How Americans Spend Their Time On Weekdays Vs Weekends
The rhythm of American life changes significantly when the workweek ends.
Weekends and holidays bring more time for rest, recreation, chores, and social connections. At the same time, work and education occupy a much smaller share of the day.
This visualization, via Visual Capitalist’s Niccolo Conte, shows how Americans aged 15 and older redistribute their time between weekdays and non-workdays.
Work accounts for the largest shift in Americans’ schedules. Time spent working and on work-related activities falls from 4.26 hours per weekday to 1.11 hours on weekends and holidays, a decline of 3.15 hours, or 189 minutes.
How Americans Spend Time
Weekday
Weekend
Change (h m)
Sleeping
9h 32m
10h 26m
+0h 55m
Leisure & Sports
4h 36m
6h 29m
+1h 53m
Working
4h 16m
1h 07m
-3h 09m
House Chores
1h 53m
2h 16m
+0h 23m
Eating
1h 10m
1h 20m
+0h 10m
Shopping
0h 40m
0h 44m
+0h 04m
Caring for Others
0h 41m
0h 34m
-0h 07m
Education
0h 33m
0h 11m
-0h 22m
Religion
0h 13m
0h 27m
+0h 14m
Communication
0h 12m
0h 11m
-0h 01m
Educational activities also decrease, falling from 0.55 hours to 0.18 hours per day.
Meanwhile, leisure and sports increase from 4.60 hours on weekdays to 6.48 hours on weekends and holidays. That represents an additional 1.88 hours, or nearly 113 minutes.
Television Absorbs Much of the Gain
Television captures the largest share of Americans’ additional leisure time. Average viewing rises from 2.33 hours on weekdays to 3.27 hours on weekends and holidays, an increase of roughly 56 minutes.
Television represents about half of total leisure time on both types of days. This suggests that Americans spend their additional free time much as they do during the workweek, only for longer.
Socializing and communicating also more than doubles, rising from 0.44 hours to 0.92 hours per day. This adds nearly 29 minutes and highlights the weekend’s role in supporting social life.
By comparison, reading changes very little, increasing by only about one minute per day.
More Sleep and More Time at Home
Personal care activities rise from 9.53 hours on weekdays to 10.44 hours on weekends and holidays. Nearly all of this increase comes from sleep, which climbs from 8.76 hours to 9.68 hours.
Household activities also increase from 1.88 hours to 2.26 hours, adding about 23 minutes.
Housework, laundry, maintenance, and other domestic tasks receive more attention, showing that weekends are not devoted entirely to rest.
Organizational, civic, and religious activities also rise, while time spent caring for household members declines slightly.
As a strong El Niño phenomenon is being predicted for the coming months, large parts of the United States can potentially expect a wet and stormy fall and winter.
While El Niño can also bring excess rain to parts of South America, Central Asia and Africa, it can exacerbate drought conditions in places like the Pacific Northwest, the Amazon, Central America and Southern Peru.
Climatic conditions during La Niña, on the other hand, are predictive of increased rainfall on the northern coast of South America, in Central America and in the Caribbean and dryer periods in the Southern U.S., Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and southern Brazil.
El Niño and La Niña are both a part of the global climate cycle known as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO).
El Niño is produced by the warming of the equatorial Pacific waters, while La Niña is what happens when these waters are cooling below their average temperatures.
During El Niño, trade winds over the Pacific normally moving from east to west weaken or even cease and reverse, making hot Pacific water accumulate near the Pacific coast of the American continent, causing rains and floods in the United States.
La Niña meanwhile strengthens these trade winds, pushing warm ocean water towards Asia.
If the temperature anomaly the El Niño/La Niña reference area is a maximum of 0.5° Celsius above or below its averages, neutral conditions prevail. Both phenomena normally peak late in the year.
A major British telecoms giant is supplying thousands of free SIM cards loaded with six months of data to a charity that hands them out to illegal migrants arriving in the UK via boats, it has been revealed.
The charity Care4Calais has distributed more than 162,000 items to nearly 30,000 people, including 2,221 Vodafone SIM cards, 3,765 hoodies, 3,532 pairs of joggers, 1,174 T-shirts, 1,173 Ramadan food packs around Calais, 2,770 cold-weather “snug packs,” and 1,169 weatherproof garments.
The charity also ran 80 drop-in sessions and 17 large-scale distributions at British military bases housing asylum seekers, providing around 23,000 items, plus free haircuts, phone charging, English lessons, Ramadan food packets, and “new arrival packs” for about 1,800 people reaching England’s South Coast.
A British charity is distributing thousands of free items to illegal migrants crossing the English Channel from France into the UK, including SIM cards with six months of data, Ramadan food packs, clothing and “new arrival packs.”
Reform UK’s home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf has accused Vodafone of “facilitating the invasion of Britain.”
In a letter to chief executive Margherita Della Valle he wrote that customers “will no doubt be astounded to hear that a British company of generally good repute is helping to facilitate the invasion of Britain by unvetted, military-age men” and that they “will be shocked to hear that their phone or broadband provider is actively endangering British women and girls.”
Yusuf demanded the company cancel the cards, end its relationship with Care4Calais, and hand over tracking data.
Under a Reform government, he said, “we will hold each and every officer and director of Vodafone Group Plc and all relevant subsidiaries personally and criminally liable for distributing SIM cards to illegal migrants. If found guilty, you would be liable to go to prison.”
The party has also pledged to review public contracts and exclude the firm from defence, national security and emergency services procurement.
Reform UK accuses Vodafone of ‘facilitating migrant invasion’ over handing of free SIM cards to asylum seekers https://t.co/y6C7eMMAav
Vodafone has rejected the demand. A spokesman said: “VodafoneThree’s programme provides mobile SIMs to registered UK charities – against strict programme criteria – for distribution to vulnerable people in the UK. Participating charities, regulated by the Charity Commission, distribute the six months connectivity to those they identify as being in need. All calls, texts and data are for UK use only.”
Yusuf later stated that Vodafone had confirmed it would continue handing out the free SIM cards to “charities” helping military-age men enter Britain.
Care4Calais insisted the cards were distributed only in the UK, many at the former RAF Wethersfield site now used for asylum seekers, and that they were obtained through Vodafone’s open “charities.connected” scheme available to any registered UK charity.
