Walmart is attracting more high-income shoppers even as lower-income households struggle with rising prices. Shoppers across income levels are increasingly prioritizing value and convenience, reflecting shifts in U.S. consumer behavior, the Miami Heraldreported.
Newsweek contacted Walmart via online form on Saturday for comment.
Why It Matters
The shift in Walmart’s customer base could indicate caution among U.S. consumers, even those with higher incomes. Retailers that cannot compete on price may face challenges as more shoppers seek value, while widespread changes in spending patterns could signal wider economic uncertainty.
What To Know
Walmart is seeing increased interest from higher-income shoppers while lower-income households continue to feel the strain of rising prices. Shoppers across all income levels are becoming more price-conscious, prioritizing value and convenience in their everyday purchases.
This shift reflects wider trends in U.S. consumer behavior as inflation and economic uncertainty continue to influence spending decisions.
Walmart has reported that households earning under $50,000 continue to face tight budgets, with many managing spending from paycheck to paycheck. The retailer is seeing strong growth among higher-income shoppers.
Research from GlobalData Retail shows that nearly 28% of high-income consumers shopped at discount retailers such as Walmart in 2025, up from around 20% in 2021. More than 17% of Americans earning at least $100,000 now shop at Walmart, compared with less than 15% in 2021.
Meanwhile, many consumers continue to feel the impact of rising prices, particularly for essentials such as food. Walmart’s CFO John David Rainey said the company has worked to mitigate grocery price increases, which may explain the growing appeal to wealthier consumers.
What People Are Saying
Walmart CEO John Furner said, as reported by the Miami Herald: “This quarter, the majority of our share gains came from households making more than $100,000.” Analysts note that higher-income shoppers are not necessarily cutting spending but are making more deliberate choices, seeking value, prioritizing convenience, and trading down on everyday items even when they can afford more.
What Happens Next
If higher-income households continue to prioritize savings and value, retailers without Walmart’s scale and pricing power may struggle to maintain sales. The trend could also indicate broader economic caution, with widespread reductions in discretionary spending potentially affecting overall retail performance and raising concerns about slower economic growth.
The Trump Administration is promising paychecks to TSA workers as soon as Monday as airports continue to struggle with staffing shortages. Meanwhile, strikes in the Middle East are intensifying as the Strait of Hormuz remains shuttered to most global oil transports.
John Murray, BBC Radio 5 Live football correspondent
What that match will be remembered for is Ben White.
That’s the only match I have ever seen when an England player has scored his first international goal for England at Wembley and was booed by, I would say, a sizeable minority of the crowd.
When he left the squad in Qatar and went home for what was described as personal reasons – we’ve never really got to the bottom of what it was.
There were stories that there was a fall-out, something happened involving Steve Holland, Gareth Southgate’s assistant. But that was never confirmed by Gareth Southgate.
I thought last night might have been the perfect opportunity for Ben White to put his head above the parapet. He’s made his comeback, he’s just scored his first goal. But, as Thomas Tuchel was saying in advance of the match – and we kind of know this already – he described him as quite introverted, quite shy, and maybe he just doesn’t feel comfortable to do that.
But probably at some stage he will have to grasp the nettle and talk about it.
When you conjure an image of Tahiti, likely it will be of a tropical paradise with dazzling beaches and stunning azure waters where thousands of miles of the Pacific Ocean lie between you and the cares of your daily life. However, from a footballing perspective, it can be something of a headache being located so far from the rest of the world.
Take the case of Tahiti United, the only team in the world that skips a day forward in time every time it travels to play a match. And then, when it returns home, it arrives back yesterday.
The Tahitians, representing the largest island of French Polynesia, are making their bow in the inaugural OFC Pro League, Oceania’s first professional football competition. They are pitted against seven other teams from Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu — all of which are located to the west of Tahiti, on the other side of the International Date Line.
