The one idea Americans can agree on this summer
Over half of Americans — 55 percent — say they plan to take at least two nights away from home on a vacation this summer, according to a new survey from the Institute of Politics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. But as America has become more politically and culturally polarized, Mileah Kromer, the director of the IoP at UMBC, told POLITICO Nightly that she expected the survey would reveal different vacation preferences for Republicans and Democrats.
In fact, the opposite was the case. The study showed few gaps between each party on questions of the types of travel they prefer, across beach trips, road trips, romantic getaways or family-friendly vacations. The main notable difference was travel to a city; 39 percent of Democrats said they are considering visiting an urban place this summer, compared to just 16 percent of Republicans.
When diving into details, differences may arise: There are some specific beach destinations, for example, that might be more popular among Republicans or Democrats. (Palm Beach vs. Rehoboth Beach, for example.) But even the fact that there's generally very little difference in preference for one type of vacation over another was a surprise to Kromer, especially as members of each party increasingly divide over everything else: what television shows or movies to watch, what newspapers to read, where to shop for groceries.
It could be as simple as this: Everyone likes getting some time off from work. The results of the survey, though, also point to the possibility that many American cultural differences are constructed out of thin air rather than preordained based on where someone grew up or their political affiliation.
To better understand the study and what it tells us about America today, Nightly spoke with Kromer right as summer begins. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What was the most surprising part of the poll results?
I've long been fascinated by these big partisan differences over seemingly non-political things, like baby name preference, where you shop, what car you buy. And so that's the reason we did this poll — I wondered if attitudes towards summer vacation are as pronounced. What stood out to me was that in the midst of all the polarity in these seemingly non-political areas, you really don't see it too much here. This is one thing that Americans share: their attitude towards summer vacation. Frankly, I was expecting to see some bigger partisan division, because it seems like it's everywhere these days.
Where did you expect that partisan division to manifest itself? I noticed a fairly stark division in interest in urban vacation results, with Democrats much more likely to vacation in cities than Republicans.
Certainly, urban tourism wasn't surprising at all. But I expected there to be some greater division among questions like where Democrats and Republicans plan to take a vacation, just because there are so many lifestyle choices that are so heavily polarized. Everyone still wants to go to the beach.
What our survey can't tell you is some of the more granular questions. So, every beach vacation is not the same. The funniest or most politically pertinent point there is that Rehoboth Beach is not the same as Palm Beach, where Mar-a-Lago is.
How much have decisions that we've considered non-political for a long time become imbued with politics more generally?
The first book that I read on this that really opened my eyes to this phenomenon was The Big Sort by Bill Bishop [which was published in 2008]. Bishop talks about how people are clustering in like-minded communities, and that the more you put yourself in a partisan silo, everyone around you begins to like the same things that you like. It really intensifies when you're doing that with geographic location.
So, with neighborhoods, even at the county level, there's fewer and fewer of what we'd consider swing counties. And when people don't spend time around folks with a diversity of opinions, they start to get a huge confirmation bias. People are now not only self-selecting into where they live, they're also self-selecting what media they consume and what they buy. That leads to an increase in specialized products directed at one group or another.
In the case of vacations, then, why has this behavior stayed similar when everything else has changed?
I'm thinking about that myself. The simplistic answer is everyone likes some time off. If we think about the flow of American culture on a calendar, every summer, school ends. When you have this break, a lot of people really relish the opportunity to take even a couple of days off, away from work, away from the stresses of life, to be with family and friends.
I actually think it's sort of nice that there's some agreement. There's always these funny pieces that are something like: 'How to talk to your uncle or your aunt who you disagree with politically at your Thanksgiving dinner.' Here's something that you can talk about — vacation. If you ever want to have a non-political conversation with someone, maybe someone who you know you don't share any political views with, talk about vacation.
Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight's author at cmchugh@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @calder_mchugh.
What'd I Miss?
— Judge blocks Trump administration's attempt to crush Harvard's foreign student enrollment: A federal judge barred the Trump administration today from rescinding Harvard University's ability to enroll foreign students, granting the school's emergency request to stave off 'immediate and irreparable injury.' U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs granted Harvard's requested restraining order just hours after the university sued the Department of Homeland Security, accusing the administration of unconstitutional retaliation for refusing to capitulate to President Donald Trump's demands.
— Justice Department agrees to end Biden-era felony case against Boeing: The Justice Department announced an agreement today to end its felony case against Boeing for the plane-maker's role in two passenger jet crashes that killed a total of 346 people in Indonesia and Ethiopia — less than a year after the company agreed to plead guilty as part of a deal with the Biden administration. In return, Boeing must pay over $1.1 billion in fines, safety improvements and compensation for families of the people who died in the crashes in October 2018 and March 2019. Those disasters, involving Boeing's 737 MAX 8 jet, kicked off years of still-unresolved questions from lawmakers and safety experts about the federal government's oversight of the giant manufacturer and defense contractor.
