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Byron Donalds emerges as GOP alternative for House speaker

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Byron Donalds emerges as GOP alternative for House speaker

MIAMI (AP) — As Republicans struggled for a second day to elect a Home speaker, Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida emerged as the selection of conservative holdouts who’re refusing to assist Kevin McCarthy’s bid.

Throughout three rounds of balloting Wednesday, Donalds obtained 20 votes to McCarthy’s 201 — sufficient to maintain McCarthy in need of the 218 wanted to win the speakership in a full Home.

On Tuesday, Republicans opposing McCarthy nominated a slew of candidates, together with Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio and even former Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York. Donalds joined the rebel Republicans on the ultimate vote Tuesday, switching his vote from McCarthy to Jordan.

So simply who’s Byron Donalds?

NO SOPHOMORE SLUMP

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Donalds, 44, was elected in November to his second time period representing Florida’s nineteenth District, within the state’s southwest. For his first election in 2020, Donalds received a nine-way GOP major and defeated his Democratic opponent to succeed retiring Republican Rep. Francis Rooney.

A local of Brooklyn, Donalds was raised by a single mom and graduated from Florida State College in 2002. He was working as a monetary adviser when he was appointed to the board of trustees at a state school by then-Gov. Rick Scott, which helped elevate his profile in Florida’s GOP circles.

His spouse, Erika Donalds, is an advocate of the college selection motion within the state. Byron Donalds has acknowledged being arrested as a younger man on a marijuana distribution cost that was later dismissed, and mentioned he turned his life round.

He unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Home in 2012, profitable a state Home seat 4 years later.

HOUSE SPEAKER VOTES

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In December 2021, Donalds informed CBS that McCarthy had “finished super issues” for Republicans within the Home. “So proper now, the query is, who’s going to be the individual that’s going to take us to the following degree?” Donalds mentioned. “Kevin’s confirmed he can try this.”

Within the first two rounds of votes on Tuesday, Donalds forged his vote for McCarthy earlier than choosing Jordan within the third spherical. In doing so, Donalds tweeted that the “actuality is … McCarthy doesn’t have the votes.”

“This can take time, Democracy is messy at occasions, however we can be prepared to manipulate on behalf of the American individuals,” Donalds added. “Debate is wholesome.”

On Wednesday, when his personal title was positioned in nomination, Donalds forged votes in favor of himself. On Fox after a type of votes, Donalds mentioned he had briefly spoken with McCarthy and referred to as for management that “really displays the place the American individuals are, and that management is one thing that’s earned right here within the nation’s Capitol, not simply given.”

PREVIOUS LEADERSHIP PURSUIT

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Donalds has beforehand sought GOP management posts. In November, he unsuccessfully challenged Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York for convention chair, the No. 4 place in Republican Home management, dropping a closed-door vote.

VOICES FROM THE FLOOR

Rep. Chip Roy of Texas was the only member to vote for Donalds for speaker on Tuesday, earlier than subsequently supporting Jordan. In his Wednesday speech nominating Donalds, Roy mentioned the sophomore represented a transfer towards one thing totally different, each for Washington and the Republican Get together.

“Right here we’re, and for the primary time in historical past, there have been two Black Individuals positioned into the nomination for speaker of the Home,” Roy mentioned, referring to Donalds and Democratic Home chief Hakeem Jeffries. “This nation wants a change. This nation wants management that doesn’t replicate this metropolis, this city that’s badly damaged.”

Donalds is presently one among solely 4 Black Republicans within the Home.

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Cori Bush, a Black Democratic congresswoman from Missouri, referred to as Donalds a “prop.”

“Regardless of being Black, he helps a coverage agenda intent on upholding and perpetuating white supremacy. His title being within the combine will not be progress — it’s pathetic,” she tweeted.

Nominating Donalds within the fifth spherical, Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado mentioned the Home’s job “is to not coronate the most important fundraiser, or rubberstamp the established order or carry on going alongside to get alongside. It’s to make use of our votes to elect a speaker who will allow us to get our nation again on monitor.”

Talking with reporters on the Capitol steps, Donalds on Wednesday referred to as the continuing debate “an invigorating day for America” however famous that “there’s lots of members within the chamber who need to have severe conversations about how we will carry this all to an in depth and elect a speaker.”

