out as well, and Reeves plans to travel to Montana and Indiana, among other states, in the coming year to talk about what can be done.

A silent number of American men are struggling

Utah, too, is at the forefront of these efforts. Gov. Cox created a Task Force on the Wellbeing of Men and Boys in 2023, and a report is due later this year, said Aimee Winder Newton, director of Utah’s Office of Families and co-chair of the task force along with Nic Dunn, a vice president and senior fellow at the Sutherland Institute.

The task force grew out of the governor’s emphasis on addressing mental health more broadly, Winder Newton said. Later, Cox asked his staff to read Reeves’ 2022 book “Of Boys and Men,” and Reeves later met with the team over Zoom to talk about it.

The task force will make policy recommendations in three areas: mental and physical health, education and vocational opportunities, and how to cultivate a strong sense of purpose for Utah’s men and boys.

“One of Utah’s greatest strengths is our strong families. We need strong mothers and strong fathers. We need strong wives and husbands; we need everyone to be thriving,” Winder Newton said.

‘Somebody has to make this a priority’

Whitmire, in his piece for the education website The74million.org, noted that the gender gap in who earns a college degree is foreshadowed as early as kindergarten. “At age 5, there is a 14 percentage point gender gap in school readiness favoring girls, who are poised to soak up those early academic challenges.”

He goes on to write: “There are multiple small fixes schools can undertake to correct the boys’ problems. Educators already know what to do: Roughly the same things they did for girls years ago to successfully correct for math and science academic deficiencies.

“By making math and science into participatory projects, bringing female scientists into their classrooms as role models and focusing on encouraging more girls to take an interest in those subjects, they turned it around. Before being reopened with the pandemic, the disparity between boys’ and girls’ middle school math and science scores had disappeared."

If the challenges that boys face are not addressed, it’s not just a problem for individuals, but for society, even extending to the falling fertility rate, Whitmire said in an interview.

“You’re not going to have kids if you can’t find a marriageable mate ... an equal partner. That’s getting harder and harder to find,” he said.

Perspective: What science tells us about marriage, fatherhood and the struggles of young men

Whitmire is hoping that a centrist Democrat like Rahm Emanuel, who wrote on the issue for The Washington Post earlier this month, will stake out the issue, particularly as it comes to the education of boys. To do so, a politician would have to withstand the ire of teachers’ unions and educators who resist change, since Whitmire believes that the problem begins in how America’s public schools are educating boys.

The political interest is a glimmer of hope for Whitmire, who has been talking about how America’s schools have failed boys for decades and, he says, seeing no progress. “Certainly, if you look at the numbers on the mental-health side, like the suicide rate, things have gradually gotten worse. There’s been no real attempt to address (the problem) as there was with girls 25 years ago in math and science. … Somebody has to make this a priority,” he said.

‘Targeted solutions’

Wes Moore, in his State of the State address in February, announced an initiative with the goal of lifting boys and men. “On every single indicator we care about, young men and boys are falling off,” he told Washingtonian magazine after the speech.

In the address, Moore promised to deliver “targeted solutions to uplift our men and boys.” Part of the work, he said, “must include removing the barriers that are holding many of them back from participating in the labor force.”

Carmel Martin, special secretary for the Maryland Governor’s Office for Children, who is leading Moore’s policy work on young men and boys, said that Moore’s work in this space began when he was elected in 2022.

Moore has said that helping boys and men is a “bit of a personal mission for me” because of his own childhood. He was raised by a single mom after his father died when he was 3, struggled in school and had a run-in with law enforcement before his mother sent him to military school, changing his life’s trajectory.

So far under Moore, Maryland is working on programming to recruit men into the fields of teaching and mental health, including launching a program designed to encourage and help more men become teachers.

The state has also expanded a summer youth jobs program and an apprenticeship program, with the goal of providing more opportunities for men.

According to the governor’s office, the number of Maryland apprentices surpassed 12,500 at the end of last year, the highest number in the program’s history, and 7,700 of them are men aged 16-29.

Martin said that Maryland is bringing a boys-and-men lens to broader initiatives, such as suicide prevention. Everyone needs to know, for example, about the suicide prevention hotline — 988 — but because more women than men call the line, Moore’s team is considering how they can get the word about the hotline out to more men, perhaps recruiting former athletes to publicize it.

‘Boys that girls don’t want to be with’

Dr. Leonard Sax, a psychologist and family physician, was one of the first voices to sound the alarm about the worrisome trends among young men in his book “Boys Adrift,” which outlined five factors that he said were holding back boys from their potential. These included teaching methods unfavorable to boys, video gaming, and societal changes in how masculinity is viewed.

At the publisher’s request, Sax is currently updating the book for a third edition, which will also address new dangers: pornography, AI girlfriends and the “manosphere.”

In an interview with the Deseret News, Sax described a website where people can view more than 500 million images, many of them pornographic, for free. “Anyone can go on it, you don’t need a credit card, and if you say you’re over 18, you can look at any image.” Age verification is not required, he said.

Sax says when he meets with young people, he asks them about the site. “They all know about it. And what they like about it is, it’s not real. ... The women are unbelievably beautiful. They have proportions no real woman could have,” he said.

This sort of online content, as well as the advent of AI girlfriends and online communities that promote misogyny, is negatively affecting teens and young men, and “the end result is boys girls don’t want to be with,” Sax said. “Increasingly, women are looking at young men and saying, ‘No, thank you. Not interested.’”

Porn is teaching bad lessons to our young men, he added. “As a society, we are failing at one of the most basic tasks of a society, which is to reproduce itself. We’re failing to create young men that young women want to be with.”

The American Institute of Boys and Men is also focusing on the way the online world is negatively affecting men and boys.

While there has been plentiful, strong research on how the internet is affecting girls, from scholars like Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge, “There has not been enough attention to the ways that it is affecting boys and teen men,” Reeves said. One area of concern that AIBM is working on is sports betting.

“The early evidence is pretty clear that the legalization of online sports betting has proven to be particularly harmful to men, young men, and low-income young men above all. And then there are all the other issues, of course, around crypto and day trading and pornography,” Reeves said.

Hope on the horizon

One longtime issue of concern to Reeves is the declining share of male teachers in K-12 schools, which deprives boys of role models and representation. Per Education Week, “The overall share of male teachers heading up the nation’s K-12 classrooms has declined in the last three decades, from 30 percent in 1987 to 23 percent in 2022, the most recent year of federal data available.”

There is growing agreement among policymakers that this must be addressed, Reeves said. “I think the alarm bells are ringing pretty loudly on that now,” he said. Financial incentives and scholarships are among solutions being considered.

But not all the work on this front is taking place at statehouses.

Reeves noted, for example, an initiative in Vermont that began with a documentary film called “Gone Guys,“ supported by The Richard E. & Deborah L. Tarrant Foundation and the Vermont Community Foundation. Screenings have been held in communities across the state, followed by civic conversations about what can be done to help young men in Vermont.

Despite all the troubling statistics, there is reason for hope, Sax, the author of “Boys Adrift,” said.

“I don’t think this is a problem without a solution,” he said. “Some boys are turning out well. And even in the big picture, it’s not hopeless.” And parents have a major role to play in how their boys turn out, Sax and Whitmire said.

According to Sax, “The most urgent thing is to limit and guide what your boys are doing with their devices, so your 12-year-old is not looking at porn.” He also said that parents should make sure that their children are not spending more than 40 minutes a day playing video games. “Parents need to be in charge of what their kids are doing,” he said.

Likewise, Whitmire said parents must assume responsibility for their sons’ education, the quality of which determines how they will spend their time, and which pursuits they follow, when they are older.

“Be very wary of your local elementary school and the incredibly nice, wonderful loving teacher that you have there. Because if your your son is not keeping up, especially in reading, don’t assume that this is going to go OK. ... You’ve got to step in as a parent and do this on your own. It could be nightly phonics lessons. It could be required reading lists. You’ve got to take responsibility for this.”

