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Here are a couple of items on pieces we’ve posted in the last few weeks. First, the pressure is building on New York Democrats to endorse Mamdani, especially with Trump trying to intervene to help Andrew Cuomo.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a longtime Sanders ally who endorsed Mamdani during the primary, suggested Democratic Party elders were setting a bad example.
“Are we a party who rallies behind our nominee or not?” Ocasio-Cortez told reporters on the steps of the Capitol Thursday. “I am very concerned about the example that is being set by anybody in our party. If an individual doesn’t want to support the party’s nominee now, it complicates their ability to ask voters to support any nominee later.”
In addition to Jeffries and Schumer, other holdouts are Reps. Yvette Clarke, Dan Goldman, Ritchie Torres, Gregory Meeks and Grace Meng. Oh, yeah, there’s also Governor Kathy Hochul. This is from a pastor after a meeting with a number of pastors in a church in Jeffries’ district:
Moore, who has met with Mamdani a handful of times, said he was disappointed to see the church meeting did not lead up to an endorsement.
“The country is under the threat of fascism, now Trump meddling in the election, it is very clear that this is real, and in a moment like this an endorsement from the federal leaders would send a message,” he added.
Turning to another followup, we’ve got two birds with one stone, travel and AI. On the travel front, this piece seems well-sourced with tables showing the number of tourists in big tourism destinations:
Tourism across the United States is in the midst of a significant downturn, with Florida, Hawaii, Arizona, Michigan, Illinois, Massachusetts, and several other states feeling the impact. The broader tourism decline has now lasted for eight straight months and is expected to persist until at least the end of 2025. In Florida, for instance, visitor numbers dropped from 19.4 million in 2024 to 15.9 million in 2025, a decline of 3.5 million visitors. Similarly, Hawaii saw a decrease from 1.8 million visitors in 2024 to 1.5 million in 2025, reflecting a 300K loss in tourism. Other states, including Michigan and Arizona, experienced comparable declines, with Michigan’s tourism falling from 14.4 million to 10.9 million and Arizona losing 600K visitors.
So far so good, but then there’s this:
The most noticeable reduction occurred in August, with 1.7 million visitors in 2024, compared to N/A in 2025, reflecting possible changes in data reporting or reduced visitation during the summer months.
So what seems to be a fact-filled piece is full of AI slop (it’s a week into September so it’s not remarkable that August hasn’t reported yet). And of course November and December haven’t happened yet, but they have in AI world:
So what are the real numbers? I’m having a hard time finding them. It looks like reporting on tourism is full of estimates and guesstimates.
First, Florida’s travel booster organization, Visit Florida, says that tourism is essentially flat or up a little bit:
Visit Florida on Tuesday estimated 34.435 million people traveled to Florida from April 1 through June 30, up from 34.279 million people during the same period last year. The estimate for this year would be a second-quarter record, according to the state tourism-marketing agency.
U.S. travelers made up 31.499 million of this year’s total, or 91.5 percent, up slightly from 31.419 million during the second quarter of 2024. Visit Florida estimated 2.295 million overseas travelers during the quarter this year, an 11.4% jump from the same period in 2024. But the estimated 640,000 Canadian visitors to Florida during the quarter marked a 20% drop from 2024.
Visit Florida’s numbers are completely different from Travel and Tour World’s. Visit Florida acknowledges a drop in Candian tourism but they claim it’s being made up for with a rise in domestic tourism and by tourists from other countries, like Brazil.
Then there’s this:
With over 825 miles of sandy beaches, Florida’s reputation as the perfect summer holiday destination has always been considered unshakeable. But this year, some business owners along the coast say the typical summer boom failed to materialize.
"Spring Break, really never happened for us, and then the summer swing, never happened for us," says Kirsten Smail, a marine educator for Dolphin Quest told ABC Action News. “It’s a ghost town,” confirmed Amber Simmons, General Manager at Pirates Pub & Grub. "It's the slowest year we've had since 2020."
Angela Wilson from Mad Beach Watersports told reporters business is down as much as 30% for some of her peers.
That piece claims that Florida tourist locations that cater to Canadian snowbirds are taking a big hit, even if overall Florida tourism is up.
So, we have a facist regime (DeSantis’ Florida) where the main tourism bureau says things are hunky-dory, some AI slop-generator is pushing out weird numbers, and anecdata shows that some tourist destinations are suffering. Pick your story, I guess…
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