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The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants on Thursday for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant for supposed war crimes committed in Gaza.
The post ICC Issues Arrest Warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant over Gaza War appeared first on Breitbart.
Go to Source: Breitbart News
As President-elect Donald Trump has aggressively set to work on building his new administration, some have noticed that many of those being selected as his closest advisors are parents with families well above the national average.
The current national average for a family in the U.S. is 1.94, which is below the minimum 2.1 required to replace the population. Meanwhile, some of Trump’s Cabinet members and advisers are well above the replacement level.
Trump is a father of five adult children. Though he has divorced two times, he is said to be a devoted grandfather to his 10 grandchildren, even reportedly spending the morning after election night golfing with his granddaughter, Kai Trump.
TRUMP’S GRANDAUGHTER KAI SHARES VLOG OF FAMILY CELEBRATION ON ELECTION NIGHT: ‘EXTREMELY PROUD’
Secretary of the Interior nominee Doug Burgum and Deputy Chief of Policy Stephen Miller each have three children. Trump’s picks for the CIA, John Ratcliffe, and Secretary of State pick Marco Rubio have four kids each. Though from several marriages, Health and Human Services nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Department of Defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth both have seven kids.
The grand prize goes to Sean Duffy, Trump’s pick for transportation secretary, who with wife Rachel Campos-Duffy has nine children. In 2019, Duffy stepped down from his role as a Wisconsin congressperson ahead of his ninth child’s birth to spend more time with his family.
“Raising a family is hard work,” he said in a social media post explaining his decision. “I have always been open to signs from God when it comes to balancing my desire to serve both my family and my country.”
By comparison, with four children, President Biden is more of an exception in his administration, which is mainly staffed by people with two or fewer children.
During the campaign, Vice President-elect JD Vance voiced his belief that the government needs to place a greater emphasis on being “pro-family” and make it easier for Americans to have larger families and more kids.
At 40 years old, Vance and his wife, Usha, have three children, and he has voiced his desire to have more.
In his first big speech on the national stage at the Republican National Convention, Vance said “the American Dream that always counted most [to me] was not starting a business or becoming a senator or even being here with you fine people, it was becoming a good husband and a good dad and of giving my family the things I never had as a kid. And that’s the accomplishment I’m proudest of.”
He was hit repeatedly by the Kamala Harris campaign and the media over his 2021 criticism of the country being run by who he called “childless cat ladies.” But the underlying problem of low birth rates in the U.S. poses an increasingly big worry to those paying attention.
Catherine Pakaluk, a social researcher and author, told Fox News Digital that the country’s low birth rate has gotten to a point where it is presenting real problems and dangers for the future.
“We Americans are not having enough children to replace the population,” she said. “What we’re seeing is an inversion of the normal population pyramid where we would think about the normal population pyramid would be a greater number of younger workers supporting a smaller number of older, retired workers.”
Though not yet at the level of countries like Japan and China, which are now facing shrinking populations, Pakaluk said the result is that there are “fewer and fewer workers,” fewer people paying into the tax base, and government programs such as social security and Medicare are becoming increasingly unviable.
Because of this reality, Pakaluk said she appreciates people like Vance pushing for larger families.
“I really value that Vice President-elect Vance is speaking positively about families and talking a lot about how much he would like to have a larger family. … I think a lot of what is very helpful to us today is to have role models talking about how having kids isn’t really all that bad and, in fact, might be better than you expected.”
Most crucial to Pakaluk, however, is advancing values that lead to people choosing to have bigger families. She recently published a book called “Hannah’s Children” in which she did extensive interviews with mothers who decided to have five or more kids. The common denominator among these women, who came from a wide array of faith backgrounds, was a strong religious belief in children as blessings from God.
This led Pakaluk to believe that the solution to what she calls the “birth dearth” is a return to religious convictions on the individual and societal level.
She pointed to Duffy, who is a practicing Catholic, as an example.
