Fox News Sunday 12-29-2024
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Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. Recently, I asked Mint Mobile's legal team if big wireless companies are allowed to raise prices due to inflation. They said yes. And then when I asked if raising prices technically violates those onerous two-year contracts, they said, what the f*** are you talking about, you insane Hollywood a**hole?

So to recap, we're cutting the price of Mint Unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. $45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes per detail. I'm Shannon Bream. As President-elect Donald Trump prepares an ambitious agenda for his first 100 days, a rift is brewing between his big tech supporters and the MAGA base.

I'm looking at a situation where we don't have a lot of Americans who are willing to fill those jobs or are capable of filling those jobs. USA STEM graduates, of which there is a surplus right now for jobs, can't get those jobs because they're competing with H-1B visas. Fallout over immigration after Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk defend work visas for highly skilled workers despite pushback from the America First crowd. We'll get reaction from Republican Senator Eric Schmidt then.

President Biden takes new actions on the environment and limiting the number of new judges President Trump will be able to nominate as the end of the Biden era approaches. We'll talk with House Democrat Ro Khanna. Plus, the new Congress is sworn in on Friday. And right out of the gate, the fate of Speaker Johnson hangs in the balance.

It's really not clear who else would be in the waiting there. I think President Trump behind the scenes will ultimately decide who the next speaker will be. Our Sunday panel on the leadership fight on Capitol Hill. All right now on Fox News Sunday. Hello from Fox News Sunday in Washington. On this last Sunday of 2024, we begin with a Fox News alert.

South Korea suffering its deadliest passenger plane disaster ever on its soil this morning. We want to warn you, the video you're about to see is disturbing.

A Boeing 737-800 jet used by a low-budget airliner crash-landed, veered off the runway and slammed into a concrete wall, bursting into flames. 181 people were on board. Only two people are known to have survived. Investigators are sifting through the charred remains, trying to determine the cause of the crash. The airport control tower had issued a bird strike warning moments before the pilots declared a mayday.

In the Middle East, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to undergo surgery to remove an enlarged prostate today after he was diagnosed with an infection. And here at home, SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying four micro-geo-satellites from Cape Canaveral in Florida early this morning. That follows a successful launch Saturday in California.

And the new Congress is set to be sworn in Friday right here in Washington. In a moment, we will talk with Senator Eric Schmidt about that and much more. But first, we've got team coverage. Lucas Tomlinson in St. Croix covering President Biden and Matt Finn in West Palm Beach, Florida, following President-elect Donald Trump. And that we begin with you.

Shannon, here in West Palm Beach, the high-profile meetings are happening to hammer out critical issues and get everyone in alignment for Trump's first 100 days. But late this week, a bit of a clash arose over an immigration issue. After a few days of flare-up inside the Trump world over H-1B visas, the president-elect has settled the matter, saying he will continue to support the visas.

MAGA leader Elon Musk led the charge, fiercely defending the visas, writing in part, the reason I'm in America is because of H-1B. I will go to war on this issue.

But some MAGA supporters say the H-1Bs, which historically allowed highly skilled workers into the U.S., are taking American jobs. I think what a lot of people in the party want to do is eliminate the fraud in this H-1B program. Another brewing topic, the wildly popular TikTok app that has more than 150 million users in the U.S.,

Trump, who previously tried to ban the video app in the U.S. because it's owned by a Chinese company linked to the CCP, is now asking the U.S. Supreme Court not to shut it down.

The U.S. issued a January 19th deadline for TikTok to divest from its Chinese-owned parent company or be banned here. But now Trump says he wants to make the final decision on TikTok's fate. A spokesperson telling Fox, as the incoming chief executive, President Trump is the right constitutional actor to resolve the dispute through political means. On immigration, Canadian cabinet members visited West Palm Beach on Friday for talks with Trump's camp.

Trump is threatening 25 percent tariffs against Canada if it doesn't stem what he calls a flow of drugs and illegal migrants into our country. Trump's incoming border czar says they've already begun to secure the border. I've talked to the foreign minister of Canada and I've been out to Arizona talking to the sheriffs out there. So we're not waiting for January 20th.

This week, a judge ordered the Biden administration to stop auctioning off pieces of the Trump era border wall. President-elect Trump calls that decision a major win for America. Shannon. All right, Matt Finn in Florida. Thank you very much, Matt. We go now to Lucas Tomlinson in St. Croix, the U.S. Virgin Islands, where President Biden is on vacation. Hello, Lucas.

Hello, Shannon. And President Biden and his family have been enjoying a leisurely vacation here in St. Croix. Yesterday, the president was spotted leaving church alongside his recently pardoned son, Hunter. President Biden spoke briefly to the press.

The White House has taken steps to so-called Trump-proof Biden's agenda, including setting new ambitious climate goals, something he dared his successor to scrap. That's going to be politically costly and economically unsound for the next president to strap to cover.

Other parts of the Biden agenda have taken a hit. A Texas judge ruled Friday the Biden administration cannot sell unused border wall material. The incoming president called the decision a major, crucial win for America.

