Politics
Trump raises millions in ritzy Atlanta neighborhood that wants to secede over violent crime
Former President Donald Trump pulled in millions at a fundraiser in a swanky neighborhood of Atlanta that has for years railed against the Democrat-led city’s spiraling crime rate and lack of support for the police – even working to secede from the city altogether over the policies.
“Our digital online fundraising continues to skyrocket, our major donor investments are climbing, and Democrats are running scared of the fundraising prowess of President Trump. We are not only raising the necessary funds, but we are deploying strategic assets that will help send President Trump back to the White House and carry Republicans over the finish line,” Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung told Fox News Digital of fundraising efforts this week.
Trump attended a fundraiser Wednesday afternoon in Buckhead, a wealthy commercial and residential district in Atlanta, where local leaders joined the 45th president, including: former Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, as well as the co-founder of Home Depot, Bernie Marcus, and poultry industry tycoon Tommy Bagwell, Fox 5 reported.
Trump pulled in more than $15 million on Wednesday, from both the Buckhead event and another fundraiser in Orlando, a campaign official said. Guests in Buckhead spent at least $6,600 per couple, and as much as $250,000 if they wished to be part of the event’s welcoming committee, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
TRUMP COULD HAUL IN MASSIVE AMOUNT OF CAMPAIGN CASH DURING ATLANTA, ORLANDO FUNDRAISING SWING: WHAT TO KNOW
Former President Donald Trump arrives at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Georgia on Wednesday, April 10, 2024. Trump is visiting the state to host a campaign fundraising event. (Robin Rayne for Fox News Digital)
The Buckhead fundraiser comes after Trump has repeatedly hammered a return of law and order policies across the nation if he’s re-elected come Nov. 5.
For Buckhead residents, spiraling crime rates have been a hot-button issue they have not taken lightly.
Dubbed the “Beverly Hills of the South,” residents of the Atlanta district tried to secede from the city back in 2021 through last year, as violent crimes such as homicides continued an upward trend, as well as when vehicle thefts and shoplifting spiked.
The wealthy district has a median household income of $109,774, with residents accounting for roughly one-fifth of Atlanta’s total population, according to the district’s website. Bloomberg calculated last year that the district produces about 38% of Atlanta’s tax revenue, meaning a secession likely would have been financially devastating for the city.
TRUMP ATTENDS SLAIN NYPD OFFICER JONATHAN DILLER’S WAKE: ‘NEED LAW AND ORDER’
Multiple young men have reported being drugged and robbed after going out in Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood. (Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg)
Residents railed that city leaders weren’t properly handling crime as taxpayers paid the price.
“We are really feeling like this is a war zone, and I don’t say that lightly, especially given what you experienced in a war zone,” Buckhead City Committee CEO Bill White told “Fox & Friends First” back in 2022. “This is murder and mayhem… We are dealing with a mayor who voted to defund the police.”
Atlanta recorded a 30-year record high in homicides in 2021, at 158 deaths, while reports of rape skyrocketed by 236% in the first few months of 2022 compared to the same time period the year prior, motor vehicle thefts shot up by 61% in 2023 and shoplifting increased by 22% last year. Violent crimes in the city have since ticked down, but just this week, police in Atlanta announced they were investigating a shooting outside a Buckhead furniture store that left a man in critical condition, Fox 5 reported.
The Wendy’s restaurant where Rayshard Brooks was fatally shot burns during an Atlanta riot, June 13, 2020. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson, File)
Violent crimes skyrocketed across the nation in 2020, when the pandemic’s lockdowns upended day-to-day life, and protests and riots spread across the nation following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police. Activists and left-wing politicians echoed calls to defund the police in response to Floyd’s killing, including in Atlanta where the mayor at the time championed that the city had already been working on plans “reallocating” policing funds to community-based initiatives.
GEORGIA GOV. KEMP DEALS BLOW TO BUCKHEAD SUBURB TRYING TO SECEDE FROM ATLANTA OVER VIOLENT CRIME
Experts who have previously spoken to Fox Digital have pinned blame on 2020’s crime trend in part on anti-police rhetoric that washed over the nation, spurring mass resignations and early retirements from the force, as well as cops pulling back from proactively policing.
