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Trump likely to make several border security moves on first day, says expert

Trump likely to make several border security moves on first day, says expert

Voters chose to send President-elect Trump back to the White House in large part over concerns about immigration and border security, something the former president will look to quickly address when he starts a new term in office. “He could probably shut down the border, declare that there’s an emergency… stop the entry of people until further notice,” Alfonso Aguilar, a former chief of the U.S. Office of Citizenship and the Director of Hispanic Engagement at the American Principles Project, told Fox News Digital. “That I think in some shape or form, will be one of his first actions.” The comments come as Trump will now shift his focus from the campaign to his return to the White House, where immigration and border security promise to be top concerns for the incoming administration. TRUMP’S ‘BORDER CZAR’ WARNS DEM GOVS REJECTING TRUMP DEPORTATION PLAN: ‘GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY’ Trump spent much of the campaign promising to secure the border and deport those in the country illegally, drawing a sharp contrast between himself and the Biden administration, which saw record-setting numbers of border crossings over its first three years in the White House. Voters rewarded Trump for the messaging, with 75% of voters indicating that border security was an important factor to them in the most recent election, 61% of whom supported Trump, according to the Fox News Voter Analysis. Trump will look to make good on that trust on Day 1 of his new administration, Aguilar said, when shutting down the border could just be one of several announced changes. Another way Trump could act on Day 1 is to announce expedited procedures for removing immigrants who are in the country illegally, most notably immigrants who have committed crimes. DEM GOVERNOR THREATENS TO USE ‘EVERY TOOL’ TO FIGHT BACK AGAINST TRUMP-ERA DEPORTATIONS “If you identify people who have criminal records, who have committed a crime, you have somehow find a way to expedite their removal,” Aguilar said. “I would imagine that they have in place an expedited procedure to remove those individuals involved in crime.” Other policies that could see swift changing include an end to the CHNV parole program, which has allowed migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to apply for Advance Travel Authorizations into the U.S. and then be paroled into the country with a court date, with many being eligible to apply for work authorization once in the country. “They can end that on Day 1,” Aguilar said. Catch-and-release tactics are also likely to end quickly under Trump, Aguilar noted. CLICK HERE FOR MORE COVERAGE OF THE BORDER SECURITY CRISIS Aguilar also said there could be a return of “workforce raids,” an enforcement tactic not seen in recent years that might be back in the “first few days, few weeks.” Other policies, however, are likely to take time, including a return to the Migrant Protection Protocols, more commonly referred to as “Remain in Mexico,” which will require coordination with the Mexican government. Some improvements may also require legislation, including obtaining more funding to finish the border wall and hire more immigration judges and other border security personnel. “There’s certain things that he will be able to do administratively, but he may need some legislation for some of the other stuff,” Aguilar said. “If you want to hire more immigration judges, you’re going to need more money, so I would imagine that they will also have some sort of immigration package ready to go to get money from Congress.”