— Trump turns the screws on big companies amid tariff fight: President Donald Trump has publicly targeted companies which have expressed concerns surrounding the administration's tariff plan in recent days, threatening major brands including Apple and Walmart. The latest target of his ire was iPhone manufacturer Apple, which Trump threatened with a company-specific tariff in a Truth Social post this morning.
— Trump approves Nippon purchase of US Steel: President Donald Trump said today he approved a deal for Nippon Steel to buy U.S. Steel, reversing a position he took during the presidential campaign after the Japanese manufacturer agreed to pour more investment into the United States. 'This will be a planned partnership between United States Steel and Nippon Steel, which will create at least 70,000 jobs and add $14 Billion Dollars to the U.S. Economy,' Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. 'The bulk of the investment will occur in the next 14 months.'
AROUND THE WORLD
LANGUAGE WARS — The rejection of Catalan as an official language in Brussels stands to trigger a political crisis in Madrid. In exchange for key support needed to form a new minority government in 2023, Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez entered into an elaborate deal with Catalan separatist lawmakers in which he committed to getting Catalan, Basque and Galician recognized as official languages of the EU.
The move requires unanimous backing of the bloc's 27 member countries, and Spanish officials spent the past two years lobbying European capitals for support. Next week, Spain intends to bring the issue to a vote in the General Affairs Council, the body that prepares periodic meetings of the bloc's leaders in Brussels. But documents summarizing this week's meeting of the bloc's ambassadors, seen by POLITICO, indicate serious doubts regarding Madrid's bid.
HEIRS NOT WELCOME HERE — Belgium's heir to the throne could be forced to leave Harvard University after U.S. President Donald Trump imposed a ban on foreign students at the prestigious institution. Princess Elisabeth, who will be the next queen of Belgium, is enrolled in a two-year master's degree in public policy at Harvard, one of the world's most elite universities.
But the Trump administration revoked Harvard's ability to enroll international students on Thursday, accusing the university of promoting violence and antisemitism and failing to comply with a request to hand over foreign students' information that could lead to their deportation.
The 23-year-old princess, who is the eldest child of Belgium's King Philippe and Queen Mathilde, has completed the first year of grad school but will not finish for another year. She graduated from the U.K.'s Oxford University last year.
She's first in line to inherit the throne, after Belgium's constitution was changed in 1991 to abolish male-only succession.
Nightly Number
RADAR SWEEP
PICS AND PRAYERS — Since the pandemic, India's religious sites have experienced a surge in popularity. The country's Hindu temples attract hundreds of thousands of visitors every day, and experts see no signs of it slowing down. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has pushed for India to become a more openly Hindu nation since gaining power in 2014, and social media influencers have helped his cause, marketing spiritual spaces around the country as 'eminently Instagrammable', writes Satviki Sanjay for Bloomberg.
Parting Image
Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Post
26 minutes ago
- New York Post
Trump is right about border and criminals, but he's losing voters with mass deportations
President Donald Trump delivered on his key campaign promise: Securing the border. Yet the only thing falling faster than illegal crossings has been his approval rating on immigration. The problem: Instead of building on his win at the border with more popular arrests of criminal threats inside the country, the administration is going after migrants indiscriminately. Democrats can't deny it: The border crisis is over. Border Patrol arrests have fallen nearly 90% since December to near-record lows. Nonetheless, only 40% of voters approved of the president's handling of immigration in a July Quinnipiac poll, while 55% disapproved. The 15-point approval deficit contrasts with a +1 rating in the January Q-poll. Other polls show similarly dramatic declines. Of course, people don't actually want more illegal immigration. Polls consistently show that the president is the most trusted on the border. Instead, it's the deportations from within the United States driving the discontent. Quinnipiac's July poll found that only 38% approve of how the administration is handling deportations. That doesn't mean voters back the other side — 84% of disagree with Democrats who want to suspend deportations completely, according to a March Pew Research Center poll. But Trump emphasized that he would prioritize ending 'sanctuary and protection for dangerous criminals' — the position of 81% of voters. Unfortunately, most voters don't believe the president is doing that right now. Even as late as June, voters told CBS News they thought that the president was prioritizing 'dangerous criminals' over peaceful immigrants 53%-47%. By mid-July, it was 44%-56% the other way — an 18-point swing in a month. What happened? Voters started to see how the priorities shifted. According to The Post's reporting, agents were instructed in late May to focus on 'quantity over quality' to meet a 3,000-per-day 'goal' set by the White House. ICE was advised to target people looking for work at Home Depot and to raid businesses in industries likely to employ illegal workers. Rather than scooping up violent criminals recklessly sent back to the streets by New York City or even cleaning out the homeless shelters costing New York taxpayers a fortune, ICE is arresting immigrants who are helping power the Trump economy. Since the White House ordered the change, there has been a dramatic escalation in arrests of people without criminal records. In June, the number of immigrants arrested without criminal convictions was 1,100% higher than it was even in 2017 during the first Trump term: nearly 6,000 per week. Yet there are still half a million illegal immigrants with criminal convictions out there to remove — and ICE should locate them before spending its time and resources on workers. It's common sense: ICE agents told The Post that the policy was 'leading them to leave some dangerous criminal illegal migrants on the streets.' Setting aside politics and crime, Trump has already publicly acknowledged there's an economic downside to these non-criminal deportations. 