Traveling can be a painful experience even if you’re someone who generally enjoys good health. In those ultra-cramped economy seats aboard airplanes, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who’d call themselves comfortable. But, for those who suffer with chronic pain, the proposition of travel presents a myriad of extra concerns and challenges.

For some, their symptoms substantially restrict even their daily activities, so the notion of venturing outside their usual controllable environment seems almost impossible. These often-invisible afflictions can effectively incapacitate you or, at least, impede your ability to enjoy all kinds of things other people take for granted. But, with careful planning and some compensatory measures at the ready, travel isn’t necessarily off the table.

There are some things you can do to help ensure that your journey runs smoothly and minimize the discomfort of whatever mode of transportation you choose. And, while the change in your environment and routine that accompanies travel will undoubtedly challenge your body, you can do your best to prepare for likely eventualities. There may be nothing we can do about the pitch of airplane seating, but some things are still within our control.

Mentality

The first obstacle may be the lingering worry that you might experience a flare-up and find yourself unfit to travel when the departure date actually arrives, which could deter you from making plans in the first place. What if an attack comes on midtrip and you find yourself without your usual means of mitigating the symptoms? It will probably be necessary to remind yourself constantly of the benefits you’ll enjoy because of your trip — seeing friends or loved ones, experiencing new things or the singular enjoyment that comes from a change of scenery.

Planning ahead

If your budget allows, you may wish to purchase travel insurance with Cancel For Any Reason coverage, so that you can back out of your trip in case the worst-case scenario does occur. Be sure to look thoroughly into the terms of your policy, however, as some may not reimburse you 100% of your travel expenses.

Communication

If you’re traveling with companions, be transparent about your condition. The pressures of traveling, particularly in a group, can be compounded if other members of your party don’t realize that you’re in appreciable pain. With invisible ailments, it’s essential to communicate your needs and limitations to your group so that they are aware of and can accommodate your restrictions, or at least understand when you need to dip out of an activity and go rest in your room.

Reduce travel time

There are things you can do to help reduce the amount of time you spend on your travel journey, most of which involve some extra expense. You can minimize time spent standing in security screening queues by enrolling in TSA Precheck, which allows you to use a dedicated lane for expedited screening service. If possible, you’ll also want to opt for a direct flight to reduce time spent in transit and lugging your bags around multiple airports.

Pack light

Perhaps this one is intuitive (and it’s definitely easier said than done), but you’ll want to pack as lightly as possible. Hauling around a heavy suitcase can easily aggravate your chronic pain condition, and the walk between your car and the airport or hotel room can quite suddenly seem very arduous. Of course, ensure you’ve got a suitcase with wheels to make things easier. If possible, you could consider shipping bulky items directly to your destination. There are companies like Luggage Free, Send My Bag and Lugless that deliver directly to your accommodations.

Bring comfort items

Packing lightly can sometimes prove challenging given my next tip, which is that you pack items that keep you comfortable while both awake and asleep. If you need to stuff a special pillow, heating or cooling pads into a larger suitcase, by all means, do it. Perhaps you need to bring along certain food or snack items that help minimize inflammation. CBD products can be brought aboard airplanes as long as the THC content is no higher than 0.3% (and you are flying between states or countries where it’s legal).

Packing medications

It may be helpful to use a travel pill organizer so you don’t need to fumble through bottles buried inside your luggage and can bring only the amount of medication you need. If you’re on an international flight, however, you may need to bring the original bottles or copies of your prescriptions. Be sure to fill your prescriptions in advance of your trip and bring along an extra three days’ supply in case your flight gets delayed or canceled and you’re away from home longer than intended. To be on the safe side, you may want to bring along a record of your condition and a list of the medications you’re taking.

Prepare your carry-on

Be sure to pack your medications, water, snacks and pain management tools in your carry-on for easy access. In case your luggage gets mishandled, you don’t want to be caught without these things. That includes any NSAIDS or other analgesics you might need mid-flight or while navigating the airport. A good neck pillow and stick-on heating/cooling pads for tight muscles can prove indispensable during a flight. I also bring a supply of cold medications and supplements with me on every trip, as my pain becomes quite unbearable when I’m fighting any illness.

Wheelchair assistance

Airports are required to provide wheelchair or medical assistance to anyone who requests them, whether or not you typically use a wheelchair. Airlines recommend calling at least 48 hours in advance on your departure on either end of your trip to request a wheelchair or guided assistance, and you can also inform a gate attendant once you arrive. This also allows you to take advantage of early boarding, so that you don’t have to stand for extended periods of time as the masses try to board the plane ahead of you. For more in-depth information on these services, visit the U.S. Department of Transportation’s article on Wheelchair and Guided Assistance.

Flying in pain

Be sure to buy your ticket early so you have your choice of airplane seats, and opt for as much legroom and seat comfort as you can afford. Even if you can’t spring for First or Business class, scoring an aisle seat in Economy has its benefits, allowing you to stand up and stretch or move around more mid-flight. Even if you have to squeeze past seatmates to do so, be sure to get up and move a bit during the flight to reduce stiffness and improve circulation.

Throughout your travel journey, you’ll want to stay hydrated and eat as well as possible to keep your blood sugar levels stable and avoid inflammation-triggering foods (like most of the stuff that’s typically available on the go). This is definitely easier said than done when you’re having to dine at the airport, so keep some healthy snacks handy in your carry-on bag.

Go by train

If air travel comes with too many variables for you to be reasonably comfortable getting on a plane and flying, consider rail travel as a viable alternative. Going by train may take longer, but it comes with considerable perks, including ample legroom and often some stunning scenery along the way. You can also choose to book sleeper accommodations, which afford you more privacy, allow you more space to move around an allow you to lie down flat for maximum comfort.

Go by car

If you’re not going too far and will be driving to your destination, many of the above principles still apply. Keep medications and comfort items close at hand, stay hydrated and eat as healthily as possible, and make sure to take breaks roughly every hour so that you can get out, stretch and move around. You’ll also want to swap driving duties, if possible.

©2024 Northstar Travel Media, LLC. Visit at travelpulse.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

WASHINGTON — The nation’s top doctor said the United States is “falling short” in protecting the public health of children and adolescents from the impact of social media and firearm violence — and both are areas where he wants Congress to take additional action.

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy is no stranger to the task of influencing the federal government’s public health priorities and the nation’s understanding of the biggest public health issues.

Between his tenure as surgeon general in the Obama administration from December 2014 to April 2017 and his current role under President Joe Biden since March 2021, he’s had one of the longest careers as surgeon general since the 1950s — more than five and half years.

The surgeon general job has taken different forms over the years, with some physicians serving more as an advocate for healthy behavior and others pushing novel and sometimes controversial policy changes.

