Louisiana cancels $3B repair coastal restoration funded by Deepwater Horizon oil spill settlement
The Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion Project had been intended to rebuild upward of 20 square miles (32 kilometers) of land in southeast Louisiana to combat sea level rise and erosion on the Gulf Coast.
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Toronto Star
5 hours ago
- Toronto Star
It's a year of rapid change, except when it comes to Trump's approval numbers, AP-NORC polling finds
WASHINGTON (AP) — Eric Hildenbrand has noticed prices continue to rise this year, even with President Donald Trump in the White House. He doesn't blame Trump, his choice for president in 2024, but says Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democrats who control his home state, California, are at fault. 'You can't compare California with the rest of the country,' said Hildenbrand, who is 76 and lives in San Diego. 'I don't know what's going on in the rest of the country. It seems like prices are dropping. Things are getting better, but I don't necessarily see it here.'
Winnipeg Free Press
5 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Trump once decried the idea of presidential vacations. His Scotland trip is built around golf
EDINBURGH, Scotland (AP) — During sweaty summer months, Abraham Lincoln often decamped about 3 miles (5 kilometers) north of the White House to the Soldiers' Home, a presidential retreat of cottages and parkland in what today is the Petworth section of northwest Washington. Ulysses S. Grant sometimes summered at his family's cottage in Long Branch, New Jersey, even occasionally driving teams of horses on the beach. Ronald Reagan once said he did 'some of my best thinking' at his Rancho Del Cielo retreat outside Santa Barbara, California. Donald Trump's getaway is taking him considerably farther from the nation's capital, to the coast of Scotland. The White House isn't calling Trump's five-day, midsummer jaunt a vacation, but rather a working trip where the Republican president might hold a news conference and sit for interviews with U.S. and British media outlets. Trump was also talking trade in separate meetings with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Trump is staying at his properties near Turnberry and Aberdeen, where his family owns two golf courses and is opening a third on Aug. 13. Trump played golf over the weekend at Turnberry and is helping cut the ribbon on the new course on Tuesday. He's not the first president to play in Scotland: Dwight D. Eisenhower played at Turnberry in 1959, more than a half century before Trump bought it, after meeting with French President Charles de Gaulle in Paris. But none of Trump's predecessors has constructed a foreign itinerary around promoting vacation sites his family owns and is actively expanding. It lays bare how Trump has leveraged his second term to pad his family's profits in a variety of ways, including overseas development deals and promoting cryptocurrencies, despite growing questions about ethics concerns. 'You have to look at this as yet another attempt by Donald Trump to monetize his presidency,' said Leonard Steinhorn, who teaches political communication and courses on American culture and the modern presidency at American University. 'In this case, using the trip as a PR opportunity to promote his golf courses.' Presidents typically vacation in the US Franklin D. Roosevelt went to the Bahamas, often for the excellent fishing, five times between 1933 and 1940. He visited Canada's Campobello Island in New Brunswick, where he had vacationed as a child, in 1933, 1936 and 1939. Reagan spent Easter 1982 on vacation in Barbados after meeting with Caribbean leaders and warning of a Marxist threat that could spread throughout the region from nearby Grenada. Presidents also never fully go on vacation. They travel with a large entourage of aides, receive intelligence briefings, take calls and otherwise work away from Washington. Kicking back in the United States, though, has long been the norm. Harry S. Truman helped make Key West, Florida, a tourist hot spot with his 'Little White House' cottage there. Several presidents, including James Buchanan and Benjamin Harrison, visited the Victorian architecture in Cape May, New Jersey. More recently, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama boosted tourism on Massachusetts' Martha's Vineyard, while Trump has buoyed Palm Beach, Florida, with frequent trips to his Mar-a-Lago estate. But any tourist lift Trump gets from his Scottish visit is likely to most benefit his family. 