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maria: welcome back, good thursday morning, everybody. thanks for joining us this morning. i'm maria bartiromo. it is thursday, february 13, 7:01 on the east coast. the householding the first doge subcommittee hearing yesterday called the war on waste, to investigate improper payments and fraudulent use of taxpayer money. democrats turned hearing into a circus, attacking ask. attacking elon musk. watch. >> donald trump and elon musk are wrecklessly and illegally dismantling the federal government, firing workers,

holding funds. >> it's time for us to do our job to rein in the rogue actor. >> elon musk is sending his unqualified doge staff to carry out this agenda across all these agencies. they're trying to rob you. maria: democrats also protesting president trump's pick for education secretary, linda mcmann, she will face her senate confirmation hearing thig morning. much of the discussion expected to focus on president trump's plan to dismantle the education department. here's the american federation of teachers president randy wine garden protesting that. >> what is coming down the pike in this aura of efficiency, it's not efficiency, it it's eviserat eviseration, an attempt to take the funding and take the rights away from each child. maria: president trump laid out his reasons wanting to dismantle

the education department. >> i'd like it to be closed immediately. the department of education is a big con job. they rank the top 40 countries in the world, we're ranked number 40th. we're number one in one department, cost per pupil. we spend more per pupil than any other country in the world. norway, denmark, sweden, i hate to say china, as big as it is, it's ranked in the top five, that's a primary competitor. maria: this is such an important point. we're number 40, lee, and china is in the top five. >> donald trump has a very valid point and it is really terrifying. as a mother of 5-year-old to think this is the education system in our country. we're supposed to be leading the world. the other thing, and i have to say, it's not that i disagree with the democrats on this one. i understand where they're coming from.

i understand the father of wanting to dismantle the department of education. i have a child. i love her child and her teachers. what happens to the schools that we love. doesn't mean they have to go away. this isn't a deletion of public education. this isn't saying that we don't have great teachers and great schools. this is saying we need a different system, a system that isn't failing our system and this what is the system is going to be and how we're going to replace it. from a messaging perspective it's very important that republicans don't go out there and say let's tear it down to the ground because there's a lot of people who love their schools, love their teachers, love the programs they grew up with so we've got to be careful about how we position it because we're absolutely right. donald trump is absolutely right. it's pathetic we're number 40 in the world. maria: it's about communicating what it's supposed to look like. >> exactly. maria: and how do you get students to be higher on the list. >> a central problem is the department of education is in bed with the radical teachers unions which conspired with the government over covid to keep

schools closed to prolong school shutdowns which caused massive learning loss that we have not recovered in k-12 students. randy w wine garden it's hysterical that she's freaking about the recommendation. it's the pork barrel politics that keeps the teachers unions in business via the department of education. no other product in the market works like that. if you continue to demand boat loads of taxpayer dollar and don't deliver academic outcomes in math, reading proficiency, you don't deserve to exist because you're a failing product and we don't want to reward that any longer and i i think you're right, lee, there's a messaging conundrum with the public because you hate the system and parents like the teachers and you develop a relationship but if we market it as yes want to empower you as families to take your dollars and use them in an

appropriate way for your family so you can have academic achievement because that's the only thing that matters in education is academic achievement. maria: why did the unions push back and demand that charter schools were not viable which is completely wrong. charter schools actually have been incredibly successful. >> exactly. what this boils down to, this is an roi conversation, return on investment. our cost per pupil is number one and education is number 40, that's anish shy. we have three business people taking a crows look at this, president trump, businessman. elon musk, businessman. linda mcmann, businesswoman. you have people who are going to be looking at this from how do we get the best use of those dollars, probably sending it back to the states. maria: meanwhile, fox business confirmed that jp morgan ceo jamie dimon and brian moynihan will be among the major bank ceos on capitol hill today, they're doing a round table

discussion with the senate banging committee on how to pre voarprevent debanking. i spoke with tim scott this week on how banks and regulators are being weaponized. watch this. >> that's what i heard from the ceos. the ceos of the bank said this to me to my face, eye to eye, that the occ and regulators were going to create a reputational risk, whatever that means, against banks who did the things like banking illegal businesses, like banking crypto. melania trump, the first lady of our country, was debanked. how is that possible in the freest land in the world? fdic just recently released a trove of documents reinforcing the fact, yes, regulators have been weaponized. maria: yeah, and you know, a lot of people speculated that this was happening that some of the major banks were debanking conservatives for example and it was all politics.

