Trump delivers first rally-style speech since election win as he threatens to retake Panama Canal: Live

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has revealed deportations hit a 10-year high in 2024 as President-elect Donald Trump promises to increase that figure dramatically when he takes office in a month.

ICE deported 271,484 people this year, the highest since 2014 when the agency deported more than 300,000 people, according to their fiscal year 2024 report.

During Trump’s first term, his administration hit a high of 267,258 deportations in 2019. This report comes after Trump spent much of his time on the campaign trail criticizing President Joe Biden’s administration on immigration.

This year’s number of deportations is still not high enough, Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the president-elect and soon-to-be White House press secretary, said in a statement to The Independent.

“This number pales in comparison to the tens of millions of illegal criminals, including thousands of murderers, rapists, and drug dealers, who Joe Biden allowed to illegally enter our country and continue to roam freely in our communities to this very day,” Leavitt said.

Katie Hawkinson has the details.

President-elect Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs on the European Union unless it purchases more oil and gas from the United States – an intimidation tactic that Trump has wielded against other countries as well.

After announcing a 25 percent tariff on the U.S. largest trading partners, Canada and Mexico, and threatening to increase tariffs on China, Trump has now targeted the E.U.

“I told the European Union that they must make up their tremendous deficit with the United States by the large scale purchase of our oil and gas. Otherwise, it is TARIFFS all the way!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social around 1 a.m. Friday.

Ariana Baio has the full story.

One-third of Americans who voted for President-elect Donald Trump said they chose him because of his business acumen or economic vision, a new poll reveals.

Thirty-three percent of Trump voters said, in their own words, they voted for him because of the “economy” or because “he is a good businessman,” a Washington Post-Schar School poll released Friday reveals.

“He is a good businessman and doesn’t let anyone take advantage of him,” one Trump voter from Wisconsin told pollsters.

Katie Hawkinson has the story.

The Biden administration is using its waning days in office to make a final mark ahead of the incoming Trump White House.

It announced Friday it would forgive another $4.28 billion in student debt for 54,900 borrowers who pursued careers in public service, bringing Biden’s total to some $180 billion of forgiveness overall, the largest sum of debt forgiveness from any president in U.S. history.

At the same time, the administration said it would scrap further forgiveness proposals from the U.S. Department of Education, noting “uncertainty around the implementation” given Trump’s impending inauguration.

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Republicans are calling for Elon Musk to be the new speaker of the House amid contentious negotiations over a spending deal to avoid a government shutdown.

“The Speaker of the House need not be a member of Congress . . . Nothing would disrupt the swamp more than electing Elon Musk,” Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky wrote on X on Thursday. “Think about it . . . nothing’s impossible (not to mention the joy at seeing the collective establishment, aka ‘uniparty,’ lose their ever-lovin’ minds).”

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia also piped in on X: “DOGE can only truly be accomplished by reigning in Congress to enact real government efficiency. The establishment needs to be shattered just like it was yesterday. This could be the way.”

Josh Marcus has the details.

Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose two trips — which hadn’t been publicly reported — paid for by a billionaire Republican donor, a new Congressional report reveals.

In the wake of ProPublica’s explosive 2023 report into Thomas’ failures to disclose his ties to wealthy donor Harlan Crow, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee conducted a 20-month investigation into the ethics challenges at the Supreme Court.

The report — spanning 97 pages plus 824 pages of supporting documents — was released Saturday, detailing two additional trips paid for by Crow that Thomas hadn’t previously disclosed. More broadly, the report also captured an array of conflicts of interest and undisclosed gifts by justices, prompting the panel to recommend the nation’s highest court establish an enforceable code of conduct.

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Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman of New York suggested Thursday night that Elon Musk would provide President-elect Donald Trump with a “windfall” if the incoming commander-in-chief does the bidding of the X owner.

The Tesla CEO was successful in his efforts to take down a continuing resolution that was set to allow the government to remain funded through Christmas, forcing Speaker Mike Johnson back to the drawing board.

Musk tweeted against the bill Wednesday before Trump did the same, pushing for it to be voted down. Speaker Mike Johnson then withdrew the bill before introducing a shorter version Thursday which was rejected even as it was backed by both Musk and Trump.

Gustaf Kilander has the story.