Washington — Making future military aid to Ukraine contingent on its participation in peace talks with Russia. Chinese nationals are prohibited from purchasing property within a 50-mile radius of US government structures. Filling the national security sector with supporters of Donald Trump.

One group attempting to prepare the framework for a second Trump administration if the former Republican president wins in November has released a new policy book articulating an “America First” national security strategy.

The book, which was shared with The Associated Press before its release on Thursday, is the America First Policy Institute’s newest endeavor. Like the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025,” the group aims to help Trump avoid the mistakes he made in 2016 when he entered the White House unprepared.

In addition to its policy activities, the institute’s transition project has been working on dozens of executive orders and a training program for prospective political appointees. Heritage has been developing a comprehensive personnel database and providing its policy manuals.

Both organizations emphasize their independence from Trump’s campaign, which has frequently made an effort to distance itself from such efforts by claiming that the only ideas the candidate supports are those that he has himself expressed.

Still, the book’s editor, Fred Fleitz, stated that he and retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, who served as Trump’s acting national security adviser and wrote several of the chapters, have been in frequent contact with the former president, soliciting feedback and discussing topics such as Ukraine in depth.

We hope this is where he is. “We’re not speaking for him, but I believe he will approve,” said Fleitz, who formerly served as the National Security Council’s chief of staff.

A Trump Affiliated Group Has Released A New National Security Book Outlining Prospective Second-Term Approaches.

He thinks the book will serve as “an intellectual foundation for the America First approach” to national security and be “easy to use.”

“It’s a grand strategy,” Kellogg continued. “You do not begin with the policies first. You start with the strategies first. And that’s what we did.”

The group portrays the current direction of US national security as a failure, blaming the foreign policy establishment for embracing an interventionist and “globalist” strategy at the expense of America’s national interests.

While lacking in specifics, the book provides guidelines for how a potential Trump administration should address foreign policy concerns such as Russia’s war against Ukraine. Trump has stated that if elected, he will resolve the problem before Inauguration Day in January but has yet to specify how.

The war chapter in the book focuses on how the conflict developed rather than how it was resolved. However, it states that any US military help should be subject to Ukraine’s participation in peace talks with Russia.

It forecasts that the Ukrainian army would gradually lose ground and warns against the US continuing “to send arms to a stalemate that Ukraine will eventually find difficult to win.” However, once a peace accord is reached, it states that the United States will continue to arm Ukraine as a deterrence to Russia.

The authors appear to support a framework in which Ukraine “would not be asked to relinquish the goal of regaining all its territory” but would agree to diplomacy “with the understanding that this would require a future diplomatic breakthrough, which probably will not occur before (Russian President Vladimir) Putin leaves office.”

A Trump Affiliated Group Has Released A New National Security Book Outlining Prospective Second-Term Approaches.

It recognizes that Ukrainians “will have difficulty accepting a negotiated peace that does not return all of their territory or, at least for now, hold Russia accountable for the carnage it inflicted on Ukraine.” Their supporters will, too. However, as Donald Trump stated during the CNN town hall in 2023, ‘I want everyone to stop dying.’ That is our viewpoint as well. It’s a good first step.

The book blames Democratic President Joe Biden for the war and reiterates Trump’s argument that if he had been president, Putin would never have invaded. Its key argument in support of that assertion is that Putin regarded Trump as powerful and determined. Trump developed a close relationship with the Russian leader and hesitated to question him.

Most of the chapter outlines an, at times, inaccurate timeline of Biden’s management of the conflict.

Moving forward, it appears like Putin could be convinced to participate in peace talks if Biden and other NATO leaders offer to postpone Ukraine’s NATO membership for an extended time. It proposes that the United States develop a “long-term security architecture for Ukraine’s defense that focuses on bilateral security defense.” It needs to explain what this entails. It also proposes charges on Russian energy sales to fund Ukraine’s rehabilitation.

The book criticizes Trump’s 2016 transition operations, citing a general lack of preparation before Trump took office.

“The tumultuous transition of 2016/2017 did not serve President Trump and the nation well and slowed the advancement and implementation of his agenda,” the writers stated. For example, they point out that before the election, Democrat Hillary Clinton’s transition team submitted over 1,000 names for future security clearance. Trump’s team filed only 25.