?UPDATE: Vodafone have confirmed they will continue to hand out free sim cards to ‘charities’ helping military aged men to break into Britain.
Let’s see if they’re as bold when Reform makes aiding and abetting illegal entry a strict liability criminal offence.
The handouts come as people-smuggling gangs switch to “mega-dinghies.” On 10 August a single vessel carried a record 230 people across the Channel, breaking the previous high of 165 set weeks earlier.
French rescuers described the 15-metre boat as “buckling,” with passengers forced to dangle legs in the water.
Overall small-boat arrivals so far in 2026 stand lower than the previous year, yet the average number of people per boat has climbed sharply as gangs pack larger vessels to maximise profit and evade beach enforcement.
This is the same system that is now redirecting arrivals into quiet villages under the explicit policy that “all parts of the country need to play their part.”
In North Yorkshire the disused RAF Linton-on-Ouse base near a village of roughly 600 people is under active consideration for around 1,200 single adult male asylum seekers.
Local women would be outnumbered six to one.
The site sits beside a primary school and nursery, has limited bus services, and already faces shortages of water, sewage and electricity. Labour MP Rachael Maskell has called it “just the wrong site.”
Local councillor Malcolm Taylor said residents moved for “peace, tranquillity and quality of life. This hand grenade has been thrown in.”
The same pattern hit the tiny Welsh seaside village of Gronant, population around 1,600. Residents expected 15 new-build homes on the site of the old village hall to go to local families or the open market.
Instead 13 units were handed to Home Office contractor Clearsprings. Blacked-out minibuses arrived without warning. Resident Kerrie Cox said “nobody was told about the arrivals.” Another called it an “absolute betrayal.”
In Oxfordshire the village of Piddington, population around 350-400, faces plans for 1,250 single adult males on a former Ministry of Defence depot next to a children’s playing field. Residents held a symbolic independence referendum in which 96 percent voted to leave the United Kingdom.
Children wrote letters pleading with the Prime Minister not to destroy the only home they had ever known.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham has doubled down, insisting middle-class and leafy areas can no longer be shielded. Borders minister Anna Turley has defended the approach as a “more fair and equitable system.”
The result is the same template repeated across rural England and Wales: large numbers of mostly young men placed into high-trust, low-density communities with limited infrastructure and stretched policing, while the Channel route remains open and charities continue to supply practical support that makes the journey and the arrival smoother.
Vodafone’s decision to keep the SIM programme running under its charities scheme, Care4Calais’s open pride in the scale of its distributions, and the government’s determination to spread housing deeper into the countryside form a single continuum.
The boats grow larger. The freebies keep flowing. The villages keep discovering they are next.
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Five years after the Taliban’s return to power on August 15, 2021, Afghanistan has transformed from a chaotic battlefield into a functioning but deeply authoritarian state. Foreign troops are gone, and fragmented opponents have failed to mount a significant challenge to Kabul’s centralized control. The movement has established a degree of internal security unimaginable under the previous government.
However, this stability rests on systematic exclusion, most notably of women, leaving the nation economically fragile and politically isolated. While the Taliban have proven they can govern without western support, they remain an international pariah managing a historic humanitarian crisis.
Afghanistan today is quieter than before 2021, but it is also poorer, more isolated, and severely repressive towards half its population. The regime’s primary achievement in its first five years was territorial consolidation. The next five will test whether it can survive mounting internal and external pressures.
Criminalization of Public Criticism
The central story of the last five years is the patient, quiet accumulation of power by the Taliban’s reclusive supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, who operates from Kandahar. Since his appointment in 2016, Akhundzada has transitioned the movement from an insurgency to a rigid governing authority.
Akhundzada has built a powerful network, ensuring key state positions, including the premiership, the central bank, and the chief justiceship, sit in Kandahari hands. This is reinforced by a massive patronage system of roughly 15,000 registered madrassas, in which students receive stipends and teachers receive graded salaries. This network secures the loyalty of the provincial clergy, the movement’s core constituency, by granting them both status and sustainable resources.
In Kabul, high-profile figures such as Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, Sirajuddin Haqqani, Maulvi Yaqoob, and Amir Khan Muttaqi manage daily governance, economic policy, and foreign diplomacy. However, real power resides in Kandahar, where a 119-article criminal procedure code was quietly approved in early 2026 to cement absolute obedience and criminalize public criticism.
“Hibatullah’s influence reaches far beyond religious affairs: major political, judicial, and administrative decisions increasingly reflect the preferences of the Kandahar leadership,” Muhammad Israr Madani, an Islamabad-based analyst and co-author of a book on state-building in the Taliban-led Afghanistan, told Middle East Eye.
This centralization of power in Kandahar has “strengthened the Taliban’s ability to prevent internal fragmentation” while creating “resentment among commanders who believe that power is becoming excessively concentrated in one faction”, a mid-level Taliban leader who oversaw Khost told MEE in early 2024.
Yet he emphasized that internal disagreement should not be mistaken for imminent collapse; top leaders recognize that unchecked conflict could cause the regime to crumble.
Ultimately, the Taliban have learned a crucial state-building lesson: durable control requires more than military force – it depends on patronage, financial leverage, ideological alignment, and the institutional capacity to systematically reward loyalty.
Economic void
Afghanistan faces a multifaceted economic crisis defined by structural dependency and extreme isolation.
Following the 2021 takeover, Afghanistan lost international grants that previously covered 75 percent of public expenditure. The financial void was exacerbated by the freezing of $7bn in central bank assets and the suspension of US humanitarian funding in early 2025, which previously accounted for about 45 percent of the country’s aid lifeline.
While the Taliban have managed the economy better than many observers expected, expanding revenue collection through more effective customs duties and mining royalties, this has not translated into recovery for ordinary Afghans. Today, about 75 percent of Afghans cannot meet their basic needs.
Economic expansion slowed from 2.3 percent in fiscal year 2023/2024 to 1.9 percent in 2024/2025, according to a May report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
Rapid population growth, fuelled by the expulsion of over five million Afghans from Iran and Pakistan since 2023, has outpaced these minimal gains. Consequently, real GDP per capita fell by an estimated 2.1 percent in 2025/2026, straining communities with scarce jobs and overstretched infrastructure, the UNDP added.