“As soon as we get this organized and found out, we’ll get again to enterprise,” he mentioned. “It’s solely Day Two, y’all. Cool down. We’re going to be all proper.”

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Kinnard reported from Columbia, S.C. Related Press author Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington contributed to this report.

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Biden and Democrats seal judicial confirmation push to beat Trump’s tally

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Biden and Democrats seal judicial confirmation push to beat Trump’s tally

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Joe Biden has stamped his legacy on the federal bench after Senate Democrats raced to confirm more than 200 nominees to lifetime appointments in courts across the US, outpacing Donald Trump’s tally during his first presidency.

The number of Biden’s judicial nominees reached 235 as Congress ended its latest session last week, topping the 234 federal judges confirmed by Trump during his first term. It was the most judges appointed by a president during a single four-year term since the 1980s, Biden said in a statement.

As Biden’s presidency drew to a close, Democrats in the Senate — which is tasked with confirming federal judges — had pushed to secure as many confirmations as they could before control of Congress and the White House is ceded to Republicans next month.  

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They hope that this final dash will counter the wave of judicial confirmations during Trump’s first term that fundamentally reshaped the US judiciary, swinging courts at all levels to the right. 

Trump’s appointment of three Supreme Court justices also skewed the ideological scale of the country’s most powerful bench, splitting it 6-3 between conservative and liberal justices. 

Justices of the US Supreme Court. Trump appointed three members of the current bench, as opposed to one from Joe Biden © Olivier Douliery/AFP/Getty Images

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority has since handed down rulings that have reverberated across American society, including striking down a decision enshrining the constitutional right to an abortion — moves that in turn emboldened right-leaning judges in lower courts, many appointed by Trump, to rule in favour of conservative causes.

The growing boldness of the American judiciary coupled with an increasingly polarised political landscape have turned judicial appointments into a critical frontier of presidential power. Judges at all levels have the opportunity to weigh in on challenges to administrations’ rules and laws, providing a powerful check on controversial policies.

Democrats’ last-minute push, which started in the wake of Biden’s election loss in November, infuriated Trump. He called on the Senate to block Biden’s judicial nominations: “The Democrats are trying to stack the Courts with Radical Left Judges on their way out the door.”

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“There has been increasing polarisation around the appointment of federal judges,” said Paul Butler, professor at Georgetown Law. The Republican party has historically prioritised judicial picks — and Biden has taken a leaf out of that playbook, Butler added.

Biden’s appointments also stand out for their diversity, including what he described as “a record number of judges with backgrounds and experiences that have long been overlooked”.

Approximately two-thirds of confirmed judges are women and people of colour. Biden has appointed more Black women to US circuit courts than all previous presidents combined, and his sole Supreme Court nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson, was the top court’s first Black woman.

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“Biden’s focus has been on remedying all of the decades where people other than straight white men weren’t considered for the bench,” said Butler.

Biden has also picked a record number of public defenders, more than 45, as well as labour and civil rights lawyers — at least 10 and more than 25, respectively — for the federal bench. 

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“It’s absolutely crucial for a thriving, multiracial democracy that there are judges who not only look like all of us, but who have studied and spent their careers understanding how the laws impact people’s lives,” said Lena Zwarensteyn, senior director of the fair courts programme at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a civil-rights group. 

The pendulum is set to swing back yet again. A new stream of conservative judicial appointments is expected once Trump returns to the White House next month and as Republicans take hold of the Senate.

“I’m incredibly proud of how the Senate Republican Conference worked as a team with former President Trump to shape the federal judiciary,” John Thune, the newly elected Republican Senate leader, said earlier this year. “I look forward to working with him to double down on our efforts during his next term in office.”

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Fox Star Is All For Trump Blowing $1.5 Trillion on Greenland: ‘Probably Will Pay Off’

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Fox Star Is All For Trump Blowing .5 Trillion on Greenland: ‘Probably Will Pay Off’
Media

MONEY WELL SPENT

Brian Kilmeade spoke to RNC Chair Michael Whatley about the president-elect’s plan—which Denmark says definitely won’t be happening.