The line, which appears on maps running between the North and South Pole at roughly 180 degrees longitude (save for a few conspicuous kinks along the way to avoid passing directly through inhabited territories) is used globally to mark the point where one day ends and the next begins. Fiji, for example, is a little more than 2,000 miles away from Tahiti — about the same distance as New York City is from Phoenix — but it is 22 hours ahead.
Due to the substantial distances and travel costs involved, the games take place in circuits where the teams come together to play two fixtures each. For 2026, those circuits are being hosted in and around Auckland, Fiji, Honiara, Melbourne and Port Moresby.
This arrangement means that Tahiti United don’t have any home fixtures, leading to them racking up a prodigious number of air miles and multiple moves back and forth in the calendar. For those cheering them on from back home, each Tahiti United game as they follow it is being played tomorrow.
Teams from Tahiti are no stranger to long journeys. Clubs from French overseas departments and territories are allowed to enter the Coupe de France each year, creating some monumental away days. AS Vénus made a 20,000-mile round trip to face French fourth-tier side Trelissac FC in 2021, only to lose 2-0.
Despite the daunting schedule, the presence of Tahiti United in the OFC Pro League has given a huge boost to those in French Polynesia. Competing in a fully professional structure has fundamentally changed Tahiti’s relationship to the beautiful game.
“The logistical challenge is significant,” Tahiti United general manager Temaui Crolas told ESPN. “Squad management, training and travel coordination become more complex when you are constantly moving. You always have to think beyond the match itself.
“But this project is very important for Tahitian football and the professionalization of sports in Tahiti as a whole. We are the first Tahitian professional team in any sport, and we are showing that football here can be part of the biggest stage.”
For the players, the shift to full-time football has come with significant sacrifices. Some have had to quit jobs and leave behind the security of an alternative career outside the sport. All have had to accept long periods on the road and away from their loved ones.
“There is a human cost,” Crolas said. “The players have had to make a sporting transition but also a lifestyle change, moving away from work, family life and routines to meet the demands of professional football.”
Tahiti‘s national football team represents all of French Polynesia — an area of over 2,200 square miles, of which Tahiti is the most populous one of 75 inhabited islands and atolls. On the international stage, Tahiti have fared well in the Oceania Football Confederation and won the 2012 OFC Nations Cup, becoming the first team other than Australia and New Zealand to claim that accolade. In the process Tahiti qualified for the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup in Brazil, where they lined up against the giants of Spain, Nigeria and Uruguay.
However, when Tahiti United secured their first win of the OFC Pro League season, a 1-0 win over Fiji’s Bula FC, it was a special and important moment. As a new club, Tahiti United have to build a fanbase from scratch and to convince those back home, watching in newly created fan zones in cafés, that they can succeed.
“Winning a match in a professional competition in Oceania is historic,” coach Samuel Garcia, who previously served as Tahiti’s national team boss for six years, told ESPN via email. “The response from home was overwhelmingly positive. For our supporters, our families, and everyone who has always believed in us, this victory was exceptional. More than anything, it confirmed the progress that we are making and that we’re going in the right direction.”
Garcia also pointed out that while the travel can be a challenge, the club knew this was what they signed up for and prepared accordingly.
By the end of the season, Tahiti United’s players and staff will have clocked somewhere in the region of 30,000 miles’ worth of travel and have spent close to an entire week in transit on their round-trips between circuit locations and home. With five circuits and then the final playoff round in May, that’s up to 12 jetlag-inducing journeys forward and back in time across the International Date Line over the course of the four-month campaign.
For Tahiti’s promising players, the OFC Pro League represents an exciting new chance to develop into a professional; something that has been hard to achieve until now.
“Tahiti United also offers a new pathway for young Polynesian players,” Garcia said. “Many families make significant sacrifices to send their children to Europe, but success rates are extremely low. Young players can now aspire to become professionals without leaving their home environment.”
A second win, 2-1 over PNG Hekari of Papua New Guinea, has helped lift Tahiti United away from the bottom of the OFC Pro League table. Club captain and Tahitian football legend Teaonui Tehau believes his side is settling into the new routine.
