Americans are traveling abroad again, and passport wait times are skyrocketing
WASHINGTON — Attention world travelers: Check your passports, now. The State Department is taking longer than usual to issue new U.S. passports, and to renew existing passports, because record numbers of Americans are going overseas.
"Americans are traveling again after COVID," Andres Rodriguez, lead community relations officer for passport services at the State Department, said in an interview.
In just the recent winter months, the department was sometimes processing as many as 500,000 passports a week, including new requests and renewals. That number is unprecedented, Rodriguez said. "It's been the busiest year ever for passport issuances," he added.
As wonderful as renewed wanderlust may feel for U.S. citizens, the wave of new applications has strained the thousands of State Department employees who must process them.
—Los Angeles Times
Trump to publish private letters from Oprah, other celebs in new book selling for $99
Former President Donald Trump plans to cash in on celebrity currency once again. Personal correspondence to the former U.S. president will be published in a new book to be released next month, selling at a basic price of $99. Available for pre-order, faithful fans can cop an autographed copy for a whopping $399.
According to the publisher, “Letters to Trump” promises “incredible, and oftentimes private correspondence, between President Donald J. Trump and some of the biggest names in history throughout the past 40 years!”
It’s the second official book released by Trump, who served a one-term presidency after being elected in 2016.
The first, “Our Journey Together,” was released in December 2021 via Winning Team Publishing, which was co-founded by Donald Trump Jr. that same year. The 320-page coffee table book reportedly grossed $20 million in sales.
—New York Daily News
Florida GOP lawmakers take aim at defining sex and gender
ORLANDO, Fla. — Republican bills aimed at preventing transgender children from transitioning have led to a firestorm of criticism from Democrats and the LQBTQ community. One proposal would allow the state to take a child away from a parent even “at risk” of doing so.
But in this year’s legislative session, the issue is just one part of a larger GOP focus on defining sex and gender in general. “At its core, it is a reductive worldview that sees people as nothing more than their reproductive organs,” said Brandon Wolf, spokesman for Equality Florida, an LGBTQ advocacy group. “And I’ve never seen a group of people more obsessed with what genitals other people have than the right wing.”
One bill by state Rep. Adam Anderson, a Palm Harbor Republican, HB 1223, has already been dubbed by opponents as “Don’t Say They” because it would prohibit public school students from using pronouns that don’t correspond to their birth gender.
It goes on to define sex as the “binary division of individuals based on reproductive function.” It also states that the Constitution and laws of Florida say a person’s gender is an “immutable biological trait” and that it is “false to ascribe to a person a pronoun that does not correspond to such a person’s sex.”
—Orlando Sentinel
Israel tensions soar as protests prompt scaling back of US visit
Israel’s move to curb the power of the Supreme Court saw tens of thousands take to the streets in protest, escalating a crisis that has spread to the army and prompted U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to cut back a visit.
More than 20 people were arrested Thursday in the country’s biggest unrest in decades, according to police, following demonstrations in many cities across the country. Austin met his counterpart Yoav Gallant in an engagement near Tel Aviv airport to avoid any disruption, the Israeli defense ministry said.
“America’s commitment to Israel’s security is ironclad,” Austin said after the meeting, though he urged Gallant — as he had Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier — to take steps to de-escalate the violence. He said the U.S. is disturbed by the violence and stressed democracy must have an independent judiciary.
Netanyahu, who regained power as head of a far-right coalition late last year, said his administration “will not allow anyone to screw up Israel’s democracy and cancel the decision of a majority.” That came after the chief of the army expressed alarm over a warning from soldiers that they are considering not showing up for duty.
—Bloomberg News
