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Trump sides with dockworkers preparing to strike over automation

President-elect Donald Trump offered his support to dock workers on Thursday as a looming mid-January strike deadline threatens to bring commercial shipping on the East and Gulf Coasts to a halt days before he takes office.

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In a post on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump said that he had just finished meeting with leaders of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), the union that represents some 47,000 dockworkers, and signaled to international shippers that their use of automation could cost them.

“For the great privilege of accessing our markets, these foreign companies should hire our incredible American Workers, instead of laying them off, and sending those profits back to foreign countries,” Trump wrote.

Automation is a main sticking point in contract negotiations between the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX), which represents shippers, and the ILA union, which went on strike for three days in early October. The union paused their strike when the Biden administration helped broker a deal that extended the current contract through Jan. 15.

A longer strike in the fall could have further weakened Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, prompting the Biden administration to push for an extension in bargaining between shippers and the union.
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The president-elect’s statement in support of the union is highly unusual for a Republican. Though Trump made inroads with unions and the labor movement this year and recently announced plans to nominate a labor secretary who has broken with the GOP to support pro-union legislation. Trump’s budding relationship with organized labor — combined with his tariff proposals — are also causing widespread anxiety in the business community.

“We appreciate and value President-elect Trump’s statement on the importance of American ports,” a statement from USMX said Thursday evening. “It’s clear President-elect Trump, USMX, and the ILA all share the goal of protecting and adding good-paying American jobs at our ports. … To achieve this, we need modern technology that is proven to improve worker safety, boost port efficiency, increase port capacity, and strengthen our supply chains.”





The ILA did not immediately respond to a request for comment but has previously said that it sees new technology as something that would cost workers their jobs.
Trump said in his statement Thursday that he met with Harold Daggett, ILA’s president. The union had previously confirmed the two share a relationship that goes back decades and Daggett visited Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, last year.

“There has been a lot of discussion having to do with ‘automation’ on United States docks,” Trump wrote in his post Thursday. “I’ve studied automation, and know just about everything there is to know about it. The amount of money saved is nowhere near the distress, hurt, and harm it causes for American Workers, in this case, our Longshoremen. Foreign companies have made a fortune in the U.S. by giving them access to our markets.”

An extended strike beginning in January could raise prices for households and businesses and wreak widespread havoc on the global economy. A long-term walkout would be the biggest disruption to the flow of goods in and out of the country since the height of the pandemic. Even a short-lived work stoppage would snarl shipping and create havoc in supply chains for weeks. Cargo ranging from cars to electronics, from food to furniture, would be stuck on ships offshore. Each day a strike lasts could cost the U.S. economy up to $1 billion, according to analysts.
Striking dockworkers agreed to go back to work in October after reaching a tentative agreement with port operators for a 62 percent wage increase that extended the current contract, providing more time to bargain over remaining issues. The ILA had initially demanded 77 percent raises but lowered its demands.
The union’s last contract, negotiated in 2018, included raises that have not kept pace with inflation. The union’s president has accused the maritime alliance of trying to “lowball” workers.

Breaking NEWS - Immigrant murder rate 'tens of thousands' higher than ICE's bombshell figures: data expert

The total number of immigrant noncitizens in the U.S. who have murder convictions is likely "tens of thousands" more than the 13,400 listed on Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) national docket, given the criminal records of border-hoppers in their native countries are not baked into the data, a data expert tells Fox News Digital.

The bombshell figures released last week via ICE’s national docket show that 277 noncitizens are currently being held by ICE, while 13,099 noncitizens are on the non-detained docket with homicide convictions. ICE’s non-detained docket includes noncitizens who have final orders of removal or are going through removal proceedings but are not detained in ICE custody.

Of the 13,099 convicted murderers not being detained by ICE, it is unclear how many are incarcerated by federal, state or local law enforcement, or roaming the streets. There are an additional 1,845 on the non-detained docket with pending homicide charges.