When Hoover Institution scholar Victor Davis Hanson gave the commencement address at Hillsdale College in May, he described the conservative Christian school, which doesn’t accept federal money, as “the nation’s 21st-century example of what higher education should be — and might still become."

Hanson has long been affiliated with Hillsdale, having been a visiting professor of history and classics at the Michigan school for more than two decades. So it’s no surprise then, that his lectures are among the offerings of Hillsdale’s free online courses — available to anyone in exchange for registering with an email address.

“Our courses are created for every American who wishes to embark upon a life-changing education in the greatest ideas and texts of Western Civilization. The only requirements are a desire for truth and a love of liberty,” the Hillsdale website says.

Course offerings include economics, philosophy, religion, history, literature, and — new this fall — American paintings, with deep dives into, for example, C.S. Lewis, Aristotle and Winston Churchill, the Constitution and the Federalist Papers, as well as overviews of ancient history and cultures.

Jordan Peterson’s Peterson Academy advertises that it offers higher education at 1% of the price — it’s currently $399 a year. There’s no doubt great content on that website, but for anyone itching to go back to school with the kids, you can’t do better than free.

Forever William F. Buckley Jr.

Say what you want about the U.S. Postal Service — and I have plenty to say about the holiday surcharges starting Oct. 5 — but the USPS has done an admirable job of staying out of the culture wars over the years, even walking a fine line on religious versus nonreligious stamps during the holiday season.

The USPS has also carefully navigated the minefield of who gets featured on a stamp — you can buy stamps featuring Barbara Bush or Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Nancy Reagan or the late Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham.

So don’t read anything into the fact that William F. Buckley Jr. is about to be on a “forever” stamp, even as Donald Trump is ruminating about privatizing the Postal Service (something he actually can’t do on his own — that would require the authorization of Congress).

Join us at 4:30pm on September 9 in Beinecke Plaza for the official USPS unveiling of the William F. Buckley, Jr. stamp. RSVP here: https://t.co/V2X1E7wMrO#WilliamFBuckleyStamp pic.twitter.com/FCs2gcKz5M

— Buckley Institute (@BuckleyInst) August 13, 2025

The Buckley stamp will be issued Sept. 9 with appropriate fanfare at WFB’s alma mater, Yale. Speakers at the ceremony will include Washington Post columnist George Will (back in the day, Buckley gave him a job at National Review) and Buckley’s son, the novelist Christopher Buckley. The master of ceremonies will be Hoover Institution fellow Peter Robinson, host of the public affairs show “Uncommon Knowledge” and once a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan. (He wrote the famous “Tear Down This Wall” speech.“)

Conservatism rooted in civility, decency and faith — how William F. Buckley Jr.'s revolution changed America

Buckley would certainly approve of the lineup, and also likely wouldn’t let the honor go to his head. After all, SpongeBob SquarePants has his face on a stamp, too. You can order both on the USPS website, and also register to attend the event if you’re anywhere near New Haven next month.

Rufo, Rufo everywhere

August has been a very good month for Christopher Rufo, the man that Rod Dreher once called “the most important conservative in America.”

The Manhattan Institute scholar best known for his anti-DEI crusade was a guest on Bill Maher’s show, there’s talk of a forthcoming debate with Jonah Goldberg (which both Bari Weiss and Hugh Hewitt have volunteered to moderate), and he’s been one of the principal drivers of the Cracker Barrel boycott (“The Barrel must be broken,” Rufo wrote on X.)

Rufo also showed up in The Free Press this week with a moving story about traveling across the country by train with his two young sons.

An excerpt: “Most families travel by car, where they are all alone, or by air, where they fight through terminals and bristle at any intrusion. But the train is a social affair,” he writes, with fellow passengers happy to share their stories as the miles go by.

”The rail lines are the archetypal American way of travel. They conquered the continent, and everyone who rides the train carries with them a small residue of that destiny. They are going somewhere, chasing something."

I’ll be thinking of this essay the next time I’m standing in the airport security line.

Recommended Reading

I love this story by Mariya Manzhos about the surprising friendship between two intellectuals who could not be more ideologically diverse: conservative Robert P. George (a Deseret contributor) and progressive Cornel West.

An excerpt: “What began as a planned half-hour interview in George’s office turned into a four-hour debate on philosophy, politics, literature and faith. The spirited exchange and the mutual intellectual affinity led to the pair co-teaching a freshman seminar called ‘Adventures of Ideas’ based on 12 great books.”

Find the full piece here: How conservative and progressive Ivy League professors became best friends

The Wall Street Journal recently highlighted a handful of conservative women who seem to be “having it all” — children, marriage and high-powered careers. But their lives are not representative of what most women want, according to Autumn Zeoli, Brad Wilcox and Ken Burchfiel.

They write: “The data show that most married mothers would much more prefer a less strenuous work-life balance — either not working for pay at all, or engaging in part-time work.”

Read more here: Are conservative women really embracing the “Supermom” ideal?

End notes

The soul-searching continues in the Democratic Party, and many Democrats seem to be taking the advice of firebrand James Carville who thinks the party should be speaking more like people you meet at a state fair, and not an Ivy League coffee shop.

Politico last week published a Third Way memo that advised Democrats to drop 45 words and phrases from their “public-facing” vocabulary and to talk more like normies.

View the list here, and notice what’s not on the list: Nowhere do the authors suggest that Democrats stop cussing like sailors in an attempt to sound more authentic and tough.

45 words and phrases Democrats should stop saying, according to strategists

To me, this seems a lost opportunity. With Republicans growing increasingly profane, Democrats had a chance to stake out an increasingly bare territory: one in which people use language that conveys dignity and respect. So sure, let’s get rid of “microaggressions,” “chest-feeding” and “existential threats” to everything. But also maybe a few other words that I can’t mention here.

And if there are any words that you wish Republicans would quit using, please let me know, and I’ll share them next week.

As always, thank you for reading and being part of the Right to the Point community. You can email me at Jgraham@deseret.com, or send me a DM on X, where I’m @grahamtoday.

“For a party that spends billions of dollars trying to find the perfect language to connect to voters, Democrats and their allies use an awful lot of words and phrases no ordinary person would ever dream of saying,“ the memo says.

While Democrats’ intentions are good, “The effect of this language is to sound like the extreme, divisive, elitist, and obfuscatory enforcers of wokeness. To please the few, we have alienated the many — especially on culture issues, where our language sounds superior, haughty and arrogant."

The memo was published on the website of Third Way, a nonprofit organization that describes itself as a center-left think tank that “champions moderate policy and political ideas.”

“We are doing our best to get Democrats to talk like normal people and stop talking like they’re leading a seminar at Antioch,” Third Way’s executive vice president of public affairs, Matt Bennett, told Politico. “We think language is one of the central problems we face with normie voters, signaling that we are out of touch with how they live, think and talk.”

Why this former college president wants Americans to join the 'courageous middle'

The memo says the alienating words and phrases fall into six categories:

“Therapy speak” includes words like privilege, dialoguing, othering, microaggression and body shaming.

“Seminar room language” includes “critical theory,” “systems of oppression,” “Overton window,” “cultural appropriation” and “existential threat,” whether to climate, the planet or democracy.

“Organizer jargon” includes “stakeholders,” “the unhoused,” “barriers to participation,” “food insecurity” and “person who immigrated” (as opposed to immigrant).

“Gender and orientation correctness” includes words and phrases such as “birthing person,” “heteronormative,” “cisgender,” “deadnaming” and “LGBTQIA+.”

“The shifting language of racial constructs” includes labels such as Latinx and BIPOC, and the words allyship, intersectionality and “minoritized communities.”

The final category, “explaining away crime,” includes the words “justice-involved,” “incarcerated people” and “involuntary confinement.”