The late C. Everett Koop gained prominence in the Reagan administration for a surgeon general report recognizing that nicotine could be as addictive as cocaine and heroin and spearheading a mass mailing to all households educating about AIDS. Under President Bill Clinton, Joycelyn Elders was forced to resign over her comments on sex education.

Murthy has straddled that line, offering increasingly bold proposals in his effort to tackle the youth mental health and loneliness crisis.

“It became increasingly clear to me during my first term as surgeon general that the mental health challenges we faced were far bigger and deeper than we were acknowledging as a country and certainly than we were responding to,” Murthy said this week in an interview.

This year he has issued two calls to action — both met with mixed reception from industry and the broader health community — tackling the impact of social media on youth mental health and reducing the public health impact of firearm violence.

“Our most sacred responsibility as a society is to take care of our children, and when it comes to protecting them from the harms of social media and gun violence, we are falling short, and we’ve got to do better,” Murthy said. “The ripple effects are extraordinary for anyone who has had a child in their life.”

His priorities have shifted since his first Senate confirmation in 2014, and many of his ideas are shaped by the ongoing conversations with community members that he began having after taking the job. Some of those conversations inspired the first federal report on electronic cigarettes in 2016, he said.

Murthy joined the Biden administration in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even amid that crisis, he said he understood that loneliness and isolation from the pandemic could have wide-ranging mental health implications.

“We’ve got to approach these issues with the urgency that they deserve,” Murthy said. “Our problem is not a lack of good ideas, it’s the will to implement those ideas and to ultimately protect our kids.”

Social media

Murthy published an editorial in the The New York Times on June 17 calling for social media companies to use warning labels illustrating the adverse effects the platforms can have for youth. The call to action also advised Congress to take steps to reduce online harassment and exploitation of children and adolescents online and echoed an advisory he had issued the prior year.

His 2024 push ultimately came with congressional backing: The Senate passed its package of two children’s online safety bills last month, 91-3, despite some industry objections.

Numerous lawmakers have cited Murthy’s guidance and his op-ed in their support for the package and the need to take action. Murthy called the congressional action “really important steps forward,” but he cautioned against drawing early conclusions on the impact.

“History is full of well-intended measures that didn’t have the full impact that they needed to have,” he said. “Until we have data that shows us that the ultimate changes that are being made are resulting in a safe environment for our kids and technology that is safe for our children to use, then our job won’t be done.”

By contrast, the House has faced obstacles advancing its companion bills. The Energy and Commerce Committee canceled a June 27 markup of an online privacy bill after it received opposition from tech companies and some LGBTQ advocacy groups.

It’s unclear whether the House will take up the Senate version after the August recess, but Murthy stressed the urgency of the problem.

“I certainly would welcome the opportunity to keep working with legislators as they fashion solutions. With that said, what’s really important is time here,” he said.

But the surgeon general stopped short of saying whether he would advocate for House passage of the Senate-passed legislation.

“When legislators have questions and need technical assistance, you know, we’re always happy to help them,” he said, adding that he’s spoken to members of Congress from both chambers about his advisories and calls to action related to social media.

“It’s taken us long enough as a country to take the steps that we’ve already taken from a legislative perspective,” he said, “and we have to get the job done.”

Firearm violence

Murthy has likened strategies to mitigate the impact of gun violence to the adoption of seat belts and airbags in automobiles.

Both safety features were initially underused, and the automotive industry lobbied against requiring them. But both are now required under federal law and greatly reduce the risk of automobile fatalities.

“The political polarization that we see around gun violence often obscures how much agreement there is in the general public about measures that have to be taken,” said Murthy, who thinks people can unite around a shared concern about the mental and physical consequences of children whose families experience gun violence.

His office released an advisory and report on the public health threat of gun violence on June 25, shortly after calls from advocates on the issue.

According to the report, the federal government spent $878 million researching motor vehicle crashes in children and adolescents between 2008 and 2017. In that same period, the federal government spent $12 million on firearm injury prevention research — money spent through the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Justice.

“We have a long way to go for Congress to raise the level of funding for gun violence to what’s actually needed to help us understand more about the factors that are contributing to gun violence, understanding who is most deeply affected, to understanding what solutions work and are most effective, and hence need to be scaled up further,” Murthy said.

Congress allocated new funding specifically for gun violence research at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the NIH for the first time in decades for fiscal 2020. Murthy said he was “encouraged to see Congress allocate some funding for gun violence research” but that the government was still “massively underfunding research” on the issue.

He said there’s a lot more that researchers still need to understand to ensure that gun violence prevention programs are effective.

“And all of that requires funds, funds that can’t be entirely provided at the scale that’s needed by the philanthropic sector, but that really need [the] government to step in,” he said.

But increasing federal funding for that research is likely a hard sell with lawmakers. The House and Senate have proposed vastly different topline numbers for Labor-HHS-Education spending in fiscal 2025, and the inclusion of any money for firearm violence-related research is a sticking point for some Republicans.

Congress did come together in 2022 on a bipartisan gun control and mental health law, the first such compromise since the assault weapons ban in 1994.

But smaller endeavors haven’t made headway.

Murthy sees the key to changing attitudes about funding this research as taking a cue from Congress’ speed and efficiency in passing broad COVID-19 relief in 2020.

“Congress moved during a complicated year to get resources to families and to communities and to put measures in place to help accelerate vaccine development,” he said. That, in combination with action in 2021, resulted in billions of dollars for schools to reopen safely.

“We can move when there is an urgent threat that we’re facing, and gun violence represents one of those threats,” Murthy said. “It may not feel as urgent, given how desensitized sometimes we become to stories about gun violence, but the truth is, the urgency is still there.”

©2024 CQ-Roll Call, Inc., All Rights Reserved. Visit cqrollcall.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Cucumbers sometimes get overlooked as fodder for a main dish or appetizer because they’re so ubiquitous and, let’s be honest, utilitarian.

Available year-round, the bright-green creeping vine plant just isn’t as exciting as veggies you can only get for such a short time in summer — say, a homegrown tomato or bi-colored ear of butter-and-sugar sweet corn.

That said, it’s a low-cal, nutritious fruit rich in antioxidants and various minerals and vitamins. Packed with water (a cucumber is 95% water) they’re also an excellent source of hydration for adults who are supposed to take in around 10 cups of water every day.

This recipe is a creamy, peanut buttery take on a Chinese smashed cucumber salad. It brings together crisp wedges of mini-cucumbers with citrusy cilantro, toasted sesame seeds and the crunch of chopped, roasted peanuts. Adding zing is a peanut butter-based dressing whisked with soy sauce, honey, lime juice and God’s gift to cooks: a heaping teaspoon of garlicky, umami-filled chili crisp.

It’s the perfect dish for a hot summer evening, or any night you want to get something bright and crunchy on the table in less than 15 minutes.