In total, 662,566 noncitizens with criminal histories are on ICE’s national docket, which stretches back decades.

The figures underline the serious threat illegal immigration and not vetting immigrants thoroughly poses to law-abiding people living in the U.S. The figures sparked an outcry from border security advocates.

Sean Kennedy, who specializes in law enforcement and crime data analysis, said the numbers of noncitizens in the U.S. who have murder convictions — as well as convictions for other crimes like assault and rape — is much higher than the 13,376 on ICE’s detained and non-detained dockets because those convictions only apply to crimes committed in the U.S. and not murders committed in migrants’ home countries.

"We don't know how many people have come into the United States over the last decades, let alone in the last few years, who have criminal convictions or offenses overseas," Kennedy said. "Very few of the migrants who crossed the border who have criminal records will ever be properly vetted because the criminal records in their home countries are insufficient, they're not compatible with, or they're just plain not shared with the United States. And we've seen this over and over again."

Kennedy cited the case of a Peruvian gang leader, Gianfranco Torres-Navarro, who was wanted for nearly two dozen murders in his home country and entered the U.S. illegally at the Texas-Mexico border on May 16, as an example of how the vetting process is letting violent criminals into the U.S.

He was arrested by U.S. Border Patrol near Roma, Texas, before being released into the U.S. with a notice to appear for immigration proceedings, Fox News learned. It took almost two months before federal authorities learned Torres-Navarro was wanted in Peru for 23 killings, including the slaying of a retired police officer.

"He was a drug gang lord, and we didn't know that because Peru didn't tell us, or he wasn't listed in a database that we had access to because our databases are very limited," Kennedy said.

Kennedy said that the federal database includes a list of people with mostly offenses that were committed in the U.S. and by people who are considered security threats, but there are lots of those who are security threats who are not identifiable, or their biometric data — such as fingerprints — is not being collected.

"So if you're living in the mountains of Afghanistan and you go by a pseudonym, we have no idea [that] when you scan your fingerprints, you're that guy," Kennedy said, noting governments aren't forthcoming with the data. "The Taliban government isn't sharing that. The Venezuelans aren't telling us who their gangsters or mobsters are. The Chinese aren't telling us who their spies are, let alone the Russians or the Tajiks or anyone else."

Kennedy said that added into the mix is the roughly 2 million so-called "gotaways" who crossed the border over the last three years but never encountered Border Patrol.

"We have no idea who they are," he added.

Kennedy noted that when Border Patrol encounters migrants at the border, the agency asks for basic information such as their name, place of birth and also collects biometric information and registers it with the National Crime Information Center, a national database of all state and local crime information. It also processes the data through the National Vetting Center list, which co-ordinates with various federal agencies like TSA and co-ordinates with other countries.


"But that data is very limited, too, because that's completely voluntary as to what countries submit … And worse than that, very few countries participate in agreements where they will share full and freely information about their criminal context," Kennedy said.

"So we get very little information about foreigners crossing the border, and very little of it can be verified [and] many of the people who cross the border have no serious government documentation and sometimes none at all."

The ICE data from last week shows that among those on the non-detained docket, 62,231 were convicted of assault, 14,301 convicted of burglary, 56,533 had drug convictions and 13,099 convicted of homicide. An additional 2,521 have kidnapping convictions and 15,811 have sexual assault convictions.

It is not known how many of the noncitizens on the national docket entered the U.S. illegally or legally. For instance, a permanent resident Green Card holder who is convicted of a crime is subject to deportation once convicted and would therefore end up on the national docket.


Kennedy, who is the executive director of the Coalition for Law Order and Safety, a nonprofit research group which studies and advocates for effective public safety policies, said the lion’s share of the near 13,400 noncitizens convicted of homicide, carried out those killings while in the U.S., and that even if they have served their time they are not necessarily deported as their home countries can refuse to take them back.

