FIRST ON FOX: Foreign entities are snatching up U.S. real estate, even when Americans cannot buy property in their nations, according to Rep. Pat Harrigan, R-N.C., who told Fox News Digital he is introducing legislation to fix the problem.
His bill, the Real Estate Reciprocity Act, would slap a 50% tax on real estate purchases by foreign nationals and entities who have government ties if their governments do not allow Americans to buy property in those countries.
It would require all foreign nationals who purchase land to file with the IRS and require the secretary of state to report each year on which foreign countries prohibit U.S. citizens from owning real estate.
"While American families struggle to afford a home, foreign adversaries are buying up our country with cash – farmland, neighborhoods, even land near military bases. These regimes ban Americans from buying land on their soil, but think they can carve up ours," Harrigan told Fox News Digital in a statement.
"My Real Estate Reciprocity Act stops it cold with a 50% tax on every purchase, mandatory disclosure, and protections for the ground we raise our kids on. If Americans can’t buy land in your country, you won’t be able to buy land in ours."
A surprising number of nations have an outright ban or severe restrictions on foreigners purchasing land within their borders. Switzerland, New Zealand, Denmark, the Phillippines, Poland and Vietnam all have stringent rules on the books. In places like China and Saudi Arabia, foreigners cannot purchase land, but they can invest in real estate.
Foreign buyers have long been accused of snatching up pricey apartments in metropolitan areas like New York City to park their assets, driving up housing costs.
The bill comes amid a slew of legislation designed to address China’s increasing encroachment on U.S. farmland, particularly near military bases.
China owned around 350,000 acres of farmland across 27 states as of last year, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
As of 2022, foreign entities and individuals held 43.4 million acres of U.S. agricultural land, which is nearly 2% of all land in the U.S.
As of 2021, Canada was the largest foreign holder of U.S. land. At 12.8 million acres, Canadian land ownership was bigger than the states of New Hampshire and Vermont combined.
The Supreme Court on Thursday voted in a 4-4 vote to uphold the Oklahoma State Supreme Court's decision in a landmark school choice case.
Justices issued a one-sentence ruling upholding the lower court's decision, saying only: "The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided Court."
The state had ruled that providing state funds for a religious charter school violated the First Amendment.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the ruling, resulting in the 4-4 split.
The Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board approved St. Isidore's contract request in June 2023, making them eligible to receive public funds.
But its ability to receive it was later blocked by the Oklahoma Supreme Court, which ruled that using public funds for the school was in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
That argument was appealed to the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case last October.
During oral arguments, the justices focused on two major questions. The first is whether charter schools should be treated as public schools, which are considered extensions of the state, and therefore subject to the Establishment Cause and its ban establishing or endorsing a religion, or whether it should be considered a private entities or contractor.
The case is the first of its kind to involve religious charter schools.
House Republicans are celebrating the major victory they delivered early Thursday morning for President Donald Trump.
Minutes after the GOP majority in the House of Representatives stood nearly entirely united to pass Trump's sweeping tax and spending cuts package by a razor-thin 215-214, Speaker Mike Johnson touted that "the House has passed generational, truly nation-shaping legislation."
Johnson predicted the measure would, among other things, "reduce spending and permanently lower taxes for families and job creators … and make government work more efficiently and effectively for all Americans."
And Majority Whip Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota said that House Republicans have "shown time and time again that we deliver for the American people, especially when it matters most."
But with Republicans clinging to a fragile House majority, Democrats view the House passage of what's called Trump's "One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act" as political ammunition as they aim to win back control of the chamber in next year's midterm elections.
Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin, in deriding the legislation, pledged that "Democrats will do everything we can to kick those who are responsible for this bill out of office. We have Americans at our side. This vote will cost many, many Republicans their seats in the midterms."
And Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington State said in a Fox News Digital interview ahead of the final House vote that "we’re going to hold Republicans accountable, and there will be a price to pay."