The memo comes at a time when Democrats are engaged in party-wide soul-searching over how they lost the White House to Donald Trump two times. While some efforts focus on how to win back young men who voted for Trump, others involve cursing more in an effort to convey authenticity.

Longtime strategist James Carville has been sharply critical of the party in recent months, and recently told Jesse Watters on Fox News, “I want somebody to talk in clear definitive language and communicate with people in a simple elegant way and that’s what the Democratic Party needs.” He has also told Jen Psaki on MSNBC that Democrats need to stop using “that idiotic NPR jargon” when talking to voters.

The memo, published Aug. 22, seems to codify the sort of things that Carville has been saying.

James Carville is having a moment, and that's a good thing

The authors, who are not identified, admit that they have used some of this language in their writing in the past, but said that when “policymakers are public-facing, the language we use must invite, not repel; start a conversation, not end it; provide clarity, not confusion.”

For “a sizable segment of the American public,” the 45 words and phrases are a red flag, the authors said.

“Before you draft your angry tweet thread, think about conversations with persuadable voters in your own life — especially friends, family, and co-workers — and consider whether the use of the language above would help or hurt your case."

Charlie Kirk, once dubbed the “youth whisperer of the American right,” has some advice for young men — or any man looking for a wife: Pull out the wallet.

The founder of Turning Point USA, Kirk said on a recent podcast that he would “go into debt and scrub dishes” before he would let a woman he was courting pay for a date.

To be clear, Kirk isn’t in the dating pool — he’s been married for four years and has two children. But the subject came up when he was talking to the hosts of The Iced Coffee Hour podcast, one of whom said he splits the check on dates “quite a lot.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to offend you — you guys are great — but that’s incomprehensible for me,” Kirk replied, saying he would find it humiliating for a date to pay. “By the way, the money you save is not worth the honor that you compromise,” he said.

“You see it as such a big deal,” the podcaster replied.

“It’s a massive deal,” Kirk rejoined.

Later Kirk told Megyn Kelly that he had gotten overwhelming support from women who told him “yes, thank you, we need more of this. Why don’t men do this anymore?” But men had complained.

“Listen, a man needs to demonstrate leadership and the capacity to provide early on,” Kirk told Kelly. Previously, he had said, “Women want to be taken care of. I know that’s super provocative, but deep down, they want a man to be able to provide for them financially.”

Megyn Kelly reacts to Charlie Kirk's viral video saying men MUST pay for dinner on a first date. pic.twitter.com/guRSi3lTbL

— Girl patriot (@Girlpatriot1974) August 6, 2025

It may be a provocative take, but USA Today inadvertently offered some evidence of Kirk’s position in an article on why some young women are pursuing “hypergamy” — described in the article as “marrying up.” A TikTok influencer is teaching women how to cultivate relationships with financially successful men, the article explains.

The discussion, as well as a recent spate of viral articles in which single women complain about single men (headlines in The New York Times include “The Trouble With Wanting Men” and “Why Mankeeping is Turning Women Off,”) show that something is off kilter in the dating world today, and it can’t all be explained by politics.

If you’re married, kiss your spouse and be grateful you’re not swimming in today’s dating pool. It seems increasingly complicated out there.

Recommended reading

Sharlee Mullins Glenn asks us to consider why conservatives disagree on whether Donald Trump is one of them.

“As an interesting exercise, my friend and I measured the actions of our current president against ... seven principles — a challenge I’d like to extend to all my fellow conservatives."

Is Trump a conservative?

Asma Uddin looks at the real-time effects of the Supreme Court’s decision to end affirmative action.

She writes: “The Constitution’s promise of equal protection isn’t fulfilled by pretending that race doesn’t matter; it’s fulfilled by knowing when it does.”

Does equal protection require ignoring unequal conditions? I don’t think so

And in her “State of Faith” newsletter, Mariya Manzhos introduces us to Doug Wilson, the Idaho pastor who doesn’t mind being called a Christian nationalist.

“His network of over a hundred churches now stretches from the Pacific Northwest to Washington, D.C., where he recently opened a new congregation. Pete Hegseth, the current Secretary of Defense, attends a Tennessee church that belongs to Wilson’s ministry.”

Is America a Christian nation?

End Notes

Disney can’t stay out of the news, for all the wrong reasons. This week, we learned why a star of “Snow White” thinks the reboot of the beloved classic failed, and also that Gina Carano has obtained what appears to be a generous settlement from her former employer for her firing from “The Mandalorian.” (The terms were not disclosed, but Carano wrote online that she was smiling.)

Here’s my story, which also answers the pressing question: What, exactly, is a grogu?

Is it OK to have Disney+ again? What the Gina Carano settlement means for her fans — and for Disney

In a more serious matter, Illinois has announced that it will be screening schoolchildren for mental health, a move that seems to be about as popular as the new name for MSNBC. Abigail Shrier, who last year spoke to the Deseret News about her book “Bad Therapy,” called the policy “disastrous.” You can read more here:

Illinois plans to screen children for mental health. Why does Abigail Shrier think it's a terrible idea?

And finally, MSNBC’s new name was dead on arrival.

That’s not just my assessment or that of the many people on social media who noted that MS NOW sounds more like a newsletter about multiple sclerosis than a news and opinion brand. The new name was even described as “baffling” by the media columnist at Columbia Journalism Review.

An old saw says, no matter how far you’ve gone down the wrong road, go back. Is it too late for MSNBC to rid itself of a new name that it hasn’t even yet adopted?

The New York Times notes that there is precedent — “Aberdeen, a British investment firm, dropped most of its vowels in 2021 and became ‘abrdn’ in a widely mocked effort to seem more ‘modern.’” The company later changed back to the original, as did Gap when a new logo was not well received.

Then again, it’s hard to find anybody but Elon Musk who was happy when Twitter became X, and that change persists.

If you have any suggestions for a new name, let me know. I’m thinking simply “Maddow.”

As always, thank you for reading and being part of the Right to the Point community. You can email me at Jgraham@deseret.com, or send me a DM on X, where I’m @grahamtoday.

Pop culture usually talks about a stairway to heaven, not a totem pole.

But President Donald Trump this week indicated that he had been spending some time thinking about the afterlife and how to get there.

On “Fox & Friends,” Trump said he hoped that, if he brokers a peace between Ukraine and Russia, there would be thousands of lives saved, a comment that many people mocked.

“If I can save 7,000 people a week from getting killed ... I want to try and get to heaven if possible. I’m hearing I’m not doing well,” Trump said on the broadcast. “I hear I am really at the bottom of the totem pole. But if I can get to heaven, this will be one of the reasons.”

The human cost of Russia’s war against Ukraine

Deseret contributor Patrick T. Brown, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, had a refreshingly different take from the snark that too often proliferates on X.

“A surprisingly beautiful sentiment for a man not always given to self-reflection,” Brown wrote. “We can all pray for peace and do our part to try to avoid being at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to the final things.”

A surprisingly beautiful sentiment for a man not always given to self-reflection. We can all pray for peace and do our part to try to avoid being at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to the final things. https://t.co/kwN7Ua1o2y

— Patrick T. Brown (@PTBwrites) August 19, 2025

The name change came as a surprise to many, even those within the network who had previously been told that the MSNBC name would continue. Versant’s CEO Mark Lazarus told The Wall Street Journal that the rebranding, which will also erase NBC’s peacock from the properties being spun off, would help prevent “brand confusion.”

MS NOW is an abbreviated version of the full new name, “My Source News Opinion World.”

On social media, critics of the change noted that “MS NOW” could be perceived as a website about the disease multiple sclerosis, which is frequently shortened to “MS.”

The MSNBC rebrand got multiple sclerosis trending. In case you're wondering how it's going.

— Varad Mehta (@varadmehta) August 18, 2025

In a note to “our community,” on the MSNBC website, the network acknowledged, “For our viewers who have watched us for decades, it may be hard to imagine this network by any other name. We understand. But our promise to you remains as it always has. You know who we are, and what we do.”

