The Daily Briefing highlights the news of the day and research that reveals the spirit of the day.
The Daily Briefing is a newsletter sent straight to your inbox every morning that provides biblical insight on today's news.
Top News
6. 1 air traffic controller was doing 2 jobs at the time (ABC News)
“An American Airlines regional jet went down in the Potomac River near Washington, D.C.'s Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport after colliding with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter on Wednesday night, with no survivors expected. Sixty-four people were on board the plane, which departed from Wichita, Kansas. Three soldiers were on the helicopter. The collision happened around 9 p.m. when the PSA Airlines Bombardier CRJ700 regional jet was on approach to the airport.
“When aircraft volume goes down, a supervisor can make the decision to combine two controller positions into one position. This happens routinely, and on Wednesday at Reagan Airport, it happened 40 minutes earlier than it normally does because the supervisor determined that the traffic was low enough to combine, according to a source with direct knowledge…Details about the helicopter’s final location indicated that it was not on its approved route, but was in a different location and higher above the ground as it traversed the busy airspace just outside the nation’s capital, according to four people briefed on the matter but not authorized to speak publicly.”
So tragic and thankfully so infrequent… A study out of MIT found that, globally, the odds of a passenger dying on a flight from 2018 to 2022 were 38 times lower than they were 50 years earlier. The National Safety Council found over the course of a person’s life, the odds of dying as an aircraft passenger in the U.S. “were too small to even calculate.”
Perception doesn’t always match reality. This is known as an availability heuristic. This refers to how individuals often gauge the probability of events by the ease with which examples come to mind, rather than relying on more objective statistical data. This can lead to an overestimation of the frequency of dramatic yet infrequent events… like a plane crash.
“Heaven knows terrible things happen to people in this world,” according to Frederick Buechner. “The good die young, and the wicked prosper, and in any one town, anywhere, there is grief enough to freeze the blood.” Though there is a deep sadness because of this tragedy, there is a lingering hope amidst it. Buechner, drawing on the truth that God draws near to the brokenhearted, rightly concludes: “From deep within whatever the hidden spring is that life wells up from, there wells up into our lives, even at their darkest and maybe especially then, a power to heal, to breathe new life into us… Every man at one time or another experiences in the thick of his joy or his pain the power out of the depths of his life to bless him.” (Ps. 34)
5. RFK Jr., Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard face Senate confirmation hearings (NBC News)
“Three of President Donald Trump's most vulnerable Cabinet nominees appeared before Senate committees yesterday. Director of National Intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel, Trump's pick to run the FBI, faced the Senate for the first time. Patel was questioned about his allegiance to Trump, and pushed back on assertions that he might go after Trump's political opponents or pursue a so-called enemies list, a phrasing that he called a "mischaracterization."
“Republicans and Democrats on the Intelligence Committee repeatedly asked Gabbard — in sometimes fiery exchanges — about her past praise for National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden and comments that appeared to sympathize with Russia on matters involving Ukraine.
“Robert F. Kennedy Jr., tapped to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, faced a second day of sharp questions, this time by the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, on his anti-vaccine activism and other controversial views, after he was grilled yesterday by the Finance Committee.”
Change Your Mind – Sister Hazel sings it and Mr. Kennedy and Ms. Gabbard have done it. There once was a day when Mr. Kennedy was a strong voice against vaccines, claiming that the polio vaccine “killed far more people” than the virus itself. Now he supports vaccinations, saying he is "pro-safety, not anti-vaccines.” And then there is abortion, telling Reuters back in March he thought it should be a woman's right to make a decision about abortion "throughout the pregnancy." Now he has committed to working to "end late-term abortions.”
Relative to former Rep. Gabbard, she has made comments in the past siding with Russia, met with the former Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, pushed to pardon Edward Snowden, and opposed renewing a key government surveillance authority, known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Yesterday, she acknowledged Putin started the war with Ukraine, disavowed Assad, and now expresses support for the reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Why is it so hard to change your mind? Belief perseverance and the backfire effect. Relative to belief perseverance, we tend to form opinions based on emotions, such as fear, contempt, or anger, rather than relying on facts. We often reject incompatible evidence for the sake of holding to our original position. Concerning the backfire effect, we have the propensity to strengthen our original beliefs when confronted with contrary claims, particularly with politically charged issues.
