Outgoing Representative Annie Kuster (D-N.H.) said that she made the decision not to run for her seat again after meeting with President Joe Biden early in the campaign and seeing his decline.

Kuster, 68, said this March she would not run for re-election to the House seat she’s held for nearly 12 years. She told the Boston Globe on Thursday that she’d made the decision after flying with Biden on Air Force One. She says that though she felt he was capable of serving the rest of his term as president, she could see the signs of aging.

“Just in my heart, [I] reached the conclusion that this would be a very challenging campaign for him, and to put himself out there for another four-year term was was going to be a struggle,” she told the Globe.

READ MORE: Two-Thirds of Americans Want Age Limits for Politicians, Supreme Court

She also suggested that Biden’s advisers may have tried to hide the effect that the president’s age had on him, but wasn’t sure how much the party had. When the Democratic party first started floating the idea of replacing him on the ticket, she compared it to discussing end-of-life care for loved ones.

“It was painful. I haven’t had these kind of conversations since I talked to my own parents about, you know, their aging and their limitations,” she said.

Kuster hopes other senior citizen politicians follows her lead.

Image by Tim Pierce via Wikimedia Commons

A large majority of Republicans think that President-elect Donald Trump will lower grocery costs, according to a new poll. Trump himself said that would be “very hard.”

Three-quarters of Republicans said grocery costs would go down under Trump, according to a new CBS News/YouGov poll. On the other hand, 68% of Democrats expected prices to rise. Independent voters were less sure, with 39% saying they expected an increase, 35% expecting a decrease, and 26% figuring the costs won’t change at all. The poll has a sample size of 2,244 American adults. The margin of error is 2.4%.

Despite campaigning on lowering the cost of groceries, Trump seemed to backtrack in his Time magazine Person of the Year interview.

READ MORE: The GOP Ran on Gas and Grocery Prices. Their Top Priority After Taking the House? Hunter Biden’s Laptop.

“It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up. You know, it’s very hard,” he said.

Trump is correct. There’s not a lot a president can do to directly affect grocery costs in the short term, according to Politico. The types of policies a president can enact are typically long-term solutions. One of Trump’s plans to lower costs across the board is specifically to work on the amount of fuel available, lowering energy costs. And while fuel is expensive, and the food industry requires lots of transportation, it’s just one factor, Politico reports.

But one of Trump’s favorite policies—increasing tariffs—is more likely to raise prices. Economist Wendy Edelberg, PhD, suggested that his proposed tariffs could boost food costs by 10-20%, according to Glamour. Tariffs also have historically cost people jobs. During Trump’s first term, his import tariffs cost 245,000 U.S. jobs, according to a 2021 study by the US-China Business Council.

Something that could help, however, is a regulation on price-fixing. In August, a lawsuit against data analytics and consulting firm Agri Stats alleged the company worked with meat processors to keep prices high, according to Food & Wine. The company is accused of sharing price and cost information among competitors so they can all agree on a higher-than-necessary price to keep profits high.

Like the meat industry, which is controlled by just four companies, according to Politico, the number of grocery chains is shrinking. A lack of competition can lead to situations like Kroger admitting to raising prices on dairy products further than necessary during the pandemic, according to Bloomberg. However, antitrust legislation and controls on prices are unpopular with lawmakers generally, especially with pro-business Republicans.

Daniel Scheitrum, a Cal Poly professor of agribusiness, told Politico that acting on this would be an effective way of lowering prices.

“This anti-competitive activity, it’s not just textbook discussion. This is actually happening and being litigated in our food system. If the federal government can rein in anti-competitive behavior, supply restrictions, price-fixing, that could bring down food prices in the U.S.,” he said.

But experts expect the new Trump administration to pull back on antitrust regulations outside of the tech industry, according to The Economist. And despite the effect lowering fuel costs could have on food prices, legal analysts at Stinson expect oil and gas industries to face less in the way of antitrust efforts.

Or, in other words, analysts across industries seem to think it’s unlikely the Trump administration will be able to lower grocery costs—directly or otherwise.

Image via Wikimedia Commons

On Christmas Day, author and politician Marianne Williamson announced her candidacy for chair of the Democratic National Committee.

Williamson is perhaps best known for her two long-shot Democratic presidential candidacies in 2020 and 2024. However, she’s also been the leader of the Church of Today, an author of self-help books and was Oprah Winfrey’s “spiritual advisor,” according to Vox.

Williamson announced her run for DNC chair on her Substack newsletter, where she urged members of the DNC to sign a petition backing her.

READ MORE: More Than a Quarter of Democrats Are Undecided in 2024 Presidential Race: Poll

“President Trump has ushered in an age of political theatre – a collective adrenaline rush that has enabled him to not only move masses of people into his camp but also masses of people away from ours. It does not serve us to underestimate the historic nature of what he has achieved,” she wrote.

“In fact, it’s important that we recognize the psychological and emotional dimensions of Trump’s appeal. We need to understand it to create the energy to counter it. MAGA is a distinctly 21^st century political movement and it will not be defeated by a 20^th century tool kit,” Williamson continued.

She argues that her two presidential runs allowed her to speak with many different communities of voters across the United States. She says she’s “witnessed up close the fraying bonds of affection between the party and the working people,” and says it’s time to create “a new party.”

Her vision of the Democratic party is “A party that listens more, and makes people feel that their thoughts and feelings are as important as their wallets,” with an emphasis on serving the working class.

Williamson is progressive, with a platform calling for free college and preschool, “medicare for all,” and $100 billion to be paid in reparations for slavery. However, she has not proven popular in elections, typically receiving between 2-3% in primaries.

She can be a polarizing figure. While her progressive polices have earned her fans, critics have slammed her views on health care. She’s previously said vaccinations and antidepressants “can literally kill people,” according to Vox. In one of her books, she said “sickness is an illusion and does not exist” and called cancer and AIDS “physical manifestations of a psychic scream.”

But while Williamson has a friendly, new-age sort of public persona—the sort of person who urges people watching the 2020 Democratic debates to do yoga instead of playing a drinking game—there are reports of her being difficult to work for. Former staffers on her 2020 presidential campaign said she was prone to “foaming, spitting, uncontrollable rage,” according to Politico. She has denied these allegations, saying those who speak out against her are “trying to score points with the political establishment by smearing me.”

Image by Gage Skidmore, used via Creative Commons license.