President-elect Trump's border czar criticized the White House for selling components needed to finish the wall. They wait four years just before we take control to sell a main piece of our plan to secure that border. Biden has told aides to spend as much as possible from the four massive spending packages he helped push through Congress. The president also vetoed a bill that would have added $6.

66 new federal judges, and a sign he wants to deny the Trump administration the ability to make more appointments. The Washington Post reports Biden has looked back on his time in office with some regrets. Quote, Biden has also said he should have picked someone other than Merrick Garland as attorney general, complaining about the Justice Department's slowness under Garland in prosecuting Trump and its aggressiveness in prosecuting Biden's son Hunter.

President Biden also regrets dropping out of the presidential race. That's also according to that Washington Post report, Shannon. OK, Lucas Tomlinson reporting from St. Croix. Lucas, thank you very much. Joining us now, Missouri Senator Eric Schmidt. Welcome to the show, Senator. Good to be with you.

Okay, so let's start here with this fight over the H-1B visas, which has gotten really ugly on social media. Elon Musk obviously supports them, says the tech companies need them. He was an H-1B visa holder himself at one point. In the middle of this fight, he's referred to people within the GOP who are hateful, unrepentant racists.

And another post on XC said this. Take a big step back and blank yourself in the face. I will go to war on this issue, the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend. On the other side of this, we've got longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon, who says the whole thing is a scam that's hurting American workers. And he adds this. We are going to win this. They are going to surrender. They are not going to continue to destroy American citizens.

citizens and American engineering by this scam. And this is a total, let me repeat, if you didn't get it, it's a total and complete scam. Now, President Trump brought together a coalition of all kinds of groups and people and thinkers to win. How does he now manage them in the middle of a fight like this that's gone very public? Well, first of all, I think it's important to acknowledge that

This is a very important debate to have, and it's happening on X right now, which is a free and open platform. It's something that I fought for when I was attorney general in Missouri. We sued the Biden administration for their censorship regime. And so I think this is an important, thoughtful debate that's happening. But the context that we need to, I think, keep in mind here is,

is that the American workers have been left behind by this economy. Many factory jobs have been sent overseas, and I think the abuses of the H-1B program have been evident, where you have sort of the sons and daughters of those factory workers who lost their jobs, got white-collar jobs as accountants, and they're training their replacements, the foreign workers who are undercutting their wages. So I think the solution here, President Trump has actually articulated in 2020, is to reform that system.

And, you know, get rid of the abuses, make it merit based and make sure that we're not undercutting wages and having Americans replace their train, their foreign replacements. And also keep in mind here that the big debate here and the big issue that's coming is actually the border. And we have 15 million people here, Shannon, that are here illegally, that Joe Biden, the Democrats have let in.

through an open borders policy. These people who are writing white papers for liberal think tanks were writing policy for the United States of America. And now we have crime, we have fentanyl, we have a national security risk. So the first order of business, I think, for the Trump administration is the deportations that are going to begin.

on day one, the executive orders that are coming. I do think President Trump has talked about reforming this system, the H-1B system. But the broader issue here is mass migration that has undercut jobs, wages, and increased housing costs. So I think that's where the focus is going to be. That's what the mandate President Trump got was to secure our southern border. And you heard Tom Holman talk about how he's going to go do that.

Okay, so I want to get to immigration more specifically, but before we leave this H-1B visa issue, the New York Post had a conversation with President Trump yesterday, and here's what they say. They say he supports immigration visas for highly skilled workers appearing to side with Elon Musk. Quote, I have many H-1B visas on my property.

I've been a big believer, a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It's a great program. He's been critical of it in the past. And to be fair, The New York Times seems to question whether he was talking about these H-1B visas because they say he's used H-2B visas and H-2A visas.

on a lot of his Trump properties, but they didn't see use of the H-1B visa. So I'm not sure that that's been clarified yet, but he's been critical about this. You talk about undercutting the American worker, and that seems to be the biggest argument against that is that people who are brought over as foreign workers are necessarily supplanting American workers who may be qualified, may want these jobs, but the foreign workers are paid less. So I want to talk through some possible legislative changes to this because

the group that is the Federation for American Immigration has talked about things they'd want to see changed that possibly you and Congress could tackle. Not allowing the H-1B visa to be a pathway to citizenship, preventing employers from paying those foreign workers less than Americans in the same jobs, requiring proof from employers that they first sought and offered these positions to qualified Americans,

and that they want tougher enforcement mechanisms, investigations, and random audits. Is that the kind of thing you think that your colleagues, whether just you as Republicans or in a bipartisan way, could get behind?

Well, I think there's been a lot of abuse and that's what's driving, Shannon, a lot of this discussion right now is the abuse that's happened with this, where you see qualified Americans being denied a lot of these jobs because a company can go out and hire cheaper labor from a foreign country. Right. That is really the abuse. And so the reforms that President Trump put forward in 2020, which, by the way, were canceled by Joe Biden, canceled by Joe Biden, had to do with right now it's a lottery.

