Donald Trump ends 2018 with a Fox News interview — his 41st since inauguration

He is wrapping up 2018 by chatting with one of his most loyal supporters on Fox, Pete Hegseth. The phone interview is airing on the cable network's New Year's Eve countdown show.

With some notable exceptions, Fox has been Trump's shelter from the storms that are saturating his presidency. And Trump has generously promoted the network and its right-wing personalities with dozens of tweets and endorsements.

Traditional lines have been crossed or erased altogether. Trump seems to get his daily briefings from "Fox & Friends" and get directions from Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro.

During the partial government shutdown, Pirro, a Saturday night host, spoke directly to Trump through her opening monologue.

"I am pleading with you," she said, to keep up the fight for border wall funding.

Past presidents have had close connections to members of the media of course — but Trump and Fox have taken it to a whole new level. Throughout 2018, the second year of Trump's presidency, the relationship became even cozier. Some love the tight relationship, and others detest it. Critics have likened the set-up to "state-run TV," or the opposite, a "TV-run state." Comedian Jordan Klepper went with the "TV-run state" idea in a commentary last April: "Fox says it, Trump spreads it."

He definitely gathers intelligence and gains talking points from Fox's talk shows. That's evident from his tweets and remarks at rallies. And he hires people he sees on TV. In 2018, Fox contributor John Bolton became National Security Adviser. And Fox anchor turned State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert was nominated to be Trump's ambassador to the U.N.

The revolving door went in the other direction too, with Fox host Kimberly Guilfoyle joining her boyfriend, Donald Trump Jr., at a pro-Trump PAC.

When Trump called Democrats "the dims" at an October rally, he credited his source: "The dims. Who says that? Lou Dobbs, the great Lou Dobbs, he says that."

Dobbs, Trump's biggest booster on Fox Business, also has the highest-rated show on Fox Business.

Similarly, the highest-rated shows on Fox News belong to pro-Trump hosts like Sean Hannity.

That's an important part of the answer to any question about whether Fox's support for Trump will waver in 2019, given the numerous criminal investigations and scandals surrounding Trump.

On "CNN Tonight" last week, host Don Lemon asked, "Do you think you'll see Fox break with this president?"

"I think it's impossible to say, but whatever Fox does is going to be one of the really accurate yardsticks for how Trump's presidency is going," New York Times op-ed columnist Frank Bruni said.

If Fox's current approach continues, "I think it's going to be ratings driven. It's going to be approval ratings driven," Bruni said. "And if Fox starts to turn on him, that is going to tell you that something's happening in the country at large, because they're going to look at that before they make any decisions."

When the headlines about Trump are especially damaging, Fox's ratings sometimes soften a bit, but the network remains remarkably strong overall. It has a lock on a significant part of the US population.

Case in point: 2018 was the network's third consecutive year as the most-watched channel on cable, both in prime time and throughout the day, surpassing ESPN.

Fox is more than its pro-Trump shows. The network has many frontline journalists and news anchors, some of whom bristle at the propaganda-like content that airs in the mornings and the evenings.

These tensions flared on the eve of the midterm election, when Hannity hosted his show from a Trump rally while claiming he was not there to campaign.

He came up on stage when Trump called his name, and declared that "all those people in the back are fake news." The press pen of journalists in the back included a crew from Fox.

Pirro came up on stage, too. Fox chastised the pair the next day, saying "Fox News does not condone any talent participating in campaign events" and calling the incident an "unfortunate distraction" that "has been addressed."

But in practice, Fox's biggest shows campaign for Trump almost every day. They defend his decisions, distract from his scandals and attack his opponents. Occasional squabbles get a lot of press — Tucker Carlson's criticism of Trump's airstrikes in Syria, for example — but those are the exceptions to the rule.

Trump has given 41 interviews to Fox since inauguration day, far more than every other major TV network combined.

One day in 2018, when Steve Doocy was co-hosting "Fox & Friends" from the North Lawn of the White House, Trump walked right outside and gave a lengthy interview.

Most of the interviews are with Trump's boosters, like Hannity and Doocy, and only a comparatively small number are with Fox journalists like Chris Wallace.

Earlier this year The Washington Post reported that White House advisers sometimes call Hannity the "shadow chief of staff."

Hannity's longtime producer and friend Bill Shine became Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications over the summer. Shine was co-president of Fox News when he was forced out in 2017. He is still being paid millions in severance and bonuses by Fox, even while working at the White House.

Meantime, Trump's former communications director, Hope Hicks, became the chief communications officer for Fox's parent company late in the year. Her very first press release announced Fox's corporate support for a Trump-backed criminal justice reform bill.

Hicks was brought aboard at a time of transition at Fox. The Murdochs are selling most of their assets to Disney in a deal that is expected to close in early 2019. The remaining assets, including Fox News and the Fox broadcast network, will be run by Rupert Murdoch's son Lachlan. Rupert will be co-chairman.

There's been rampant speculation over the years about how the Murdoch family's politics align with Fox. Observers have wondered if Lachlan Murdoch might try to moderate some of Fox's right-wing programming. But there's been no sign of that.

When asked at a conference if he's embarrassed by some of Fox's content, Lachlan Murdoch said, "I'm not embarrassed by what they do at all."

He defended Fox News as "the only mass media company in America with conservative opinions. It's the only one."

Left unsaid was perhaps the most important fact: Fox News is a huge profit engine for its parent company, thanks to reliable subscription fees from cable customers across the country.

The turnover at Fox in recent years — starting at the top with founding CEO Roger Ailes — proved that the network is far bigger than any single star. In the months after Ailes was ousted amid a sexual harassment scandal in July 2016, Greta Van Susteren, Megyn Kelly, and Bill O'Reilly all left, all for different reasons. The network didn't miss a beat.

