The Brief

As the new school year begins, parents, researchers, advocates, and educators are still trying to untangle the academic, mental, and social-emotional consequences of the pandemic.

There is no one answer to the question: Are the kids OK?

Academics with a bird’s-eye view point to numerous statistics that show kids aren’t demonstrating the same academic skills as years prior.

“We're still playing catch up,” said Joseph Bishop, who leads the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools. “We're still trying to understand what students need. We're even trying to find students.”

Individual families are focused on the gains their students made in the last few years and their return to library storytimes and mask-free summer activities.

“It's feeling strange, but also normal,” said Brenda Miller, a parent of three kids in Highland Park. “Should we get used to this or should we not get used to this?”

Bridgette Donald-Blue has been in the classroom for more than 30 years and works at Coliseum Street Elementary School near Leimert Park.

“The kids are a part of society, so, are we OK as a society? The kids are just a reflection of that,” Donald-Blue said. “I feel like they're OK and like the rest of us, we're going to get better. We're going to progress and get better, and move forward.”

LAist asked these and other experts to help us understand where students are today: Are they learning? Have families found the help they need? Are students present? Are they engaged?

What we know about academic recovery 

When Brenda Miller’s youngest daughter started kindergarten in 2021, tests showed she was behind on reading skills, such as correctly identifying the sounds letters and words make.

Miller thinks it’s in part because her daughter missed out on in-person activities such as the library storytimes her older children were able to attend at her age.

“She just kind of got cut off from other kids in a major way,” Miller said.

In fact, most California kids are not reading on grade level.

Less than half of students — 47% — met or exceeded the standards for English/language arts in the first set of California standardized tests given statewide since the start of the pandemic. That’s 4 percentage points lower than in 2019.

The loss of proficiency in math was even larger. Just one-third of students met or exceeded the state's expectations in math — the lowest-ever score since the state started using the test in 2015.

For some parents, the connection between how much their students learned and the pandemic is clear.

“Truthfully, her academic level decreased because it wasn’t the same to be in school at home as it is in person,” said Mirzan Velasquez.

Her daughter, Elizabeth Gomez, is an incoming 7th grader at an East L.A. charter school.

“There's so much stress now,” Elizabeth said, adding that math was particularly challenging last year and she struggled with learning how to subtract and divide decimals.

“We couldn't learn anything like really good when we were in the pandemic and now they're like teaching us way too fast,” she said.

California’s test scores also show American Indian/Alaska Native, Black, Latino, and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander students trailed their Asian and white peers.

“‘Normal’ in education was actually profoundly inequitable,” said Mayra Lara, director of Southern California partnerships and engagement at The Education Trust-West. “What we really saw through the pandemic is the inequities really were deepened.”

Celebrate where students have shown progress

California students were on par with the rest of the country in declining math scores, but did not fall as far behind in reading according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP.

Los Angeles Unified was one of few districts to show an increase in eighth-grade reading skills.

“There is a need for assessment. It lets us know what it is we need to do, how hard we need to work, what we need to work on,” said Los Angeles teacher Donald-Blue. “It's also extremely important to understand that students are working hard and have the students understand we are wildly excited about how hard you've worked.”

“We are here every day to celebrate those small successes and help them build upon what they've learned,” said Los Angeles teacher Bridgette Donald-Blue.

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As a school interventionist, Donald-Blue helps students who’ve fallen behind in math develop a toolkit to answer questions.

At the end of last year, one student shared that she was most proud “that she knows how to answer questions now.”

“That was huge,” said Donald-Blue, a 2023 California Teacher of the Year. “It's not always about getting the correct answer each and every time, but if she has a strategy and a knowledge of how to answer, then that means she will persevere.”

Miller, in Highland Park, said her daughter’s teachers kept them updated on her progress and sent home lists of words to practice sounding out together.

Miller said a surprising incentive was her older siblings’ deck-building Harry Potter game. Improving her literacy skills meant she could read the cards and play with the big kids.

“Finding ways for her that don't feel like a chore, but that make it fun and meeting her where she is, is important,” Miller said. And by the time she finished first grade, she’d caught up to her peers.

Understand where your child is now

But most students who fell behind during the pandemic have not caught up yet. The strategies to help students recover vary from district to district and often rely on federal funding that runs out next fall.

"There's this kind of fantasy that people have like, ‘Oh, well, we'll just do better instruction during the school day. We'll accelerate kids' learning,'" said Morgan Polikoff, an associate professor at USC’s Rossier School of Education. "If we knew how to do that, we would have done it already."

Instead, researchers and policymakers point to frequent, one-on-one tutoring as an effective way to help students catch up. Los Angeles Unified has tried — and struggled— to implement such a program.

Another option is to extend the school year. Los Angeles Unified administration and the teachers union squabbled over the addition of four optional days of school to last year’s calendar. Each of the next two school years in the district will include three voluntary instructional days.

“We must recognize that the amount of additional schooling required to catch students up cannot be compressed into a one-shot intervention or single school year,” wrote researchers from NWEA, a nonprofit that creates standardized tests, in a recent policy brief about pandemic recovery.

NWEA estimated it will take the average student more than four months of additional schooling in reading and math to catch up to pre-pandemic levels.