'Every president is forced to weigh politics versus fun on vacation,' said Jeffrey Engel, David Gergen Director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, who added that Trump is 'demonstrating his priorities.' 'When he thinks about how he wants to spend his free time, A., playing golf, B., visiting places where he has investments and C., enhancing those investments, that was not the priority for previous presidents, but it is his vacation time,' Engel said. It's even a departure from Trump's first term, when he found ways to squeeze in visits to his properties while on trips more focused on work. Trump stopped at his resort in Hawaii to thank staff members after visiting the memorial site at Pearl Harbor and before embarking on an Asia trip in November 2017. He played golf at Turnberry in 2018 before meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Finland. Trump once decried the idea of taking vacations as president. 'Don't take vacations. What's the point? If you're not enjoying your work, you're in the wrong job,' Trump wrote in his 2004 book, 'Think Like a Billionaire.' During his presidential campaign in 2015, he pledged to 'rarely leave the White House.' Even as recently as a speech at a summit on artificial intelligence in Washington on Wednesday, Trump derided his predecessor for flying long distances for golf — something he's now doing. 'They talked about the carbon footprint and then Obama hops onto a 747, Air Force One, and flies to Hawaii to play a round of golf and comes back,' he said. Presidential vacations and any overseas trips were once taboo Trump isn't the first president not wanting to publicize taking time off. George Washington was criticized for embarking on a New England tour to promote the presidency. Some took issue with his successor, John Adams, for leaving the then-capital of Philadelphia in 1797 for a long visit to his family's farm in Quincy, Massachusetts. James Madison left Washington for months after the War of 1812. Teddy Roosevelt helped pioneer the modern presidential vacation in 1902 by chartering a special train and directing key staffers to rent houses near Sagamore Hill, his home in Oyster Bay, New York, according to the White House Historical Association. Four years later, Roosevelt upended tradition again, this time by becoming the first president to leave the country while in office. The New York Times noted that Roosevelt's 30-day trip by yacht and battleship to tour construction of the Panama Canal 'will violate the traditions of the United States for 117 years by taking its President outside the jurisdiction of the Government at Washington.' In the decades since, where presidents opted to vacation, even outside the U.S., has become part of their political personas. In addition to New Jersey, Grant relaxed on Martha's Vineyard. Calvin Coolidge spent the 1928 Christmas holidays at Sapelo Island, Georgia. Lyndon B. Johnson had his 'Texas White House,' a Hill Country ranch. Eisenhower vacationed in Newport, Rhode Island. John F. Kennedy went to Palm Springs, California, and his family's compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, among other places. Richard Nixon had the 'Southern White House' on Key Biscayne, Florida, while Joe Biden traveled frequently to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, while also visiting Nantucket, Massachusetts, and St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. George H.W. Bush was a frequent visitor to his family's property in Kennebunkport, Maine, and didn't let the start of the Gulf War in 1991 detour him from a monthlong vacation there. His son, George W. Bush, opted for his ranch in Crawford, Texas, rather than a more posh destination. Presidential visits help tourism in some places more than others, but Engel said that for some Americans, 'if the president of the Untied States goes some place, you want to go to the same place.' He noted that visitors emulating presidential vacations are out 'to show that you're either as cool as he or she, that you understand the same values as he or she or, heck, maybe you'll bump into he or she.'