Compounded by natural disasters, particularly earthquakes, diplomatic isolation, and severe international banking restrictions, Kabul remains cut off from World Bank and IMF support, locking the nation into an unsustainable cycle of forced self-reliance.
Even the regime’s most touted achievement, an opium ban that reduced poppy cultivation by 95 percent, has functioned as economic self-immolation for the poor. While landowning farmers reaped capital gains from soaring prices on existing stockpiles, the ban decimated the livelihoods of land-poor rural households who relied on opium for their income.
Women: the defining cost of Taliban rule
The suppression of women and girls remains the most globally condemned aspect of Taliban rule, with international organizations such as Human Rights Watch framing the system as “gender apartheid”.
A relentless succession of decrees from the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice has stripped women of fundamental freedoms, such as restrictions on movement, employment, and public life. Girls remain barred from secondary education, and women are prohibited from attending or teaching at universities. Enforcement has intensified sharply, with authorities detaining women for “improper hijab” or travelling without a male guardian.
Reflecting this crisis, the International Criminal Court issued secret arrest warrants for Supreme Leader Akhundzada and Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani, citing gender-based persecution as a crime against humanity.
Taliban staged a simulated bomb attack on a US military convoy during fifth-anniversary events in Paktia, with footage showing an upside-down US flag on an armored vehicle before an explosion.
In Kandahar, Taliban and their supporters also paraded an effigy of President Trump… pic.twitter.com/NneauF56rU
Beyond its human toll, this policy represents severe economic self-sabotage. Barring women from the workforce deprives the nation of vital human capital while accelerating brain drain. The United Nations estimates that restricting female labor force participation costs Afghanistan up to $1bn annually, or nearly 6 percent of its GDP.
The structural fallout, particularly acute shortages of female healthcare workers, teachers, and civil servants, has been “crippling basic health and education delivery for a generation,” said a Kabul-based humanitarian expert working for a UN body.
By sacrificing half its population to enforce ideological purity, the regime is “dismantling the country’s prospects for sustainable economic recovery and long-term development”, he told MEE.
The bitter divorce with Pakistan
The relationship between the Taliban and their historical sponsor, Pakistan, has undergone a catastrophic collapse, shifting from strategic partnership to “open war” by early 2026.
Initially, Islamabad celebrated the Taliban’s August 2021 return to power as a major geopolitical victory that would secure Pakistan’s western border and eliminate Indian influence. Then-Prime Minister Imran Khan declared that Afghans had broken “the shackles of slavery”, while current Defence Minister Khawaja Asif posted a photograph of a Taliban leader with former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, captioned, “God is great.”
However, that initial optimism quickly unraveled. The Taliban administration’s refusal to suppress the militant group, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), known colloquially as the “Pakistani Taliban”, transformed the border between the countries into an active flashpoint.
Islamabad accused the Taliban administration of granting the TTP safe havens and access to abandoned US weaponry, driving a sharp escalation in cross-border attacks.
A recent UN Security Council report reinforced these concerns, reiterating that the “terrorist threat emanating from Afghanistan remained largely unchanged”, and warning that militant sanctuaries pose an enduring risk to neighboring states and Central Asia.
In response, Islamabad deployed aggressive coercive measures, deporting around 2.6 million Afghans since late 2023, repeatedly closing vital border crossings, and launching retaliatory air strikes inside Afghan territory.
Publicly, Taliban officials reject allegations that they harbor TTP fighters, dismissing the violence as an internal Pakistani security crisis. Privately, however, managing the TTP has exposed deep ideological fractures within the regime.
“Hardline elements within Taliban ranks view Pakistani militants as historical comrades-in-arms, making any forcible disarming politically unthinkable,” said a Taliban mid-level official now working with the interior ministry.
He said that shielding the TTP is deepening Afghanistan’s international isolation, while taking aggressive action against it risks driving disaffected fighters directly into the ranks of Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP).
Minority marginalization
The fifth year of Taliban rule has accelerated the systematic exclusion of Afghanistan’s religious and ethnic minorities, particularly Shia and Hazara populations, who comprise 15 percent of the country.
Despite early promises of inclusivity, Shia jurisprudence has been erased from legal systems, universities, and schools, stripping away protections won under the former republic.
Local Shia leaders highlighted a recent Taliban decree shuttering two vital cultural institutions, the Khatam al-Nabieen Educational Centre and Tamadon TV. Furthermore, Supreme Leader Akhundzada has excluded Shia scholars from new provincial ulema councils, even in Shia-majority provinces like Bamiyan and Daykundi.
The Taliban “are systematically working to remove our sect from the country’s legal and educational landscape,” warned a Quetta-based Hazara Shia cleric connected to the Afghan Shia community, who chose to remain anonymous for safety concerns.
Beyond the Shia population, the Taliban launched a sweeping crackdown on the Salafi minority under the guise of severing ISKP’s ideological pipeline, severely restricting access to mosques and seminaries. Analysts warn this heavy-handed repression risks alienating local communities and driving radicalized youth directly into ISKP’s ranks, exacerbating national instability.
Outlook
Five years after returning to power, the Taliban regime appears militarily entrenched yet structurally fragile. No organized opposition possesses the foreign backing, territory, or unified leadership needed to threaten Kabul.
Armed groups like the National Resistance Front remain fragmented, incapable of challenging the regime’s centralized security apparatus.
However, the regime’s greatest threat lies within its political architecture. Internal rifts continue to widen, prompting rare warnings from Akhundzada that discord could dismantle the government from within. While these political failures have not yet triggered a power crisis, an outright collapse would likely plunge Afghanistan into a civil war, devastating civilians and destabilising its neighbours.
Demographics present an equally existential hurdle. With a stagnant economy and a population projected to double by 2050, long-term survival hinges on delivering livelihoods, food, and employment – a mandate current policies fail to meet.
Internationally, pragmatic ties with Russia, China, and Central Asian neighbors provide economic lifelines without western recognition. Yet by governing through an extreme ideological police state, the leadership risks complete public alienation.