That is because in 2001's Zadvydas v. Davis, the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional to indefinitely detain people who would otherwise be deported if they cannot be deported.

Kennedy said there is no exact figure of the actual homicide crime convictions rate of noncitizens, but it can be gauged by extrapolating the numbers from a Texas investigation into noncitizen crimes and then applying them to the national rate.


That investigation, by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), found that since June 2011, illegal immigrants have been charged with over 1,100 homicides, more than 3,500 sexual assaults and 3,700 other sex offenses.

It meant that the overall Texas homicide conviction rate in that period was 2.88 per 100,000 residents, while the illegal immigrant rate was 3.25 per 100,000 residents, or 13% higher. Legal immigrants, by contrast, were convicted of homicide at significantly lower rates than illegal immigrants and the overall Texas population.

"So if we extrapolate that across the United States, there would be tens of thousands of people in addition to these 13,000 who've committed a homicide here," Kennedy explained.

"There is a large number of people who are committing crimes in the United States who are here illegally that we know about. And there is a large number of people who are committing crimes in the United States who we don't know about. They could be gotaways or somehow slipped through the cracks in another way and that population is a wild card for US law enforcement because we can't deport them."


"When you're importing hundreds of thousands of young El Salvadorian men, or Venezuelan men, which for decades were homicide capitals of the world, it's likely that many of them have committed murder or have been accomplices to murder because their homicide rates were 20 times the U.S. rate," Kennedy added.

The Texas DPS investigation found that more than 20% of its incarcerated illegal immigrant killers were unknown to DHS, Kennedy said, adding this is likely replicated across other states as well – bringing the figures even higher again.

"These are all preventable crimes. If these people hadn't come here, they wouldn't have committed these crimes," Kennedy explained. "So when we know someone has a criminal history, we have an obligation to protect our citizens first, not import the world whom some of them are criminals and offenders and violent and terrorists and other threats to U.S. public safety."

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AOC finds out her fate in race for top Democrat leadership spot​


Democrats recommended that Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) be appointed to the party's top role in the powerful House Oversight Committee.

It is a snub to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) who also wanted the influential position.

During a House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee closed-door meeting on Monday, the panel voted 34 to 27 for Connolly over Oasio-Cortez.

All 215 House Democrats are expected Tuesday morning to take a full caucus vote by secret ballot following the recommendations, which usually leads how the party will lean.

There have, however, been instances where the Party overrules the panels' vote.

It's unlikely they would break with the will of the group closely aligned with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) in favor of a progressive member of the so-called 'squad.'

The position for top Democrat on the Oversight Committee opened after Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) challenged and ultimately ousted Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) for the top post in the Judiciary Committee.

Choosing Connolly, 74, shows a preference for a more establishment and much more senior member of the Democratic Caucus to take leadership in the highly influential panel. Connolly has served in the House since 2009.

The Democratic Party will hold no power in any branch of government starting in January 2025.

The decision from the Steering Committee came after former Speaker Nancy Pelosi worked behind the scenes to put the kibosh on Ocasio-Cortez's dream of taking a powerful House position in the 119th Congress.

The 35-year-old previously served as vice ranking member.

Pelosi may no longer be in House leadership but she still wields immense power and publicly backed Connolly for the position.

The 84-year-old California Democrat reportedly made calls on behalf of Connolly.

Last month Connolly revealed days after the 2024 election that he was diagnosed with esophagus cancer.

The congressman said he will undergo chemotherapy treatment.

AOC first signaled she was 'interested' in mounting a bid for ranking member earlier this month and said she was speaking with colleagues before formalizing her bid.

While Democrats are in the minority again in the new year, whoever serves as ranking member on the committee could hold massive power should Democrats retake the majority in the midterms.

Retaking the House would give them the ability to subpoena Trump administration officials as they carry out investigations.

