Politics
Video: How Kash Patel, Trump’s F.B.I. Pick, Plans to Reshape the Bureau
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How Kash Patel, Trump’s F.B.I. Pick, Plans to Reshape the Bureau
Donald Trump’s pick to lead the F.B.I. has called for firing the agency’s top officials, shutting down its Washington headquarters and has vowed to investigate the president-elect’s political adversaries.
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“I’d shut down the F.B.I. Hoover building on Day 1, and reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep state. And I’d take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals. Go be cops. You’re cops, go be cops.” “A man who’s also been with me just about from the beginning. He’s tough, he’s smart. He loves our country and he is a warrior, Kash Patel.” “We are blessed by God to have Donald Trump be our juggernaut of justice, to be our leader, to be our continued warrior in the arena. I am going to go on a government gangsters manhunt in Washington, D.C., for our great president. Who’s coming with me? And we have to take out not just the government gangsters, but the mainstream media, the ones that perpetuated the fake news narratives. We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you.”
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Politics
U.S. job growth bounces back in November, a reassuring sign that the labor market remains healthy
WASHINGTON — Job growth rebounded in November from the weather-related stall in hiring the previous month, fresh evidence that the U.S. labor market remains healthy despite signs of a slowing economy overall, according to new government data released Friday.
But the nation’s unemployment rate edged up to 4.2% last month from 4.1% as more people reported being unemployed and others left the labor force. That is still low by historical standards, although the rate has crept up from 3.7% at the start of the year.
California’s most recent unemployment rate, for October, was 5.4%. And the state has lagged behind the nation in job growth.
The U.S. job gains reported Friday were slightly stronger than what most economists had expected. Still, the pace of hiring nationally has been on a cooling trend from earlier this year. And with the rise in unemployment, financial markets are betting that the Federal Reserve will make another quarter-point rate cut at its last policy-setting meeting of the year on Dec. 18.
The central bank is striving to strike a balance between maintaining steady job gains and continuing its efforts to bring inflation down to its 2% target by keeping interest rates higher than usual. A key measure of core inflation was most recently at 2.8%.
Friday’s report showed that employers nationwide added 227,000 jobs in November, led by big gains in healthcare and leisure and hospitality. Government also added a sizable number of jobs. Taken together, these three sectors accounted for 62% of all the jobs added last month.
But the retail industry, which once tended to add a lot of seasonal help in late fall, lost 28,000 jobs in November and its payrolls have barely grown all year, a reflection of continuing difficulties at brick-and-mortar stores and some recent softening in retail sales. Online sales on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, saw strong increases while physical stores showed modest gains.
November’s overall job gains included a reversal of temporary losses in the prior month, when only 36,000 jobs were added, thanks to hurricanes and a strike by Boeing workers, which has since ended.
“Firms continue to manage their workforce carefully,” said Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at the tax and consulting firm RSM US. He said the recent tally “speaks to a remarkable stability across the labor force even as finding a job is becoming a bit more difficult as firms become far more selective with whom they are hiring.”
California’s employment statistics for November won’t be released until Dec. 20. Some analysts, though, say Friday’s national jobs report and other recent patterns suggest that California probably hasn’t been keeping pace.
In October, employers in California shed 5,500 jobs, even though the state wasn’t affected by the hurricanes. The state has greater exposure to international trade, which has felt the effects of a strong dollar and weaker growth in China, said Sung Won Sohn, professor of economics and finance at Loyola Marymount University.
Hiring in the real estate sector has been sluggish, and it’s been slow in two of the state’s leading industries — technology and film — both of which have gone through hard times. Last month, U.S. jobs in the motion picture business were up a meager 1,900 from October. Manufacturing employment in California has been falling at a faster rate than nationally.
“In a nutshell, it’s too expensive for employees to live and work in California,” Sohn said.
Nationally, the economy is slowing from its robust pace earlier this year. So far in this quarter, the nation’s gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic activity, looks to be expanding at roughly half the 3% annual rate in prior months.
Job growth, meanwhile, has been more volatile lately, but over the last three months payrolls increased on average by 173,000, which is down from near 200,000 in the prior 12 months.
In November, average hourly earnings for all employees in the private sector rose by 13 cents, to $35.61. That’s a 4% increase from a year ago, which is about one percentage point above the annual rate of inflation.