i was stunned when melania trump first told me she was debanked. here she is with me before the election last year. watch this. >> when we left the white house, when i established my own business as you said the bank suddenly informed me they will not be able to do business with me anymore. also, i had very prominent e-mail distribution service provider just terminated my agreement so suddenly. as well as the university. i was all agreed that they will accept my donations for the foster students. they find out that it was me, they didn't -- they said we cannot go on. maria: you know, the question is was this pressure from the biden white house? the way that the biden white

house pressured social media to cancel conservative speech. >> i hope we find o i really o. i really want to know. the banks are saying they didn't do it. they're saying what they did was actually only -- there was a few instances. i find it challenging because there's so many people that have stories that say this is true including as you said the first lady so my question is are they getting hung up on the term debanked, is debanking what they said they didn't do. did they reject services to, did they make decisions based on political ideology? because i can't believe that it's not true when we have all of these stories and these people that we know. you have the first lady saying it herself. so i want to understand what really happened and what the pressure was to make it so. maria: maybe we'll get answers today. >> i hope so. >> my boss had a great piece called trump's counter march through the institution, because so many institutions have been ideologically captured, banking is another one.

maria: and that's what i want to know, how much pressure from the biden white house was this. we're just getting started this hour. we'll slip in a short break. we're on the a.i. battle, google claims the u.s. is facing a power capacity crisis in the race against china. we've got the word on wall street panel with exec station there's. don't miss it. you're watching "mornings with maria" live on fox business. we'll be right back. ♪ i'm thinking of updating my kitchen... ...thinking of redoing our kitchen. ...we are finally updating our kitchen. for all those people who never seem to get around to it... —...a breakfast nook. —chase has financial guidance. let's see how you can start saving... —really? —really? at home or in-person. that's guidance from chase. (vo) weight loss. for so long, i felt stuck. but zepbound means change. zepbound is for adults with obesity to help lose weight and keep it off. it's changing what i believe is possible

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maria: welcome back. time now for the word on wall street, top investors watching your money. joining me is baron market reporter, jacob sonenshine, also with us is mark tepper. the federal reserve talking about being in no rush to cut interest rates. the nasdaq is negative. president trump's reciprocal

tariffs on europe could be announced to die ahead of the meeting with the prime minister of india. we are expecting that it will be higher than what is on canada and mexico because of the european vat tax. markets year-to-date are strong, dow industrials up 4%, nasdaq up almost 2% and the s&p up 3%. do you think the tariff announcement later today likely is going to cut into these moves? >> no, i don't think so. i think the issue right now with the market is the market is trying to figure out are we going to get like one or two or $300 billion worth of goods tariffed but it doesn't really matter because you're not talking about more than 1 or 2% or the american economy so you're not getting more than maybe 1 percentage point of incremental inflation. i think the market's going to power right through it. maria: i mean, it's going to power right through it but people are still questioning the tariff situation but president trump is using it as leverage. >> yeah, i mean, he definitely

is using it as leverage. if you ask an economist, there is some economic impact and it does matter. we got cpi yesterday. it was 3%. we're not getting that close to 2%. i think it muddies the waters for the fed a little bit, means we can't get that many more rate cuts but we're still at 3% economic growth, we're not moveing that far down. the market can power through a lot of this. maria: a lot of people are talking about the need for energy in america. google is warning that the u.s. is facing a power capacity crisis as big tech invests in data centers. google turned to nuclear power after realizing utilities were investing in natural gas to back up renewables. where is this going? >> it's pretty remarkable how quickly we've turned on the deepseek threat that happened a few weeks ago. it was completely overstated. nvidia, broadcom, those stocks for the most part rebounded from deepseek but when you look at the energy related stocks, like