If you detest cilantro — some people swear it tastes like soap — leave it out or substitute parsley or Thai basil, which is spicier than Italian sweet basil. I added a pinch of red pepper flakes to add a gentle heat, but you also could drizzle the finished dish with chili oil.

The salad can be served as an appetizer or side dish, and it also makes a great vegetarian lunch.

Peanut and Chili Crisp Cucumber Salad

PG tested

For salad

10 mini cucumbers, cut into thick wedges

Handful of fresh cilantro, chopped

1/4 cup roasted unsalted peanuts, chopped

1 tablespoon sesame seeds, toasted

For dressing

3 tablespoons peanut butter

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 lime, juiced and zested

1 teaspoon honey

1 heaping teaspoon chili crisp, or more to taste

Red pepper flakes, for garnish, optional

1 tablespoon chili oil, for drizzling, optional

Place cucumber wedges, cilantro and chopped peanuts into a large bowl. Sprinkle over sesame seeds and toss well to combine.

In a separate bowl, make dressing by stirring together peanut butter, soy sauce, lime zest and juice, honey and chili crisp. If it seems too thick, add a little water, a spoonful at a time, to thin to desired consistency.

Pour the dressing over the salad, and toss well to combine. (I used my hands, but two spoons also works.) Allow to sit on the counter for at least 10-15 minutes for the flavors to mingle. Pausing before serving will also allow the cucumbers to soften ever so slightly.

Taste, and adjust seasoning as desired — you may want to add more soy or lime juice to temper the peanut butter flavor, or spice it up with more chili crunch.

Spoon salad onto a serving platter or into individual bowls, and pour any dressing that remains in the bowl over top. Sprinkle a little (or a lot) red pepper flakes on top, or drizzle with chili oil. If you like, you can also garnish with more sesame seeds and/or chopped peanuts.

Serves 4 as a hearty appetizer or vegetarian side dish.

— Gretchen McKay, Post-Gazette

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©2024 PG Publishing Co. Visit at post-gazette.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

LOS ANGELES — Jonnae Thompson has felt for a long time that her dark brown skin and natural hair have made finding work in Hollywood especially hard.

“It’s like this negative connotation,” said the 37-year-old actress, singer, and stand-up comedian, who said she is often asked to audition for villainous roles such as a bully, drug dealer, or pimp.

Her quest for more equitable representation on the big screen isn’t just professionally exhausting. Thompson says anxiety about her skin complexion has affected her health.

“It definitely had a negative impact on my self-esteem,” she said. She recalls being called “charcoal” in kindergarten. “It was big, like, your skin is dark and that’s a problem.”

The term colorism — a form of prejudice and discrimination in which lighter skin is favored over darker skin — was popularized by author Alice Walker in her 1983 book “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose.”

Clinicians from various ethnic groups have recently begun to draw a direct line between colorism and poor health. A 2023 KFF survey found that, among Black and Hispanic adults, those with self-described darker skin tones reported more experiences with discrimination in daily life compared with those who have lighter skin tones. People who feel they experience daily discrimination can be at higher risk for depression, loneliness, increased alcohol and drug use, and anxiety, data shows.

And colorism can also lead to physical health concerns. Hair straighteners and skin lighteners commonly used by women of color, sometimes to conform to racialized beauty standards, increase their exposure to toxic chemicals, research shows.

Because of the potential health implications, the health care system should pay more attention to colorism, said Regina James, a child and adolescent psychiatrist who heads the American Psychiatric Association’s Division of Diversity and Health Equity.

“Skin color discrimination is so insidious it can literally get under your skin,” she said. “And consciously or subconsciously, it can contribute to low self-esteem and self-confidence, and even be detrimental to one’s mental health.”

Conversations about skin complexion can remain overlooked by mental health professionals who do not have expertise about or awareness of a person’s cultural context, if the conversations happen at all, said Usha Tummala-Narra, a clinical psychologist and professor in the Department of Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology at Boston College.

“There’s no specific training on colorism. Many people are unaware that it exists,” Tummala-Narra said.

But the experience can negatively affect a person’s self-worth, relationships, sense of belonging, and dignity. “These are all really critically important things as human beings that we all need to secure to have good health, both physically and mentally,” she said.

The issue can emerge in childhood for Black and Indigenous people and other people of color, who must navigate fair skin often being seen as superior, a ramification of colonialization. Black children with the darkest complexions experience higher levels of depressive symptoms, found a 2020 study in the journal Society and Mental Health.

Shannon Brown, 34, a former college counselor from the Bronx, New York, who is Black, remembers being called “midnight” by classmates and having family members joke about his skin being difficult to light in family photos. “I’ve just kind of accepted it and try to find the humor in it,” he said. “I feel like most folks aren’t intentionally trying to hurt me, but the jokes get tiresome.”

Shakun Kaushal, a 26-year-old digital communications specialist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, is Indian American and has a “darker complexion.” She said that in Indian culture one might hear comments like, “Oh, she’s so light and beautiful.”

“I sometimes feel dismissed by people,” said Kaushal, who has searched for an Indian or Black therapist in hopes they might better relate to her lived experience. She believes conversations about colorism should be intergenerational, start early, and get introduced with great care.

“What you say to a child does affect them. They will remember, and it will impact how they feel about themselves and in their skin,” Kaushal said. “We must talk about it.”

The feeling of shame and embarrassment colorism produces in people is palpable and needs to be acknowledged in health care settings, said Roopal Kundu, a dermatologist who founded and directs the Northwestern Medicine Center for Ethnic Skin and Hair in Chicago. Kundu, who is of South Asian heritage, opened the center in 2005 and notes that some cases of diseases like psoriasis, skin cancer, and eczema get diagnosed later, or misdiagnosed, because they present differently on diverse skin tones.

“How can we really make sure, as a field, that we’re taking care of everybody?” she said. “Healthy skin is beautiful skin. And beauty is across every single skin tone that there is.”

Therapists, doctors, and other clinicians from diverse backgrounds say that, in addition to clinical approaches that incorporate cultural competence, more efforts are needed to diversify the pool of mental health practitioners and to collaborate between disciplines.

Without cultural awareness and sensitivity, “you’re not going to get all the information that you need to appropriately diagnose and treat someone,” James said.

Black people are more likely to report difficulty finding mental health providers who understand their background and experiences, a KFF survey found. At the same time, programs that bolster diversity, equity, and inclusion in medical schools are faltering in the wake of the 2023 Supreme Court decision outlawing affirmative action in higher education.

According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, in 2022, about 5% of active psychiatric physicians identified as Black, 16% as Asian, 6% as Hispanic, and fewer than 1% as American Indian or Alaska Native.

Thompson, Brown, and Kaushal all said they had never been treated by a therapist who looks like them.

Thompson, the L.A. comedian, said she drank bleach when she was 10 years old, thinking it would lighten her skin. Fortunately, it caused only nausea.