In election victory, Trump’s gains went beyond the battlegrounds

In election victory, Trump’s gains went beyond the battlegrounds

President-elect Trump flipped six highly competitive states in his election victory last week. But his gains with voters were not limited to the battlegrounds. Trump improved his vote share across the country, starting with conservative areas but extending into deeply Democratic states. It is a critical part of the story of this election: one where Trump built a broader coalition and led on two defining issues of the campaign. DONALD TRUMP ELECTED AS THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES Trump gained in all seven of the battleground states. He gained 1.8 points in Michigan and Pennsylvania, 1.4 points in Georgia, just over a point in North Carolina, and under a point in Wisconsin. (Trump’s largest gains are currently in Nevada and Arizona, two of ten states where there is significant vote left to count.) But Trump’s best performances relative to 2020 were in reliably Democratic states. These states voted for Democrats, but by narrower margins than before. His strongest improvement was in New York, where the former and future president gained 6.4 points.  His county-level gains were spread across the state, but notably included an improvement in all five of the New York City boroughs (where, again, there are some votes left to be counted). EARLY VOTES TOP 84M IN 2024 ELECTION He also posted a 5-point improvement in neighboring New Jersey, enough to reduce the margin of his loss to just 5.5 points. That is the best performance for a Republican candidate in more than three decades. Look for New Jersey and Virginia (Trump +2.4 since 2020) to become a focal point in future elections, beginning with next year’s gubernatorial races. Trump also took more vote share in Illinois (Trump +4.2 since 2020); another Democratic state with a highly populated urban area. And as some pre-election polls predicted, the president-elect brought home another five points worth of votes in Florida, where Democrats fought hard for a victory just two cycles ago. Just as he improved in the battlegrounds and left-leaning states, he also put up strong gains in states like Texas, Tennessee, South Carolina and Idaho. Trump posted a 3-point improvement in all four of those conservative states, with smaller improvements in over a dozen more. In fact, as of this writing, there isn’t a single state in the country where Trump turned in a weaker performance than he did four years ago. ELECTION NIGHT WINNERS AND LOSERS: 2024 EDITION So far, Harris has only outperformed President Biden’s vote share in one state: Utah, where she gained 0.6 points since the last election. But even in Utah, Trump also performed about a point better than he did in 2020. It’s third party candidates who saw the most erosion. (And there are many ballots left to count.) To find positives for Harris, you have to search for a smattering of counties across the nation. The Vice President did between 2-9 points better in a few counties in the Georgia metropolitan area, led by Henry, Rockdale and Douglas. She also improved in some of the North Carolina counties most impacted by Hurricane Helene, particularly Democratic-leaning Buncombe, but also Henderson and Transylvania. She posted about a 4-point gain in each. Kaufman County, in the Dallas suburbs, also bucked the national trend. That Texas county swung about 6 points towards Harris. AMERICANS WANT TO SEE TRUMP ADDRESS ECONOMY, INFLATION UPON RETURN TO WHITE HOUSE Harris posted a modest gain in Chaffee County, Colorado, otherwise known as the “Heart of the Rockies” (here, too, there are some outstanding ballots). And there are signs that parts of Oregon and Washington could end up more Democratic than 2020 when counting is finished. These are the exceptions to a clear rule: voters almost uniformly swung away from the Democrats this cycle. The Fox News Voter Analysis shows that Trump’s gains came from multiple groups, and that voters preferred him on two defining issues. As the Polling Unit writes: Trump’s victory was powered by his strength on the economy and immigration – two of voters’ top concerns. He was seen as a stronger leader than Harris in a time of turmoil, and voters remembered his presidency more fondly than their evaluations of the current administration. Trump ran up the score with his base while narrowing traditional Democratic advantages among Black, Hispanic, and young voters. The complete Fox News Voter Analysis is available on FoxNews.com.

