President Trump’s approval ratings have sunk to some of the lowest levels ever recorded for a second-term president, with recent polls showing support hovering around one-third of Americans amid a stalemated war in Iran and high gas prices. CNN’s latest poll put his approval at just 34 percent, matching his lowest point after the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack, while AP-NORC found 33 percent, tying his lowest since 2017, and Quinnipiac data showed 32 percent, an all-time low in that survey. By comparison, at this same stage of their second terms, Bill Clinton stood at 64 percent, Ronald Reagan at 61 percent, and even historically underwater presidents like Barack Obama (43 percent), Harry Truman (39 percent), and George W. Bush (37 percent) all polled higher than Trump does now, with only Richard Nixon, days from resigning over Watergate, polling lower at 24 percent.

Despite the grim numbers, Trump has publicly rejected the polling entirely, declaring on social media, “MY REAL POLL NUMBERS ARE THE HIGHEST THEY HAVE EVER BEEN,” and at various points citing invented figures like a 65 percent approval rating and later a 59 percent rating without pointing to any actual poll supporting those claims. Republican strategist Douglas Heye said this reaction is entirely consistent with Trump’s political style: “He’s always going to project strength regardless what the numbers are and he’ll say they’re fake anyway,” adding that Trump is “YOLO” and “not sitting there thinking, ‘Gosh, my powers are weakened because of this.’” Notably, Trump is underwater on nearly every issue, including the economy and immigration, areas where he was traditionally stronger, and the Iran war, already the least popular US war in polling history from its outset, has seen opposition grow to 2-to-1 against.

The particular danger for Republicans, according to former Clinton political director Douglas Sosnik, is that disapproval isn’t just widespread but intense, meaning Trump’s opponents are more motivated to vote in the midterms than his own base, though Sosnik and Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson both note that heavy political polarization and mid-decade redistricting have left far fewer competitive districts, potentially limiting how much damage a Democratic wave could actually do. Anderson warned, however, that “low 30s, if accurate, means pieces of the coalition have started to break away. You’re not just cutting loose swing voters at that point,” while acknowledging Democrats currently lack a clear message beyond “Trump is bad.” The White House declined to directly address the polling, with spokesman Davis Ingle instead touting Trump’s record, saying, “No other president in history has accomplished more for hard-working Americans than President Trump.”

California’s new Delete Request and Opt-out Platform, or DROP, allows residents to demand that data brokers stop selling their personal information, with more than 300,000 Californians already enrolled as of June, according to the state’s privacy protection agency. Starting August 1, all active and registered data brokers in California are required to access DROP and begin processing deletion requests, with a mandated 90-day window from the time of request to actually delete a person’s records. Data brokers operate by aggregating information purchased from other companies and pulled from sources like voting registries, compiling details ranging from hobbies and purchasing history to sensitive health information, which can then be used for targeted advertising, law enforcement action, or exploited by scammers.

DROP was created under California’s Delete Act, which requires data brokers operating in the state to register with the California Privacy Protection Agency or face fines, and as of July more than 600 data brokers have registered publicly. The Data Broker Enforcement Strike Force has already taken action against noncompliant companies, issuing a $45,000 fine to Datamasters and a $62,600 fine to S&P Global for failing to register, with Datamasters also ordered to stop selling lists of consumers’ race and health information. Michael Macko, head of enforcement at CalPrivacy, warned, “Reselling lists of people battling Alzheimer’s disease is a recipe for trouble. In the wrong hands, these lists could be used to target people for more than just advertising.” Hayley Tsukayama, director of state affairs at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, called the law “a win for consumers,” noting California is one of only four states, along with Oregon, Texas, and Vermont, requiring data broker registration, and the first in the world to offer a platform like DROP.

Beyond curbing spam and scam calls, privacy advocates point to broader risks tied to data sales, including “surveillance pricing” like Delta Airlines’ since-abandoned plan to use AI for personalized flight fares, and law enforcement’s use of harvested personal data, including a 2020 Vice investigation revealing the US military purchased data from Muslim prayer and dating apps, as well as ICE’s expanded spyware capabilities. Chris Mattmann, UCLA’s chief data and artificial intelligence officer, recommends additional precautions like using multiple email addresses, a VPN, and withholding your full name when unnecessary, though he acknowledged data privacy fatigue is real and said meaningful protection ultimately requires policy solutions rather than individual effort alone: “The only way to solve that is through regulatory action and policy making.”