a canaco, a nuclear play, or kin kinder morgan, which is natural gas, they're down 10 to 20%. there's a buying opportunity there. i believe the long-term solution is going to be nuclear power plants. in the more immediate term, small, modular nuclear reactors, and in the near immediate term, natural gas, that's the best way to get power in a cost effective manner to these data centers. maria: is there an investable item in all of that? do you want to buy futures in oil or are there companies that you think will benefit from that policy? because right now the qataris are the exporters of natural gas. i think the united states is going to compete in terms of becoming the number one exporter of natural gas at some point. >> we own camaco, the largest

source of uranium in north america. that's a good one. and we own kinder morgan, a natural gas pipeline company. it doesn't matter if drill, baby, bill brings the price of natural gas down which hopefully it does because they just get paid on how much gets transported through the pipeline so the greater the demand, they more they get paid, you get a nice diff dividend. that's a great point. it's a huge impact from president trump's policies. i was thinking the banks would be mostly impacted by the policies because of the deregulation part of it but fox business confirms jamie dimon and brian moynihan will be among the major banks on capitol hill today. they're meeting for a closed door round table on how to prevent debanking. your thoughts. >> i think 2025 and into 2026 we're going to see a lot of m&a in banking. i think first of all, there are thousands of regional banks and there are a few big banks but i think you're going to have money

in the banking system freed up, it could be freed up for more loans but i do think it will be freed up for some m&a. maria: we'll leave it there. we'll see you friday night on the baron's round table. quick break, we'll come right back after president trump is on a mission to cut costs. he's doubling down on shrinking the federal government. senate doge caucus member, florida senator rick scott is here with more on that. you're watching "mornings with maria" live on fox business. we'll be right back. ♪ [air blower sound] ♪

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maria: welcome back. the senate is expected to confirm robert f. kennedy junior today as health and human services secretary. this morning, the vote is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. eastern. tulsi gabbard was sworn in as the director of national intelligence at the white house. she becomes the 14th cabinet official to be confirmed in president trump's second term. joining me now is florida senator rick scott. thank you for being here. how's it going? can you take us behind the scenes in terms of the cabinet nomination hearings underway?

>> republican senators are doing everything we can. unfortunately, the democrats are blocking this, they're slowing everything down, they're making us stay there for all hours of the night to get this done. at this point in obama's term he had 28 people confirmed. i think we have 14. we'll go to howard lutnick and we'll go to brooke rollins. today we'll probably get one person done, that will be rfk which will be great but democrats keep blocking us but we're working hard. i'm going to do everything i can to get trump's nominees done so he can fulfill the mission he set out when he won the election. it's crazy how long this takes. maria: one of the missions is to cut down the size of government and cut out wasteful spending. the doge agency has 100 members, elon musk is vowing to find $1 trillion in cuts. trump is doubling down on his

calls to shut down the education department. watch here, yesterday. >> mr. president, do you want the department of education to be closed? >> oh, i'd like it to be closed immediately. look, the department of education is a big con job. maria: senator, your thoughts? the president went on to say that we are number one in terms of spending per pupil but we're number 40 at the bottom of the list in terms of outcomes for our students. >> we've known the stock of the stock of the department of education. has the quality of education gone up or down in the country? it's gone down. has the ratings gone up or down? they've gone down. this is a state and local issue. the federal government should get completely out of the department of education and let the states handle education and let them all compete. when i was governor of florida i was figuring out how could i compete against every other state for the best education department, the best law

enforcement, the best economic development. that's what we should be doing. get the federal government out of department of education. maria: to what do you attribute such poor performance for our students? >> lack of accountability. it's real simple. it's like in business. if there's no transparency, to accountability, there's no results. maria: you are measuring now hugh tohow to coming up with spg cuts, there's a reconciliation plan, you and your colleagues would first pass a bill focused on border security, defense and energy policy before a second bill to extend the 2017 tax cuts. we talked about this and whether to do one bill or two. the house is aiming to pass the agenda in one bill. they are set to markup new draft legislation calling for 1 and-a-half billion in spending cuts and maximum of 4.5 trillion in tax cuts, it would increase the federal debt limit by $4 trillion while including