The coming years will test whether the Taliban can transition from ruling through coercion to sustainable governance. Given their trajectory, this evolution remains improbable. Instead, persistent economic despair, social repression, and regional friction threaten to reignite systemic instability, preserving Afghanistan as an enduring catalyst for regional crises.
While many countries have their own special days to celebrate beer, one of the oldest alcoholic beverages known to humankind, International Beer Day is aimed at beer drinkers everywhere.
Every first Friday in August, special events are held in bars and pubs around the world.
A recent Statista Consumer Insight survey shows that some Latin American countries exhibit a share of between 35 and 44 percent of regular beer drinkers. Brazil tops the list with 44 percent of survey participants between legal drinking age and 64 years old regularly consuming the alcoholic drink usually made with malted barley, hops, water and yeast. Coming in first is Spain, however, with 45 percent of respondents saying the same.
Another Southern European country, Italy, also ranks high with 42 percent regular beer consumers.
Asia is also home to some of the biggest beer lovers, with 44 percent in Vietnam and 40 percent in Thailand saying they were regular beer drinkers. Muslim countries Malaysia and Indonesia see much fewer people drink beer on the regular, at just 15 percent and 6 percent, respectively. In China, the world’s largest beer market, only a third of respondents say they are regular consumers. Overall, developing countries with younger populations are more likely to see higher beer consumption and production, while those with aging or shrinking populations typically see fewer beer drinkers.
Germany, Belgium and the United Kingdom, countries associated with many popular beer brands and varieties, are closer to the 31-country average of around a third of respondents being regular beer drinkers.
In the United States, this figure was even lower at around a quarter of respondents between the ages of 21 and 64 years old.
While the Chinese may not be the biggest drinkers in the worlds, they are the world’s leading producer of beer, according to the latest BarthHaas Report. In 2025, the country’s output stood at 354 million hectoliters of beer. A hectoliter is equivalent to one hundred liters.
As the following chart shows, the United States is the second biggest producer of beer with an output of 175 million hectoliters last year. However, both countries have seen production decline over the past two years, as have a number of other nations, mostly in the developed world.
As the beer market struggles with changing consumption patterns and stagnating real incomes, countries with aging or declining populations have yet another factor weighing on the alcoholic beverage market.
Germany, Spain and Japan all saw their production fall over the course of the past two years.
Rounding off the top 5 countries are Brazil, Mexico and Russia, which all saw production increases since 2023. Asia showed more of a mixed picture with production increasing in Vietnam as well as India, Thailand and the Philippines, while it was down in China, Japan and South Korea. Meanwhile, the African continent saw a significant 16 million hectoliter increase in output since 2023.
A Roth conversion allows you to turn funds in a traditional IRA into a Roth IRA. As a result, you get to enjoy qualified tax-free withdrawals in retirement. And you avoid the required minimum distributions (RMDs) that may trigger major tax consequences for retirees.
However, a Roth conversion can also set off surprise tax bombs if you convert a large enough amount. But if you convert too little, you could be letting substantial tax savings slip away.
Luckily, there’s no maximum or minimum as to how much money you can convert to a Roth IRA.
So how much should you convert into a Roth IRA? Let’s see what the experts say.
Convert Only Enough to Fill Lower Tax Brackets
The IRS treats the amount of money you convert into a Roth IRA as ordinary taxable income for the year in which you made the conversion.
So many financial advisers recommend you convert just enough to fill the marginal income tax bracket you’re currently in without converting enough to push you into a higher one.
So let’s see how you can do that step-by-step.
First, determine your taxable income for the year from all sources. This includes the following.
Wages
Social Security checks
Pension payments
Dividends and interest
Next, subtract your standard or itemized deductions. Most people take the standard deduction. In calculating how much of your social security income is taxable, the Social Security Administration has a website calculator that is highly useful.
Then, check to see the highest level of your current tax bracket and see how much room there’s left before reaching the next highest one.
Now, let’s crunch some numbers.
Suppose you’re a 45-year-old individual with gross income for the year of $80,000 and you’re filing single. Subtract the standard deduction of $16,100 to get $63,900 in taxable income. That puts you in the 22 percent tax bracket. The top level for that bracket is $105,700.
That means you have $41,800 to “fill” the 22 percent tax bracket before you spill into the 24 percent tax bracket.
So you can convert around $41,800 and stay in the 22 percent tax bracket, making it a potentially tax-efficient move.
But higher income individuals may need to tread a bit more lightly.
That’s because Roth conversions could increase your modified adjusted gross income (MAGI). And if it’s high enough, it could trigger major surcharges on your Medicare Part B and Part D premiums. These surcharges are called the Income-Related Monthly Adjustment Amount (IRMAA).
So you should be aware of key thresholds you may want to avoid crossing – especially if you’re near or over age 65. That’s the age when you begin qualifying for Medicare.
IRMAA Thresholds
The Social Security Administration (SSA) determines whether you owe IRMAA to your Medicare premiums by looking at your MAGI from two years prior.
You may face IRMAA in 2026 if your 2024 MAGI was greater than $109,000 as an individual filer or if it was larger than $218,000 for couples filing jointly.
So you may want to run the IRMAA thresholds against your total MAGI. This would include the Roth conversion amount.
If you’re in the 24 percent tax bracket, which opens at $105,701 in income, you may have little room to convert before you cross the IRMAA thresholds.
But a Roth conversion could still make sense if the pros outweigh the cons. Think about how much tax-free withdrawals in retirement, the avoidance of RMDs, and protection from potential future tax rate increases may benefit you.
Pro Tip: Timing Matters
Some financial advisers recommend considering Roth conversions during the sweet spot or gap years. This is generally the time after you retire, but before you begin collecting Social Security checks and before RMDs kick in (age 73 or 75, depending on birth year).
In theory, you would be in your lowest tax bracket at this time and have strong control over how you manage your cash flow from existing accounts.
But there’s more you should be aware of.
Understand the 5-Year Rule
The five-year rule is key to the mechanism of a Roth IRA. But here’s what you need to know about this rule when it specifically comes to Roth conversions.
In order to withdraw converted funds and their earnings tax-and-penalty-free, you must meet the following criteria.
Have had the Roth account for at least five years
Be at least 59.5 years old
If you withdraw converted funds before five years have elapsed and you’re under age 59.5, you will likely face a 10 percent penalty on any pre-tax assets that were converted as well as the earnings. Plus, you’d owe income taxes on those earnings.