'Our aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long-time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,' he said in June, referencing farms, hotels, and leisure businesses. The president is correct. Besides the border, the president's other primary election issue was inflation. And immigrants reduce inflation — not, as critics claim, by depressing wages for American workers, but by increasing production of goods and services. When supply decreases, prices go up for consumers, as we painfully saw throughout the pandemic. Immigrant workers also benefit their American counterparts: Companies invest more when there is enough labor to quickly construct and fully man facilities, and Americans end up in better jobs as managers and supervisors when immigrant workers fill lesser-skilled jobs. Booting the nearly 2 million illegal-immigrant construction workers will pull Americans out of those better-paying jobs, not into the labor force. Whatever the immigration politics are, Trump's midterm success will ultimately depend most on his economic outcomes. Americans re-elected him because they remember his first term before the pandemic as a period of stable wage and job growth — but random mass deportations are both politically unpopular and economically destabilizing. Although the president has promised 'changes are coming' on deportations, none have yet occurred. In April, Trump floated the idea that employers might be able to sponsor their illegal workers for visas if the workers leave the country and return legally. That's a great starting point: If no employer is willing to vouch for them, deportation likely won't have much economic downside. The president has diagnosed the problem. He's come up with a viable solution. And the One Big Beautiful Bill shows he's capable of navigating controversial legislation across the finish line. With the economy slowing and midterms looming, there's no reason to wait. David J. Bier is Director of Immigration Studies at the Cato Institute.
San Francisco Chronicle
26 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Trump administration halts visas for people from Gaza after Laura Loomer questions arrivals
WASHINGTON (AP) — A day after conservative activist Laura Loomer posted videos on social media of children from Gaza arriving in the U.S. for medical treatment and questioning how they got visas, the State Department said it was halting all visitor visas for people from Gaza pending a review. The State Department said Saturday the visas would be stopped while it looks into how 'a small number of temporary medical-humanitarian visas' were issued in recent days. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday told 'Face the Nation' on CBS that the action came after 'outreach from multiple congressional offices asking questions about it." Rubio said there were 'just a small number' of the visas issued to children in need of medical aid but that they were accompanied by adults. The congressional offices reached out with evidence that 'some of the organizations bragging about and involved in acquiring these visas have strong links to terrorist groups like Hamas,' he asserted, without providing evidence or naming those organizations. As a result, he said, 'we are going to pause this program and reevaluate how those visas are being vetted and what relationship, if any, has there been by these organizations to the process of acquiring those visas.' Loomer on Friday posted videos on X of children from Gaza arriving earlier this month in San Francisco and Houston for medical treatment with the aid of an organization called HEAL Palestine. 'Despite the US saying we are not accepting Palestinian 'refugees' into the United States under the Trump administration,' these people from Gaza were able to travel to the U.S., she said. She called it a 'national security threat' and asked who signed off on the visas, calling for the person to be fired. She tagged Rubio, President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, GOP Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat. Trump has downplayed Loomer's influence on his administration, but several officials swiftly left or were removed shortly after she publicly criticized them. The State Department on Sunday declined to comment on how many of the visas had been granted and whether the decision to halt visas to people from Gaza had anything to do with Loomer's posts. HEAL Palestine said in a statement Sunday that it was 'distressed' by the State Department decision to stop halt visitor visas from Gaza. The group said it is 'an American humanitarian nonprofit organization delivering urgent aid and medical care to children in Palestine." A post on the organization's Facebook page Thursday shows a photo of a boy from Gaza leaving Egypt and headed to St. Louis for treatment and said he is 'our 15th evacuated child arriving in the U.S. in the last two weeks.' The organization brings 'severely injured children" to the U.S. on temporary visas for treatment they can't get at home, the statement said. Following treatment, the children and any family members who accompanied them return to the Middle East, the statement said. 'This is a medical treatment program, not a refugee resettlement program,' it said. The World Health Organization has repeatedly called for more medical evacuations from Gaza, where Israel's over 22-month war against Hamas has heavily destroyed or damaged much of the territory's health system. 'More than 14,800 patients still need lifesaving medical care that is not available in Gaza,' WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Wednesday on social media, and called on more countries to offer support. A WHO description of the medical evacuation process from Gaza published last year explained that the WHO submits lists of patients to Israeli authorities for security clearance. It noted that before the war in Gaza began, 50 to 100 patients were leaving Gaza daily for medical treatment, and it called for a higher rate of approvals from Israeli authorities. The U.N. and partners say medicines and even basic health care supplies are low in Gaza after Israel cut off all aid to the territory of over 2 million people for more than 10 weeks earlier this year.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Texas Gov. Abbott blasted for special session on gerrymandering failing again
In Texas on Friday, a special session to vote on new redistricted maps by state Republicans failed after not enough Democrats showed up to vote. There is another special session scheduled for Monday. Texas State Rep. John Bucy III (D) joins Alex Witt to discuss the issue.
