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- The midterms spelled the end of pandemic politics
Since 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic has quietly shaped American politics. At first, the backlash was loud and obvious. Anger about school closures and frustration with masking helped groups such as Moms for Liberty take over school boards, while pandemic-era inflation became an overriding concern in back-to-back presidential elections. But while Covid faded as an explicit issue, its effects lingered. Donald Trump won a second term in part due to a combination of continuing frustration over inflation and nostalgia for life before the pandemic. It even bled into policy. Trump put vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services, cut thousands of health agency jobs, proposed funding cuts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, canceled or paused research grants, tried to claw back pandemic-era funding for state and local health departments and withdrew from the World Health Organization. That’s a big part of what makes Tuesday’s results so notable. In Ohio, Amy Acton, who led the state’s pandemic response as its health director, won the governor’s race. In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, a former public health official, won a Senate seat. Pediatrician Annie Andrews in South Carolina’s Senate race and numerous House candidates with medical or scientific backgrounds also won. The candidates weren’t explicitly running on their pandemic records, but those records didn’t appear to be liabilities either. The results suggest that direct attacks over the Covid-19 response have lost much of their electoral power. The era of pandemic politics may finally be over. Traumatic events can reshape politics for years to come. The Great Depression fueled public support for a more active federal role in the economy and a stronger safety net. The Sept. 11 attacks ushered in a more aggressive foreign policy and broader acceptance of domestic surveillance. The backlash soon widened into a broader mistrust of public health institutions. While the initial fights over the pandemic centered on masking, vaccine mandates and school closures, the backlash soon widened into a broader mistrust of public health institutions and government authority. You can draw a line from angry parents protesting at their local school board over remote learning in 2021 to today’s fights over whether parents can opt their children out of certain lessons, which books can go on school library shelves and whether transgender students can play sports. Similarly, conspiracy theories about mRNA… [TheTopNews] Read More.2 hours ago - How Democrats’ midterm gains could reshape the political landscape for AI
The midterm elections ushered in Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate for the next two years, along with state-level gains that could shake up oversight of artificial intelligence (AI).The AI sector has faced political scrutiny in a variety of areas, including the amount of electricity consumed by data centers and its impact on consumers, as well as cybersecurity and labor force impacts.President Donald Trump has made the development of artificial intelligence – which he has rebranded in official White House policies as "superintelligence" – a priority in his administration and has the authority to veto legislation passed by the Democratic Congress, while he will also retain control of regulatory agencies in the executive branch.With the AI buildout advancing at a rapid pace, Democratic policymakers at the federal and state level could make moves that affect how companies approach those investments as they deal with oversight and political pressure.BUSINESS LEADERS, INVESTORS WEIGH IMPACT OF DEMOCRATS' MIDTERM SWEEP ON MARKETS, AI AND TRAVELState Street chief macro policy strategist Elliot Hentov and investment strategist Christine Norton wrote that "Democratic gains could create additional headwinds for… and increase scrutiny of AI providers and data center development, particularly the impact of power demand on local communities.""These concerns are heightened by some of the state gubernatorial results," Hentov and Norton added. "Yet at a federal level, congressional control alone would not be enough to curtail AI-related data center construction in the face of a presidential veto.""AI also remains a strategic priority for both parties, suggesting that greater policy scrutiny should not automatically be equated with an end to the AI capital spending cycle. AI investment will likely continue to be robust in 2027, albeit tempered by strains on the supply chain and tighter credit," they added.TRUMP REBRANDS AI, REJECTS 'GLOBALIST SCHEME' TO CONTROL TECHDallas Dolen, technology, media and telecom lead at PwC told FOX Business that with Democratic control of Congress "we're likely to see greater scrutiny around AI safety, bias, labor, copyright and transparency, but more oversight doesn't necessarily mean more certainty.""Companies will still be navigating an evolving patchwork of state requirements, and they can’t put major AI investments on hold while the rules take shape," Dolen said. "They need a strong governance baseline that allows them to keep investing, building and scaling AI responsibly."WHAT THE MIDTERM ELECTIONS COULD MEAN FOR MARKETS, DEBTStrategists at UBS noted that potential pauses on data center construction… [TheTopNews] Read More.2 hours ago - Martha Stewart Now Blames Craig Melvin for Homeless Halloween Costume
Stewart, the media mogul and entrepreneur, had posted a photo of a costume with tattered clothes and a sign asking for help. [TheTopNews] Read More.2 hours ago - Russell Brand is being investigated over two new rape complaints, police say
Det Supt Andy Furphy said he hoped other potential victims would gain "courage" and "confidence" from the guilty verdicts. [TheTopNews] Read More.2 hours ago - Nate Silver Says He Has ‘Weird Intuition’ Trump May ‘Quit’ Presidency
Pollster Nate Silver explained why he got the sneaking suspicion that President Donald Trump could actually “quit” the presidency before his term ends. Following the Republican Party’s disastrous showing in Tuesday’s midterm elections, Silver and his co-hosts of the podcast Still Counting took a closer look at the future of the party. With Trump’s term ending in two years, and many viewing the election results as a rebuke of the MAGA movement, many have begun to question who will be on the Republican ticket in 2028. As Silver speculated on potential candidates, he briefly mentioned his wild theory about Trump potentially leaving the White House before January 2029, saying: I just think that Republicans made — I was searching for a more original metaphor — but a a deal with the devil in Trump, right? And I don’t mean that to mean that he’s evil. I mean that in the sense of, like, you get your three Supreme Court justices, you get tax breaks for the wealthy, but you pay a lot of f*cking price for that. Because Trump has so sucked out the oxygen from anybody else in the Republican Party. Like, in some sense, it’s kind of crazy that like JD Vance is considered the leading nominee. I was going to ask the two if you if you know the history. I don’t actually, of like, it used to be a little more common for presidents and vice presidents to kind of be rivals. We haven’t seen that recently. We notably did not see it with Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, to the point where it really hurt her. But that is going to be going to be interesting, right? I mean, that’s part of why I had just a weird intuition that maybe Trump will find some pretense to to quit, you know what I mean? Because he could get very, very, very isolated, and that also could make him dangerous. Silver added that Trump effectively has no leverage domestically, adding that, “He has lost the fear factor.” Jason Cohen contributed to this report.The post Nate Silver Says He Has ‘Weird Intuition’ Trump May ‘Quit’ Presidency first appeared on Mediaite. [TheTopNews] Read More.2 hours ago - France holds new strikes and protests as unions demand immediate answersFive of France's unions join a wave of strikes and protests in a national day of action. [TheTopNews] Read More.2 hours ago
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