There's really no merit to this. It's just a lottery. So you see companies trying to game the system. I.T. companies sometimes putting 30,000 applications in, hoping to get 10,000 from a random lottery. That is a system I think that needs to be reformed. President Trump's talked about that. And then also undercutting wages by bringing in somebody, you know, under a loophole, for example. You can't have it be the same employer, but it's a consulting firm.

So those are the kinds of things that I think the starting point that President Trump articulated when he wanted to reform this very broken system back in 2020 that Joe Biden nixed. He came in under the auspices of undoing everything that was President Trump, including the 94 executive orders he issued, getting rid of remain in Mexico, getting, you know, stopping the construction of the border wall.

All the things that President Trump was trying to do to shore up the border and make sure we were putting American workers first. And I think you're going to continue to see that that's the mandate that President Trump got. It's what he talked about on the campaign trail. It's we have to, and Shannon, one last point here. This is a longer term conversation too. We have to invest in American workers.

I think what people get frustrated by is they see $175 billion going to Ukraine. They see millions of dollars going to other countries to teach them about DEI. Meanwhile, our education system has completely failed in many ways, and there hasn't been a focus on the American worker. And I think that's this multi-ethnic working class party. The Republican Party is now led by President Trump. I think there's a lot of ground to be made up here in putting American workers first.

point, the broader conversation about immigration. The president has talked about putting a stop to illegal immigration, getting control of the southern border, but also deporting potentially millions of people who are already here. I want to play something that your colleague, Senator Alex Padilla, says about actually getting those people out of the country. So the next time we hear Republicans say that they support Trump's plan to deport waves, waves of undocumented immigrants, let's be clear about what comes with that.

Higher prices for American families. They're supporting the forced removal of millions of hardworking community members, 80% of whom have lived here 10 years or more. So what do you say to critics who say this is going to tear apart existing families and it's actually going to hurt the U.S. economy by taking millions of workers out of the mix? Well, I would point out to my friend from California that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama deported 17 million people. Okay.

Okay, so the idea of deporting people who are here illegally is not a new concept. In fact, the policy and the law of the United States of America since, you know, for 200 years is if you come here illegally, you are detained. If you don't have a valid reason, like asylum, and by the way, 9 out of 10 asylum claims are bogus, then you are deported. That is how we have always operated. Only recently, quite frankly, in the last four years when the radical left has taken over the White House,

And these people do not believe in borders. They think they're arbitrary lines on a map that we're all world citizens and everybody should be able to come here. They could put up in a luxury hotel in New York at the expense of taxpayers. They look the other way when an illegal immigrant sets a woman on fire at a subway. This is all part. And they, by the way, you don't need to be a citizen to be counted in the census. There was this was the goal for them all along. The truth is we have laws in this country. They're just not being enforced.

So President Trump's going to come in. He's going to enforce those laws, bring back Remain in Mexico, which creates a disincentive for the cartels to traffic people because they're waiting. You know, the waiting room is in Mexico, not here in the United States where they're just released into the interior, never to be seen again and given a court date 10 years from now. That's what's happening right now, Shannon. That's the system that's totally broken. So President Trump is actually just going to enforce existing laws and deport people who are here illegally.

And so I think that's common on day one. I think you're going to see a flurry of executive orders to that point. And the American people want that. You see that among Hispanic voters. You see them on black voters. You see them on white voters. Every socioeconomic group supported that the exit polling supports that. That's why President Trump won. He was very clear about this. And I think it's important. It's a.

big important part about his mandate that he received. Yeah. And we saw that in our Fox News voter analysis, as you mentioned as well. We know there's an ambitious agenda ahead for those first hundred days. We know there are confirmation battles to come that you'll be in the middle of as well. So, Senator, we hope you'll come back in the meantime. Happy New Year. We'll do it. Happy New Year. OK, up next, we're going to look ahead to the new Congress from the other side of the aisle. Congressman Ro Khanna, a Democrat who represents Silicon Valley, weighs in on this fight over importing high tech workers as the America First Coalition vows to fight back.

A mystery. Fox News Audio presents the Fox Nation Investigates podcast. The Menendez brothers, monsters or misunderstood? We have evolved to understanding that this kind of stuff can happen. Judge Jeanine Pirro and a panel of experts break down the Menendez brothers' new fight for freedom. And their defense attorney explains why he's optimistic he can clear their names.

Are these convicted killers monsters or just misunderstood? Listen and follow starting January 7th at foxtruecrime.com or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. I am not a Democrat in the form of what the Democratic Party has turned itself into, the national brand, absolutely not. The brand got so bad. The D brand has been so maligned from the standpoint of it's just, it's toxic.

Retiring West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin with some tough talk for the Democrat Party as he wraps up a decades-long career as one of the strongest centrist voices in the upper chamber. Joining me now to react, California Congressman Ro Khanna. Welcome back. Good to see you, sir.

