Inspire, the magazine created by Yemeni Al-Qaeda branch Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, has just released its second issue, which features articles suggesting blowing up lunch spots in Washington, D.C., and an essay by a North Carolina native turned Al Qaeda operative entitled “I Am Proud to be a Traitor to America.”
You might remember the first issue included the hilariously headlined “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.” While the second issue seems to only exist in news reports right now, you can download the first issue here.
The $617 billion that Americans gave to everything from churches to cat rescues was the second-highest ever in inflation-adjusted terms, but it fell short of the record set in 2021, when there was a burst of social services giving in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Charitable bequests – gifts to causes that happen after someone dies – represented about 10% of all U.S. giving in 2025, up from 9% in 2024. They grew by 16.6% to $62 billion in 2025, faster than all other sources of donations. Bequeathed gifts have exceeded $50 billion every year since 2022, growing significantly in three of the past four years.
There are several possible reasons for this increase. One is the impending passing of tens of trillions of dollars in wealth from people over 65 to their younger heirs, often called the “great wealth transfer.” However, the total value of charitable bequests may be rising simply because stocks have been performing better than normal for several years. The stock market boom has increased the net worth of the estates of the wealthiest Americans, who are the main people making these gifts after death.
This value does vary greatly year to year, partly because even a single very large bequest can significantly skew the total amount. And when these changes will occur is unpredictable due to the complexity of multibillion-dollar estates, which can get paid out several years after a wealthy person dies. For example, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who died in 2018, was among the largest donors of 2025 due to the $3.1 billion bequest his estate made.
Giving by foundations also tends to respond to strong stock market growth. By law, private foundations must spend at least 5% of their assets for charitable purposes, primarily through grants to nonprofits, to retain their tax-exempt status. Endowment growth tends to boost what foundations disburse.
Giving by foundations, which accounted for about 1 in 5 dollars given to charity in 2025, rose by 3% to $117 billion – an all-time high, even when adjusting for inflation. Giving by foundations has not decreased in any year in real terms since 2010.
Giving by individuals, whether they’re rich, poor or in between, is clearly influenced by consumer sentiment and other trends that affect typical households more directly. And consumer sentiment declined in 2025 to the lowest annual level ever recorded.
Giving by individuals grew by 1.4% in 2025, though that share of charitable giving has gradually shrunk. It dipped to 64% of the total in 2025 – the second-lowest share of total giving ever.
Corporate giving was responsible for around 7% of all charitable gifts made in 2025 – a record high. It totaled $44 billion in 2025, up 0.5% from a year earlier. Giving by corporations has grown by almost 30% since 2020 in inflation-adjusted terms.
Most kinds of donations increased
Donations to seven of the nine charitable categories that Giving USA tracks grew.
One exception was gifts to houses of worship and religious institutions. Religious giving was essentially flat in inflation-adjusted terms, with a 0.2% decline. That’s in keeping with a long-term trend.
Religious giving has barely budged in the U.S. over the past two decades, increasing by only 1.2% since 2005. That pace is the most sluggish of all the categories we track. Even so, the $152 billion Americans gave to congregations and other religious institutions remains by far the largest category. It accounted for 23% of all donations in 2025.
The other exception was gifts to foundations, which fell 18.3% in 2025 after surging to their second-highest level ever in 2024. In 2025 they represented 12% of all giving, totaling $79 billion.
Giving to social services nonprofits, such as food banks and homeless shelters, grew 2.6% in 2025, reaching almost $100 billion. That marked a record high and represented 15% of all giving.
Giving to education and public-society benefit causes, categories associated with wealthier donors, grew the most in 2025.
Charitable gifts for education, which primarily support colleges and universities, grew 8.9% – faster than any other category in 2025. They totaled $92 billion, an all-time high.
Public-society benefit giving grew by 8.7% to $72 billion. This category consists of organizations serving the public more generally, such as advocacy organizations, independent research institutions and donor-advised funds, which function as charitable investment accounts.