"House Democrats just signed their own political death warrant. Voters won't forget how they betrayed working families. And Republicans won't let them," NRCC spokesman Mike Marinella argued in a statement.
The GOP-crafted measure is stuffed full of Trump's campaign trail promises and second-term priorities on tax cuts, immigration, defense, energy and the debt limit. It includes extending his signature 2017 tax cuts and eliminating taxes on tips and overtime pay, providing billions for border security and codifying his controversial immigration crackdown.
Passage of the bill in the House comes as the national debt currently sits at $36,214,475,432,210.84, according to Fox Business' National Debt Tracker.
The massive package now heads to the Senate, where Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the top Democrat in the chamber, said that "this is not one big, beautiful bill. It’s ugly."
As Democrats attack the measure, they’re highlighting the GOP’s proposed restructuring of Medicaid—the nearly 60-year-old federal program that provides health coverage to roughly 71 million low-income Americans.
The changes to Medicaid, as well as cuts to food stamps, another one of the nation's major safety net programs, were drafted in part as an offset to pay for extending Trump's 2017 tax cuts, which are set to expire later this year. The measure includes a slew of new rules and regulatory requirements for those seeking Medicaid coverage. Among them are a new set of work requirements for many of those seeking coverage.
"Let’s be clear, all Republicans are talking about right now is how many people and how fast they’re going to take away healthcare. They have these huge cuts to Medicaid, 14 million people lose healthcare across the country, and they’re talking about how fast they can do that," said DelBene.
Schumer argued that "there’s nothing beautiful about stripping away people’s healthcare, forcing kids to go hungry, denying communities the resources they need, and increasing poverty."
And Martin claimed that "the GOP budget will decimate local communities, blow an economic hole in rural America, and make us into a nation governed by and for a handful of elites."
House Republicans push back against the Democrats' attacks and say what they are doing is putting an end to waste, fraud and abuse currently in the Medicaid system, so the program can work for the public in the way that it was intended.
They call any talk that they are cutting aid to mothers, children, people with disabilities and the elderly a "flat out lie."
And NRCC chair Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina told Fox News Digital in a statement ahead of the vote that "Republicans are ending waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicaid so the most vulnerable get the care they need."
"Democrats are lying to protect a broken status quo that lets illegal immigrants siphon off billions meant for American families. We’re strengthening Medicaid for future generations by protecting taxpayers and restoring integrity," Hudson added.
Dating back to last year's presidential campaign, Trump has vowed not to touch Medicaid. On Tuesday, as he made a rare stop on Capitol Hill to meet behind closed doors with House Republicans in order to shore up support for the bill, Trump's message to fiscally conservative lawmakers looking to make further cuts to Medicaid was "Don't f--- around with Medicaid."
While there are divisions between Republicans over Medicaid, and a chasm between the two major parties over the longstanding entitlement program, there is one point of agreement: This issue will continue to simmer on the campaign trail in one form or another long after the legislative battles on Capitol Hill are over.
FIRST ON FOX: Democrat Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy are reaching across the aisle to roll out a measure that would quickly deliver new and effective technologies to strengthen law enforcement’s ability to combat human and drug trafficking at the border, Fox News Digital has learned.
Cortez Masto, D-Nev., and Cassidy, R-La., are working together to introduce the "Emerging Innovative Border Technologies Act," which would make innovation teams at U.S. Customs and Border Protection permanent. Innovation teams were first created at the agency in 2018.
The bill would authorize the Customs and Border Protection commissioner to maintain one or more innovation teams to research and adapt commercial technologies to assist in border security operations and urgent mission needs.
It also would require the Department of Homeland Security to submit a plan to Congress that assesses the performance parameters and security impacts of potential technologies, as well as the deactivation of former Customs and Border Protection technology.
"Technology continues to improve our everyday lives, and it’s just common sense that we look for ways innovative technologies can help keep our border communities secure," Cortez Maso told Fox News Digital. "I am committed to helping CBP continue developing the tools they need to improve border security operations."