Thank you, Shannon. Thanks for having me. OK, I want to get to that because you have also been vocal about what the party needs to do is sort of some introspection post-election. But I got to get to you because you represent Silicon Valley on this H-1B visa issue that I talked about with Senator Schmidt. It's gotten really ugly on social media and part of that has gotten into culture. I want to read part of what Vivek Ramaswamy said.

posted on X in talking about this. He says a part of it comes down to the C word culture. Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long. A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math Olympiad champ or the jock over the valedictorian will not produce the best engineers. Well, Nikki Haley, former ambassador, responded to that saying there's nothing wrong with American workers or American culture. All you have

to do is look at the border and see how many want what we have. We should be investing and prioritizing in Americans, not foreign workers. What do you make of this culture argument and the need to invest more in American workers, American students to make sure they are up to taking these jobs and there won't be as great a need to look overseas?

Well, American culture is extraordinary, and I respectfully disagree with Vivek. You know, I was a valedictorian in my high school, and they respected valedictorians and people who were exceptional at football and music. And what makes American culture extraordinary is that we—

celebrate the talent and genius and skills of people of diverse backgrounds. There's a reason that America leads in Nobel laureates in physics and in medicine and in chemistry. If there was some problem with the culture, we wouldn't be the world's greatest economy of 30 trillion. But one of the points that I think Elon and others are making is what makes America as exceptional is that we are a magnet for the world's talent. It's great that Elon Musk comes here. It's great that

Jensen, who started NVIDIA, is doing it here and not in Taiwan. We made a mistake when we lost Morris Chang, who was an immigrant here, educated at MIT. He leaves the United States. And guess what? He starts Taiwan Semiconductors. And now we don't have semiconductors in the United States. So we want the best talent coming here while reforming the abuses of the H-1B program. So let's talk about that, because critics will say

These aren't always people with specialized genius level technology. There are people who are doing jobs that could go to Americans. Neil Patel of The Daily Caller wrote a really lengthy post. People can check it out on X. I'm just going to read part of it. He says that big tech is the only group that actually benefits here. It's not the foreign worker. It's not the American worker. He says the system keeps many of these workers in a legal limbo, often for decades.

Workers tied down like this are less able to negotiate salary and benefits. That's the main reason big tech loves hiring H-1Bs. American workers who then have to compete with these foreign workers are thereby hurt by unfair labor conditions. He says the system is broken. It needs major reform. And if you don't see that, you don't understand what's happening or you're not being truthful. So let's talk about where you think there is room for reform.

Well, Neil is largely right on the need for reform. I have a bipartisan bill, which we introduced with former Representative David Bratt today. Paul Gosar, Frank Pallone and I are on it. And basically it would say you can't underpay these H-1B folks coming in and you shouldn't have lower skilled workers.

things that could be done by American workers. You shouldn't have that kind of category in the United States. It shouldn't be for accountants or entry-level IT jobs. It should really be for exceptional talent. And we can have that balance. And I hope President Trump actually looks at that bipartisan bill that would reform this. But, you know, Senator Schmidt said that America's towns have been hollowed out. And he's absolutely right. And workers have gotten a raw deal because jobs have been offshored. Let's just be honest about...

this H-1B program. We're talking about 85,000 people. Sometimes it goes up to 200,000 because there are too many exemptions. But the real challenge in America is how did we lose steel? How did we lose aluminum? How did we allow for deindustrialization? You want to bring back new jobs. You need to have the investment in reindustrialization of America and places left out. And that's what we should be talking about.

Okay, so with Elon and Vivek are not talking about this H-1B visa program and getting into these epic fights on social media, they're now about the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE as people are calling it. Where do you think you or other Democrats could work with them on cutting government waste?

Well, I've gotten some criticism on my side because I said I'm open to working to cut programs that are not competitive. For example, the defense budget, 56 percent of discretionary budget. It's dominated by five primes. And Musk is saying that maybe we can disrupt that, have new competition so that we actually have a better national security strategy without all of the waste. If there are real proposals to do that, then Democrats should work.

with him if there are actually duplicative agencies that aren't efficient on taxpayer dollars that we should work with him. What I will not do is support any cuts to Social Security, any cuts to Medicare, any cuts to veteran benefits, any cuts to education programs that parents rely on. But there is no doubt that there's waste and where there is waste, we should work at putting the country first.

So let's get back to your reflections. You wrote some tough truths to your party after the loss in November of the White House, House and Senate. You said essentially they weren't listening to people where they are suffering pain. You said you've got to get to common sense on things like crime and safety and those kinds of issues. How has your analysis been received internally? Do you feel like Democrats have a path forward?

Absolutely, we have a path forward, but we need generational change. Look, people are upset with the system. They're upset that too many billionaires are spending money on our elections. They're upset that politicians offshore jobs and lost industry for decades. They're upset that health care is being denied to too many Americans. And while this is going on, you have some of the people in our party have been in Congress for 20, 30 years, and they're not change agents. We need a new generation to step up. We need people who were part

the failed status quo to step aside. And I think the vibrancy of the House Democratic Caucus, where you have new generational leaders and some in the Senate, is what's going to revitalize this party. So there was a piece in The Hill, as you get ready to come back here, swearing in the new Congress, got to elect a speaker, do all of these things.

