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this hour as president biden prepares to meet with president-elect donald trump in the oval office tomorrow. and is democrats are starting to unite their party and cope with sweeping losses across the border. >> this is not a moment for small changes or reforms. this is a moment for a fundamental rebuild of the left. >> so we made a messaging issue, but the policies that we put forward were specifically for the working men and women. >> we did not have a messaging problem, we had a reality problem, right, inflation is not a messaging problem how it's a reality problem and no much a messaging will make people feel good about inflation. >> john: why are they figuring that out now? why couldn't they have told that a year ago when everyone was telling them that that was the problem? >> jacqui: suddenly it is easy to say the day after. >> john: they just did not want to listen. welcome back as between nine rows into a second hour, please to be here with the hammer. >> jacqui: you are not sick of me yet? >> john: are you kidding? >> jacqui: jacqui heinrich in

for sandra smith, happy to be with you, john. we are going to have to explain it at some point. president-elect trump is not letting anything slow him down as he rapidly begins rolling out his cabinet picks, choosing lawmakers and leaders to propel his america first policies. >> john: fox team coverage starts now, mark meredith with more on trump's staff picks but first hillary vaughn on capitol hill as democrats continue playing the blame game. [laughs] which, i don't know that's going to get them anywhere, hillary. >> john, it may not because especially from house progressive's point of view they don't think that they are the problem with the democratic party, in fact yesterday they said democrats are always quick to blame them for any problems, but they say that it's establishment democrats tied to big money in their party that are actually holding them back. progressives, though, are looking to the future, not looking back. they want to turn this lame duck session in congress to a last-ditch effort to try to stall president-elect trump's

agenda. >> there are some executive orders that we are looking at to try to protect the structures that exist. or at least make it harder for the trump administration to do whatever they are planning to do. i think everything can be undone or a lot of things can be undone but it can take longer to them, and of course they are a priority from them on what they want to focus on. >> progressives welcomed new members to their caucus on capitol hill and are already plotting their next move, calling these fresh faces the front line of defense against trump's agenda appeared one idea they have is to get as many immigrants their legal paperwork as they can so that they do not accidentally get caught up in the mass deportations the trump administration has planned. >> there are a lot of people whom could have green cards or be u.s. citizens, but they are just waiting for their paperwork. we should make sure that people have the paperwork they need so that they don't have their civil

liberties violated by the right-wing crazies that trump is about to put in power. >> it sounds like a lot of this is leading to go full bore with his ability to obstruct trump plans before he leaves office. >> that's right. >> one thing progressives have changed their mind about now that president-elect trump has the trifecta, control of the senate, control in the house, and control of the white house, is the filibuster. congresswoman pramila jayapal said she was for getting rid of the filibuster when democrats were in power but now that they aren't, she wanted to stay put. john? >> john: yeah, it all depends on which side of the majority you are. she is a house member so why is she meddling with the said it? some people might answer that question. >> jacqui: present trump rolling out his cabinet picks, moments ago nominating mike huckabee to be the u.s.

ambassador to israel. mark meredith is a live from west palm beach, florida. is the trump administration shaping up. >> jackie, good afternoon. president trump urging lawmakers, wants them ready on day one and we are learning exactly who trump wants to accompany him in the white house. as you mentioned moments ago, the president-elect announcing that former arkansas governor, tv host, presidential candidate mike huckabee will be nominated to be the u.s. and pastor of israel. trump writing, mike has been a great public servant, governor, and leader in faith for many years, he loved israel and the people of israel and likewise the people of israel love him. mike will work tirelessly to bring peace in the middle east." senator marco rubio expected to secretary of state. he has been in the senate since 2011 and has some support among democrats. two democrat senators say they are on board today, including john fetterman of pennsylvania saying, surprisingly, the other

teams pick will have political differences than my own, that being said rubio is a strong choice and i look forward to voting for him for confirmation. governor christie nomo south dakota likely to head the department of homeland security. we have not heard any reaction yet from a governor on that news which broke overnight. congresswoman elise stefanik heading to the united nations. the president-elect will be in d.c. tomorrow, we know he is going to be having that sit down with president biden at the white house just before lunchtime. also expecting it is possible he could make a stop on capitol hill to meet with lawmakers to carry out his agenda. hearing from top house republicans who insist they have such a slim majority here they can't afford to lose anymore members that want to take the white house post because of course they want to support the trump agenda once january rolls around. >> john: >> jacqui: thank you. >> john: for the first time,