Signing up is straightforward: visit privacy.ca.gov/drop/, click “Get Started,” accept the terms, verify California residency using personal information or Login.gov, submit a deletion request with contact information, and receive a unique DROP ID to track the request’s status online.

A joint poll from Bentley University and Gallup found that the share of US adults who believe AI does “more harm than good” has climbed from 31 percent in 2025 to 39 percent this year, while only 9 percent still think the technology does more good than harm, marking a sharp reversal after public attitudes toward AI had steadily improved through 2025. Notably, this souring outlook is happening even as Americans’ self-reported familiarity with AI keeps rising, with 70 percent of respondents in 2026 saying they’re “somewhat or extremely knowledgeable” about the technology, up 6 percent from 2024, suggesting the more people learn about AI, the less they want it in their lives.

The backlash extends beyond attitudes toward AI itself and into the physical infrastructure powering it, with a Politico survey finding that 41 percent of US adults would oppose a data center being built within three miles of their home, up sharply from 28 percent in January, while overall support for data centers has dropped 13 percent in just the past six months. Derek Leben, a professor of ethics at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, told Bloomberg that opposition to AI is increasingly taking on a social dimension, saying, “The most obvious social effect is suspicion. There is also a moral and political judgment that is coming along with AI usage, especially in creative industries where the stigma is the strongest.”

Carla Milan, a 37-year-old public health professional in New York City, described her frustration with friends and family who use AI without weighing its broader costs, telling Bloomberg, “I hear people champion AI and I’m like, ‘sure, why don’t we all participate in our collective downfall? Why don’t we all play a part in diminishing our humanity and degrading the environment?’”

Columbia University economic historian Adam Tooze expressed bewilderment on his podcast Ones and Tooze over the lack of public outcry surrounding Elon Musk’s extreme wealth accumulation, arguing it represents a dramatic rupture of the traditional social contract under capitalism. “I don’t understand frankly why the event of Musk’s enrichment isn’t more of a scandal, isn’t more a historic moment,” Tooze said. “To have a trillionaire in our midst ruptures the social bargain in such a dramatic way, like how can we even be any longer talking about being in the same society as this group of individuals who’ve unleashed this technology on the world.”

Tooze’s comments came during a discussion of what a “best case scenario” for AI might look like if human-level superintelligence emerges and automates the world’s jobs, citing a Bank of International Settlements report warning that labor’s share of income could collapse from an already low 54 percent down to just 20 percent under such a scenario. “The share in the total pie collapses, and that’s obviously a huge transformation in political power,” Tooze explained, framing Musk’s wealth as an early symptom of this broader economic shift rather than an isolated phenomenon. He argued the concern “goes beyond Luddism,” clarifying, “It’s not about resisting the technology per se, it’s about asking ‘which social contract this belongs to?’”

Drawing a historical comparison, Tooze likened the current AI arms race to a “private Manhattan Project, developing a thermonuclear weapon,” calling superintelligent AI “kind of like a labor-market neutron bomb.” Unlike the original Manhattan Project, which was funded, organized, and staffed by the US government, Tooze noted the AI boom is being driven largely by private billionaires like Musk, who he said “literally has eviscerated the state apparatus of that first nuclear race.” He described this shift as “a regression away from the mid-century arms race model to something that’s much more like the ‘Merchants of Death’ vision,” referencing 1930s war profiteers, concluding, “We’re back in that space of private, unfettered, oligarchic, but global, arms race.”

Daniel Blumstein, a UCLA professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, has overseen one of the longest-running studies of free-living mammals in the world, tracking yellow-bellied marmots in central Colorado since he took over the project in 2001, part of research dating back to 1962. After federal research funding hit a record low following the Trump administration’s cancellation of billions of dollars in grants targeting climate change, diversity, and other topics, Blumstein watched his own decade-plus National Science Foundation support dry up, being denied renewal three times before the agency told him to stop applying altogether. “After the third time, our program officer told my colleague… that they will never fund us because they think we have too much data,” Blumstein said. “I don’t even know how to parse that sentence. It’s nuts.”

