What happened
President Donald Trump held the first Cabinet meeting of his second term yesterday, inviting billionaire Elon Musk to expound on his DOGE cost-cutting effort and ensuring that Cabinet members knew Musk had his full support. Trump also declined to say the U.S. would protect Taiwan if China invaded, said Ukraine will sign a mineral deal on Friday, suggested tariffs on Canada and Mexico could be postponed until April 2 and said 25% tariffs on the European Union were coming "very soon."

Who said what
"The European Union was formed in order to screw the United States," Trump said, and "they've done a good job of it." He said the tariffs "will be on cars and all other things." A European Commission spokesperson said the EU "has been a boon for the United States" and "will react firmly and immediately against unjustified" tariffs.

With nascent negotiations, "the eventual tariffs imposed on the EU could be less than 25%," The Wall Street Journal said. But after Trump's "embrace of Russia" and "warnings that Europe had better fend for itself," the tariff threats "added to the increasing view" in Europe that Trump "considers America's traditional allies in Europe as adversaries not just on trade, but on nearly everything," The New York Times said. The question is whether Trump is "merely indifferent to Europe" or feels "open hostility."

What next?
Mexican Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard will meet today with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, confirmed yesterday in a 56-43 vote, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is meeting with Trump to discuss trade, Ukraine and other trans-Atlantic topics.

What happened
"After many years of steady decline, the share of Americans who identify as Christians shows signs of leveling off — at least temporarily," Pew Research Center said yesterday.

Who said what
Pew's third Religious Landscape Study found that 62% of Americans call themselves Christian — 40% Protestant, 19% Catholic and 3% other. That's a decline from 78% in 2007 and 71% in 2014, but "the Christian share of the adult population has been relatively stable" for the past five years, Pew said. The share of "nones" — those with no religious affiliation — has also been relatively stable at 29%, up from 16% in 2007 and 23% in 2014.

The study, which surveyed a nationally representative sample of 36,908 respondents from July 2023 to March 2024, found that 1.7% of Americans identify as Jewish, 1.2% as Muslim, 1.1% as Buddhist and 0.9% as Hindu.

Older age cohorts were more likely to identify as Christian, as were political conservatives — 82% versus 37% of liberals. But the "youngest age group," people 18 to 24, "appear to defy that trend," The New York Times said. They are about as religious as the cohort above them, and the persistent "gap in religiosity between men and women" that "some scholars characterize" as a "fact of human life" is "small or nonexistent," with men as religious as women. "If you're a young white male these days and you think of yourself as conservative, then being religious is a part of that," David Campbell, a Notre Dame political scientist, told the Times.

What next?
Religious researchers said the "data does not indicate an actual reversal in the decline of Christianity," the Times said, but it "might offer a hint at the natural ceiling of nonreligiosity in the United States."