President-elect Trump taps North Dakota Gov Doug Burgum to join Cabinet
President-elect Trump teased a “big” announcement Thursday night, sharing that North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum will lead the Department of the Interior.
“He’s going to be announced [Friday]…I look forward to doing the formal announcement, although this is a pretty big announcement right now, actually,” Trump said during his speech at the Americans For Prosperity Gala at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday. “He’s going to head the Department of Interior, and he’s going to be fantastic.”
“We’re going to reduce regulation waste, fraud and inefficiency,” Trump said. “We’re going to clean out the corrupt, broken and failing bureaucracies. And we’re going to stop child sexual mutilation. We’re going to stop it because it’s time.”
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Burgum, a multi-millionaire former software company CEO turned two-term governor, launched a White House bid in June 2023.
Bergum made energy and natural resources a key part of his campaign for the GOP nomination.
After making the stage at the first two GOP presidential debates, Burgum failed to qualify for the third showdown, in autumn of last year, and he dropped out of the White House race last December. A month later, he appeared in Iowa with Trump and endorsed the former president for the GOP nomination, days ahead of the first-in-the-nation caucuses.
Burgum became a high profile surrogate for the former president, appearing on the campaign trail and in media hits on Trump’s behalf.
He was in consideration as Trump’s running mate this past summer before Sen. JD Vance of Ohio was picked as the Republican Party’s vice presidential nominee.
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Burgum, in an interview with “Fox and Friends” last week, said Trump’s election victory was “game changing” and that “we’ve got a new sheriff in town.”
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The governor added that a Trump victory also “means that America is going to be dominant in energy.”
“America is going to be dominant in energy which is key to all the diplomacy we do all over the world,” he said.
Governor ignites outrage for pursuing controversial plan before Trump can block it
New York state leaders signaled they’re ready to revisit a costly “congestion pricing” program for Midtown and Lower Manhattan that originally would have charged drivers $15 per entry-day, reportedly in order to implement it before President-elect Trump takes office.
Gov. Kathy Hochul halted her long-held plan after initial backlash against state Democrats — but now some in the Empire State are warning Trump may quickly kill their revenue stream dream.
A group of New York Republicans wrote a letter to Trump asking him to use the power of the federal government to reverse what they called a wrongly-accelerated process by the Biden administration.
“Congestion pricing has only moved forward due to the MTA [Metropolitan Transportation Authority] and Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) manipulation of the FHWA’s Value Pricing Pilot Program (VPPP), a pilot program initially authorized by Congress over three decades ago in 1991,” the letter read.
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“The Biden Administration even conspired to allow an abbreviated environmental review in order for the program to skip the normal process.”
Rep. Sam Graves, R–Mo., chair of the House Transportation Committee, said Trump has made his opposition clear and that the “rush to institute it before he can take office is a blatantly political move.”
“Just before it was scheduled to begin this summer, and prior to the election, the governor acted unilaterally to ‘indefinitely pause’ the congestion pricing proposal because of its unpopularity. Now it’s conveniently being resurrected barely a week after the polls closed,” he said.
State Sen. Andrew Gounardes, D-Bay Ridge, conversely told the Albany Times-Union a congestion pricing plan must be started “immediately — before Trump can block it,” as the Republicans asked.
Congestion pricing would institute a video-enforced toll at newly-built gantries surrounding the city’s core. Traffic moving below 60th Street and Central Park, and entering from New Jersey, Brooklyn or Queens — except for via the RFK Triboro Bridge and George Washington Bridge — would be subject to the toll.
The lawmakers, including Rep. Michael Lawler of Rockland County, Nicole Malliotakis of Staten Island, and Andrew Garbarino, Nick LaLota and Anthony D’Esposito of Long Island, called on Trump to respond.
“Congestion pricing, the latest in a long string of tyrannical taxes, has been pressed forward through consistent opposition about the burden on New York families and workers, the timing of the effort, areas lacking adequate transit, the fiscal responsibility of the move, the negative impact that congestion pricing will have on residents of some of the lowest-income neighborhoods in New York City and more,” they wrote.
