But, “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.” For it is not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends.2 Corinthians 10:17-18
Young people raised on swiping, DMing and streaming are doing something bold: going out.
Why it matters: Amid a loneliness epidemic, millennials and Gen Zers are craving IRL connection — enough to show up for meetups built around activities once considered solitary, or "grandma hobbies."
"It's very easy to sit inside and rot just by yourself," Cole Robinson, president of the Audubon on Campus Trinity University chapter, tells Axios San Antonio.
But activities like birding can help you "feel a little less lonely," the 20-year-old says.
"Soft socializing" experiences — where you're with other people but networking is not the main focus — have taken off, per Eventbrite.
By the numbers: There were 151% more puzzle competitions from August 2024 to July 2025, compared to the preceding 12 months, according to Eventbrite numbers (separate from the below "singles" data) shared with Axios.
And mahjong-focused events are up 94% earlier this year compared to last, according to Evite data shared with Axios.
Data: Eventbrite; Chart: Brad Jennings/Axios; Note: U.S. Eventbrite data for in-person, publicly listed events including connection-oriented language in their descriptions.
The big picture: The trend extends to finding love, too. Americans are seeking romantic connection at so-called "meet-cute" events — settings meant to spark a sweet "How'd you meet?" story, away from apps.
Meanwhile, platonic dinner parties with strangers have also gained traction.
Axios just launched our own dinner series, bringing readers together for our new Axios Social Club starting in Charlotte, Chicago, Kansas City and San Antonio.
"Everybody's been stuck behind their phones for the past two decades, and it's not good for humanity," writer Stuart Schuffman — who recently launched an IRL dinner club for his Broke-Ass Stuart readers — tells Axios San Francisco.
A child actor since she was cast in various commercials as an 11-month-old, Panettiere was best known for her role as the country music star Juliette Barnes in the series "Nashville."
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has refused to pull back the country’s military until Hamas fully disarms. But the Trump administration is under pressure to show progress.
Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has ground to a near halt as the 60-day truce lapses with no deal, reviving the oil-price risk that has capped crypto all summer. ETF flows, meanwhile, are quietly turning.
Data: Bureau of Labor Statistics; Chart: Courtenay Brown/Axios
America is experiencing its biggest prescription drug price deflation in generations.
Why it matters: By one important measure, there is a striking reversal underway for one of health care's most stubbornly expensive necessities amid a major Washington push to lower drug costs.
By the numbers: Prescription drug prices fell 0.8% in July and are down 3.1% from a year ago — the steepest annual decline in more than six decades, according to the recent Consumer Price Index.
Prices haven't risen in any month this year, an unusually persistent stretch of flat or falling drug prices.
The downward trend comes as costs for hospital and physician services continue to rise.
The intrigue: Trump administration officials are taking a victory lap for the price drop, although TrumpRx — the administration's website connecting patients with discounted cash prices for certain drugs — likely only accounts for part of the decline.
Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk also struck deals with the administration that cut cash prices for blockbuster GLP-1 drugs and expanded Medicare access.
Those cuts may have added to broader downward pressure on drug prices, though other forces were already at work.
Another potential factor: Medicare negotiations established under the Inflation Reduction Act took effect in January for 10 of the program's costliest drugs, with negotiated prices as much as 79% below their list prices.
Zoom in: Changes in what Medicare pays pharmacies can show up in the prescription drug CPI.
The government tracks the prices that pharmacies receive from patients and insurers, including Medicare, not just what consumers pay out of pocket.
Manufacturer rebates paid after the transaction are not captured in the index, the Bureau of Labor Statistics told Axios.
What they're saying: Geoffrey Joyce, a USC health economist, said that TrumpRx makes discounts easier to find but often points consumers to prices that already exist.
"If you were going to give policy credit, you'd have to say the IRA," Joyce said. Still, he added, much of the decline is being driven by market forces.
The big picture: As blockbuster drugs lose patent protection, cheaper generics enter the market, a shift the government's inflation gauge is designed to capture.
Heated competition in the market for GLP-1 drugs is pushing down cash-pay prices.
The other side: White House spokesperson Kush Desai called attributing the decline to the IRA "idiotic and unfounded," arguing that its negotiated prices failed to deliver meaningful savings beyond existing insurer discounts.
Desai pointed instead to Trump's most-favored-nation deals, aimed at aligning U.S. drug prices with lower prices overseas, and discounts available through TrumpRx.
What we're watching: Falling prices in the aggregate do not necessarily translate into relief for consumers, given the complexity of drug pricing and payments.
Six in 10 Americans this spring said they were worried about affording their medications, according to KFF — the largest share since the group began tracking the question in 2018.
Four in 10 said that in the past year they hadn't taken medication as prescribed because of cost.
"People don't care about what the true cost of the drug is," Joyce said. "They just say, 'What's my copay?' or 'What's my cost sharing at the pharmacy counter?'"
Caitlin Owens and Adriel Bettelheim contributed reporting.
The centrist Democratic group Third Way recently declared "war" on democratic socialists to head off what they fear could be a far-left hijacking of the party ahead of 2028.
But establishment Democrats have made clear what they're against without making much of a case for what they're for.
Why it matters: It's hard to beat something with nothing.
