Republicans throw wrench in Dem confirmation machine as Biden seeks last-minute judges
Senate Republicans opted to delay votes and draw out floor action on Monday night after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., sought to stack additional judicial confirmation votes on the calendar ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday.
Two sources familiar told Fox News Digital that the plan to slow down the Senate was spearheaded by Senate Minority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., who was recently elected as the next Republican Senate leader.
“If Sen. Schumer thought Senate Republicans would just roll over and allow him to quickly confirm multiple Biden-appointed judges to lifetime jobs in the final weeks of the Democrat majority, he thought wrong,” Thune told Fox News Digital in an exclusive statement.
In response to the Democrat leader’s decision to file cloture on a number of judicial nominees, which would come up for confirmation votes in a number of days, Republicans plotted procedural maneuvers on the Senate floor to significantly delay votes, multiple GOP sources told Fox News.
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The additional cloture filings by Schumer come as Democrats are focusing their efforts on confirming as many judges nominated by President Biden as they can in the time they have left in the majority.
During the first procedural vote of the evening, a source familiar told Fox News, “it could be a late night.”
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In order to file cloture on a nomination, the Senate needs to transition from legislative session to executive session. This is typically done by unanimous consent from the Senate. But on Monday evening, Republicans began objecting to the requests for unanimous consent.
When a senator objects, it requires the transition between executive and legislative sessions to be voted on.
By objecting to Democrats’ unanimous consent requests in order to file cloture on the Biden nominees, Republicans are adding additional votes to the schedule, taking up a substantial amount of time.
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Schumer’s office did not immediately provide comment to Fox News Digital.
In floor remarks on Monday, Schumer emphasized that Democrats are prioritizing judges in the lame duck session.
“The judges we’ve confirmed represent perhaps the widest range of backgrounds and experiences ever seen under any president. We have more judges that worked as public defenders, legal aid attorneys, civil rights lawyers, federal prosecutors, voting rights lawyers, and more women and people of color than we’ve ever had under one Administration,” he said of the 215 nominees that have already been confirmed.
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“After we vote today, we’ll keep going. Tonight, I will file on additional judges who we will move forward on the floor this week.”
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“So, let me repeat: the Senate is going to keep prioritizing judicial and administrative confirmations this week, this month, and for the rest of this year,” he said.
During Biden’s term, his administration has sought to surpass President-elect Donald Trump’s first-term legacy of 234 confirmed Article III judicial nominees. And as Democrats look down the barrel of a Republican trifecta in Washington, D.C., controlling the House, Senate, and White House, they appear more energized than ever to push Biden’s judges through and potentially beat Trump’s number.
‘Sanctuary’ city mayor vows she will defy Trump’s mass deportation push
Boston’s Democrat Mayor Michelle Wu said in an interview on Sunday that her city won’t cooperate with the looming mass deportation operation from the incoming Trump administration — even as the region sees a number of illegal immigrants with criminal charges released back onto the streets.
Wu was asked in an interview with WCVB about the Trump administration’s plans to launch a mass deportation operation when it takes office in January, and was asked what Boston’s response will be.
“Elections have consequences, and the federal government is responsible for a certain set of actions, and cities, no individual city, can reverse or override some parts of that,” she said. “But what we can do is make sure that we are doing our part to protect our residents in every possible way, that we are not cooperating with those efforts that actually threaten the safety of everyone by causing widespread fear and and having large scale economic impact.”
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“And then we are providing the spaces to reach out directly to our residents, because the last thing we want is for people who are part of our economy, part of our school system, part of our community and the fabric of our city, to feel that all of a sudden they have to retreat into the shadows with because of fear that reaching out to city services, whether it’s calling 911, when you need it, or taking your child to school, those are all city services that have nothing to do with immigration enforcement, and we will continue to protect our residents within those spaces,” she said.
Trump made a mass deportation operation a centerpiece of his campaign and on Monday said he was open to declaring a national emergency and using military assets.
Fox News Digital reported last week that the Trump administration is already discussing where it can expand detention centers in anticipation of the operation and has spoken to private prison companies about potential expansion.
But there is already brewing resistance from blue cities and states, including those that are “sanctuary” cities — meaning they do not cooperate with ICE requests that detained illegal immigrants with criminal charges or convictions be transferred to ICE custody.
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Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said she is prepared to use “every tool in the tool box” to protect its citizens and residents and vowed that state police would “absolutely not” assist Trump in the operation.
But the state, and the Boston area, have seen a number of ICE arrests of illegal immigrants who have been charged with crimes, including child sex offenses, but then released back onto the streets.