The note also gave a nod to the face of MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, saying: “As Rachel often reminds us all … watch this space." The note ended with the colorful peacock logo.

Announcing the change on “Morning Joe,” Joe Scarborough called the new name “very sporty” and said that the change shows “we’re independent.”

“What’s in a name? Whatever you put in a name,” Scarborough said.

'Morning Joe' went to Mar-a-Lago. What does that mean for the media under Trump 2.0?

The network said its mission would stay the same — “to serve as your destination for breaking news and thoughtful analysis and remain the home for the perspectives that you’ve relied on for nearly 30 years" — and that it is expanding its staff to that end.

But critics on social media questioned the strategy, noting that MSNBC has struggled to compete with Fox News, especially with Maddow’s changing schedule. (She’s now back to one night a week.)

Maddow’s replacements have not done well in the slot. One of former President Joe Biden’s White House press secretaries, Jen Psaki, drew about half of Maddow’s audience in May.

Analysts have questioned whether MSNBC, in its current or future form, can afford to keep Maddow, who The Wrap once dubbed “Rachel Mad-Dough.” It’s been reported that she is being paid $25 million a year. In the most recent ratings, her once-a-week show averaged 2 million viewers, per Deadline.

By comparison Fox News’ “The Five,” the No. 1 cable news show, averaged more than 3.5 million viewers, and “Jesse Watters Primetime” drew 3.14 million.

In the second quarter of 2025, per AdWeek, “Fox News continued its streak as cable news’ most-watched network and also surged past a couple of the broadcast networks, ABC (2.977 million) and NBC (2.704 million), in primetime in total viewers. This was the network’s second-highest-rated second quarter in network history with weekday total day viewers, trailing its coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.”

The news of the name change is the latest in a series of changes for MSNBC this year. In January, Rashida Jones, who had led the company since 2021, stepped down.

As part of Versant, which will be a publicly traded company, MS NOW will join a media family that comprises USA Network, CNBC, Oxygen, E!, Syfy and Golf Channel, as well as Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, GolfNow and SportsEngine.

CNBC, which stands for Consumer News and Business Channel, will also be getting a new logo, but the name will not be changed, the company has said. In its report, on the changes, PBS said it was “noteworthy” that CNBC was allowed to keep the “NBC” in its name, while MSNBC wasn’t.

According to PBS, MSNBC President Rebecca Kutler said in a memo to employees, “During this time of transition, NBCUniversal decided that our brand requires a new, separate identity.”

The program, the first of its kind in the nation, was lauded by state Sen. Sara Feigenholtz and the state Democratic Caucus, which said in a statement that children face challenges including “increased rates of sadness, hopelessness and difficulty with schoolwork.”

“At a time when our kids are struggling with anxiety and depression more than ever before, it’s our responsibility to ensure that young people have all the support that they need to get the help that they deserve,” Pritzker said. Earlier this year, the state launched a portal to connect parents, caregivers and youth with mental health services.

The news was not universally applauded. Abigail Shrier, the author of “Bad Therapy,” a 2024 critique of the mental health industry and its effects on kids, called Illinois’ plan “a disastrous policy that will do vastly more harm than good.”

She later published a piece in The Free Press headlined “Stop asking kids if they’re depressed."

“Kids are wildly suggestible, especially where psychiatric symptoms are concerned,” she wrote. She describes an experience she had as a parent, when she took her son to urgent care for stomach pain and was asked to leave the room so the nurse could administer a mental health screening that included the questions “In the past few weeks, have you wished you were dead?” and “Are you thinking of killing yourself right now?”

I want to be on-the-record and crystal clear. This is a disastrous policy that will do vastly more harm than good.

Watch as tens of thousands of Illinois kids get shoved into the mental health funnel and convinced they are sick. Many or most of which will be false positives. https://t.co/BjOhi3YIuK

— Abigail Shrier (@AbigailShrier) August 7, 2025

In The Free Press, Shrier quoted Dr. Allen Frances, a psychiatry professor at Duke University, who told her, “Most kids who screen positive will have transient problems, not mental disorder. Mislabeling stigmatizes and subjects them to unnecessary treatments, while misdirecting very scarce resources away from kids who desperately need them.”

Abigail Shrier has a message for parents: Assert authority in your kid's life

Writing for City Journal, Manhattan Institute policy analyst Carolyn D. Gorman also expressed concern, noting that universal screenings often result in false positives, leading to unnecessary and life-changing treatment.

“Giving children an inaccurate diagnosis can harm their well-being. Even a ‘correct’ diagnosis has potential downsides; it does not explain the cause of a mental health problem, can lock a child into a label, and does not guarantee access to the right treatments. For some young people, medical diagnoses, including mental health diagnoses, can shape their identity and expectations, lead to long-term medication use, affect job prospects, and diminish their sense of control over their future.”

Few specifics were offered about how the program would be implemented; however, the governor said the cost of the screenings would be covered by the state, and not the schools, and that various state agencies would work together to provide services. The state Board of Education has a year to work out the details.

On the Facebook page of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, some parents were skeptical, with one saying, “As a parent I am not letting my kid be screened. By who? What is their training? What will they be asked? Who is funding this? Who sees the results?”

Generation vexed: How anxiety stalks teens in Utah and across the nation

In The Free Press, Shrier acknowledged that many children are “lonely, worried, scared, and bummed out,” but, she said, “The vast majority of our kids and teens are not mentally ill.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 1 in 5 children ages 3 to 17 (21%) have been diagnosed at some time with a “mental, emotional or behavioral health condition.” More specifically, the most recent CDC data show that 11% of children ages 3–17 had current, diagnosed anxiety and 4% had current, diagnosed depression. The numbers rise as children grow older, with 20% of children 12–17 reporting symptoms of anxiety and 18% symptoms of depression.

Children’s mental health has worsened since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, leading the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Children’s Hospital Association to declare a national emergency for children’s mental health in 2021.

Among the group’s recommendations at that time was to “increase implementation and sustainable funding of effective models of school-based mental health care, including clinical strategies and models for payment.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Department of U.S. Health and Human Services secretary, has long expressed concern about the use of psychiatric drugs in children. A report of his “Make America Healthy Again Commission,” released in May, called out the rising numbers of prescriptions written for children for depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

But while there is disagreement about the best way to confront rising mental health struggles, the numbers continue to climb, for both children and adults. As Kevin Lind reported for the Deseret News in May, “Today, the National Institute of Mental Health reports that some 40 million Americans have anxiety disorders — nearly one-fifth of the total U.S. population — and more than 14 million suffer from depression."

Announcing the settlement on X, Carano thanked Elon Musk, whose company paid for her legal fees, and said the agreement was “the best outcome for all parties involved.” She also said she was “humbled and grateful to God for His love and grace in this outcome.”

The terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but they were clearly favorable to Carano, who wrote on X, “Yes, I’m smiling.”

As many Americans are.

I have come to an agreement with Disney/Lucasfilm @disney @Lucasfilm which I believe is the best outcome for all parties involved. I hope this brings some healing to the force. 

I want to extend my deepest most heartfelt gratitude to Elon Musk, @elonmusk a man I’ve never met,… https://t.co/qiAX7W1vgf

— Gina Carano 🕯 (@ginacarano) August 7, 2025

For those who didn’t follow the story, Carano’s social media posts had been warily eyed by her employer as she wrote skeptically about masks and vaccines during the first year of COVID, wondered about election integrity and wrote in her social-media bio that her pronouns were “beep, bop, boop.”

But the firing came after she reposted a meme on Instagram that said, in part, “Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?”

The #FireGinaCarano hashtag immediately circulated, with people accusing Carano of being antisemitic. Lucasfilm called the post “abhorrent.” But others, like Ben Shapiro of The Daily Wire, defended Carano, saying that she was fired because of her libertarian and right-leaning beliefs.