and author and journalist who identifies as a left-wing populist, despite having conservative views. she says this is because of her focus on social class, which she feels has been abandoned by the left and embraced by the right. ladies, welcome to you, good to have you with us this afternoon. marie, good -- >> so good to see you, john peered. >> john: good to see you for the first time since election night. democrats are still trying to analyze what went wrong. this is what ro khanna said. listen here. >> the reason we didn't win, ultimately, is we didn't listen enough to people on the ground, people like -- you were saying talk about the economy, talk about people's economic struggles, have, convince people you have the better policies and better vision. >> john: so, marie, why didn't they do that? why was it all about the vibe? >> well, i think they tried to do that, and it's interesting, in four of those battleground states that trump won very handily, democrat senate

candidates actually won. and in a deep red state like missouri, voters also voted to raise the minimum wage and to protect abortion rights, which are two key democratic policy proposals. so i think ro khanna is right. i think a lot of people who are saying we needed to talk more about the economy and understand how people felt, but kamala harris did. she talked about housing a affordability, she talked about child care, tax credits, but the question is how is she reaching voters? and a lot of what president trump did well was reach voters through nontraditional means, podcasts, these different kinds of events he had. in blue states that we questioned him going to. so i think some of it is message but a lot of it is messenger and how you reach them, john. >> john: a couple of challengers. marianne williamson was one of them, dean phillips another, who said look, it's too much about trump here and not enough about policy. listen to what he said. no? >> if that becomes our primary

focus, we are going to lose perpetually because that's exactly i think what we have done wrong. we have used condemnation of donald trump versus invitation to donald trump supporters. i have never known any industry, political or professional, in which a strategy of condemnation works better than invitation. >> john: all right, so you are a disaffected democrat, liberal, i don't know what label we want to put on you, if any, what do you think about what he said? >> this whole election came down to the class divide. kamala harris won overwhelmingly with the college educated elites, especially women, and donald trump just ran away with the working class, multiracial, multiethnic working class, and the way he did that, john, was by convincing democrats to vote for him, so i totally agree with marie. i think that a lot of the issues that he raised were compelling to democratic voters. he won the working class with a formula that always wins the american working class, it won when democrats had it ended won

when trump ran on it and that formula is this: no more wars. trade agreements that favor american workers. socially moderate, not socially conservative, and the most important one, immigration, immigration. this was the immigration election because immigration separates a working-class who immigrants compete with, from the elites who immigrants are employed by, and that is how trump ultimately convinced so many working-class americans, black, hispanic, white, men and women, to give him a chance. he was willing to say these immigrants are coming and bringing down the wages in your industries, and they heard him loud and clear. >> john: all right, enough about -- we will leave the democrats to navel gaze over the next months and maybe years ahead to figure out how to win the next election, but let's focus on the future. marie, trump is coming to the white house tomorrow to meet with president biden in the oval office. he will be meeting with a guy who said that he wants to smack

him in the -- and take him out behind the gym. that's when to be an interesting meeting. >> yeah, and the transition this time cannot be more different than four years ago, right? this is, in some ways, these are strange meetings, right? when barack obama met with donald trump in 2016, i mean, these are hard conversations to have. certainly. and especially given the backdrop that joe biden should not have run for president for the second time. so i think that the biden administration is trying to do everything by the book here. there will be no january 6th. there will be no insurrection. kamala harris herself will have to certify this win. and tomorrow's meeting is just one of those parts of our political pomp and circumstance every four years, and the biden administration is doing what donald trump didn't do four years ago, and i think that's important to point out. >> john: she will have to certify the election, unless, of course, biden steps down and gives the presidency to her.

