The White House banned Politico, citing anonymous sources. It provided the quotes.: In a letter defending its ban of Politico, the White House critiqued a report based on a press call it conducted, in which reporters were told not to name the speaker. - "After this article published, the media newsletter Status reported that the senior administration official who spoke on the call was Vice President J.D. Vance. The Associated Press reported earlier Wednesday that the letter 'appeared to reference a background briefing set up by the White House' and linked to its reporting from that briefing."
How the fate of a rural hospital could help flip the House: In one Virginia race and others, Democrats are highlighting the rising costs of health care and possible closures of facilities, putting Republicans on defense. - "Sitting on a bench after lunch at a Franklin restaurant on a hot day at the end of August, Carman and her friend Bonnie Langer, 77, agreed that the survival of the Franklin hospital is an important issue. But they also favored cuts to Medicaid, which Langer said should not be used for undocumented immigrants.
"Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for federal Medicaid benefits."
The Makings of a Prewar World President: Trump’s speech to the United Nations clarifies the vision he shares with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. - "Rather than promising what they cannot deliver, aspiring presidents should level with the American people. The international order has come to an end. The next president will inherit one of the most unforgiving international environments since 1945. Their task will be to stop the deterioration, inject some stability into world affairs, and begin to lay the foundation for a better future, even if that is not achievable in the short term."
Why I’m Sending My Black Son to Private School: I admire Nikole Hannah-Jones’s choice. I am making a different one. - "Last year, parents at my son's preschool learned that it had begun admitting students who got government assistance to cover their tuition. The school was suddenly much more diverse. I was glad to see more Black and brown kids, but I confess that I was also concerned; I called the school, asking how many of the new students would be in my son's class. I joined a chorus of other parents complaining about my son mixing with the kids who, I assumed, were growing up with more problems at home-not because I didn't know kids like that, but because I had been a kid like that. My mother was the one other parents judged at drop-off. And now I wanted my son as far away from the little Jenishas as possible."
America’s Allies Are No Longer Waiting for Trump to Leave: They now figure isolationism and protectionism will be U.S. foreign policy for a long time to come. - "The shift may be the most consequential legacy of Trump's foreign policy. Since his first term, he has demanded that allies become more self-reliant. In his second term, Trump has accelerated the emergence of a world in which American influence is less central-and China has more room to maneuver. Beijing benefits if Europe, Canada, Japan, or South Korea becomes more willing to engage and less certain that Washington is the power around which all strategic decisions must revolve. And the shift undercuts the delicate strategic balance Washington seeks with Beijing itself-an issue Trump will confront when he meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week.
...
"Katherine Tai, the U.S. trade representative in the Biden administration, told me that she and other senior officials were sent on an 'apology tour' following Trump's first term to convince allies that the America they knew had returned and that President Biden was committed to protecting the relationships. (The reference was a throwback to the Barack Obama-era 'apology tour,' as some later called it when he traveled the world after taking office to apologize for past American actions, military interventions, and foreign-policy decisions.) But the message dissipated over the next few years amid the political divisiveness in the U.S., Tai recalled. Foreign diplomats relayed to her and other top Biden officials a nervousness 'that what you kind of hoped was an aberration is actually going to come back,' she told me. With Trump's second term, 'everything is more over the top than even in the first administration,' Tai said. 'The insults are more insulting, the jabs are drawing more blood, and my gut is that there is not a second time for America to declare that it's back.'
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"The economic stakes of these shifts are substantial. Trade wars with allies raise costs for American consumers. U.S. defense companies could eventually lose market share as allies develop their own industries and buy more from one another. And the more that countries diversify their supply chains and commercial relationships, the less leverage Washington enjoys. 'Our old relationship of steadily deepening integration with the United States is over,' Carney said, weeks after assuming office last year. 'While this is a tragedy, it is also the new reality.' Trump's biggest impact during his second term may be that America's allies are now planning for that reality to outlast him."
Israel Can’t Postpone Its Reckoning Forever: Intractable divides between the secular and the religious pose a bigger problem for the country than any external threat. - "Israel's religious shift has been subtle but unmistakable. In 1948, the ultra-Orthodox (the Haredim, or "those who tremble" before God), comprised a tiny fraction of the Israeli population. The Haredim followed what one modern Haredi rabbi and activist, Yehoshua Pfeffer, called a "Noah's Ark model," with the surviving members 'riding the storm' so they could maintain a way of life and proliferate after the storm passed. They were fruitful beyond expectation. Within three decades, about one in 20 Jewish Israelis were Haredi. By 2024, they were one in eight, and by mid-century, they could be one in three. The proliferation of this population would be inconsequential if it meant only that more Israelis observed Shabbat. The Haredim, however, insist that their contribution to Judaism is prayer and observance, and that civic demands placed on other Israelis are, at best, distractions. Some even consider the modern Israeli state a secular abomination. Their population is poor and lives largely off public assistance, and the men (instantly identifiable by their black suits, prodigious beards, and forelocks grown long) almost all take exceptions from military service. What the early secular elites assumed would remain a niche interest - lifelong religious study - has become the full-time occupation of an unsustainable number of Israeli citizens. Taxpaying, war-fighting Israelis express irritation at a community that reproduces at an astonishing rate, takes public money, and lives behind a shield that others die to uphold. But it is also awkward for anyone, even a fellow Jew, to describe a group of Jews as parasitic, especially a group of Jews that recently faced extermination by an enemy that spoke in those same terms."
Crying Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship Ever: Seven agonizing nights aboard the Icon of the Seas - "I am constantly told by my fellow passengers that 'everybody here has a story.' Yes, I want to reply, but everybody everywhere has a story. You, the reader of this essay, have a story, and yet you're not inclined to jump on a cruise ship and, like Duck Necklace, tell your story to others at great pitch and volume. Maybe what they're saying is that everybody on this ship wants to have a bigger, more coherent, more interesting story than the one they've been given. Maybe that's why there's so much signage on the doors around me attesting to marriages spent on the sea. Maybe that's why the Royal Caribbean newsletter slipped under my door tells me that 'this isn't a vacation day spent—it's bragging rights earned.' Maybe that's why I'm so lonely."
Jason Arday’s Final Self-Delusion: Elevating a fraud is shameful. Exposing one isn’t.
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