"President Trump secured the southern border in his first 30 days," Cassidy told Fox News Digital. "Let’s secure the border forever by using new technology."
He added: "Let’s stop fentanyl from flowing into our country."
The senators told Fox News Digital that investments in border security technology will "strengthen CBP’s detection and response time to cases of trafficking and illicit border crossings in remote areas."
The legislation would make innovation teams a more permanent and long-lasting part of Customs and Border operations.
A Cortez Masto aide told Fox News Digital that the senator has been working to crack down on cross-border crime since she was attorney general in Nevada. The aide highlighted Cortez Masto’s work with Republicans in the state, along with Mexican officials, to combat the rise of methamphetamine manufacturing and cross-border drug trafficking.
In the Senate, she has authored legislation to combat drug trafficking online, which was signed into law; and passed legislation to eliminate illegal fentanyl supply chains. Cortez Masto has also introduced a bill that would crack down on the deadly fentanyl additive xylazine.
Meanwhile, a similar version of the "Emerging Innovative Border Technologies Act" was introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Lou Correa, D-Calif., and Rep. Morgan Luttrell, R-Texas.
Apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border have plummeted 93% under President Donald Trump's administration, according to new data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection released Monday.
Customs and Border Protection says it averaged 279 apprehensions per day at the southern border in April, compared to 4,297 apprehensions in April 2024. The total apprehensions for April landed at 8,383, compared to April 2024's 129,000.
Customs and Border Protection officials also noted that just five illegal aliens were temporarily released into the U.S. during April, compared to 68,000 during the same month in 2024.
Fox News' Anders Hagstrom and Bill Melugin contributed to this report.
A new book sheds light on former White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates’ role in defending President Joe Biden's mental acuity, which the book alleges was done without the White House staff having the full picture of the president’s actual condition.
"Some of Bates’s colleagues believed that Biden’s inner circle took advantage of his loyalty and told him to deny things they knew were true," Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson wrote in their new book "Original Sin," detailing the inner workings of the Biden White House and attempts to downplay concerns about the president’s mental and physical fitness.
"He, along with most of the press team, rarely met with the president and didn’t have firsthand knowledge of the president’s wherewithal," the book continued. "They relied on senior staff for answers. Still, risking his own credibility, Bates willingly became the White House’s tip of the spear when it came to fighting off any reporting on Biden’s acuity."
Outside of White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, Bates was perhaps the most prominent face of the public-facing defense of Biden during his administration, often handling requests for comment from reporters and is mentioned about half a dozen times in the book.
The book goes into detail about an alleged "modus operandi" from the Biden campaign and the White House for "attacking any journalist who covered any questions about the president’s age" with the goal to "shame journalists and create a disincentive structure for those curious about the president’s condition."
"To answer the question on everyone’s minds: No, Joe Biden does not have a doctorate in foreign affairs. He’s just that f---ing good," Bates posted on X following a Biden press conference two weeks after the debate performance that many believe was the beginning of the end of his campaign.
The book looked back on that remark and stated that it "reflected the views of the Politburo but among professional Democrats, it became an instant legend for its sycophancy and tone-deafness."
Bates dismissed the book's narrative about him, telling Fox News Digital it "is distorted, stretching select facts while excluding others."
A former Biden White House staffer also came to Bates' defense, telling Fox News Digital, "This gets important facts wrong."
"Bates served as a senior spokesperson who met with and traveled with the President, including in the Oval and on Air Force One, staffing him around the country and on Capitol Hill. That’s public information. He served as a point person in the press office on major legislative and political issues," the former White House staffer continued. "He was known for being respectful and considerate if a colleague didn't want to do an interview for a challenging story, whether it was about policy or anything else."
The book details one specific instance of the White House successfully killing a story when "weeks" before the explosive Wall Street Journal story detailing concern about Biden's decline came out in June, Steve Ricchetti, former White House deputy chief of staff, strongly denied claims that the president was slipping to another journalist.