Throughout the biblical narrative, we encounter a variety of characters who change their minds and, in turn, their direction. Zacchaeus changed his ways, Jonah changed his travel itinerary, and even Jesus changed his plans because even the dogs eat the “crumbs that fall from the table.” Adam Grant is right: “Changing your mind is not a sign of losing integrity. It's often a mark of gaining wisdom… Opinions are what you think today. Growth comes from staying open to revising your views tomorrow.” (Jonah 3, Lk. 19, Mt. 15)
4. Student reading scores decline again in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic (USA Today)
“New national test scores show a bleak picture of American education in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Fourth and eighth graders' literacy skills dipped – once again – on the U.S. Department of Education's National Assessment of Educational Progress, illuminating how temporary pandemic-related academic setbacks like school closures and remote classes continue to affect students' ability to learn nationwide.
“The nation's young people scored an average of five points lower in reading than kids who tested before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019, from 220 to 215 for fourth graders and from 263 to 258 for eighth graders. Many lower performers' scores dipped even lower than the national average, according to the Nation's Report Card published Wednesday. Reading test score declines began in 2019, exacerbated due to pandemic-related setbacks and have continued to slide because of the nation's "complex challenges in reading," said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics.”
How do you raise a reader? In his book Raising Kids Who Read, Daniel Willingham identifies 3 components to doing so: decoding, comprehension, and motivation. Decoding refers to making sense of the letters that form words. Willingham says the vast majority of kids manage to be good decoders by age 11, which allows them to achieve a series of little wins on their way to comprehension.
Comprehension is less like hitting a baseball and more like building Ikea furniture, according to Willingham. Ikea instructions don’t say that “every so often you should look at what you’re building, and evaluate how it’s going.” Instead, the instructions provide the pertinent information to enjoy the final product as it was intended. And finally there is motivation. This is less about awarding them because they read or praising them after reading but rather inculcating in them a love of reading.
Be curious with strangers. Descartes described reading as a conversation with luminaries from the past. They teach us and shape us, introducing us to new ideas and offering different perspectives on existing beliefs. Reading may take time out of your day but it will enrich your future days. (2 Tim. 3:16-17, Ps. 119:105, Heb. 4:12, Rom. 15:4, Josh. 1)
Cultural News
3. Forget 21 days. Most healthy new habits take at least two months to stick (CNN)
“For years, popular wisdom has held that it takes just 21 days to add a new habit to your daily routine. But according to recent research from the University of South Australia (UniSA), new habits typically take around two months to engrain, and can take up to almost a year.
“The researchers reached this conclusion after conducting a meta-analysis of 20 earlier studies, published between 2008 and 2023, and involving more than 2,600 participants. These studies measured habitual behavior to find an overall trend in the length of time taken for healthy habits to form. Habits included exercise, drinking water, taking vitamins and flossing.
“I think the main thing is that it helps people set realistic expectations,” Ben Singh, research fellow at UniSA Allied Health & Human Performance and co-author of the study, told CNN. “It’s not often a quick fix.” The study, published in the journal Healthcare, found that the median time taken to form new, healthy habits was 59-66 days, but it could take as long as 335 days.”
40 percent of the actions we perform each day are not actually decisions we make but rather are rooted in the habits we have formed, according to Charles Duhigg. In his book The Power of Habit, Duhigg highlights how habits can’t be removed, but they can be changed. We all have a habit loop: a cue, routine, and reward.
In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear asserts that “habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.” For Clear, you don’t “rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems… Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.” He concludes: “You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results."
So what is your trajectory? As Christians, we want to establish habits that honor God and bless our world. In his phenomenal book You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit, James K.A. Smith writes: “Learning virtue—becoming virtuous—is more like practicing scales on the piano than learning music theory… Learning here isn’t just information acquisition; it’s more like inscribing something into the very fiber of your being.” (1 Cor. 10:31, 1 Pet. 2:12)