If she could speak to her younger self, she would say: “You’re beautiful. You’re brilliant.”

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(KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.)

©2024 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

LOS ANGELES — About four months after a notorious hacking group claimed to have stolen an extraordinary amount of sensitive personal information from a major data broker, a member of the group has reportedly released most of it for free on an online marketplace for stolen personal data.

The breach, which includes Social Security numbers and other sensitive data, could power a raft of identity theft, fraud and other crimes, said Teresa Murray, consumer watchdog director for the U.S. Public Information Research Group.

“If this in fact is pretty much the whole dossier on all of us, it certainly is much more concerning” than prior breaches, Murray said in an interview. “And if people weren’t taking precautions in the past, which they should have been doing, this should be a five-alarm wake-up call for them.”

According to a class-action lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., the hacking group USDoD claimed in April to have stolen personal records of 2.9 billion people from National Public Data, which offers personal information to employers, private investigators, staffing agencies and others doing background checks. The group offered in a forum for hackers to sell the data, which included records from the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, for $3.5 million, a cybersecurity expert said in a post on X.

The lawsuit was reported by Bloomberg Law.

Last week, a purported member of USDoD identified only as Felice told the hacking forum that they were offering “the full NPD database,” according to a screenshot taken by BleepingComputer. The information consists of about 2.7 billion records, each of which includes a person’s full name, address, date of birth, Social Security number and phone number, along with alternate names and birth dates, Felice claimed.

National Public Data didn’t respond to a request for comment, nor has it formally notified people about the alleged breach. It has, however, been telling people who contacted it via email that “we are aware of certain third-party claims about consumer data and are investigating these issues.”

In that email, the company also said that it had “purged the entire database, as a whole, of any and all entries, essentially opting everyone out.” As a result, it said, it has deleted any “non-public personal information” about people, although it added, “We may be required to retain certain records to comply with legal obligations.”

Several news outlets that focus on cybersecurity have looked at portions of the data Felice offered and said they appear to be real people’s actual information. If the leaked material is it what it’s claimed to be, here are some of the risks posed and the steps you can take to protect yourself.

The threat of ID theft

The leak purports to provide much of the information that banks, insurance companies and service providers seek when creating accounts — and when granting a request to change the password on an existing account.

A few key pieces appeared to be missing from the hackers’ haul. One is email addresses, which many people use to log on to services. Another is driver’s license or passport photos, which some governmental agencies rely on to verify identities.

Still, Murray of PIRG said that bad actors could do “all kinds of things” with the leaked information, the most worrisome probably being to try to take over someone’s accounts — including those associated with their bank, investments, insurance policies and email. With your name, Social Security number, date of birth and mailing address, a fraudster could create fake accounts in your name or try to talk someone into resetting the password on one of your existing accounts.

“For somebody who’s really suave at it,” Murray said, “the possibilities are really endless.”

It’s also possible that criminals could use information from previous data breaches to add email addresses to the data from the reported National Public Data leak. Armed with all that, Murray said, “you can cause all kinds of chaos, commit all kinds of crimes, steal all kinds of money.”

How to protect yourself

Data breaches have been so common over the years, some security experts say sensitive information about you is almost certainly available in the dark corners of the internet. And there are a lot of people capable of finding it; VPNRanks, a website that rates virtual private network services, estimates that 5 million people a day will access the dark web through the anonymizing TOR browser, although only a portion of them will be up to no good.

If you suspect that your Social Security number or other important identifying information about you has been leaked, experts say you should put a freeze on your credit files at the three major credit bureaus, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. You can do so for free, and it will prevent criminals from taking out loans, signing up for credit cards and opening financial accounts under your name. The catch is that you’ll need to remember to lift the freeze temporarily if you are obtaining or applying for something that requires a credit check.

Placing a freeze can be done online or by phone, working with each credit bureau individually. PIRG cautions never to do so in response to an unsolicited email or text purporting to be from one of the credit agencies — such a message is probably the work of a scammer trying to dupe you into revealing sensitive personal information.

For more details, check out PIRG’s step-by-step guide to credit freezes.

You can also sign up for a service that monitors your accounts and the dark web to guard against identity theft, typically for a fee. If your data is exposed in a breach, the company whose network was breached will often provide one of these services for free for a year or more.

As important as these steps are to stop people from opening new accounts in your name, they aren’t much help protecting your existing accounts. Oddly enough, those accounts are especially vulnerable to identity thieves if you haven’t signed up for online access to them, Murray said — that’s because it’s easier for thieves to create a login and password while pretending to be you than it is for them to crack your existing login and password.

Of course, having strong passwords that are different for every service and changed periodically helps. Password manager apps offer a simple way to create and keep track of passwords by storing them in the cloud, essentially requiring you to remember one master password instead of dozens of long and unpronounceable ones. These are available both for free (such as Apple’s iCloud Keychain) and for a fee.

Beyond that, experts say it’s extremely important to sign up for two-factor authentication. That adds another layer of security on top of your login and password. The second factor is usually something sent or linked to your phone, such as a text message; a more secure approach is to use an authenticator app, which will keep you secure even if your phone number is hijacked by scammers.

Yes, scammers can hijack your phone number through techniques called SIM swaps and port-out fraud, causing more identity-theft nightmares. To protect you on that front, AT&T allows you to create a passcode restricting access to your account; T-Mobile offers optional protection against your phone number being switched to a new device, and Verizon automatically blocks SIM swaps by shutting down both the new device and the existing one until the account holder weighs in with the existing device.

Your worst enemy may be you

As much or more than hacked data, scammers also rely on people to reveal sensitive information about themselves. One common tactic is to pose as your bank, employer, phone company or other service provider with whom you’ve done business and then try to hook you with a text or email message.

Banks, for example, routinely tell customers that they will not ask for their account information by phone. Nevertheless, scammers have coaxed victims into providing their account numbers, logins and passwords by posing as bank security officers trying to stop an unauthorized withdrawal or some other supposedly urgent threat.

People may even get an official-looking email purportedly from National Public Data, offering to help them deal with the reported leak, Murray said. “It’s not going to be NPD trying to help. It’s going to be some bad guy overseas” trying to con them out of sensitive information, she said.

It’s a good rule of thumb never to click on a link or call a phone number in an unsolicited text or email. If the message warns about fraud on your account and you don’t want to simply ignore it, look up the phone number for that company’s fraud department (it’s on the back of your debit and credit cards) and call for guidance.

“These bad guys, this is what they do for a living,” Murray said. They might send out tens of thousands of queries and get only one response, but that response could net them $10,000 from an unwitting victim. “Ten thousand dollars in one day for having one hit with one victim, that’s a pretty good return on investment,” she said. “That’s what motivates them.”