Carano’s lawsuit charged discrimination, wrongful firing and reputational harm.

Bob Chapek, then Disney’s CEO, had said that Carano’s values didn’t align with the company’s. And that didn’t play well with conservatives, who rallied around the star as the company made headlines for things unrelated to entertainment: for example, Disney’s battle with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the off-brand pairing with Hulu that brought mature content to its streaming service, and the 2025 Super Bowl ad in which Disney used a word that was quite unDisney-like.

FWIW I've met many kind, gracious stars over the years through my work

Gina Carano was the nicest

It goes beyond that, though. She went to bat for people in a way that she didn't need to do.

She did it anyway. Speaks volumes of her as a person pic.twitter.com/rqPpgLZP6o

— Christian Toto (@HollywoodInToto) August 8, 2025

Ever since the company became part of the culture war, conservatives have been struggling with a kind of cognitive dissonance — trying to maintain their love of Disney and what it used to represent while feeling disappointment and anger about what Disney was doing and where it seemed to be headed. Many couldn’t do it and started boycotting Disney instead. Conservatives on social media cheered when a reimagined “Snow White” struggled at the box office in the U.S.

But there are signs that Disney could recover.

Last year, Axios, while still calling the company “polarizing,” noted that Disney’s “reputation score” was slightly improving, even among Republicans; it was the company’s first reputational gain since 2017.

“Disney’s reputation score among Republicans jumped from 61.03 in 2023 to 67.8 in 2024,” Axios reported.

It could rise even more this year, if the company employs Carano again, as Lucasfilm hinted it might.

How Mickey Mouse entered the culture wars

What did Gina Carano say about Disney+?

Carano clearly was happy to put the matter behind her, a month before the case was scheduled to go to court. In a jubilant post on X, Carano said she was celebrating “what feels like 1,000 lbs off my shoulders.”

She also expressed relief that her friends and loved ones could move beyond being upset with Disney, saying that people close to her had been putting away their “Mandalorian”-related toys, like the “Grogu,” better known to “Star Wars” fans as a “baby Yoda.”

“The Baby Grogus all my families’ kids got Christmas’s ago silently put away, along with Star Wars shirts and toys, broke my heart to watch. Everyone apologizing to me for going to Disneyland, or refusing to go, I didn’t ask or want that for anyone, but people were properly upset, it has been so sad,“ she wrote on X.

She added: “Healing is definitely happening now. No need to apologize to me for having Disney+ anymore PLEASE. I need to move on. Bring the Grogus out, I’m ok! I do believe positive change is happening.”

What are your honest opinions on Grogu (Baby Yoda) in The Mandalorian? pic.twitter.com/FygR0jN3HX

— Star Wars Daily (@StarWarsDaily_) August 14, 2025

For its part, Lucasfilm — which in February 2021 said “Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future” — said in a statement, “With this lawsuit concluded, we look forward to identifying opportunities to work together with Ms. Carano in the near future.”

To say that’s a turnaround is an understatement. But it’s part of a sea change in the culture since President Donald Trump returned to the White House, with companies rolling back diversity, equity and inclusion programs like “Reimagine Tomorrow,” the initiative that got Disney in trouble with conservatives and was discontinued earlier this year.

In the statement, Lucasfilm also praised Carano, saying she “was always well respected by her directors, co-stars and staff, and she worked hard to perfect her craft while treating her colleagues with kindness and respect.”

That wording is significant, given that Chapek said in 2021 that Carano didn’t share Disney’s values. In an earnings call in March 2021, per The Hollywood Reporter, Chapek told shareholders that Disney stands “for values that are universal: Values of respect, values of decency, values of integrity and values of inclusion.”

What’s next for Gina Carano?

In a lengthy post on X, Carano said she was not giving interviews right now but was looking forward to getting back to work. What that work entails, she did not say, although she said she’d lost 50 pounds and was engaging in a “healthy kind of suffering” to restore her physical health.

“And don’t worry about me, the hate doesn’t even make me blink anymore, it doesn’t even come close. I already went through that fire. I’m immune to that heat now. Refined by fire, maybe not for everyone but I consider myself blessed, God knew what I could handle,“ she said.

As for future projects, it’s unclear what they may be. Before she was fired, Carano had been told she would star in a spinoff. But “The Mandalorian” is thought to have concluded its Disney+ run after three seasons. A film, “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” is scheduled for theatrical release in 2026.

Could she have a cameo in that? Or will that canceled spinoff actually happen? While those scenarios may be unlikely given the past four years, with Carano’s permission to “bring the Grogus out,” look for the film to do better than “Snow White.”

Sasha Stone is one of the more interesting voices in the conservative space these days — which is all the more interesting since she’s not a conservative.

Stone, founder of the film website Awards Daily, became disillusioned with the extremes of the left in recent years and emerged as a Donald Trump supporter, which radically upended her career, fan base and income stream. But even as she lost advertising and influence in one sphere, she gained them in another.

In the past year, she has been featured in The New York Times among other publications, been a guest on The Megyn Kelly Show, and become a commentator on the state of the Democratic Party and the media. But even as The Hollywood Reporter described her “right-wing turn” and The New York Times called her a “MAGA pundit,” Stone refuses to conform to any political category. And last week, she delivered a lesson in listening to each other that stuck with me.

She listened to a conversation between journalist and podcaster Mark Halperin and Glenn Kessler, a former fact-checker for The Washington Post who recently took a buyout and as such has been newly enabled to share what he really thinks about everything.

Kessler, whose fact-checking system established a scale of “Pinocchios” to rate the veracity of statements, got pushback not only from conservatives but from Halperin, for his insistence that there was no anti-conservative bias at The Washington Post. It’s the sort of take that, to many people, seems breathtakingly naive, and Stone admitted that she’d had the impulse to call him out over it. “I wanted to mock Glenn Kessler or call him out or chide him or Tweet at him or something to shake him out of it,” she wrote.

But instead, she listened, and did so thoughtfully, giving Kessler what Halperin calls “the presumption of grace.” By the end of the conversation, she wrote, “I could see that this is how he genuinely sees the Washington Post, his work there, and reality itself.” Most importantly, she saw him as a person, not a member of the media, with all the baggage that entails.

“I saw a guy who loved his job and loved The Washington Post. Every day, he showed up and worked in that bustling newsroom. How could anyone ask him to throw that newspaper or his work under the bus?” Stone wrote.

I was genuinely touched by @MarkHalperin's interview with Glenn Kessler. I thought I would come out of it wanting to mock him and call him out for not noticing the bias but he's just an old newsroom guy who loved the WaPo. I thought Mark was decent to him and it moved me, I can't…

— Sasha Stone (@realsashastone) August 10, 2025

Stone still thinks Kessler’s take on the media is wrong, and the result of an ideological bubble that deflects and rejects all contradictory opinions. Escaping our bubbles is essential, she said, and so is treating each other with kindness and decency — in other words, not only presuming but also offering grace.

Those with a solidly conservative worldview won’t agree with Stone on everything — she loved the Best Picture winner “Anora,” for one thing — but this is the kind of discourse America needs. More talk about grace — yes, please.

The problem with Trump ‘comedy’

“I acknowledge we’re losing money. Late-night TV is a struggling financial model. We are all basically operating a Blockbuster kiosk inside a Tower Records.”

Those are the words of comedian Jon Stewart, as defenders of Stephen Colbert continue to rage against the forthcoming cancellation of “The Late Show” despite The Wall Street Journal’s report that it was losing $40 million a year.

As statistician Nate Silver wrote, Google search data shows that interest in both Stewart and Colbert trended downward in the age of Trump, in part because it’s hard to be funny around the ultra-woke: “Comedy usually isn’t very good when you have to tiptoe around people’s sensitivities,” Silver wrote.