money for border and defense spending. where are you on this? >> in the senate we're going down the path that we're going to give the president he needs to secure the border and have a defense where we can defend the freedoms of this country and it will get paid for. we have to balance this budget. the way you do it is the way i did in florida. you say how much are we going to collect in revenues. guess what. we're not spending more than that. we've g got to dramatically rede federal spending to get interest rates down, inflation down, and we have a stronger economy. maria: you mentioned the workings and the making of the sausage, if you will. let's talk about those numbers. senator, spending will total $89 trillion over the next decade, tax revenue will total 68 trillion over the next decade. obviously the gap is the interest. i'm sorry, the gap is obvious, 89 trillion over the next decade in spending and 68 trillion in

tax revenue. interest is a problem. interest is the single largest item in the budget behind social security, more than defense, medicare and children. how do you even this out? where are the cuts? >> well, it's actually pretty simple. the first thing you do is you say i'm not going to worry about cuts, i'm going to worry how much do i spend and then where am i going to allocate the dollars. when i became governor of florida, florida had not lived within its means in 20 years. we went agency by agency, we said this is how much we'll allocate you to spend. you have to figure out how to create efficiencies to make that happen. we do it in business every day. every business person does it. have you to do it in the federal government. maria: the deficit was the highest it's ever been outside of a recession or emergency in 2024 and people realize this at some point something's got to give. what do you think -- where do you think are the real wasteful

spending, we've been talking about usaid and it's crazy the things that were being spent on out of the $40 billion slush fund. where else do you believe there's real waste and as president trump says corruption? >> well, usaid, they're paying for terrorists to go to college, you look at fema, they're giving money to hotels in new york, expensive hotels to house illegals. fema is supposed to help americans, not help foreigners but it's really going through every line in the budget. that's what i did. there were 4,000 lines in the budget in florida, we had a purpose for every line. we went through every line. it might be nice but we can't afford it today. maria: is there any mea culpa on the part of your colleagues on the left? wanted a million dollars for advancing dei in serbia, $2 million to fund sex changes in guatemala, $7.9 million for a

project to teach journalists to avoid binary gendered languages, money to help people to become climate leaders. what do your colleagues on the left say about this? how did that happen? >> they don't want to cut any spending. 3$310 million for a cement factory probably used to build tunnels in gaza. they defend all of it. the world's going to fall apart if we don't keep spending money to oblivion. we're not going to get interest rates down, we're not going to get inflation to go away if we don't balance the budget. so it's hard. but you have to do it in your life. i mean, you don't get to spend every dollar you want. we have to live within a budgets. that's the way this works. maria: it's a great point. today we're expecting president trump to announce tariffs on europe. the president hinted this last friday. and i spoke with stephen miller, the deputy chief of staff, on sunday. and asked him about the vat tax in europe because i'm being told

that the president's going to add the vat tax to the reciprocal tariff that he's going to put on europe. peehere's stephen miller with mn sunday. i was told by a source that president trump is going to announce reciprocal tariffs against europe but it's going to be more than just reciprocal. he's also going to add on more to the tariff to cover the vat tax which europe charges us a vat tax. can you tell us what we're expecting next week? >> the president's making clear that we are going to pursue a policy of reciprocity. in other words, if we're getting charged 30% by europe that we need to charge them 30% in return. and if they want to be charged less than 30%, they're going to have to lower their barriers so it's fair and equal and, yes, reciprocal treatment. here's n another area where they're committing predatory practices. there are tens of billions of dollars every single year.