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©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are in a tax policy arms race, copying and one-upping each other’s proposals in a bid to court key battleground state voting blocs ahead of a looming battle in Washington to rewrite the tax code.

The duel highlights the central place of the economy in November’s vote, with American households battered by high costs and the campaigns seeking to emphasize pocketbook issues.

The back-and-forth over taxes has escalated in recent days. In an interview with CBS News over the weekend, Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance tried to outflank Democrats by floating a $5,000-per-child tax credit — $3,000 more than the size of the current credit and even larger than President Joe Biden has proposed.

Harris, rallying supporters in Nevada, endorsed a version of Trump’s own promise to exempt tipped wages from taxes.

Her pitch, in the same battleground state where Trump made his proposal two months ago, drew the ire of the Republican presidential nominee, who accused his Democratic rival of stealing his idea.

“The tit-for-tat here is amazing,” said Marc Goldwein of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget in an interview with Bloomberg’s Balance of Power.

“Joe Biden wants a child tax credit, so JD Vance wants a bigger child tax credit. Donald Trump says, ‘No tax on tips,’ so Kamala Harris says, ‘no taxes on tips,’ ” he said.

Goldwein, though, raised a critical question: “Who’s going to pay for all this?”

The scope of the tax changes being floated by the candidates could be budget-busting. While the Trump campaign has not released key details of its proposals, increasing the child tax credit could cost $2 trillion over the next decade. If the tax credits are refundable — meaning taxpayers would get money back even if they don’t owe taxes — it could be closer to $3 trillion.

“Detached from reality”

Trump has also proposed ending the tax on Social Security benefits entirely, replacing current policy that gives targeted tax breaks to lower-income seniors. His proposal could cost as much as $1.8 trillion and ultimately endanger the Social Security trust fund itself, according to nonpartisan budget watchers.

Largely absent from the discussion, for now, are the tax cuts from Trump’s 2017 tax law that will expire at the end of 2025. Extending those cuts carries a $4.6 trillion price tag.

“We’re not dealing with the elephant in the room, which is the expiration of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” said Erica York of the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. “It’s scattershot, and it’s really detached from reality.”

None of the proposals being floated give any consideration to how the tax cuts will shift the tax burden — from older taxpayers to younger ones, from parents to people without dependent children, and from tipped workers to salaried ones.

“I wish we were in a situation where they were trying to one-up each other on serious tax proposals,” York said. “But instead the entire discussion is on the silly side of things.”

Election-year politics is driving the frenzy of proposals.

Trump won voters 65 and older by 5 percentage points in 2020, according to network exit polls. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll showed him in a dead heat with that demographic against Harris.

Vance’s child tax credit proposal came during a round of weekend interviews in which he tried to deflect a barrage of attacks over past comments that the U.S. was run by “childless cat ladies.” Saying the tax code should support “pro-family” policies, Vance proposed a massive expansion of the child tax credit, with no income limits. That means middle- and upper-income families will get a bigger benefit from a tax provision that was originally designed as an anti-poverty program.

And it’s no coincidence that Trump first made his no-tax-on-tips pledge at a rally in the critical battleground of Nevada, a state with the largest proportion of food service and accommodations workers in its workforce. Those employees have historically relied on tips.

Guerrilla marketing

Trump has made “no tax on tips” a centerpiece of his stump speech, and his campaign is employing guerrilla marketing tactics to promote the policy. Donors to his campaign can receive stickers that read “VOTE TRUMP FOR NO TAX ON TIPS” to put on their restaurant checks.

Harris, too, chose Las Vegas to make a similar campaign promise to cut taxes on tips — although her proposal would apply only to federal income taxes and leave payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare intact. That largely accounts for the difference in price tags: about $250 billion over 10 years for the Trump plan, perhaps half that for Harris.

The Trump campaign responded by giving Harris a new nickname: “Copy Cat Kamala Harris.” But the proposal was already generating bipartisan support in Congress, especially among Democratic members of the Nevada delegation.

Vance’s proposal to increase the child tax credit marked an abrupt departure from his party’s orthodoxy. In a Senate vote this month, only three Republicans voted to increase the amount of the refundable credit.

Vance, who was campaigning in Arizona, skipped the vote. He blamed Harris for the measure failing, telling CBS’ Face the Nation that she “failed to show fundamental leadership.”

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(With assistance from Joe Mathieu.)

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©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

WASHINGTON — Mass shootings often bring calls to tighten America’s gun laws. That hasn’t happened in response to the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.

There was little demand on Capitol Hill or on the presidential campaign trail to ban assault-style weapons like the AR-15 used by the Butler, Pennsylvania, shooter and by the killer of 11 worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue; the AK-17 used in the deaths of 22 people in El Paso, Texas; or the Bushmaster semiautomatic used to gun down 20 children and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut.

One of the few calls to action in Congress after the July 13 shooting came from U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, who used his opening and closing statements during the panel’s July 22 hearing on the Trump shooting to call for stronger gun regulations.

“Part of the problem is people have resigned themselves to a brick wall of Republican obstruction on the issue,” Raskin, D-Md., said in an interview. “The vast majority of Americans would like to see universal violent criminal background checks, a ban on assault weapons and red flag laws. That agenda has to be as important to the majority as blocking that agenda is to a much smaller minority.”

In the days following the shooting, Trump doubled down on his opposition to gun regulations, touting his endorsement by the National Rifle Association, the powerful gun rights lobby.

“I will fully uphold our very important but under siege Second Amendment as I did for four years, and I got the full endorsement from the NRA,” Trump said in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on July 20, his first rally after the Butler County shooting. “You saw that. They gave us their full strongest endorsement. For four years, I protected (gun rights) and it was not that easy to do.”

Months earlier, Trump’s first 2024 campaign appearance in Pennsylvania, the nation’s most populous battleground state, took place Feb. 9 in Harrisburg at an NRA-sponsored gun show. It was his eighth appearance before NRA members.

“When I’m back in the Oval Office, no one will lay a finger on your firearms,” he told the crowd.

The NRA spent more than $16 million in the 2020 elections to reelect Trump, according to the research group OpenSecrets. Gun rights groups in total spent $33.2 million in 2020, the ninth largest among outside organizations and more than 99% of that sum on behalf of Republicans.

Gun control groups ranked 12th in 2020 with $23.5 million in expenditures, all of it to help Democrats.

In 2022, following mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, President Joe Biden signed the first gun bill since the 1994 assault weapons ban.

It provided expanded background checks for gun buyers aged 18 to 21, including mental health records, and encouraged states to pass so-called “red flag” laws that would let authorities temporarily take away guns from individuals deemed a threat to themselves or others.

The new law also included funding for mental health programs and increased school security; made it more difficult for people who could not pass a background check to get someone else to buy a gun for them; and required more gun sellers to register as dealers, therefore mandating background checks of their customers.