“Playing all our matches away and travelling for every round naturally has an impact on the group,” he told ESPN via email. “For many players, this is a completely new experience, and they are not used to this type of regular travel.
“Many did not expect us to perform at the level we have but our wins highlighted the strength and solidity of the team, which meant a lot to us. We are embracing the experience and adapting well. It’s strengthening us as a team.”
There are hopes that one day Tahiti United will finally get to be the hosts rather than the away side, but they may have to wait a while for their OFC Pro League home debut.
Tahiti is hosting the 2027 Pacific Games — a multisport event for athletes from all over Oceania. Football will be included, giving Tahiti a chance at glory if they can overcome the likes of New Caledonia and the Solomon Islands, but it will have an impact on Tahiti United’s plans.
“We want to host an OFC Pro League circuit in the future, but it is difficult because of the Pacific Games,” Crolas said. “Our home stadium is one of the grounds for that event, so for our first two OFC Pro League campaigns it won’t be possible. Our target is 2028 for our first home game.”
Tehau said: “Personally, I would love to play Pro League matches one day in Tahiti and finish my career at home, in front of our supporters.”
For now, Tahiti United’s supporters will have to settle for watching from afar. But while the International Date Line means Tahiti’s fans are forever in the past, they can look forward to their heroes’ homecoming somewhere in the future.
Mobile bills stung back then—every minute charged, even incoming. But for Harbhajan, celebrating India’s 2008 Sri Lanka series win meant balcony calls to Geeta, not just beers with the boys. And once, his overseas phone call to her reportedly even hit Rs 27,000, as per reports! “Love mattered more than money,” friends recalled. Geeta made him wait 10 months, teasing that she would say yes to his marriage proposal only after he takes 300 international wickets. Days later, he nailed the milestone. Those endless talks—secrets swapped on hotel balconies—wove their bond tight. Geeta faced fallout too: lost four film roles to dating rumours in an industry unkind to women’s personal lives. Still, she later said moving to India helped her find her soulmate.
On Feb. 28, the United States and Israel launched massive strikes on Iran in an operation targeting military and government sites that President Donald Trump has said could last as little as four weeks.
One month later, both countries remain engaged in a war that has impacted the wider Gulf region, killing thousands of people, as the Pentagon is preparing to surge thousands of troops to the Middle East, according to U.S. officials.
As the U.S. enters its fifth week of the conflict, here’s a look at how we got here, where things stand and where they may go from here.
Watch special coverage on Nightline, “War with Iran,” each night on ABC and streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.
Negotiations break down
Operation Epic Fury began months after the U.S. and Israel carried out strikes on nuclear weapons facilities in Iran, with Trump declaring at that time that the regime’s nuclear capabilities had been “obliterated.”
In the weeks leading up to the Feb. 28 strikes, the U.S. tried to negotiate with the Iranian regime to reach a nuclear deal, with Trump saying he was weighing whether to strike. A day before launching Operation Epic Fury against Iran, Trump said he was “not happy” with the negotiations.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was among those killed in Tehran in the initial strikes, with his son Mojtaba Khamenei later chosen to succeed him.
A poster of the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is pasted on the wall of a residential building damaged after a nearby police station was struck two days earlier in a U.S.-Israeli attack in Tehran, Iran, March 15, 2026.
Vahid Salemi/AP
Trump said at the start of the “major combat operations,” which occurred without Congressional approval, that they were to “defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime,” and he called on the Iranian people to depose the regime.
In the weeks since, more than 1,440 civilians, including at least 217 children, have died from U.S. and Israeli strikes in Iran as of March 23, according to a report from several human rights groups. Iranian officials have blamed the U.S. for a missile strike on an Iranian elementary school that killed nearly 170 people. The Trump administration has said it is investigating the incident.
Regional allies attacked
Iran retaliated against the strikes with missile and drone attacks targeting Israel, regional U.S. bases and multiple Gulf nations, primarily targeting U.S. interests in the region.