The group claims to have identified over 1,200 national security-related roles that the future administration would need to fill and wants it to be prepared on Day 1 with Trump loyalists who support the “America First” strategy.

“It is not about retaliating against individuals or attempting to politicize official posts. “It’s about ensuring that government employees do their jobs while keeping politics out of it,” Fleitz added.

The book portrays China as the country’s most significant national security concern, eager to dethrone the United States as the world’s dominant force. It advocates a hardline policy that builds on methods taken under both the Trump and Biden administrations to render Beijing’s actions “largely irrelevant to American life.”

A Trump Affiliated Group Has Released A New National Security Book Outlining Prospective Second-Term Approaches.

It raises economic concerns about China to national security ones and advocates a reciprocal strategy that would deny Beijing access to US markets in the same way that American enterprises have been denied access in China.

The book also calls for more stringent screening of cyber and digital enterprises owned by US rivals, particularly China, to ensure they are not collecting sensitive information. It also advises prohibiting Chinese people from purchasing property within a 50-mile radius of any US federal facility.

It advocates for visa restrictions on Chinese students seeking to study in the United States and the ban of TikTok and other Chinese apps due to worries about data privacy. Conversely, Trump has spoken out against legislation that would force TikTok to sell or ban access in the United States.

Analysts’ interpretations of what constitutes an “America First” policy frequently reflect the writers’ own interests.

Ellie Cohanim, a former Trump senior State Department ambassador in charge of monitoring and combatting antisemitism, sees “America First” as a shopping list for Israel’s military.

The United States should provide Israel with a squadron of “25 Lockheed Martin F-35s, one squadron of Boeing’s F-15 EX, and a squadron of Apache E attack helicopters,” Cohanim stated.

The United States should give Israel some of its billions of dollars in military funding in Israeli currency so that it can spend it at home, and Washington should press Arab states to foot the bill for Gaza reconstruction and accept Israel’s suspension of any political talks with the Palestinians pending an indefinite period of compulsory deradicalization for the Palestinian people, she wrote.

SOURCE – (AP)

NEW YORK — Harvey Weinstein appeared in a New York City courthouse on Thursday as authorities considered California’s extradition request to serve his awaiting term for a 2022 rape conviction in Los Angeles.

The 16-year sentence Harvey received in 2023 for raping a woman at a 2013 Los Angeles film festival was put on hold while he spent time in New York after being convicted of rape in 2020. However, the Empire State conviction was reversed late last month, erasing the 23-year term.

Harvey Weinstein Is Back In Court As New York Considers California Prison Request.

According to prosecutors and defense attorneys, the hearing in Queens criminal court on Thursday morning, only days after Weinstein left a city hospital, was related to California’s request. Weinstein arrived at the hearing in a wheelchair and wearing a dark suit.

The 72-year-old remains in New York detention while Manhattan’s district attorney seeks to retry him. During a hearing last week, prosecutors stated that they could be ready as early as September and that at least one of the two accused victims was willing to testify again.

Harvey Weinstein Is Back In Court As New York Considers California Prison Request.

In one case, the once-powerful former movie magnate is charged with raping an aspiring actor in 2013 and sexually abusing a TV and film production assistant in 2006. He rejects the charges.

New York’s highest court vacated Weinstein’s conviction, finding that the trial judge prejudiced him with incorrect rulings, including allowing other women to speak about charges he was not charged with.

The 2020 conviction was hailed at the time as a watershed moment in the #MeToo movement, which began in 2017 with a slew of complaints against Weinstein.

Harvey Weinstein Is Back In Court As New York Considers California Prison Request.

Weinstein was sentenced to upstate New York state prison. Following the appeals court verdict, he was transferred to city custody and taken to Manhattan’s Bellevue Hospital, where his publicist claims he was treated for pneumonia and other medical conditions. He was sent to the city’s Rikers Island detention complex on Monday.

SOURCE – (AP)

LONDON — Thousands of die-hard Taylor Swift fans who missed her U.S. concert tour last year or didn’t want to pay high prices to see her again discovered an unusual solution: fly to Europe.