A 2023 Gallup poll said 56% of Americans favored stricter gun laws, while 12% said they should be less strict. Another 31% said the laws should remain unchanged.

On the campaign trail, Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, are calling for stronger gun regulations, though neither has mentioned the Trump shooting as a reason to do so.

“Tim is a hunter and a gun owner who believes, as the majority of gun owners do, that we need reasonable gun safety laws in America,” Harris said to applause when introducing Walz at a rally in Philadelphia.

“So, as governor, he expanded background checks and increased penalties for illegal firearm sales. And together, when we win in November, we are finally going to pass universal background checks, red flag laws, and an assault weapons ban.”

Walz, during his speech, said, “As you heard, I was one of the best shots in Congress. But in Minnesota, we believe in the Second Amendment, but we also believe in common sense gun violence laws.”

The Democratic ticket has been endorsed by March for Our Lives, the group borne out of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The organization’s spokesman, Ryan Barto, criticized Trump’s continued opposition to stronger gun laws.

“During Trump’s presidency, he not only stood by while gun violence soared to become the No. 1 cause of death for children, but he repeatedly bowed down to the NRA and embraced their agenda, and he’s vowed to do the same if reelected,” said Barto, a veteran of Josh Shapiro’s 2022 Pennsylvania gubernatorial campaign. “While we hoped that former President Trump would have a change of heart and demand laws that could have prevented the very shooting that targeted him, it’s clear that this isn’t the case.”

The NRA did not respond to requests for comment.

At a news conference last week, Trump hit back against Harris on guns.

“She wants to take away everyone’s gun,” he said. “They need guns for protection in this country. People live out in the woods and they’re not going to have a gun.”

One reason there was little discussion of new gun legislation on Capitol Hill after the July 13 shooting is that political assassinations are viewed differently than other shootings, said U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who led a 2016 Senate Democratic filibuster to force action on gun legislation after 49 people were gunned down at an Orlando, Florida, gay nightclub.

“It is a narrative about politics, about the motivation of the shooter, about security,” he said in an interview. “I think it’s unfortunate but understandable that we don’t process assassinations in the same way we process a mass shooting. But there’s no doubt that the gun facilitates political assassinations just like it facilitates mass murder.”

The 2016 filibuster ended when then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., agreed to bring up bills to ban those on the terrorist watch list from buying weapons, and to require background checks for purchases at gun shows and online transactions. Then Republicans blocked any debate on them.

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who joined the filibuster, said in an interview that the assassination attempt should have sparked new pressure to ban assault weapons. Then-U.S. Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., was the lead Senate sponsor of the 1994 law that banned those weapons. President George W. Bush and a Republican-controlled Congress let the ban expire 10 years later.

“It’s stunning to me that these weapons of war are so readily available and put the lives of people in danger, including presidents,” Booker said. “So it is something I definitely think should be part of this conversation and I’m surprised it’s not.”

In his closing statement at the hearing, Raskin called out Congress for failing to act, noting on the same day Trump was shot, a gunman killed four people and wounded 10 others in a Birmingham, Alabama, nightclub.

“The mass shooting that took place in Butler, Pennsylvania, is replicated all over the country every day,” Raskin said. “I just wish to the heavens that our colleagues who could get together on the question of presidential security against an AR-15 attack could get together on the question of public security against an AR-15 attack.”

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(c)2024 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Visit the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at www.post-gazette.com

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If you’ve lost track of how many people in your orbit have recently posted pictures of themselves at a Formula One race or Taylor Swift concert, chances are you’re not alone. According to new research from Collinson International Ltd., which owns Priority Pass and LoungeKey airport lounges around the world, sports and music tourism are growing at unprecedented rates and are forecast to represent a $1.5 trillion industry by 2032.

Sports tourism represents the overwhelming majority of that figure. Valued at $564.7 billion in 2023, it’s expected to skyrocket to $1.33 trillion in the next eight years. Music tourism, meanwhile, is projected to contribute an additional $13.8 billion, more than doubling its current valuation of $6.6 billion.

For the purposes of its report, published on July 29, Collinson defined travelers as anyone who flew to an event, whether internationally or within their own country. Of 8,537 surveyed travelers from 17 countries, more than four in five (83%) have flown to a sporting event while 71% have boarded a plane for a concert in the past three years, or plan to in the next 12 months.

Collinson used those results to model how the industry has expanded and may continue to do so — assuming linear growth in spite of history-making events such as Swift’s Eras Tour or the first Summer Olympics in eight years to allow in-person spectators, which are currently underway in Paris.

“People are placing high value on experiences over objects,” says Christopher Ross, president of Collinson International EMEA. “If you are going to a sports or music event, the experience does not just start when you walk into the stadium. It’s the planning, travel itself and excitement.”

About 83% of people traveling for events are heading to soccer matches, basketball games, the Olympics, F1 races or tennis tournaments — the five most popular sporting events in descending order. In a world where streaming networks have created easily accessible pathways to fandom, Ross says, “the ability to become a global fan has become much more of a reality.”

Soccer captured 69% of the survey’s sportsgoers, who said they’d recently traveled to a live match or had plans to do so in the next year. That includes those who were among the more than 1 million fans in Qatar for the 2022 FIFA World Cup but not those who plan to attend the next World Cup, in 2026.

Formula One, meanwhile, has been surging in popularity with younger generations ever since Netflix Inc. premiered its Drive to Survive docuseries, in 2019; a full 30% of F1 fans attributed their interest in the sport to the show. In 2023 the average race weekend had more than 270,000 in-person spectators, up from 195,000 in 2019.

It’s not just that more people are interested in the sport; ticket prices are also on the rise. Tickets for races in the U.K. this summer have reached £600 ($765) for prime “grandstand” seats, with general admission often costing more than £400 per person — up from about £300 just two years ago — prompting British driver Lewis Hamilton to publicly criticize the rising price tag.

To Ross’ point, those tickets are just one aspect of the sports tourism economy, which also includes hotel stays, restaurant meals, taxi rides, merchandise and other expenses. Collinson data show that 77% of travelers arrive one or two days before a concert or competition, and some 80% will stay one to three days after. Sports tourists spend the most, with 51% exceeding $500 per trip per person on flights and other expenses, not including the event tickets.

Take Las Vegas, which hosted an F1 Grand Prix race in November 2023. The event brought $1.5 billion in economic impact to the city, 50% more than the Super Bowl would raise just three months later. “It’s a younger demographic,” Ross says of F1 fans, who are among the most likely to add extra expenses to their sports trips. “It seems counterintuitive, because you would think they have less disposable income,” Ross adds.

