Politics

Column: Mea culpa: I got some things wrong in 2024. At least I hope I did

Published

3 days ago

January 1, 2025

Column: Mea culpa: I got some things wrong in 2024. At least I hope I did

WASHINGTON — I spent much of 2024 warning readers that a second Trump presidency would do serious damage to American institutions, beginning with democracy and the rule of law.

“The former president neither understands nor respects the Constitution,” I wrote. “He would use the powers of the federal government as an instrument of his whims, prosecuting opponents and rewarding donors instead of serving the public interest.”

Judging from the election results, about half of America’s voters disagreed. Many of them wrote to tell me how wrong I was.

“Trump Derangement Syndrome,” a reader named Ed Osborne scoffed.

I hope he’s right and that I was wrong. A less destructive Trump would come as a relief.

This is my annual “mea culpa” column, an end-of-the-year look back at what I got wrong and what (if anything) I got right.

Writing a column is a recurring opportunity to make mistakes in plain sight and repent them at leisure. Election years offer even more chances than usual to make bad guesses.

A drawn-out finish and economic optimism?

Here’s one: I expected the presidential election to be closer — and to take longer to resolve — than it was. “We won’t know who won on election night,” I predicted.

Wrong! Trump swept all seven swing states in short order, piling up an impressive electoral vote majority. His popular vote margin turned out to be one of the narrowest in recent history, but that didn’t become clear until California finished its leisurely count this month.

One reason I forecast a razor-close election was that I believed Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, was successfully eroding Trump’s advantage on the most important issue: voters’ dissatisfaction with the economy.

“Maybe good economic news — a growing economy, easing inflation and lower interest rates — is finally seeping into voters’ consciousness, allowing Harris to reap some political benefit,” I wrote a month before the election.

Wrong again. Exit polls found that 45% of voters said they still felt worse off than they had during Trump’s first term. Only 24% said they were better off.

On one of the biggest stories of the year, President Biden’s disastrous performance in his June debate with Trump, another confession: I didn’t see it coming. Before the debate, I wrote that Biden’s age was clearly slowing him down; “he needs to show that he can not only find the stairs but think on his feet,” I advised. But I wasn’t concealing his condition; I never had a close enough look to support a tougher diagnosis.

To be fair (to myself, in this case), at least I didn’t commit the most basic error a reporter can make before an election: I didn’t predict who would win. In October, I wrote that the Trump-Harris race was too close to call — and it was.

I also noted that the Democratic nominee didn’t run a perfect campaign.

“She took a distressingly long time to define a clear, overarching vision,” I wrote. “Early in the campaign, her answers to tough questions often devolved into word salad. She struggled to explain how her presidency might differ from a second Joe Biden term.”

That made the election essentially a referendum on the Biden administration — a contest almost any Democrat was bound to lose.

A clear pattern and an unanswered question

When I sat in on focus groups of undecided voters last fall, a pattern became clear: Plenty had qualms about Trump, but they had confidence in his ability to improve the economy.

Many of them discounted Trump’s most worrisome proposals because they didn’t think he’d act on them — like Kevin, a home inspector in Atlanta, who said he thought Trump’s promise to slap huge tariffs on imports was “a bad idea, but I don’t think it’s going to really go anywhere.”

And that brings us back to the question of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Who was right: Kevin or me?

That depends on which version of Trump emerges once he’s in office.

Polls show that most of his voters elected him mainly to bring prices down and reduce illegal immigration. But many don’t support separating migrant families, imposing tariffs that would spike inflation, or prosecuting political opponents.

Will Trump moderate any of his campaign promises? So far, he’s having it both ways.

He’s stuck to his vow to launch mass deportations, but said he might make an exception for “dreamers,” migrants who came to the United States as children. He’s threatened massive tariffs against Mexico, Canada and China, but hinted that he might relent if they offer concessions. On some days, he says his critic former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) “should be investigated by the FBI”; on others, he tosses out a contradictory message of magnanimity, “Retribution will be through success.”

Here’s another prediction

Undaunted by my shaky track record, I’ve already made a prediction: Just as in his first term, Trump will try to carry out his promises, but will trim them back if he runs into opposition, especially from voters in his own party.