“What I like to say is, I don’t know that you can get more children out of being pro-child. … But I think you can get more children if you’re pro-church or pro-religious community,” she said. “If people encounter strong religious communities on a more regular basis, this can change in a generation.”
Go to Source: Latest Political News on Fox News
Senate Republicans are warning confirmation proceedings for former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) will be like “Kavanaugh on steroids,” referring to the contentious hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.
GOP senators say allegations against Gaetz of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, as well as the findings of the Department of Justice’s probe into allegations of the sex trafficking of minors, are likely to become splashed across the media if he remains President-elect Trump’s nominee for attorney general.
Some Republicans are privately suggesting that Gaetz should consider withdrawing his nomination to save himself the wrenching ordeal of an embarrassing confirmation hearing if he’s unlikely to be confirmed in the end.
“The most humane way not only to Mr. Gaetz but to the dignity of our process, the best thing to do is to convince the president that the votes aren’t there, regardless of his strong-arming, and Gaetz can decide it’s not his to fight for,” said one Republican senator who requested anonymity to comment on the bleak prospects for Gaetz’s nomination.
But the lawmaker acknowledged that Trump may want to use Gaetz to make it easier to get some of his other controversial picks, such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is nominated to head the Department of Health and Human Services, and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii), who is nominated to serve as director of national intelligence, to get through the confirmation process.
“Maybe throwing Gaetz out there to the wolves and having this big frenzy and he goes down then allows for a situation where some of the others who are compromised” get through the Senate, the senator said.
The senator said a number of Senate Republican colleagues have already raised concerns about Kennedy and Gabbard.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, warned that the details in the FBI’s investigation of Gaetz as well as the information in the House Ethics Committee’s report is likely to become public.
“It’s going to come to us one way or the other. There are no secrets around here,” Cornyn told reporters.
And he warned that a Senate confirmation hearing would be nasty and messy, even worse than the brutal fight over Kavanaugh, who was accused of committing sexual assault as a teenager.
Asked if Gaetz is aware that a confirmation hearing would become very messy, Cornyn said it would be “like Kavanaugh on steroids.”
“He’s a smart guy, I’m sure he realizes that,” Cornyn said.
Gaetz met with Cornyn and other Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Capitol’s Strom Thurmond Room just off the rotunda on Wednesday.
Vice President-elect JD Vance, who is acting as the chief liaison between the Trump-Vance transition team and Republican senators, attended the meetings.
Vance has urged his colleagues to give Gaetz a chance to explain his vision for reforming the Justice Department and not rush to judgement about his fitness to serve.
Gaetz met with Cornyn and Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and John Kennedy (R-La.).
A second Republican senator who requested anonymity to discuss Gaetz’s embattled nomination said the remarks from Cornyn point to how Gaetz’s personal life could be examined over days of public hearings.
“I think he’s probably trying to send a message to Gaetz and the president that ‘this may be really ugly, do you really want to do this?’” the senator said.
“There are two months, at least, until the confirmation hearing. It’s a lot of time. It’s a lot of information that’ll be out there. The administration will need a plan for how to handle that,” the source warned.
A Senate Republican aide said Trump may decide that it’s not worth spending a lot of political capital on a losing battle over Gaetz.
“It doesn’t look like the votes are there. How much time and energy do you want to spend on this?” the aide said.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), another member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, agreed that the Gaetz nomination would only pour fuel on partisan tensions if it comes before his committee next year.
“I absolutely think it’s a multiplier. Given the environment we’re in, yeah,” he said.
Graham, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he would try to prevent Gaetz’s confirmation hearing from becoming a “circus.”
But he cautioned that Democrats could call women who said Gaetz paid them for sex as well as a woman who said she had sex with Gaetz when she was 17 to testify before the committee.
“He wasn’t prosecuted for having sex with an underage girl. That tells me something. But having said that, this is not a criminal trial. This is a court of public opinion. Is this the right person for this job?” Graham said.
He said that Gaetz will have an opportunity to tell senators on the Judiciary Committee why he’s the right person to lead the Justice Department and to defend himself against allegations of misconduct.