In his own way, Trump is a Fox News star too. But all signs indicate that Fox is bigger than him, too.

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Getting your child vaccinated is a gift to others

What I'm talking about is childhood vaccination. We usually think of vaccination as being something we do to directly protect our own children. But in countries like the United States, where the risk of deadly infectious disease to most people is relatively low, the opposite is really the case. The children who most benefit are actually those who have not yet been immunized or who cannot be because they are too young or too sick.

Take, for example, measles. As soon as vaccination coverage drops below 95%, outbreaks are inevitable.

Even if measles vaccination coverage were at a healthy 95% for the 24.3 million children under the age of five in the United States, which it isn't -- the US vaccination rate for those children is at 91% -- that would leave 5%, or 1.2 million unvaccinated and unprotected. Of those who have received their first dose, about 7% (1 million) will have not successfully induced the immune response to provide protection. That means there are at least 2.3 million children unprotected. Additionally, there are even more children at risk when you consider those who are too young to be vaccinated and no longer have the protection of their mothers' antibodies.

That is a worry because, for these children, some highly infectious diseases like measles are on the rise. Before widespread vaccination, measles claimed the lives of more than 2.5 million people globally each year. Today it's around 110,000, yet in wealthy countries, too often parents think of measles as a harmless disease. The reality is that, even with the best health care in the world, there is still a risk of death and a number of serious medical complications, such as blindness and permanent brain damage.

That's why measles still remains such a serious threat to those millions of American children who have not been, or cannot be, vaccinated; children in whom the vaccine has not taken or who have compromised immune systems, such as those with unusual allergies, or who are undergoing treatment for cancer. For them, the only hope of protection is to rely on everyone else being vaccinated, or enough of them to be provide herd immunity.

This is where enough of the population is protected to prevent the spread of an infectious agent. For measles, the proportion of the population required to achieve this is higher than for most other diseases by virtue of the fact that it is one of the most contagious diseases ever known. Just by entering a room you can catch it from someone, even if they left hours before. Because of this, it is important to keep coverage at the 95% threshold.

And that is precisely what we're not seeing at the moment, both in the United States and the world over; after years of steady decline, the number of measles cases has in the last year increased by nearly a third, with the number of deaths rising from 90,000 to 110,000, again mainly children. There are many complex reasons for this increase -- not least the collapse of health systems in Venezuela, which has contributed to a 6,358% increase in cases across the Americas from 2016 to 2017. In 2018, as of December 1, there have been 292 confirmed cases in 26 US states and the District of Colombia.

In North America and Europe, the most common reason is vaccine hesitancy. That doesn't just mean refusing to have one's child vaccinated. In some countries, including the United States, parents are delaying their children's vaccinations, perhaps because they believe in immunization but are worried by some of the anti-vaccine scaremongering. This needs to stop. What these parents may not realize is that this not only puts their own child at risk, but also other children. By contributing to low coverage, this effectively creates a window of opportunity for the virus, helping to perpetuate its existence, and not just locally but globally too.

That's not an exaggeration. Measles can travel from country to country as fast as a jet plane. Outbreaks in the United States can be caused by unvaccinated people traveling overseas to poor countries where measles vaccine coverage is lower and bringing the virus home, but equally the opposite is true; diseases can be spread from wealthy nations. In 2009, the medical journal The Lancet reported an example of this when Latin America, a region that had previously eliminated measles, experienced outbreaks caused by imports from Europe.

Today, measles cases are now common almost all over the world -- but the point here is that while measles is one of the few diseases we could potentially eradicate, that will never happen if wealthy countries like the United States can't maintain herd immunity. Because a measles case anywhere is a threat everywhere.

Part of the problem is that, as medical interventions go, vaccines are somewhat unique. Apart from the occasional required travel jab, the decision to vaccinate is usually made by parents for their own children, and they are usually given to healthy individuals. These two factors shift the focus of fear away from the disease and toward the intervention itself. No parent wants their child to suffer or die, or knowingly wish that upon another child.

Perhaps, then, in countries like the United States we need to stop thinking about vaccination as something you only do to protect the ones you love, and instead view it also as a goodwill act for the benefit of others.

Note: This piece has been updated to clarify that, when measles vaccination drops below 95% coverage in a community, there is a risk of outbreak. For other diseases, that risk level may vary.

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Chicago murder rate drops for second year in a row

Chicago Police credit the drop in violence partly to "investments in data-driven policing and the creation of strategic decision support centers in 20 of the city's 22 police districts," according to a Chicago police news release.

Data-driven policing uses information from multiple sources to help police learn where crimes are happening and where they are likely to happen. Police said the decision support centers harness technology such as crime cameras and gunshot detection systems to help officers prevent crime and increase response times.

The city has struggled to contain violence in almost every major category of crime since 2016, after the release in late 2015 of police dashcam video that showed a white police officer shooting a black teenager 16 times. Laquan McDonald, 17, was holding a knife as he walked away from multiple police officers who were following him. The video's release led to massive protests throughout 2016. In October of this year, a jury found Police Officer Jason Van Dyke guilty of second degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm in the killing. He is in jail awaiting sentencing.

This year the city also experienced one of its most violent weekends in recent memory when 66 people were shot, 12 of them fatally, in at least 33 shooting incidents.

However, overall shootings fell 14% compared to 2017, and have dropped 32% since 2016, according to police statistics. For the second straight year, robberies declined by 19% and burglaries were down 10%. Carjackings also dropped 19%; earlier this year, police launched the Vehicular Hijacking Task Force, a partnership with the US Attorney's Office and other agencies.