The pop artist is ready to begin the 18-city European leg of her record-breaking Eras Tour in Paris on Thursday, and planeloads of Swifties will follow Miss Americana across the water in the coming weeks. The arena where Swift performs reported that Americans purchased 20% of the tickets for her four sold-out gigs. The next leg of the tour, Stockholm, is expected to draw approximately 10,000 concertgoers from the United States.

A concert may seem like a weird reason to visit a distant nation, especially because fans can watch the Eras Tour documentary from home on Disney+. However, Expedia, an online travel website, claims that Swift’s fans’ continent-hopping is part of a bigger trend known as “tour tourism,” after noticing a tendency during Beyoncé’s Renaissance world tour.

Some North American fans who intend to fly overseas for Swift’s Eras Tour said they justified the cost by noting that tighter limitations on ticket costs and resales in Europe made Swift perform abroad no more expensive—aand possibly cheaper — than seeing her closer to home.

Fans Are Following Taylor Swift To Europe After Finding Eras Tour Tickets Less Costly There

“They said, ‘Wait a minute, I can either spend $1,500 to go see my favorite artist in Miami, or I can take that $1,500 and buy a concert ticket, a round-trip plane ticket, and three nights in a hotel room,” Melanie Fish, an Expedia representative and travel specialist, said.

Jennifer Warren, 43, of St. Catharines, a community in Ontario’s Niagara region, has had this experience. She and her 11-year-old son adore Swift but needed help finding reasonably priced tickets in the United States. Undeterred, Warren and her husband decided to arrange a European holiday based on where she could obtain tickets. The location turned out to be Hamburg, Germany.

“You get out, you get to see the world, and you get to see your favorite artist or performer all at once, so there are a lot of benefits,” said Warren, director of research and innovation at a mutual insurance firm.

The three VIP tickets she got near the stage eras tour— “I would call it brute-force dumb luck” — were 600 euros ($646) each. Swift then announced six November tour dates in Toronto, within driving distance of Warren’s house. “Absolute nose-bleed seats” are already selling for 3,000 Canadian dollars ($2,194) on secondary resale sites such as Viagogo, Warren added.

Fans Are Following Taylor Swift To Europe After Finding Eras Tour Tickets Less Costly There

Hardcore fans following their favorite musician or band on tour is not a recent phenomenon. “Groupie” first appeared in the late 1960s as a somewhat pejorative term for devoted rock band fans. Deadheads hit the road in the 1970s to follow the Grateful Dead from city to city.

More recently, according to Fish, music festivals such as Coachella in California and Glastonbury in England, as well as musical residencies in Las Vegas by Elton John, Lady Gaga, and Adele, have drawn visitors to places they might not have visited otherwise.

Since the coronavirus outbreak, travel and entertainment specialists have reported a pent-up consumer demand for “experiences” rather than tangible items. Some believe that music fans’ readiness to widen their fandom horizons is part of a larger societal adjustment.

“It does seem like it’s more than a structural shift, maybe a personality transformation we all went through,” said Natalia Lechmanova, the Mastercard Economics Institute’s top Europe economist.

As Swift travels around Europe, Lechmanova anticipates restaurants and hotels to experience the same increase that Mastercard saw within a 2.5-mile (4-kilometer) radius of performance venues in the cities she visited in 2023. According to the economist, the strong strength of the US dollar against the euro may also boost retail spending on apparel, collectibles, beauty items, and materials for the friendship bracelets fans exchange during the Eras Tour.

Former college roommates Lizzy Hale, 34, of Los Angeles, and Mitch Goulding, 33, of Austin, Texas, already had tickets to see the Eras Tour in L.A. last summer when they decided to try to obtain them for Paris, London, and Edinburgh, Scotland. They saw a concert trip to Europe as a replacement for a trip they planned to celebrate Goulding’s birthday in May 2020 but had to cancel due to the pandemic.

Goulding got VIP seats to one of Swift’s three Stockholm gigs. He, Hale, and two other pals planned a ten-day tour that included stops in Amsterdam and Copenhagen.

