Covers: Nicole Rifkin for The New Yorker, David Gahr/Getty Images“Pure Gold” — by illustrator Nicole Rifkin, who’s also a musician — is the title of the Dolly Parton tribute cover for The New Yorker’s new issue, out tomorrow.
“I admire not only her and her music but also her generosity,” Rifkin said. “She touched the lives of millions of kids with her Imagination Library.”TIME’s Dolly tribute (above right) goes on sale Sept. 18.
Go deeper: More New Yorker covers about musicians.
America’s grocery squeeze has been felt most painfully in expensive categories like beef, coffee and chocolate.
But new forces are pushing up food prices across the board: expensive grain, soaring fertilizer and fuel prices, plus unpredictable weather and raging wars, Axios’ Erica Pandey writes.
Why it matters: The next grocery price shock could hit much harder — and wider. And midterms are 65 days away.
The big picture: Your grocery store is fed by a vast global supply chain, and pressures are building all along it.
The Iran and Russia-Ukraine wars have driven up diesel prices, making it more expensive to operate harvesting equipment and to truck food from suppliers to stores.
The Iran war has disrupted fertilizer supplies and prices, since a large share of the world’s fertilizer passes through the Strait of Hormuz.
This past week, corn and wheat prices hit their highest level in three years. Bad weather has hit corn crop yields, and the Russia-Ukraine war has roiled wheat exports.
Friction point: Wheat’s a key ingredient in pantry staples, and corn is a major animal feed. So as they go up, so can meat, dairy and eggs.
The intrigue: Don’t assume those soaring commodity prices are a bonanza for farmers, either.
They’re still getting squeezed by all the other crises. Even the president of the National Corn Growers Association told Axios Future of Energy author Ben Geman that he himself wouldn’t be profitable this year.
Add all these pressures to the listof already inflated food items:
Instant coffee is up 15.8% year-over-year; tomatoes, 12.8%; beef roasts, 13.5%; apples, 11.1%.
In the latest Economist/YouGov poll, about three-quarters of people said grocery prices are still rising where they live.
Threat level: There’s reason to believe it’s only going to get worse.
J.P. Morgan analysts warned in a report this month that global food inflation would hit 5% in the first half of 2027, nearly doubling this year’s rate.
“Price pressures are expected to extend through [the first half of 2027], as crop and price effects are still building and agricultural impacts lag the oceanic peak by 6 to 12 months,” they wrote.
The bottom line: These forces don’t drive up your grocery budget overnight. But compounding strains on the cost of growing, harvesting and transporting food could make an already expensive grocery run even more expensive.
And for the average American family, one parent would need to be earning around $80,000 to sustain the other quitting their job to raise one child.Getty Images
For many Gen Zers, becoming a “tradwife” is the dream—with even teen girls taking to TikTok and sharing how they’re ditching aspirations of holding down a corporate career, in favor of getting married, having a family, and being supported by a doting partner. But now, research reveals exactly how much a husband (or wife) would need to earn to afford that lifestyle in the U.S.—and perhaps surprisingly, in most states, it’s below six figures.
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That’s according to new research from the financial advisory software SmartAsset, which ranked all 50 U.S. states by the minimum income one parent needs to earn to support their partner staying home to raise a single child.
For the average American family, one parent would need to earn around $80,000 to sustain the other quitting their job to raise one child.
It’s perhaps lower than you’d expect.
Although the researchers say it costs a staggering $40,000 before tax to raise a child, a stay-at-home parent cuts out the single biggest cost: daycare. And of course, the bigger the family, the bigger the salary needed. Plus, this figure is the minimum needed—not counting any extra life extravagances like the annual family holiday, private school, or a bigger home.
Hawaii is the most expensive state to be a stay-at-home-parent—you’d need to earn over $102,000
Some states make the “tradwife” dream a lot more affordable than others.
In West Virginia, Arkansas, Mississippi, Kentucky, and North Dakota, a single-earning parent could support a stay-at-home spouse for under $71,000 a year—the lowest on the ranking.
Meanwhile, Hawaii sits at the opposite extreme. A single earner there needs to bring in at least $102,773 a year just to cover basic expenses for two adults and a young child. If both parents work instead, the household needs $119,226 between them—and even then, daycare alone runs about $33,363 a year.