"[A] reporter with a different national news outlet had been hearing from White House aides that behind the scenes the president was having serious and disturbing moments, forgetting names and facts, sometimes seeming seriously confused at meetings," the book read.
"The reporter reached out to members of the White House press office, which not only aggressively—and angrily—disputed her reporting but also took the unusual step of having Steve Ricchetti call her," the book said. "He talked to her off the record, so she couldn't use any of what he said or even attribute it to ‘a White House source.’ But he told her that everything the others were saying was false, and that he was at the meetings as a counselor to the president."
According to Tapper and Thompson, the Biden White House was going all out trying to control the perception of his health.
"The message from the White House was clear, this reporter believed: If she went forward with the story from anonymous aides, the White House would aggressively dispute it, on the record, and portray her as a liar," the book reads. "The tacit threat worked."
The book has sparked intense reactions from both sides of the aisle, leading many to slam the media's coverage of Biden's mental acuity and blame the media and Biden's team for covering up the facts of the situation.
Fox News Digital has written extensively dating back to the 2020 presidential campaign about Biden's cognitive decline and his inner circle’s role in covering it up.
Others have pushed back against the framing of the book, including Naomi Biden, Joe Biden's granddaughter, who delivered a scathing rebuke to the new book, calling it "silly" and "political fairy smut."
CNN, Tapper's network, has also faced pushback for its promotion of the book, including from "The View" and Daily Show host Jon Stewart, who took issue with the network promoting the book under the backdrop of Biden's recent cancer diagnosis.
In a statement to Fox News Digital, a Biden spokesperson said, "There is nothing in this book that shows Joe Biden failed to do his job, as the authors have alleged, nor did they prove their allegation that there was a cover up or conspiracy."
"Nowhere do they show that our national security was threatened or where the President wasn’t otherwise engaged in the important matters of the Presidency. In fact, Joe Biden was an effective President who led our country with empathy and skill."
Fox News Digital's Hanna Panreck and Rachel del Guidice contributed to this report
Four months into his second tour of duty in the White House, President Donald Trump's approval ratings remain slightly underwater.
The president stands at 46% approval and 54% disapproval in a new national survey by Marquette Law School. And Trump is at 42% approval and 52% disapproval in a Reuters/Ipsos poll.
Most, but not all, of the latest national surveys place the president's approval rating in negative territory, with a handful indicating Trump is above water.
Trump has aggressively asserted executive authority in his second term, overturning longstanding government policy and aiming to make major cuts to the federal workforce through an avalanche of sweeping and controversial executive orders and actions, with some aimed at addressing grievances he has held since his first term.
Trump started his second administration with poll numbers in positive territory, but his poll numbers started to slide soon after his late-January inauguration.
But two issues where the president remains at or above water in some surveys are border security and immigration, which were front and center in Trump's successful 2024 campaign to win back the White House.
Trump stands at 56% approval on border security and 50% approval on immigration in the Marquette Law School poll, which was conducted May 5-15.
But Trump's muscular moves on border security and immigration, which have sparked controversy and legal pushback, don't appear to be helping his overall approval ratings.
"Immigration is declining now as a salient issue," said Daron Shaw, who serves as a member of the Fox News Decision Team and is the Republican partner on the Fox News poll.
Shaw, a politics professor and chair at the University of Texas, said "immigration and especially border security are beginning to lose steam as one of the top-three issues facing the country. Republicans still rate them fairly highly, but Democrats and independents, who had kind of joined the chorus in 2024, have moved on and in particular moved back to the economy as a focal point."
Pointing to Trump, Shaw added that "when you have success on an issue, it tends to move to the back burner."
Contributing to the slide over the past couple of months in Trump's overall approval ratings was his performance on the economy and, in particular, inflation, which were pressing issues that kept former President Joe Biden’s approval ratings well below water for most of his presidency.
Trump's blockbuster tariff announcement in early April sparked a trade war with some of the nation's top trading partners and triggered a massive sell-off in the financial markets and increased concerns about a recession.
