While it’s clear Donald Trump is all-in for 2024, his MAGA hold on evangelicals may have lost some strength. A lot has happened since last time around: January 6th; the fallout with Mike Pence; the Mar-a-Lago classified documents; the continued focus on the past election and just overall drama. So does he have work to do this time around with evangelicals? “He has real work to do, let’s not kid ourselves,” says his former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. “I’m sure that the team has a plan, but the work with the evangelicals and others that he may have taken for granted in 2020 is very real.” As it stands, some of the prominent faithful who fervently backed Trump last time are still in the pews, not yet willing to commit. There’s been no official support from the likes of Franklin Graham, Jack Graham or Albert Mohler – all previous backers. As for Pastor Robert Jeffress, once a vocal Trump defender says he’ll wait until the primary season comes into focus. Dr. Mike Evans, who helped mobilize evangelicals for Trump says the former president does not personify biblical values and has been quoted as saying he, “does not have the support of the evangelicals that he did.” Christian TV Host James Robison has also been critical this time around saying…

Sam Smith and Kim Petras made history at the 65th Grammy Awards when the duo performed their smash hit “Unholy.” The performance drew controversy — Smith wore devil horns while Petras danced in a cage — as some viewers claimed it promoted Satan. It’s safe to say Donald Trump Jr. wasn’t a fan. In a video shared online, Donald Trump’s son compared the “Unholy” performance to a satanic ritual. “You can’t make this stuff up anymore … The next conspiracy theory to go down the drain is Hollywood, the music industry, totally not into the satanic rituals, despite all of the symbolism, despite all of the coincidence with said symbolism. It never ends,” Trump Jr. said. “Maybe it’s art, but why is it always this kind of art? Why is it never, like, regular art?” Trump Jr. continued, claiming that Hollywood is influencing children by promoting supposed satanic symbolism in the performances they watch and the programs they consume. “They’re all in on it. They’re going to crush everything we hold near and dear in America. Our morality, our decency, our religion, our freedom, and they’re going to replace it with this crap,” he added, alleging that Smith’s performance proved “right-wingers were right that Hollywood and the music industry are all Satan-worshippers…

Feeling inclined to let Elon Musk stick a computer chip into your brain? Just be warned: according to a fascinating story by Insider, research has linked brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) like the one Neuralink is working on to bizarre, unpredictable and little-understood cognitive changes — including some that might completely alter your identity and sense of self. “Many felt that the disease had robbed them, in some ways, of who they were,” Wexler continued, adding that illness “really impacts your identity, your sense of self, if you can’t do the things that you think of yourself as being able to do.” But in other cases, patients have reported back feelings of estrangement, or even that the implant makes them feel unlike themselves. The lack of an ability to self-identify is, unsurprisingly, deeply unmooring — so much so that there has been at least one known attempted suicide as a result of BCI-induced self-alienation…

“Deaths by despair,” including suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, may be fueled by declining faith in America, a new report claims. The study, a working paper titled “Opiates of the Masses: Deaths of Despair and the Decline of American Religion,” authored by Tyler Giles, Daniel M. Hungerman and Tamar Oostrum of the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, says these types of deaths have dramatically increased among middle-aged white Americans in the late 20th century due to “lower participation in organized religion that was preceded by a repeal of blue laws that prohibited commercial activities on Sunday.” In essence, the report says that the “collapse of religion in the U.S. may be driving a wave of suicides, drug overdoses and alcohol abuse deaths among the white working class…