ICE announced this month that it apprehended a Colombian illegal immigrant, who had been arrested on charges of enticing a child under 16, distribution of obscene matter, and lascivious posing and exhibiting a child in the nude. ICE had filed a detainer against him, but it was ignored, the agency said.
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In March, Fox News embedded with ICE officers in Boston and saw them make five arrests, including four alleged child rapists and a member of MS-13, a group of potential dangerous criminals the officers say were allowed on the streets because of local sanctuary policies that denied the agency’s detainer requests.
But the lack of cooperation from those states and cities is unlikely to dissuade the administration. Tom Homan, appointed to be the border czar by President-elect Trump, had a message for those jurisdictions this month.
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“If you don’t want to work with us, then get the hell out all the way. We’re going to do it. What it means is, rather than send 100 people to Boston, we’re going to send 200 agents to Boston. We’re going to get the job done,” he said.
Soccer star nails Trump’s dance move after goal as celebration sweeps sports world
U.S. men’s soccer star Christian Pulisic put a ball into the back of the net and then got in on the dance craze sweeping the sports world.
Pulisic and the Americans were playing Jamaica in a Concacaf Nations League matchup, and it didn’t take long for the striker to put the U.S. up. He flicked the ball over the Jamaican goalkeeper and into the back of the net for the first score.
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He ran to the corner to celebrate the score and immediately was seen doing President-elect Donald Trump’s dance move.
Pulisic scored again in the 33rd minute, and Ricardo Pepi put the U.S. up 3-0 in the 42nd minute. They had that lead at halftime. The U.S. had a 4-0 aggregate lead, and the three goals appeared to put the match out of reach for Jamaica.
Pulisic’s decision to pull off the dance move joined the line of professional athletes who did it over the weekend.
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Several NFL players and UFC stars showed their support for the president-elect over the weekend. Brock Powers, Calvin Ridley, Nick Westbrook-Ikhine, Za’Darius Smith and Malcolm Rodriguez all pulled it off.
At UFC 309, Trump was seated cageside as Jon Jones and Bo Nickal both showed support for him. Jones did the dance move after he knocked out Stipe Miocic.
He handed the heavyweight belt to Trump afterward. Nickal talked with Trump about golfing after his victory.
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LPGA Tour star Charley Hull also appeared to do the move.
Bill Maher tries to explain to baffled William Shatner why Harris lost election
Actor William Shatner admitted to “Real Time” host Bill Maher that he didn’t understand why Vice President Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election, as the pair discussed what went wrong for the Democratic Party on Maher’s “Club Random” podcast on Sunday.
Maher opened his show suggesting the left’s “intolerance” to Democrats who don’t toe the party line on every issue cost them votes this election.
“Conservatives are much more tolerant of people they don’t like. It’s the liberals who are purists, especially the ones in this town. They are the ones who say if you don’t agree with me one million percent, I don’t even want to know you. That’s one of the reasons they lost. They have a bad attitude,” he told Shatner.
But Shatner admitted he was baffled by the election results. “I don’t know why Democrats lost. I don’t understand [it],” he said.
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Maher argued that President Biden was partly to blame for staying in the race too long.
“That, I understand,” Shatner replied. “But inflation? Prices have come down, the economy is good. I don’t know why they voted against her, against the party,” he said.
Inflation and high costs of living consistently charted as top concerns for voters in polls leading up to the election.
Maher said that Harris “was not a great candidate” either.
“Let’s be honest,” he said. But Shatner defended Harris.
“Why isn’t she a great candidate?” he asked. “She combined several trends of thought here. Black, a woman,” he offered.
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“That’s not a candidate,” Maher pushed back. “That’s identity politics.”
“But those are elements!” Shatner argued.
Maher conceded that while some voters will vote for a candidate simply because they “look like them,” this election proved “you have to go a lot further than that” to win over voters.
“You can’t just be, woman. Black person. I mean, Trump got a quarter of Black men!” Maher said.
“He didn’t do much better because the women are very much against him but he killed it with Latinos. Is there any great irony that the guy who came down the elevator ten years ago talking about the ‘rapists’ — they keep giving him more of their votes,” Maher said, claiming that he understood why Harris lost better than the Democratic Party did.
“Democrats don’t understand their own constituencies. If you are a Mexican-American, who do you fear taking your job? The guy who just came in through the border! Of course they like the guy who says, ‘I’m going to keep everybody out,’” he continued.