Mass deportation, for example, “is one promise Trump clearly intends to keep,” I wrote last month. “But there may be a debate in the new administration over how fast and how sweeping the deportation drive should be.” That debate, focusing mostly on the costs of a big operation, is already underway.

As for his most controversial Cabinet nominees — Pete Hegseth at Defense, Kash Patel at the FBI, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at Health and Human Services, Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence — my guess is that Gabbard is the only one whose confirmation is in serious jeopardy.

I’ll be glad if I was mistaken. If I was, I’ll be sure to let you know.

Politics

Johnson’s Reward as Speaker: An Impossible Job Delivering for Trump

Published

6 hours ago

January 3, 2025

Press Room

Johnson’s Reward as Speaker: An Impossible Job Delivering for Trump

Just minutes after Speaker Mike Johnson could exhale, having put down a short-lived conservative revolt and won re-election to his post on Friday, hard-right lawmakers sent him a letter.

It was not congratulatory.

They had only voted for him, they wrote, “because of our steadfast support of President Trump and to ensure the timely certification of his electors.”

“We did this despite our sincere reservations regarding the speaker’s track record over the past 15 months,” lawmakers in the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus continued, appending a list of three major complaints about Mr. Johnson and seven policy dictates they demanded he adopt.

Welcome to the 119th Congress.

“I just expect intramural wrestling matches to be kind of the norm,” Representative Mark Amodei, Republican of Nevada, said as he walked off the House floor after Mr. Johnson’s whipsaw election to the speakership.

Ever since he ascended to the top job in the House after many of those same conservatives ousted his predecessor, Mr. Johnson has had one of the hardest jobs in Washington. Now, with total Republican control of government and President-elect Donald J. Trump’s enormous domestic agenda at stake, he is facing his toughest test yet.

Mr. Johnson will be responsible for pushing through Mr. Trump’s economic plans, including one or more huge bills that lawmakers say they want to simultaneously increase the nation’s borrowing limit, extend the tax cuts Mr. Trump signed into law in 2017, cut federal spending, and put in place a wide-ranging immigration crackdown.

At the same time, he will be dealing with a mercurial president who has already displayed his penchant for squashing congressional negotiations and inserting new demands at the 11th hour. And he will do so while trying to corral an unruly group of lawmakers who, despite their reverence for Mr. Trump, have already shown their willingness to buck him on key votes, and who care little about the political fallout of stirring up drama within the party.

Within weeks, Mr. Johnson’s majority will shrink smaller still. He is losing two reliable Republican votes, Representatives Elise Stefanik of New York and Michael Waltz of Florida, who are leaving the House to work in the Trump administration, meaning he will only be able to afford a single defection on fraught votes.

On top of all of it are towering expectations about what Mr. Trump can accomplish with a Republican trifecta.

“I never said any of the other things that we’re going to do are going to be easy; they’re actually going to be very hard,” Representative Carlos Gimenez, Republican of Florida, said. “But we have to do it for the American people. The American people expect us to get things accomplished, and I think that’s going be the driving force. Every once in a while, we’re going to take a hard vote.”

Mr. Johnson’s allies like to say never to bet against him, a refrain they reprised after the speaker, a Louisiana Republican, was re-elected after a single, if tortured, ballot on Friday.

But it was clear that the spat on the House floor over Mr. Johnson’s ascension to the speakership was only the opening salvo in a fight brewing over the tax, budget and immigration legislation Republicans were preparing to pass.

Chief among the demands that the House Freedom Caucus issued on Friday was that the bill “not increase federal borrowing” — a move Mr. Trump has called upon House Republicans to approve — “before real spending cuts are agreed to and in place.”

They also complained that Mr. Johnson had failed to promise to ensure that “any reconciliation package reduces spending and the deficit in real terms with respect to the dynamic score of tax and spending policies under recent growth trends.”

Such demands will almost certainly set up a bitter fight among House Republicans over how to structure what is supposed to be Mr. Trump’s landmark legislation. Extending the tax cuts Mr. Trump signed into law in 2017 is estimated to cost roughly $4 trillion alone. Offsetting those cuts — as well as any immigration measures that Republicans are also clamoring to include — would tee up deep spending cuts that could run into a buzz saw from more moderate Republicans, who are sure to have their say.

Already some mainstream conservatives who just won tough re-election battles in swing districts, preserving the House Republican majority, have vented frustration with their hard-line colleagues.