Police said they seized almost 10,000 guns in 2018, representing a 9% increase from 2017 and the highest number of confiscated guns in the last five years, more than one illegal gun seized every hour of the year.

The city also kept a 2016 pledge made by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson to add 1,000 police officers to the department, a goal that was reached earlier this month.

In an effort to increase community trust in police, the department announced it is planning to provide cell phones for detectives "to improve communication with victims and witnesses."

Re-establishing trust with members of the community has been one of the long-term goals of the police department, which has struggled to get witnesses to come forward with information on murders and other crimes.

Emanuel was criticized earlier this year after partly blaming violence on a lack of morals. "There are too many guns on the street, too many people with criminal records on the street, and there is a shortage of values of what is right and what is wrong," he said after the August 19 record weekend violence.

Many of his critics were among the more than 18 mayoral contenders campaigning to replace Emanuel since his decision not to seek re-election. One of the most important issues facing the new mayor after the election in February will be trying to sustain the reduction in the violence that continues to plague the nation's third-largest city.

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Elizabeth Warren's brilliant beginning

Elizabeth Warren announced Monday that she is forming an exploratory committee for the presidency -- which is as good as saying she's running. It's the first major announcement of what will likely be a crowded Democratic primary in the 2020 race, and potentially the most diverse in history.

Watching Warren's announcement video, you can see her priorities are clear: she wants economic and racial justice and recognizes that the two are neither identical nor severable (unlike too many others on the populist left who believe class is a singular unifying force and racism is a secondary "identity politics" issue solvable by economic changes alone). She recognizes that equality of opportunity isn't just about what class you were born into; it's also about how race and gender shape individual opportunity and mobility. Most strikingly, she doesn't issue a milquetoast call for unity and change, or demonize some amorphous threat to American families and prosperity. No, she names and shames her villains, from big banks who push for their own deregulation, to self-interested and moneyed politicians who cut their own taxes at the expense of the rest of us, to hate-mongers on Fox News and in the White House who peddle racism and misogyny to stir up an angry, bigoted Republican base. That's a kind of honesty at the expense of political feel-good-ism that we haven't seen much of in recent presidential politics.

With the vision laid out in her video, Warren has staked out what might just be the ideally unifying position for Democratic voters, at least some of whom are still smarting from (and waging proxy wars out of) the 2016 primary, in which Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders. But while Warren may in theory be the perfect candidate to heal that rift, she's still a woman -- and that remains more of a liability than we may want to believe.

In 2016, many of the most vocal Bernie Sanders supporters were also some of the most vocal Clinton detractors, feeding into right-wing attacks and amplifying the narratives we now know were also pushed by Russian operatives seeking to sway the election for Donald Trump. Elections are almost never won and lost on a single factor, but this dynamic almost certainly contributed to Clinton's loss. Along the way, Clinton supporters suggested that their candidate was subject to wildly disproportionate criticism in part because she is a woman, and pointed out that even on the left, many are subconsciously and reflexively hostile to female ambition and pursuit of power.

Many of Clinton's detractors on the left met these observations with howls of indignation. It wasn't that she was a woman, they said -- it's because it was her. And then, inevitably, something along the lines of: "I would vote for Elizabeth Warren if she were running."

Well, now she is, so let's see how that plays out. My prediction: a lot of the same people who swore they weren't sexist because they would support a hypothetical Warren run will not in fact throw their weight behind an actual Warren run.

They should -- and so should Clinton fans. Or at the very least, we should all welcome a candidate like Warren into the inevitably crowded field. For some, her disputing the president's characterization of her racial identity was a huge misstep, playing into bad race science and undermining the right of Native Americans to decide tribal identity for themselves. Fair enough -- although, if we are really being fair, Warren didn't claim tribal membership or an allegiance to race science, and was rather trying to validate an oral family history that the President had smeared as a lie. In any case, one video intended to share her family history and shut up our bully of a President should hardly be disqualifying.

Maybe Warren really isn't your candidate -- that's okay, too. By the looks of it, there are going to be a great many contenders. She certainly faces an uphill battle based on gender, and those of us on the left should be particularly attuned to the ways in which another eminently qualified woman will inevitably be attacked and undermined for her appearance, her voice, and even a cherry-picking of her record not similarly applied to progressive men in the field.

But Warren has done us all an immense favor by kicking her campaign off the way she did: she is setting the narrative, and insisting it focuses on class and race, economic inequality and gender inequality, and all of the ways in which our identities, and America's history of racism and sexism indelibly shape who has opportunity, when and how.

It's a brilliant beginning, and even if she doesn't ultimately earn your vote, Warren has drawn the lines of the race -- and launched from a crucial starting point.

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Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Fast Facts

Personal:
Birth date: March 1, 1964 or April 14, 1965 (both are used)

Birth place: Pakistan

Father: Sheikh Mohammed Ali Doustin Baluchi

Mother: Halema Mohammed

Marriage: Wife's name unavailable publicly

Children: Abed al-Khalid; Yusuf al-Khalid

Education: North Carolina A&T University, Mechanical Engineering, 1986

Other Facts:
Has been called "the mastermind of the September 11th attacks."

Has been linked to nearly every al Qaeda attack between 1993 and 2003.

Is sometimes referred to as KSM.

Timeline:
January 1995 - Mohammed first comes to the attention of the FBI and CIA because of his involvement in a failed plot to blow up as many as a dozen American commercial airliners over the Pacific. After a fire in the apartment in Manila, Philippines, where the planning took place, the Manila police discover a computer where the plans were laid out and arrest some of the conspirators.

1995 - Mohammed is linked to a plot to assassinate Pope John Paul II during his visit to Manila, Philippines.

January 1996 - Is indicted on seven counts of terror conspiracy in the Southern District of New York for his alleged involvement in a Philippines-based plot to blow up 12 US-bound commercial airliners in 48 hours. Referred to as the "Bojinka Plot."