“He doesn’t say, ‘I’m keeping everybody out.’ I’m going to send everybody out,'” Shatner disagreed.
Maher insisted that Democrats would have had much better chances at winning the election if they hadn’t put in Harris at the last minute.
“If Biden had got out earlier, they had a true primary season to find the best candidate, not just one whose turn it was. By the way, before they anointed her, nobody was sort of on the page that she was very good at being a candidate,” he said of Harris.
“She failed the first time,” Shatner agreed, referring to the VP’s 2019 presidential campaign that didn’t make it past the primaries.
Maher also hit the Biden-Harris administration for its “pointless reversal” of Trump’s Remain in Mexico policy.
“[They] let in too many people. Not that we shouldn’t be a nation of immigrants. But it turned into a lawless a s— show for years,” he said.
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This isn’t the first time since the election that Maher has reprimanded the Democratic Party for failing to understand its constituents.
Maher opened his first post-election “Real Time” show by telling his party to “look in the mirror” and realize that “woke” policies and a bad candidate lost them the election. He has since scolded his party for “doubling-down” on far-left policies.
The “Real Time” host previously predicted Harris would win the election after the September presidential debate.
Interviewers received large donations from Harris campaign ahead of sit-downs
Vice President Kamala Harris‘ campaign reportedly gave large amounts of money to organizations run by media figures in the weeks before sitting down for interviews with them.
FEC filings, first reported by the Washington Free Beacon, show the Harris campaign gave two $250,000 donations to Rev. Al Sharpton’s nonprofit organization in September and October.
Harris sat down for a friendly interview with the MSNBC host on October 20, in which he asked her what she wanted her legacy to be, 50 years from now.
Sharpton wasn’t the only media ally that received a payment from the campaign to his organization ahead of their sit-down interview, a bombshell New York Times report revealed.
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The campaign also gave a $350,000 payment to Nu Vision Media on September 9, according to FEC filings first reported by the Times.
Nu Vision Media is a media company run by journalist Roland Martin. Martin spent roughly 30 minutes interviewing Harris on his streaming program in October.
The former CNN contributor told the Times the payment was for advertising.
“It should have been a hell of a lot more,” he said, according to the report. “More should have been spent on Black-owned media.”
According to the Free Beacon, the Harris campaign gave $5.4 million to Black and Latino advocacy groups in her effort to add more of these voters to her coalition.
News of these expenditures comes as the Harris campaign faces increasing scrutiny over its $1.5 billion spending spree during her short presidential campaign.
The Times report also found that star-studded election eve rallies cost the campaign over $10 million. While the singers were not paid, the support staff was, the report said.
The campaign also made two $500,000 payments to Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Productions on Oct. 15, a month after Winfrey’s town hall with Harris and weeks before the pair appeared at a Harris Philadelphia rally, FEC filings show.
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The full price of the event with Winfrey was closer to $2.5 million, Harris allies told the Times.
A Harpo Productions spokesperson acknowledged to Variety that the company took money from the campaign but claimed it was for “production costs.”
The Harris campaign did not immediately return a request for comment to Fox News Digital.
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Trump’s waste-cutter czar pulls back the curtain on what’s getting axed
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that President-elect Donald Trump has tasked Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk with leading will look to eliminate some federal agencies in their entirety.
Ramaswamy discussed DOGE’s cost-cutting focus in an appearance on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” and told host Maria Bartiromo that DOGE will pursue major reductions in the federal bureaucracy which could result in some agencies being shuttered.
“We expect certain agencies to be deleted outright,” Ramaswamy said. “We expect mass reductions in force in areas of the federal government that are bloated. We expect massive cuts among federal contractors and others who are over-billing the federal government.”
“So yes, we expect all of the above, and I think people will be surprised by… how quickly we’re able to move with some of those changes given the legal backdrop the Supreme Court has given us,” he said.
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Ramaswamy was asked about the potential of relocating certain federal agencies’ headquarters outside the District of Columbia and said that is something DOGE will consider as a means of making the bureaucracy more responsive to the American public.
“It’s funny you bring up this point. ‘Yes’ is the answer, but here’s why – they’ll say, ‘what happens to the people who live in Washington, D.C.?’ Here’s the dirty little secret in the federal bureaucracy today, most people don’t even show up to work,” Ramaswamy said.
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“So if you require most of those federal bureaucrats to just say, like normal working Americans, you come to work five days a week, a lot of them won’t want to do that,” he added. “And by the way, that creates a logic for many of those agencies being outside of DC in the first place.”