The downtown skyline in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., on Friday, Dec. 3, 2021. (Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“It’s obvious that police officers do not want to come work for a mayor or a city that does not back them, so Buckhead wants to take things into its own hands,” White said during the “Fox & Friends” interview in 2022.
“We’re short 180 police officers, so what are we supposed to do?” White continued. “They said this has never been done taking a part of a city out and making its own city from that, but we’re going to do it, and we’re going to absolutely love our police.”
TRUMP CAMPAIGN RAISES MORE THAN $50 MILLION AT FLORIDA FUNDRAISER: ‘HISTORIC’ HAUL
The effort to secede received support from some local Republican leaders, and notably received Trump’s backing, who railed against “RINO” politicians who did not come to the aid of residents demanding assistance with crime trends.
Former President Donald Trump arrives at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Georgia on Wednesday, April 10, 2024. Trump is visiting the state to host a campaign fundraising event. (Robin Rayne for Fox News Digital)
“What is happening in the City of Atlanta is nothing short of disgraceful. It’s national news and a regional embarrassment. The good people of Buckhead don’t want to be a part of defunding the police and the high crime that’s plaguing their communities,” Trump wrote in February of 2022. “However, RINOs like Governor Brian Kemp, the man responsible, along with his puppet master Mitch McConnell, for the loss of two Senate Seats and 2020 Presidential Vote, Lt. Governor Jeff Duncan, Speaker David Ralston, and State Senators Butch Miller, Jeff Mullis, and John Albers always talk a big game but they don’t deliver.
“What good is having Republican leaders if they are unwilling to fight for what they campaigned on? Every RINO must go! Let the voters decide on the very popular City of Buckhead proposal!”
The effort to secede ultimately failed in the state Senate last year, when all Democrats and a handful of Republicans delivered the blow with a 33-23 vote.
Former President Donald Trump pumps his fist as he arrives for a GOP fundraiser, Saturday, April 6, 2024, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)
This year, Trump has continued hammering the issue of crime trends and public safety, including in New York last month, when he attended the wake of an NYPD officer, Jonathan Diller, who was shot and killed allegedly by a career criminal. Trump called for “law and order” outside of the funeral home.
TRUMP PROMISES TO INDEMNIFY, PROTECT LAW ENFORCEMENT FOLLOWING NYPD JONATHAN DILLER’S DEATH
“The other day I was very honored to visit the family of an amazing man, New York Police Detective Jonathan Diller. You read about it, who was gunned down by a vicious thug, who was originally arrested by different law enforcement agencies over twenty-one times for very serious crimes. And the person with them was a known killer,” Trump said days later at a campaign stop in Wisconsin.
“We will very importantly restore law and order to our country, and I’m going to indemnify all police officers and law enforcement officials throughout the United States to protect them from being destroyed by the radical left for taking strong actions on crime,” Trump said.
Ahead of Trump’s fundraising event in Buckhead, the 45th president pulled in more than $50 million at a GOP fundraiser in Palm Beach on Saturday.
Politics
Trump signs order to protect Venezuela oil revenue held in US accounts
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President Donald Trump has signed an executive order blocking U.S. courts from seizing Venezuelan oil revenues held in American Treasury accounts.
The order states that court action against the funds would undermine U.S. national security and foreign policy objectives.
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President Donald Trump is pictured signing two executive orders on Sept. 19, 2025, establishing the “Trump Gold Card” and introducing a $100,000 fee for H-1B visas. He signed another executive order recently protecting oil revenue. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Trump signed the order on Friday, the same day that he met with nearly two dozen top oil and gas executives at the White House.
The president said American energy companies will invest $100 billion to rebuild Venezuela’s “rotting” oil infrastructure and push production to record levels following the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.
The U.S. has moved aggressively to take control of Venezuela’s oil future following the collapse of the Maduro regime.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Politics
Column: Some leaders will do anything to cling to positions of power
One of the most important political stories in American history — one that is particularly germane to our current, tumultuous time — unfolded in Los Angeles some 65 years ago.
Sen. John F. Kennedy, a Catholic, had just received his party’s nomination for president and in turn he shunned the desires of his most liberal supporters by choosing a conservative out of Texas as his running mate. He did so in large part to address concerns that his faith would somehow usurp his oath to uphold the Constitution. The last time the Democrats nominated a Catholic — New York Gov. Al Smith in 1928 — he lost in a landslide, so folks were more than a little jittery about Kennedy’s chances.