But the markets have rebounded, thanks in part to a truce between the U.S. and China in their tariff standoff as Trump tapped the brakes on his controversial tariff implementation.
Trump stood at 37% approval on tariffs and 34% on inflation/cost of living in the Marquette Law School poll. And he stood at 39% on the economy and 33% on cost of living in the Reuters/Ipsos poll, which was conducted May 16-18.
Doug Heye, a longtime GOP strategist and former RNC and Bush administration official, pointed to last year’s election, saying, "The main reason Trump won was to lower prices. Prices haven’t lowered, and polls are reflecting that."
"With the exception of gas prices, there hasn’t been much of a reduction in prices," Shaw said.
"Prices haven’t come down, and it’s not clear that people will say the absence of inflation is an economic victory. They still feel that an appreciable portion of their money is going to pay for basic things," he added. "What Trump is realizing is that prices have to come down for him to be able to declare success."
A federal judge blocked President Donald Trump's administration from firing two Democratic members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board on Wednesday.
Trump fired all three Democratic members of the five-person board in February, resulting in two of them filing a lawsuit. U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton found that allowing unilateral firings would prevent the board from carrying out its purpose.
Walton wrote that allowing at-will removals would make the board "beholden to the very authority it is supposed to oversee on behalf of Congress and the American people."
The oversight board was initially created by Congress to ensure that federal counterterrorism policies were in line with privacy and civil liberties law.
"To hold otherwise would be to bless the President’s obvious attempt to exercise power beyond that granted to him by the Constitution and shield the Executive Branch’s counterterrorism actions from independent oversight, public scrutiny, and bipartisan congressional insight regarding those actions," Walton wrote.
Trump's firings left just one Republican on the board. The third Democratic member had just two days left in her term when she was removed, and she did not sue the administration.
The two plaintiffs, Travis LeBlanc and Edward Felten, argued in their lawsuit that members of the board cannot be fired without cause. Meanwhile, lawyers for Trump's administration argued that members of other congressionally created boards do have explicit job protections, and it would therefore be wrong for Walton to create such protections where they are absent.
"The Constitution gives President Trump the power to remove personnel who exercise his executive authority," White House spokesman Harrison Fields told the Associated Press. "The Trump Administration looks forward to ultimate victory on the issue."
The plaintiffs also argued that their firings left just one member on the board, a Republican, and that falls short of the quorum required for the board to function.
President Donald Trump's "one big, beautiful bill" passed the House of Representatives early on Thursday morning with few Republican defections.
It is a significant victory for House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who navigated deep inter-party friction within the House GOP Conference to deliver a product that few Republican lawmakers ultimately defected from.
The bill is a sweeping multi-trillion-dollar piece of legislation that advances Trump's agenda on taxes, immigration, energy, defense and the national debt.
Republicans spent more than 48 hours continuously working on the bill from the time it came before the House Rules Committee – the final gatekeeper before a House-wide vote – at 1 a.m. on Wednesday to when it passed the chamber just after sunrise on Thursday.
"It quite literally is morning again in America," Johnson said. "What we're achieving today is nothing short of historic."
All the while, Democratic lawmakers attempted a variety of delay tactics, from introducing amendments targeting key Trump policies to forcing several procedural votes on the House floor ahead of debate on the legislation.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., notably spoke on the House floor for over 30 minutes just before the vote in a last-ditch effort to stretch out the seemingly endless day of debate and votes.
"This bill represents a failed promise. Last year, Donald Trump and House Republicans spent all of their time to lower the high cost of living in the United States of America," Jeffries said on the House floor. "We're now more than 120 days past the inauguration. Costs aren't going down, they're going up."
Tensions flared at multiple points as visibly weary lawmakers continued to fight their ideological battle into the early morning.
Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., who was presiding over the House at the time, warned Jeffries multiple times to address the chair in his remarks rather than directly attacking Republicans sitting across the chamber.
"Every time I'm interrupted, that's going to add another 15 minutes to my remarks," Jeffries said as Democrats sitting around him sounded off in support.