1996 - Osama bin Laden meets with Mohammed.

1998 - Is linked to bombings of US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

October 2000 - Is linked to the bombing of the USS Cole.

September 11, 2001 - Is linked to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

2001 - Is linked to Richard Reid's foiled attempt to blow up an airliner with a shoe bomb.

October 2001 - Placed on the FBI list of 22 Most Wanted Terrorists.

2002 - Al Qaeda expert Rohan Gunaratna says Mohammed ordered the killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl saying "Daniel Pearl was going in search of the al Qaeda network that was operational in Karachi, and it was at the instruction of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that Daniel Pearl was killed."

October 2002 - Is linked to the Bali nightclub bombing that killed more than 200 people.

November 2002 - Is linked to the bombings at the El Ghriba synagogue, in Djerba, Tunisia.

March 1, 2003 - Mohammed is captured in a house in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, along with Pakistani political leader Ahmed Abdul Qadoos, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi (another alleged al Qaeda operative), and Jamaat Islami.

September 6, 2006 - The United States acknowledges Mohammed has been held at a secret overseas CIA prison and is being transferred to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba where he will face a trial before a military commission.

March 15, 2007 - In a 26-page transcript released by the Pentagon, Mohammed admits decapitating Pearl and responsibility for the Reid shoe bomber attempt to blow up an airliner over the Atlantic Ocean, the Bali nightclub bombing in Indonesia, the 1993 World Trade Center attack and other attacks that did not play out. "I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z."

February 11, 2008 - The United States announces it will seek the death penalty against Mohammad, along with Mohammed al-Qahtani, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, al-Hawsawi, Walid bin Attash, and Mohammed bin Attash, for charges related to the 9/11 attacks which include: conspiracy, murder in violation of the law of war, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, destruction of property in violation of the law of war, and terrorism and material support of terrorism.

June 5, 2008 - The arraignment for Mohammed and four co-defendants begins. Mohammed tells the judge, Marine Colonel Ralph Kohlmann, that he wishes to represent himself, understands the charges against him could lead to the death penalty, and wishes to plead guilty to all charges in connection with his role in the 9/11 attacks and become a martyr.

January 19, 2009 - Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh admit in open that they are guilty and proud of the attacks committed on September 11.

January 21, 2009 - At the request of US President Barack Obama, trial proceedings are frozen for 120 days.

April 16, 2009 - The US Justice Department releases a 2005 memo which states that Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003.

September 21, 2009 - The US government's request for a 60-day delay in the trial is granted. Decisions on where to try the case are being worked out.

November 13, 2009 - The Justice Department announces five Guantanamo Bay detainees, including Mohammed, will be transferred to New York for trial in a US District Court courtroom just blocks from the site where the World Trade Center twin towers stood until September 11, 2001.

April 4, 2011 - Attorney General Eric Holder announces that Mohammed will now face a military trial at Guantanamo Bay, along with four other detainees.

May 31, 2011 - The Department of Defense announces that capital charges have been re-filed against Mohammed and four other alleged 9/11 co-conspirators. The charges include: conspiracy, murder in violation of the law of war, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, destruction of property in violation of the law of war, hijacking aircraft and terrorism. He will be tried before a military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

April 4, 2012 - Vice Admiral Bruce MacDonald authorizes a new trial for Mohammed and the four co-conspirators.

May 5, 2012 - Is arraigned at Guantanamo Bay along with Walid bin Attash, Bin al-Shibh, Ali, and al-Hawsawi. The five refused to cooperate with court proceedings in various ways. They are each charged with terrorism, hijacking aircraft, conspiracy, murder in violation of the law of war, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, intentionally causing serious bodily injury and destruction of property in violation of the law of war. The hearing lasts 13 hours and is the first time the defendants are seen in public since January 2009.

October 17, 2012 - At a pretrial hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Mohammed declares that the US government sanctioned torture in the name of national security and equates the plane hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 people to the "millions" he said have been killed by America's military. After Mohammed's remarks, military judge Captain James Pohl says that no other personal comments by the accused will be allowed.

January 28, 2013 - The second session of the pretrial motion hearing against Mohammed takes place at Guantanamo Bay.

March 18, 2014 - A federal judge denies a request by Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, bin Laden's son-in-law, to have Mohammed testify in Abu Ghaith's defense at trial, either by teleconference from the Guantanamo Bay detention camp or via deposition.

December 9, 2014 - The Senate Intelligence Committee releases its report on "enhanced interrogation techniques" used by the CIA in the post-9/11 era. Mohammed was waterboarded at least 183 times. The CIA said the method was effective in helping CIA interrogators pull information from Mohammed, but according to the Senate report, Mohammed figured out a way to "beat the system," often recanting information he told CIA officers to get them to stop the waterboarding.

November 29, 2016 - James Mitchell, a psychologist and government contractor who helped develop the CIA's post-9/11 enhanced interrogation (EIT) program, releases his book, "Enhanced Interrogation: Inside the Minds and Motives of the Islamic Terrorists Trying to Destroy America," in which he details some of the thousands of hours he spent interrogating Mohammed.

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Chief Pentagon spokeswoman announces departure

"I appreciate the opportunity afforded to me by this administration to serve alongside Secretary Mattis, our Service members and all the civilians who support them," White tweeted Monday. "It has been my honor and privilege. Stay safe and God bless."

On Tuesday, Charles Summers Jr., a principal deputy assistant to the secretary of defense in White's office, will assume the role of acting assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs, according to the Pentagon.

White's departure comes as the department's inspector general investigates allegations of retaliation against staff members after she used some of them to conduct her personal errands and business matters.