The Bottom Line
The right amount to convert depends on a variety of personal factors. These include your income, your current and future tax situation, your Medicare situation and more.
And remember, Roth conversions could be most ideal when you’d be in a higher tax bracket in the future than the one you are in now.
But you can also strategically make Roth conversions over time. This is known as staggering conversions. Nonetheless, you must understand that every conversion has its own five-year rule.
As you can see, a Roth conversion can be as beneficial as it is complex. So it’s important to discuss this strategy with a qualified tax professional before you move forward.
The Massachusetts Abortion Law Could Backfire On Democrats
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey spent this week signing away one of the last hard limits on abortion in a state that already ranked among the most permissive in the country, and now even some of her own party’s lawmakers think she went too far.
The Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act strips away the state’s statutory ban on abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy. Physicians in the state can now perform abortions at any point in the pregnancy, based on their own professional judgment, with no gestational cutoff written into law. The measure also expands legal protections for providers, shielding them from consequences that once accompanied performing procedures deep into the third trimester. Critics have a simple way of describing what changed: abortion in Massachusetts is now legal up until the moment of birth.
The bill cleared the Massachusetts House 119-33 on July 22, and the vote broke down almost exactly the way you would expect in a legislature that Democrats control by an overwhelming margin. Almost exactly, but not quite. Nine House Democrats voted with Republicans against the bill, and several of them made clear that their objections went beyond politics.
Rep. Jeffrey Turco, a Winthrop Democrat, did not hold back.
“This new law represents an extremist and dangerous position,” Turcotold Fox News Digital.
He added that the law “allows abortion anytime, unrestricted, and in many cases, publicly funded until the moment of birth.” Turco also complained about the process itself, saying the bill was “rushed through the legislative process in two weeks, without an opportunity for the public to weigh in.” He called the result “out of step with the views of the average person in Massachusetts” and added, “The new law is barbaric.”
Rep. Chris Markey raised a different kind of objection, one rooted less in outrage than in unease about where the law leaves physicians.
He said the bill “creates a very slippery slope” and “puts doctors in a very difficult ethical dilemma.”
Markey argued the law conflicts with what most of his own constituents actually want.
“While many are pro-choice, you can still be pro-choice and see this law as going beyond the norms of acceptability.” Rep. Dennis Gallagher, also a Democrat, said he simply saw no need for the law in the first place.
Healey’s office defended the bill by pointing to what it described as an ongoing “assault” on reproductive rights nationwide since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
“I’ve heard heartbreaking stories from women and families who were preparing to welcome a healthy baby into their family, only to receive devastating news later in their pregnancy,” Healey claimed, describing families who traveled long distances and paid out of pocket rather than relying on doctors they already trusted.
A 2024poll by the Reproductive Equity Now Foundation found 66 percent of Massachusetts voters supported expanding abortion access after 24 weeks, with 34 percent opposed.
That number will get cited endlessly by supporters of the law. It also happens to describe one of the bluest electorates in America, which is exactly the problem Democrats elsewhere are about to run into.
National polling on abortion has never lined up neatly with the binary pro-life versus pro-choice framing that dominates cable news. Gallup has tracked the moral acceptability of abortion since the early 2000s, andits 2025 survey found 49 percent of Americans consider it morally acceptable, down from a record 54 percent in 2024.Gallup’s Values and Beliefs poll from May of this yearfound 48 percent of Americans want abortion legal in all or most circumstances, split between 33 percent favoring all circumstances and 15 percent favoring most. Meanwhile, 49 percent want it to be illegal or legal only in a few circumstances, split between 17 percent favoring illegality and 32 percent favoring rare exceptions. That split has held steady on the broader question of legality since at least 2022.
Read those numbers together, and a pattern emerges. Most Americans lean pro-choice in the abstract, yet a majority still wants some boundaries. This instinct is a lot closer to Bill Clinton’s old “safe, legal, and rare” formulation than to anything resembling abortion without limits. Massachusetts Democrats just passed a law that abandons limits entirely, and the timing of this is very inconvenient for them.
Democrats already face a midterm environment complicated by a socialist insurgency inside their own coalition, an ideology that polls poorly with the general electorate.
Layering abortion extremism on top of that gives Republicans a matching set of arguments heading into November: a party too far left on the economy and now demonstrably too far left on one of the few issues where most voters still want some compromise.
I lived in Massachusetts for a number of years and even at one time owned a home there. The home was in a town called Cotuit, on the Cape, a small, pretty town that recalled the atmosphere of the television show Lost or the novel Lord of the Flies. There was an equivalent feeling of desolation and desperation and the strange notion that cannibal zombies ran the town. We determined that it was not the place we wanted to spend our free time, even though I have to say that the clam strips were delicious.
When I was a student, I lived in the Boston area, and that was a different feel, more of what we can find in our Blue American cities today. I have to say that Cambridge was ahead of its time. When I worked on the student janitorial crew, my boss, one of the wisest men in Boston—a dyed-in-the-wool Bruins, Red Sox, and Patriots fan and Vietnam vet—comforted me one day as we sat together on the steps in Radcliffe Yard. Bob said to me, “Donnie, the thing you need to know about this place is that it’s basically an insane asylum where the inmates would never think of leaving.” It is a fact of my life that the best advice I have ever received has not come from professors or academics, and certainly not lawyers, but working people.
As effed up as Massachusetts is, even I was stunned to see the spectacle of the governor signing what, in my view, amounts to infanticide into law while a bunch of cackling celebrants stood around her clapping. This finally even got a rise from the local Catholic bishops, not a frequent event because God forbid they should lose parishioners. Clearly, I have more fieldwork to do in Massachusetts to understand the delirious reaction of women to removing legal restrictions on aborting their own children at an advanced stage of pregnancy. But I suppose we can take solace in knowing that this lunacy—which was once largely confined to university campuses—is now active throughout the country, and especially in America’s major cities.
So, I think it is time we took a tour of some of our major cities and important organizations so we can show the fecundity of choices that we have in terms of where to live in the relevant blue states.