California isn’t far behind, requiring a single income of $97,656 to support a stay-at-home parent, and a single earner in Massachusetts can support the family on a slightly lower $97,261.
But be warned: the full American Dream costs a lot more than an $80K salary can support
If you want the American Dream—the house in the suburbs, two children, and a cabriolet in the drive—it’ll cost you millions. Not thousands.
While research shows stay-at-home parents can raise one child on less than $100,000, that figure might be conservative or involve a lot of skimping. That’s because when you take into account needing to buy a home, forking out for kids’ college tuition and maybe even a pet, the price tag explodes.
The financial media site Investopedia has done the math and calculated that achieving those milestones now costs a staggering $4.4 million.
Plus, as inflation squeezes workers in a cost-of-living vise, paired with spiraling housing costs and AI cutting paychecks, the salary it takes to be considered comfortable could keep climbing. Just look at Gen X retirees, a quarter of whom have had to go back to work because the cost of staying retired outpaced what they’d saved for it. Proof that today’s “comfortable” number is no guarantee of comfort a decade from now.”
The combined wealth of the world’s billionaires has exploded from less than $1 trillion in 2000 to more than $20 trillion today. But alongside that rise comes a growing debate over power, influence and democracy.
DW reporter Tomi Oladipo speaks with economist Paul Segal, who argues that today’s ultra-wealthy have access to technologies, media platforms and political networks that give them unprecedented influence over society. He said growing inequality is reshaping economies and raising questions about who really benefits from economic growth.
We also meet German entrepreneur Sebastian Klein, who gave away 90% of his personal fortune after concluding that extreme wealth concentration threatens democracy.
As the fortunes of billionaires continue to grow and calls for higher wealth taxes gain momentum, the discussion explores whether extreme wealth and democratic equality can coexist, and what governments can do to address a widening gap between the richest citizens and everyone else.
Tomi Oladipo British-born Nigerian journalist based in Berlin.
A groundbreaking MIT brain-scan study shows relying on ChatGPT weakens critical thinking and memory wiring.
A recent MIT study, titled ”The Cognitive Cost of Using LLMs,” monitored the brain activity of 54 students using electroencephalography (EEG) devices.
Researchers from the MIT Media Lab discovered that participants who consistently relied on ChatGPT for essay-writing tasks demonstrated significantly lower neural engagement in brain regions tied to memory and analytical reasoning.
Rather than actively synthesizing information, these users increasingly defaulted to a state of ‘mental passivity,’ struggling to recall their own work shortly after completion and producing increasingly generic, uninspired content.
However, the research also highlights a path forward: AI does not have to be a cognitive detriment. Students who initially worked unaided and later transitioned to using ChatGPT showed an increase in brain activity, suggesting that AI is highly beneficial when used to enhance and scaffold human thought rather than replace it entirely. To avoid a future of algorithmic echo chambers and cognitive decline, experts urge users to remain active, critical participants when collaborating with digital tools.
source: Chow, A. (2025). ChatGPT’s Impact On Our Brains According to an MIT Study. TIME.
High-profile infanticide trial fuels debate over postpartum illness, malpractice claims, and whether psychiatrists should be judged for patients’ crimes rather than care quality.
oksa_studio/AdobeStock
Lindsay Clancy is currently being tried for the murder of her 3 children. The question for the jury is about whether or not Clancy is criminally responsible. The prosecution argues that she is guilty despite her history of postpartum depression and anxiety, while the defense counters that she had postpartum psychosis. The defense further argues that the diagnosis was missed, and that she was overmedicated anyway.
A good portion of the public and the media appear to support the defense theory as they struggle to understand how a mother could commit such a crime. The defendant and her then-husband have filed malpractice lawsuits against her psychiatric providers. They argue that the psychiatrists’ negligence led to the events. None of the psychiatrists who evaluated Clancy as a patient before the murders documented evidence of psychosis. Yet public opinion appears to favor a simple narrative: she is not to be blamed because she asked for help, and therefore the mental health system should be blamed.
But what are the implications of these trials? Can psychiatry, or the mental health system, be responsible for a patient’s criminal behavior?The litigation places psychiatrists and other mental health providers under scrutiny, looking for possible errors or inconsistencies to demonstrate that they did not provide adequate care.