This piece in The Hill by two attorneys said that Congress needs to block President Trump from being certified as the winner. They say Democrats need to take a stand against electoral college votes for a person disqualified by the Constitution from holding office. And they have arguments about that. No less is required by their oath to support and defend the Constitution. Now, in 2016, a number of Democrats did push back against certifying the first win by President Trump. What do you expect this time around?

We're going to certify the election. I plan to show up to the inauguration. It's not about President Trump. It's about honoring the American people. And we've got to get past this thing that everything has to be partisan. You know, when I put forward a proposal of common sense on H-1B reform, I had people on my side saying, why are you doing that, Roe? Let the Republicans fight. Let them destroy each other fighting.

That's the wrong approach. We're Americans first. We've got to be solution oriented. The American people just elected Donald Trump. I worked my heart out to oppose him. I went to every state, but we lost the election. We respect the American people. And now let's think about how we have a better message going forward. All right. So let me get you respond then to Jen Rubin, who writes an opinion column over the Washington Post. She says Democrats should not try to find common ground with Trump.

She says a depressingly high number of elected Democrats are declaring their intent to find, quote, common ground with President-elect Donald Trump and his, as she calls it, crackpot cabinet picks. Their naive tone-deaf declarations epitomize an infatuation with bipartisanship for bipartisanship's sake. She says you shouldn't be doing it. Your response.

We need to look at it issue by issue. No one is saying that we should work with Republicans or Donald Trump if there's any proposal to cut Social Security or if there is a proposal to politicize the Justice Department or if there is a proposal to abolish the Department of Education. Of course, Democrats will oppose that with our values. But if the president has actually a good idea to bring manufacturing back or to cut food,

wasteful defense spending or to make our food system safer and get the additives out of our food. Why wouldn't we want to work on things that are good for the American people? This is the part of politics that folks are sick about, that we're always looking at things from a partisan lens as opposed to what's good for America. And what they want actually is change agents, change agents on the Republican side and the Democratic side. Yeah, our numbers showed people desperately want to change in big numbers, more than 80 percent saying they want to

Complete upheaval or significant change. So there's definitely a theme there. All right, Congressman, we'll see you back here in the new year. Thank you always for your time and happy new year. Thank you. Happy New Year to you, Shannon. OK, disorder in the court. That's what many now fear after President Biden vetoed a bill that would have added 66 new federal judges to an understaffed judiciary. Our panel reacts to critics' claims that the move is blatantly partisan and it's aimed at hindering President Trump. Next.

America has the greatest. The president, this president, Joe Biden, did not want to give President-elect Donald Trump a chance to add more conservatism into our courts. Bottom line.

So President Biden vetoing bipartisan legislation with just weeks left in office, that measure would have added 66 judges to what lawmakers in a bipartisan way had argued is a desperately understaffed federal court system. Critics call the move blatantly political. Let's see what our panel thinks. Time for our Sunday group. USA Today White House correspondent Francesca Chambers.

Axios political politics reporter and co-author of the Axios Hill Letters Leaders Newsletter. I will get this right, Steph Kite. Philippe Reines, former deputy assistant secretary of state and senior advisor to Hillary Clinton and syndicated columnist Cal Thomas. Welcome to all of you.

So let's start with this bill. President Biden said this about why he vetoed it. He said it would create new judgeships in states where senators have sought to hold open existing judicial vacancies. Those efforts to hold open vacancies suggest that concerns about judicial economy and caseload are not the true motivating force behind passage of this bill now, Francesca.

This has turned into an issue where both parties are accusing the other one of playing politics. Before the election, the United States Senate passed this unanimously, but then the House didn't take it out for a vote until after the election. So now you have Democrats saying that their House Republicans only wanted to vote for it because Donald Trump had won the election and he would get to appoint a significant number of these judges into the role, whereas Democrats

You have Republicans accusing Democrats of playing politics because House Democrats didn't want to vote for it now. And then Biden ended up issuing a veto of this. So all around, you have lawmakers saying that the other side is at fault for this issue. So Chris Coons, Democrat senator, said this. He's one of the big sponsors of it. I'm disappointed by the outcome for my own state and for the federal judges throughout the country struggling under the burden of ever higher caseloads.

I've worked on this bill for years, and thanks to tireless bipartisan effort with Senator Young, it made it to the president's desk. So, Cal, he's saying we wanted to get this done in a bipartisan way. Whoever was going to be the next president? Well, he was right, of course. But look at what Senator Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden did at the beginning of the Biden administration. They had this clandestine meeting and came up with a plan to create as many federal judgeships with judges,

of a liberal constitutional view as possible. Now we have this bill that passed, as you said, unanimously, supported by not only Chris Coons but Senator Todd Young of Indiana, and now it's flipped on the other side. And who knew that Washington played politics? It's just amazing to me. But Democrats for years, really beginning since prayer in the public schools and Bible reading and Roe v. Wade, have used

the federal judges in this country to get policies enacted that they knew they couldn't get through Congress. So both sides play this game and it's too bad. But this this deal was a real deal. And I think Chris Coons and Senator Young deserve a lot of credit, even though it's now been vetoed by the president. Yeah, well, I mean, these judicial nominations and confirmations last way beyond any presidential term or two. So they have a ton of impact.