“It angers the 95 percent of us that 5 percent are doing this thing to Mike Johnson — and to the whole conference; who are they?” Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska said. “We’re the 95 percent, and these guys act like they’re some House of Lords or something of the conference. And we don’t like that.”

“We have had our fill of these guys,” he added. “Most of us don’t want to work with them, we don’t want to work on their legislation, because it’s all about them.”

That may suit them just fine, but it will only make Mr. Johnson’s job of cobbling together a Republican majority for Mr. Trump’s priorities more difficult.

Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina, one of the two Republicans who initially opposed Mr. Johnson for speaker on Friday on the House floor, only to change his vote, told reporters that he felt his message about the tax and budget bill — that it could not end up costing taxpayers money — had been received.

“I think Mike Johnson knows now, that’s not going to be a reality,” Mr. Norman said, adding that he respected how the speaker had handled his concerns.

“He said, ‘Look, if I don’t perform the way I say I’m going to perform, and push the things that you’re saying, put me out,’” Mr. Norman continued. “He said, ‘I never thought I would have this job anyway.’”

Karoun Demirjian and Maya C. Miller contributed reporting.

Politics

'Let's see what happens': Trump picks for deputy Mideast envoy, Estonia ambassador, State Dept. spokesperson

Published

7 hours ago

January 3, 2025

Press Room

'Let's see what happens': Trump picks for deputy Mideast envoy, Estonia ambassador, State Dept. spokesperson

President-elect Donald Trump announced via Truth Social Friday night his picks for Deputy Special Presidential Envoy, U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Estonia, and spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State.

Trump’s former State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus will serve as Deputy Special Presidential Envoy for Middle East Peace, Roman Pipko will serve as U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Estonia, and Tammy Bruce will serve as spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State.

Morgan Ortagus – Deputy Special Presidential Envoy for Middle East Peace

In a post Friday afternoon, Trump announced Ortagus will work under Steven Witkoff, a New York real estate tycoon selected for Middle East envoy in November.

“Morgan fought me for three years, but hopefully has learned her lesson,” Trump wrote in the post. “These things usually don’t work out, but she has strong Republican support, and I’m not doing this for me, I’m doing it for them. Let’s see what happens.”

Morgan Ortagus was selected Friday afternoon to serve as deputy Mideast envoy. (Fox News)

TRUMP’S PICKS SO FAR: HERE’S WHO WILL BE ADVISING THE NEW PRESIDENT

He added she will “hopefully” be an asset to Witkoff.

“We seek to bring calm and prosperity to a very troubled region,” Trump wrote. “I expect great results, and soon!”

FORMER GEORGIA SENATOR KELLY LOEFFLER TO SERVE ON TRUMP’S INAUGURAL COMMITTEE

Trump speaks behind a microphone wearing a blue suit, white shirt and red tie

President-elect Donald Trump picked former State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus to serve as deputy Mideast envoy Friday afternoon. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Ortagus, an active U.S. Navy Reserve intelligence officer, served as spokesperson at the Department of State from 2019 to 2021, where she was a member of Trump’s Abraham Accords team.

THESE ARE THE TOP NAMES IN CONTENTION FOR DEFENSE SECRETARY UNDER TRUMP

Previously, she worked at the Department of the Treasury as a financial intelligence analyst and served as Deputy U.S. Treasury Attaché to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from 2010 to 2011.

Morgan Ortagus, a former State Department spokesperson, was selected Friday afternoon to serve as deputy Mideast envoy.

She is also the founder of Polaris National Security and the host of “The Morgan Ortagus Show” on Sirius XM.

Roman Pipko – U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Estonia

Pipko, who was born and raised in Estonia, represented U.S. interests in the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the Russian American Enterprise Fund.

“Roman has represented American companies, negotiating projects in Mongolia, Africa, Russia, Western Europe, and his native Estonia, in cooperation with U.S. Government Agencies, and has worked with Foreign Governments on the enforcement of U.S. sanctions,” Trump wrote. “As a legal immigrant, he has lived the promise of America, and I trust that he will advance American interests in his new role.”

Pipko is a graduate of Columbia University and Yale Law School.