>> it could happen. >> john: it's the most ridiculous suggestion i've ever heard. final question to you, batya, because somebody else's coming to town, that's gavin newsom, who has made a big point of saying he wants to call a special session of the california legislature to trump-proof california but if you take a look at the map from this year's election and compare it to 2020, i mean, look at all of the red that has gone in there where the deep blue was. it would seem, batya, that large sections of california doesn't want to trump-proof california, it wants to new some-proof california. >> when the democrats say they want to trump-proof their cities, they are effectively saying they want to make their cities, you know, safe from the will of their own voters. i'm sorry, but they just hate their voters. there voters showed up and said we are giving donald trump a mandate to protect us from all of your terrible, terrible legislation, and one what do the progressives do? they say we are going to protect

you from the things you want. that is what we are seeing. donald trump said and again, they don't hate me, they hate you, and they just keep proving him right. >> john: all right, batya ungar-sargon, great to have you on the program. we will see you more in the future. marie harf, great to have you on, as well. >> thanks, john. >> john: ladies, we will see you soon. can we put the results of california again? take a look at the shift between 2020 and 2024. look at all of that blue, which turned to pink. i mean, that's unbelievable. force new some to say we're going to protect california against trump, a large slice sat you. >> jacqui: as you and i were talking about and one of the breaks, sort of the media -- the, like, inclination to just throw rocks at trump as a strategy, you are going to lose viewers, you are going to lose business -- >> john: going to lose elections. >> jacqui: you have now had what is a clear mandate from, as you put it, referendum

from american voters. if you stick to that strategy, you will keep losing. >> john: if you keep throwing rocks at trump, you are telling 75 million people they were stupid, and i don't think they want to hear that. i don't think they will take to it. >> jacqui: fox news alert now. we are moments away from sentencing for former massachusetts air national guardsman jack teixeira for leaking classified documents. he pleaded guilty in march to six counts of violating the espionage act, for distributingf documents on social media platform discord. most notably of them, documents on russia's war in ukraine. prosecutors are requesting 17 years in prison. teixeira's attorney, they are pushing for 11 years. we will bring you the very latest from the courtroom as soon as we have it. ♪ ♪ >> it goes from here. to hear.

here. >> john: you've heard of snakes on a plane but what about bulletholes on a plane, gang shooting at his spirit airlines flight trying to land in port-au-prince, haiti. what we now know about the incident that was first developing at this time yesterday. plus this. >> how do you stop it? do you go to the sports leagues? >> you just ban it. the president bans it. you just don't let it happen. >> jacqui: president-elect donald trump promising to protect women sports just as controversy unfolds in a california university over a transgender athlete whose biological sex was allegedly hidden from the team. we are talking to one of the teammates come alongside riley gaines. that's coming up next.

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♪ ♪ >> jacqui: san jose state

university women's volleyball team is under scrutiny over a transgender player and the controversy now deepening as several opposing teams are forfeiting matches in protest and the associate head coach says she's been suspended for voicing her concerns about having a biological male on the roster. rooks luster, a san jose state university volleyball player joining us now, followed by riley gaines, host -- thank you for being here. really appreciate your time. >> thank you. >> jacqui: broke, i want to start with you. you have alleged that your school hit your transgender teammate biological sex from you and the rest of your team over the course of the last two years and you have also said that some of their spikes traveled at 80 miles an hour during practice. and now we have since learned that the assistant coach was suspended for speaking up really for your concerns.

what impact has that news had across the team? >> i mean, i think you can imagine, she was that one person that everyone felt like they could voice their opinion and truly speak how they felt with the whole situation and feel comforted. and them taking that away from us, it was, everyone felt distraught, and especially finding out minutes before a game, it was just a horrible situation. >> jacqui: the assistant coach, or associate coach, i should say, melissa, she wrote a statement, they a safety and far play is being taken away from women and we need more people to do this and fight this fight because women w it right now will forever be changed. riley, you know well sort of the fallout after you speak up for these concerns. what do you think is happening now? because she has also released a statement saying she was instructed not to speak to the

media. >> well, it's retaliation, jacqui, that is what this is. that is the message being sent loud and clear, do not oppose us. do not even dare to question our motives, or else we will get rid of you. and that's exactly what melissa has gone through. that is exactly what the san jose state university team has gone through. so i want to commend these brave girls, girls like brooke, other teammates who have been willing to say this is unfair, it's unsafe, it's wrong. it's hard to do. a lot of people who maybe aren't involved, you know, they think it's easy to take the stand that brooke has taken. it is not. and again, i think we can see that based off the intimidation factors. honestly, the emotional blackmail that there university, that their head coach, that the athletic director, that the president of the university, that the ncaa and mountain west conference has put on these girls, it is a burden that they should not have to bear, but here we have brooke, i mean, a young girl standing up for herself, for herself and for