Thirteen American servicemembers have been killed since the war began, including seven from retaliatory strikes in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and six from an aircraft crash in Iraq. Over 300 troops have also been injured, a U.S. official said Friday.
Iran has also launched a series of retaliatory strikes against the energy infrastructure in several Gulf states after Israel hit its largest gas field — in what one Qatari official called a “dangerous escalation.”
A fire and plume of smoke rise after, according to authorities. debris from an intercepted Iranian drone struck an oil facility in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates, Saturday, March 14, 2026.(AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)
The Associated Press
Experts say the strikes and the threat of further attacks risk throwing global energy markets into a state of protracted chaos.
Amid the conflict, Israel has also intensified its long-running strike campaign against the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon and expanded its ground operations in the south of the country. More than 1,000 people have been killed and thousands more injured in Lebanon amid this escalation, according to Lebanese officials.
Strait of Hormuz shutdown
Map of the Strait of Hormuz
Anadolu via Getty Images
In response to the U.S.-Israeli strikes, Iran has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, a vital maritime passage for the oil and shipping trades, threatening an energy crisis.
Iran has attacked several oil tankers since the war began in late February, halting nearly all shipping traffic. The supply shock has sent the price of oil surging.
Trump has threatened to attack Iran’s power plants if it doesn’t fully reopen the strait, since extending the deadline to do so to April 6.
US’ expansive aims
Trump’s stated goals in Iran have shifted and expanded in the weeks since the conflict began, from talks of regime change and peace throughout the Middle East to, more recently, reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
Among other key aims, the U.S. military has said Iran’s navy and ballistic missile stocks and production capabilities have been degraded by airstrikes.
Making sure Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon has been another major goal of Trump’s. Iran’s intent to build a nuclear weapon, according to Trump, was a central justification for the war.
Trump has suggested that Americans could go in to seize Iran’s enriched uranium. Experts previously told ABC News that a large American force on the ground would likely be needed to take the nuclear material but would carry a lot of risk.
During a Cabinet meeting on Thursday, Vice President JD Vance emphasized the importance of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and warned that there are “further military options” possible.
Damage to the Isfahan Optics Industries building and the surrounding area in Isfahan, Iran, March 24, 2026.
Social Media via Reuters
Where things go from here
The White House has said “productive” negotiations have been ongoing between the U.S. and Iran, while officials in Tehran have publicly denied that any talks have taken place.
The U.S. has presented Iran with a 15-point framework for a peace deal via Pakistan, according to White House special envoy Steve Witkoff. As of Friday, the U.S. has not received a response from Iran, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Sources previously told ABC News the plan addressed Iran’s ballistic missile and nuclear programs as well as maritime routes.
The negotiations come as the U.S. is preparing to surge as many as 5,000 troops to the Middle East, according to two U.S. officials, and the Pentagon is seeking $200 billion in supplemental funding for the war. The funding request has been met with bipartisan skepticism from some lawmakers.
Rubio on Friday declined to answer questions from reporters on whether the U.S. planned to deploy ground troops in Iran. Though he said the U.S. can achieve its goals without putting boots on the ground.
A man stands next to buildings damaged by Israeli strikes, amid escalating hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, as the U.S.-Israel conflict with Iran continues, in Beirut’s southern suburbs, Lebanon, March 27, 2026.
Reuters
Trump, who has said he believed the war could last up to four weeks, and at other times four to six weeks, said this week that the operation is “ahead of schedule” and should end soon. Rubio told reporters Friday that the operation could end in a “matter of weeks, not months.”
The Israel Defense Forces said Friday they need “a few more weeks” to fully degrade Iranian military capabilities, such as missile-launchers, a senior Israeli security official told ABC News.
The videos and posts relentlessly mock President Trump or vilify him and as a bloodthirsty leader who strikes civilian targets indiscriminately. They make up content about attacks on American and Israeli targets, including one on Wednesday that featured a fabricated video of a missile striking Liberty Island in New York Harbor. They regularly mention Jeffrey Epstein.