In August, CNN reported that White, a Trump administration political appointee, was under investigation by the inspector general after multiple complaints were filed against her.

White is alleged to have misused support staff, asking them to fetch her dry cleaning, run to the pharmacy for her and work on her mortgage paperwork, among other things. Staffers also accused White of inappropriately transferring personnel after they filed complaints about her.

White became the Pentagon's chief spokeswoman in April 2017 and reported directly to Mattis. The defense secretary's last day at the Pentagon also was Monday.

White used to hold regular televised press briefings, but has not appeared in one since May. It is not clear if her absence from briefings is related to the investigation. Reporters have been told the White House wanted to see more briefings by senior uniformed officers.

After a months-long pause in on-camera briefings, Mattis selected Burke Whitman, a two-star major general in the Marine Corps, to act as a uniformed spokesman for the Defense Department.

While White remained in her role up until Monday's announcement, the expectation was that Whitman would replace her as the Pentagon's regular on-camera briefer.

The decision to appoint Whitman was controversial because the military is supposed to remain outside the political arena, and with a member of the military acting as spokesperson, reporters will not be able to ask questions about the political aspects of decision-making.

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CNN Travel editors choose their best trips of 2018

(CNN) — When you travel as your job, do you start to see it as just another day at the office? That's an ongoing challenge for the team at CNN Travel as they are tasked with seeing the world while also reporting on it.

Here, the members of team travel share their highlights of 2018 and destinations where they hope to get new passport stamps in 2019:

Lilit Marcus, editor, New York City

BEST 2018 TRAVEL MEMORY: It's not just about the where -- it's about the how. In 2018, I traveled by bus, subway, car, ferry and plane, but the most significant mode of transport was in March, when I had my first ride in a helicopter.

For 45 minutes, a friendly pilot from Anthelion Helicopters wove us above Los Angeles and Long Beach, California, pointing out landmarks and providing amazing photo ops.

Long Beach, California, pictured from the sky.

CNN/Lilit Marcus

Despite some initial nerves, I had a blast -- and, better yet, got to understand more about these two cities beyond what I'd been able to experience on the ground.</span>

TRAVEL HOPE FOR 2019: I took Spanish classes this year in hopes of improving my language skills. What better way to test my knowledge than some time traveling in South America -- say Peru?

Maureen O'Hare, editor, London

BEST TRAVEL MEMORY OF 2018: The land underfoot is cracked, yellow and dry, as if wrapped in shedded snakeskin. The endless sky is hazy blue, and the sun beats down on this hill without shadow.

As we climb upward, we notice the summit is flat, its crest sliced off like the top of an egg. At the peak, we gaze into the cauldron of the mud volcano, some 15 meters wide.

An otherwordly mud volcano in Azerbaijan.

Maureen O'Hare/CNN

The gray slurry within shifts in endless turmoil, gas rising again and again to form bubbles that swell then burst, with a greedy plop. This is Azerbaijan, mud volcano capital of the world, and it's the closest I'll get to a trip to Mars.

TRAVEL HOPE FOR 2019: I don't know whether Costa Rica will live up to my technicolor fantasies -- green jungles teeming with sloths and monkeys, lakes filled with frogs, skies filled with birds, and a shoreline filled with dolphins and sea turtles -- but I'd sure like to find out.

Brekke Fletcher, executive editor, New York City

BEST 2018 TRAVEL MEMORY: Early last year, I traveled north to Alberta, Canada. It was my first visit to the Canadian Rockies and over the course of nearly a week, our crew battled the frigid winter to capture some of the most majestic places I have been: Banff, Lake Louise and Jasper, which are all part of Canada's tremendous national park system.

It was our second day into the trip when we woke before dawn to drive to the Banff Gondola so the videographers could capture the sunrise. It was so cold, so very cold. And dark. And our timing was screwy so we were concerned we wouldn't reach the peak in time to set up all the equipment.

But we did make it. And the proof is this wonderful story about Banff and one of its most beloved daughters, freestyle skier and all-around badass, Tatum Monod.</span>

Snowy-yet-colorful Banff.

Mike Seehagel/Travel Alberta

TRAVEL HOPE FOR 2019: Next year I'm going to fulfill one of my all-time travel goals by finally going to Bali.

My sister, Anne, is a majorly committed yogi for whom this will be the pinnacle of her practice, and I'm addicted to sultry weather, experiencing new cultures and maintaining my Delta Diamond status.

We're perfect travel partners, insofar as we're best friends who happen to be related, so I'm fairly certain this trip will be my favorite travel memory of 2019. But I'll let you know when I get back.

Karla Cripps, senior producer, Bangkok:

BEST 2018 TRAVEL MEMORY: I was fortunate enough to take a few great journeys this year, but my top memory has to be waking up in one of the world's highest tree houses, deep in the Laos jungle, to the sounds of endangered black-crested gibbons singing as they bounced through the trees nearby.

It was part of a three-day tour run by the Gibbon Experience, most of which was spent trekking and ziplining through the Nam Kan National Park.

Best of all, it's a tourism-based conservation project, meaning profits go toward protecting the forest and its precious inhabitants.</span>

A sky-high treehouse in Laos.

Souksamlan Laladeth/Gibbon Experience

TRAVEL HOPE FOR 2019: More Japan! It's my favorite destination in the world. The food. The people. The wild landscapes. I've traveled there more than half a dozen times, and it just never gets old.

Katia Hetter, senior producer, Atlanta

BEST 2018 TRAVEL MEMORY: I stepped onto the grounds of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, and I was immediately transfixed by Kwame Akoto-Bamfo's sculpture of a mother with a chain around her neck, her infant in her arms.