I believe that it’s only fitting that we begin in the “Big Apple,” where a thirty-something, self-declared democratic socialist with no experience running anything is currently mayor of the world’s leading financial center.
New York City
Mamdani’s rhetoric and positions have struck many people, including many Jews, as openly hostile to Israel and even antisemitic, so it only makes sense that Jewish people would line up to vote for him. I’ve written about this before, and we are always reminded of the heartwarming stories of German Jewish and Hungarian leaders urging Jews not to panic and to work together with the Nazis. But the difference is that the Jews who support Mamdani today have university degrees, so they know better. And just because they elect a guy who has been reluctant to condemn calls to “globalize the intifada”—a phrase many Jews understand as a call for violence—or the destruction of the Jewish state doesn’t mean he’s not a swell guy. He cares.
He caps this off nicely with a piss-poor understanding of economics. Since we have unlimited money—don’t we?—we can have fare-free buses and city-supported grocery stores because the government runs everything so efficiently, and frozen rents because I suppose we want to make it completely undesirable for developers to build new housing structures. But the best part is that Mamdani wants to finance all this with higher taxes on corporations and wealthy people who actually provide jobs and fuel the development of the city. He appears to be shocked by the fact that rich people might leave New York City and take their jobs and development plans elsewhere.
Mamdani’s dream city is rounded off by his history of supporting the “defund the police” movement. Of the many super-dumb ideas that American socialists and communists have put forward, this may be the dumbest. It is, in fact, so dumb that it has been repeated in blue cities like Boston, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. It is usually accompanied by dim-witted announcements from social scientists that there are “social causes” for crime and no real criminals, and then followed up with an appeal to shut down the jails.
Boston
But let’s continue our tour and mosey on up the East Coast to the city of Boston. The socialist mayor, Michelle Wu, has called for the abolition of ICE, a mantra repeated in many blue states and cities, and does not seem all that concerned about drug trafficking and human trafficking associated with illegal immigration. After all, she needs every last vote to stay in power. Logically, she has supported noncitizens voting in local elections, along with many similar lunatics in the Boston City Council. She is also a big backer of rent control, something the state eliminated in 1994. But bad ideas, like cockroaches, don’t go away, and she seems determined to employ fallacious economic theory in the laboratory she calls Boston.
But before we leave Boston, we should say a word about the Massachusetts governor. Governor Maura Healey has now signed legislation removing the state’s previous set of specified conditions for abortion after twenty-four weeks and replacing them with the “best medical judgment” of the physician. The law no longer supplies a clear gestational boundary of its own. Not being stupid, let’s understand that this makes it possible to forum-shop for a doctor willing to supply the necessary medical judgment to terminate a pregnancy very late in the process. In Rome and Sparta, they were courageous enough to call this infanticide. Here we refer to this as “health care.” Although I’m not sure that unborn children, if they could express an opinion, would agree with that assessment. And I’m not sure that female unborn children would find this as liberating for women as Governor Healey does.
Seattle
Let’s continue our journey and take a 3,000-mile journey across the country and visit Seattle’s Mayor Katie Wilson. Mayor Katie is hardly an economic success story, but then that doesn’t matter if you are a socialist. One of the controversies during the campaign involved financial assistance from her parents, including more than $10,000 in campaign-related childcare expenses that were not properly reported, for which her campaign paid a fine. But this fits nicely with all the other socialists living in their parents’ basements. In America these days, it’s not necessary to have a job, know anything about American history or the Constitution, or even believe there is such a thing as right or wrong in order to vote. Katie tapped heavily into this voter base in winning her election.
Katie has also demonstrated a command of economics sufficient to out-Mamdani Mamdani. When she was confronted with the very real scenario of wealthy people leaving Washington because of the state’s aggressive taxation proposals, she famously said, “Bye.” This is the same woman who left college in her final year six weeks before final exams because she wanted to “burn a bridge to the conventional professional world.” Now, if she had perhaps crossed the bridge, she would have seen that even socialist utopian projects like the ones dancing in her head require tax revenue. And tax revenue comes from people who make money—some of whom are millionaires. She is a perfect fit for Seattle, whose residents have gone out of their way to turn one of America’s most beautiful cities into a trash heap.
Katie didn’t just talk the talk; she also walked the walk. She campaigned on a citywide capital-gains tax designed to target wealthy residents. All of her favorite programs—subsidized transit and universal childcare—need to be paid for, and so she expected to be able to ask wealthy residents for money the same way she asked Mom and Dad. It never occurred to her that these are not her parents and they don’t have to stay around Seattle and give her money.
Katie has also fallen in line with the sanctuary-city rhetoric of not distinguishing between American citizens and people who are here illegally and making use of our resources. She has courageously directed her law-enforcement authorities not to cooperate with ICE, because why would you ever want to alienate future voters? Illegal gangs, drug and human trafficking be damned.
Chicago
But we really need to go to the Midwest to enjoy the full panoply of socialist woke delights. In one sense, we have to hand it to Chicago’s Brandon Johnson in that he not only stuck around for final exams but went on to get a master’s degree from Aurora University. The bad news is that he taught social studies and not economics. This was obvious from his support for reviving a “head tax” per employee on large businesses as part of his effort to close the enormous budget gap in Chicago. Brandon helped create that budget gap by spending outrageous sums of money on newly arrived migrants, to the detriment of actual legal residents. This created waves of outrage amongst residents who were not even receiving basic services. So, perhaps being contrite over destroying the economic infrastructure of the city, he felt that he could offer a solution by chasing businesses out of the city. Like other socialist geniuses, he made it his goal to bleed high-income earners and businesses to fund his sanctuary-city resistance.
Well, he may not have wanted to do much about drug and human trafficking carried out by Central American gangs, but at least he made up for it by reducing portions of the police budget and calling for the abolition of ICE. See how smart that is? Brandon’s rhetoric about white people and “white supremacy” has also been inflammatory. He does not consider this to be much of a problem in a city where white people happen to live, because he seems to see them mostly as an endless tax base to fund his permanent revolution.
Brandon doesn’t seem to have won over the nonwhite voters either. Polls have placed his approval rating between 23 and 30 percent, and one survey found that fewer than one in seven voters wanted him to run for reelection. He has accomplished nearly the impossible in making himself even less popular than his predecessor, Lori Lightfoot, currently of Harvard University.
