Republicans have usually claimed the faith mantle in U.S. politics. But this year’s midterm elections are developing along a different path, with Democrats like James Talarico in Texas and Adam Hamilton in Kansas highlighting their religious bona fides on the campaign trail.

What did the commentators say?
“Faith is back in Democratic politics,” said Jim Wallis at Religion News Service. A new generation of “faith-forward” candidates is “reclaiming religion” as a “moral framework for public service.” They talk of faith with “authenticity instead of apology.” And there might be broad benefits to the movement. Faith may be “our last line of defense in saving, and then restoring, our democracy.”

Democratic Socialists have received a lot of attention this campaign cycle, but “Democratic Christians may prove more influential this November,” said Bill McKibben at The New Yorker. Candidates like Talarico and Hamilton are leading a “resurgence of the once dominant and long-dormant mainline Protestant tradition” in Democratic politics. 

Other faith-centric Democrats in this year’s midterm elections include Iowa’s Sarah Trone Garriott (pictured above), a Lutheran minister, and Arkansas’ Robb Ryerse, an evangelical pastor. Iowa’s Rob Sand is not a pastor, but his campaign has featured messaging about “how his faith is deeply woven into his public service,” said Doug Pagitt, of the nonprofit Vote Common Good, at The Hill.

Democratic efforts to “reclaim God” are “unlikely to succeed” unless the party moves toward the center, said Eric Teetsel at The Washington Post. Today’s progressive Christians are “not reaching out to religious voters by taking a more moderate stance” on transgender rights or euthanasia. Trump is problematic, but he has been able to “achieve reasonable policy wins consistent with a Christian understanding of the good.”

What next?
Republicans are pushing back. Democratic candidates “don’t profess the true gospel of Jesus Christ,” said Iowa congressional candidate Joe Mitchell at July’s Family Leadership Summit, per Religion News Service. 

Democrats also have to figure out how to speak the language of faith without alienating secular voters, said ABC News. Some candidates “do it better than others,” said David Campbell, of the University of Notre Dame, to the network. 

More than a year after courting controversy with an American Eagle ad, actor Sydney Sweeney is facing another firestorm for a racy campaign in which she appears in various states of undress. Posing for the sports trading app Novig, she has stirred a debate regarding oversexualization in the advertising world.

‘Kick in the face’
Australian Olympic swimmer Ariarne Titmus posted on Instagram that she could not keep her “mouth shut” upon seeing the ad, per the Sydney Morning Herald. Not only is Sweeney’s ad a “kick in the face to every woman who has dedicated her life to perfecting her craft,” said Titmus, but also to every woman who enjoys sports for “teamwork, friendship, dedication, excellence, unity.” 

This is “already a male-dominated field” where women are “constantly having to prove why we belong,” said Marissa Womack, the manager of game day promotions and programming for a minor league baseball team, on TikTok, per The Hollywood Reporter. When the “only representation is sexualization,” you see “less and less young women wanting to pursue this.”

The controversy is about “more than one advertisement,” said Vivienne Lewis, a clinical psychologist, at The Conversation. It “raises a bigger issue” about the “attention we give to what women look like” rather than “who they are and what they can do.” 

‘Hardly an unusual strategy’
Not to be a “crazed optimist,” said Marina Hyde at The Guardian, but women’s sports feel a “whole lot bigger and stronger and more compelling” than whether Sweeney “did or didn’t get her tits out for a gambling ad.” Alternatively, people could “focus on the gambling bit rather than the woman advertising it,” as “gambling wrecks a lot more lives than Sydney Sweeney.”

We all know “exactly what Sweeney was doing,” said advertising copywriter Paul Burke at The Spectator. She was “selling a sports betting app.” She did not “pretend that she was an elite athlete” or “decry the great talent, strength and sacrifice involved in becoming one.” 

Novig’s decision to cast Sweeney is “savvy,” said Burke. Her “provocative performance,” building on last year’s “denim-based outrage,” does “appeal to the people most likely to download this app.” This is “hardly an unusual strategy.”

Dancers perform at the Thom Browne spring 2027 show during New York Fashion Week. Inspired by the children’s film “A Bug’s Life,” The Shed arts space was transformed into a “dark garden replete with giant leaves, huge daffodils and a glamorous cocoon at the center of it all,” said W magazine.
Taylor Hill / Getty Images

The modern history of civilization provides ample, almost endless, inspiration for writers, who can draw on both well-known and obscure figures and events to build dazzling narratives. From classic works to recent and more structurally daring standouts, historical fiction remains one of the most popular forms of writing.

‘Blood Meridian’ (1985)
The Kid is an illiterate 14-year-old runaway with a “taste for mindless violence” who gets swept up in the gruesome rampage of the Glanton gang during the 1840s. This “extraordinary poetic” novel by Cormac McCarthy serves as an “exploration, at times explicitly philosophical, of the relationship between culture and violence,” said Andrew Hislop at the Times Literary Supplement.

‘The Luminaries’ (2013)
Set in 1866 New Zealand, Eleanor Catton’s novel follows Walter Moody, a gold prospector who meets twelve local notables convening in his hotel to discuss a series of strange events. The novel is “trying both to revive plot as a literary mode and to consider what a storyline looks like in our real, unplotted life,” said B.D. McClay at The New Yorker.

‘Great Circle’ (2021)
Maggie Shipstead sets her novel in two timelines. In one, we follow the exploits of an aviator named Marian Graves and her attempt to circumnavigate the globe. The second follows Hadley Baxter, a troubled actress who has signed on to star in a biopic of Graves after her journal from the grand flight is found. The book “grasps for and ultimately reaches something extraordinary,” said Lynn Steger Strong at The New York Times.