But he said that Democrats will get a chance to bring forward their own witnesses, as they did six years ago when Christine Blasey Ford testified in detail about how Kavanaugh had groped her and tried to take off her clothes at a party in Bethesda when she was 15 and he was 17.
“That’s to be expected to some extent. I thought what they did to Kavanaugh was ridiculous, but there is a place for people to come in and say why this person is not qualified. Blasey Ford did,” he said. “That’s going to be the process.
“I expect [Gaetz] to be challenged. I expect people to come in and say why they think he did bad things,” he added.
Kavanaugh was ultimately confirmed to the Supreme Court in a mostly party-line 50-48 vote.
But GOP aides say that Republican senators viewed Kavanaugh much more favorably than they now view Gaetz, whom they blame for pushing former Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) out of the Speakership and causing chaos in the House last year.
Asked if Trump needs to run a cost-benefit analysis to decide whether it’s worth the political cost of trying to push Gaetz through the Senate, Graham said: “I’ll let him decide that.”
Graham issued a statement after meeting with Gaetz urging his Republican colleagues not to take the allegations against him as verified fact.
“I fear the process surrounding the Gaetz nomination is turning into an angry mob, and unverified allegations are being treated as if they are true. I have seen this movie before,” he said, appearing to allude to the bitter fight over Kavanaugh years ago.
Go to Source: Administration News
EXCLUSIVE: House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer is expected to establish a subcommittee that will work with the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to eliminate government waste, Fox News Digital has learned.
A source familiar told Fox News Digital that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., will chair the Delivering on Government Efficiency Subcommittee, which will focus on rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government.
The subcommittee is expected to investigate wasteful spending, examine ways to reorganize federal agencies to improve efficiency and identify solutions to eliminate bureaucratic red tape.
A source familiar told Fox News Digital that Comer had a meeting with Ramaswamy and his incoming DOGE team.
UFC STAR HOPES DOGE WILL ‘CLEAN THINGS UP AT THE STATE LEVEL,’ WANTS JUSTICE FOR PEANUT THE SQUIRREL
The source said Ramaswamy is “supportive of the Oversight Committee’s endeavor and are already working together.”
Comer told Fox News Digital that President Trump’s “landslide victory reflects a clear mandate to address inflationary spending that’s driving up the cost of living for hardworking Americans.”
“Wasteful government spending must end, and taxpayers deserve to see their money used effectively and efficiently,” he said.
Comer told Fox News Digital that the new Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency “will align with the Trump administration’s priorities to eliminate government waste, streamline the federal government’s operations and cut red tape that’s stifling jobs and increasing costs for the American people.”
“I look forward to working with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to deliver on these goals to Make America Great Again,” Comer said.
Greene told Fox News Digital that the House Oversight Committee “is the perfect place to support the DOGE mission.”
“I’m excited to chair this new subcommittee designed to work hand in hand with President Trump, Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy and the entire DOGE team,” Greene said. “We will identify and investigate the waste, corruption and absolutely useless parts of our federal government.”
Greene said the subcommittee will provide “transparency and truth to the American people through hearings.”
“No topic will be off the table,” she said. “The goal of DOGE is to bring accountability and GUT useless government agencies.”
Greene said she expects the subcommittee’s work “will expose people who need to be fired.”
“The bureaucrats who don’t do their job, fail audits like in the Pentagon and don’t know where billions of dollars are going, will be getting a pink slip,” Greene said. “Chairman Comer and I are focused on delivering the mandate voters sent on Nov. 5th, and I can’t wait to get to work.”
Trump this month tapped Musk and Ramaswamy to lead DOGE, which Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO, has widely touted. DOGE has already started soliciting civilian help in the agency.
Trump said last week he hopes DOGE will become the “Manhattan Project of our time,” in reference to J. Robert Oppenheimer’s secretive atom bomb endeavor during World War II.
“Republican politicians have dreamed about the objectives of DOGE for a very long time,” Trump said.