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“Governor Hochul recently announced that she would pursue an almost immediate implementation of the congestion pricing cash grab, despite cynically ‘pausing’ it earlier this year in an effort to win back the House.”
The lawmakers claimed Hochul is acting now because the move failed to engender goodwill to elected Democrats this past election, adding that the MTA — which falls under state auspices — is running a massive deficit in part due to fare evasion and internal waste and fraud.
Democratic-majority New Jersey joined with Republican-majority Long Island lawmakers in bipartisan opposition to the plan, with the Garden State at one point pursuing legal action.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said Thursday he remains “firmly opposed to any attempt to force through a congestion pricing proposal in the final months of the Biden Administration.”
“All of us need to listen to the message that voters across America sent last Tuesday, which is that the vast majority of Americans are experiencing severe economic strains and still feeling the effects of inflation. There could not be a worse time to impose a new $9 toll on individuals who are traveling into downtown Manhattan for work, school, or leisure,” he said.
Murphy said New York never meaningfully consulted New Jersey in crafting a plan that would have great repercussions on their neighbor.
Rep. Tom Kean Jr., R-N.J., agreed with Murphy, calling the program a commuter “cash grab.”
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“[T] this effort has always simply been a way to take money from the pockets of New Jersey residents to bail out the MTA from a mountain of debt,” he said.
MTA Chairman Janno Lieber on Thursday said a problematic transit system that includes “buses that are slower than walking” and increased car accidents is “not the New York that we all want to live in.”
As for critics of congestion pricing, Lieber suggested that if first responders were stuck in Manhattanesque gridlock in any given town, their residents and local officials would clamor for a fix.
Hochul previously said she would like to see a slightly lower price point than the original $15, instead around $9, citing inflation, and Lieber suggested on Thursday he was open to seeing whether a lower toll could achieve the same revenue goals.
The news arrives as Democratic New York City Comptroller Bradford Lander announced that Trump’s presidency comes with “grave risks for New York City [including in] education, housing, health care and transit… to the mass deportation of hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Team Trump for its response and to Hochul for additional comment.
Riley Gaines unleashes on AOC for quietly removing ‘she/her’ pronouns from bio
Riley Gaines didn’t let Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., off the hook for not using the right pronouns anymore.
The congresswoman was the subject of trending conversation on social media on Thursday when X users discovered that she no longer includes her pronouns “she/her” in her bio. Gaines, a former NCAA swimmer and OutKick contributor, got in on the mockery of Ocasio-Cortez on X with multiple posts.
“They’ll pretend they never embraced (or even celebrated) the insanity. Don’t forget who the compliant, virtue-signaling sheep were,” Gaines wrote in response to a post that claimed Ocasio-Cortez took the pronouns out of her bio before May of this year.
Gaines later responded to a video that showed Ocasio-Cortez previously apologizing for not including pronouns in her bio next to a photo that showed they were no longer there.
“We’re winning and its glorious,” Gaines wrote.
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Then even later on Thursday, Gaines made one more effort to mock Ocasio-Cortez in a solo post.
“How will we know what to call AOC now that her pronouns in her bio are gone?!?!?!,” Gaines wrote.
Gaines previously lambasted Ocasio-Cortez for her stance on trans athletes in women’s sports. The Democratic congresswoman has been a frequent advocate for transgender rights and trans inclusion in women’s sports during her tenure. Ocasio-Cortez recently spoke out against Green Party vice presidential candidate Butch Ware for saying he did not believe trans athletes should play in women’s sports, calling the ticket “predatory.”
“AOC says it’s predatory behavior to not want men competing in women’s sports. To AOC, acknowledging biological reality is ‘predatory’ You know what’s actually predatory? Sexualizing children and normalizing pedophilia,” Gaines wrote on X while posting a Fox News Digital article about Ocasio-Cortez’ comments.
Ocasio-Cortez has taken a partisan stance in her support of transgender rights and protections.