Who’s who on Trump’s short list for attorney general

Who’s who on Trump’s short list for attorney general

President-elect Donald Trump has wasted little time in naming top White House and Cabinet officials to serve in his administration as he prepares to be sworn in for a second term in January. It remains to be seen, however, who Trump will pick to head up his Justice Department, perhaps one of the most important vacancies to be filled in the next administration.  Early contenders for the post include sitting U.S. senators, former Justice Department personnel and at least one top White House adviser from Trump’s first term. Though each would bring widely different backgrounds and perspectives to the position, they all share one common trait: loyalty to the president-elect and a willingness to back his agenda and policies over the next four years.  As the U.S. awaits a formal announcement from the president-elect, here are some of the top names being floated for the role of U.S. attorney general. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT LOOKING TO WIND DOWN TRUMP CRIMINAL CASES AHEAD OF INAUGURATION Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah Sen. Mike Lee, R- Utah, is considered to be a more conventional pick to head up the Justice Department. Lee is a high-ranking Republican in the chamber and would face a somewhat easy path to Senate confirmation, at least compared to some of the more controversial names that have surfaced. But he may not be gunning for the role. The Utah Republican told reporters last week that while he has been in frequent conversations with Trump’s transition team, he plans to focus his sway in the Republican-majority Senate on helping gin up support for Trump’s Cabinet nominees and helping select the Senate majority leader, a leadership election in which Lee, as current chair of the Senate Steering Committee, is poised to a play a major role. “I have the job I want,” Lee told the Deseret News in an interview. “And I look forward to working in the next Congress and with President Trump and his team to implement his agenda and the reform agenda that Republicans have offered and campaigned on, and it’s going to be an exciting time. We’ve got a lot of work to do.” John Ratcliffe Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe is among the top names being considered to head up the Justice Department.  Ratcliffe, a former federal prosecutor and a former U.S. representative from Texas, earned the spotlight during Trump’s first term for his outspoken criticism of the FBI and of the special counsel investigation overseen by Robert Mueller. Trump tapped Ratcliffe in 2019 to replace Dan Coates as the Director of National Intelligence. The following year, he was tapped by the outgoing president to be a member of his impeachment team. Mark Paoletta  Former White House attorney Mark Paoletta served during Trump’s first term as counsel to then-Vice President Mike Pence and to the Office of Management and Budget. Paoletta is also already working on the Trump transition team, including helping steer Justice Department policy in the next Trump administration, making him a potentially natural fit for the role. Paoletta also made clear Monday that if tapped to head up the Justice Department, he would not tolerate any resistance to Trump’s agenda by career prosecutors and other nonpolitical officials. In a lengthy post on the social media site, X, Paoletta said career employees are “required to implement the President’s plan” after an election, even ones they may consider unethical or illegal.  “If these career DOJ employees won’t implement President Trump’s program in good faith, they should leave,” Paoletta said, noting that employees who engage in so-called “resistance” to Trump’s agenda would be guilty of “subverting American democracy” and subject to “disciplinary measures, including termination.” Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is also among the names floated to lead the Department of Justice. Bailey was tapped by Missouri Gov. Mike Parson in 2022 to be the state’s top prosecutor after then-state Attorney General Eric Schmitt was elected to the U.S. Senate. Since taking over the state AG’s office, Bailey has led dozens of lawsuits against the Biden administration and sought to defend the state on a number of conservative issues as well.  Those familiar with Bailey’s ascent say his lower-profile career could be an asset as a possible U.S. attorney general, especially since the role requires Senate confirmation. He could be aided here by Sens. Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt, two Missouri Republicans who also served as state attorney general before their Senate service. Since neither appear to be seeking the role of the top U.S. prosector, they could play a key role in stumping for Bailey in the Senate if his name does come up for consideration. TRUMP TO APPOINT FORMER ICE DIRECTOR TOM HOMAN AS NEXT ‘BORDER CZAR’: NOBODY BETTER AT POLICING OUR BORDERS’ Matt Whitaker Former Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker temporarily led the Justice Department after Trump fired former Attorney General Jeff Sessions during his first term. Asked last week in a Fox News interview whether he wants the role, Whitaker declined to answer, saying that the decision is Trump’s to make.  “He’s going to want someone who he knows, likes and trusts,” Whitaker said. “He’s going to want someone who was there from the beginning,” he added, and who can help defend against what Whitaker described as “all this lawfare nonsense.”  The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to Fox News’s request for comment as to who remains on its list of candidates to lead the Justice Department.

