unfavourable. For example, the sermon that contained the passage “if you can vote for Kamala Harris, you better ask God to forgive you,” was classified as “opposition: Democrats”, while “please, oh Father, make us all vote Republican or libertarian,” was classified as “favorability: Republicans”. The study found that nearly 90% of references to Republicans were favourable, and more than 70% of references to Democrats were unfavourable. Mr Trump was the topic of over 50% of political discussion. In presidential election years, around one in seven churches engaged in electioneering—six times the rate in non-election periods and twice that of the 2022 midterms. But when a human researcher reviewed a random sample of 500 passages that had been flagged as political, 380 were judged to contain political advocacy, compared with just 121 flagged as such by the LLM. This suggests that the true number of evangelical churches engaging in political advocacy during elections may be closer to one in two. In 2024 pastors in Republican counties were also more than twice as likely to engage in political advocacy as those in Democratic ones. ■ Stay on top of American politics with The US in brief, our daily newsletter with fast analysis of the most important political news, and Checks and Balance, a weekly note that examines the state of American democracy and the issues that matter to voters. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//united-states/2026/05/21/americas-sermons-are-becoming- op-eds
Democratic primary voters chose a dicey candidate for Georgia governor Keisha Lance Bottoms will have to run against her record May 21st 2026 There is a certain kind of jubilance that comes from unexpectedly good results. When Keisha Lance Bottoms won the Democratic nomination for Georgia’s governor outright on May 19th, avoiding the run-off many expected, her supporters in an Atlanta hotel ballroom broke into a line dance as if they were at a summer cookout. Women in impossibly tall stilettos and men in suits stepped and swayed in sync to “Ain’t Nobody”, a soul classic. They aren’t the only ones celebrating: Republicans across the state are licking their chops. In a midterm cycle where Democrats are thought to have their best chance of taking the governor’s mansion in decades, Ms Bottoms, the former mayor of Atlanta, may be her party’s most polarising general-
election choice. She won this week because she has better name recognition than her opponents—Georgia’s last Democratic labour commissioner and county executive, and a millennial state legislator with an Obama-like demeanour—and because a sisterhood of black women came out in droves for her. But her time in office was marred by problems that will dog her when she faces a Republican in November (a June run-off will decide which one). “The commercials write themselves,” says Fred Hicks, a Democratic strategist. “Republicans don’t even have to spend, they can just talk about her record.” Their simplest line of attack is that Ms Bottoms is soft on crime, an allegation that has bite with a conservative southern electorate. After George Floyd was killed in 2020, Atlantans looted stores and set cop cars on fire. Ms Bottoms spoke as if she had no patience for it. “When Dr King was assassinated we didn’t do this to our city,” she told rioters. “Go home.” But more than a month later armed vigilantes occupied several blocks around a Wendy’s in south Atlanta—and the city didn’t stop them. On July 4th a gangster fired into a car driving past, killing an eight-year-old girl. Something seemed broken. Residents of Buckhead, a rich neighbourhood, began making plans to secede from Atlanta. That autumn a city councillor chided the mayor for letting Atlanta spiral. “Stop minimising our concerns by telling us that ‘crime is up everywhere’,” he wrote. “It will take a lot to turn this around. But here, in descending order, are the three things we need to begin: 1) Leadership 2) Some leadership 3) Any leadership.” City Hall insiders recall Ms Bottoms being absent during her term. Where she was perhaps most present was in her feuds with Brian Kemp, the popular Republican governor, over pandemic rules. In clashes with him she styled herself as a warrior for the underdog blue city, but ended up making enemies with the power-brokers who control state funds. In 2021 Ms Bottoms announced that she would not seek re-election and would take a job in the Biden administration later that year. “The last three years have not been at all what I would have scripted for our city,” she said at the time. “It is abundantly clear to me today that it is time to pass the baton on.” Some touchy locals felt she quit on them.