That doesn’t diminish the effect of other events. The Paris Summer Olympics, while less of an international tourism juggernaut than expected, are still attracting enough tourists to send Airbnb bookings up 133% from the same period last year. International tourists have been expected to pay around $5,000 for hotel stays, airfare and event ticket costs. And sports fans, Collinson says, are willing to spend in airports too — which is of note to the company. Over half of sports fans, its research shows, spend $500 or more in the airport alone; those aged 25-34 are the highest spenders, with a third of them spending in excess of $1,000 while waiting for their flights to board.

On the music front, Collinson cites major events including Rock in Rio, Coachella and Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour as tourism drivers. But the latter is an unprecedented anomaly. Swift fans have driven 45% year-over-year increases in airfare sales to destinations such as Milan and Munich during concert dates, according to United Airlines Holdings Inc., and the tour resulted in larger booking spikes for Paris’ top-tier hotels than even the Olympics.

For those in the hospitality industry, the question now is how to cash in on the trend. Marriott International used the Eras Tour as an opportunity to earn new members for its Bonvoy loyalty program, promising free tickets via raffles. By contrast Auberge Resorts Collection, which has 27 five-star resorts from Italy to Hawaii, is teaming with Mercedes-Benz to create a new concert series starting in October, with live performances so far featuring Kate Hudson, Maren Morris and LeAnn Rimes. At Tennessee’s iconic Blackberry Farm Resort, which has its own concert hall on-site, the events lineup includes performances by Kacey Musgraves, Emmylou and Friends, and Noah Kahan in the coming months, with general access tickets typically starting at $1,000 per person.

©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Ask a luxury-minded globetrotter to name their favorite hotel brands and chances are you’ll hear some combination of the following names: Four Seasons Resort & Club, Aman Resorts Group Ltd., Marriott International Inc.’s Luxury Collection and the Ritz Carlton Hotel Co. LLC, or Rosewood Hotels & Resorts LLC.

Now, Hilton Hotels Worldwide Holdings Inc. is doing its best to get on that list. Some loyalists would say it already belongs there — if only for its best-known Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts and Conrad Hotels & Resorts brands.

But even Hilton’s top brass concedes that the hotel behemoth’s reputation lies mainly with road warriors rather than luxury seekers. While Marriott has been busy expanding into luxury all-inclusive resorts in the Caribbean and Ritz-Carlton yachts, Hilton has spent the past year focusing on new corporate-leaning brands, such as Tempo by Hilton.

“Here’s the irony — Hilton didn’t have a full category’s worth of luxury brands a few years ago,” says Dino Michael, senior vice president and global head of Hilton’s luxury brands. “But if you look back before today’s proliferation of luxury brands, Hilton was the international hotel brand,” he says, citing its prominence from the 1950s to 1970s. “We have legitimacy in this space, we just changed focus for a while.”

That’s what Hilton is aggressively pushing to change. The corporate hospitality giant has been on an acquisition and partnership spree to expand its luxury lifestyle portfolio. Its hope is not just to grow in a segment that’s sustained high demand since the pandemic, but to offer its most loyal clientele — 190 million Hilton Honors members, including lots of those road warriors — more enticing ways to spend their hard-earned points.

“We are going from 100 to 500 luxury hotels in 2024,” says Chris Silcock, president of global brands and commercial services. “That’s going to be phenomenal for our customers and will continue to feed our loyalty program —it’s a huge, huge year for us.”

Hundreds of luxury hotels in one year

Hilton’s concerted luxury push started in February 2024, when it signed an exclusive partnership with Small Luxury Hotels of the World, a collection of 560 luxury boutique hotels in 90 countries. Most of those are now bookable with Hilton points — think a beachfront all-inclusive suite at Hermitage Bay in Antigua and Barbuda, a luxury farmhouse stay with mountain views at a Himalayan lodge, or a swanky terrace suite at Nobu Hotel in Marbella, Spain. If you’re booking in points, it’ll cost you: The all-inclusive Caribbean suite goes for 1.3 million points per night in mid-November.

Also in February, Hilton partnered with outdoorsy resort brand AutoCamp. By the time summer travel season rolled around, Hilton loyalists could book the brand’s customized Airstreams and luxury tents, which are set near U.S. national parks in such locations as Zion in Utah and Yosemite in California, from around 70,000 points per night.

Then came the acquisitions. In March, Hilton spent $210 million on Graduate Hotels, a collection of roughly three dozen stylish hotels strategically located near university campuses, which this year will add locations near Princeton and Auburn Universities. By acquiring the majority controlling interest in Andrew Zobler’s Sydell Group, it then added expansion rights to its boho-luxe NoMad brand, which Hilton envisions growing from one London flagship location to as many as 100 hotels around the world. (So far there is no firm pipeline of openings, Hilton confirmed.)

The NoMad deal is especially sweet. While most hotel conglomerates manage the properties in their portfolios without owning them outright, Hilton will do neither for NoMad; it will only offer real estate development services for the brand while keeping it in the mix for Hilton Honors members.

Rethinking legacy brands

Meanwhile, Hilton is trying to up the ante for Waldorf Astoria and Conrad as it rapidly expands both brands. Its latest Waldorf outposts are jaw-droppers: It opened 50 seafront villas and six restaurants on an ultra-secluded private island in the Seychelles in late January, all amid lush forests, lagoons and coral reefs. The Waldorf Astoria Maldives Ithaafushi, meanwhile, opened in 2019. It sprawls across three islands, with overwater villas perched above the Indian Ocean. Each has its own dressing room with a glass floor and infinity pool, plus access to the country’s largest spa.

Waldorf Astoria’s flagship New York location will reopen this year, too, after a highly complex redevelopment spanning several years. After that, it will open a Waldorf Astoria in London — it’s being built into Admiralty Arch, a landmark building that neighbors Buckingham Palace and was originally used by the British Navy. In total, 15 new Waldorf Astorias and Conrads are in the pipeline, all set to open by 2026.

The company’s efforts to further upscale these brands are already helping Hilton’s bottom line. In its Aug. 7 earnings call, it shared that revenue per available room climbed 7.5% in the second quarter compared with the same period a year earlier for the Waldorf Astoria brand, and 8.7% for its Conrad brand. Meanwhile, brands such as Hampton by Hilton, which is focused on more of an upper-midscale market, posted a 1.8% increase in that measure.

A growing, profitable segment

All this is happening at a time when major hotel brands outside of Marriott are playing a big game of luxury catch-up. Intercontinental Hotels Group PLC has acquired Six Senses Resorts & Spas and is bringing its top-notch Regent Hotels & Resorts to the U.S.; Hyatt Hotels Corp. has bought brands such as Alila and Miraval, plus Apple Leisure Group and Mr & Mrs Smith. But as of late, Hilton has been the most aggressive in its luxury pivot.

Silcock says it’s just a way to give his loyalists what they increasingly want. “Many of these customers may spend their traveling life staying in many of our other brands for business or for different occasions,” he says. “But they all like to dream of luxury. The more options we have to offer them, the better.”