Go to Source: Latest Political News on Fox News
President-elect Trump has sparked a Washington guessing game by selecting several controversial nominees for high-level posts.
The question is whether one or more of his picks will be denied confirmation by the Senate.
Most insiders see four Trump picks in particular as being controversial.
They are former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) as attorney general, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii) as director of national intelligence, media personality Pete Hegseth as Defense secretary and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services secretary.
There are, to be sure, other Trump picks that divide opinion, including former World Wrestling Entertainment Chief Executive Linda McMahon to be Education secretary, and TV personality and former Senate candidate Mehmet Oz to administer Medicare and Medicaid.
But it is the initial quartet that are in the vanguard of controversy.
The Washington consensus is that Gaetz is in the most danger.
The list of vulnerable nominees “starts with Gaetz,” said Douglas Heye, a former communications director for the Republican National Committee. “He is on my TV screen right now, and it’s just expected, from what we already know, that the allegations about him are going to be very serious and very alarming.”
Specifically, allegations of sexually inappropriate behavior have swirled around Gaetz for some time.
A previous Justice Department probe produced no criminal charges, and Gaetz denies all wrongdoing.
But there is enormous scrutiny over a House Ethics Committee investigation into Gaetz, which officially ended when he resigned his seat immediately upon being nominated by Trump.
The committee has no jurisdiction to investigate people who are no longer sitting members of Congress. But Democratic senators — and at least one Republican — have called for the committee’s report to be released.
Their quest had a setback Wednesday.
“There is not an agreement by the committee to release the report,” Ethics Chair Michael Guest (R-Miss.) told reporters following a roughly two-hour meeting of the panel. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) had previously expressed his opposition to the report being released.
But that’s unlikely to be the end of Gaetz’s troubles.
Many in Washington expect the panel’s report to leak. Even if it does not, the past few days have added specificity to the damaging allegations.
A lawyer representing two women who testified to the panel says his clients were paid for sex by Gaetz. Furthermore, one of those women, according to the lawyer, says she saw Gaetz having sex with a 17-year-old when Gaetz was in his mid-30s.
Furthermore, a handful of Republican senators have already expressed significant misgivings about Gaetz, including Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska). Republicans will have a 53-47 Senate majority once the new Congress convenes, meaning any Trump nominee can afford to lose no more than three votes, assuming all Democrats also vote against them.
Trump has so far stood behind his pick of Gaetz, and his team insists the former congressman will be confirmed in the end. In an additional show of support, Vice President-elect JD Vance accompanied Gaetz to private meetings with Republican senators Wednesday.
Republican sources nevertheless are consistent in the view that Gaetz is the most likely Trump nominee to fall.
They also suggest that, if he does, a single rebuff might be as far as Republican senators are willing to go in defying a president-elect who has just won the White House comfortably. Trump is renowned for his willingness to go after people who cross him, including those within his own party.
“It feels to me like they may be able to reject one of his nominees, but maybe not more than one,” said Matt Mackowiak, a GOP strategist and the chair of the Travis County, Texas, Republican Party.
Mackowiak added, in terms of Trump’s most controversial quartet of nominees:
“I think the most likely scenario is that they are all confirmed, except Gaetz. I think the second most likely scenario is that they are just all confirmed. And I think the third most likely scenario is that two or three are not confirmed.”
Still, the Senate is sometimes reluctant to simply cede to the wishes of a president, and much could hinge on whether further damaging information emerges.
In the case of Hegseth, for example, The Washington Post revealed earlier this week that he had paid a woman who had accused him of sexually assaulting her as part of a nondisclosure agreement.
The incident was reported to police at the time, and no charges were pressed. Hegseth’s lawyer has adamantly denied any wrongdoing on his client’s behalf, asserting that the woman was in fact “the aggressor in initiating sexual activity,” and contending that Hegseth paid her to protect his media career.
The mere existence of such a case is bad news for any nominee. But so far, few Republicans seem ready to predict it would lead to Hegseth’s downfall as a nominee.
