Fewer than half of Americans say religion is an important part of their daily lives, Axios' Russell Contreras writes from a new Gallup poll.

• That's the lowest level on record, and a drop of 17 percentage points over the past decade — one of the largest declines in the world.

✝️ Why it matters: The shift reflects profound cultural changes that could reshape politics, social ties and even national identity.

• "Such large declines in religiosity are rare," Gallup researchers Benedict Vigers and Julie Ray wrote.

🌎 Context: Other wealthy nations are generally less religious than the U.S., but that gap is closing.

• A record number of Americans (29%) identify as religiously unaffiliated, while 62% identify as Christians — down from 78% in 2007, according to the Pew Research Center.

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Suspected Chinese hackers used Anthropic's AI coding tool, Claude Code, to help target dozens of tech companies, financial institutions, chemical manufacturers and government agencies, the company said today.

• This is the first documented case of a foreign government using AI to fully automate a cyber operation, Axios cybersecurity expert Sam Sabin writes.

💻 How it worked: The attackers tricked Claude into thinking it was performing defensive cybersecurity tasks for a legitimate company. They also broke down malicious requests into smaller, less suspicious tasks to avoid triggering its guardrails.

• Claude then carried out 80%–90% of the operation on its own, Anthropic said.
• Claude inspected target systems, scanned for high-value databases and wrote custom exploit code.
• It also harvested usernames and passwords to access sensitive data, then summarized its work in detailed post-operation reports, including credentials it used, the backdoors it created and which systems were breached.

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1. 📺 The BBC apologized to President Trump for the way it edited a documentary about him. The program combined two sections of his remarks on Jan. 6, 2021, in a way that made it seem as though Trump had made a direct call for violence. Go deeper.
2. 🇸🇦 Trump told Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that, with the Gaza war ending, he expects Saudi Arabia to move toward normalization with Israel, Axios' Barak Ravid scoops.
3. 🏈 The Washington Commanders picked HKS — the architecture firm behind SoFi Stadium in L.A. — to design its new stadium. Go deeper.

The Northern Lights have been illuminating skies across the U.S. this week — and they're not done yet.

• Social media has been filled with photos of the aurora borealis dancing over cities, farms, mountains and lakes — a moment of shared serenity at a time when that's hard to find.

More photos.