Pressure campaign boosting Rick Scott could fall flat with Senate GOP colleagues, strategists say

Pressure campaign boosting Rick Scott could fall flat with Senate GOP colleagues, strategists say

As Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., enjoys an influx of public support from Trump-allies ahead of the Senate Republican leader race on Wednesday, some strategists are warning that the external pressure might not translate to the secret ballot and could even hurt his effort.  “They don’t matter one way or another,” said Republican strategist Doug Heye, sounding off on the public endorsements Scott has received from figures such as billionaire X owner Elon Musk, former presidential candidates Vivek Ramaswamy and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Sens. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., Rand Paul, R-Ky., Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., among others. “The only endorsement that matters, especially in such an inside game, would be Trump’s,” he added. TRUMP ALLIES BACK RICK SCOTT IN GOP SENATE LEADER RACE AS THEY LOOK TO INFLUENCE SECRET BALLOT Trump notably has not made an endorsement, and it is unclear if he will explicitly back a candidate in the leader race, which will be conducted via secret ballot on Nov. 13 at 9:30 a.m.  Scott is competing against Senate Minority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. Sens. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., and Mike Rounds, R-S.D., expressed their support for Thune early on. Cornyn received his only public endorsement last week from Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. SCHUMER WON’T ALLOW DAVE MCCORMICK AT SENATE ORIENTATION, CITING OUTSTANDING PA BALLOTS “Senate Republicans aren’t usually influenced by those outside the Senate when it comes to leadership elections,” explained Republican strategist Ron Bonjean, former top spokesman to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and former chief of staff of the Senate Republican Conference. “In fact, too much pressure would likely have the opposite effect and cause a candidate to lose votes.” SENATE LEADER CONTENDER JOHN THUNE RESPONDS TO NEW TRUMP LITMUS TEST AHEAD OF ELECTION Since the vote is conducted by secret ballot, there is no way to know how an individual senator voted unless they reveal it. And even then, reporters, colleagues, and the public can only take them at their word.  Thune had previously described the nature of the secret ballot by referring to an old quote by former Sen. Lamar Alexander after he lost the election for Republican whip by one vote to Lott. In 2006, following the loss, Alexander reportedly said, “I wrote 26 thank you notes for 24 votes.” A former leadership aide previously cast doubt on how much of an impact even an endorsement from President-elect Donald Trump would have.  “I don’t think it has anywhere near the impact that it would in a public race,” they told Fox News Digital.  CORNYN TOUTS LIFETIME FUNDRAISING PROWESS FOR GOP IN FINAL CASE TO SUCCEED MCCONNELL The aide further described the leader race vote as “a true vote of conscience” for senators. According to the aide, these particular votes “are not super-amenable to endorsement pressure.” Another factor that could play into how senators vote is whether the leader is sustainable after Trump’s second term. Depending on whether term limits are instituted for the leader, which some have pushed for and both Scott and Cornyn have gotten behind, the GOP leader could very well outlast Trump, who can only serve his four-year term. Thune has said he is open to the idea of limiting terms for the Republican leader. 