Jonathan Turley weighed in on this as well. He called it, the move by Biden, a disgrace. He says our courts are overwhelmed by dockets that leave parties without any resolution for years. In 2004, the number of cases in district court pending for more than three years was 18,280. This year, there are nearly 82,000 cases, Steph, that have been pending for more than three years.

It takes a lot to get these cases moving. Do you foresee maybe this effort being taken up again under a Trump first? Well, it's his second term, but a new term for him. I could see this be taken up again. You know, judges are a very important issue for both parties, as we've discussed. You know, Mitch McConnell was the one who kind of wrote the playbook for

how to push through as many judges as possible in a single term. And Chuck Schumer only recently surpassed that record in a single term just a week or two ago. These are important positions. Like you said, they are long term. They're not just for four years. And both parties have an interest in getting these through. And if you look at this actual piece of legislation, it was crafted in a bipartisan way, not giving all 66 of these new judges to any particular administration to fill. It would have spread it out.

spread it out over multiple administrations, giving both parties chances at filling some of those. So I could see movement on this. Obviously, this is not necessarily the number one priority for Trump. He has a list of policies that he wants to push for the border, you know, energy policies, et cetera. So this may not be one of the first things we see get done. But it's clear that there is real bipartisan support, especially when you look at the Senate. They're going to need bipartisan issues that they can push through. Leigh.

Well, I mean, first to Cal's point, I think that Supreme Court Justice Merrick Garland, 10 years into his term, would probably disagree about. But I do think with all respect to the senators, it was naive to think you can remove politics from this topic in particular, judgeships. If we need another 66 or whatever it is, Donald Trump can add it to his day one agenda, which I know is already crowded with about 100 other things. But

But he's controlling Congress and the White House. They can sign that in not to stand on ceremony. Francesca alluded to it. The point, the theory behind removing the politics of it was to get the House and the Senate to approve this in August. Mike Johnson didn't. I don't know. That's because he didn't have the confidence that Donald Trump would win. But in any event, this was not.

Apparently, this is not the way to get politics out of judgeships. But Donald Trump has another bite of the apple in about a month. Yeah, we'll see. OK, so speaking of confidence, this is the headline from Axios. The Trump effect, CEO and investors bullish on global economy survey finds. They say President-elect Trump's election victory has produced soaring confidence in the global economy, according to a new survey. An outlook that outweighs concerns about tariffs, trade barriers and geopolitical tensions. And Cal, that's

Very different than some of the predictions we heard about his impact pre-election, should he win. Yeah, well, of course, I remember Paul Krugman, the now former columnist for The New York Times, predicting that if Trump were elected in 2016, there would be a depression. Well, never mind. I think the confidence is warranted if Trump maintains the tax cuts, but mostly if Ramaswamy and Musk win.

get that $2 trillion in spending reduction. But even that is only a drop in the bucket. And a $36 trillion debt, where interest on that debt this year alone is $1 trillion. We've got to cut the spending. No nation has ever been able to survive with this level of debt. Yeah, and, Steph, it's Republicans and Democrats who have contributed to that spending over the years.

It's true, and it tends to kind of switch which party cares more about cutting spending, depending on who has power at the time. We have already seen that fight kind of play out in Congress already, where we have, on one hand, conservatives in the House demanding that there be significant spending cuts included in any kind of spending deal. Meanwhile...

The president-elect is asking for the debt ceiling to be eliminated. We're already seeing that tension within the Republican Party play out, and I'm sure we've not seen the end of that fight moving forward. So as to these predictions, Axios had Goldman back in September pre-election saying that if he won again, it would result in a half percentage point drag on GDP in the second half of 2024.

They went on to note such predictions did not age well during Trump's first term when the economy experienced steady growth, historically low unemployment and benign inflation, even amid trade wars. This is now Goldman Sachs post-election this time around. The U.S. economy is poised to beat expectations in 2025. Philippe.

Well, look, I mean, I hope that, you know, naysayers who believe that things that go down there are wrong, including anything that I said about Donald Trump is going to ruin the economy. I'm part of the economy. It's not in my best interest. But this is anticipatory. And, you know, I'm sure if the Fortune 500 CEOs of watching, of course, they feel good. They feel good about tax cuts that are coming their way that are going to benefit them. But I wrote down a few things.

Ten of the last 11 recessions dating back to 1953 have been Republicans. The GDP has risen 3.9 percent under Democrats versus 2.4 percent under Republicans. The S&P 500 has risen 11.2 percent for 6.9 percent under Republicans. My favorite unemployment, 72 percent of the jobs since World War Two have been under Democratic president. Seventy million.