Pelosi and AOC have been doing a delicate dance since the New York progressive Congresswoman came to Washington after a surprise upset ousting a powerful Democratic incumbent in the 2018 primary.

Ocasio-Cortez was among a group of protesters who stormed Pelosi's office urging action on climate change in October 2018.

But Pelosi has also publicly praised the high-profile young congresswoman and downplayed reports of their feud in the past.

Earlier this year, AOC offered praise to the former speaker for 'passing the torch' to Minority Leader Jeffries.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds names LeClaire state Sen. Chris Cournoyer lieutenant governor

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds announced Monday she has chosen Iowa Sen. Chris Cournoyer to be her lieutenant governor.
Cournoyer, a Republican from LeClaire, has served in the Iowa Senate since 2018. She was elected to a second four-year term in 2022.




Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds announces state Sen. Chris Cournoyer as the next lieutenant governor.
ERIN MURPHY, The Gazette

She succeeds former Lt. Gov. Adam Gregg, who abruptly resigned in early September to take a job as the incoming president and chief executive officer of the Iowa Bankers Association. The association advocates for, provides resources to and lobbies on behalf of Iowa banks.
Gregg, in his resignation letter to Reynolds, said he was stepping down to focus more on his family.


Reynolds, a Republican, named Gregg as acting lieutenant governor to replace her in May 2017 when she succeeded former Gov. Terry Branstad after he was named U.S. ambassador to China by then-President Donald Trump. The two have since been elected to two terms in office, in 2018 and 2022.

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Under Iowa law, the governor has the power to appoint a new lieutenant governor to fill a vacancy and serve for the remainder of the unexpired term. Reynolds and Gregg were reelected in 2022 to a four-year term that expires in January 2027.

The role of lieutenant governor is not statutorily defined in Iowa Code. Under the Iowa Constitution, the lieutenant governor performs duties assigned by the governor.

As lieutenant governor, Gregg led the Governor’s Empower Rural Iowa Initiative, the Feeding Iowans Task Force in 2020 and the Governor's FOCUS Committee on Criminal Justice Reform. The working group focused on recommendations to reduce recidivism through successful offender re-entry.

The GOP’s top priority for 2025: Repeal the laws of arithmetic

What will Republicans prioritize when they regain their government trifecta next month? A tax overhaul? Energy production? Border security?
Nope. The GOP’s first order of business: getting rid of math.

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The fractious Republican Party can agree on few things these days. But one of them is near-unanimous frustration with the pesky laws of arithmetic. That cutting future taxes would reduce future tax revenue, for instance, perpetually aggrieves them.

A large chunk of the 2017 Trump tax cuts expires next year, and extending these provisions will be extremely expensive. (That’s why Republicans scheduled them to sunset in the first place: to lower the price tag.) The Congressional Budget Office, the legislature’s official scorekeeper, estimates a full extension would add more than $4 trillion to the federal debt over the next decade.



That’s true even after considering any potential growth effects on the U.S. economy. It might also understate the full cost of GOP tax plans, since it doesn’t include Trump’s other pricey promises: slashing corporate taxes; eliminating taxes on Social Security, overtime and tips. Those would add trillions more in red ink — awkward for a party that fancies itself fiscally responsible.

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Republicans’ solution: invent a New Math, Cold-War-style.
Incoming Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) says that since tax rates are currently low, extending these expiring rates another decade shouldn’t count as costing anything because it wouldn’t “feel” like a change. Crapo’s tax-writing counterpart in the House, Rep. Jason T. Smith (R-Missouri), agrees.

This is like saying even though your car lease is up this month, leasing another car should count as free because you got used to having a car. Alas, that is not how budgets work.


Elsewhere Crapo has said that Republicans haven’t paid for similar tax cuts before, so they sure as heck shouldn’t start now. Indeed, he opposed an earlier, fiscally responsible bipartisan deal to expand the child tax credit and certain business breaks because it was paid for.
The CBO’s current budget-scoring methods don’t support Crapo’s fiscal fantasies. But not to worry: House Republican leadership has also been scrounging around for dirt on the CBO, in an apparent attempt to preemptively discredit their ref.