As I walked through the memorial, I read the names of lynching victims inscribed on monuments hanging above me. Some monuments list the names of entire families murdered by mobs in one day.

I wasn't unaware of America's original sin, but the horror has never been more evident to me than at the memorial and accompanying Legacy Museum, the brainchild of Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson. </span>

Civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson shows CNN's Nia-Malika Henderson around a new memorial and museum in Montgomery, Alabama that names some of the over 4,000 lynching victims in America.

"I hope people will feel like they've been deceived a little by the history they've been taught," Stevenson told CNN. "Truth and reconciliation work is always hard. It's challenging, but if we have the courage to tell the truth and to hear the truth, things happen."

TRAVEL HOPE FOR 2019: I want to meet friends for my birthday in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, now more than ever Puerto Rico deserves our attention -- and our tourism dollars. My Cuban genes need to swim in those warm ocean waters, and I'll try to improve my Cuban Spanglish in the process.

Stacey Lastoe, senior editor, New York City

BEST 2018 TRAVEL MEMORY: A popular time to visit Newfoundland, Canada, isn't March, but that's when I went, and let me tell you: It's an excellent time to go.

While I didn't get a chance to forage for summer berries or sail to see fjords, I did get to eat a Jiggs dinner (traditional Sunday supper, often with guitar-playing) with locals, enjoy a wintery boil-up (fire in the woods to make tea and snacks) and drink a pint in downtown St. John's with some of the nicest people I've ever met.

Newfoundlanders are a happy, welcoming bunch, and I can't wait to go back.

A lighthouse in Newfoundland, Canada.

Getty Images/Stephen Saks

TRAVEL HOPE FOR 2019: I recently posed this question to my Travel team colleagues: Is it weird that "Narcos: Mexico" has me wanting to visit Guadalajara? They said it wasn't odd at all, but, either way, Mexico's second-largest city would've still made my list.

Barry Neild, global editor, London

BEST TRAVEL MEMORY OF 2018: Some hikes are simply an are-we-nearly-there-yet stretching of legs in the countryside. Others, like the relentlessly cinematic climb to Upper Grinnell Lake in Glacier National Park, northern Montana, make you wish they could go on forever.

The path switchbacks up, up and up above Lake Josephine, traversing stomach-flipping steep-drop ledges, passing through cascading waterfalls and scrubland teeming with furry critters. Then, after cresting a final ridge, the big reveal: a bright blue expanse of water with icebergs swimming incongruously in the high heat of August.

Magnificent, even through the haze of nearby wildfires.

A rainbow at Glacier National Park.

Pixabay/Creative Commons

TRAVEL HOPE FOR 2019: Returning to the most beautiful place on the planet — the English Lake District — for another attempt to cycle the grueling but magical 112 miles of the Fred Whitton Challenge.

Marnie Hunter, senior producer, Atlanta

BEST 2018 TRAVEL MEMORY: Pristine, nearly deserted Caribbean beaches star in many a daydream. A screensaver staple, their aquamarine waters entrance workers the world over.

But remote locations often make getting to these coastal stunners in real life a bit of a white-knuckle adventure. Such is the case with Bonefish Point on Providenciales in the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Bonefish Point in Turks and Caicos.

Marnie Hunter/CNN

The uneven, unpaved, rocky road leading out to its calm waters and the neighboring Split Rock landmark is no picnic -- especially in an economy-sized rental car. But having some laughs and taking it very easy (you're on island time, after all) yields those screensaver rewards and a bonus thrill to anyone willing to gingerly trek across the sharp limestone terrain for tip-top views.

Francesca Street, writer and associate producer, London

BEST 2018 TRAVEL MEMORY: I'm still daydreaming about Lisbon's coral-colored buildings, intricate tiled walls, views stretching out across red roofs toward the Atlantic and, of course, the delicious custard tarts.

Lisbon was vibrant, colorful and (mostly) sunny -- unsurprising, then, that I quickly fell under the Portuguese capital's heady spell. Days were spent drinking rich port outside cafes on the sloping cobbled streets, walking the medieval ramparts of Castelo de São Jorge and wandering the spectacular Mosteiro dos Jerónimos -- a World Heritage site featuring stunning brickwork, centuries of history and cloisters to explore.

It's hard to find a bad view in Lisbon.

Courtesy Francesca Street/CNN

Lisbon's lesser known gems were equally as enticing. We were enthralled by the floor-to-ceiling book shelves at Livraria Ler Devagar. Surely the most beautiful bookstore in the world, this Lisbon institution doubles up as a printing press, exhibition space, bar, café and meeting place, complete with moving sculptures of bicycles and ladders leading up to more reading material.

TRAVEL HOPE FOR 2019: Many of my favorite travel memories involve hurtling around country roads in tiny cars in Scotland with my closest friends.

Next year, we're hoping to swap one Celtic country for another and hop across the Irish Sea and road trip through Ireland. I can't wait to see the Cliffs of Moher and the Giant's Causeway, but I'm also excited for the time spend chatting, laughing, singing and catching up in the car with my closest friends.

Forrest Brown, SEO specialist and editor, Atlanta

BEST 2018 TRAVEL MEMORY: In January, I unexpectedly found myself in the role of caregiver for my mother. While that has meant no traditional vacations, it didn't mean travel was off-limits. I just had to redefine the word for my new circumstances.

So one lovely spring day near Augusta, Georgia, I took an hour off from working and caregiving to take a "journey" to Savannah Rapids Park -- five miles from my motel and yet a world away.

This beautiful escape is situated where part of the Savannah River is diverted to form the Augusta Canal. Built in 1845 for industrial purposes, recreation is now the order of the day. I've taken classic strolls along the Seine, Thames, Tagus and St. Lawrence rivers, but none matched the serenity and promise of a spring day here.</span>

South Carolina's Congaree National Park.