Giving to several other categories reached record highs, including the $61 billion Americans donated to hospitals and other health-related causes; the $27 billion they gave to the arts; and $25 billion dispatched to nonprofits tied to the environment and animals.
While charitable donations did grow broadly in 2025, the giving categories the wealthiest Americans tend to favor – bequests, foundations, education, public-society benefit organizations – fared better than usual. Giving by less affluent U.S. donors – gifts from individuals and donations to religious institutions – lagged.
Beginning in 2026, however, virtually all U.S. taxpayers will have some incentive to make charitable gifts due to the addition of the universal charitable deduction as part of President Donald Trump’s big package of tax and spending measures that Republican lawmakers passed in July 2025. That should increase the number of donors who make modest gifts to charity.
Think about the last smartphone, tablet or smartwatch you stopped using. Odds are it is not in a recycling bin or a new owner’s hands; it is sitting in a drawer.
From our survey of 4,000 American consumers, we found the single most common thing people did with a device they were finished with was nothing at all: 39% simply stored it. Recycling and reselling, outcomes better for the environment, each accounted for only about 1 in 10 devices. Throwing devices in the trash claimed another 9%.
Funded by the National Science Foundation, our multidisciplinary team blended our expertise in causal inference, sustainability and cybersecurity, to work on the tangled question of what people do with their consumer electronics when they’re done using them. We used statistical models to connect what people say – that is, their stated knowledge and attitudes – to what they actually did.
Why the drawer wins
Two main forces keep devices in the drawer. The first is anxiety about data. People who worried that recycling or reselling a device would compromise their data were 14% and 9% more likely to store it instead.
The second force is simply not knowing how to. People who did not know where to recycle were 10% more likely to hold onto a device, and many also kept old gadgets as a perceived data backup.
Recycling and reselling electronics are a lot easier than a lot of people think. In the U.S., the national chain Best Buy accepts devices for recycling; reselling online is convenient with vendors such as Back Market and Gazelle.
Just be sure to wipe data before parting with a phone or computer. Also, remove the device from your account, for instance with Apple or Android. Unless you do, the device stays locked to you, and no one else can use it.
We also compared what people intended to do with what they had actually done. This led to a telling detail: Data security worries led to people storing devices at a greater rate than they said they intended to.
In other words, the fear of leaking personal data kicks in only when someone is facing the real decision of whether to hand off their device to a recycler or secondhand buyer.
Getting at why people don’t recycle
Researchers have long studied why people do or don’t recycle electronics: Convenience, awareness and incentives showed up as affecting the decision. But prior work examined recycling as the only option.
Instead of considering the issue as a yes-or-no vote on recycling, we treat it as a comparison between different options: Storing, reselling, donating, trading in, recycling and throwing away the device in the trash. When modeling this way, trade-offs became visible.
Knowing where to recycle, for instance, made recycling 47% more likely, but it also pulled people away from reselling, which is often the more environmentally friendly choice. You can explore the survey results in our interactive dashboards.
Getting people to let go
Storage is the worst of both worlds: A device sitting unused for years loses its resale value, and erasing its data only gets harder over time. The good news is that the main barriers – data concerns and not knowing where to turn – can be addressed with better information.
We are experimenting with information interventions that walk people through their options, including how to securely wipe their data. We are testing nudges with randomized, controlled trials to test what leads people to give their old electronics a second life.
It might be a good time to remember what old devices you’re holding onto and revisit your reasons for not letting go of them.
As summer in the U.S. heats up, people become more diligent about protecting their skin from the Sun. Another option for doing so will soon be available.
On June 9, 2026, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first new sunscreen ingredient to be permitted for over-the-counter consumer use in the U.S. since 1999 – a chemical called bemotrizinol.