The Role of Psychiatry & Psychopharmacology
In regular psychiatric care, where caseloads are large and time is limited, physicians rely on the medical record and on information provided by the patient, family members, and other treating providers. Psychiatrists must work with the information available.They cannot approach every patient as detectives whose primary task is to uncover or disprove every piece of information they are given. Clinical care requires judgment, and that judgment is necessarily based on incomplete information.
Similarly, in clinical psychiatry, the quality of care cannot be defined solely by the outcome. Patients can receive excellent psychiatric care and still have devastating outcomes. Imagine an oncologist providing the best possible treatment to a patient with stage IV cancer. If the patient ultimately dies, would that alone demonstrate that the oncologist provided poor care? Of course not. The outcome is heavily influenced by the severity and biology of the disease, not simply by the quality of medical care. Psychiatry is no different in this regard. Despite the best care, occasionally there are bad outcomes and deaths—suicides and homicides both.
In clinical psychiatry, the treatment of depression, including postpartum depression, may include psychotherapy and medication when indicated. In severe depression with suicidal ideation, antidepressant treatment combined with psychotherapy is a standard approach.Characterizing the prescription of an antidepressant together with a medication for sleep as evidence of inappropriate or excessive treatment, without considering the clinical circumstances, oversimplifies psychiatric practice.
Misdiagnosis vs Different Diagnoses
Another argument commonly raised in malpractice litigation is that a patient may have been misdiagnosed.But psychiatric diagnosis is different from the diagnosis of many medical conditions for which objective laboratory findings or biomarkers can confirm a disease. Psychiatric diagnoses are based primarily on clinical observation, history, reported symptoms, collateral information, and interpretation of the patient’s presentation. Presentations can change from one encounter to another, and reasonable clinicians can sometimes arrive at different diagnostic formulations.
This does not mean that psychiatric diagnosis is arbitrary. It means that psychiatry operates within a degree of uncertainty that is inherent to clinical medicine. There is often no laboratory test that can definitively confirm depression, psychosis, or a personality disorder at the time of an outpatient encounter. Treatment decisions are therefore based on the information available at that moment, and psychiatric treatment often involves adjusting medications and therapeutic approaches according to the patient’s response over time. Trial and error is not necessarily evidence of poor care; it can be an unavoidable component of treating many psychiatric disorders.
Responsibility of Clinicians
But ultimately, the most important question is one of responsibility.If a person is found not criminally responsible for a crime because of mental illness, can the psychiatrist then become responsible for the crime? And if so, should that responsibility depend primarily on the outcome? Can psychiatrists be held responsible for their patients’ behavior?
Tarasoff-like cases consider psychiatrists’ duties to third parties who are potential victims. But this is different—the perpetrator suing their psychiatrists. Decades ago, Wendell Williamson was found insane after killing 2 people in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He then sued his former psychiatrist. Initially the jury returned a $500k verdict against the retired psychiatrist, but this was overturned by an appeals court—due to the specific facts of the case and the lack of foreseeability.
Can malpractice litigation become an additional legal strategy for defendants and their families following catastrophic acts?If the legal system shifts responsibility for patients’ behavior toward their physicians, will psychiatrists respond by practicing more defensively? The consequences could extend far beyond individual lawsuits. More defensive psychiatry could mean more documentation, more testing, more hospitalizations when there is any concern of risk, more consultations, more time spent obtaining records, and more effort devoted to protecting clinicians from future litigation. That would come at a cost. Time spent protecting oneself from a possible future lawsuit is time that cannot be spent treating the patient in front of you. And, if this becomes increasingly common, will anyone want to practice psychiatry in the future?
The question should not be, “Given what happened, what should the psychiatrist have known?” The question should be, “Given what was reasonably knowable at the time, what would a reasonable psychiatrist have done?” That distinction is essential. Otherwise, psychiatry risks being judged not by the quality of the care provided, but by whether the patient ultimately had a good outcome. And if we begin to judge psychiatric care by the crimes our patients commit rather than by the care we provide, psychiatry itself may end up on trial.
Dr Forcen is a psychiatrist at McLean Hospital in the division of depression and anxiety disorders.