But the late Norm Macdonald, of “Saturday Night Live” fame, would have said there was more to it than that. Jokes about Donald Trump, a staple of late-night comedy, just aren’t that funny, MacDonald once said; they’re “low hanging fruit.”

He explained in this interview why good comedians struggle in the age of Trump.

“If you try to do smart comedy, it’s better to stay away from Trump,” said the comedian, who got his start writing for the “Roseanne” show. But few comedians and late-night hosts can resist the lure of the Trump joke and the chance to make a political point. Meanwhile, their undisguised loathing of Trump gets in the way of good comedy, he said.

“If you’re doing an impression of someone, you have to like that person, because people like themselves. You can’t play someone and have contempt for them at the same time. It doesn’t work as an impression,” Macdonald said. (While on SNL, Macdonald often impersonated Bob Dole, a man he once called his hero.)

Trump comedy is also complicated by the fact that Trump engages in self-parody, and “nothing looks dumber than if you parody self-parody — you get caught not understanding," he said.

Macdonald famously rued comedians who styled themselves as political pundits, and his remarks seem even more prescient today. He is still missed.

Recommended reading

Artificial intelligence can write obituaries. But should it? Holly Richardson takes a look at what happens when we outsource our love and memories to a machine — and shares what she got when she asked AI to write her own obituary.

She writes: “For a funeral home to write obituaries may take six hours or more — three hours meeting with the family to gather details and another three to craft an obituary. From that standpoint, it’s easy to see the appeal. Still, it can be cold and impersonal to grieving family members. Disrespectful, even, to use an algorithm to create something as personal as an obituary for a loved one.”

AI is everywhere. Can it write obituaries?

Child care is sometimes seen as at odds with family values, but Elliott Haspel argues that the two are inseparable.

He explains: “Acute, chronic stress is an enemy of healthy families. And at worst, such stress can split families apart: One North Carolina mother, Lindsay K. Saunders, shared in a 2024 op-ed that the stress of trying to afford child care was a factor in her and her husband separating. ‘I wondered,’ Saunders wrote, ‘if only we’d had more support, would we have made it?’”

Good child care doesn’t undermine family values. It supports them

When teacher’s unions make political statements or libraries promote social justice, it’s “mission creep,” according to Naomi Schaefer Riley.

She writes: “Universities and corporations finally seem to have moved away from issuing grand statements about world affairs, but now other sectors should follow suit. And the individuals employed in those sectors might want to also rediscover the importance of their actual jobs.”

The excesses of mission creep

As always, thank you for reading and being part of the Right to the Point community. You can email me at Jgraham@deseret.com, or send me a DM on X, where I’m @grahamtoday.

The Los Angeles Times put the story on its front page Wednesday: “Your best bet for stargazing? California, oddsmakers declare.”

It wasn’t just a play on words.

Curiously, the poll had been conducted by a sports betting website that, in a master class in mission creep, said it had analyzed “sky visibility, elevation, historical meteor activity, and astronomical infrastructure to compile a ranked list of the best states for witnessing celestial events.”

In this list, California came out on top, followed by Colorado, Oregon, Utah and New Mexico.

Even California stargazers aren’t buying this.

“The ranking of those places doesn’t necessarily make any sense at all and is probably based on a variety of assumptions, maybe some judgment involved about which of those states have more dark sky territory and accessibility,” Ed Krupp, director of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, told Karen Garcia of the Los Angeles Times.

Krupp also pointed out that the report had focused on where the best places are to see an asteroid — even though usually you can’t see an asteroid without a telescope. (Possibly they meant meteors, which are visible to the naked eye.)

Nonetheless, California was cited for its “outstanding combination of dark skies and infrastructure” while Utah came in fourth place because its “national parks and remote deserts deliver exceptional night-sky clarity.”

With the skies increasingly dimmed by light pollution, dark-sky tourism, also called astrotourism, is booming, and companies completely unrelated to astronomy are trying to cash in on Americans’ interest in celestial grandeur.

How to view the Perseid meteor shower at its peak

In another poll of dubious origins released to the media this month, a website promoting tarot cards said its survey of 3,000 “campers and skywatchers” found that three of the best stargazing sites are in Utah: Natural Bridges National Monument, Dead Horse Point State Park and Capitol Reef National Park.

What is astrotourism? Discover Utah's stellar destinations

There’s an easier way to find this out: the Dark Sky International website, where you can search for the best stargazing sites near you — something that people are especially interested in right now, with the Perseid meteor shower continuing through the end of the month.

And as Dennis Romboy reported earlier this year, “Utah has some of the darkest skies on Earth and the highest concentration of certified International Dark Sky parks and communities in the world.”

They include five national parks (Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef and Zion), 10 state parks and three communities that have been certified International Dark Sky places.

Moreover, U.S. News & World Report last year called Utah “the predominant state for dark skies.”

“The city of Moab is an International Dark Sky Community that draws visitors as a haven for outdoor recreation. The area encompasses the Arches and Canyonlands national parks, as well as the Natural Bridges and Hovenweep national monuments. The lighting ordinances encourage practices that minimize light pollution, a big priority for Dark Sky Places; the Moab area even offers residents financial assistance to retrofit their lighting fixtures,” U.S. News & World Report said.

Not to throw any shade on California, which remains golden despite its quirks, but Utah has equal claim to the best stargazing sites in the country, and Americans didn’t need a sports betting company to tell them that.

Meet Richard Daynard, the 81-year-old law professor who took on sports betting

A few days ago, The Boston Globe published an article about the American Eagle ad controversy with the headline “How American Eagle’s Sydney Sweeney ‘good jeans’ ad went wrong.”

The preview on the newspaper’s website also included the line “The company’s stock has soared.”

That’s the exact opposite of something going wrong if you’re in business to make a profit. A more fitting headline would be “How American Eagle’s ad went right.”

What happened here was a triumph of marketing, what most companies with edgy ads want: for paid advertising to catch fire and explode into “earned media,” otherwise known as free advertising.

For those of you who missed the story, American Eagle signed Sweeney — an actress best known for her roles in HBO’s “Euphoria” and “The White Lotus” — for a sultry ad in which she talks about genes being passed down from parents to offspring. At the end, she says, “My jeans are blue.”

From those benign words, a ruckus ensued.

Some critics have said that the words coming from a blue-eyed blonde are suggestive of eugenics and old ideals of beauty that we’re no longer supposed to embrace.

Others have noted the similarities between the American Eagle ads and Brooke Shields’ ads for Calvin Klein in the 1980s, which also played with the words “jeans” and “genes.” Both campaigns showed the young women zipping up their jeans in sexually suggestive poses.

In years past, we would be talking about that. But conservatives on social media have been largely quiet on this point, and instead are crowing that the age of “wokeness” is over since American Eagle didn’t respond to a handful of critics by apologizing and pulling the campaign. President Donald Trump praised Sweeney on social media, and American Eagle stock prices are up.

The internet wants to cancel Sydney Sweeney for this

Meanwhile, the doughnut chain Dunkin’ released a cheeky ad in which the actor Gavin Casalegno, who stars in the Amazon series “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” says, “Look, I didn’t ask to be the king of summer, it just kinda happened. This tan? Genetics.”

Podcaster Shawn French told Fox News Digital that this is a “cultural turning point,” and it’s true that we have gone, with dizzying speed, from Dylan Mulvaney, the transgender influencer whose promotion famously tanked Bud Light sales, to Sydney Sweeney.

But also, the American Eagle story has benefited from the dog days of summer, and a group of people who have been described as “terminally online.” Which is to say that, yes, the ad has generated a shocking amount of news coverage (even the journal First Things found a way into the story), but it’s a social-media-generated conversation.

Conversely, the Brooke Shields controversy was more of a monocultural moment. The movie “The Blue Lagoon” was widely panned (winning Shields a Razzie award for worst actress), but everyone knew who she was — a teenage actress starring in an R-rated film. (Shields later said that the film couldn’t be made today, but that’s probably more due to animals being harmed than the nudity.)