After the Biden-Harris administration passed a sweeping reform to Title IX in April that aimed to provide more protection for gender identity in schools and universities, Ocasio-Cortez argued the reform did not go far enough in favor of transgender people and, specifically, transgender athletes who want to compete in women’s sports.
“Absolutely no reason for the Biden admin to do this. It is indefensible and embarrassing. The admin can still walk this back, and they should. It’s a disgrace,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote in response to a report that the change would allow schools to bar transgender athletes from women’s and girls’ sports.
The administration issued a sweeping rule that clarified that Title IX’s ban on “sex” discrimination in schools covers discrimination based on gender identity, sexual orientation and “pregnancy or related conditions.”
And while the administration insisted the regulation does not address athletic eligibility, multiple experts presented evidence to Fox News Digital in June that it would ultimately put more biological men in women’s sports.
Still, that wasn’t good enough for Ocasio-Cortez.
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Ocasio-Cortez has also co-sponsored the Equality Act, which was proposed in 2019 and has had revisions that “would force public schools to allow biologically male athletes who identify as transgender on girls’ sports teams.”
In March 2023, Democrats, including Ocasio-Cortez, advocated for a transgender bill of rights, proposing a resolution “recognizing that it is the duty of the Federal Government to develop and implement a Transgender Bill of Rights.”
The resolution specifically called for a federal law to ensure that biological men can “participate in sports on teams and in programs that best align with their gender identity [and] use school facilities that best align with their gender identity.”
Meanwhile, Gaines has passionately fought against trans inclusion in women’s sports as a former college swimmer who infamously tied with trans athlete Lia Thomas at the NCAA championships in 2022.
Gaines shared her harrowing recollection of her experience being forced to share a locker room with Thomas at a Trump campaign rally on Oct. 23.
“I could share the grotesque details of what it was like being forced to undress, inches away from a 6-foot-4 man who watched us strip down to nothing, while he did the same, exposing his fully-intact naked male body,” Gaines said. “There are no words to describe the violation and the betrayal, the humiliation that we felt.”
Gaines leads a lawsuit against the NCAA with other female athletes, accusing the governing body of violating their Title IX rights due to its policies on gender identity.
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The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, details the shock Gaines and other swimmers felt when they learned they would have to share a locker room with Thomas at the 2022 championships in Atlanta. It documents a number of races they swam with Thomas, including the 200-yard final in which Thomas and Gaines tied for fifth but Thomas, not Gaines, was handed the fifth-place trophy.
Meanwhile, many other Democrats have backed off from their support for transgender inclusion in women’s sports prior to and after the election.
Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass, and Rep. Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., spoke out against trans inclusion in a New York Times article.
Moulton’s comments have incited a flury of backlash against him from Democratic allies who have deemed his words “transphobic.” Still, Moulton has only doubled-down on the comments amid the controversy.
Joe Rogan says many entertainers quietly ‘thanked me for endorsing Trump’
Podcast host Joe Rogan said that many unexpected sources have privately thanked him for endorsing President-elect Trump in the 11th hour before his electoral victory.
In the wake of the election where Trump won both the electoral college and the popular vote, many have spoken about the power of podcasts in swaying the votes of young men across multiple racial groups to support Trump.
“The Joe Rogan Experience” host spoke Wednesday about how much backlash he received for criticizing Harris.
“A lot of what people say, they say it because they don’t want people to attack them. They say it because they think that if they say it, it will clear them, they’ll be OK,” Rogan said. “If you say you support ‘x’ — you might not even support ‘x’ — but if you say you support ‘x,’ you’re not going to get attacked and the right people will leave you alone or agree with you and appreciate you or praise you.”
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Rogan then said that many creatives and groups associated with liberal movements of the past have been silent supporters of Trump.
“There’s a lot of that out there. There’s a lot of people that don’t speak their mind. Do you know many artists that have reached out to me that are like f—ing hippies, man, like artists, like musicians, comedians that thanked me for endorsing Trump because they can’t do it?” he said.