Iran is waging what researchers have described as a sophisticated information war, aided by Russia and China, that is spreading content designed to exploit worldwide opposition to the U.S.-Israeli military campaign and deflect from the country’s considerable losses on the battlefield.
Nearly a month into the war, Iran’s state media outlets and covert operatives are producing a steady torrent of propaganda, overstated narratives and outright disinformation. They are often wielding generative A.I. tools to create increasingly realistic-looking images and videos, according to human rights organizations and research groups studying foreign influence.
Much of the false content has been debunked, but not before reaching millions of people on X, Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and other social media platforms.
The information war, the researchers say, has given Iran’s beleaguered leadership a weapon almost as potent as its ability to disrupt the world’s energy economy by throttling shipments of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. While the impact of the information war can be difficult to measure, experts said it appeared to have stoked popular anger and unease about the conflict in the United States and beyond.
“They’re winning the propaganda war,” Darren L. Linvill, a director of Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, said of the Iranians. “They were prepared for it more than the administration, because they’d been preparing for this entire conflict for 50 years.”
With the internet largely shut down inside Iran, the intended audience appears to be people outside the country.
Many of the posts appear to come from accounts controlled by humans, rather than automated bots. Researchers at Clemson identified a furtive network of at least 62 accounts on X, Instagram and Bluesky that spread pro-Iranian content.
The accounts, controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, set up accounts purporting to be Spanish-speaking users in Texas, California, Venezuela and Chile and English speakers in England, Scotland and Ireland.
In some cases, the content they shared had been lifted verbatim from posts published by real people, including prominent Western influencers like Jackson Hinkle and Mario Nawfal, who each have millions of followers on X and are known for incendiary commentary on foreign affairs and conservative issues.
Another campaign focused on a March 18 interview by Tucker Carlson with Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center who resigned in protest of the war, according to a report by Honest Reporting, a nonprofit advocacy group that critiques news reports it deems critical of Israel.
First, RT, the Russian television channel, posted a clip of the interview in which Mr. Kent portrayed the attack as unjustified aggression. From there, dozens of accounts spread the same clip almost simultaneously.
“This was not simply organic virality,” the group said. It added, “Actors with varying ideological positions aligned almost immediately around a single, highly specific message: that Israel had manipulated the United States into war.”
Iran has also seized on Mr. Trump’s erratic statements and taken advantage of the weakening of American government and corporate guardrails that once sought to counter false or misleading information.
One video fabricated with A.I. and posted on Instagram by SSN TV, an Iranian state network, ridiculed Mr. Trump’s inability to persuade American allies to provide military help to keep the Strait of Hormuz open to oil tankers. The video includes fakes of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Kim Jong-un of North Korea laughing while listening to a rap song.
“Trump’s inability to do alliance management or coalition building before this war sort of started the fire, and Iran’s disinformation campaigns are just pouring gasoline on that,” said Jonathan Ruhe, an analyst at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, an advocacy organization based in Washington that supports strong ties between the United States and Israel.
The American military has sought to debunk false claims, including another this week that falsely said Iran had downed an F/A-18 fighter jet. Social media platforms have also moved to take down some obviously fabricated videos.
Even so, more continue to circulate, including content that Mr. Trump and other American government accounts have posted using A.I.-generated content and misleading narratives.
Russia and China, which have close relations with Iran and share a disdain for the unchecked use of American military power, have in turn sharply criticized Mr. Trump’s decision to attack. They amplified Iran’s propaganda and produced their own, according to the researchers.
Although neither country has openly provided direct military support to Iran, influence operations in both countries have worked at times in a seemingly coordinated fashion, according to Graphika, a company that analyzes content online.