Kennedy’s nomination is controversial, in a different way, among the wider world, especially within the medical community. Kennedy is a longtime vaccine skeptic with a whole host of provocative remarks, including suggesting a link between vaccines and autism — a claim that has been debunked.
But there are not many signs so far that Republican senators are willing to buck Trump to block Kennedy.
Gabbard, the Democratic-congresswoman-turned-Republican, is in a category all of her own.
There are no personal peccadilloes around Gabbard akin to the allegations that dog Gaetz and Hegseth. But her history of remarks that are unusually sympathetic to Russia could cause heartburn, especially to Republicans with a more traditional, hawkish view of foreign policy.
None of the quartet can take their confirmation as assured.
But Gaetz seems, by some distance, to be out on the flimsiest limb.
The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.
Go to Source: Administration News
For a normal administration, Linda McMahon would be an unusual pick for Education secretary. But President-elect Trump has given no indication he wants a normal administration.
McMahon has little direct experience with education but has been a friend and ally of Trump for decades and is the only person so far the president-elect has selected for a Cabinet secretary slot who also served in his first administration, specifically as head of the Small Business Administration.
Conservatives are cautiously optimistic about the pick, which was announced Tuesday evening, despite some controversies that surround McMahon right out the gate.
“Speaking on behalf of myself, and, I think, most other people in D.C., I was kind of surprised,” said Max Eden, a research fellow at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute.
“After the first reaction … it’s evolved into a kind of intrigued optimism, because I think there’s a very strong case that she could be a great Education secretary, and that case is that she’s clearly very personally close to Trump, very trusted by Trump, very loyal to President Trump,” Eden said, adding it is likely McMahon will be “extremely competent” in trying to execute what Trump campaigned on, including potentially eliminating the department altogether.
McMahon rose to fame as CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), which she co-founded with her husband, Vince McMahon.
Her time directly involved in education has been minimal, apart from a year on the Connecticut State Board of Education and as a member of the board of trustees for Sacred Heart University.
But Trump’s list of nominees is full of people with unusual resumes for their would-be jobs, from potential Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to Defense nominee Pete Hegseth, who is currently a Fox News host.
And critics of current Education Secretary Miguel Cardona say his extensive experience in the field has not translated to success.
Cardona’s Free Application for Student Federal Aid “mess-up literally harmed thousands of low-income families, right?” said Robert Enlow, president of EdChoice. “And he had a huge education pedigree, so I kind of think that she might be the right person for the job, given what’s needed at the Department of Education.”
And others argue McMahon’s time taking her small company and turning it into the massive WWE corporation is experience enough for running the bureaucracy of the Education Department.
“I kind of got in the sense that she is seen, maybe by Trump, as somebody that could be put into a lot of different departments, probably because she has a history and pretty successful track record in business and running a large organization, and he may think that she is prepared to run any number of large organizations,” said Neal McCluskey, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute.
“And that is basically what the Department of Education is, it’s a big bureaucracy, and her main job is to make sure that programs are administered successfully, which is more of a management job than it is an education job. So, from what I know of her, I don’t see any reason that she wouldn’t be successful as a secretary of Education,” McCluskey added.
However, the choice to nominate McMahon has been seen by other experts as a signal that education policy will not be a top concern for Trump.
McMahon had been floated as a potential Commerce secretary until that position was given to Howard Lutnick, the other co-chair of Trump’s transition team.
“I think it’s disappointing that President Trump sees the Department of Education as a consolation prize,” said Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
“Given that it sounds like that Linda McMahon wanted to get the Commerce Department, and is getting the Department of Education instead — so that, I think, that is an indication that this is not a top priority for the president,” he added.
McMahon will have huge tasks to fill: Trump has said he is looking to change the definition of Title IX after President Biden added protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
The president-elect has also talked about withholding federal funds from K-12 or higher education institutions if he dislikes their curricula — or their bathroom policies regarding transgender students.