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade and RNC Chair Michael Whatley on Fox News on December 23, 2024.
Fox News
Sean Craig

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Private equity investors trapped in China as top firms fail to find exit deals

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Private equity investors trapped in China as top firms fail to find exit deals

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The world’s biggest private equity groups have been unable to sell or list their China-based portfolio companies this year, as Beijing’s crackdown on initial public offerings and a slowing economy leave foreign investors’ capital trapped in the country.

Among the 10 largest global private equity groups with operations in China, there is no record of any having listed a Chinese company this year or fully sold their stake through an M&A deal, figures from Dealogic show.

It is the first year for at least a decade where this has been the case, though the pace of exits has been slow since Beijing introduced restrictions on Chinese companies’ ability to list in 2021.

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Buyout groups rely on being able to sell or list companies, typically within three to five years of buying them, in order to generate returns for the pension funds, insurance companies and others whose money they manage.

The difficulties in doing so have in effect left those investors’ funds locked away, with future returns uncertain.

“There’s a growing sense among PE investors that China may not be as systemically investable as once thought,” said Brock Silvers, chief executive of Hong Kong private equity group Kaiyuan Capital.

He said firms were facing “weakened exit strategies on multiple fronts” in China, including being affected by a slower economy and domestic regulatory pressure.

Many private equity groups expanded their presence in the world’s second-biggest economy as it grew rapidly over the past two decades. Global pension funds and others ploughed capital into the country, hoping to gain exposure to its economic boom.

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The 10 firms invested $137bn over the past decade, but total exits amount to just $38bn, Dealogic data shows. New investment by those groups has collapsed to just $5bn since the start of 2022.

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The pace of buyout groups’ exits from deals globally has also been slowing. It was down 26 per cent in the first half of this year, according to a report by S&P Global.

But the halt in China exits is particularly stark. It has helped make some pension funds that allocate cash to private equity groups warier of exposure to the country.

“In theory, you could buy cheaply [in China] now but you need to ask what would happen if you can’t exit or if you have to hold it for longer,” said a private markets specialist at a large pension fund that is not currently investing in the country.

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A senior executive at a major investment group that commits cash to private equity funds said they were “not expecting a lot of exits for the next couple of years at least” in China.

The data covers Blackstone, KKR, CVC, TPG, Warburg Pincus, Carlyle Group, Bain Capital, EQT, Advent International and Apollo, the 10 largest buyout groups by funds raised for private equity over the past decade, excluding those that have done no deals in China. The data does not include Blackstone real estate deals.

Private equity firms sometimes buy or sell companies without disclosing it, and any such exits may be missing from the data. The firms declined to comment.

The difficulty in cashing out has been one of the main factors deterring international buyout groups from making investments in the country, in addition to Sino-US tensions and the economic slowdown.

Jean Salata, founder of Barings Private Equity Asia, which Stockholm-based EQT bought in 2022, told the Financial Times in June that one reason the “bar is high” for China deals was that investors were asking: “How easy will it be to get liquidity on those investments five years from now?”

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Foreign buyout groups used to rely on taking Chinese companies public in the US or other countries in order to exit their investments after a few years. But Beijing has introduced new restrictions on offshore listings since cracking down on the ride-hailing app DiDi, in the wake of its New York IPO in 2021. Listings have slowed significantly since.

In total this year, there have been just $7bn of domestic IPOs in China as of late November, compared with $46bn last year, which was already the lowest total since 2019.

The crackdown has left buyout groups searching for other options, such as selling their stakes to domestic and multinational companies and to other buyout groups. But overseas buyers are sometimes reluctant, in part because of closer US political scrutiny of the mainland.

One of the few recent exits among the 10 firms came when Carlyle sold its minority stake in the Chinese operations of McDonald’s back to the US fast-food retailer last year.

In China’s boom years before the Covid-19 pandemic, there were dozens of exits through both listings and mergers and acquisitions, and foreign private equity played a much bigger role in driving mainland activity.

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Goldman Sachs chief executive David Solomon said at a Hong Kong conference in November that one of the reasons investors were “predominantly on the sidelines” over deploying funds in China was that “it’s been very difficult . . . to get capital out”.

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