Our planet is irradiated by a yellow dwarf star 93,000,000 miles away that we fondly call the Sun. It radiates light from its surface at a temperature of about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
The Earth’s atmosphere blocks most of the Sun’s radiation. Of the rays that get through, about half consist of infrared light – which gives you that warm feeling you feel on a sunny day – and 40% visible light, which you are probably familiar with as daylight.
About 10% of those rays are ultraviolet, or UV, light. UV light has the shortest wavelengths of the three types. That makes it the most dangerous – it’s invisible and can damage living tissue.
Ultraviolet damage
Physicists further categorize solar UV light into several types, based on the wavelength, which is measured in nanometers. About 95% of it is UVA (315-400 nm) and 5% is UVB (280-315 nm). Sunscreens need to be able to block those rays from penetrating the skin.
The sun also emits two other types of UV light – UVC (200-280 nm) and vacuum UV (100-200 nm) – but these are stopped by the atmosphere, so sunscreens do not typically need to be able to block them.
Scientists previously thought that only UVB rays were dangerous because they cause sunburns, but UVA can also damage the skin. m.malinika/iStock via Getty Images Plus
Scientists used to think only UVB was harmful because UVB rays cause sunburns. But today, researchers know both types of UV can damage the skin.
The only natural safeguard your body has against UV light is a microscopically thin layer of a pigment called melanin in your epidermis. The skin produces more melanin when exposed to the sun – that’s what tanning is.
This extra melanin does protect the skin, but not fully. That’s why protecting your skin with sunscreen is so important.
Sunscreens old and new
Sunscreens come in two different forms – mineral and chemical.
The first chemical sunscreen, developed in 1891, was an ointment made from quinine – a plant-derived compound that makes tonic water bitter.
Chemical sunscreens cover the skin in a transparent coating, acting like a solar sponge. They absorb UV photons and undergo a harmless chemical reaction, then dissipate the energy as heat. Bemotrizinol falls into this category.
Mineral sunscreens such as zinc or titanium oxide ward off the Sun’s rays by forming a protective film that also absorbs most UV light, but reflects some of it. Unlike chemical sunscreens, the film absorbs the light naturally, without a chemical reaction – which is why they are often visible as a white film on the skin.
Chemical sunscreens that have been available in the U.S until now combine ingredients like avobenzone, the most widely used UVA filter, with UVB filters such as octinoxate, octocrylene octisalate and homosalate. Working together, these substances protect the skin against the broad spectrum of ultraviolet rays.
These sunscreens are only effective for a short time because they are degraded by the chemical reactions they undergo, which means they must be frequently re-applied.
Another important element of sunscreen – whether mineral or chemical – is its Sun Protection Factor, or SPF. This number tells you how well a sunscreen prevents your skin from burning – in other words, what amount of UVB rays it absorbs.
An SPF of 2 would mean a sunscreen cuts your exposure to UVB rays in half, filtering out 50% of those rays. An SPF of 30 means the sunscreen lets just 1/30 of the rays penetrate your skin – which is 3.3%. So it blocks about 97% of the UVB rays.
Dermatologists generally recommend using a sunscreen with an SPF of at least 30.
Benefits of bemotrizonol
Bemotrizinol, while new to the U.S., isn’t a new compound. European regulators approved it in 2000. Chances are, if you brought back sunscreen from a vacation in Mexico, Europe, Canada or South Korea, you may even have some laying around your house.
One benefit of bemotrizinol is its ability to filter both UVA and UVB rays, so it doesn’t have to be mixed with other products to do the job.
It has some other beneficial features as well. First, its molecules prefer to sit on the surface of the skin rather than being more readily absorbed into the bloodstream, which can occur for some formulations.
Bemotrizinol also does not degrade as readily in the sun than other chemical sunscreen products. That photostability means it can last for four to eight hours, rather than having to be applied every two hours or so.
Regardless of the type, as a skin scientist I can say with certainty that any sunscreen is better than none. Your skin does an excellent job protecting you from the world outside – so make sure you protect it in return.