Eric Nuñez and his daughter Emilia check out the backpacks at a resource fair at the East L.A. Civic Center. Families could also get food and information about educational and mental health programs.

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At the start of school last year, public schools reported half of their students were at grade level, but not all families are getting the message, Polikoff said. A survey of families in California and nationwide this summer found only a quarter of families say their child was identified as needing help or support in school.

“If parents just don't think that kids are really struggling, they're just not likely to opt in,” Polikoff said.

Seek help in and outside of school

The parents that seemed the most comfortable about how their kids were doing in school told LAist they sought out additional resources.

L.A. mom Gabriela Heredia enrolled her daughter in a summer program ahead of her freshman year of high school. Her son, who is a special education student, goes to a socialization program at a community-based organization.

At a recent backpack giveaway at the East L.A. Civic Center, she got information about community mental health resources and youth services, and her kids looked through free comic books.

“I really keep them busy,” Heredia said. “I look for programs aside from the school.”

Gabriel Gomez, Elizabeth’s dad, said parents are key partners in their kids’ schooling.

“I educate her to pay attention in school,” Gomez said. “I educate her to do homework, to read, to do everything that the teacher is telling her to do.”

Gomez also encourages his daughter to ask questions in class.

“If you see the teacher gets mad, you say, ‘I'm just trying to learn,'’’ Gomez said.

Get students to school 

Data shows that in the three years since the start of the pandemic, fewer students consistently attend school.

Several parents LAist talked to said non-COVID illnesses caused their children to miss so much school they received letters about truancy in the mail last year.

About 30% of California students in grades K-8 were chronically absent during the 2021-2022 school year— triple the rate of students who missed at least 10% of school before the pandemic.

The rates of American Indian, Alaska Native, Black, Latinx, and Pacific Islander students who missed more than 10% of school were even higher.

“Chronic absence is usually a symptom of a lot of things,” UCLA’s Bishop said. “It's not usually because students don't want to come to school. It's that they're struggling.”

For instance:

• Transportation to — and from — school is one barrier. California schools are not required to bus students and until last year hadn’t increased transportation funding levels in more than four decades. 
• A lack of access to health care and meaningful relationships with school staff also contributed to rising absenteeism before the pandemic.
• Some students also say they’re not going to school out of concern for their safety.

In 2021, 9% of high school students told the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention they didn’t go to school because they felt unsafe at or going to and from class. American Indian, Black, and Latinx students were most likely to skip school, citing safety concerns. 

Bishop said fears of gun violence play a role, but that students also equate safety to their ability to be heard and ask questions like “Do I feel like my peers and my teachers will listen to me?”

Students who miss a lot of school can fall behind and are more likely to drop out. Students in California school districts with larger increases in chronic absenteeism scored worse on the state’s standardized English/language arts and math tests, according to a recent analysis from the Public Policy Institute of California.

Families can also be penalized for multiple unexcused absences. Students can lose access to extracurricular activities and parents can be fined.

“Punitive responses are unlikely to improve attendance when absences occur for reasons beyond the control of the student and their family,” wrote researchers at Policy Analysis for California Education, a consortium of research universities.

Gabriela Heredia, right, said aside from a few people wearing masks, her son and daughter's parent orientation and open houses felt "pretty normal and the same like before."

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Gabriel Gomez, left, said he he saw a drastic change in his daughter's education during the pandemic, but that he's hopeful the future will be better. "[A] parent has to get involved and say, 'What are you doing? Are you doing your homework? Are you reading? Are you doing all the things that the teacher is telling you?" Gomez said.

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Researchers have also found several low-cost strategies to engage parents in the effort to get students to school.

A Harvard study found students missed fewer days when their families received several letters a year about the importance of attending school.

Other approaches are more high-touch. During the pandemic, some educators visited students at home and continuing that work could help bring kids back to school.

“That kind of wall-less classroom or school became a reality in a lot of places,” Bishop said. “It's really hard to keep up that practice, but I think it is ... still very powerful.”

Sort through a lot of emotions

It’s a little trickier to pick one metric that represents students’ mental health and its impact on how they learn.

“If I had a magic wand, the thing that I would want to know is how many school days are missed because of a mental health issue,” said Lishaun Francis, senior director of behavioral health at advocacy group Children Now. “We're not really able to easily understand that connection.”

But here’s what we do know:

Young people were experiencing increased feelings of sadness and hopelessness, and attempting suicide even before the pandemic started.

The percentage of students who reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness increased 40% between 2009 and 2019, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC has surveyed high school students about their mental health since 1991. The most recent survey, and the first since the start of the pandemic, was completed in 2021. It found:

• 42% of students reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in the last year. 
• Female, LGBTQ+, Latinx and Hispanic high schoolers were among the most likely to feel so sad or hopeless they stopped participating in their usual activities. 
• 22% of students seriously considered suicide. 

LGBTQ+ students often reported the highest percentages of mental distress.

• 69% reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness. 
• 37% made a suicide plan, more than twice the percentage of their peers overall. 

Nicole Stelter, who oversees behavioral health care at Blue Shield of California, said part of the increase may be due to better awareness of mental health during the pandemic.