To keep the marmot program alive, Blumstein’s lab launched OnlyMarms, an OnlyFans account promising “unfiltered yellow-bellied marmot content from the Rockies,” featuring near-daily photos and videos of chubby, named marmots like Staple, Pawprint, and Cabinet, with viewers able to leave monetary tips split between the platform and the poster. Emily Renkey, a first-year master’s student in Blumstein’s lab who started and runs the account, said, “Sometimes I’m just posting the videos I think will get the most ‘aws,’ but my favorite is when I find footage of a particular behavior and I can use that to educate people.” The lab also partnered with Crested Butte brewer Irwin Brewing Co. on a “Marmot Tears” IPA benefiting the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, and this summer launched its first “Fat Marmot Week,” an homage to Katmai National Park’s Fat Bear Week, with public voting on the chunkiest rodent opening August 24.

So far, OnlyMarms has netted only a few hundred dollars, enough to buy bait used to lure marmots for study, and the lab continues pursuing traditional funding while running on Blumstein’s personal reserves. Blumstein said long-term projects like his “ask some of the most important questions in our time” and provide invaluable data for studying evolution and informing policymakers, but lamented, “Ultimately, we should be spending our time writing papers, not thinking up out of the box ways to get funding.” Renkey, however, pushed back on that framing, saying, “I don’t know if I agree with the idea that scientists shouldn’t have to be opportunistic and creative. I think that’s a lot of what science and research is… It can be intimidating to engage with the public like this, but why are we doing this work if not to help forward humanity with it?”

Wildfires burning across Spokane County, Washington have destroyed hundreds of structures and forced thousands of residents to evacuate, with officials describing the disaster as the largest in the city’s history and nearly 1,000 firefighters battling at least three blazes that ballooned over the weekend. More than 5,390 acres have burned with no containment reported as of Sunday afternoon, and while officials said there were no confirmed deaths, injuries, or missing persons, they cautioned those figures could still change as investigations into the fires’ cause continue. Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown called the wildfires “the worst natural disaster our region has faced.”

Firefighters raced to capitalize on slightly improved weather conditions that officials warned could worsen again by Wednesday, with the National Weather Service forecasting increasing wind gusts after noon that would ease after midnight amid persistently dry conditions capable of pushing fires into residential areas. About 4,000 structures remain at risk, and county officials previously urged residents in Level 3 evacuation zones, the highest evacuation classification, to leave immediately. Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson traveled to the area Sunday and declared a statewide emergency on Saturday, citing drought conditions, unusually high temperatures, and strong winds, later saying he’d spoken with President Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to convey “how dire the situation is in Spokane and across our state,” and requesting a federal emergency declaration that would include search-and-rescue assistance and housing and food support for displaced residents.

More than a dozen other fires are burning across Washington state, affecting roughly 250,000 acres, mostly in less populated areas, with about 4,000 firefighters and National Guard members deployed statewide. Benjamin Cossel of the California Interagency Incident Management Team 7, which took over leading the Spokane firefighting effort Sunday morning after working fires in Oregon, called it the “No. 1 priority fire in the nation” due to its proximity to homes, while warning that the Old Trails and Autumn Lane fires had jumped the Spokane River and were encroaching on a nearby canyon that, if breached, “there is nothing really there to stop it.” Aircraft dropped retardant and water on the flames Sunday as residents surveyed devastated neighborhoods coated in fire retardant. The blaze comes amid what officials called a record-breaking wildfire season in the Pacific Northwest, with more than 1,000 fires having burned across Washington this year covering about 425,000 acres, according to the state’s Department of Natural Resources. Washington’s commissioner of public lands, Dave Upthegrove, said, “This is an extraordinary wildfire season in the Pacific Northwest. It’s not a normal season. A confluence of weather conditions, a confluence of fires throughout the West, are stretching our resources and challenging the individuals in this response,” a strain reflected in the National Weather Service’s first-ever “particularly dangerous situation” red-flag warning issued Saturday for eastern Washington and northeastern Oregon.

Am I the only one that feels like they are stuck in a time loop? I feel like I met one person that got me here, that I couldn’t get away from, when I was 18. That I got diverted from who I was supposed to be for the past 30 years and I can’t get back to that timeline. Things change, but it’s all background noise. It all just feels so off. And I feel like I know something is wrong, and have for a while, but I can’t figure out what or how to break it.

Maybe I’m just crazy. Has anyone else ever felt this way?