Of notable importance are the 30 million new Hilton Honors members who joined the loyalty program in the last year, and who Silcock now needs to retain.

Despite Hilton’s extensive efforts, some experts say it still isn’t doing enough. Bjorn Hanson, adjunct professor at New York University’s Jonathan M. Tisch Center of Hospitality, believes the new acquisitions and partnerships will help fill Hilton’s luxury hospitality portfolio, but not completely.

“Luxury did especially well during COVID, and now it continues to do especially well,” Hanson says, giving credence to Hilton’s strategic timing. But with no other sector of the hotel industry showing greater occupancy gains this year than these five-star stays, Hanson says Hilton is limited to few acquisition opportunities — a challenge, when what it really needs to be doing is buying up more brands with larger portfolios to flesh out its own portfolio.

Hanson gives credit, however, for Hilton rapidly doubling the number of its Waldorf Astoria locations to 30 — an average of one new location each year, the pandemic and supply crises notwithstanding — since announcing the start of the Waldorf Astoria Collection in 2006, branded after its flagship Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City.

An uphill climb

Hanson isn’t the only one predicting an uphill climb for Hilton. Erich Joachimsthaler, branding expert and chief executive officer at strategic business reinvention firm Vivaldi Group, says that competing directly with Marriott —which has seven well established luxury brands — will require Hilton to better differentiate itself. If it wants to get there, Joachimsthaler says, it’ll need to be the one defining luxury.

“For Hilton to have any chance whatsoever, given they don’t have any scale in luxury right now, they must figure out these points of differences,” he says, noting that today’s luxury consumer isn’t merely seeking amenities that are available at any other brand.

Then again, Hilton’s top brass talks less about winning over market share than simply making its members happy. Take Michael’s obsession with opening a five-star hotel in Paris that his loyalists could book with points: He keeps it at the top of his priority list because Hilton Honors members have it at the top of theirs.

“The road warriors are staying with us because they want to accumulate their points to spend them somewhere they can celebrate and enjoy,” he says. “We know where the demand is.”

©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk held a warm but glitch-delayed conversation on X that saw the tech mogul pitch a role for himself should the Republican nominee win a second White House term.

The highly anticipated discussion started roughly 40 minutes late, stretched more than two hours and largely rehashed the notes that the former president routinely strikes at his campaign rallies.

The pushed-back start was an embarrassing blow to Musk’s social-media site and the latest hiccup for Trump, whose campaign has struggled to douse a burst of momentum from Vice President Kamala Harris in the weeks since she replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee.

The billionaire entrepreneur blamed the delay on a cyberattack, without providing any evidence, and when the event started, Musk suggested Trump’s opponents were responsible.

Trump sought to spin the delay as a sign of interest in the event. As many as 1.3 million listeners tuned in, according to X.

Musk called for a government commission to ensure that taxpayer money is spent effectively and pitched himself for a role in that effort.

“I’d be happy to help out on such a commission,” Musk said. “I’d love if it were formed.”

Trump praised the idea, calling Musk “the greatest cutter.”

But otherwise, the event in some ways resembled an online Trump rally with Musk, the world’s richest man, playing the role of moderator.

The conversation came days after Trump held a more than one-hour press conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort. One of his campaign strategies is to try and goad Harris into doing more unscripted media appearances.

Musk endorsed Trump for president last month, part of a shift that has seen the Tesla Inc. and SpaceX chief executive officer publicly embrace right-leaning causes and candidates to make his mark on the political scene. He also created a super political action committee to support Trump’s reelection effort.

An already formidable Washington presence, with companies boasting sizable government contracts, Musk is poised to be an even bigger player if Trump returns to power. He’s grown closer to the GOP nominee, advising him on electric vehicles and cryptocurrency policy — a reversal from a once-rocky relationship that saw the two trade insults.

Highlighting Musk’s growing sway with Trump, long a critic of electric vehicles, praised the EV maker, saying Tesla’s cars are “incredible.” He also hailed Musk’s intelligence, saying “You have definitely got a fertile mind. You and I can talk about rockets, tunnels and electric cars,” referencing the entrepreneur’s many business ventures.

Trump taking a softer stance on EVs could have massive financial benefits for carmakers and Musk’s personal wealth, much of which is in Tesla stock. Trump has vowed to scrap some benefits intended to help grow the market if he returns to the White House. Those threats have intensified concerns over a slowdown in EV sales growth.

Trump and Musk’s conversation comes at a critical point in the 2024 race — less than three months to Election Day. Harris’ ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket has shaken up the race with polls showing she has erased the lead Trump held for much of the summer and pulled ahead in fundraising.

The first 20 minutes of the event was spent on Trump recounting last month’s assassination attempt on his life at a Butler, Pennsylvania rally. He said that he would be returning to the town in October to resume the campaign event.

Border crackdown

Musk, like Trump, has criticized illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border and promoted conspiracy theories that Democrats are encouraging migration to bring in people to vote fraudulently in the 2024 election. Musk suggested the Republican candidate was “supportive” of legal migration but said the U.S. needs “to shut down illegal immigration.”

“I think most people who are illegal immigrants are actually good, but you can’t tell a difference unless there’s a solid vetting of who comes across the border,” said Musk, who was born in South Africa and described himself as a “legal immigrant.”

“They have to come in legally. They have to be checked,” Trump said.

Republicans have seized on Harris having been given a portfolio that included addressing the root causes of migration earlier in the administration even though other officials such as Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas bore more direct responsibility for the situation at the border.

“Trump’s entire campaign is in service of people like Elon Musk and himself — self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class and who cannot run a livestream in the year 2024,” Harris campaign spokesperson Joseph Costello said in a statement after the event concluded.

Musk, who tops the Bloomberg Billionaires Index with a net worth of $227.3 billion, aims to use his vast fortune to swing the race for Trump.

Musk served on White House advisory councils when Trump was president, but left after the Republican decided to withdraw from the landmark Paris climate accord. Musk’s stint on the councils was mired in controversy as supporters urged him to step down.

Tech glitch

The technical mishap on X, which delayed the start of the event, drew comparisons to the glitches that foiled the launch of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s ill-fated presidential campaign last year, as servers struggled to handle surging demand.

X has faced technical problems and scrutiny since Musk purchased the platform in 2022.

“This massive attack illustrates there’s a lot of opposition to people just hearing what President Trump has to say,” Musk said when the event finally began. “This is really aimed at kind of open-minded, independent voters who are trying to make up their mind.”

Trump was banned from X, then known as Twitter, after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, but had his account restored after Musk bought the company.

Trump returned to X in August 2023, posting his mug shot after being indicted in Fulton County, Georgia on charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election result, but has preferred to use his own social-media site, Truth Social. On Monday, however, Trump posted several times to X, including a campaign video.

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©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.