But one of the biggest changes Trump is pushing for is no Education Department at all.
“The other big thing I’m sure people are looking at as well is ‘Is she focused on dismantling the department?’ And I would like to see the department dismantled, but that’s not something either she or Trump can do on their own, it’s going to have to come through legislation in Congress, and until that happens, then her job remains executing the laws that require the secretary of Education to be involved,” McCluskey said.
Though hardly Trump’s most controversial nominee, McMahon does come with baggage after she was recently named in a lawsuit from her time as head of WWE. The lawsuit alleges she knew about an announcer who was allegedly sexually abusing “ring boys.”
Those in the education world are still diving into the details of the case, but some are skeptical it will have an impact on her confirmation process.
“I have not reviewed it in depth at this point, but the first thing that comes to my mind is just more lawfare, right? I mean, this was a suit that goes back to events that occurred in the 1980s and it was filed in October of 2024, a few weeks before she was presumed to, if [Trump] won, take some position. So, I just kind of have a blanket suspicion and skepticism of it without having gone into the details of it myself, so it’s not of [special] concern to me,” Eden said.
While liberals were never going to be thrilled with Trump’s Education pick, there was a small “sigh of relief” given the other names that were speculated for the position.
“On one hand, I think she’s utterly unqualified for the position, because she has, essentially, she has very little meaningful experience and expertise in education from what I could see. And in normal times, I think she would look like an outrageous selection for that position,” said Jon Valant, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution.
“The second thought, on the other hand, is that a lot of the other names that had been floated as potential candidates seemed more threatening in a lot of ways, and so I think some people are breathing a sigh of relief that she is, at least, not openly a culture warrior who’s going to sort of pick up some of the fights that I think a lot of us have been eager to see fade away,” Valant said. “Now, she might do that. She’s very much an unknown, so I think we still have to learn a lot about her and her priorities and what she might do if she is ultimately confirmed for that.”
Go to Source: Administration News
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., successfully won re-election in Wisconsin all while President-elect Donald Trump simultaneously flipped the state back to red in the presidential election.
As to how she did it, the Democrat attributes much of her win to her “72-county strategy.” Baldwin made sure during her campaign to traverse the entire state, venturing far from the two large blue enclaves of Milwaukee and Dane counties.
“I think showing up matters, listening matters,” she said in an interview with Fox News Digital. “And so I go, and I really listen and get to know the challenges and aspirations of people all over the state, rural areas, suburban areas, urban areas.”
Baldwin won by a few tens of thousands of votes in the state, clinching victory by roughly the same margin as Trump.
RFK JR’S ABORTION ‘ISSUE’: SENATE GOP PLANS TO SCRUTINIZE TRUMP HHS PICK’S POSITION
According to her campaign, she did more than 250 events in Wisconsin in 2024 alone. She also hosted several targeted tours during her campaign, including her Dairyland Tour and her Rural Leaders for Tammy Tour.
Further, Baldwin’s campaign microtargeted rural communities to deliver content regarding her agricultural work.
But her rigorous travel is not the only thing that sealed the deal for her. The senator acknowledged that people can go everywhere, but they also need to effectively engage voters in each place they travel to.
One thing she noted is that she’s “had years to earn the trust of Wisconsin voters,” referencing the short few months that the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris had to turn out voters for her in the state.
Baldwin also said she convenes roundtables and forums on relevant issues while she travels in Wisconsin.
“So I’ve done that on, say, the fentanyl and opioid epidemic, bringing together first responders, public health officials, concerned community members to talk about what does the epidemic look like in this community, in this area of the state? What resources do you need? What are your biggest worries?”
She also held events geared toward agricultural issues, she noted.
Baldwin notably credits, in part, her work on agricultural issues with her re-election win. In early October, Baldwin earned the endorsement of the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation Board of Directors, which was a significant achievement for a Democrat in a statewide election.
“They cited a number of different measures that I either championed or actually got into law,” she said.