Getty Images/skiserge1

TRAVEL HOPE FOR 2019: I need to always be within a few hours' drive from my mother, but that still leaves the swampy mysteries of Congaree National Park south of Columbia, South Carolina, open to me.

Channon Hodge, video producer, New York City

BEST 2018 TRAVEL MEMORY: on vacation in September, I sorely needed some crowd-free time. On one blissful afternoon, I found myself totally alone for nearly an hour in one of the most crowded tourist spots in Vienna, Austria -- Schönbrunn Palace.

Originally, I went intending to drink in all the décor and dresses. After breezing through the rooms tour, however, I bypassed the free trolley and wandered the public park behind the main gardens.

Austria's Schloss Schonbrunn is known as Schonbrunn Palace in English.

Cavan Images/Getty Images

The park is on a massive hill that few seemed to want to brave on a hot day, and so I found myself sitting under a canopy of old trees in near absolute silence. I found my own little spot shrouded inside a quiet, cool forest in the middle of bustling Vienna.

I started to remember how to daydream, and wondered what it would be like to walk those paths a century ago, a feathered hat on my head and a long gown trailing the ground. As an African-American woman, that dream is quite a stretch, but I have a very healthy imagination when I find the time to let it run.

TRAVEL HOPE FOR 2019: I'm aiming for a trip built solely around food and for that, I've got to head to China. Every daily travel decision will be prioritized by breakfast, lunch, second lunch, snack, dinner and dessert. The sightseeing will have to go somewhere in between.

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Elizabeth Warren launches exploratory committee ahead of likely 2020 presidential run

With her announcement 13 months before the Iowa caucuses, Warren, who became a progressive star by taking on Wall Street after the 2007 financial crisis and, more recently, President Donald Trump, is the first Democrat with a national profile to take formal action towards a likely presidential campaign.

In a four-and-a-half minute video, Warren makes clear some of the very themes that catapulted her to national prominence will define her upcoming presidential run: economic equality, government accountability and reining in big corporations.

"Corruption is poisoning our democracy," Warren says in the video as images of Republican leaders flash across the screen. "Politicians look the other way while big insurance companies deny patients life-saving coverage, while big banks rip off consumers and while big oil companies destroy this planet."

The clip begins with the senator recalling a hardscrabble childhood in Oklahoma -- her mother got a minimum-wage job after her father suffered a heart attack. He would eventually work as a janitor.

"He raised a daughter who got to be a public school teacher, a law professor and a senator. We got a real opportunity to build something," Warren says. "Working families today face a lot tougher path than my family did."

In one of multiple nods in the video to racial inequality, she adds that "families of color face a path that is steeper and rockier, a path made even harder by the impact of generations of discrimination" -- an early acknowledgment of the political importance of appealing to and winning the support of minority voters.

As she warns of a deepening crisis faced by the American middle class, Warren points a finger squarely at the Republican Party, using images of former presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, along with grinning cameos from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, departing House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Trump.

Warren is a searing critic of the President, and Trump has responded by openly mocking her Native American heritage and referring to her as "Pocahontas." Her decision in October to respond to Trump and other critics by releasing the results of a DNA test aimed at proving her ancestry fell flat with many Democrats and overshadowed her midterm message.

The announcement also comes in the midst of a prolonged partial government shutdown over Trump's insistence on funding for a border wall, which has caused political chaos that has spooked investors and sparked turmoil in the stock market. This backdrop could prove to be a boon for Warren, who is widely expected to build a campaign centered around her signature economic populist message and anti-corruption platform.

By launching an exploratory committee, Warren can begin raising money for the coming campaign. She is unlikely to seek the assistance of a billionaire-funded super PAC, according to a source familiar with Warren's thinking, because she believes grassroots support should be a defining factor in the coming primary. Warren has already sworn off corporate PAC money. She enters the 2020 cycle with $12.5 million left over from her 2018 Senate campaign, according to Federal Election Commission records. That money can be transferred into Warren's presidential coffers.

A source close to Warren has said the timing of Monday's announcement -- on New Year's Eve, when most people aren't plugged into the news -- had more to do with a need to "build an apparatus" by "identifying and hiring staff" than influencing other contenders' plans.

But some Democratic operatives are skeptical, and one fundraiser suggested the Warren team might be hoping that a hefty day-one haul, made public in early 2019, could cause potential rivals to reconsider their options.

"It's a gamble that folks will give a ton of small money today," the Democrat said.

Rufus Gifford, former President Barack Obama's 2012 campaign finance director, made the same point in a tweet.

"Elizabeth Warren must think she can put up huge $$ numbers on her January report - scaring others out of the race," he wrote. "Only reason I can figure you'd launch a Presidential Campaign on New Year's Eve."

Even before Monday's notifications went out, the work of building the infrastructure to support a presidential bid had been well underway.

Since her re-election to the Senate in November, Warren has made hundreds of calls to political grassroots leaders in the early states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, the source said. She is expected to hit the campaign trail later this week if no votes are scheduled to end the government shutdown.

Warren's staff members are also having discussions with operatives in those states and are in the process of searching for campaign office space in the Boston area, the expected location of her presidential campaign headquarters.

Dan Geldon, Warren's longtime aide who served as her chief of staff in the Senate and was once the senator's student at Harvard Law School, is likely to serve a senior role in the eventual Warren campaign, the source said.

More than a year out from the first round of voting and with months to go until the first debate, the coming Democratic primary is already shaping up to be one of the most fierce and feisty nominating contests in a generation.

Warren's work to establish and defend the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, made her a star among progressives who first pushed for what would be a successful 2012 Senate run and then, with less luck, a presidential bid she ultimately passed up four years later.