obviously, that has to go into the reciprocal treatment as well. you can't have a situation where our country, our auto companies, our tech companies are just a piggy bank for europe. maria: so senator, what are you expecting today in terms of these european tariffs? >> i hope the president does exactly what he said. we should not be treated worse, right, than -- american companies can't go sell into china or sell into europe. there's all these rules. the taxes, the beat us to death. if you want to sell into the u.s. market, we're going to treat you the exact same way. we need to have a balanced trait tradepicture and that's what stn miller is talking about. maria: what are your expectations in terms of how much revenue the president could raise with this. he's creating the external revenue service to collect revenue on tariffs and fees externally. how significant could that be? >> well, the numbers could be

very big. i think the biggest thing it's going to do is create american jobs. the most important thing we can do is get americans back to work. we have over 50 million americans working age right now that don't have a job. we need to get people back to work. the biggest thing i want is i want american workers back to work. i want people to say i'm proud because i bought an american product, not some piece of crap from china. maria: you introduced a foreign adversarial battery dependence act to help our security and that's also about china, right. >> absolutely. we have to stop spending money on china. quit giving them our dollars. we have to wake up. they want to destroy us. maria: do you support yanking some of the chinese stocks off of u.s. exchanges then because that's also something that most people don't understand that they are actually funding the expansion of our number one adversary by buying these

chinese stocks which don't even follow the rules that every other american company has to follow. >> all of them. maria: take them glawl comply with the rules. all of them. we should not invest in chinese companies, many are helping their military get ready to defeat us. stop investing in chinese stocks. they shouldn't be on our exchaexchange period. maria: good too have you this morning. presspecial presidentialenvoy fa general keith kellogg is with me, next. you're watching "mornings with maria" live on fox business. stay with us. ♪

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maria: president trump wants to negotiate peace between russia and ukraine and says vladimir putin is open to the discussion. watch. >> president putin said he wants it to end. he doesn't want to end it and go back to fighting six months later. we talked about the possibility -- i mentioned it of a cease fire so we can stop the killing and i think we'll problem employ end up at some point getting a cease fire in the not too distant future. maria: the president spoke with putin and ukraine's zelenskyy on the phone yesterday, directing the team to begin discussions at the conference in munich tomorrow. the president was asked about ukraine's bid to become a part of nato. watch. >> i don't think it's practical to have it, personally. i think long before president putin they said there's no way they would allow that. this has been going on for many, many years. they've been saying that for a long time that ukraine cannot go into nato.

and i'm okay with that. maria: joining me now is special presidential envoy for ukraine and russia, luted genlieutenantgeneral keith kell. thank you for being request us today. >> good to be here. we just got off the airplane. nice to be with you. maria: i know you've got a goal and agenda. you're in munich, preparing for these talks. you're trying to carry out the president's wishes of peace in the middle east. what can you tell us? >> yeah, maria, look, let's step back for a second. i've been with president trump since 2015 and i go back to an old classic, the art of personality and the art of war. the president has shown that. when you think of what he's done in less than a month of taking office, he's now looking towards ending a war that's gone on for almost three years, it will be three years on the 24th of february and in one day he's talked to putin, the same day he talked to zelenskyy, back to back conversations, bringing these two fighting countries

together to some type of peace, potentially go to a cease fire right away and go to long-term peace negotiations. one of the reasons we're here, mash. isthe real role europe will have to play in this. this is in their backyard. that's one of the things we're going to talk about when we're here in munich at the security ' security conference. we'll talk to the senior leaders. it's critical that they step up to this and deliver long-term fleas the region. maria: i think that's a great point in terms of europe and how the europeans play a role here. but general, what do you make of what a deal could look like? because i think it was pete hegseth, the defense secretary yesterday who said something like, look, it's unrealistic to think ukraine can have the borders that it once had so is any deal admitting that ukraine will lose some territory? >> well, president zelenskyy already said that and i think

secretary of defense hegseth was right, you're not going back to 2014 and what they had before the russians went into cry knee crimea.you don't have to acknowe that. we didn't do that with the baltics. there's a thing called the wells doctrine, we never said they owned the countries, we said there was domination. i think maybe you could look at this for a long-term -- potential long-term. but that's part of negotiations and president zelenskyy said that. what you want is a real stable peace, one that is secure until there's a security agreement among all the parties that is long-term and sustainable and that's going to depend on the europeans. we understand that. i said that just a minute ago. this is in their backyard many this is in their best interest to do it. that's one of the reasons we're here in munich to talk to the senior leadership, the foreign ministers, the prime ministers, the presidents of the countries