The senator pointed to her Dairy Business Innovation Act, which provides small grants to various dairy producers and processors.
“I went this past spring to a particular farm that had received one of these grants, and they had also invited several other farmers and processors who had received grants to show me what they were able to do with these grants in order to grow their business and improve their bottom line,” she said.
RICK SCOTT OUTLINES CONSENSUS FOR ‘DRAMATIC CHANGE’ TO SENATE OPERATION IN POST-MCCONNELL ERA
The Wisconsin Democrat also pointed to the large manufacturing sector in her state and attributed her push for “buy America” rules in pieces of legislation as helping her win some of those voters.
On whether her campaign is a model for other Democrats, specifically those in swing states, she said, “I think it is something that would be helpful to many public officials.”
Baldwin added that she realized the need to travel Wisconsin to this extent during her first Senate campaign: “I had been in the House of Representatives representing, as you know, seven counties in [the] south-central part of the state. I had to learn Wisconsin as I was running.”
MATT GAETZ ‘WORKING THE PHONES,’ SPEAKING TO GOP SENATORS DESPITE DIFFICULT CONFIRMATION ODDS
“And so traveling to do that learning was extremely important, being exposed to, you know, the timber industry and the north woods. We didn’t have a big timber industry in the south-central part of the state.”
The Midwestern senator also said this was the first time she heard from Wisconsinites that elected officials hadn’t been spending much time in certain parts of the state.
“One thing I will say that I hear from constituents when I show up is just like, ‘I don’t remember the last time we had a U.S. senator visit our community, and especially not a Democrat,'” she said.
“It’s like, you know, the timber industry folks saying, ‘I don’t think we’ve ever had a senator pay so much attention to us,'” she added.
Go to Source: Latest Political News on Fox News
President-elect Trump’s team is confident that Senate Republicans will approve his cabinet selection – despite some of the picks raising eyebrows from Republicans and Democrats alike.
A Trump transition official confirmed to Fox News that the president-elect is “confident that Senate Republicans will hold the line.”
“President Trump is confident that Senate Republicans will hold the line and respect the will of the American people by approving his cabinet nominees,” the official said.
The official said that Trump is “very happy” with the vice president-elect, saying that Vance is “laser focused on already getting the ball rolling on his highly-qualified nominees.”
TRUMP PICKING CABINET AT BREAKNECK SPEED COMPARED TO 2016
Trump’s nominees and administration picks during his second administration are being publicly announced at a much faster pace than during his first administration in 2016, which the transition team attributed to Trump’s commitment to putting “America first.”
“The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin, giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail, and his Cabinet picks reflect his priority to put America First. President Trump will continue to appoint highly qualified men and women who have the talent, experience and necessary skill sets to Make America Great Again,” Trump-Vance transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt previously told Fox News Digital when asked about Trump’s speedy rollout of Cabinet picks.
WATCH:
Trump’s most contentious choice so far has been Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., for attorney general. The pick came as a surprise to many since the firebrand does not have any prior law enforcement experience and faces misconduct allegations.
Gaetz was under investigation by the House Ethics Committee, which subpoenaed him as recently as September for an ongoing investigation into alleged sexual misconduct with a minor.
LOYALTY MATTERS: TRUMP PICKS ALLIES AND SUPPORTERS TO FILL OUT HIS ADMINISTRATION
Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing and had told the panel he would “no longer voluntarily participate” in its probe. Gaetz resigned from Congress shortly after Trump made the announcement.
On Wednesday, Vance and Gaetz were spotted leaving the Capitol.
A source familiar previously told Fox News Digital that Gaetz is “working the phones” to address concerns from GOP senators ahead of his confirmation hearings next year. He is also making the rounds with Vance on Capitol Hill to meet with senators directly.
“The meetings have been productive with AG nominee Gaetz listening to senators’ thoughts on the role of the DOJ and the confirmation process. Gaetz is looking forward to meeting with more senators throughout this process on the Hill,” a Trump transition official told Fox News Digital.