Over seven presidents. Now, these numbers of what's happened, this is history. This is not people guessing. The American economy has done better under Democrats for whatever reason, which we could probably debate. Cal might not agree with me about why, but they have done better. If it's about CEOs looking forward to their tax cuts or if it's about what Democrats have done for America, I will go for this every single time.

But quickly, Francesca, voters felt like the economy was not working under this administration. But there's quite a few unknowns in the Trump administration of what he will end up doing. He said that he'll put tariffs on a number of countries, but those are believed to be a negotiating tactic. How many of those will he actually enact? We talk about the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. In what order will he pursue these policies? Lawmakers want to do the border and immigration first before they even get to that.

Will he cut corporate tax, the corporate tax rate for companies that produce their manufacturing in the United States of America? So there's there's so many question marks about what order and combination of the economic policies in terms of what the economic analysis. I can tell you one thing he won't do is, I mean, he said that he would end inflation on day one. And I'm no economist, but that's not going to happen. OK.

A non-economist, Philippe, but we got a lot more to talk about with the panel. So don't go far. We're going to get your winners and losers as we say goodbye to 24 and your predictions for 25. Maybe on the economy from Philippe. Next. If you have weeks, I was, you know, in his corner. But now, you know, we should we should consider what's the best path forward. We do need to consider whether if we're going to advance Mr. Trump's agenda, whether the current leadership is what we need.

OK, House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris on whether current House Speaker Mike Johnson survives the upcoming speaker vote. And he's not the only Republican voicing concerns and hesitation. We are back now with our panel. So we wait to see whether Speaker Johnson is a big winner or loser in this year or in the new year. But we want to get to your political winners and losers of 2024. Would you like to start us off, Philippe, with your winner?

I think the state of Israel. They basically started out as, quote, mowing the lawn, and they just basically paved a parking lot over Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran itself. And this might sound boring, but they did us, the United States, a lot of good. These are the two worst terrorist organizations in the Middle East, and they do Iran's bidding. Iran themselves look kind of stupid, shooting 300 missiles off and 300 being shot down.

And I think that that's great. The flip side of that is Iran is the biggest loser. We've had, you know, Iran, North Korea, Russia are three, you know, axis of whatever these days. Russia's looking pretty bad. They've been mired in the same war for three years. And the United States is basically winning two proxy wars without losing a single life and a fair amount of low cost to our treasury. So and to and to watch how Israel.

scripted some of those attacks years in advance was a pretty stunning thing to watch. Okay, so and your loser is Iran. All right, Steph, your winner, John Thune. My winner was John Thune, who pretty shortly after Mitch McConnell announced that he would be stepping down from his role as Senate Republican leader, Thune became president.

considered favorite, but he did survive, you know, two challenges from the other Johns, also Rick Scott, who got a lot of momentum at the end from people very close to the president-elect. There were concerns that Trump may weigh in against John Thune, but he seems to have at least made amends well enough that they appear to be on good terms. He's moving forward. And

Right now, three seats feels quite roomy in Congress, and he's going to have a little bit of wiggle room when he has the majority come January. And so I, you know, it's rare that the leading contender actually ends up winning these days. And so the fact that he was he managed to keep the party in line when leadership election at the end of the day, I think makes him a winner. Well, and then he was given an interesting slate of people to get through the confirmation process. He was. So he's avoiding for winning, though the Matt Gaetz fiasco ended pretty quickly. So he at least won't have to deal with that.

deal with that. That one's done. OK, your loser is the Democratic Party. Yeah, a little bit of a cop out, but they've had a rough year. I said that he was not very excited about that. They've had a rough year, you know, from the Joe Biden health concerns, the age concerns, the fact, you know, we all watched the debate and even at the beginning of the year, they were coming off of

record illegal border crossings and grappling with how they're going to respond to this issue that was becoming the issue of the election cycle. They never really got a firm handle on how to respond to that issue politically. They had the Joe Biden

debate. They have the Kamala Harris ascension only to have her lose resoundingly in every single battleground state. And now you're seeing this tension and division play out on television screens with progressives saying that they're the ones who the party should be listening to and moderates saying, no, we need to continue moving right and embrace more of these more conservative policies to win over the American people. And it's just very hard to see who their leader is right now moving forward. All right, Cal, your winners and losers.

Well, I think the biggest loser to play off Steph's Democratic Party is the media. Same thing. Sorry to repeat myself. They covered up for Biden's mental acuity decline. They covered up on the Hunter Biden laptop, Facebook and other social media, covered up in the New York Post story about the Hunter Biden laptop. The 51 intelligence agencies who the Russia, Russia, Russia thing signed off saying it was true. The media followed all of this.

and I think it's a disgrace to the profession that I've been a part of for a half a century and I wish we'd get some new blood in the media to actually practice journalism instead of practicing politics. Now my winner is outgoing Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. A true independent who puts his country first, his party second, and himself third. I think he's gone out with great class and dignity and I salute him for that. I wish we had more of him. Maybe it will cause me to

rethink my position on cloning. Or running yourself. Or running yourself. No, no. All right, Francesca, winners and losers. Well, my runner-up, actually, on the winner was the Dakotas.

