do influencers actually win elections?

It’s becoming a more common goal for campaigns to seek out viral moments and the support of popular internet stars as part of an effort to reach more voters online. It's a strategy Democrats and Republicans alike watched Donald Trump ride to victory in 2024. But the strategy, albeit flashy, has yielded mixed results in key races this cycle as candidates try to figure out how much political power an influencer can have. (NPR, 6/15)

Some of this has been organic: the work of conservative pastors and firebrand preachers who would have decried this moderation in any case. But observers also see a more concerted, digital-first project driving the rightward lurch. “This is being driven, at least in part, by social media influencers who very much want to see the SBC move in a more conservative direction. They think that anyone on their left is literally Bernie Sanders,” Burge told me. (Vox, 6/15 – free version)

The UFC said some fighters will receive bonuses in World Liberty Financial crypto called “stablecoins,” whose value is pegged to the US dollar. World Liberty named the currency “USD1”. World Liberty is a venture of the Trump family and the family of Steven Witkoff, Trump’s friend and special envoy to the Middle East. (The Guardian, 6/14)

To repair the pool, Mr. Trump’s administration awarded no-bid contracts to two handpicked vendors, bypassing a legally required process of seeking competitive bids because of what officials declared an urgent need. (The administration said the urgency was justified because of the nation’s 250th birthday party.) (NYT gift link, 6/15)

The report estimates that residential customers of Entergy Mississippi, one of the state’s regional energy monopolies, have paid $38 million as of March 2026 for infrastructure and other costs related to data centers and will have paid $74 million by the end of the year. The average Entergy Mississippi customer is now paying at least an extra $10.60 a month to finance the data centers, the report says. (404 Media, 6/11)

A large-scale poll of Australians aged 12 to 15 conducted by the Molly Rose Foundation and research agency YouthInsight found that ~61% of respondents who previously held accounts on restricted platforms still had access to active accounts as of March 2026. Proportionately, over half of teens who previously used YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram were still able to use these platforms, with more than a fifth of the cohort overall still having accounts on each of the top 5 platforms in the survey. (Sherwood, 6/15)

In an analysis on technology and nostalgia by Wired back in 2017, Southampton University researcher Tim Wildschut explained that nostalgia gives people a “sense of social connectedness,” especially during periods of loneliness and uncertainty, which makes sense. Nostalgia today is no longer just an aesthetic trend; it has become a psychological comfort mechanism operating within the digital exhaustion of constantly performing online. (Refinery29, 6/11)

In the Netflix documentary, viewers were taken back to the beginning, when Banks first conceived the idea with the help of Ken Mok, who co-executive-produced the show with her and also took part in the docuseries. In the three-part project, Banks was asked to address head-on some of the more controversial moments from the show's tenure. (People, 6/15)

Images of Merlin parading through Mexico City, wearing a Mexican national team jersey — and socks — as thousands of fans celebrated, quickly went viral, racking up millions of views across social media. Overnight, and as if by the magic of the famous wizard who inspired his name, Merlin had captivated the internet. (AP, 6/15)

Thousands of you have also registered your enthusiasm by saving books to your personal reading lists. As summer kicks off, here are the books published so far this year that New York Times readers say they’re most eager to dive into, any one of which could be a perfect companion for the season. (NYT gift link, 6/12)

Extra Credit 🤓

Some current obsessions:

That’s all for now – I’ll see you next week!