“A lot of people recognize that we were going through this real, very collective stressor,” Stelter said. “It opened up that door for more dialogue.”

The health plan recently surveyed youth 14-25 nationwide this summer; nearly 9 in 10 respondents regularly felt stressed, overwhelmed, anxious, unmotivated, lonely, or panicked.

Students' feelings are also changing how they show up at school each day.

“We have eighth graders who are running through the halls, pushing and shoving at the same rate you would expect to see from fifth or sixth graders,” said Terrence, a middle school administrator in Westchester who called into LAist 89.3's public affairs show AirTalk earlier this week.

Donald-Blue taught fourth grade at Coliseum St. Elementary during the first year of in-person school.

“There were a lot of tears,” Donald-Blue said. Many children asked her to sit next to them so they could complete their work.

Donald-Blue tailored her lessons to the moment. For example, by changing journal prompts to focus more on feelings.

“We need to have them at grade level,” Donald-Blue said. “But we also need them to be whole emotionally.”

Pasadena mom Anne Marie Molina has noticed since the pandemic her two youngest children, who are 8 and 10, often pepper her with questions. For example, whether their car will flip over in an accident, and, after a lice scare at their school, whether bugs will eat their scalps.

“It seems like it's all stemming from the same place of anxiety and fear of unknown danger,” Molina said.

She tries to reassure them with facts and is honest about what she doesn’t know, but “it feels so heavy every time they talk about all these disastrous possibilities.”

Blue Shield’s survey also found that more than three-quarters of youth say they’ve talked to someone about their mental and emotional health in the last year. Stelter said it’s a positive sign if kids are willing to talk to their parents, or another trusted adult, about what’s bothering them.

“You cannot take care of yourself in a vacuum,” Stelter said.

Find ways to grow confidence

The caveat is that it’s often challenging for families to access mental health services.

“California's problem has always been that they're not widespread and readily available for every child,” Francis said. For example, more than two-thirds of California adolescents who said they experienced a major depressive episode did not receive treatment, according to a study from the California Health Care Foundation.

Molina said she waited almost a year for her son, who has autism, to be connected with a therapist who is helping him improve his social skills.

He also recently started swim lessons with an instructor familiar with autism. Molina said the weight of the water comforts him and after only a month-and-a half he’s now confident in the deep end of the pool. Though he often avoids certain foods, her son's now curious about seafood.

“The fact that he's building up his self-esteem to try different things that he's uncomfortable with? He's really shooting for the stars,” Molina said. “It does make me extremely proud.”

Illustration by Assistant Engagement Producer Adriana Pera.

The 1994 World Cup kicked off with a sold-out match. On a scorching afternoon in Chicago, some 63,000 spectators — including then-President Bill Clinton and Oprah Winfrey — were packed like sardines at Soldier Field to watch Germany vs. Bolivia. Their cheers and boos, as loud as thunder.

Today, it's easy to imagine a World Cup game drawing such American fanfare. But back then, it was a much different story.

"It was a big question as to how the U.S. would embrace it. Would people come to the games?" Mike Sorber, who played for the U.S. Men's National Team in 1994, told NPR.

Ahead of the 1994 World Cup, most Americans were unaware that the U.S. would be hosting the tournament. A survey from the time ranked soccer 67th among the nation's favorite sports (behind tractor pulling).

Despite this, the 1994 World Cup — the first held in the U.S. — took a surprising turn. Game after game, stadiums were filled to capacity, packed not only with tourists and die-hard fans but also with soccer novices who came out of curiosity and because tickets were relatively affordable, according to soccer historians.

Mike Sorber plays during an exhibition game at the Rose Bowl in 1994.

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" I think all the naysayers were surprised," said Sorber, who is currently an assistant coach for Major League Soccer's New York Red Bulls. "The atmosphere was electric. It was like a big party."

Soccer's momentum in the U.S. has only been growing since then, fueled by the launch of Major League Soccer and the success of the U.S. Women's National Team. When the World Cup returns to the U.S. in June, it will be greeted by a larger and more passionate fanbase than ever before.

How exactly did a sport that struggled to gain traction for decades go on to break the World Cup's record for largest attendance and win over Americans' hearts? To answer that, NPR spoke to Sorber, along with soccer journalists and fans, about the breakthrough World Cup.

Why did it take so long for the U.S. to embrace soccer?

How far back the soccer tradition in the U.S. goes depends on whom you ask and where they're from.

Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis and pockets of New York, New Jersey and New England all have deep soccer roots — often brought by European immigrants in the 19th century, according to Brian D. Bunk, who teaches the history of sports at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

As a result, the sport was largely associated with working-class and immigrant communities, Bunk added. Some also dismissed soccer over the perception that it lacked the physicality of sports like American football.

Colombian soccer fans wave their country's flag during the "Chicago Welcomes the World Cup" parade on June 15, 1994.

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"The argument that was often made against soccer is that it was an inferior form of football," Bunk said.

There were brief bursts of excitement for the sport in the late 20th century — such as when legendary Brazilian player Pelé came to play in the U.S. in the late 1970s — but they never lasted long.