The bill seeks to permanently extend Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) while also implementing newer Trump campaign promises like eliminating taxes on tips and overtime pay, and giving senior citizens a higher tax deduction for a period of four years.
The legislation also included new funding for the border and defense, including more money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations and $25 billion to kick-start construction of a "Golden Dome" defense system over the U.S.
At the same time, the legislation seeks to make a dent in the federal government's spending trajectory by cutting roughly $1.5 trillion in government spending elsewhere. The U.S. government is more than $36 trillion in debt.
Cuts include new work requirements for able-bodied Medicaid recipients, as well as putting more of the cost-sharing burden on states that took advantage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)'s expanded Medicaid enrollment by giving illegal immigrants access to the healthcare program.
The legislation would also roll back a host of green energy tax credits awarded in former President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) – which Trump vowed to repeal in its entirety on the campaign trail.
It also would cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by roughly 20% by introducing some cost-sharing burdens on the states and increasing the amount of able-bodied Americans facing work requirements to be eligible for food stamps.
All House Democrats rejected the bill, accusing Republicans of disproportionately favoring the wealthy at the expense of critical programs for working Americans. Republicans, on the other hand, have contended that they are preserving tax cuts that prevent a 22% tax increase on Americans next year if TCJA was allowed to expire, as well as streamlining programs like Medicaid and SNAP for vulnerable Americans who need it most.
Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas, chair of the House's 189 member-strong Republican Study Committee, told Fox News Digital, "This transformational legislation permanently extends President Trump's historic tax cuts, provides unprecedented funding for border security, and obliterates the last four years of catastrophic Democratic policies."
And while most GOP lawmakers united on the final bill, divisions appeared to persist until the final moments. Conservatives had pushed for more aggressive targeting of Medicaid waste and Biden green energy subsidies, while blue state Republicans pushed for tax relief for Americans in high-cost-of-living areas.
To resolve outstanding differences, House Republican leaders released a list of eleventh-hour changes to President Donald Trump's "one big, beautiful bill," hours before their full chamber is expected to consider the legislation.
New provisions in the bill include a ban on federal funding for transgender adults' medical care, and $12 billion in new funding to reimburse states for money they spent countering the former Biden administration's border policies.
A key request from fiscal conservatives was also honored, with House GOP leaders apparently agreeing to speed up the implementation of work requirements for certain able-bodied recipients of Medicaid.
The bill initially had Medicaid work requirements going into effect in 2029.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, one of the fiscal hawks leading GOP opposition to the bill, told Fox News Digital just after midnight Thursday that he was not sure if the legislation went far enough – but suggested the White House could persuade him with other avenues for change.
"There are things in the executive space, executive actions that we think could take care of … some of our concerns on the Medicaid expansion," Roy said.
The legislative update also included a victory for blue state Republicans who have been pushing for a higher state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap – the current $10,000 cap would be quadrupled to roughly $40,000, but only for people making less than $500,000 per year. The $10,000 cap was first instituted in TCJA.
"This is what real leadership looks like. President Trump and House Republicans made a promise to the American people to secure our border, protect seniors, cut taxes on tips and overtime, and shut off the spigot of benefits for illegal immigrants," first-term Rep. Mike Haridopolos, R-Fla., told Fox News Digital.
Rep. Randy Feenstra, R-Iowa, told Fox News Digital, "More than 77 million Americans made clear at the polls that they want President Trump’s America First agenda codified into law, and our ‘One, Big, Beautiful Bill’ delivers on this promise."
But while House GOP leaders are enjoying their hard-fought victory now, the battle over Trump's "big, beautiful bill" is not over.
Senate Republicans have already signaled they expect to make changes to the bill when it reaches the upper chamber, despite House GOP leaders publicly urging them to amend as little as possible.
There is a significant number of senators who have expressed wariness at the level of Medicaid and SNAP cuts sought by the House. An increase to the SALT deduction cap could also be met with skepticism in the Senate, where no Republican represents a blue state – unlike the House, where New York and California districts are critical to the majority.