“I am fully aware of the fact that the Democratic Party, by nominating someone of my faith, has taken on what many regard as a new and hazardous risk,” Kennedy told the crowd at the Memorial Coliseum. “But I look at it this way: The Democratic Party has once again placed its confidence in the American people, and in their ability to render a free, fair judgment.”
The most important part of the story is what happened before Kennedy gave that acceptance speech.
While his faith made party leaders nervous, they were downright afraid of the impact a civil rights protest during the Democratic National Convention could have on November’s election. This was 1960. The year began with Black college students challenging segregation with lunch counter sit-ins across the Deep South, and by spring the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee had formed. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was not the organizer of the protest at the convention, but he planned to be there, guaranteeing media attention. To try to prevent this whole scene, the most powerful Black man in Congress was sent to stop him.
The Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. was also a warrior for civil rights, but the House representative preferred the legislative approach, where backroom deals were quietly made and his power most concentrated. He and King wanted the same things for Black people. But Powell — who was first elected to Congress in 1944, the same year King enrolled at Morehouse College at the age of 15 — was threatened by the younger man’s growing influence. He was also concerned that his inability to stop the protest at the convention would harm his chance to become chairman of a House committee.
And so Powell — the son of a preacher, and himself a Baptist preacher in Harlem — told King that if he didn’t cancel, Powell would tell journalists a lie that King was having a homosexual affair with his mentor, Bayard Rustin. King stuck to his plan and led a protest — even though such a rumor would not only have harmed King, but also would have undermined the credibility of the entire civil rights movement. Remember, this was 1960. Before the March on Washington, before passage of the Voting Rights Act, before the dismantling of the very Jim Crow laws Powell had vowed to dismantle when first running for office.
That threat, my friends, is the most important part of the story.
It’s not that Powell didn’t want the best for the country. It’s just that he wanted to be seen as the one doing it and was willing to derail the good stemming from the civil rights movement to secure his own place in power. There have always been people willing to make such trade-offs. Sometimes they dress up their intentions with scriptures to make it more palatable; other times they play on our darkest fears. They do not care how many people get hurt in the process, even if it’s the same people they profess to care for.
That was true in Los Angeles in 1960.
That was true in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021.
That is true in the streets of America today.
Whether we are talking about an older pastor who is threatened by the growing influence of a younger voice or a president clinging to office after losing an election: To remain king, some men are willing to burn the entire kingdom down.
YouTube: @LZGrandersonShow
Politics
Federal judge blocks Trump from cutting childcare funds to Democratic states over fraud concerns
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A federal judge Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from stopping subsidies on childcare programs in five states, including Minnesota, amid allegations of fraud.
U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian, a Biden appointee, didn’t rule on the legality of the funding freeze, but said the states had met the legal threshold to maintain the “status quo” on funding for at least two weeks while arguments continue.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said it would withhold funds for programs in five Democratic states over fraud concerns.
The programs include the Child Care and Development Fund, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, and the Social Services Block Grant, all of which help needy families.
USDA IMMEDIATELY SUSPENDS ALL FEDERAL FUNDING TO MINNESOTA AMID FRAUD INVESTIGATION
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it would withhold funds for programs in five Democratic states over fraud concerns. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
“Families who rely on childcare and family assistance programs deserve confidence that these resources are used lawfully and for their intended purpose,” HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill said in a statement on Tuesday.
The states, which include California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York, argued in court filings that the federal government didn’t have the legal right to end the funds and that the new policy is creating “operational chaos” in the states.
U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian at his nomination hearing in 2022. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
In total, the states said they receive more than $10 billion in federal funding for the programs.
HHS said it had “reason to believe” that the programs were offering funds to people in the country illegally.
‘TIP OF THE ICEBERG’: SENATE REPUBLICANS PRESS GOV WALZ OVER MINNESOTA FRAUD SCANDAL
The table above shows the five states and their social safety net funding for various programs which are being withheld by the Trump administration over allegations of fraud. (AP Digital Embed)
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is leading the lawsuit, called the ruling a “critical victory for families whose lives have been upended by this administration’s cruelty.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is leading the lawsuit, called the ruling a “critical victory for families whose lives have been upended by this administration’s cruelty.” (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
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Fox News Digital has reached out to HHS for comment.
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