All these factors led us to the bewildering moment where the nation was obsessively talking about an actress that many of us have never seen wearing jeans that most of us will never buy. There are probably more people scandalized by the idea of paying $80 for jeans than those who believe that American Eagle is promoting eugenics in a well-funded, well-planned series of ads. If I ever wear a pair of these jeans, I will have found them at the Goodwill.

A tale of two Posts

In the same week that the media reporter for Columbia Journalism Review wondered if The Washington Post is on life support, the New York Post announced a westward expansion.

Per Sara Fischer at Axios, “New York Post Media Group, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., will launch a new, daily Los Angeles-based newspaper called ‘The California Post’ in early 2026.”

Unlike The Washington Post, which reportedly lost $100 million last year, the New York Post is profitable and has a large number of readers in Los Angeles, the editor-in-chief, Keith Poole, told Axios. The publication will feature " journalism, entertainment and celebrity gossip, sports news, local news and opinion — with an edgy voice," Fischer wrote.

The New York Post is often derided by “legacy” journalists as a tabloid, a label that was useful when explaining why the publication’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop was ignored for so long. CNN’s Brian Stelter at the time called the laptop story a “manufactured scandal‚" but The Washington Post and other news organizations eventually conceded that at least some of The New York Post’s revelations were correct.

In a head-spinning bit of irony, The Washington Post reported on the New York Post’s expansion and quoted Poole saying, “I think it’s a good time to cement that we are a national brand in the eyes of America and in the eyes of our peers and in the eyes of the advertising industry as well.”

Meanwhile, over at Columbia Journalism Review, Jon Allsop enumerated the number of Washington Post writers and editors who have recently left (including longtime political writer Dan Balz and all but one obituary writer), while noting that owner Jeff Bezos wants his paper to be a national brand, one that firefighters in the Midwest might want to read.

It’s a worthwhile goal, though one that might be best achieved by offering free subscriptions to first responders.

Recommended reading

Jay Evensen, who recently published a five-part series on Bangladesh, looks at the real-life effects of Trump’s tariffs in the South Asian country.

He writes: “Bangladesh is the embodiment of the old saying that when the United States sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold. In this case, Bangladesh is just glad it won’t catch pneumonia.”

What happens when tariffs increase? Look to Bangladesh

Brad Wilcox and Maria Baer examined how the “big, beautiful bill” failed families, particularly parents who want to stay home with their children but can’t afford it.

They write: “Rather than catering to the most privileged parents who choose to work outside the home, allowing all parents to keep more of their own money each time they grow their family would benefit all families. And it would have sent a much better message."

Where are the pro-family senators?

Asma Uddin argues that we should all pay attention when norm-breaking, rather than being costly to our leaders, becomes politically rewarding.

“The framers designed our system knowing they couldn’t draft rules for every crisis. George Washington and his contemporaries relied instead on good faith, restraint and habits of compliance to make the Constitution work. The document’s deliberate ambiguity wasn’t a flaw but a key feature, and it depended on leaders respecting the system even when breaking it might offer short-term advantage.”

When constitutional norms are challenged, that should matter to us all

Endnotes

A few years ago, after seeing a sign advertising “drive-thru” weddings, I wondered if we are losing something important when marriages can be officiated by anyone.

The Wall Street Journal raised the stakes this week with a story about a couple who were married in Las Vegas by a cartoon jar of mayonnaise, a promotional event (read: earned media) for Hellmann’s. It is a relief, I suppose, that only 37 couples applied. It’s a bigger relief that after the mayo-themed ceremony, the couple said they found “a quiet place to read their real vows.”

Meanwhile, soon after I wrote about the rise of banks that court conservatives, Donald Trump appears poised to issue an executive order that will fine banks who drop or deny service to customers for political reasons. Melania Trump wrote in her memoir that both she and her son had been debanked.

As always, thank you for reading and being part of the Right to the Point community. You can email me at Jgraham@deseret.com, or send me a DM on X, where I’m @grahamtoday.

“But first,” Acosta said, “today is August the fourth. That happens to be the birthday of my first guest: Joaquin Oliver, (who) died in Parkland school shooting in Florida back in 2018. ...”

What followed was a deeply unsettling tableau enabled by artificial intelligence, gun politics and humanity’s collective helplessness in the face of deep grief.

Acosta’s “guest” was an AI avatar, programmed to look and sound like Oliver, who was 17 when he died outside his creative writing class at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. His parents, Manuel and Patricia Oliver, have spent the past seven years campaigning against gun violence, and they believe that the AI version of their son will help in this effort.

Acosta encouraged this thinking, telling the father, “We’ve heard from the (Parkland) parents. We’ve heard from the politicians. Now we’re hearing from one of the kids. That’s important. That hasn’t happened.”

It was the most unsettling moment in a segment that was deeply unsettling from beginning to end — from Acosta introducing the avatar as his guest to Oliver’s father revealing his vision for the future, in which his son’s avatar will be on a stage during a debate, and will have followers, presumably on social media. “This is his first interview,” Manuel Oliver said with pride.

A show you don’t want to miss at 4p ET / 1p PT. I’ll be having a one of a kind interview with Joaquin Oliver. He died in the Parkland school shooting in 2018. But his parents have created an AI version of their son to deliver a powerful message on gun violence. Plus Texas State… pic.twitter.com/mbdM2WxwUR

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) August 4, 2025

Acosta described Manuel Oliver as a good friend, which might help to explain why he agreed to do this strange and stilted exchange, surely knowing that it would be controversial, even though the subjects they talked about were largely benign. Acosta and the avatar at one point segued into a discussion about their favorite movies and athletes, neither offering anything beyond the most banal of small talk.

Even the answer to Acosta’s most poignant question — “I’m wondering if you could tell me, what happened to you?” — was reduced to generalities, with the avatar responding as if with talking points:

“I appreciate your curiosity. I was taken from this world too soon due to gun violence while at school. It’s important to talk about these issues so we can create a safer future for everyone.”

Perspective: AI is the new Ouija board of our time

Those of us who have never suffered the loss of a child have no standing to judge those who have. And if the avatar brings comfort to Joaquin’s parents, then for them, the technology is a blessing. (At one heartbreaking moment in the segment, Manuel said that his wife loves hearing the avatar say, “I love you, Mommy.”)

But the use of this technology in this way presents a gauntlet of ethical issues, especially when the deceased person was a minor, as Joaquin was.

Joaquin may well have agreed with everything his avatar says had he lived to be 25 or 55. He may even have agreed with Acosta that the avatar is “a symbol of something that is deeply, deeply wrong with this country.” His father has defended the segment, saying that artificial intelligence didn’t kill his son, an AR-15 did.

An AR-15 stole Joaquin’s life, not artificial intelligence.

Instead of being infuriated at AI, you should be furious at the gun violence epidemic in the United States.

Thank you for amplifying Joaquin’s voice @Acosta pic.twitter.com/RnPZB9gklS

— Change the Ref 🟧 (@ChangeTheRef) August 5, 2025

But the dead cannot consent, and as Alissa Wilkinson wrote in her New York Times review of “Eternal You,” a documentary about AI models trained to mimic the deceased, “Those tools can be comforting, but they’re also potentially big business.”

This sort of business is sometimes called “grief tech‚” and families are exploring options to help them prepare for, or cope with, the loss of a loved one.

Still, the generally horrified reaction to Acosta‘s segment shows that the future got here sooner than we were expecting, and we haven’t yet worked through the ethical, philosophical and, yes, the spiritual dimensions of this industry.

“If this isn’t the making of a graven image, then I don’t know what is,” Glenn Beck said on his talk show Tuesday.