Fox News Digital has reached out to the Trump transition team for comment.
Fox News Digital’s Emma Colton and Andrea Margolis contributed to this report.
Go to Source: Latest Political News on Fox News
An effort by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to block certain U.S. weapons sales to Israel was overwhelmingly rejected by the U.S. Senate Wednesday evening.
Sanders’ joint resolution of disapproval, which was supported by Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.; Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.; and Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., intended to stop the White House’s latest arms sales to the Israeli military. An effort to block the sales of tank rounds to Israel was voted down 79-18, and a measure intending to block mortar round shipments was rejected 78-19.
Speaking on the Senate floor, Sanders claimed the Israeli government is controlled “not only by right-wing extremists, but by religious zealots.”
“It is time to tell the Netanyahu government that they cannot use U.S. taxpayer dollars and American weapons in violation of U.S. and international law and our moral values despite receiving $18 billion from U.S. taxpayers in the last year,” Sanders said.
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“And being the largest historical recipient of U.S. foreign aid, the Netanyahu government has completely ignored the repeated requests of President Biden and the U.S. government.”
The 83-year-old politician also decried living conditions in Gaza during his speech.
“Right now, there is raw sewage running through the streets of Gaza, and it is very difficult for the people there to obtain clean drinking water,” Sanders said. “Every one of Gaza’s 12 universities has been bombed … as have many hundreds of schools. For 13 months, there has been no electricity in Gaza.
“As I have said many, many times, Israel had the absolute right to respond to that horrific Hamas attack as any other country would,” Sanders concluded. “I don’t think anybody here in the United States Senate disagrees with that. But Prime Minister Netanyahu’s extremist government has not simply waged war against Hamas. It has waged an all-out war against the Palestinian people.”
Despite the vote, Sanders’ effort was not wholly unpopular. Earlier this week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., signaled support for the Vermont Independent’s proposal.
“The failure by the Biden administration to follow U.S. law and to suspend arms shipments is a grave mistake that undermines American credibility worldwide,” Warren said in a statement to The Guardian.
“If this administration will not act, Congress must step up to enforce U.S. law and hold the Netanyahu government accountable through a joint resolution of disapproval.”
Fox News Digital’s Jessica Sonkin and Alec Schemmel contributed to this report.
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Conservative Republican Nick Begich will win a tight race for Alaska’s lone seat in the House of Representatives, according to the Associated Press.
Begich defeated his main rival, Rep. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska, the first Native Alaskan in Congress, and one of only five House Democrats currently representing a district won by President-elect Trump in 2020.
The win widens the Republican majority in the House to 219 and 213 for Democrats.
The GOP candidate is no stranger to politics, having been born into a prominent political family in Alaska – made up of mostly Democrats.
His grandfather, Nick Begich, Sr., was an Alaska congressman, before mysteriously disappearing on a flight and being pronounced dead in 1972. His uncle, Mark Begich, was a U.S. senator for Alaska from 2009 to 2015.
The other two hopefuls in the race were Alaska Independence Party candidate John Wayne Howe and Democratic candidate Eric Hafner.
Alaska is one of only two states to use ranked-choice voting in federal elections, something that benefited Peltola in 2022, when Begich and former Gov. Sarah Palin knocked each other out of the running by splitting the Republican vote.
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Republicans took a lesson from that defeat, however, and instead, coalesced around Begich earlier in the race.
Alaska has just one House seat given its modest population compared to more densely packed states. It is also one of only two states to use ranked-choice voting in its federal elections.
Peltola won her seat in a special election following the sudden death of longtime Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, in 2022.
Young’s daughters and several former staffers endorsed Peltola for re-election in the November race later that year.
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The moderate Democrat has been known to break from her party on certain climate and energy issues, among others.
Begich’s victory is a much-needed win for House Republicans who have fought tooth-and-nail to retain and even expand their majority.
He was added to the House GOP campaign arm’s “Young Guns” list in August of this year, giving him access to National Republican Congressional Committee resources, support, and advisement.
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