The podcast host continued, “They said they want to but they don’t want to be attacked. They can’t say it. They think the country’s going in the wrong direction. They think that this control of social media by the government, which we would have had pretty much fully if it wasn’t for Elon buying Twitter.”
Rogan endorsed Trump the night before the election, citing his interview with billionaire X owner and Trump-backer Elon Musk that was released that day.
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During his appearance on the podcast, Musk said that a President Kamala Harris would use the levers of government to shut down X.
On Wednesday, Rogan argued that the majority of the media being dominated by one ideology is a “dangerous precedent to set, whether it’s a right-wing government or a left-wing government and that what you see that’s happening in the U.K. where people are being imprisoned for tweets and Facebook posts. It’s f—ing crazy.”
“Mind bending. The whole thing is nuts,” Rogan continued. “And it’s a dangerous path that we were on. We were on that path. Trump has vowed to have free speech become a very important part of what he’s standing for, and that this censoring of information needs to stop and that we need to stop all government influence in what people have to say.”
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Co-host of ‘The View’ alleges political discrimination at bakery
Whoopi Goldberg claimed on “The View” that a popular Staten Island bakery refused to serve her because of her political views, but the bakery’s owner has denied the allegations.
During Wednesday’s episode of “The View,” Goldberg and her co-hosts celebrated her 69th birthday with Charlotte Russe desserts, a nostalgic New York treat that Goldberg shared was her mother’s favorite.
Goldberg told the audience her birthday order had almost fallen through due to what she claimed was the bakery’s objection to her left-wing political stance.
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“They said that their ovens had gone down, all kinds of stuff, but folks went and got them anyway, which is why I’m not telling you who made them,” said Goldberg. She claimed that her order wasn’t rejected because of her gender, but rather because “they did not like my politics.”
Goldberg, an outspoken liberal, will not speak the name of President-elect Trump on air.
Despite the possible snub, Goldberg encouraged her audience and co-hosts Alyssa Farah Griffin, Joy Behar, Sara Haines and Sunny Hostin to dig in to the Charlotte Russe desserts.
“But that’s okay because, you know what? Listen, this is my mother’s celebration,” said Goldberg. “Pick these up and celebrate with me and my mom. Thank you everyone for celebrating my birthday today.”
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Entertainment Weekly later identified the bakery as Holtermann’s Bakery, a 145-year-old family-owned establishment on Staten Island, by examining the Charlotte Russe desserts themselves. The packaging — pink polka dots on a white paper cup — allegedly was a tell-tale sign the desserts came from the family bakery.
Bakery owner Jill Holtermann denied Goldberg’s version of the events, explaining that the bakery’s issues were not politically motivated but stemmed from mechanical problems with their boilers, an ongoing challenge in their building, which was built in 1930.
“I said to Whoopi, ‘I can’t do it right now’,” Holtermann told the outlet. “We have so many things going on with my boiler.”
Holtermann confirmed that she ultimately managed to make 50 treats, which were picked up early Wednesday morning for “The View’s” taping.
Holtermann reiterated that her inability to immediately confirm the order had nothing to do with Goldberg’s political beliefs, adding, “I didn’t want to make a commitment that I can’t carry through,” given the existing technical difficulties.
Staten Island Live reported that Holtermann’s has been “bombarded” with calls since the episode aired.
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Holtermann’s Bakery refused Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Teacher resigns after she’s caught on video threatening Trump supporters in viral rant
A special education teacher in Connecticut has resigned after a viral video surfaced of her going on a rant and threatening violence and harm to supporters of President-elect Trump.
The viral video allegedly featured Cheshire educator Annie Dunleavy making threats to “handle” supporters of Trump.
“Just because you won doesn’t mean we don’t remember who the f— you voted for,” Dunleavy says in the social media clip. “Please don’t test your gangster on me because you will end on a stretcher, gone forever. So serious.”
“If you voted for Trump please delete me, block me, get rid of everything of me or step to me so that I know what’s up, and I can handle you how I see fit,” she added. “Please just come forward, we f—ing know.”
