As 2025 draws to a close, the country is already turning its attention to next year’s midterm elections.
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| “One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.” |
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe |
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Here are the top eight Senate races to watch, leading up to the 2026 midterms.
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As U.S. churches have become a target for mass murderers, religious leaders are grappling with the complex question of how to protect their congregations.
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President Donald Trump welcomed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida, on Dec. 28 to discuss a plan to end the yearslong war with Russia.
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Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Dec. 27 that the Iranian regime is in a full-scale war with the United States, Europe, and Israel—months after his country’s nuclear facilities were bombed during a 12-day-long aerial war.
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🍵Health: Your mind can bend time. Here’s how.
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| Ivan Pentchoukov
National Editor (Email) |
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Good morning! It’s Monday. Thank you for reading the Morning Brief, an exclusive newsletter for Epoch Times subscribers. |
Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock |
Here are the top eight Senate races to watch, leading up to the 2026 midterms. Republicans are facing favorable odds in the Senate, where they currently hold a 53–47 advantage.
In the 2026 midterms, 33 Senate seats are up for election—20 currently held by Republicans and 13 held by Democrats. Prediction site Polymarket gives Republicans a 66 percent chance at holding the upper chamber. To do so, they’ll need to fend off challenges from Democrats and make gains in a series of key races, including in Georgia, North Carolina, Maine, and Texas. Democrats are the current favorites to reclaim the House from Republicans, who hold the chamber 220 to 213, with two vacancies.
Prediction sites such as Polymarket are giving Democrats a 78 percent chance of winning and RealClearPolitics shows Democrats leading in House polls by about 3.7 percentage points.
Here are the top eight Senate races to watch, leading up to the Nov. 3, 2026, general election. More Politics: |
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FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed that his office had surged resources to Minnesota to investigate claims of fraud exploiting federal services and programs.
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Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) has introduced legislation to protect Americans from what he calls China’s “lawfare” campaign, following a $50 billion lawsuit recently filed against him in a Chinese court.
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A public-interest law firm is suing the U.S. Census Bureau to ensure that allegedly flawed procedures used in the 2020 census are not employed again in the 2030 count, the lawsuit claims.
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Assistant Director of the Park Valley Church Safety Ministry Shane Canestra speaks during an interview at the Park Valley Church in Haymarket, Va., on Dec. 5, 2025. (Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times) |
The man, dressed in all black and wearing dark glasses, caught Rusty Spearman’s attention as soon as he walked through the doors of Park Valley Church in Haymarket, Virginia. The day was overcast, making the tinted glasses a questionable choice. The man didn’t acknowledge Spearman’s greeting and seemed to barely notice the other people. He didn’t do anything overtly threatening, but something didn’t seem right.
“Bob, we need to keep an eye on this guy,” Spearman told a team leader over a radio earpiece. Spearman and his teammates had no idea that they would make news that day—not for what happened, but for what didn’t happen.
As U.S. churches have become a target for mass murderers, religious leaders are grappling with the complex question of how to protect their congregations. At Park Valley Church in September 2023, Spearman and his team of armed volunteers were the solution. Others are struggling with the theological quandary of whether guns belong in church.
From 2000 to 2024, there were 397 violent crimes reported in places of worship, resulting in 497 deaths, according to data gathered by the Violence Prevention Project. Of those incidents, 11 fit the DOJ’s definition of mass murder, which is “the killing of three or more people at one time and in one location.” The statistics don’t yet include three church shootings that occurred in 2025.
Violent crime is increasing in churches for the same reasons that it is increasing in society, Rob Chadwick, a retired FBI tactical trainer and principal training adviser for the United States Concealed Carry Association, told The Epoch Times. As American culture changes, he said, fewer people have a religious affiliation and critics of religious institutions have a virtual megaphone.
“The echo chamber that is social media has turned a lot of people not just away from church but actually against organized religion,” Chadwick said. A 2022 survey of Protestant pastors by Lifeway Research found that 54 percent of houses of worship had security plans for an active shooter scenario that included armed parishioners.
Evangelical churches such as Park Valley are more likely to have armed security, according to Lifeway. (More) |
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Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian speaks at a press conference in Tehran, Iran, on Sept. 16, 2024. (Majid Saeedi/Getty Images) |
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Dec. 27 that the Iranian regime is in a full-scale war with the United States, Europe, and Israel—months after his country’s nuclear facilities were bombed during a 12-day-long aerial war.
The war is worse than the Iranian conflict with Iraq that began when Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in 1980 and that lasted throughout the decade, Pezeshkian said in a Dec. 27 interview released on the website of the country’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
“In my opinion, we are in a full-fledged war with America, Israel, and Europe; they do not want our country to stand on its feet,” Pezeshkian said. “This war is worse than Iraq’s war against us; if one understands it well, this war is far more complex and difficult than that war.”
The 1980–1988 war with Iraq left more than 1 million casualties on both sides and included reports of chemical weapon and gas attacks. The remarks were made two days before U.S. President Donald Trump is scheduled to host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The U.S. and Israeli militaries both launched strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and other areas during a nearly two-week-long conflict in June. Iran launched a barrage of missiles at Israel and at a U.S. air base in Qatar in response. More World News: |
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French cinema icon Brigitte Bardot, known for her roles in movies such as “And God Created Woman” and “Love on a Pillow,” has died at the age of 91.
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A person dressed as a Christmas elf waterskis during a Waterskiing Santa event in Alexandria, Va., on Dec. 24, 2025. Santa and his elves faced off against the Grinch in the annual water show on the Potomac River. (Aaron Schwartz/Getty Images) |
📸 America in Photos: Trump Takes NORAD Santa Calls, Helicopter Crash, and Winter Storm (Look) ✍️ Opinion |
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A Defence of Dissident Scholars—by William Brooks (Read)
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Why America Needs Trump’s Battleships—by Morgan Murphy (Read)
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Illustration by The Epoch Times/Shutterstock |
A minute is always a minute, except when it isn’t.
This idea was put to the test in a 2023 Harvard study. Researchers induced minor bruising on participants’ forearms and then had them sit in rooms where the clocks ran at normal speed, half-speed, or double-speed. Crucially, the actual elapsed time was identical across all conditions—28 minutes—but the clocks ticked at different rates. The results surprised the researchers. Wounds healed faster when people thought more time had passed, and slower when they thought less time had passed. “Personally, I didn’t think it would work,” lead author Peter Aungle told The Epoch Times. “And then it did work!”
A century ago, Albert Einstein demonstrated that time is relative—not fixed. He explained the idea with a simple, humorous example: “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.”
Now, psychologists and neuroscientists are finding that our sense of time is not only inherently subjective but also highly malleable. We can’t stop the clock, but by understanding how we perceive time, we can make minutes feel longer, heal faster, and even expand our memories.
The Harvard healing experiment is a pivotal piece of evidence that mind and body are not only connected, but may be one and the same. “We weren’t really manipulating time itself. We were manipulating expectations,” Aungle said.
“If they [people] think more time has passed, they expect more healing—and those expectations can shape the body.” (More) |
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Thanks for reading 🙏 Have a wonderful day! |
—Ivan Pentchoukov, Madalina Hubert, and Kenzi Li. |
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