The House and Senate must pass identical bills before sending them to Trump's desk for a signature. GOP leaders have signaled they hope to do that by the Fourth of July.
EXCLUSIVE: Alexis Nungaray, the mother of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, whose murder authorities say was at the hands of two illegal immigrants suspected to be Tren de Aragua gang members, told Fox News Digital that renaming a local wildlife refuge in her daughter’s honor would mean "the world" to her family.
Jocelyn Nungaray was sexually assaulted and strangled to death, allegedly by two Venezuelan illegals, Franklin Jose Pena Ramos and Johan Jose Rangel Martinez, who were let through the southern border during the Biden administration. Her body was found tied up in a bayou in Houston.
Since her daughter’s murder, Alexis Nungaray has become a vocal advocate for increased border security and a supporter of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Nungaray said the tragic manner of Jocelyn’s death "takes away [from] who she was as a person." However, she said that the renaming of a 39,000-acre wildlife refuge on the Texas Gulf Coast preserves Jocelyn’s memory for what she loved in life.
Trump issued an executive order on March 5 renaming the former Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge in southeast Houston to the Jocelyn Nungaray National Wildlife Refuge.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas, have since introduced bills to enshrine Trump’s executive order into law, making it more difficult for a future president to change the name of the refuge back. The Senate has already passed the bill, and Babin is working to pass it in the House.
Babin told Fox News Digital that his bill to codify Trump’s renaming of the refuge after Jocelyn is receiving bipartisan support and that he expects it will be passed by the House soon and be immediately signed by the president.
"This is a beautiful place. And if we name it after her, I think we will preserve her legacy," he said.
"The main thing we need to remember is that this can never be allowed to happen again," he added. "We get this thing in law, codified, no future president can ever undo this. And so, we will have a memory of what happens when you have bad policies that can create a system that will allow this to happen to innocent people like Jocelyn."
Nungaray said the effort to rename the refuge "touches every part of my heart and my family's heart."
"Everyone who knew Jocelyn knew she loved animals so much, knew she loved nature, wildlife," explained Nungaray. "She truly loved all animals and all creatures, and she wanted every animal to have a place to call home."
"Knowing that this national wildlife refuge is a place for a bunch of wild animals that travel through the country, and it is somewhere that they can call home, and it is somewhere that they can find a place of safety for them. I just know it would absolutely mean the world to her to know she has something in honor of her in that nature."
She said that seeing the signs going up around Houston bearing her daughter’s name is "bittersweet."
"I went out there to just go see what it was about, what it was like, and the amount of peace I felt just being there, it was just so pure and so peaceful," said Nungaray. "Immediately I thought Jocelyn would love this. She would love to be out here."
"She wasn't just a 12-year-old girl who was strangled and left in a bayou of water," Nungaray went on. "She was a very creative, talented, free-spirited 12-year-old girl."
Smiling, Nungaray added that Jocelyn "was very quirky" and "an old soul." She liked dressing in 1990s-style cargo jeans and Converse and loved listening to music from as far back as the 1940s and 1950s.
"She was very different and unique. She was an amazing friend," said Nungaray.
Nungaray said she is very grateful to Trump for both his support and for "keeping his promises" regarding immigration enforcement.
"I support immigration, but I say there's just a right way and a wrong way to do it," she explained. "He's protecting the people, and he's taking consideration to the people, us the citizens and making sure we're safe and our kids are safe, women are safe, that we're all safe in our communities."
"We've still got a long way to go," she went on. "But I will always advocate for her and be her voice and stand up for better border control and immigration laws. Because I know one-million percent Jocelyn's death should have been preventable."
EXCLUSIVE: First lady Melania Trump is launching an audiobook of her memoir using artificial intelligence (AI) audio technology in multiple languages, Fox News Digital has learned.
This week, she is breaking new ground by releasing "Melania, the Audiobook," which has been "created entirely" with AI.