DOGE will look to downsize the workforce of those federal agencies regardless of whether they are relocated outside of Washington, D.C., Ramaswamy said.
“Many of these agencies should be downsized wherever they are, and for whatever does remain, move many of them out to be more accountable to the people. And by the way, if you have many voluntary reductions in force of the workforce in the federal government along the way, great, that’s a good side effect of those policies as well,” he said.
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“Our goal is not to be cruel, by the way, to the individual federal employees. Most of them, I do want to say this, are individually good people, and we want to be compassionate and generous in how we handle this transition,” Ramaswamy noted.
“But the real issue is there’s just too many of them, we don’t need 4 million, and we shouldn’t have 4 million civil servants who aren’t elected and can’t be removed from their positions. It’s anti-democratic.”
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Ramaswamy and Musk announced last week that DOGE will be reviewing applications for individuals interested in contributing to its cost-cutting efforts. Applicants can send a resume via the DOGE account’s direct messages.
Democrat mayor changes plans after family tells him he’s not welcome at officer’s funeral
A funeral service was held Monday for Chicago Police Officer Enrique Martinez, killed two weeks ago in the line of duty, and the city’s mayor did not attend at the request of the officer’s family members.
Darion C. McMillian, 23, was charged with several felonies, including one count of first-degree murder, for the killing of the 26-year-old officer on Nov. 4.
“My brother and I… we wanted to become Chicago police officers… it was our calling,” Martinez’s brother, Adrian Martinez, also a police officer, told mourners at the funeral. “Becoming police officers was not just a job title for us, but who we were supposed to be.”
Hundreds of mourners, including police officers, citizens and public officials, gathered for the funeral.
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After originally planning to attend the service, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson reversed his decision on Saturday, Fox 32 reported.
“The family of Officer Enrique Martinez continues to be in my prayers as they prepare to lay him to rest. I heard from the family and am honoring their request and will no longer plan to attend the honors funeral services,” the mayor’s statement read.
“This has been an emotional two weeks for the loved ones of Officer Martinez, the Chicago Police Department, and the city of Chicago. We all want to do right by Officer Martinez and give his family and the CPD family space to grieve. The focus must remain on Officer Martinez, his loved ones, and the CPD as our city continues to honor his ultimate sacrifice and legacy of service.”
That latest statement came after the mayor’s previous comments on Friday, when he said he would be attending.
“Mayor Johnson will attend honors funeral services and celebration of life for Chicago Police Officer Enrique Martinez. Mayor Johnson will join Superintendent Snelling and the Chicago Police Department to honor the legacy of service Officer Martinez will forever inspire. Our prayers and deepest sympathy are with the Martinez family and Officer Martinez’s beloved fiancé.
WATCH: Hundreds mourn Chicago Police Officer Enrique Martinez
“The Mayor of Chicago will attend all honors funeral services for every Police Officer, Firefighter or EMT who loses their life in the line of duty. These official honor services are solemn moments to honor the sacrifice of our officers and first responders. It is the Mayor’s honor to support the officers of the entire Chicago Police Department, especially in moments of grief.”
Representatives for Martinez’s family held a press conference on Friday evening, when they said that both Johnson and Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker would not be welcomed at the funeral, Fox 32 reported.
The governor’s office said it always respects the wishes of the family and would not attend, according to the outlet.
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Fatal Chicago shooting
Chicago police said the fatal shooting happened when Martinez and his partner responded to a report about a vehicle, with three people inside, blocking traffic in the East Chatham neighborhood.
Before additional officers arrived to assist, Martinez and his partner spoke with the driver and observed McMillian reaching for a bag on the floor of the vehicle, police said.
When instructed to stop, McMillian allegedly pulled out a handgun and fired, fatally wounding Martinez.
“Officer Martinez and all of our police officers run toward this danger to protect everyone in the city,” Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling said in a previous press conference. “We all need to be outraged at the violent offenders who are creating endless cycles of trauma in our communities.
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Martinez is survived by his mother, Rosa; father, Adrian; sister, Angelica; brother, Adrian, and fiancée, Lesly, according to his obituary.
“On the night of his murder, my brother was taken from all of us, our world stopped. On his final tour, my brother looked evil and terror in the face and took his final breath,” Adrian Martinez said at the funeral. “That night, my brother saved countless lives, as he was pierced by multiple bullets. Every bullet that struck my brother could have taken the life of someone’s mother, father, sister, brother, or friend.”
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“Because of my brother’s strength and courage, we are all able to see another day, embrace a loved one…and live without fear. Enrique will always be my little brother…you will never be forgotten.”