Its researchers have documented numerous instances in recent weeks when Russian and Chinese state media or known covert influence operations amplified narratives that Iran has pushed — and vice versa. They have highlighted Iran’s ability to block the Strait of Hormuz and claims that the war was started to distract from the release of files related to Mr. Epstein and his crimes.
Iran’s strategies have been extensively cataloged by social media watchdogs since the war began. Researchers at Graphika described a “travel chain of narratives” that spread from node to node: Iranian state TV airs a misleading broadcast, which is picked up by online influencers who then create A.I.-generated media that Chinese- and Russian-linked bot armies help give wide circulation.
The effort, the company said in a note to clients, “likely aims to normalize support for escalation, shifts blame onto external actors and bolsters the perception of Iran as a victim, justifying defensive or retaliatory stances.”
Cyabra, a social media monitoring company, found that Iran had activated hordes of phony social media accounts to push a message of Iranian dominance on the battlefield, earning 145 million views in the first two weeks of the war.
TikTok accounted for 72 percent of those views. Accounts on TikTok with tens of thousands of followers shared A.I.-generated fakes, including dozens of videos of fake attacks on Israel. The company did not respond to a request for comment.
Cyabra also found evidence that the efforts were the result of “clear coordination” and a “structured campaign” by Iran, citing as evidence the use of recurrent content and hashtags, alongside rapid bursts of posts that appeared online over short periods.
“These tactics allowed the network to rapidly flood the information environment and dominate online discussions during key moments of the conflict,” the company wrote.
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz insists that President Donald Trump will be “impeached over and over and over again” if the Democrats win back control of the House in this year’s midterm elections.
And the conservative firebrand and three-term senator from Texas, in a sit-down interview this week with Fox News Digital, argued that if Democrats win both the House and Senate majorities in the midterms, “they will do whatever they can to burn it down,” as he pointed to the agenda passed by Trump and Republicans in Congress.
As they fight to hold their slim majorities in both the House and Senate, Republicans are battling stiff political headwinds as the party in power in the nation’s capital traditionally loses seats in the midterms. And they also face a rough political climate fueled by economic concerns over persistent inflation, an unpopular war with Iran and Trump’s underwater approval ratings.
“I think these midterm elections are unbelievably consequential,” said Cruz, who won re-election in 2024 and isn’t on the ballot this year.
An exterior view of the House side of the U.S. Capitol, on Jan. 12, 2026, in Washington, D.C.(Paul Steinhauser/Fox News)
And the senator pledged, “I am all in fighting for us to win in the midterms, fighting for us to hold the House, fighting for us to hold the Senate and, ideally, grow our majorities in both houses.”
“If the Democrats take the House, no meaningful legislation will pass for the next two years, and we will see the president impeached over and over and over again. And by the way, it won’t matter what for. They will impeach President Trump just because they hate him, because he is Donald Trump,” Cruz claimed.
And he argued, “We will see investigations attacking the administration in every House committee if they take the House.”
Cruz said implications for Trump and the GOP are even worse if Democrats also win back the Senate.
President Donald Trump speaks with the media before boarding Air Force One, Monday, March 23, 2026, at Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Fla.(Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo)
“If they take the Senate, we would see an almost complete halt of Senate confirmations — Cabinet members. I think these radical Democrats would leave cabinet offices empty, leave them vacant, rather than confirm President Trump’s nominees. I think judicial nominations. If the Democrats took the Senate, they would essentially halt judicial nominations,” he claimed.
And he charged, “I think Chuck Schumer and the radicals are so extreme that if they get a majority, they will do whatever they can to burn it down.”
But Democrats argue it’s President Trump who’s lighting the match due to what Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chair Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York called Trump’s “hurtful and harmful agenda.”
“President Trump is creating a toxic agenda that’s harming people, and they’re looking for Democratic leadership to take them out of this nightmare,” Gillibrand argued in an interview last month with Fox News Digital.
And Democratic National Committee Rapid Response Director Kendall Witmer told Fox News Digital: “If Democrats take Congress, the Republicans won’t be able to give massive tax breaks to billionaires, shutter nursing homes and rural hospitals, bomb foreign countries instead of feeding kids, or turn a blind eye to Trump’s open and egregious corruption.”