Politics
Conservatives worry Congress won't have 'spine' for spending overhaul after DOGE meetings
Republicans have big plans for spending cuts next year, but some GOP lawmakers are doubting Congress can muster the momentum for significant changes.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, whom President-elect Trump tapped to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an advisory panel on cutting spending and the national debt, were on Capitol Hill Thursday for a series of meetings with lawmakers on how Congress and the White House can work together to achieve that goal.
And while that advisory panel is chiefly aimed at what executive actions Trump could take, lawmakers are conceding that significant, lasting change must be achieved through legislation. And some Republicans are skeptical they can get there.
“The problem’s in that room,” said Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., referring to other GOP lawmakers who met with Musk and Ramaswamy.
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“These guys, you know, they talk real tough,” but they did not vote in ways he believed showed they were serious about cutting spending.
“You don’t see a lot of that. Now, when is that going to start? Is it going to start just because Elon and Vivek [address us]?” Burchett asked. “I just worry about us losing steam. … We’ve got to get some guts, and people have got to hold us accountable.”
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Retiring Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., told Fox News “a lot of members” stood up to suggest ways to “save money” during Thursday afternoon’s brainstorming session with Republicans and the DOGE duo.
“One would think more of them would have been willing to vote, cast votes on the floor of the House in order to do those things early,” Bishop added.
The DOGE discussions have opened up longstanding wounds within the House GOP, whose members spent a significant amount of the 118th Congress battling among themselves over how to navigate government funding and other fiscal issues.
The national debt recently surpassed $36 trillion.
A senior House GOP aide expressed optimism about the new goal but added that Musk and Ramaswamy were “swinging for the fences.”
“The hard part is once they find the stuff to cut, I think it’s Congress who has to do the actual cutting, right?” the aide said.
Another senior GOP aide said, “The mission of DOGE is worthy and absolutely necessary, but nothing is going to change. We aren’t going to cut spending like we [have to] to get our fiscal house in order, and we aren’t going to slash waste at any significant level.”
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Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, also skeptical, told Republicans at Thursday’s meeting they needed to “grow a spine” to actually move meaningful spending cuts.
“I’ve said to my colleagues, ‘If you can’t print money, if, literally, it was banned today, what would you do?’ You would do what you do for your home budget. You would say, ‘Well, we can’t take a vacation here. I can’t get a fancy new car because I need to get braces for my child,’” Roy told WMAL radio host Larry O’Connor.
“We don’t ever do that, and, until we do, all of the DOGE waste-cutting in the world won’t help. We’ve got to do both. We need the waste-cutting, but we need Congress to grow a spine.”
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Some Republicans are skeptical of having Musk and Ramaswamy lead the charge.
“They had no game plan — a wish list that they’re giving to Santa and the American people that will never be even remotely accomplished,” one GOP lawmaker, granted anonymity to speak freely, told Fox News Digital of Thursday’s meeting.
The GOP lawmaker called DOGE a “magical department that has been erected out of thin air,” and pointed out its logo was heavily inspired by a cryptocurrency known as “dogecoin” that Musk has backed.
“They’re going to run into a brick wall called ‘members of Congress who know how to do our job,’” the lawmaker said.
Politics
A city council race was tied so this California city drew straws to decide who won
When it came down to deciding a tied race for a Galt City Council seat, the longest straw won.
Three people ran this year for two open seats on the City Council: Tim Reed won one of them with 5,870 votes, according to the Sacramento County Registrar of Voters. But Mathew Pratton and Bonnie Rodriguez tied with 3,882 votes each, meaning they had to put to a test a tiebreaker voters approved earlier this year.
Ahead of Tuesday’s regularly scheduled City Council meeting, Pratton and Rodriguez both drew straws. Rodriguez drew the short straw, making Pratton the winner.
“It’s pretty crazy for it to come down to this,” Pratton told KCRA-TV. “Each one, it got a little closer and got a little closer. So, it was pretty interesting.”
Galt is a city south of Sacramento with a population of about 26,000. Galt City Clerk Tina Huber told CBS News that deciding the outcome of a tied race by drawing straws would be much cheaper than holding a special election at a cost of at least $100,000. The cost of a pack of straws: $3.
“Having a special election is extremely expensive, especially for a small city. Instead of pushing those funds on the city taxpayers, they voted to draw straws,” she added.
Rodriguez told the outlet that she and Pratton are friends.
“We have texted back and forth,” she added. “And at one point, he joked that in order to solve it, maybe we need to do a calf roping contest or something. It’s all in good fun.”
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