Los Angeles
I would be remiss if I did not include my hometown mayor, Los Angeles’ Karen Bass, in this whirlwind tour. Karen, after deploying the usual defund-the-police rhetoric, actually discovered that police do play an important function in restoring order, and her later budgets called for hiring more of them. But she has displayed the same fiscal prowess as her fellow blue mayors and governors. Her budget shortfall is only about $1 billion. In her first couple of years, Los Angeles spent billions on programs to combat homelessness. Homelessness didn’t meaningfully improve, the money disappeared into a network of agencies and contractors, and questions were buried. But Mayor Bass has a distinction that her fellow progressive mayors do not share. On her watch, her own city burned down.
Mayor Bass has a tremendous record of placing incompetent wokesters into key positions. The Santa Ynez Reservoir serving Pacific Palisades was empty and offline when the fire began, and hydrants lost pressure during the emergency. Her fire-prevention leadership included committed wokesters who seemed to make up in woke rhetoric what they lacked in practical preparation. Her fire chief was on camera after the Pacific Palisades Fire had eaten half of the oceanfront communities, complaining about not having resources. One of the fire chief’s senior officials had previously made strange comments suggesting that someone needing rescue might object to being carried out of a fire by a woman who looked like her. But this was better than Mayor Karen, who was in Ghana at a presidential inauguration. And she was better than Governor Brylcreem, who had taken to disappearing altogether—when he wasn’t falsely assuring residents that he was working with President Trump to resolve the problem.
Bass had plenty of warnings and can be blamed for presiding over a government that was catastrophically unprepared for it. The empty reservoir, loss of hydrant pressure, inadequate pre-deployment, and later controversy over the after-action report all belong to the government she led. It may be hyperbole to say she burned her own city down. But, in the eyes of many who lost their homes, it doesn’t seem like it.
Like all her pals on the blue team, Mayor Karen is also soft on crime, anti-ICE, and, as a bonus, seemingly anti-fire prevention. This is hardly surprising given her history on the radical Left and her work in her youth with a pro-Castro organization. Like her socialist and communist pals, she is also an unwavering supporter of abortion, earning a 100 percent score from NARAL Pro-Choice America. So, we need to ask, if we burn the homes down of all the wealthy residents, chase all of the Hollywood studios out of Los Angeles, and make it unreasonable for anyone with a business to stay or relocate to Los Angeles, where are you going to get your tax revenue? And she seems to also want to take care of the next generation by joining in the effort that has resulted in nearly 1/3 of Generation Z disappearing through abortion.
As we take our tour of American hellholes, we cannot help but think of Margaret Thatcher’s words: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” Between scaring off job providers and denying any rights to unborn children, there is not going to be a lot of money—or many people—around to fund the Leftist utopias of the future. Some of these Leftists may even have to do the unthinkable and get real jobs working construction, digging holes, building shelters, and growing crops, rather than dictating to the rest of us how we should live our lives. But for the moment, as they celebrate chaos in the streets and cheer on infanticide, this is their shining moment. Let them enjoy it, because it won’t last much longer.
Trump: 9 Months At Sea For USS Lincoln ‘Not Nearly Long Enough’
President Trump shrugged off mounting concerns over the welfare of 5,000 sailors aboard the USS Lincoln on Friday, denying that family members were worried and telling reporters that nine months at sea was “not nearly long enough.” His remarks came on the same day that he promised an audience that he would declare the Strait of Hormuz a US territory, and that higher gas prices were a small price to pay so that a “very evil country” wouldn’t obtain “a nuclear weapon.”
The media’s questioning of the US commander-in-chief was prompted by concerns raised by family members of sailors aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, who say their loved ones are suffering from low morale from being stuck on the ship so long, and that they’re enduring moldy showers, rationing of food, and a lack of basic hygiene supplies like toothpaste, deodorant and soap. One woman says her son told her the food situation has been so bad at times that a meal consists of only a half-cup of rice and two tortillas. Things are so bad that there are reports that at least two crew members have recently attempted to kill themselves by leaping off the towering deck of the ship, which has been participating in the US-Israeli war on Iran.
Hegseth rejects reports of worsening conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, including a sailor going overboard and declining crew mental health, calling the reports “completely misrepresented.” pic.twitter.com/JicN9bkoBQ
As he was about to leave Washington for a rally in New York, a reporter started to frame a question by noting that family members were concerned about what was happening to the crew of the Lincoln. “No, they’re not,” interrupted Trump, contradicting the fact that many have raised their worries in a town hall with Navy Secretary Hung Cao attended by some 200 family members, and with the media.
“That ship is moving right now — well, very shortly — and it’s being replaced with another very similar ship,” Trump continued, referring to the USS George Washington. When the reporter asked if the deployments were going on too long, Trump replied, “No, no, no — not nearly long enough.”
The Lincoln departed its San Diego base on Nov. 21, 2025, on what was supposed to be a seven-month deployment. That deployment is now in its ninth month, but what’s far more remarkable is that the Lincoln went more than 200 days without a port call. Typically, a carrier crew might expect a port call every 30 to 45 days, with each break spanning around 3 to 5 days. On Friday, the New York Timesreported that problems resupplying the Lincoln and other ships were due in large part to Iran’s prompt destruction of a major logistics hub at America’s Navy base in Bahrain soon after the country was attacked in the middle of ongoing negotiations.
Later, addressing a rally in Garden City on New York’s Long Island, Trump claimed that the nearly six-month-old war on Iran has been a great success. “After we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated — pretty soon, I’ll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States,” Trump said, eliciting cheers from a crowd dominated by police, firefighters and other first responders. The event was part of the campaign of Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman.
No doubt wary of the war’s potential effect on the upcoming midterms, Trump also asked the audience to be patient with higher prices for gas and diesel, saying that, just before he joined Israel in starting a war on Iran, gas prices were only $1.85 a gallon. “For you to pay a tiny little bit more for your gasoline, just remember, you’re doing it so that a very evil country…[cannot have] a nuclear weapon.” Starting in 2007 and repeatedly up to the February 28 start of the war, the US intelligence community assessed that Iran was not developing a nuclear weapon. “I’ll never apologize, I did the right thing,” he told the crowd.