to make sure they understand that and they're part of the deal that we're starting to set up, the president's starting to set up. maria: what do you want the european leadership to do? >> own it. what i mean by own it, this is there. this is their backyard. they say okay, we understand where the president's going. we're with the president. when the president of the united states, the leer leader of the e world says go right, you go right, if he says go left, go left. this is the agreements and this is what we'll provide. and that's very important. so when we come out of this conference hope flow with the vice president here and the secretary of state here, we're going to have pretty good agreements so everybody's in lock step as we go forward with these negotiations between president putin, president zelenskyy and president trump. maria: wow. thanks for your leadership on this, general. this is incredible. meanwhile, ukraine still wants and needs aid. the president sent the treasury secretary scott bessent to

ukraine to try negotiate some kind of agreement if the u.s. sends more aid they'll give us what, rare earth minerals that are plentiful inukraine. what can you tell us newt. >> they have a lot of precious metals. they came up with discussion points for zelenskyy to agree that there would be some type of payback using precious metals for the amount of aid that the united states has given. for example, ukrainians exports titanium. we import titanium. when you look at the crest there on the western part of kyiv, when you look at the precious metals that are there, i think it's a good idea to set up the economic partnership because it also provides security for ukraine. when they know the united states is involved economically, and we have an economic interest in ukraine, this is another part of the security guarantee for ukraine and they should look at it that way and i think as we go through the next few days, hopefully ukrainians will see that, they'll agree to the

agreement as scott was in kyiv to talk about and we'll come out with some type of arrangement that sets us up for the future. we're not talking one or two dollars. we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars in the potential for rare earth minerals in ukraine. it's very rich here in rare earth minerals in ukraine. we should capitalize on it. maria: and the american people are no doubt pleased to see the president's not giving anything away as has been the case over the last four years. in terms of giving aid with no -- nothing in return. there's a story breaking this morning as well, general, at least 20 people reportedly injured after a car drove into the crowd gathered in munich city center ahead of tomorrow's munich security conference, german investigators detained the driver, cnn reported he's a 244-year-old national from afghanistan, they're treating it as a, quote, expected attack, general. do you have any -- have people been talking about this? are you worried about your own safety ahead of this conference?

>> no, i never worry about my own safety. i'm fine. when we got out of the cars this morning we were told about it. i think that's a developing situation. it's sort of like -- i don't worry about my safety. everything is fine here. maria: real quick on defense spending. we are seeing $125 billion talked about for defense spending in the upcoming reconciliation plan. is that enough and where do you believe that money should be allocated knowing that our military needs upgrading and modernization as the defense secretary has said as well? >> you know, when you look at the united states military, it's critical we modernize our system, it's critical we resupply the amunitions structure that we put into the war effort so i think that's going to be critical and pete understands that. pete hegseth. and i understand when you look

at defense giants that are out there, that he has to sit down and talk with them. because what we've done, maria, people don't understand this, a few years ago we had what's called a 2.5 war strategy. we had a contingency. we dropped it to 1.0, just one war and we dropped our stock levels and didn't modernize as well as we should have. that's something we need to change and this president will. that's one thing about president trump. he believes in the nation, he believes in the security and when it comes back to ukraine and russia he's also -- he wrote the art of the deal. he understands what needs to get done. maria: he sure did. >> this nation's well poe prote. maria: one deal after the next across the world. lieutenant general keith kellogg, it's always a pleasure. thanks so much. >> thanks, maria. maria: quick break and then first lady melania trump brings back a major white house tradition that was paused during the peaceful transition of

power. all the details on the other side of the break. you're watching "mornings with maria" live on fox business. stay with us. ♪ p where ya headed? susan: where am i headed? am i just gonna take what the markets gives me? no. i can do some research. ya know, that's backed by j.p. morgan's leading strategists like us. when you want to invest with more confidence... the answer is j.p. morgan wealth management (♪) at enterprise mobility, we never stop looking for new mobility solutions. because sometimes the best road forward, is the one you didn't expect. (♪) as your host, i have some rules. two flush maximum per bathroom visit. no games. no fun. there's a great barbeque outside. but don't touch that. meanwhile, at a vrbo... when other vacation rentals make you share your turf with a host, try one that's all yours.