“She couldn’t meet the moment and she didn’t really try to meet the moment, but the question now is whether her campaign for governorship will be like that,” says a former city official. Some Democrats argue the tailwinds are strong enough to carry even a weaker candidate to victory this year. Crunch the numbers from Georgia’s primary night and you can see that Democrats are more energised than Republicans: 150,000 more of them cast ballots. Ms Bottoms spent the past week on a bus tour far from her home city—a prudent sign, says Charles Bullock of the University of Georgia, that she knows she will need to run up the score in rural Georgia. As governor she says she plans to come out swinging to fight Donald Trump, expand Medicaid and preserve voting rights. At her victory party Ms Bottoms admitted that when she started her campaign she had “no idea” where her support would come from. Joe Biden, her last boss, is her biggest endorser so far. While that may have helped in the primary, it could now be a liability. The former president describes Ms Bottoms as “battle-tested”. No one questions that she has been tested. What is less clear is whether she won her battles. ■ Stay on top of American politics with The US in brief, our daily newsletter with fast analysis of the most important political news, and Checks and Balance, a weekly note that examines the state of American democracy and the issues that matter to voters. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//united-states/2026/05/21/democratic-primary-voters- chose-a-dicey-candidate-for-georgia-governor
Europe’s first known language is alive in America’s West A corner of Idaho will forever be north-east Spain May 21st 2026 Introducing House Bill 561 to the Idaho Legislature, Ted Hill did not expect to stoke international controversy. The law, which originally banned local governments from flying the flags of non-states, was intended to stop Boise from flying the gay-pride flag. Earlier this year the president of the Basque Country, an autonomous region in Spain, sent a letter expressing concern about the effect HB 561 might have on the flying of the Ikurrina, the Basque flag, during Jaialdi, the 40,000-person Basque festival the city hosts every five years. Worried about flagging support for the bill, Representative Hill offered the Basques a carve-out for the Ikurrina.
Speakers of the language first came during California’s gold rush, then moved from mining to sheep herding. By 1900 chain migration saw nephews follow uncles as Basque shepherds spread across federal land. They carved 25,000 Basque-language messages into trees across the West. Some with Basque ancestry tried to shed it. “My great-grandparents’ generation said, ‘Learn English, don’t speak Basque.’ But my mom’s generation worked to get Basque back,” says Olaia Urquidi Beals of Txantxangorriak, a musical group. On Tuesday nights they gather with trikis (accordions) and panderos (tambourines) and sing in Basque. Afterwards, some musicians visit Ansots Basque Chorizos & Catering around the corner. Just down the road is Boiseko Ikastola, America’s only Basque-language pre-school. There was a time, in the late 1970s, when it looked as if the language and culture would fade away, says Dave Bieter, a former mayor of Boise. Now when he plays Mus, a Basque card game, he says a third of players speak Basque. There are about 40 Basque clubs in America, mostly in the West. Jainkoak Amerika bedeinka dezala!■ Stay on top of American politics with The US in brief, our daily newsletter with fast analysis of the most important political news, and Checks and Balance, a weekly note that examines the state of American democracy and the issues that matter to voters. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//united-states/2026/05/21/europes-first-known-language- is-alive-in-americas-west
Michigan’s Senate primary is a fight over the future of the Democratic Party The options are far left, soft left and pure establishment May 21st 2026 YOU CAN learn a lot from the type of campaign stops politicians make. In early May The Economist went to Detroit to see the three Democratic candidates for Michigan’s open-Senate-seat campaign on the same day. It provided an insight into three very different approaches. First was Mallory McMorrow, a state senator, who visited a state-backed industrial project in the city’s suburbs where she peppered staff with earnest questions about 3D printing. Next, in a left-wing coffee shop in the city, was Abdul El-Sayed, a former head of Wayne County’s health department, who spoke for half an hour to your correspondent before giving a speech to 100 or so attendees at an event space nearby. Finally, there was Haley Stevens, a