Cruz heads back home to Texas this weekend, where he’ll address the crowd Saturday in Dallas at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, better known by its acronym CPAC.
But it’s a stop on May 1 in Iowa — the state whose caucuses for half a century have kicked off the race for the Republican presidential nomination — that’s sparking speculation that Cruz is gearing up for a second White House run.
Cruz was runner-up to Trump in the combustible 2016 GOP presidential primaries, and he took a look at making another run in the 2024 cycle before deciding to seek re-election to the Senate.
“There will be plenty of time to make those decisions. I don’t have an announcement for you today,” Cruz answered when asked by Fox News Digital if seriously considering another White House campaign.
Then-Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas speaks during the Road to Majority 2015 convention in the nation’s capitol, on June 18, 2015.(Andrew Harnik/AP Photo)
But he appears to be laying the groundwork for a possible bid, as he positions himself as a conservative alternative to Vice President JD Vance, who is currently the odds on favorite to be Trump’s MAGA and America First heir.
Cruz has grabbed plenty of attention with his clashes with far-right figures, such as Tucker Carlson, and he’s enhanced already strong standing among conservative leaders and donors. And he’s bolstered his grassroots outreach with his popular and widely downloaded podcast, ‘Verdict with Ted Cruz.’
In his Fox Digital interview, Cruz also shared what seemed to be the beginnings of a possible 2028 stump speech.
“I look back to the last year with President Trump in the White House and with a Republican Senate in the house, we have accomplished more in the last year than I’ve seen Congress and the president accomplish in the preceding 13 years that I was here. It is an incredible record of success that we’ve been able to produce. And so my focus is, number one, keep delivering results, keep delivering big wins for the American people,” Cruz said.
Cruz spotlighted that he was “the author of no tax on tips. I wrote that law.” The cuts were one of the tax provisions in the GOP’s massive domestic policy bill that was passed nearly entirely along party lines last summer.
The senator also pointed to the so-called “school choice” provisions in the measure, as well as the Trump Accounts, tax-advantaged, IRA-style investment accounts for children under 18 that were also included in the law.
“Both of those provisions I wrote, both of them are in the bill,” he noted.
And Cruz predicted that in “10, 20, 30 years from now, those two provisions, school choice and the Trump accounts, will be, by an order of magnitude, the most consequential provisions in the entire bill. So we’ve got a record of wins, of victories for the American people to run on.”
Paul Steinhauser is a politics reporter based in the swing state of New Hampshire. He covers the campaign trail from coast to coast.”
Many painted a stark picture of the risks, warning that even limited screen use can dull curiosity, slow learning, and replace real-world play.
Nostalgia ran through the comments, with readers longing for a time when children played outside, built friendships face-to-face, and weren’t exposed to online grooming, bullying, or the constant bombardment of misinformation.
Several highlighted parental responsibility, stressing that young children rely on adults to set limits and model healthy digital habits. But readers were just as quick to call out tech giants, arguing that platforms deliberately design addictive feeds, push harmful content, and profit from exploiting users’ attention and data – and that they must be held accountable.
Across the debate, the message was clear: children need guidance, parents need support, and social media companies must face the consequences of their designs.
Here’s what you had to say:
Not a fair fight
Those who say “just stop using the apps”, miss two important points.
Addiction is different for different people. I had no problem drastically reducing my alcohol consumption, with none of the withdrawal symptoms or cravings that I’d been told to expect. But I know that I’m just lucky and that some people really struggle with it.
Companies like Meta invest many millions of dollars in crafting products that are uniquely addictive. You, as a user, are up against this. It’s hardly a fair fight.
The obsession is not limited to younger people. I have seen older people who keep the phone next to them when they eat in restaurants. That has another reason. They are lonely, have no contact with other people and enjoy receiving and sending messages with jokes and political news. In good old days people called each other but now only send messages. That makes people more lonely.