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maria: welcome back.

tulsi gabbard confirmed, officially becoming the 14th member of trump's second cab threat. cheryl casone with details. >> she was confirmed along party lines in 52-48 vote in the gop controlled senate. mitch mcconnell breaking with his party, voting no. president trump calling her an american with extraordinary courage and exceptional patriotism. the senate will vote to confirm robert f. kennedy junior at as health and human services secretary. senator susan collins and lisa murkowski are voting yes. the senate judiciary committee is expected to move kash patel along to a full senate vote today. democrats are accusing him of trying to orchestrate a purgeal the fbi. fireworks are likely as linda mcmann's the nominee for secretary of education appears

for her nomination hearing. well, in massachusetts a federal judge has restored trump's deferred resignation program offering federal workers eight months of pay and benefits if they voluntarily resign. it's known as the fork in the road directive. the judge denying the union's request to permanently block the program because the unions were not directly impacted saying the unions don't have the required direct stake in the fork directive, thins is not sufficient. second, the court lacks subject matter jurisdiction to consider the plaintiff's claims but 75,000 federal workers have accepted the buyout deal so far. well, chicago mayor brandon johnson showing off his gift room in a youtube video after a watchdog report flagged ethical concerns over improper gifts to him. the inspector general report flagged items like a gucci tote bag, kate spade purse and other pricey items.

johnson's office issuing new rules on tuesday for the disclosure of gifts saying it reinforces transparency and ensures prompt disclosure of the gifts received. the ig telling fox news digital we can't have a for sale sign on the door at city hall, the ethics rules contain requirements on gifts and there are clear on how to h handle gifts. commenters on the youtube s video not buying it, saying if that's all that's in there why didn't they let the inspectors in. some said it's plenty of time to cover it up. first lady melania trump announcing that public tours of the white house starting tuesday, february 25 are back on. the tours were suspended as the transition from biden to trump took place. i.c.e. announcing an arrest in boston of a guatemalan illegal alien charged with multiple counts of aggravated child rape

despite a retainer being denied. the 49-year-old, here's the statement. i.c.e. acting field director said in a release, quote, he is the type of alien we're far getting with the worst first policy, he poses a significant danger to children. we're not going to tolerate the threat to our community. look, maria, these are the types of criminals that are being targeted by i.c.e. these type of individuals. and tom homan is coming today e border czar, the post reported last night that he's, quote, not happy with how these raids are happening in new york city but these are the type of people that we're trying to protect our nation from. maria: that's why it makes no sense to see any pushback or criticism of this from the democrats. >> let's not forget -- maria: how are you against this. >> bill clinton deported 12 million people when he was president. obama deported 5 million people.

not a peep from the democrats when they were doing it. >> it's about messaging and framing. they're trying to tell you you're inhumane if you want to send these people home. you're inhumane if you want them here. do we want to have criminals here? no. our job, the job of the government is to keep americans safe. it's one thing we can agree on. how can you not agree on this. >> one thing about today about the tom homan, eric adams meeting, tren de aragua who has become violent here in the city of new york, two months ago we had reports about concerns about a gang war in new york city. can't believe we're having that conversation in this day and age. maria: you're right. >> i went to college in boston. it's surrounded by affluent communities that are insulate frd the migrant crisis. if they keep resisting deportation of violent criminals, boston is about to get more unlivable because it's a progressive city, generally pleasant. i don't see how that continues

if they're literally standing up against tom homan who is trying to get rid of rapists and other criminals. maria: it's unbelievable. we'll keep watching that. thank you. let's take a short break. we have a big hour coming up. the 8:00 a.m. stay with us. you're watching "mornings with maria" live on fox business. oh yeah. borrow up to a hundred thousand dollars to consolidate bad debt and save money for your next goal. take a swing at your kitchen reno... meant that literally. or design your actual dream wedding. consolidate bad debt and fund all your ambitions with a sofi personal loan. go to sofi.com to view your rate. sofi. get your money right.

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