many generations of women to come. >> jacqui: and brooke, this is continuing to sort of unfold. you have now had seven forfeits across, i think it was five schools, southern utah, boise state, utah state, wyoming, and nevada. what real impact does all of these schools forfeiting games have on the ability to compete, you know, coupled with there are concerns you voiced about facing off against this player when you've got 80-mile-an-hour spikes, i mean, how do you feel about this? >> i mean, it sucked that the school still chooses to prioritize one man's needs over an entire team, and be willing to get rid of half of our season because of it. so it's amazing that other teams in the conference can stand up and just say, no, we are not doing this, and yet our school is still okay with having one person on our team that is causing all of these issues and yet will not get rid of them. >> jacqui: riley, i want to end with you because we have

seen in the last weeks since the election results came in, some democrats acknowledging that their party was far afield from where most people's concerns lie, specifically around the issue of transgender athletes and playing in women's sports. what is your message to people like brooke trying to speak up now? do you think the tide is changing at all, and what advice do you have moving forward? >> absolutely, i believe that the tide is turning. i think that was made very obvious just last week. my message to everyone, regardless of any identity factor, is that this should not be a partisan issue. this should not be a political issue. this is a humanitarian issue. it's a moral issue. it's a civil rights issue. but it shouldn't be as partisan as it has become in the way that our elected officials are voting and the way that the media represents this issue. again, it was made very clear just last week that that is not how the overwhelming majority of

society feels about this. your common sense, everyday american, they intuitively know that men and women are different, that men cannot become women, that men cannot get pregnant, that tampons and menstrual products do not belong in boys bathrooms. yet we had an entire political party who ran on this. i mean, that was their message to voters, and again, we saw how that turned out, so i'm hoping that the tide turns. i'm hoping that president trump takes decisive action on day one and bans this altogether. >> jacqui: okay. riley gaines, brooke slusser, thank you both for being here, really appreciate the conversation and keep us posted on the rest of your season and this lawsuit, brooke, we will be watching it. >> thank you. >> john: we keep saying this but we are just minutes away from a white house press briefing after a judge delayed his ruling on whether to toss president-elect trump's criminal conviction. how will the white house react? if this briefing ever gets underway, we'll let you know.

it looks like no time soon because there is nobody standing there. >> jacqui: no one in the front row, never a good sign. and what are the legal ramifications of letting this case hang around, even after the supreme court's immunity decision? andy mccarthy and jonathan turley digging into that coming up next. >> the judge should dismiss this case, but he won't. he's acting as a politician today instead of a judge. are you a veteran, own a home and need money for your family? newday usa can help. veterans have earned

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♪ ♪ >> jacqui: president-elect trump argues the deep state thwarted his agenda during his first term and he's planning to take steps to keep that from happening again. senior national correspondent rich edson joins us on the set. how is he going to do it? >> he says he's going to fire bureaucrats and moved government jobs out of washington, d.c. president-elect trump says on the first day of his new administration he is going to sign an executive order giving him that power. he is promising to wield it aggressively. trump exec at water would reclassify tens of thousands of

federal workers as at will employees, making it easier to fire and replace them. known as schedule f, trump issued it in 2020, president biden rescinded it, now the trump team says it is coming back. >> who would've thought it's controversial that when a new boss comes in with a new agenda that the people who work there are going to support the president's agenda, right? only in the federal government, only with the deep swamp, two career employees think they get to run the joint. >> there are more than 2 million civilian government workers. trump says he plans to move up to 100,000 of those jobs out of the capital city. there are more than 280,000 civilian federal workers in the largely liberal d.c. area. in his first term, trump transferred the bureau of land management's headquarters from d.c. to colorado. 287 agency workers resigned or retired. opponent say trump must replace experts with political cronies. >> i was there in 2020 when they started pushing people of the