By the 1980s, the future of soccer in the U.S. looked bleak. The North American Soccer League, which began in 1968, folded after the 1984 season. American soccer officials hoped a World Cup tournament at home could resuscitate interest.

" Let's face it: You need to have the product in front of you to see what the heck this is all about," said Michael Lewis, who has covered soccer for five decades. He's the editor of Front Row Soccer, a website that follows the soccer scene in New York and New Jersey.

FIFA also saw an opportunity. Soccer's global governing body viewed the U.S. "as the last and largest uncracked market for its sport," Pete Davies, who has written extensively about sports, told NPR's Fresh Air in 1994.

"And it want[ed] to get into that market," he added.

What led to the tournament's success in 1994? 

What the U.S. lacked in soccer prowess, it made up for with its ability to put on a massive sporting event (thanks to the nation's football stadiums and experience hosting the Olympics) — and a fun one at that.

" We have the sporting infrastructure — the stadiums — we have the hotels, the restaurants, the transportation systems," said Bunk, of the University of Massachusetts. "And so all of that stuff meant that the World Cup could go very smoothly."

Americans also proved they were up for a good time — and World Cup fans knew how to bring the party. Drums, whistles, trumpets, singing, dancing and face paint were the hallmarks of a World Cup game.

A Mexican fan, his face painted with Mexico's national colors, cheers in the stands at the Citrus Bowl stadium in Orlando, Fla., on June 24, 1994, prior to the start of the World Cup match between Mexico and Ireland.

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A soccer fan supporting Argentina plays a drum at the World Cup match between Argentina and Nigeria at Foxboro Stadium in Massachusetts in June 1994.

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That's what Kevin Tallec Marston, a research fellow at the International Centre for Sports Studies in Switzerland, remembers most vividly from the Belgium vs. Saudi Arabia match in Washington, D.C., which he attended as a teenager.

"It was not the kind of fandom that Americans would associate with going to an NBA game, going to an NFL game," he said. "Seeing these people from all around the world with their own cultures, their own chants, their own songs, their own instruments."

Univision played a major role in attracting both Spanish- and non-Spanish-speaking viewers alike, especially through World Cup announcer Andrés Cantor and his iconic "Goooooooooool!"

"It created this sort of mythical element of what it was to watch the World Cup," said Tallec Marston, who, along with Front Row Soccer's Lewis, is a board member of the Society for American Soccer History.

But perhaps what electrified Americans most was the strong performance of the U.S. Men's National Team. It started with a hard-fought 1-1 tie with Switzerland, followed by a stunning 2-1 upset over powerhouse Colombia. (The victory was later marred by tragedy: Colombian defender Andrés Escobar, who had accidentally knocked the ball into his own team's net, was shot and killed shortly after returning home.)

That match was the first World Cup win for the U.S. men's team since 1950. The team's victory was witnessed by more than 93,000 fans at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.

Sorber, a midfielder in the starting lineup, said he had played for large crowds before, but never for an audience so enthralled by the U.S. team. It was "euphoria," he said.

" All of a sudden, it really opened the eyes to the whole United States … that wow, this is what the future of soccer could be."

Steve Davis covered the 1994 games as a young sports reporter for The Dallas Morning News. "It sort of lit a fire under people," he said. "I would think some Americans became soccer fans that day."

The U.S. team went on to lose to Romania 1-0 and then to Brazil 1-0. Although the U.S. didn't win, Sorber said, the support and energy from American fans during those matches felt like a victory.

" You had a huge turnout," he said. "So again, that was a big moment in U.S. soccer history … to reestablish soccer, to build that foundation and get more awareness for the U.S. national team."

Post-1994

In total, over 3.5 million people attended the 1994 World Cup — the largest attendance in FIFA history to this day. Despite its success, soccer's American fanbase didn't grow overnight.

"Soccer's growth isn't linear," writer Davis said.

Two years later, the professional Major League Soccer (MLS) launched. Around that time, FIFA's World Cup video game franchise helped introduce soccer to an even broader audience. All the while, the U.S. Women's National Team emerged as a dominating force and accelerated the rise of women's soccer globally. Across the U.S., youth soccer exploded in popularity.

Brandi Chastain celebrates after kicking the winning penalty kick at the 1999 women's World Cup final against China on July 10, 1999.

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The arrival of international superstars to MLS, like David Beckham in 2007 and Lionel Messi in 2023, added fire to the nation's passion for the sport. MLS, which began with 10 teams, has since expanded to 30 clubs.

Together, these moments helped transform the soccer landscape in the United States. The 2022 World Cup in Qatar drew an average of 4.7 million American viewers per game, according to Nielsen. Each year, millions of Americans watch England's Premier League matches on TV and streaming platforms.

When it comes to America's favorite sports, soccer now ranks third, surpassing baseball, according to Ampere Analysis, a data firm focused on entertainment industries.

Davis, who is now the director of legacy programs for the North Texas FIFA World Cup Organizing Committee, said it's validating to see the sport he has loved and played since childhood resonate with more people at home.

"I did have some faith that it was going to grow," he said. "But I would be lying if I said I thought we'd be here in 2026, seeing how big it's become."