Is Beijing hoping to turn other authoritarian societies into digital Chinas?
China’s rise as the world’s leading exporter of surveillance technology is yielding some disturbing results. Beijing’s surveillance export packages comprise an entire technological architecture that can give governments an unprecedented ability to see, identify, and track their populations.
Those technologies include cameras, artificial intelligence, telecommunications networks, cloud computing, facial recognition, license-plate recognition, and centralized command systems. Many mid-sized countries are becoming or are already customers.
Turning Other Nations Into ‘Little Chinas’
Turkey is an important case study.
To be clear, Turkey has not yet become a Chinese-style surveillance state. Its political system and institutions remain different from China’s. That said, Chinese technology companies have established a significant presence in Turkey’s digital infrastructure, and they’re not shy about it. In fact, Huawei has explicitly marketed its AI-powered CCTV and “Safe City,” i.e. surveillance technologies, in the Turkish market.
It’s no mystery that China wants to sell as much merchandise to as many trading partners as possible. But is it also possible that China wants as many partners as possible to use and become dependent upon its surveillance technology so that their societies turn into “little Chinas” by deploying Smart City tech?
AI Camera Surveillance
The first building block is the camera.
Chinese companies such as Hikvision and Dahua have become global leaders in video-surveillance equipment. Meanwhile, Huawei has developed AI-powered cameras capable of performing sophisticated image recognition and analysis. CSIS notes that Chinese firms can provide technologies ranging from cameras to AI analytics and centralized deployment.
Huawei’s AI-enabled technology is in Turkey, using cameras with embedded AI chips and deep learning capabilities to perform recognition and identification while feeding information into cloud-based big-data systems. Such systems could operate across enormous numbers of cameras.
That represents a fundamental shift in surveillance capability for nations such as Turkey. A conventional camera records what happened. An AI camera can begin answering who, when, where, and what.
A screen shows visitors being filmed by AI (Artificial Intelligence) security cameras with facial recognition technology at the 14th China International Exhibition on Public Safety and Security at the China International Exhibition Center in Beijing on Oct. 24, 2018. Nicolas Asfouri /AFP via Getty Images
The difference is enormous.
‘Smart Cities’ Can Become Surveillance Networks
The second technological piece is the smart-city platform.
Huawei’s smart-city operation combines 5G, artificial intelligence, Internet-of-Things devices, cloud computing, and big-data analytics. The company describes an integrated “digital brain” capable of connecting multiple government functions and data sources.
None of those technologies is inherently authoritarian.
Smart traffic systems, energy management, and connected public services are all examples of how technology can make cities more efficient.
The problem begins when these systems become interconnected with security databases.
A camera produces an image. A telecommunications network produces location and communications data. A smart-city sensor produces movement information. AI can combine those streams instantly.
The result is no longer simply a collection of cameras. It’s an urban information and surveillance system.
This technology isn’t new, but the worry is about its widespread adoption. CSIS has documented Huawei “Safe City” agreements involving CCTV, intelligent video surveillance, facial and license-plate recognition, crowd monitoring, command centers, and other security technologies in dozens of countries over the years.
Huawei’s Digital Footprint
Another factor is telecommunications. Amplifying on the Turkish case, Huawei has operated in Turkey (and other nations) for decades and has established a substantial local research and technology presence. Employing roughly 1,500 people in the country and operating an R&D center in Istanbul, Huawei has its own people running the technology, providing additional opportunity for data gathering.
That matters because telecommunications infrastructure is the nervous system of the modern surveillance state. It’s a powerful technological information loop where cameras and sensors collect information, telephones generate it, networks transfer it, cloud systems store and analyze it, while AI interprets it.
The more deeply those systems become integrated, the greater the potential for governments to build a comprehensive picture of their citizens.
Huawei’s smart-city model explicitly combines those technologies.
Scalable Surveillance Technology
Why do governments buy it?
The answer is not necessarily ideology, although that may be part of it, but it is often simple economics.
China’s surveillance companies can offer governments a complete technological package at competitive prices. Huawei’s Safe City partners are disproportionately middle-income countries, noting that affordability and commercial promises can be important drivers of adoption.
That alone gives Beijing an enormous commercial opportunity. Why build surveillance infrastructure from scratch when you can just buy it off the shelf?
What’s more, such systems may well help illegitimate governments remain in power. But also, once a country has invested heavily in a particular technological ecosystem, replacing it can become expensive.
A woman stands at the booth of Huawei featuring 5G technology at the PT Expo in Beijing on Sept. 28, 2018. Reuters
CSIS has warned that countries adopting Huawei equipment could become effectively “locked in” through high replacement costs, while Chinese companies gain market share and establish technical standards.
That doesn’t mean that Huawei’s clients aren’t authoritarian regimes, many are.
Data as Strategic Assets
Another consequential factor is data.
China’s surveillance exports potentially provide Beijing with more than equipment sales. They can help Chinese companies expand their technological standards, gain experience in foreign markets, and deepen commercial relationships.
The strategic concern is that if Chinese companies become the suppliers of the world’s cameras, networks, cloud systems, and AI platforms, they would become deeply embedded in the digital infrastructure of other nations.
That creates influence even without direct access to every byte of data.
What Does it Mean?
Turkey, among others, is therefore a warning sign—not necessarily because it is becoming China, but because it demonstrates how surveillance capabilities can enter a country through ordinary commercial infrastructure.
Thus, the struggle between China and the West is increasingly a contest over technological models adopted by a growing number of nations.
China’s model emphasizes scale, integration, and centralized control.
Western democracies generally place greater emphasis on privacy, transparency, and legal restrictions, although Western governments also use facial recognition, AI surveillance, and other monitoring technologies.
The Chinese advantage is that Beijing’s companies can offer much of the infrastructure as a package. That makes the technology easy to export and, once deployed, difficult and expensive to replace.
The United States and the West, therefore, face a challenge that goes beyond Huawei, Hikvision, or Dahua. They must compete with an entire technological ecosystem.
The real question is not necessarily whether every Chinese camera is secretly spying on foreign citizens. But rather, it’s whether countries like Turkey and many others with a growing exposure to China’s digital infrastructure could become digital dictatorships because of it.
