A “substantial anti-Trump youth movement” is missing, argues New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall, warning that apathy, social media, and artificial intelligence may be leading to the deterioration of American exceptionalism and democracy.

“We have a president who has directly attacked the finances and the intellectual freedom of colleges and universities, is building the technology for a surveillance state, undermines free and fair elections and took the nation into an unjustified war with no explanation while causing domestic economic havoc,” Edsall writes. “But one ingredient is missing: a substantial anti-Trump youth movement.”

Edsall suggests that the “No Kings” movement is increasingly comprised of a demographic that is older than students and younger men and women.

Asked about their mobilization, Dana Fisher, a professor in the School of International Service at American University, said, “We’re not seeing them in the streets at No Kings events.”

“At No Kings 1 (June 14, 2025) the median age was 36,” Fisher wrote, “at No Kings 2 (Oct. 18, 2025) the median age was 44, and at No Kings 3 (March 28, 2026) it was 48. Clearly, it’s getting older.”

Asking why, Edsall writes he spoke with experts who “pointed to such structural developments as the explosion in social media usage and public access to artificial intelligence, both of which weaken users’ sense of efficacy and agency.”

Democrats will bear the brunt of the cost of social media and artificial intelligence, given that those “adverse effects are most acute for young liberals, especially young liberal women.”

There are other factors at work.

Sociology professor emeritus Richard Braungart “argued in an email that over 70 years the United States has undergone a moral and ideological transformation that has created a hostile environment for the liberal activist young.”

Braungart posited that there “is a widening gap and split between spirituality and materialism in our society today.”

He pointed to his youth, “a world of moral and spiritual values (Marshall Plan, U.S.A.I.D., CARE, good government that served the people), which, unlike today, heavily influenced political decisions. Politicians were held accountable for their moral lapses and flagrant violations.”

But now, “Americans are living in a crumbling moral wasteland, where corruption and raw-power politics rule supreme and are carried out without ethics, morality, personal responsibility, accountability, nor concern for people, the environment and a healthy future for upcoming generations.”

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt also points to social media, arguing that it “has done more harm to the Democrats than to the Republicans, both by weakening their young people (e.g., their requests for trigger warnings and safe spaces) and also by radicalizing them. They in turn push the party to take more extreme cultural positions, which drive noncollege voters to the right.”

Haidt has more to say about social media, and specifically about short-video platforms.

“I believe that TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts are bringing America a cognitive catastrophe,” he writes. “The diminishment of capability is hitting both sides, but it is the left that most needs its young people to come out and fight for change.”

Edsall has a warning: “As apathy spreads, the ability of authoritarian leaders in the Trump mold to smash democratic norms and wrest control of elections will grow stronger.”

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Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, 76, has given no public indication he plans to retire — but if he does, Senate Republicans stand ready to fast-track President Donald Trump’s nominee through committee and lock in a confirmation before the November midterm elections.

“Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday that Republicans are ‘prepared’ for the possibility of a retirement as speculation swirls that Alito, a conservative vote on the Supreme Court, is weighing stepping down at the end of the current term, slated for the end of June or early July,” the Washington Examiner reports.

“That’s a contingency, I think, around here you always have to be prepared for,” Thune said. “And if that were to happen, yes, we would be prepared to confirm.”

Alito is thought to want to avoid a similar repeat of events when liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg eschewed requests from the left to retire during President Barack Obama’s term. Republican President Donald Trump was able to fill her seat upon her death with a conservative, changing the balance on the Court.

READ MORE: The World Has Stopped Fearing Trump’s Bullying: Report

Justice Alito is not the court’s oldest justice — that distinction belongs to Justice Clarence Thomas, 77, who has given no public indication he plans to step down either.

“I hope they stay ’cause I think they’re fantastic, OK?” Trump told Politico in December 2025, referring to both Alito and Thomas. “Both of those men are fantastic.”

Should Alito or Thomas — or both — retire, Trump could secure a conservative majority, possibly for decades to come. Chief Justice John Roberts, also a conservative, is 71 and is not rumored to be seeking retirement.

The three remaining conservative justices Trump placed on the court during his first term. Amy Coney Barrett is 54, Brett Kavanaugh is 61, and Neil Gorsuch is 58.

The three liberal justices are Sonia Sotomayor, 71, Elena Kagan, 65, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, 55.

READ MORE: Voters in Military Towns Fear Trump Is ‘Bumbling’ US Into Another Iraq: Report

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Voters from military towns are worried that President Donald Trump, despite campaigning on a “peace” platform, is “bumbling” America into another Iraq or Afghanistan war, The New York Times reports.

“It’s a waste of resources, a waste of money, and we come off as bullies,” Krystal Zimmerman, an Army veteran who fought in Iraq, told the Times. She had supported President Trump’s bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites last year, “but as the conflict lurches from bombings and threats of annihilation to a shaky truce with no clear exit, she worries that President Trump has now stumbled into his own forever war.”

The Times conducted three dozen interviews with voters in military towns across America — including Colorado Springs, San Antonio, and Fayetteville.

After six weeks of war, many voters “said they still had no clear sense of the president’s goals in Iran, or why he had joined Israel in attacking now. It all felt so fast and erratic, they said.” They were used to past presidents making the case for months to the public, as Republican Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush did.

“Nothing like that preceded the attack on Iran, the Times noted. “And the blizzard of shifting statements that Mr. Trump has offered in phone calls with reporters and late-night Truth Social posts only added to some people’s confusion.”

READ MORE: The World Has Stopped Fearing Trump’s Bullying: Report

On April 1, the White House published a press release declaring “President Trump’s Clear and Unchanging Objectives Drive Decisive Success Against Iranian Regime.”

It listed remarks made by several different administration officials including the president, offering varying reasons for the war, which the White House said were the Trump administration “repeatedly and unambiguously” reaffirming “core objectives.” Some of the quotes mentioned nuclear weapons, some did not.

“Nearly two-thirds of voters,” the Times reported, “and 71 percent of political independents — said they thought Mr. Trump had not provided a clear explanation in the lead up to the war, according [to] a Quinnipiac University poll from early March.”

“I don’t think Trump is making wise decisions,” Emmelia Lorenzen, a Trump voter from Fayetteville who was raised in a military family, told the Times. “One of Trump’s biggest campaign motives was that he is not a man of war,” she said. “And then you see us moving to war so quickly after saying that. It just doesn’t really make sense.”

She “was particularly disturbed by his vow to annihilate the entire Iranian civilization if Iran did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz — a threat averted at the last minute when the United States and Iran agreed to a two-week cease fire.”

Mike Keefe in Portland, Oregon, told the Times, “I’m incredulous that more people aren’t in the streets but, yeah, it’s kind of hard to be surprised or even shocked by anything he does now.”

Not everyone the Times spoke with opposed Trump’s actions.

“It’s a threat — it needs to be neutralized,” Gary Freese, who served in Iraq, said. He praised the president, saying his actions show “he’s got spine” by attacking Iran.

“These guys are religious zealots,” Wayne Brincks, a retired farmer, said of Iran’s leadership. “I think the president thought it was now or never, and we had to do something.”

Others disagreed.

Iowa farmer Mike Nelson, who questions Israel’s influence in Trump’s decision to attack Iran, told the Times, “I don’t think there was any imminent danger.”

READ MORE: ‘He Reported to Me in Detail’: Netanyahu’s Boast on Vance Fuels Blowback

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