Winnipeg Free Press
5 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
It's a year of rapid change, except when it comes to Trump's approval numbers, AP-NORC polling finds
WASHINGTON (AP) — Eric Hildenbrand has noticed prices continue to rise this year, even with President Donald Trump in the White House. He doesn't blame Trump, his choice for president in 2024, but says Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democrats who control his home state, California, are at fault. 'You can't compare California with the rest of the country,' said Hildenbrand, who is 76 and lives in San Diego. 'I don't know what's going on in the rest of the country. It seems like prices are dropping. Things are getting better, but I don't necessarily see it here.' Voters like Hildenbrand, whose support of the Republican president is unwavering, help explain Trump's polling numbers and how they have differed from other presidents' polling trajectory in significant ways. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in March found that 42% of U.S. adults approved of Trump's job performance. That is a lower rating than those of other recent presidents at the beginning of their second terms, including Democrat Barack Obama and Republican George W. Bush. The most recent AP-NORC poll, from July, puts Trump at 40% approval. While that is not a meaningful change from March, there is some evidence that Trump's support may be softening, at least on the margins. The July poll showed a slight decrease in approval of his handling of immigration since earlier in the year. Some other pollsters, such as Gallup, show a downward slide in overall approval since slightly earlier in his term, in January. But even those shifts are within a relatively narrow range, which is typical for Trump. The new AP-NORC polling tracker shows that Trump's favorability rating has remained largely steady since the end of his first term, with between 33% and 43% of U.S. adults saying they viewed him favorably across more than five years. Those long-term trends underscore that Trump has many steadfast opponents. But loyal supporters also help explain why views of the president are hard to change even as he pursues policies that most Americans do not support, using an approach that many find abrasive. Persistently low approval of Trump's job performance Trump has not had a traditional honeymoon period in his second term. He did not in his first, either. An AP-NORC poll conducted in March 2017, two months into his first term, showed that 42% of Americans 'somewhat' or 'strongly' approved of his performance. That is largely where his approval rating stayed over the course of the next four years. The recent slippage on immigration is particularly significant because that issue was a major strength for Trump in the 2024 election. Earlier in his second term, it was also one of the few areas where he was outperforming his overall approval. In March, about half of U.S. adults approved of his handling of immigration. But the July AP-NORC poll found his approval on immigration at 43%, in line with his overall approval rating. Other recent polls show growing discontent with Trump's approach on immigration. A CNN/SSRS poll found that 55% of U.S. adults say the president has gone too far when it comes to deporting immigrants who are living in the United States illegally, an increase of 10 percentage points since February. 'I understand wanting to get rid of illegal immigrants, but the way that's being done is very aggressive,' said Donovan Baldwin, 18, of Asheboro, North Carolina, who did not vote in the 2024 election. 'And that's why people are protesting because it comes off as aggression. It's not right.' Ratings of Trump's handling of the economy, which were more positive during his first term, have been persistently negative in his second term. The July poll found that few Americans think Trump's policies have benefited them so far. Even if he is not a fan of everything Trump has done so far, Brian Nichols, 58, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, is giving him the benefit of the doubt. Nichols, who voted for Trump in 2024, likes what he is seeing from the president overall, though he has his concerns both on style and substance, particularly Trump's social media presence and his on-again, off-again tariffs. Nichols also does not like the push to eliminate federal agencies such as the Education Department. Despite his occasional disagreements with Trump, though, Nichols said he wants to give the president space to do his job, and he trusts the House and Senate, now run by Republicans, to act as a safeguard. 'We put him into office for a reason, and we should be trusting that he's doing the job for the best of America,' Nichols said. Overall views of Trump have been fairly steady since 2019 Trump has spent the past six months pushing far-reaching and often unpopular policies. Earlier this year, Americans were bracing themselves for higher prices as a result of his approach to tariffs. The July poll found that most people think Trump's tax and spending bill will benefit the wealthy, while few think it will pay dividends for the middle class or people like them. Discomfort with individual policies may not translate into wholesale changes in views of Trump, though. Those have largely been constant through years of turmoil, with his favorability rating staying within a 10-percentage point range through the COVID-19 pandemic, a felony conviction and attempted assassination. To some of his supporters, the benefits of his presidency far outweigh the costs. Kim Schultz, 62, of Springhill, Florida said she is thrilled with just about everything Trump is doing as president, particularly his aggressive moves to deport anyone living in the country illegally. Even if Trump's tariffs eventually take effect and push prices up, she said she will not be alarmed. 'I've always had the opinion that if the tariffs are going to cost me a little bit more here and there, I don't have a problem with that,' she said. Across the country, Hildenbrand dislikes Trump's personality and his penchant for insults, including those directed at foreign leaders. But he thinks Trump is making things happen. 'More or less, to me, he's showing that he's on the right track,' he said. 'I'm not in favor of Trump's personality, but I am in favor of what he's getting done.' ___ Cooper reported from Phoenix.