The challenges ahead 

Although this isn't the first time that the U.S. has hosted the World Cup, the upcoming tournament is expected to be vastly different.

"One of the key aspects of the '94 World Cup was taking football to the new horizon," said Tallec Marston, who co-wrote Inventing the Boston Game. "So it'll be interesting because we are no longer in a new frontier."

Hosted by the U.S., Canada and Mexico, this year's competition will introduce more teams and matches than ever before. It will also return to a far more diverse United States. In 1994, about 8% of the country's population was foreign-born. As of 2025, immigrants make up 15% of the nation.

Two men walk past a mural of a soccer player in Guadalajara, Mexico, on April 29. Mexico will co-host the biggest World Cup in history, along with the United States and Canada, from June 11 to July 19.

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"You're going to have a representation of countries and nations that we will have never seen before. And so that will be very exciting to see," Tallec Marston said.

The current U.S. Men's National Team has far more experience on the World Cup stage compared with the 1994 team. Since then, the team has qualified for every World Cup except one, in 2018. There's much excitement for this group of young players, many of whom are playing for top European clubs.

The controversies leading up to the games are also quite different. In 1994, the uncertainty was whether many Americans would attend the matches. This year, the question is whether they will be able to afford to — with dynamic pricing driving ticket costs sky-high.

The tournament will also take place during a politically volatile period in the United States. The ongoing war with Iran has led to questions about whether the Iranian team will participate.

The Trump administration's travel restrictions and harsh immigration crackdown have also sparked debate as to how many tourists will feel comfortable traveling to the United States. The administration is also requiring a bond of up to $15,000 for travelers from 50 countries that it deemed as having immigration risk factors, such as high overstay rates and screening and vetting deficiencies. Five nations that qualified for the World Cup — Algeria, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Tunisia and Cape Verde — are on the list.

For all these reasons, Lewis, who wrote Around the World Cup in 40 Years, about his experience covering eight men's World Cups, expects that "there'll be magic, but there'll be headaches too."

" I think the games themselves should be exciting and fun," he said. However, putting the problems to rest, Lewis added, will be "easier said than done."
Copyright 2026 NPR

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On March 1, the day after U.S. forces bombed Iran and began a war that's now more than nine weeks long, President Donald Trump posted 30 times on Truth Social.

Just after midnight, he posted about the bombing campaign, including a threat to retaliate if Iran itself retaliated ("THEY BETTER NOT DO THAT").

But he soon had a lot more on his mind; mid-morning, he posted a video portraying Senator Mitch McConnell as the floppy, deceased Bernie from Weekend at Bernie's.

He posted a Tiktok video praising his State of the Union — a speech he had given five days prior — then reposted that video, along with a screenshot of a post on the social media site X. Just after noon, he posted an update on the war ("we have destroyed and sunk 9 Iranian Naval Ships, some of them relatively large and important"). Mid-afternoon, he posted a string of Trump-friendly news coverage, including a New York Post article from September 2024 about how Lady Gaga's father endorsed Trump in the presidential race. Shortly thereafter, in the span of five minutes, he posted 10 times, all of them lists of screenshots of praise from X users for his State of the Union address. He later posted a video update about the war in Iran, followed by a video marked as being from an Instagram user called @truthaboutfluoride, purporting to show San Francisco as a run-down city filled with poverty.

During his first presidential campaign, Trump's constant stream of seemingly unvetted tweets was a sideshow that quickly became inescapable — the boasts, insults, and lies at times hijacked news cycles. Once he was elected, they presented a new frontier in American politics: a real-time view into a president's mind.

Ten years, one Twitter ejection, one Twitter return, and a move to Truth Social later, Trump's posts still make news — like when he announces a war or tries to pick a fight with the pope — but for many have become the background noise of American politics.

The president of the United States is now communicating with the public sometimes dozens of times a day on a social media platform that he himself created, and most Americans (and perhaps even journalists) never see most of those posts. Of course, most of those posts are not individually newsworthy. But looking at them together provides a picture of exactly what, in the aggregate, the president of the United States is thinking about and saying to the world at all hours.

To try to grasp that, NPR analyzed the first four months of Trump's Truth Social posts this year. What emerged is a portrait of an extremely online president with scattered focus — who, even while he dealt with fallout from his policies such as war in Iran and immigration enforcement in Minneapolis, was also busy insulting his critics, posting pictures of his proposed ballroom, and continuing to insist on the lie that he won the 2020 election. The president also has unorthodox posting habits that illustrate that, even as arguably the most powerful person on earth, he remains focused on how he is seen.

What the president is posting about

To quantitatively analyze the president's posts, NPR compiled the president's first four months of posts, using a data scraper maintained by CNN. We then classified each post based on its topic (tariffs, the war in Iran, Greenland) and the type of post it was (sharing a news story, reposting someone else, making a threat).

Trump posted 2,249 times in the first four months of 2026, an average of just under 19 posts per day.

The most common topic Trump posted about – at about 14% of his posts – was 2026 elections. These posts — more than 300 of them — consist largely of either candidate endorsements or posts touting a Trump-backed candidate's win.