Democratic socialism, whatever you think of it, is easy to grasp: Tax billionaires and redistribute wealth. Provide government-funded health care and child care for everyone. Rely less on markets for housing and education. Empower workers with stronger unions.
The establishment vision is murky. Raise taxes, but not too high; use government to make health care and child care more affordable, rather than taking them over; rein in the excesses of capitalism without upending capitalism itself.
That's a tougher vision to sum up, let alone rally behind.
"Without question, we agree with the left that we have failed to convince working-class voters that their lives will be better if they put us in charge," Third Way co-founder Matt Bennett told Axios. "You'd have to be insane to disagree."
State of play: A string of democratic socialist wins in House primaries, followed by progressive Abdul El-Sayed's win in the Michigan Senate primary, has set off a debate over whether the Democratic Party is undergoing a transformation.
New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the most prominent democratic socialist, is emerging as a formidable potential presidential candidate in 2028.
But others argue the party hasn't fundamentally changed from 2020. That year, Joe Biden dispatched a primary field that lurched left on health care, crime and immigration (though Biden also adapted to accommodate the party's leftward shift).
"Give progressives credit for bringing ideas to the table. Pragmatists haven't been as good as we need to be about offering our own ideas and agenda," potential Democratic presidential candidate Rahm Emanuel wrote on X.
But, pointing to democratic socialist Francesca Hong's loss in her primary for Wisconsin governor and other mainstream Democrats winning the same night, he added: "[T]he pragmatic wing isn't a faction of this party. It's the majority, it's awake now, and it's exerting itself."
Between the lines: Third Way recently announced a $15 million campaign to take on the progressive left.
Bennett said Third Way has 100-plus people working on a policy menu — a "new kind of offer for working-class voters who have abandoned Democrats" — that he hopes 2028 Democrats will draw from.
There are already clear examples of centrists drawing a bright line with democratic socialists, he added. "Where we strongly differ with them is around the particulars. They're for Medicare for all, and we're for … a health care bill of rights that would improve the existing system, not throw it out and replace it with a $30 trillion socialization of the health care space."
Yes, but: Some liberals have tried to chart a fresh direction for the party. Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson argued in a 2025 book that Democrats should become the party of "abundance" — building more housing, infrastructure and clean energy — by cutting red tape and making government work better.
But it hasn't caught fire.
The big picture: Some middle-of-the-road Democrats say the problem isn't just about ideas — it's also about tone.
Their argument: Voters want fighters to take on President Trump, but the party establishment — unlike progressives — too often offers split-the-difference responses.
Third Way President Jon Cowan, speaking at a Democratic Party strategy summit in March, called instead for a "combative" centrism.
The bottom line: Establishment Democrats have lost their identity. 2028 will show whether they can give voters something to rally around — or whether the party has moved away from them.
The big picture: The U.S. is embarking on one of the biggest grid expansions in decades just as wildfire risk is becoming a defining challenge for utilities. Today's planning decisions may determine how resilient tomorrow's grid becomes.
Utilities are combining weather models, wildfire behavior, infrastructure data and population impacts to help prioritize resilience investments, Nadia Panossian, an electrical engineering researcher at the National Laboratory of the Rockies, tells Axios.
Undergrounding — burying power lines underground — can also improve resilience to hurricanes, winter storms and other hazards, Seth Guikema, a University of Michigan professor of civil and environmental engineering, tells Axios.
He says utilities also have to manage aging infrastructure, which in many cases is "the bigger challenge than building new."
State of play: Wildfires are already affecting how utilities operate.
They disrupt the power system by damaging equipment, forcing utilities to cut power, and reducing solar generation when smoke blocks sunlight.
Yes, but: Preventing outages is no longer enough. Utilities now have to incorporate wildfire resilience into grid projects.
Case in point: California was one of the first states to require investor-owned utilities to publish wildfire resilience plans, Panossian says.
Other states have adopted similar approaches as wildfire risk grows.
Panossian says utilities are moving beyond "basic minimum maintenance" toward longer-term upgrades that account for future wildfire risks.
Some California utilities are already experimenting with microgrids that can disconnect from the main grid and keep supplying power during outages as wildfire risk grows, Guikema says.
But those investments "can be cost prohibitive — and that's the challenge," he adds.
Catch up quick: Utilities have already learned costly lessons about wildfires.
California utilities have spent billions on wildfire mitigation.
Utilities across the West now conduct public safety power shutoffs. "They shut the power off because you'd rather have a short-term power outage than a catastrophic fire," Panossian says.
What we're watching: The grid is poised for a major expansion. The U.S. needs thousands of miles of new transmission to connect renewables, storage and data centers.
Much of the U.S. grid also needs to be replaced. As utilities evaluate those upgrades, Panossian says, they're looking for opportunities to build wildfire resilience into those projects.
Guikema says utility planning is, in many ways, a cost-risk trade-off. "How much are we willing to increase our utility rates to do undergrounding and things like that?" he says.
In some cases, he says, regulators — not utilities — are limiting resilience investments because of cost concerns.
The bottom line: California has shown utilities what wildfire planning looks like. As wildfire risk spreads beyond the West, those lessons are shaping how the next generation of the U.S. grid is built.
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