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- How to Use AI to Plan a Trip: Better Prompts for Travel Recommendations
Generic questions get generic answers, experts say, so to avoid mediocre recommendations, you’ll need to write smarter prompts. Follow these tips. [TheTopNews] Read More.4 days ago - Hiking With Reindeer on the Kungsleden Trail, Sweden’s Royal Arctic RoadOn a hike along the Kungsleden Trail, or “king’s trail,” in Swedish Lapland, a writer encounters majestic animals, challenging terrain and communal moments of sheer wonder. [TheTopNews] Read More.4 days ago
- Never Forgetting 9/11 Means Learning Lessons
The 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks has passed, marked by solemn remembrances and harrowing footage. Fond memories of President George W. Bush lifting America’s spirits atop the World Trade Center rubble through a bullhorn and with a World Series first pitch strike at Yankee Stadium leavened the commemoration’s sadness. The words “never forget” rang throughout the day. But we have forgotten the main strategic blunder by the Bush administration that left America vulnerable to a major terrorist attack. We have forgotten it because we never had much of an opportunity to remember it. For a few weeks in the spring of 2002, the public was stunned by the news that President Bush received a memo one month and five days before the attack titled “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.” The New York Post ran the sensationalist headline “Bush Knew” on its cover. But the public’s interest in the White House’s mishandling of counterterrorism before 9/11 quickly faded after Bush, hoping to move past the controversy, proposed the creation of a Department of Homeland Security to better prevent future terrorist attacks. This was a flip-flop, as Bush had publicly opposed the Democratic idea on the grounds it was unnecessary bureaucracy. His initial opposition was soon forgotten; in the November 2002 midterms, Republicans would soon attack Democrats who demanded labor protections for the new department’s workforce as soft on terrorism. Bush’s dismissive response to the briefer who provided the memo—“All right. You’ve covered your ass now”—was indicative of a deeper strategic failure: His administration did not believe counterterrorism was as important as national missile defense. In fact, during the 48 hours before Al Qaeda struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Bush administration was amid a coordinated campaign to convince the public and Congress that the federal government already spends enough on counterterrorism and not enough on national missile defense. The Bush administration first embarked on its wayward path on February 8, 2001, when it previewed for The New York Times plans for a comprehensive national security review, including a “commitment to building a defensive missile shield” which would necessitate withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Treaty with Russia. The president made this objective plain in a May 1 address: “We need a new framework that allows us to build missile defenses to counter the different threats of today’s world. To do so,… [TheTopNews] Read More.4 days ago - Can the House Clerk Lead a Midterm Coup?
“The country has never faced anything like this in its 250-year history,” former Judge J. Michael Lutting told CNN Monday morning. He was referring to a new article he wrote for The New Republic, outlining a nightmare scenario: What if Trump and the Republicans lose the House but refuse to concede? When Congress assembles for its required first meeting on January 3, what if Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, in preparation for this first meeting, dismisses the current Clerk of the House and appoints a MAGA stooge instead—and then that stooge calls the names of elected Republicans but (perhaps on the ground that President Donald Trump says the elections were rigged) refuses to call the names of newly elected Democratic Representatives? Only Republicans—or at least a Republican majority—would be seated, would re-elect Johnson as Speaker, and proceed to serve the White House. This, he says, would be the “final battle in Trump’s determined war to corrupt America’s democracy.” Luttig, a man of impeccable conservative credentials—he clerked for then-Judge Scalia, served in the Reagan White House Counsel’s office, and played a significant role in the brutal fight over confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the Court. He was frequently mentioned as a possible Justice under a future Republican president. He is also an acute student of the Constitution, congressional procedure, and the multiple authoritarian threads of Trumpism. He deserves credit for quickly recognizing the danger of Trump’s rise to power. The scenario he outlines could happen. Indeed, Luttig, to the contrary notwithstanding, it already has happened, not once but twice, in 1863 and 1865—and both times it brought American democracy to the brink of collapse, and indeed on one occasion brought federal troops into the Capitol itself on a mission to block a conservative coup. I came across the story some years ago, while researching my book, Democracy Reborn, a narrative of the framing of the Fourteenth Amendment. That framing took place in the late winter of 1865 and the spring of 1866, and it was the endpoint of a series of hair’s-breadth escapes for democracy from the forces of the Slave Power and its northern allies, who actively sought to subvert the Union war effort and deliver a post-Appomattox victory to pro-slavery forces. The first episode occurred in December 1863, after the Union was defeated at the polls nearly as badly as at First and Second Bull Run. On… [TheTopNews] Read More.4 days ago - Who Are the “Trump Regretters”?
A new survey finds that 18 percent of voters who supported Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election now say they regret their vote. Many of these voters come from groups that swung toward Republicans in the last election, including young people, Black and Hispanic voters, and moms. What drove these voters to change their mind about Trump? And how much could this shift benefit Democrats in this fall’s midterms? Tina Tang, Director of Polling and Analytics for Navigator Research, explains that while affordability and the economy are the top concerns of these “Trump regretters,” they don’t trust either party to deliver. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity. The full interview is available at Spotify, YouTube, and iTunes. *** Anne Kim: How important are these “Trump regretters”? Are they a big enough bloc to make the difference this fall in some key races? Tina Tang: We saw that nearly half the people who said that they regret voting for Trump would want to go back and change their vote if they could. So if you look at the total electorate of Trump voters, that’s about one in ten Trump voters. That’s a significant bloc of folks. We’ve been tracking over the last year or so how this Trump regret number has changed, and we’ve seen consistently it’s about one in five people that are continuing to regret their vote. Anne Kim: So who are these Trump regretters then? What share of them are loosely connected to the Republican Party, and what share of them are people like Marjorie Taylor Greene—i.e., die-hard MAGA people who became disillusioned. Tina Tang: This was the most fun part for me, digging into this survey. So there were a lot of think pieces that came out after 2024 about the growing share of young Americans that are throwing their support behind Trump. And we saw that about 30 percent of 18 to 34-year-olds who voted for Trump in 2024 now regret their vote. This is, I believe, triple the number of folks who are over 55, and about double the folks who are in the 35 to 54 range. We also saw a pretty large number of black and Latino American—about one in three—compared to just about 16 percent of white Americans. We also saw that about a quarter of independents and non-MAGA Republicans now regret their vote. And this is especially high for independent men—around 37 percent. That’s obviously a key part… [TheTopNews] Read More.4 days ago - JD Vance, Here’s a Catholic Politician You Should Get to KnowAndy Burnham is in some ways a throwback to U.S. Catholic politicians of past decades. He might be a signpost for the future. [TheTopNews] Read More.4 days ago
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