national security council and replacing them with loyalists. they were getting national security experts across the board. my greatest fear is it is going to impact national security as a whole here in our country. >> the largest federal workers union says it won't let any leader run roughshod over the federal law. this fight could be headed to the court system. jacqui, john? >> jacqui: wow. >> john: well, so they said that he is gutting the national secured he system, but if i remember correctly, there weren't any wars on his watch. and how many do we have now? >> jacqui: what impact did it have moving headquarters for the bureau of land management -- what real impacted that have? >> we will see, too, this was done at the end of the first trump term, the closing days of the trump administration the first time so it is unclear what type of impact this could have longer term, if he is giving a s he is doing it day one he has a much longer runway. >> jacqui: i wonder if there is a work from home order that is going to be rescinded for a

lot of these federal employees who have been able to move across the country and keep their jobs. >> john: make it a work from montana order. we will see. people talk about what is the president going to do in the first 100 days? what is he going to do in the first ten days is the most pertinent question. rich, great to see you. fox news alert, any minute now, massachusetts air national guard meant jack teixeira will be sentenced for leaking thousands of classified documents. >> jacqui: noon pleaded guilty in march of six of violating the act, social media pot from discord. most notably, classified documents on russia's war in ukraine. let's go to alexis mcadams with more on this. >> hey, john and jacqui, just getting this brand-new information, hopefully in the next 10-15 minutes to get more information, jack teixeira, massachusetts air national guard member, who as you saw in the video you just played, searched his home, a huge deal last year in the boston area, the hands up

on his head, they walked him out of his home, he is 22 years old, and he leaked what they say, citing the espionage act in american history, that is where they walked him out there, handcuffed him, and now he has been in federal lockup. this is going on for months. that was in north dighton, massachusetts, outside of boston. teixeira's hearings in boston are arguing the u.s. district judge should sentence him to 11 years in prison, okay, this was what they ask for, but it could get at least 17 years. they are trying to bring that down. the 22-year-old did admit that he illegally took some of the nation's most sensitive secrets and shared them with users on the social media platform discord. so imagine these people aren't discord, this chat app, people talking but all different things, video games, all of these different topics, and he posts all of these private documents from the u.s. government, so that is how it originally happened. they had to track exactly who

had access to these things. remember last year covering it out there and boston courthouse and they were time to figure out how he used his past to get into some of those very sensitive areas. he had no prior criminal record. he did say in some of the discord chat apps at the time that he purposely posted this stuff because he wanted people to see what the u.s. government was doing behind closed doors, kind of alluding that he did not agree with it. the security breach, though, raised alarms over the ability to protect its closely guarded secrets. people wondering how did a 22-year-old kid, a guards man, have access to these kind of documents? authorities that he typed out the classified documents because he was going to then post it, then he said i'm going to take pictures of this thing. these documents that he posted, john and jacqui, secret, top-secret, he knew he was not supposed to be posting these things, that's why they went to his house in boston, they searched his home, his parents were there, the authorities found a tablet, a laptop, and an x but gaming console in the dumpster.

into authorities try to get rid of some of that information and some of the evidence. that leak exposed to the world a lot of information about ukraine and the troops movements on the ground, so what this 22-year-old did really put a lot of plans overseas into harm, put a lot of security at risk, so now once this is all done, whether he gets 11 or 17 years in a matter what happens in this court hearing it still goes back to those questions people had in the very beginning, how did jack teixeira go and have the ability to take all of these private documents that he would think you would have to have a lot higher security clearance for and be able to post them online? so as those questions remain we are waiting to get more information on exactly how many years he is going to be behind bars but still at least from what we have been reading at least ten years behind bars, jacqui or john. >> john: it was pretty stunning how easily he got access to these things as a low-level national guardsman. >> jacqui: and then to posted on discord, imagine you're scrolling through online and you see like top-secret. in the beginning people thought it wasn't real, until --