The only screen a child aged under five should be watching is a cartoon on TV, and even that should be limited.
Social media has now proven to be toxically addictive in an extremely negative way.
Never mind it being banned for those under 16, it should be banned for all of us because I cannot think of one positive attribute it has brought to anyone, including interaction with our friends.
Bring back the good old days before social media, when kids were allowed to be kids, they played outside with their friends instead of being hooked to a tablet, groomed by sick actors, and bullied online.
Back to a place where lies weren’t the truth, hostile states were unable to sway people’s political opinions, people could not be groomed into extremists, and false actors could not convince people online that they were communicating with their banks and persuade them to transfer their entire life savings into a new account.
The vast majority of our country’s leaders know that social media isn’t working for us and is damaging democracy, but who will have the guts to admit that and then completely ban it outright?
As for screen time for under-fives, unless you’re an extremely stressed parent with a lot on your plate, I think the majority are responsible enough to curb their own screen time for young children. If they’re not, then hopefully the advice from the government will help, but what I will not do, as so many do, is blame the parents because nobody else knows what it’s like to walk in their shoes.
Social media is just an example of ‘better’ targeted advertising. Better, in this case, means any method possible to attract and keep attention and gain valuable data for resale. That’s it. Maybe a ‘health warning’ stating this could be inserted into every page to deter the unwary, as the saying goes. Preventing misuse of the above rule is important. Management of the social media companies must face shutdown or imprisonment, not fines.
If you’re a parent who chooses to avoid or drastically limit screen time, or — God forbid — no screen time before two, then you’re on your own. And that’s us. We literally have not met anyone currently raising a young child who is also taking such an ‘extreme’ approach. We’re the mean parents depriving our child of his own tablet, Bluey, the third parent Miss Rachel, and the other heroes.
I’m sad that this is the new normal, and scared for the kind of generation that will come out of this. No need for studies to see the effects of screen time on kids — just look at their faces watching something. There’s a blank stare into nowhere. Nothing is going on inside their heads that is capable of learning things at an amazing pace, and naturally being incredibly curious — screens are like a super slow lobotomy.
I have to admit I’m unconvinced about the “boo-hoo, addiction” claim. It’s hard for kids these days (or often anyone without a limited social circle) to opt out of social media entirely, of course, but I’m unconvinced that’s the same thing as an addiction per se, and it stinks a bit too much of cheapening the concept of actual addiction.
I am, however, very keen to see these huge platforms — which, let’s not forget, make all their money off the back of their users and the data they harvest — forced to take responsibility for the filth and harmful content their algorithms are designed to push our way. If you’ve ever wondered why your Facebook feed went straight from an echo chamber of you and your friends to 80 per cent content you don’t follow and didn’t ask for, it’s largely because of two things: petulance right from the top — “Oh, you don’t want echo chambers, do you? Fine, here’s the other stuff you didn’t sign up for” — and the discovery that people will very often engage more and for longer with content with which they disagree strongly. Enhanced engagement equals greater profit.
This case surely opens a can of worms. Can we sue oil companies and car manufacturers for selling products that contribute to cancer and other diseases? Can we sue petrochemical companies for mass-producing plastics that end up in our food and drinking water? How about suing tobacco companies for selling products directly linked to cancer and heart disease?
While I don’t disagree that these platforms are designed to hook you, I’m not too sure I agree that the platform, as opposed to the content, was a substantial factor in her declining mental health. I do think they need to do more to moderate content. There are so many lies that people blindly believe.
Yes, the platforms are designed to keep you coming back, and the protections and controls are inadequate, but the young person involved in this case started using social media at the age of six and was addicted by the age of nine. There is also a significant question of parental responsibility. What were her parents doing? At six, she is not buying her own phone or iPad. Her parents enabled her behaviour, and apparently stood back and let it happen until it was too late.
Some of the comments have been edited for this article for brevity and clarity.
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