"I am proud to be at the forefront of publishing’s new frontier – the intersection of artificial intelligence technology and audio," Trump told Fox News Digital.
The first lady said ElevenLabs AI developed "an AI-generated replica of my voice under strict supervision, which will establish an unforgettable connection with my personal story, in multiple languages for listeners worldwide."
ElevenLabs AI CEO Mati Staniszewski told Fox News Digital that they are "excited that the first lady and her team trusted our technology to power this first-of-its-kind audiobook project."
"We look forward to helping bring this book to the public in many other languages, in the first lady’s own voice, soon," Staniszewski said.
The English version of the audiobook is expected to be available on MelaniaTrump.com. Later this year, it will be released in multiple languages, including Spanish, Hindi and Portuguese.
Meanwhile, billboards to promote the audiobook will be up in Times Square in New York City as well as in Los Angeles and Miami; the billboards will be up for one month in all three cities. The Times Square billboard will feature the video below.
Upon the release of the memoir last year, the first lady told Fox News Digital that writing her story was "an amazing journey filled with emotional highs and lows."
"Each story shaped me into who I am today," she said. "Although daunting at times, the process has been incredibly rewarding, reminding me of my strength, and the beauty of sharing my truth."
"Melania" is the first lady’s first book. She released the original book along with a special collector’s edition that includes photos hand-selected by the first lady, many she photographed herself of her home and of various trips she has taken around the world.
Marco Rubio told Fox News that far-left Democrats espousing regret over voting to confirm him as secretary of state is likely just "confirmation" that he is doing a good job.
Democrat Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen told Rubio during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing yesterday that he "regret[ted] voting" to confirm him as secretary of state after indicating as much on "Fox News Sunday" in March. Rubio shot back at the hearing that Van Hollen's regret just proves he is doing a good job, and he subsequently told Fox News that the same goes for other Democrats who are expressing regret over their nod of approval to him earlier this year when he was confirmed by the Senate 99-0.
"In some cases, depending on … whoever you're talking about and what they stand for, the fact that they don't like what I'm doing is a confirmation I'm doing a good job," Rubio said. "That's how I feel about it."
A growing number of Democrats are coming out against Rubio despite voting to confirm him, with the bulk of the criticism describing him as a sell-out to the Trump administration.
"I don't recognize Secretary Rubio," Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., added during the Tuesday Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing with Van Hollen, noting that in the past she had viewed him as "a bipartisan" and "pragmatic" person.
"I'm not even mad anymore about your complicity in this administration's destruction of U.S. global leadership. I'm simply disappointed," Rosen said.
Last week, Democrat Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz lamented that Rubio has aligned himself "so closely" with President Donald Trump.
"President Trump’s narrow and transactional view of the world is not news to anybody. But what is genuinely surprising to me is that Secretary Rubio is aligning himself so closely with it," Schatz said during a live event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations last week.
"This is someone who, up until four months ago, was an internationalist. Someone who believed in America flexing its powers in all manners, but especially through foreign assistance," Schatz continued. "And yet, he is now responsible for the evisceration of the whole enterprise. He’s a colleague. I voted for him. We talk all the time. But what I’m trying to understand is: What happened?"
Schatz noted that he hopes to see Rubio "reemerge, reassert himself and save the enterprise."
Rubio's supportive stance on Trump's foreign aid cuts, his defense of the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and his alleged lack of action to help get him back to the U.S., his approach to the Russia-Ukraine war, and Rubio's decision to pull visas from foreign college students in the U.S. for stoking anti-Israel sentiment on university campuses are all issues Democrats have pointed to for why they regret voting to confirm Rubio.
The secretary's alleged role in bringing white South African refugees to the U.S. was also something for which Rubio was chastised by Democrats during his Tuesday testimony on Capitol Hill.
"I think a lot of us thought that Marco Rubio was going to stand up to Donald Trump," Democrat Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy said in March during an interview on CNN. "Marco Rubio has not, and that's been a great disappointment to many of his former colleagues in the Senate."