This time around, the large Democratic field is expected to include multiple candidates touting progressive platforms -- a reality that underscores her influence within the party but could also complicate her path to its nomination.

Some two dozen candidates are said to have shown interest in a 2020 bid. Warren's national profile, which traces back to her work as a watchdog following the 2008 bank bailouts, immediately places her among the favorites, alongside former Vice President Joe Biden, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and rising star Beto O'Rourke, the departing Texas congressman who just lost a bid for the US Senate.

A CNN/Des Moines Register/Mediacom survey earlier this month of likely Iowa caucusgoers found Warren with 8% support, trailing Biden (32%), Sanders (19%) and O'Rourke (11%) -- numbers broadly consistent with other early national polling.

Her decision to more formally begin the process comes less than a month after the editorial board for her hometown newspaper, the Boston Globe, ruffled progressive feathers by suggesting she consider abandoning a potential run.

"Warren missed her moment in 2016, and there's reason to be skeptical of her prospective candidacy in 2020," the board wrote in early December, citing a poll from September 2018 that put former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, a Democrat who has since ruled out a presidential run this cycle, ahead of Warren.

It also suggested she had become too much of a "divisive figure," an apparent reference to the heavily publicized DNA test. It confirmed Warren had distant Native American ancestry, but was met with backlash from some tribal leaders, activists and outspoken Democrats who fretted over whether Warren had played into Trump's hands.

In a statement Monday, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel gave a preview of the attacks to come, dismissing Warren as "another extreme far-left obstructionist and a total fraud." McDaniel also took a swipe at what she described as Warren's "phony claim to minority status."

Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin Jr. was among the most outspoken critics and said in October that Warren had undermined "tribal interests."

"Using a DNA test to lay claim to any connection to the Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation, even vaguely, is inappropriate and wrong," Hoskin said in a statement.

But any early missteps -- or even disappointing polling -- are unlikely to dampen excitement among the party's increasingly influential progressive bloc.

"Elizabeth Warren, on a visceral level, is fighting for everyday people and against powerful interests," Progressive Change Campaign Committee co-founder Adam Green said, "and that comes through with an authenticity this moment demands."

Green, whose group has supported Warren for years while talking up "the Warren wing" of the Democratic party, also gave a hint of how his group and potentially others might seek to distinguish the Massachusetts senator from other leading contenders.

"There are different theories on being effective, but she believes in picking issues that are super popular and forging coalitions to win on those issues," he said. "Others can be more of a loner, or willing to charge into battle first before having a fully baked plan."

CNN's Fredreka Schouten and Dan Merica contributed to this report.

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'Ninja,' the Fortnite streamer who's one of video gaming's biggest stars

And who could argue? Ninja is, literally, killing it. The 94,958 Fornite kills he had racked up at last check have helped him earn what he says is close to $10 million this year. Blevins and his colorful hair (neon red at the time of this interview) have become a cultural phenomenon, and his skills and personality have helped make Fortnite the behemoth that it is — one that drove its company, Epic Games, to a reported profit of $3 billion this year.

Blevins burst onto the scene after a record-breaking live stream (628,000 concurrent viewers, a record which he's since broken) with rap icon Drake back in March. Since then he has become a must-see on social media and more importantly, a must-stream. Ninja's "bread and butter," he says, are YouTube and Twitch, a streaming video platform. He estimates 70% of his income comes from the two services.

Every time one of Ninja's 20-million plus YouTube subscribers watches a pop-up ad on his channel he earns a percentage of the ad sale, and most of Ninja's videos on YouTube have been viewed millions of times. On Twitch, more than 12.5 million users follow him, and almost 40,000 pay to watch, subscribing to three different tiers and forking over either $4.99, $9.99 or $25 per month to watch Ninja blast his way to big bucks. Because users don't have to subscribe, ad dollars help the platform and its streamers make money too. Still, Blevins thinks Twitch "could do a much better job incentivizing" people to choose the pricier subscriptions; he compared Twitch to a giant "violin case" for a street performer, with people just throwing in what they feel is right.

The rest of Blevins' income is from sponsors like Samsung, Uber Eats and Red Bull. And those sponsors, along with Ninja's September appearance on the cover of ESPN The Magazine, lead to a major question about him and his peers in the burgeoning esports community: Are they athletes? Blevins said he sees himself instead as a small business owner, equating gaming to a small coffee shop. "They're gonna find another coffee shop if you're not there ... you have to be there all the time," he said.

Ninja mans that "coffee shop" for 12 hours a day, he estimates, working out to nearly 4,000 hours of Fornite this year alone, the equivalent of more than 140 days. Each and every time he's away from the shop, Blevins and wife/manager Jess are calculating how many subscribers they're losing, and how much money they're not earning. While the couple does carve out time for one another each day, their last vacation was their honeymoon eight years ago. And even that trip, long before Fornite, was still cut short for professional gaming.

Fornite has 200 million registered players around the world, a 60% increase since June, and Blevins says he thinks it's nowhere near peaking. No matter how long its popularity lasts, Blevins is enjoying his moment in the sun. He appeared on "The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon" earlier this month, and has recently been moving into other revenue streams, like a clothing brand and music. He's released a rap album called "Ninjawerks" and "Fortnite Rap Battle," a compilation video in which he stars, has been viewed nearly 80 million times on YouTube.

While parents are watching the ball drop on New Year's Eve, Ninja will be capping off the best year of his life. As Fortnite fans wait for the battle bus, he'll be streaming on his Twitch page in front of an invite-only audience in Times Square, going from 4 p.m. ET to 4 a.m. ET in what he promises will be an "epic, cool, incredible time" — or just another day at the office for one of the hottest gamers on the planet.

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