>> john: you might disagree with the policy but let's put it this way, lives are at risk. alexis mcadams for us, thanks. andy mccarthy's former assistant u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york, jonathan turley george washington university law professor, both fox news contributors. gentlemen, start with you, andy, your reaction to the loony sentencing of teixeira and we might have to interrupt. >> you have a situation where there is obvious harm done to the country. these situations can be catastrophic because in addition to troop movements, which in wartime in and of itself is bad enough, you always have to do a damage assessment, john, regarding methods and sources of intelligence and what might be blown by virtue of the fact that this stuff gets leaked out. so it obviously, when there is a real impact on national security, it's got to be dealt with in a serious way. >> john: you know, as alexis, jonathan, was pointing out, one

question was how a low-level national guardsman got access to this top-secret material. >> i know. that's one of the most troubling aspects, like they are giving clearances to beavis and butthead. i mean, this guy was a gamer who was just going on and slashing these things. andy and i have been on opposite sides of national secure the cases, his on prosecution, mine on the criminal defense, but i think defense did a very good job by not denying how serious this is, by saying he deserves to go away for a long time, we would like that to be about 11 years. the range between 11 and 17 years, the court may lamp somewhere in between, but he is going to go away for a long time. the real question here is how someone like this got this type of information. and i'm not entirely sure we have the answer on that. i think that the judge is starting here with the assumption that he disclosed

information that actually put lives at risk. not just national security, but lives in ukraine. some of the information was to do with troop movements in ukraine, obviously the russians are very good at following social media and scooping up that type of information. >> john: to your beavis and butthead point, they did help 80 '80s hair metal, why not classified -- let me ask you but judge merchan, who has kicked the can down the road here. we were joking with katie pavlich that maybe he is just trying to go through the five stages of grief and acceptance before he lets this case go, but what do you think, andy, merchan ultimately is going to do here? >> well, i think he is going to freeze the case. you know, when i look more carefully at the correspondence after we first heard about all of this this morning, i wonder what jonathan things about this, i was struck by how similar what merchan was to what judge chutkan did last week.

basically when the government, the federal government came into judge chutkan last week on the washington election interference case and said it was basically closing down shop, chutkan gave jack smith until december 2nd to come back and say what is your view of what the future proceedings of this case are? and that seems to be an invitation to file a motion to dismiss. i thought that the order that merchan gave to alvin bragg's office, the d.a. in manhattan, was very similar, basically saying you have until 10:00 next tuesday to get back to me on what your views are about the future of the case. i wonder if he is expecting a similar type of response. >> john: jonathan, what do you think? >> well, i wish i could be as hopeful on that point. both the prosecutors and the defense asked for this extra time to give them a chance to

come up with proposals for the court. the difference, of course, andy is well aware of this, as well, in the federal cases, there was no trial, let alone a conviction. here you have the jury verdict, and you have also a very motivated judge. his history does not bode well for reconsidering the basis of this case. even though i believe there are truly layers of reversible error. keep in mind that he can't diffuse part of the problem in a sentence that doesn't require any jail time or limitations on the president, he could even declare being president a type of community service and just say, you know, i'm going to leave it at that. it's when he puts restrictions on his movements or time is when he is going to trip that wire and it will end up in federal court. >> john: gentlemen, good to get your opinions on this. we still await the sentencing news for jack teixeira, so we will find out soon how long he

will be going away for, if he is going away at all. appreciate it. jacqui? >> thanks, john peered. >> jacqui: john, the migrant charged with murdering laken riley in court today, just one day before jury selection was set to begin, but there was a very surprising twist that is going to jump-start this trial. phil holloway joining us next. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ kia. movement that inspires.

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hearing. a knowledgeable, licensed humana sales agent will explain your coverage options. even help you enroll over the phone. call today and we'll also send this free guide. but now is the time. the annual enrollment period ends december 7th! humana. a more human way to healthcare. ♪ ♪ >> jacqui: welcome back. the venezuelan migrant charged with murdering 22-year-old nursing student laken riley on the university of georgia campus in february has waived his right to a jury trial. jose ibarra's bench trial now expected, set, rather, to start on friday. phil holloway, former assistant district attorney, former police officer, has been following this case from the start, joining me now to discuss. phil, this is quite unusual for

the defense to make this request. >> oh, yeah, unusual to say the least. things for having me, by the way. the case against the defendant in this case is overwhelming. the evidence is overwhelming. but a perspective, if all you have is a hail mary, i don't understand why you give the hail mary away. after all, you might find one juror that could perhaps hang this up. otherwise he is on a fast-track express straight to the state prison. he might even be in prison before thanksgiving, at this rate. >> jacqui: well, the state even sounded a little bit surprised. let's play for you what they said today. >> the state was contacted by the defense last week, and they let the state know they waived the defendants right to a trial by jury, instead the defendant wishes to seek a trial by judge only, a bench trial.