Way back in January, Albert Mohler Jr., the president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, talked about the technology on his podcast, saying, “Just consider the potential manipulation of all of this.”

We don’t have to consider it. We’ve now seen it on our social media feeds.

While Knowles later learned an administrative error was to blame, the conversation renewed discussion about whether Americans are losing banking accounts because of their politics, as first lady Melania Trump said happened to her and her son, Barron.

Enter the parallel economy, where conservative-themed products and services, such as coffee and cellphones, are thriving, and now banks hope to, as well.

The offerings include Old Glory Bank, marketed as “the pro-America bank owned by Main Street, not Wall Street.”

A financial technology company called ProLifeFintech is offering checking, saving, business and investment accounts for people who don’t want to support banks that directly or indirectly support abortion providers.

Regent Bank, based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, seeks to attract customers who are people of faith — its website offers a daily devotional and says Regent’s purpose is “to show God’s love to our employees, clients & communities.”

These are not the Henry F. Potters of the banking world.

Hi, @Stripe. Are we still doing this de-banking thing? Was it something I said?

If we say that men can’t be women, if we donate to pro-life charities, if we oppose two men buying eggs, renting wombs, and commoditizing babies…

Does that come at the cost of de-banking?

— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) July 21, 2025

What is debanking?

Debanking, according to Nicholas Anthony, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, generally refers to the closure or denial of an account because the bank or the government considers it too risky — whether because of the type of commerce involved (say, gun sales or cryptocurrency) or because of the individual or company. The term describes not just account closures at a bank, but also a credit union, payment processing service or any other type of financial company.

President Donald Trump raised the issue the week of his second inauguration when he said, in remarks to the World Economic Forum, that Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase were withholding services to conservatives, something that both banks deny.

But in an interview, Anthony said that debanking is a real thing, and something that consumers are right to be concerned about.

“To be clear, I don’t think billions of people are having their accounts shut down every week, but it is happening enough that people are recognizing that this is an option on the table, this is something that could happen to them," he said.

“One of the best ways to protect yourself against an account closure is not just looking for someone like Old Glory Bank, which specializes in serving conservative clients, but really just looking for another option, having a backup option. That’s a great way to build out a lifeline for anyone,” Anthony said.

Robert E. Wright, an economic policy historian and a fellow at the Andersen Institute for Finance & Economics, said that debanking became an issue for conservative Americans during the Canadian trucker protests in 2022. Then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act, which allowed Canada to suspend personal bank accounts and insurance policies of protest organizers.

It’s impossible to know how many people have been debanked, but the most recent figures from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation show that about 4% don’t have a bank account, a number that has been falling over decades.

Earlier this year, members of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs were told that nearly 12,000 consumers filed complaints over the past three years with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, saying their accounts were improperly closed or they had been unable to open an account.

Why Citi said it won't debank for political reasons anymore

Who runs Old Glory Bank?

Old Glory Bank did not respond to an interview request, but in testimony before a hearing of the Senate Banking Committee, Old Glory Bank President and CEO Mike Ring said his bank was created as a market response to both regulatory and participatory debanking.

The founders of the bank, who include Dr. Ben Carson, Larry Elder and former Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin-Christensen, bought an Oklahoma bank with one branch in November of 2022 and launched nationwide digital banking five months later.

Ring told committee members that Old Glory Bank has since grown from 300 local customers to serving more than 50,000 individuals and 2,000 small businesses.

“I humbly submit that we have better products than the mega banks, plus better service. Our customer service center is in beautiful Durant, Oklahoma, (not offshore), and we actually love our customers and respect their views,” Ring said in his testimony.

Ring was speaking the language of conservatives when he said, “We actually love our customers and respect their views.” One of the selling points of the parallel economy over the past few years has been “don’t give your money to people who hate you.”

But it’s not just conservatives worrying about debanking. In a rare moment of agreement with the president, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said at the same hearing, “Donald Trump was onto a real problem when he criticized Bank of America for its de-banking practices.”

Are conservative-facing banks new?

Michael Kofoed, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and a Deseret News contributor, said that while niche banking has long been a part of the American banking system, the introduction of political themes is a new development.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s bad. It’s just new,” he said.

He added: “Banking depends on trust and trust can come from many places such as religion or perhaps even politics. Whether having similar political views or concerns about cancel culture translates to solvency is always the tough part. ... I trust someone because they have a shared experience with me, but that experience may not be correlated at all with whether a business is successful.”

That said, Old Glory customers are insured through the FDIC, as are customers of ProLifeFintech because of its affiliation with Regent Bank.

Perspective: The termites nibbling at the joists of American democracy

Consumers might not earn any more interest by choosing a niche bank like these, but might benefit from what economists call “the warm glow,” Kofoed said — which he described as the sense that “I did something right by investing in something that matches my values.”

But as much as niche banks are benefiting from people feeling passionate about political issues, they’ve really been enabled by the technology that allows people to bank anywhere.

Fewer of us are using physical banks at all. Newsweek reported in March that in the fourth quarter of 2024, “45 percent of U.S. bank account holders reported conducting activities in person at a branch, a decrease from 53 percent from the first half of 2019.”

Kofoed himself says that he uses a Utah bank even though he lives in Tennessee. Ring, Old Glory’s CEO, told the House Banking Committee that Old Glory has customers in all 50 states.

‘Aligned with godly principles’

On a video on the ProLifeFintech website, co-founder Betsy Gray said she had an abortion before she became a Christian and it was “a tragedy in my life.” Later, when she was running a medical clinic, she was dismayed to learn that her bank donated money to a major abortion provider, and she couldn’t find any others that didn’t also do that. “So many of the major banks promote the shedding of innocent blood,” she said in the video.

Gray said that God spoke to her heart and said: “Start my bank. Start pro-life bank.”

“We’re so excited to have a financial institution truly aligned with godly principles,” she said.

ProLifeFintech said its spokesman was not available, but the company’s website says it offers a “range of financial products and services designed to meet your needs and support your family’s financial journey, all while honoring God and aligning with your values.”

It offers checking, savings and money market accounts through Regent Bank.

The company celebrated its opening in March with an event that featured co-founder Nick Vujicic, retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.

Vujicic, an evangelist and motivational speaker who was born without arms or legs, wrote on X, “In a world where many financial systems back causes contrary to God’s moral laws, ProLifeFintech is a bold stand. It’s a powerful alternative to the ‘woke’ financial systems that are on the rise.”

Anthony, at the Cato Institute, noted that banking services organized around values or religious principles aren’t new. “One case that is very widespread is Islamic finance, offering services in line with the Muslim faith and making sure that it is compliant with Islamic doctrine.” Similarly, the Kosher Financial Institute keeps track of financial institutions compliant with Jewish law. And Christian-leaning banking has also been around for more than a century, though with mixed results.

For example, Stewardship Bank of Oregon, which Christianity Today described as the nation’s “first Christian bank,” didn’t last four years. But St. Mary’s Cooperative Credit Association, which opened in Manchester, New Hampshire, in 1908, was a success and went on to become St. Mary’s Bank, now open to anyone in the U.S.

The future of niche banks

Wright, the author of “Financial Founding Fathers: The Men Who Made America Rich,” among other books, said although offerings like Old Glory Bank may be new to the parallel economy, banking and politics have been entwined from the earliest days of America.

“We’ve always had a two-party system that began in Washington’s first administration, partly because of a bank. It’s why the Republicans split off from the Federalists,” he said.

Yet despite Americans’ growing distrust of institutions, most of us still use big banks, although that number is declining, Kiplinger reported earlier this year. But it’s all part of a cycle, Kofoed said.

“Ever since (Andrew) Jackson killed the Second Bank of the U.S., it’s as part of America as apple pie that we go from not trusting big banks, to setting up small ones, to those getting wiped out, to banks getting bigger, and we kind of go through this cycle. It’s not necessarily good or bad cycle, it’s just how we are as an American culture,” he said.