This is hardly the only recent case of GOP legerdemath.
On “Meet the Press” last Sunday, Trump complained that the United States is allegedly “subsidizing Canada to the tune over $100 billion a year,” and “subsidizing Mexico for almost $300 billion.” He appeared to be referring to the size of our bilateral trade deficits with these countries.


Some problems with that: First, paying companies abroad for the products they sell you is not a “subsidy,” in the same way that paying your local supermarket for its bananas is not a “subsidy.” It’s a transaction. Does Trump expect Mexico to just give us avocados, free?
Second is a subtler, more sinister issue: the specific numbers Trump used.

Trump’s figures do not match the official statistics put out by the U.S. Census Bureau or the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative — they are much larger. This is probably because Trump and his MAGA allies have joined forces with some protectionist progressives in trying to change how trade figures are calculated to exaggerate the size of trade deficits. (The short explanation is: They want to stop counting goods that are first imported and then reexported as exports, without making a symmetric change for imports.) This change may sound small and technical but it would massively distort how we measure and understand economic changes — and is symptomatic of Trump’s habit of torturing the data until it confesses.
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Parents Defending Education founder calls Biden admin's spending spree on DEI in schools a 'slap in the face'

Parents Defending Education founder Nicki Neily called the Biden administration's decision to spend over $1 billion on diversity, equity and inclusion [DEI] programming and training in America's schools "heartbreaking" and a disservice to America's students.

"We're at a time when 40% of American students can't read, and this is how the Biden-Harris administration chose to fritter away hard-earned American taxpayer dollars. It's really a slap in the face," Neily told "Fox & Friends First" on Friday.

Researchers at Parents Defending Education looked through nearly four years of grants awarded by the Biden administration from 2021 to present and found that the Biden administration spent hundreds of millions of dollars on diversity, equity and inclusion grants for students and schools.

According to the report, $489,883,797 was spent on grants for race-based hiring; $343,337,286 went toward general DEI programming; and $169,301,221 went to DEI-based mental health training and programming, totaling $1,002,522,304.81 spent in all.

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Examples in the report include a $3,974,496 grant given to the School District of Philadelphia for a restorative justice program headed by a former Communist Party USA member; a $4,000,000 grant given for a 3-week residential "culturally responsive" computer science summer camp for 600 11th- and 12th-graders; and a $38,000 grant to a Michigan school district for a one-day professional development training by an equity consultant, along with copies of the consultant's book.

Neily argued that DEI is harmful because it "pits people against each other" and labels people as either "oppressed" or "oppressors."

She cited a recent study from the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) and Rutgers University which found that there were significant increases in hostility and punitive attitudes among participants exposed to DEI pedagogy.

"So these are hurting American children, it's not helping anyone. It's hurting them," she told Fox News.

Texas, Florida and several other states have introduced or passed legislation banning DEI in higher education. Neily said universities should be aware that DEI is on its way out with the incoming Republican administration.

"These programs need to be completely eradicated. And I think over the next four years we're going to have a major clean-up effort," she predicted.

Vivek Ramaswamy, whom President-elect Donald Trump tapped to help lead his incoming advisory board for cutting government waste, also reacted to the report on X.

"This is worse than just wasteful," Ramaswamy said on X.

Musk and Ramaswamy have both signaled support for dissolving the entire Department of Education, an idea that Trump ran on during his presidential campaign. Linda McMahon has been nominated to lead the department in 2025 by Trump.

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Britney Spears vs. Victor Wembanyama is the feud America needs

Britney Spears was apparently backhanded by Victor Wembanyama’s security when she approached him.

He says she grabbed him. She says she tapped his shoulder. At least we’ll recognize his arm when he posts his Pints concrete picture.

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