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On Monday, Cheshire Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Jeff Sloan said in a statement that he was made aware of the Snapchat video over the weekend that allegedly showed Dunleavy making the threats.
“Unfortunately, it came to my attention over the weekend that someone had taken a video of one of our teachers who shared what she intended to be a private message to her group on Snapchat. She was expressing her personal opinion and not those of the Cheshire Public Schools,’ the statement read.
“That being said, it is immediately clear that it will be impossible to conduct business as usual for our students and staff without temporarily removing the teacher from the building, so we have done so until the outcome of the investigation,” Sloan continued.
In a statement sent to Fox News Digital, Sloan said that Dunleavy has since resigned after his initial statement was issued.
“I am writing to inform you that Annie Dunleavy, our teacher who made the social media post I referenced in Monday’s email, has announced her resignation from her employment with the Cheshire Public Schools effective immediately,” Sloan wrote.
Sloan added that comments made in the video do not reflect the position of the school system.
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“They were hurtful, deeply concerning, and ultimately undermined the faith that our community has placed in us,” Sloan continued. “As a leader of this school system, I feel terrible for the angst that this has caused our community and I look forward to returning our focus on the great work that our educators perform every day.”
The Cheshire Police Department also acknowledged the video and said they are investigating the incident.
“The Cheshire Police Department is aware of the recent social media post which has gone viral which involves an employee of the Town of Cheshire Board of Education,” the statement reads. “Upon becoming aware of the nature of the post, an investigation was initiated.”
Police added that no further information about the investigation was available at this time, but that Dunleavy would not be facing any criminal charges.
Connecticut state Sen. Rob Sampson issued a statement condemning the video, saying the conduct is unbecoming of a public school teacher and “deeply troubling behavior.”
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“Such behavior must not be tolerated in any school system,” Sampson said. “Educators bear the vital responsibility to foster a safe, respectful, and inclusive environment for all students, regardless of their or their parents’ beliefs. The remarks in this video raise serious concerns about this individual’s ability to uphold that standard and protect the well-being of students in her care.”
“Unfortunately, incidents like this reveal a troubling hypocrisy from the radicalized political left, which frequently accuses those on the right of bigotry and intolerance without evidence,” he added.
“As a State Senator, I am fully committed to eliminating political bias from our classrooms. Education should equip students to think critically and independently, not to impose personal or political views on them. Unfortunately, incidents like this reveal a troubling hypocrisy from the radicalized political left, which frequently accuses those on the right of bigotry and intolerance without evidence. Accountability should apply across the board,” — Connecticut state Sen. Rob Sampson, R-District 80
Sampson also sent a letter to Sloan voicing his concerns about “the hostile language and clear threats expressed” in the video.
“It is my belief that the nature of these remarks necessitates immediate action, as this behavior is beyond unacceptable and sends a damaging message to the community. Disciplinary actions, in this case, should clarify such conduct cannot and will not be tolerated within Cheshire Public Schools,” the letter read.
The Connecticut Educator’s Association (CEA) acknowledged the video and told Fox News Digital in a statement that they called for a “civil discussion” and maintaining a positive environment in the schools.
“CEA values the right to free speech and respects the diverse opinions of our members. We know that emotions can run high after an election, and we encourage everyone to engage in respectful conversations as part of our democratic process. Keeping our discussions civil and focused is important in maintaining a positive environment in our schools. We must continue to share our views constructively while prioritizing respect, unity, and our shared commitment to educating and caring for our students,” CEA President Kate Dias said.
Dunleavy has since apologized for the video and appeared on NEWS 8 WTNH.com to explain her side of the story and share her remorse for what she said.
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“I was in a moment of high emotion, and I shouldn’t have posted,” Dunleavy told the news station in an exclusive interview. “The message came off wrong, which was if this is going to give people the permission in their minds to enact violence against women, I wanted to say, I’m not going down without a fight.
“I will fight for myself, and if someone was to try to hurt me, I would protect myself.”