But you took John Thune there. Well, because they have had a real run at it in Trump's upcoming cabinet. You look at John Thune's new position as well as the fact that you have Kristi Noem and Doug Bergen getting positions. But I did go with Florida, Shannon, partially in honor of you. Thank you so much. I know that you appreciate the Florida love here.

But no, but really, when you look at the people that he's been picking, you've got Susie Wiles as White House chief of staff, Marco Rubio, the Florida senator as secretary of state. His incoming national security adviser, Michael Waltz, is also from Florida. You also have Brian Mast, who's now going to be the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. So a lot of Florida politicians under under Donald Trump will actually get Pam Bondi.

Pam Bondi, who's been picked for attorney general. So lots of love for Florida and the incoming Trump administration. And then as the loser, not to be too trite, as well as Stephanie, I picked Kamala Harris, cover the White House, cover the Harris campaign.

She not because she lost the election, per se, but she was handed a losing campaign. She had three months to try and turn it around, regardless of the things that she did during that campaign to contribute it, whether it be the comments that she made on The View and not distancing herself from Biden.

We're not focusing on the economy as voters felt closer to the end of the election. She she was handed a three month time frame in order to be able to try and do a lot of things and she couldn't get it done. OK, we literally have seconds left. So I want you each to give me a one sentence on your prediction for 2025. We'll work back around.

Executive orders. Lots of them from Trump. Lots of executive orders from Trump. Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey get engaged and may be married as soon as the lawyers can finish the prenup. Oh, that one may take a while. Details, details. Gavin Newsom's 2028 star starts to rise. Oh, he's right around the corner. 2025 looks a lot like 2017. Meaning? Meaning, you know, a lot of dysfunction in 2017. If you don't learn from history, you repeat it.

But more importantly, I think that your ratings continue to skyrocket. With continued appearances from all of you. Living the dream. I hope it looks like 2024 in terms of the Chief Super Bowl champion. Okay, we've got to leave it there. Panel, thank you very much. Happy New Year to all of you. All right, tonight marks the fifth night of Hanukkah. We're going to show you how the Museum of the Bible here in D.C. is sharing a message of light and honoring the remarkable history and traditions of the Jewish people. Next.

I love that my daughter still needs me. Today marks the fifth night of Hanukkah. And last week, we showed you how the Museum of the Bible here in Washington is highlighting the history of faith this season. That includes priceless artifacts that tell the story of the unwavering resilience of the Jewish people. It is our Sunday special.

I'm just a little link in that unbroken chain going all the way back 3,336 years. You might be surprised to learn that one of the many educational resources at the Museum of the Bible is a rabbi who specializes in writing the sacred words of the Torah. The reason we are still writing it by hand is because I, as a Torah scribe, have to have a thought process that every single letter that I'm writing is the word of God himself.

But inside these walls, the history of religious tradition and its impact through the ages is an experience that's shared across many faiths, particularly during this festive time of year. We have to understand also that the foundation is the same for everybody who embraces the Bible.

The foundation is the same, and it all started right there. And it takes us through so much of what the Jewish people suffered, where they triumphed. I mean, Exodus, all of these different things, and leads us to the season we're now celebrating Hanukkah as well. And they're all tied in together. The Torah is the DNA.

of the world and the history of the world. The museum's collection of Judaic exhibits includes rare editions of the Hebrew Bible, along with its crown jewel, the newly unveiled Afghan Liturgical Choir or prayer book, which dates all the way back to the 8th century. It is the earliest Jewish prayer book in a book format. It was found in the modern state of Afghanistan, but it really is this Jewish treasure. Those of the Jewish faith that have come here are just stunned.

And they're amazed that this treasure is here in Washington, D.C. Next year, another treasured artifact of the Jewish faith is set to make its home at the museum, the Dead Sea Scrolls. We got a look at the ancient manuscripts when Fox News Sunday visited the Reagan Library earlier this month. The scrolls themselves are the oldest known manuscript of the Hebrew Bible.

or what Christians might call the Old Testament. This is the psalm scroll. It is one of the most intact of the scrolls, and you can see there it is in its completeness, only slight damage on the fringes. This contains psalms that didn't make it into the book of Psalms, but speak about King David.

For now, visitors can experience the rich history of Judaism through the museum's thousands of current exhibits just in time for Hanukkah. Hanukkah is about the freedom that the Maccabees brought when they brought new light back to the temple. And in some ways we're in a world right now that needs new light. And even this can give hope that maybe someday we can get back to that concept of light being all around the world.

Absolutely remarkable pieces of history over there at the Museum of the Bible. Happy Hanukkah to everyone who is celebrating tonight and beyond. That is it for us today. Thank you for joining us. I'm Shannon Bream wishing you and yours a happy and healthy 2025. It's going to be great. We'll see you next week and next year for Fox News Sunday.

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