“As someone who enjoys both traveling and music, finding a way to combine the two is really special,” said Hale, expecting her first child.

The local economic impact of what the zeitgeist has dubbed “Swiftonomics” and the “Swift lift” can be significant. It’s no surprise that Singapore’s government signed an exclusive deal with Swift to make the city-state her lone tour stop in Southeast Asia earlier this year, sparking regional envy.

European governments have yet to acknowledge that their countries were not among the 12 chosen for the Eras Tour’s Europe leg, while some fans are surprised that Gelsenkirchen, a city with a population of around 264,000, is one of three German places that made the list

Airbnb announced Tuesday that searches on its site for the U.K. cities where Swift will perform in June and August — Edinburgh, Liverpool, Cardiff, and London — jumped by an average of 337% since tickets went on sale last summer.

Not to be outdone in identifying trends, the property rentals firm identified the demand as an example of “passion tourism,” or travel “driven by concerts, sports, and other cultural events.”

According to Stockholm Chamber of Commerce Chief Economist Carl Bergqvist, 120,000 visitors from 130 countries, including 10,000 from the United States, are scheduled to visit Sweden’s capital this month. Stockholm is the only Scandinavian destination on Swift’s tour, and airlines have increased flights from nearby Denmark, Finland, and Norway to bring fans to the May 17-19 gigs, he said.

Even though rates for the tour dates have soared, the city’s 40,000 hotel rooms are all booked, according to Bergqvist. He said that concertgoers are likely to spend roughly 500 million Swedish kroner, or more than $46 million, on the local economy during their stay, excluding the cost of Swift tickets and travel to Sweden.

“So this is going to be huge for the tourism sector in Sweden and Stockholm in particular,” said Bergqvist.

Nightclubs, restaurants, and bars are taking advantage of the opportunity to pander to fans by hosting Taylor Swift-themed activities such as karaoke, quizzes, and after-concert dance parties.

Caroline Matlock, 29, of Houston, saw Swift more than a year ago on the Eras Tour in Texas. She’s now making additional friendship bracelets and trying to learn a few Swedish words in preparation for the three-and-a-half-hour presentation in Stockholm. Swift’s friend proposed seeing her in Europe, and Matlock initially needed convincing.

“I said, ‘I only want to travel if it’s a nation I’ve never been to. “I’ve seen Taylor Swift,” she explained.

Their itinerary includes visits to Scandinavian destinations such as Oslo and Gothenburg. The event is the trip’s final night, and Matlock looks forward to meeting Swifties from other countries. “Americans tend to have a very obsessive culture, especially Taylor Swift-related, so I’m curious if the crowd will be more toned-down.”

It remains to be seen whether the music tourism trend will last as long and as strong as Swift’s and Beyoncé’s and whether it will spread to Billie Eilish, Usher, and other artists who have world tours planned for next year. Expedia’s Fish believes that other well-known singers performing in Europe this summer will demonstrate that planning a foreign trip around a concert is becoming popular.

Fans Are Following Taylor Swift To Europe After Finding Eras Tour Tickets Less Costly There

Kat Morga, a travel consultant in Nashville, is still determining. Morga watched Swift perform in Nashville last year and assisted two clients with school-aged children in booking European family holidays this summer, which included seeing Swift in concert. However, she believes that the complexity of navigating ticket purchases through language hurdles, currency conversions, international banking restrictions, and the danger of cancellations will limit the popularity of regular gig vacations.

“I think this is an anomaly,” Morga stated. “People aren’t going to spend $20,000 on a lavish family trip just because Taylor Swift is there. She’s a unique individual. “She’s unique.”

Glenn Fogel, CEO of Booking Holdings, owns Booking.com, Priceline.com, agoda.com, Kayak, and OpenTable, is even less excited about concert tours as a tourist promoter. The Swift Effect creates a “little blip” when the superstar visits smaller destinations, but for the global travel sector, “one star touring around does not make a difference,” he explained.

“It may only shift it somewhat. A person planned a week-long vacation in the Caribbean. Instead, that individual says, ‘Let’s go to the Taylor Swift thing,'” Fogel explained. “It does not increase it. “It just moves it from here to there.”

SOURCE – (AP)