However, Trump at times did not give a simple endorsement, instead adding attacks on an endorsee's opponents. For example, in endorsing Republican candidates for the Indiana state Senate, the posts became paragraph-long screeds as Trump attacked sitting senators as "RINOs" (Republicans in name only) if they voted against a Trump-backed redistricting plan.

The next most common topics after elections were Iran (247 posts) and the economy (177). He also posted dozens of times about alleged fraud in Minnesota's safety net programs, the SAVE Act, and his belief that the justice system was weaponized against him.

To the degree that his posts measure what he's thinking about, the president's social media feed suggests he is as preoccupied — or even more so — with his personal projects and vendettas than he is with pressing policy matters.

President Trump posted about the 2020 election 71 times in the first four months of 2026, more than he posted even about tariffs (57 times — all of which we coded as a subset of posts about the economy). Those 2020 election posts all promoted the lie that via massive voter fraud or other malfeasance, Joe Biden stole that election.

Trump posted 68 times about his various Washington, D.C., building projects, including his White House ballroom and a proposed massive arch across the Potomac near Arlington National Cemetery. That's slightly more than he posted about Venezuela, more than he posted about the SAVE Act he's promoting, and more than he posted about protesters and federal agents in Minneapolis, including federal agents killing two U.S. citizens.

He posted more than six times as often (105) about his various legal grievances than he did about healthcare policy (17).

Also notable are the topics that get little attention. While tariffs and the war in Iran do affect, for example, the farm economy, Trump posted just four times specifically about American farming during the first four months of the year — less than half as many times as he posted (nine times) about his anger at comedian Bill Maher.

As for the top types of posts, the largest category – at just under one-quarter of his posts – are social media reshares. These take several formats — some are screenshots of posts from X, and others are videos reposted from other social media sites, such as TikTok.

This emphasizes the technological differences between now and Trump's first term.

Near the end of his first term, the videos Trump posted were largely from Fox News or other right-leaning news outlets, or they were videos produced by the White House.

Now, there's an endless array of TikTok and Instagram videos and memes the president can repost, many of them from amateurs or generated by AI. Some have been outright offensive, as when he posted a racist video that depicted former President Obama and Michelle Obama as apes. The White House initially defended the video, with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt telling reporters, "Please stop the fake outrage." Trump later said he hadn't seen the full video, telling reporters, "I looked at the beginning of it. It was fine." He did not apologize, and the post was later deleted.

Other posts have promoted conspiracy theories, as with a video that baselessly proposed that Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was involved in the 2025 killing of Minnesota Democratic State Rep. Melissa Hortman.

Occasionally, those videos have nothing to do with current events, or even Trump, but are the kind of inane posts littering many people's Facebook feeds. Around 11 p.m. one night in February, Trump posted a TikTok video of a person's pet corgi reacting to a can of Reddi-wip. A minute later, he reposted that video along with a screenshot of a supporter's X post ("Good Night Patriot Friends!"). A minute after that, he posted a 15-second video of Bruce Lee fighting, which he similarly reposted alongside another X screenshot seconds later.

Reposting material from X

This posting-then-reposting pattern is one of the more notable oddities of the president's Truth Social posts. It appears to be a makeshift way of reposting things from X. The president regularly grabs, for example, a video someone else has posted on X, posts it without attribution on Truth Social, then immediately quote-posts his own post along with a screenshot of the original X post.

Some of these reposts are about current events, but they cover many other topics as well – they include a variety of amateur-made videos praising Trump, attacking his enemies, and (incorrectly) concurring with his false claim that he in fact won the 2020 election. In recent months, Trump has reposted a video compilation of moments with his grandkids, a video about his loyalty to Michael Jackson over the years, a montage of Trump moments set to a choral arrangement of "Like a Prayer," and an apparently AI-generated video of Trump playing hockey against Canadian hockey players – and punching the bejeezus out of one of them.

The pattern of snagging content from X highlights two important facts about Truth Social.

One is that X appears to dwarf it in size. The Center for Campaign Innovation, a right-leaning political strategy organization, provided NPR with polling from around the 2024 election, finding that only 6% of people used Truth Social for news on even a weekly basis. That's compared to 30% who used X.

Trump may therefore go to X to get material because there are just more users there, and especially more big names like politicians, news organizations, and MAGA influencers.

Secondly, Truth Social's smaller size means it serves a different purpose for Trump than Twitter ever did, before Trump was kicked off of the platform after the January 6 riot. (His account was eventually reinstated.)

"I think really the best way to understand it is this is where you get your marching orders if you're MAGA," said Eric James Wilson, a Republican strategist and executive director of the Center for Campaign Innovation. "And too, it is direct communication from him, in the way that maybe a statement, an administration policy or a press release would have to go through multiple layers of, if not revisions, certainly approvals."

Leavitt told NPR in a statement that Truth Social is "the most powerful and popular social media platform in the world because it serves as President Trump's authentic voice."

One restriction has kept Trump from simply posting on X when he wants a bigger audience – according to details about a licensing agreement in a 2023 SEC filing, he is "generally obligated to make any social media post on TruthSocial and may not make the same post on another social media site for 6 hours." This gives the site "limited time to benefit from" his postings.

NPR emailed Truth Social's press team to check if this agreement is still in effect, but the email bounced back.

