NEWS AND OPINION:
Year-end surveys proceed to be launched by the nation’s ever-vigilant pollsters. One has some promising information for former President Donald Trump.
“Trump holds a commanding lead in the GOP primary,” declared Rasmussen Reports, providing some new numbers in a quick report launched Tuesday.
“With just weeks to go before Republican primary voters begin choosing their 2024 presidential candidate, former President Donald Trump has a wide lead over his rivals for the GOP nomination,” the pollster mentioned in a quick written report.
The nationwide phone and on-line survey discovered that 51% of doubtless Republican major voters would vote for Mr. Trump if the first have been held as we speak, whereas former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley would get 13%, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie every get 9% of the vote. Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy has 1% help.
A large 16% are undecided, the ballot discovered.
The survey of 792 doubtless Republican major voters was performed Dec. 19-21.
THE HALEY FACTOR
The nation is barely days away from the daybreak of 2024 — a presidential election 12 months that has already sparked a lot hypothesis about Republican contenders. A CBS News report that aired Dec. 22, for instance, urged that former President Donald Trump has been “asking allies and advisers for their thoughts about Nikki Haley as a potential vice presidential candidate.”
Politico, however, reported this on the identical day:
“Donald Trump’s allies, MAGA media influencers and even his son are sending the Republican frontrunner a message as he begins to ponder potential vice president picks: Don’t even think about choosing Nikki Haley.”
Mrs. Haley is now on the middle of press hypothesis — and conflicting opinions plus a little bit confusion as properly. A number of headlines from the final 72 hours supply perception:
“Trump has spent months attacking Nikki Haley. Now he’s mulling her for VP” (The Independent); “Trump’s MAGA allies strongly urge him not to choose Nikki Haley for VP” (Business Insider); “Trump allies and MAGA luminaries move to kill off the Haley-for-VP buzz” (Politico); “Nikki Haley can beat Trump by touting her superior plan to fix Americans’ health care” (The Tennessean); “Newly flush with cash, Nikki Haley makes her move in Iowa. is it too late?” (Yahoo News); and “Nikki Haley closes to within four percentage points of Trump in surprise New Hampshire poll” (Fox News).
A REALITY CHECK
“When it comes to immigration, conservatives want the current law enforced before we talk about reforming the system. That means raising the bar for asylum claims to weed out applicants who are gaming the system, ending mass release of illegal crossers at the border, and limiting President Biden’s rampant abuse of immigration parole,” wrote Simon Hankinson, a former international service officer with the State Department and presently a senior analysis fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center.
“Virtually nothing new or informative is being stated in this article. Yes, we know that enforcing existing laws would shut the problem down nearly immediately, but we also know no one in the Biden administration nor the Democrat Party, as a whole, is interested in doing that,” Mr. Hankinson mentioned in a commentary concerning the scenario.
“They are busy importing millions upon millions of fresh, poorly educated or completely illiterate people into the country to ensure they have enough voting numbers to win every major election going forward in perpetuity. By election day 2024, the total of illegal aliens residing in this country should top 50 million. With 10 million of that number being imported just under the first four years of the Biden administration,” Mr. Hankinson writes in The Daily Signal, a web based information website revealed by The Heritage Foundation.
THE FIRE HOSE ROBOT
It’s not Godzilla, however this might turn out to be useful.
“Imagine a flying dragon that doesn’t spout fire, but instead extinguishes it with blasts of water. Thanks to a team of Japanese researchers, this new kind of beast may soon be recruited to firefighter teams around the world, to help put out fires that are too dangerous for their human teammates to approach,” mentioned a information launch from Frontiers in Robotics and AI, a science journal.
“The blueprint of this novel firefighter robot, called the Dragon Firefighter, has now been published in Frontiers in Robotics and AI. And as it has been published as Open Science, roboticists around the world may freely use the plans to build their own Dragon Firefighters, for the benefit of all,” the discharge mentioned.
It was revealed Friday by Eurekalert.org, a information website maintained by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
“We here present a prototype of a four-meter-long, remotely controllable flying firehose robot, engineered to safely and efficiently extinguish fires in buildings by directly approaching the fire sources,” mentioned joint corresponding writer Yuichi Ambe, an assistant professor at Osaka University, in a written assertion.
Others are exploring the identical concepts, apparently.
“A research team from Prof. Satoshi Tadokoro’s laboratory at Tohoku University began working on similar flying robots in 2016. Since then, 11 researchers and students have contributed to its further development. Prior and during development, they liaised with Japanese firefighters to better understand their needs,” the information launch mentioned.
POLL DU JOUR
• 45% of U.S. adults say the present situation of the U.S. economic system is “poor”; 67% of Republicans, 48% of independents and 22% of Democrats agree.
• 33% general say the U.S. economic system is “only fair”; 28% of Republicans, 30% of independents and 41% of Democrats agree.
• 19% general say the U.S. economic system is “good”; 5% of Republicans, 18% of independents and 33% of Democrats agree.
• 3% general say the U.S. economic system is now “excellent”; 0% of Republicans, 4% of independents and 5% of Democrats agree.
SOURCE: A Gallup Poll of 1,013 U.S. adults performed by phone Dec. 1-20.
• Follow Jennifer Harper on X @HarperBulletin, on Facebook @HarperUniverse.