Dr Hatters Friedmanis the Phillip J. Resnick Professor of Forensic Psychiatry; professor of psychiatry, reproductive biology, and pediatrics; and adjunct professor of law at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. She served as editor of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry volume Family Murder: Pathologies of Love and Hate, which won the Manfred S. Guttmacher Award. an editor of the textbook Malpractice and Liability in Psychiatry.
Roughly 200 accounts from a suspected Chinese bot farm have quietly tried to influence Americans to oppose AI data centers on social media, X said Thursday night.
Why it matters: The U.S. and China are racing to build the world’s most advanced AI systems — and it appears Chinese propaganda has infiltrated American circles with the hope of slowing the U.S. down.
Driving the news: The X Safety team probed suspected Chinese accounts involved in influence operations and identified 200,000 accounts, including 200 accounts “posting in a manner that could manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and energy policy,” the team said in a tweet.
The posts included content on how AI strains the electricity grid and increases utility prices and “cartoons that depicted data-center operators enriching themselves at the public’s expense.”
It’s unclear what, if any, action X will take to suspend or delete accounts from the bot farm.
X, owned by Elon Musk, whose billions rely on data centers to boost his AI enterprises, did not respond to Axios’ request for comment.
State of play: Congressional Republicans have been digging into influence campaigns from foreign adversaries designed to stall American AI development.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee sent a letter in June asking the FBI and White House advisers to brief lawmakers on alleged propaganda campaigns by foreign adversaries, specifically China, Russia and Iran, aimed at hindering U.S. AI development and data center expansion.
The letter cited several reports, including one estimating that opposition campaigns have delayed or obstructed roughly $45.8 billion in data center projects in Virginia alone.
Nonetheless, Democrat and Republican officials alike have increasingly backed data center moratoriums and embraced a not-in-my-backyard stance toward the massive infrastructure projects.
Thought bubble from Axios’ Madison Mills: Data center pushback has become a financial liability for the AI buildout.
Several Wall Street banks have recently cited political opposition as a risk to the entire AI sector.
The AI boom relies on expanding data centers because they provide the computing that massive AI companies need to keep growing.
The other side: “The ‘All In’ chattering class ‘Chinese psyop’ thing is worrying and frustrating,” Jim Prosser, a Silicon Valley communications consultant and former Twitter head of corporate communications, told Axios.
He noted that this is the new messaging Big Tech wants to use to change the conversation on data centers.
“If you can get both Greg Abbott and Kathy Hochul agreeing on something, it’s probably not a Chinese psyop, it’s probably not a mass delusion people are having on these issues.”
“It’s about touching grass and actually being somewhere. If you’re a [venture capitalist] in Atherton or Menlo Park opining about how somebody in Ohio should feel, and you’ve never been to Ohio, that’s a problem.”
By the numbers: Whatever role foreign influence campaigns may play, organic opposition to data centers is very real.
Sixty-one percent of Americans oppose building new data centers in their area, according to an early August University of Pennsylvania survey. That’s up 12 percentage points from a previous UPenn survey conducted in February and March.
That squares with a YouGov survey released Tuesday that found only 24% of Americans say building new data centers is very or somewhat good for the country. 47% say it’s bad.
Flashback: OpenAI disrupted two Chinese-linked covert networks using ChatGPT to create fake content to influence U.S. debates on AI energy consumption and tech tariffs, the company said in a June report.
The campaigns failed to catch on, but they signaled an active push by foreign adversaries to exploit American economic anxieties.
Yes, but: It doesn’t take much social media scrolling to see real videos of real people showing up in droves to local council meetings to fight back against data centers.
Dolly gets her due
Covers: Nicole Rifkin for The New Yorker, David Gahr/Getty Images“Pure Gold” — by illustrator Nicole Rifkin, who’s also a musician — is the title of the Dolly Parton tribute cover for The New Yorker’s new issue, out tomorrow.
The big picture: Your grocery store is fed by a vast global supply chain, and pressures are building all along it.
Friction point: Wheat’s a key ingredient in pantry staples, and corn is a major animal feed. So as they go up, so can meat, dairy and eggs.
Add all these pressures to the list of 
canisgallicus 