It's not entirely clear how many of the posts on the president's Truth Social account come directly from him. Leavitt also told NPR that some posts are made by staffers.

"President Trump posts at all hours because he is constantly working, but sometimes these posts are also published by staff who are simply catching up on the many articles and reading materials President Trump approves the day prior," she said in another statement.

It's not just news articles that the White House says Trump isn't personally posting; after backlash to the racist video depicting the Obamas the White House also said a staffer "erroneously" posted the video.

Old news

One of the most telling indicators of what's on Trump's mind can be found in the news articles he posts — more than 1 in 5 of the president's social media posts in the first four months of this year were news articles, op-eds, and videos. Those news pieces almost uniformly praise the president or promote administration-friendly storylines, including persecuting his perceived enemies.

On March 29, in a span of six minutes, his account posted 10 news pieces about criminal referrals against New York Attorney General Letitia James, who prosecuted Trump in a civil business fraud case.

A substantial number of the news stories Trump's account posts are not current. At least 1 in 4 of the news stories posted were more than 10 days old at the time he posted them (the dates of some TV news clips could not be easily verified).

In some cases, such as the article about Lady Gaga's father, the news pieces were months old. At other times, he posted several older articles in rapid succession about the same event. On March 16, Trump posted three January articles in a row about the crowd at the College Football National Championship game cheering for him.

Leavitt told NPR in a statement: "The President is extraordinarily well read, and he likes to share stories or content that he finds interesting on his account."

The problem with bluster

In the first four months of the year, President Trump made 98 posts we classified as "announcements" — which we defined as the president purporting to give the public new information.

These covered a range of topics — there was the video announcing the U.S. had bombed Iran. There was the announcement of a new DHS secretary nominee — Markwayne Mullin. There were announcements about disaster aid to states affected by a massive winter storm. There were notifications of upcoming interviews or press conferences. Not all of these announcement posts turned out to be accurate, however, as with an April 17 post declaring the Strait of Hormuz to be "COMPLETELY OPEN AND READY FOR BUSINESS AND FULL PASSAGE."

He also made 29 posts we classified as "threats." These range from the specific ("If Canada makes a deal with China, it will immediately be hit with a 100% Tariff") to the vague ("I wonder what would happen if we 'finished off' what's left of the Iranian Terror State"). The president hasn't followed through on all of these threats with concrete action.

Altogether, that's 127 of Trump's most newsmaking posts — around one per day. Those posts have introduced an unprecedented unpredictability into presidential policymaking. His tariff policy posts, for example, have created widespread uncertainty in the business world.

This can make life in a Trump White House particularly difficult, especially in the realm of foreign policy. John Bolton, who served as National Security Advisor in Trump's first term, tells a story about Trump's chaotic posts.

"My deputy was there when [Trump] was shown — this is in 2019 — overhead pictures of a failed Iranian missile launch," Bolton says. "And he said to the intelligence briefer, can I keep this picture? And she said, 'Well, yes, but it's very sensitive, Mr. President.' He said, 'Okay.' And about 20 minutes after they left, he tweeted the picture out with some of the markings still on the picture."

As NPR later reported, the photo was revealed to be classified. Experts told NPR that tweeting the picture potentially helped America's adversaries, including Iran and Russia, because it revealed U.S. satellite capabilities.

Since his time in the first Trump administration, Bolton has been willing to sharply criticize the president. In October, the Trump Department of Justice obtained indictments against Bolton on 18 charges alleging that he unlawfully retained and transmitted classified documents. Bolton pleaded not guilty.

Bolton sees Trump tweeting the picture as part of a larger pattern: to attempt maximum bluster and in the process reveal more than he intends to. Trump's recent posts about the war in Iran are another example.

"The very ferocity of his tweets or the outrage you can hear just tell the Iranians 'If we just stay, if we just be patient a little while longer, he's just going to flip right out entirely, and he wants out. So we're going to drag it out and get every concession we can from him,'" Bolton said. "I don't understand why he can't see that."

Pundits have theorized that with his threatening posts about Iran, President Trump is practicing the "madman theory" of foreign relations. H.R. Haldeman, who served as chief of staff to President Nixon wrote that Nixon's strategy was to make the U.S.S.R. and the government in North Vietnam think that the fervently anticommunist president was willing to go to even extreme lengths, such as dropping a nuclear bomb, to end the Vietnam War.

"Nixon had credibility. He was strongly anti-communist," Bolton said, adding that communist adversaries might have thought, "Good God, that guy is crazy enough that he would drop a nuclear weapon."

"Just being generically crazy does not give you an advantage," Bolton added.

A president's id on display

To some degree, the president's posting can be seen as an extension of his communications strategy of simply communicating a lot. Trump regularly does lengthy press gaggles in the Oval Office, and he also has the unprecedented habit of fielding calls directly from reporters who have his phone number.

However, with posts, unlike interviews, the president is not having a conversation. Rather than being prompted by a reporter, the president in his posts seemingly reveals what is on his mind at any given time. On April 2, the day he announced that Pam Bondi would be leaving her post as attorney general, President Trump was also thinking about Bruce Springsteen. He insulted the singer in two posts shared at 7:58 a.m. and 9:21 p.m. that day.

