Win And Hold.

A new variety of rice.

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“There are a bunch of newsletters out there I have read. News Items is the one I want to read.” — Jane Metcalfe, Chair of the Board of Directors, Human Immunome Project, co-founder Wired Ventures and Wired magazine.

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1. Americans are the most optimistic they have been in the past seven years about several aspects of the U.S. economy, particularly economic growth and the stock market. Majorities of Americans expect both indicators of economic health to go up this year, while 41% are hopeful that interest rates will fall, exceeding the 35% saying interest rates will rise. The public is divided over whether unemployment will increase (38%) or decrease (38%) -- although at a time of relatively low unemployment, the 21% expecting the rate to hold steady could be viewed as positive. A slim majority of Americans, 52%, predict that inflation will rise, but that is down significantly from recent years. The latest results are based on a Jan. 2-15 survey, conducted shortly before President Donald Trump took office. Except for unemployment, Americans are more positive about these economic indicators than they were in 2019, during Trump’s first term, before the pandemic sent the economy into a brief but deep recession. Americans’ current outlook on the stock market is the most optimistic Gallup has recorded, while the percentages expecting interest rates, unemployment and inflation to worsen are among the lowest. (Source: news.gallup.com)

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2. Dexter Filkins:

In 2022 and 2023, the Army missed its recruitment goal by nearly twenty-five per cent—about fifteen thousand troops a year. It hit the mark last year, but only by reducing the target by more than ten thousand. The Navy has also fared badly: it failed to reach its goals in 2023, then met them in 2024 by filling out the ranks with recruits of a lower standard; nearly half measured below average on an aptitude exam. The Army Reserve hasn’t met its benchmark since 2016, and the ranks are so depleted that active-duty officers have been put in charge of reserve units. Some experts worry that, if the country went to war, many reserve units might be unable to deploy. A U.S. official who works on these issues put it simply: “We can’t get enough people.”

At the end of the Second World War, the American military had twelve million active-duty members. It now has 1.3 million—even though the population has more than doubled, and women are now eligible for armed service. “The U.S. military has been shrinking for thirty years,” Lawrence Wilkerson, a former senior State Department official who leads a task force on the challenges facing the armed services, said. “But its global commitments haven’t changed.” The military operates out of bases in more than fifty countries, and routinely deploys Special Operations forces to about eighty. Now, Wilkerson said, “it’s not clear that the military is large enough anymore for America to uphold its promises.”