>> jacqui: the judge checked in with ibarra to make sure he knew what that meant. have you ever seen something like this happen before? and what do you think is the strategy there? is there one? >> i've seen this happen in the context of maybe waving a jury in exchange for taking, say, the death penalty off the table but the district attorney in this case, the one who got beat in this last week's election, already made the determination the death penalty is not on the table. this is very unprecedented, in my view, and i can't really see any advantage that the defense might have by this. on the other hand, the prosecution gets a big advantage because instead of having to prove their guilt, his guilt to 12 people, they only have to prove it to the judge. and they get to streamline their evidentiary presentation. they don't have to worry about all of the extraneous matters that they might have to deal with if there was a jury in the box, so it makes the prosecutors job easier.

it shortens the trial considerably. and i don't see any discernible benefit for the defense. but one day, these lawyers who represent him, i'm sure they have their reasons, we just don't know what those reasons are, they will explain it, whatever it isn't a motion for a new trial and have to testify as to what their strategy -- >> jacqui: real quick, very quickly, do you think his immigration status has anything to do with this? he came here illegally from venezuela. what do you think? taking deportation off the table? i don't know, you're the expert. >> no, deportation is not off the table. look, he's going to spend the rest of his natural life in a georgia prison. he's never going to be deported. he's going to die in a georgia prison, so i don't see how immigration really plays a role in this very strange decision. >> jacqui: all right, we will continue following it. phil holloway, thanks so much, appreciate it. john? >> john: jumping gangs are firing on commercial flights in haiti. the faa taking action that could

affect thousands of passengers. we will have the details coming up next.

♪ ♪ >> john: breaking moments ago, the faa now banning all flights from the united states into haiti through december the 12th has gained violence escalates in the caribbean country. the closure of the

port-au-prince airport comes as the gangs opened fire on jetblue and spirit airlines planes. alex hogan is following this. she's got the latest for us. what are we seeing in haiti's capital, alex? >> hi, john. there has been continued chaos and a terrifying moment for passengers on board that flight. picture you are about to descend when gunfire hits the plane from the ground below. that is exactly what happened on this flight that was departing from fort lauderdale, florida, to haiti's capital, port-au-prince. this is the footage where you can actually see the bullet holes in that spirit airline carrier, that aircraft that was diverted then to land in the dominican republic. one flight attendant was injured by the gunfire. no other passengers, think fully, were wounded. spirit says this aircraft has been taken out of commission but this is not the only plane that came under fire in port-au-prince. jetblue plane taking off from there was also hit by gunfire but it did land safety in new york. gang violence in haiti ranging, even as the new prime minister

took office on monday, the new p.m. has promised to bring down crime. police from kenya have been deployed to haiti under a u.n. peacekeeping mission backed by the u.n. although it is struggling because of lack of funding and personnel. now the u.s. embassy says this latest gang violence targeting planes appear to be aimed at blocking travel. well, as a result of that, as you mentioned, the airport is closed spirit, jetblue, and american airlines have temporarily canceled flights to and from haiti and now the faa is banning all flights to haiti, as well as any flights above haiti as ten below 10,000 feet in that airspace to prevent any incidents like this. john, there has been continued chaos. the u.n. says 85% of the capital port-au-prince is now run by those gangs. john? >> john: as if the island didn't have enough problems. alex hogan for us, thank you so much. we will be right back.

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>> jacqui: a not so jolly christmas for sacks fifth avenue, the company announcing its annual holiday lights show at its flagship location in new york city not coming back this year. the company signaling it has been slow for luxury brands lately and needs to "ensure the company's best position for the future." the store will continue to have its holiday windows displays but maybe back in time for next christmas. >> john: there is the effects of the economy. things have been slow for luxury brands. it's inflation, people's wages are going down in relation to prices. >> jacqui: a lot of people come in to see that light show. maybe they can afford better when they cut prices. [laughter] >> john: thanks so much for joining us, good to be with you. >> jacqui: always a pleasure. >> john: i'm john roberts. >> jacqui: i'm jacqui heinrich. "the story" with martha is coming up now. >> martha: thanks, john and jacqui.

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