Indeed, the president's insults and tirades have become so commonplace that they at times don't get much notice. Some of these posts go on at length. On April 9, he wrote a more than 2,700-character post that insulted a series of right-wing commentators but also veered into the topics of Iran, election results, media outlets he dislikes, and his approval rating.

This kind of naked fury from the president of the United States toward his perceived opponents ("NUT JOBS," "TROUBLEMAKERS," "low IQs," "nasty") might once have made headlines.

In 2026, it's a Thursday.

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Truth Social

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Screenshot by NPR

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NPR also analyzed the length of Trump's posts this year through the end of April. He wrote 93 posts of 1,500 characters or more in that time period, accounting for around 4% of all his posts. About half of those are endorsements, in which the president praises his chosen candidates and at times rails against the opponent ("DEFEAT Third Rate Congressman Thomas Massie, a Weak and Pathetic RINO"). Many of these endorsements appear to be variations on boilerplate language as Trump endorses a string of candidates in a short timeframe.

The rest of these long posts are anything but boilerplate – they are often attacks ("Pope Leo is WEAK ON CRIME") and occasionally announcements ("I am nominating Kevin Warsh to be the CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD OF GOVERNORS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM").

Trump had more of those ultra-long posts in April than in any other month. And if you take out endorsements, it's even more stark. In April, Trump posted 22 extra-long posts about things other than endorsements — slamming Supreme Court justices, repeatedly promoting his ballroom, and railing against particular media outlets. That's twice as many such posts, or more, as he had in any other month.

To the degree, then, that the length of his posts correlates to Trump's anger, or perhaps enthusiasm, April was a particularly enthusiastic month for the president.

The president's Truth Social account primarily gets wide attention when the president either makes an announcement or writes something particularly coarse or offensive.

That was the case on Easter morning this year, at around 8:00 a.m., when President Trump threatened Iran.

"Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F*****' Strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah," he wrote.

A threat of massive violence — and potentially war crimes — along with an obscenity and a tongue-in-cheek praise to Allah, all on one of Christianity's holiest days, together were stunning choices for a president whose core supporters are white evangelical Christians.

In a recent NPR focus group of Georgia swing voters — people who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2024 — no one reacted positively to that post. Participants were identified by their first names as a condition of their participation. One voter named Joe said that posts like that one inspire fear.

"It's not presidential. They're supposed to be doing diplomatic negotiations. You know, he's the agent of chaos when it comes to this kind of thing. It just – it scares me," he said. "He's a loose cannon, in my opinion, when it comes to this kind of stuff."

Brent Jones contributed to this report.

Copyright 2026 NPR

A swarm of earthquakes has hit the Imperial Valley city of Brawley, the most significant ranging in magnitude from 2 to 4.7 — with scores more registering at lower magnitudes.

In all, the U.S. Geological Survey has reported some 355 quakes over the past day. At least 40 quakes strong enough to make the 2.0 and higher magnitude list are among those.

No injuries or significant damage have been reported. A ShakeAlert was issued for the 4.7 magnitude quake. The early warning system alerts nearby residents to prepare, warning that strong shaking will start imminently.

Area residents report taking the quakes in stride.

"It felt all right. We were having a good day," Dave Ramirez, who works at a local truck stop, told LAist. " Nothing really crazy."

Here's a look at how earthquake magnitudes compare.

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Courtesy Incorporated Research Institutes for Seismology, IRIS.

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What we know so far

The first, a magnitude 3.4, struck around 4 p.m. Saturday. The latest was a magnitude 2.9 that hit at 4 a.m. Sunday.

The biggest so far was a magnitude 4.7 that rattled the area shortly after midnight Sunday.

Brawley, about 115 miles east of San Diego, says in a statement that it "continues closely monitoring ongoing earthquake activity and aftershocks affecting the region."

The jolts are concentrated around the Brawley Fault Zone, an area known for frequent earthquake swarms connecting the Imperial and San Andreas faults.

Here's what the activity looks like on a seismogram

Listen to our podcast to get ready:

A Frontier Airlines plane bound for Los Angeles on Friday night struck and killed a pedestrian who was crossing the runway, according to Denver International Airport.

The collision happened around 11:19 p.m. local time as the aircraft prepared to take off to California.

"Smoke was reported in the cabin and the pilots aborted takeoff," Frontier said in a statement.

"Passengers were then safely evacuated via slides as a matter of precaution."

The airline said it was "deeply saddened" by the event.

ABC News reported that the person struck was "at least partially consumed" by one of the craft's engines, leading to a brief fire.

Denver International said the person was not believed to have been an onsite worker.

"DEN can confirm the pedestrian jumped the perimeter fence and was hit just two minutes later while crossing the runway," the airport said in a statement.

"The pedestrian is deceased, and is not believed to be an employee of the airport nor have they been identified. The airport has examined the fenceline and found it to be intact."

The airport said 12 people reported minor injuries, with five of those individuals taken to local hospitals for treatment.

The Airbus A321 was at the time carrying 224 passengers and seven crew members. Airport authorities said the majority of those passengers have since taken off for Los Angeles on a new Frontier flight.
Copyright 2026 NPR