Tammy Bruce was selected as the next spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State. (John Lamparski/Getty Images)

Bruce will be joining Marco Rubio, nominee for United States Secretary of State, as State Department spokesperson.

Bruce, a political analyst, received her bachelor’s degree in political science at the University of Southern California.

“After being a liberal activist in the 1990s, [she] saw the lies and fraud of the Radical Left, and quickly became one of the strongest Conservative voices on Radio and Television,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “As one of the longest serving News Contributors, Tammy has brought TRUTH to the American People for over two decades. I know she will. bring that same strength of conviction and fearless spirit to her new position as State Department Spokesperson.

Alexandra Koch is a breaking news writer for Fox News Digital. Prior to joining Fox News, Alexandra covered breaking news, crime, religion, and the military in the southeast.

Politics

Meet the 9 new House members from California

Published

7 hours ago

January 3, 2025

Press Room

Meet the 9 new House members from California

WASHINGTON — Friday was the first day of work for California’s nine new House members, and their first order of business involved typical congressional chaos, as Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) narrowly won reelection to his role after almost losing the first round of voting.

The nine new representatives — all Democrats, including three who flipped Republican seats — cast their votes for Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.). But Johnson, who has presided over the chamber since fall 2023, eked out a win.

For the record:

4:31 p.m. Jan. 3, 2025An earlier version of this report said former Rep. Michelle Steel flipped a congressional seat in 2020 held by Rep. Katie Porter. She defeated Rep. Harley Rouda.

As a Democratic stronghold on the West Coast, California is home to a bevy of Democratic leaders in Congress. Reps. Pete Aguilar (D-Redlands) and Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) hold the positions of House Democratic Caucus chair and vice chair, respectively.

The state lost many of its heavyweights in recent years, however — notably Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), who stepped down as House speaker to pass the torch of leadership to Jeffries. Although she no longer holds a position of leadership, Pelosi remains a powerful figure among her congressional colleagues. Still recovering from a hip surgery, Pelosi smiled from the House floor Friday as she hugged Jeffries after casting her vote for him as speaker.

Kevin McCarthy, the Bakersfield Republican who served as House speaker before a historic ouster, left Congress in 2023. Longtime Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein died in 2023. And after Vice President Kamala Harris lost the presidential election, California will no longer have a leader in the White House.

Still, as the most populous state in the nation, California enjoys the most representation in the House with 52 delegates — down one after the 2020 census showed a population decline. Nine Californians officially took their oath of office Friday afternoon to join the 119th Congress.

Here are California’s newest representatives:

Rep. Derek Tran (D-Garden Grove): Tran won a razor-thin election against incumbent Rep. Michelle Steel, a Republican who held the 45th Congressional District seat in Orange County for two terms. Steel herself flipped the seat in 2020 from Democratic Rep. Harley Rouda.

Rep. David Min (D-Irvine): When Democratic Rep. Katie Porter decided to run for U.S. Senate, Min, then a state senator, ran and won the seat, keeping it under Democratic control.

Rep. Gil Cisneros (D-Covina): Cisneros is a familiar name around California politics, having served in a different congressional district previously. He easily glided to victory in his safely Democratic San Gabriel Valley district, succeeding retiring Rep. Grace Napolitano.

Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale): Friedman, a former Assembly member, is now representing central Los Angeles County, taking over the seat long held by Adam B. Schiff, who handily won California’s open Senate seat.

Rep. Luz Rivas (D-North Hollywood): Rivas, a former California Assembly member and nonprofit leader, easily won the Democratic 29th Congressional District, representing the San Fernando Valley.

Rep. George Whitesides (D-Agua Dulce): Whitesides defeated GOP Rep. Mike Garcia, flipping the northeastern Los Angeles County seat from red to blue.

Rep. Adam Gray (D-Merced): The race in the Central Valley’s 13th Congressional District was the last election in the country to be called, as Gray flipped the seat from Republican Rep. John Duarte. Gray, a former state lawmaker, pitched himself as a centrist Democrat to win over the Central Valley’s largely agricultural population.

Rep. Sam Liccardo (D-San José): Liccardo, a former mayor of San José, is representing the Bay Area in Congress.

Rep. Lateefah Simon (D-Oakland): Simon is taking over the seat vacated by Rep. Barbara Lee, the longtime Democratic representative who lost the primary race for U.S. Senate.