Media liberals savage Kamala as Trump picks experienced hard-liners

Media liberals savage Kamala as Trump picks experienced hard-liners

I have now read 587 pieces on why Kamala Harris got clobbered, so I consider myself an expert. I have also watched endless cable segments in which left-leaning pundits either grappled with the fallout from the Democratic wipeout, or urged their colleagues to become part of the Resistance, with Rachel Maddow telling the “free press” to “stand and fight.” As Donald Trump moves quickly to fill top administration posts – and newspaper pieces warn of the horrors to come – the denigration of Harris, and Joe Biden, has reached fever pitch. And yet, many of the media liberals who praised the Kamala operation as “flawless” and “incredible” now basically say it was a no-good, horrible, very bad campaign. That makes clear they knew this all along, but wouldn’t say so, because they were protecting the vice president as a way of trying to keep Trump out of the White House. This is yet another blow to the media’s plummeting credibility. BIDEN, HARRIS TEAMS IN LEAK WAR AFTER KAMALA HARRIS’ 2024 ELECTION LOSS Here are some of the media post-mortems: Andrew Sullivan: “How could an entire left-liberal worldview be more comprehensibly dismantled by reality? And yet, the primary response among my own liberal friends was rage at the electorate. They texted me to insist that Harris lost because of white people — white women, in particular.”  Maureen Dowd: “Some Democrats are finally waking up and realizing that woke is broke… “Kamala, a Democratic lawmaker told me, made the ‘colossal mistake’ of running a billion-dollar campaign with celebrities like Beyoncé when many of the struggling working-class voters she wanted couldn’t even afford a ticket to a Beyoncé concert, much less a down payment on a home.” Nellie Bowles, the Free Press, said Harris “made me furious, because she’s a good and fine person who ran a truly terrible campaign. It was a campaign that exemplified all of the delusions of the modern Democrats: that you never need to say what you stand for (because people should just assume you know what’s best for them), that you should never answer hard questions or appear with questionable figures, and that the only issue any American woman should care about is abortion… “The real villain of this story is Zombie Biden and his corrupt family, who the media treated like heroes the whole way through.” David Brooks: “There will be some on the left who will say Trump won because of the inherent racism, sexism and authoritarianism of the American people. Apparently, those people love losing and want to do it again and again and again… “Can the party of the universities, the affluent suburbs and the hipster urban cores do this [disrupt the Republicans]? Well, Donald Trump hijacked a corporate party, which hardly seemed like a vehicle for proletarian revolt, and did exactly that. Those of us who condescend to Trump should feel humbled — he did something none of us could do.” Politico: “How can Harris’s defenders grumble about being dragged down by Biden when she could not find one substantive policy issue on which to break from the unpopular incumbent? She waited three months, blurted out on ‘The View’ that she couldn’t think of any difference with Biden.”  National Review: “She was a lousy candidate with an even lousier message, if you can call it that. The only thing she had to do was sell herself, and she couldn’t manage even this fundamental task.” COLUMNIST CALLS OUT KAMALA HARRIS FOR NOT BEING ABLE TO ANSWER CRITICAL QUESTION ON ‘THE VIEW’ Well, you get the idea. In a 107-day campaign, Harris couldn’t convince enough Americans that she was authentic, that she could be commander-in-chief, or that she had abandoned the far-left policies (such as legalizing border crossings and backing inmate trans surgeries) of her last campaign. She foolishly hid from the press for a month, fostering the impression that she couldn’t go off script. Now just about everyone – except those blaming her loss on racism and sexism – is saying what I’ve been saying for three months. Harris never should have picked Tim Walz, who did nothing for the ticket. The trans issue hurt her and she never picked an issue, that or something else, to separate from the left wing of her party. She worried too much about hurting Joe’s feelings. The VP tried to focus on kitchen-table economics, such as with her price-gouging plan. But despite low inflation and unemployment right now, many Americans still felt they were paying higher grocery prices and liked Trump’s economic record better than Biden’s. It may well be there’s nothing Harris could have done to stop the Trump juggernaut, given his hijacking of working class and minority voters. Now the president-elect is moving quickly to tap his top appointees, having immediately named campaign manager Susie Wiles as his chief of staff – the first woman ever to hold the job. Tom Homan, who was ICE director in Trump’s first term, will be the border czar, not a big surprise. Homan will be in charge of the mass deportation program, and when asked if there was a way to avoid separating families, as happened last time, he said sure – deport them all together. Stephen Miller, who ran the hard-line immigration policy in the first term, is expected to be named deputy chief of staff – a promotion, first reported yesterday by CNN, that probably doesn’t convey the clout he’ll have as a trusted member of Trump’s inner circle. TRUMP WILL LEAVE THE WH WITH ONE OF THE HIGHEST APPROVAL RATINGS OF ANY MODERN PRESIDENT, LARA TRUMP PREDICTS I had been told days ago that Elise Stefanik, a GOP congresswoman from upstate New York, would go into the administration. And yesterday, Trump tapped her to be U.N. ambassador. She has experience in the George W. Bush White House. Then there are insiders who are the subject of speculation. Howard  Lutnick, a Wall Street CEO, is being touted by some as a possible Treasury secretary,