In response to concerns that environmental protection efforts might delay reconstruction in the coastal area, environmental laws that could have posed obstacles to rebuilding structures destroyed by the Southern California wildfires will be temporarily suspended.
Houses along the scenic Pacific Coast Highway in California burned down in a monstrous fire that destroyed more than 10,000 homes and structures beginning on Jan. 7.
"We’re afraid they won’t let us rebuild," said Teddy Leonard, owner of Reel Inn, a seafood restaurant serving on the Malibu coast since the 1980s that burned down in January. "It’s very scary."
California law currently requires that people looking to build undergo a lengthy environmental review process before receiving approval, but state officials say the process will not apply to victims of the recent fire seeking to rebuild their lost structures.
The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires that a review be conducted to weigh any potential environmental effects before a building permit is approved. Another state law, the California Coastal Act, focuses on development as it relates to "the preservation of sensitive coastal and marine habitat and biodiversity."
Both laws were halted on Sunday for those who tragically lost their homes after Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order to suspend the environmental review process.
"When the fires are extinguished, victims who have lost their homes and businesses must be able to rebuild quickly and without roadblocks," Newsom said in a statement.
"The executive order I signed today will help cut permitting delays, an important first step in allowing our communities to recover faster and stronger. I’ve also ordered our state agencies to identify additional ways to streamline the rebuilding and recovery process," he added.
CEQA has received pushback over the years from critics, including environmentalists, who say it is restrictive and expensive.
"I don’t think that anybody really thinks that CEQA works exactly how it’s supposed to," Eric Buescher, an attorney with San Francisco Baykeeper, an environmental nonprofit working to "hold polluters accountable," said in 2022 about the state law, according to local outlet Bay Nature.
"Developers say it is way too restrictive. Cities say it’s expensive and impossible to comply with," Buescher said. "Environmental groups say you can’t even get a project that is going to be built for sea level rise reviewed in time for sea level rise."
Many of the Malibu homes that were destroyed by the fires were located on the beach along the Pacific Coast Highway, and their reconstruction could be subject to local land regulations designed to preserve the natural coastline.
President Biden announced on Thursday the federal government would cover all costs of debris removal and California’s fire management for 180 days.
The Minnesota Republican Party vowed to pursue constitutional recalls against any Democratic legislator who refuses to show up at the state legislature's first day of session on Monday.
Democrats have threatened to boycott the first two weeks of the session in an effort to block Republicans from taking advantage of a narrow and temporary majority in the state legislature. Minnesota GOP Chairman Alex Plechash argued at a Monday press conference that intentionally skipping work would expose Democratic lawmakers to election recall efforts.
"Minnesotans expect one thing from their elected officials: to show up and do the job they were sent here to do. That's a basic duty, not a special request," Plechash said, speaking at the Minnesota state capitol.
Republicans currently enjoy a 67-66 seat majority in the state House and could use that majority to set legislative rules for the next two years when the session begins on Tuesday. Their advantage is likely temporary, however, with a special election in a lean-Democratic district scheduled for January 28. The previous Democratic lawmaker in the district, Curtis Johnson, won his election in November, but was later disqualified after courts determined he did not truly reside in the district.
Republicans will therefore enjoy a majority for at least the two weeks between the start of session on Tuesday and the special election at the end of January. Republicans are also contesting the election of another Democrat, Rep. Brad Tabke, who won re-election by 14 votes after county elections officials lost 20 absentee ballots in one precinct.
"We are committed to holding every lawmaker accountable. If you don't show up for the job, you shouldn't keep it," Plechash said.
GOP Attorney Ryan Wilson says Minnesota law requires that a recall petition receives at least 25 signatures from voters in a given district. Once obtained, the petition is then sent to the Minnesota Supreme Court to determine whether the cause for the recall meets legal standards.
Wilson said the GOP would be basing its recall requests on "nonfeasance," or the failure to perform an act that is required by law.
If the state Supreme Court approves that reasoning, the petition would then need to be signed by at least 25% of the number of voters in the district who cast ballots in the November election. If it passes that threshold, the district would then hold a recall vote.
"We've never had a situation like this in the history of the legislature, where 66 members of a caucus are unwilling to show up for work," Wilson said.
Republican state Rep. Pam Altendorf argued Democrats are only facing a disadvantage "because of cheating." She added that the lawmakers are "acting like sore losers and not coming to work."
A wife working to bring her husband home from years of wrongful detainment in Afghanistan saw heartening progress over the weekend.
After traveling to Mar-a-Lago with no promise that anyone with President-elect Donald Trump's team would see her, Anna Corbett had a meeting with incoming National Security Advisor Michael Waltz for more than an hour and received a phone call from President Biden.
"I have heard from several that President Trump is concerned about our family. He knows that we are down here. He knows about our situation, and is very concerned," Corbett revealed to Fox News on Monday morning.
On Sunday, Waltz came to Corbett’s hotel and met with her for over an hour, she said.
"I am extremely encouraged, and the contrast of my experience is just mind-blowing right now."
Corbett said she "absolutely believe[s]" the Trump administration will bring her husband home, but "the details are unclear."
Biden had not called her once, she said, in the two and a half years since her husband was detained, until this weekend.
She told Fox News Biden was "very kind" and "empathetic," but the call was "absolutely devastating" because it was clear he was not going to bring Ryan Corbett home in his final days in office.
"What I heard him say is he is not bringing Ryan home," she said.
Since Ryan Corbett was detained two and a half years ago, he "just keeps missing milestones," according to Anna Corbett. One of their three kids recently shot his first buck while hunting, another was elected prom queen and another graduated from high school.
The Corbett family lived in Afghanistan, where Ryan Corbett operated a business prior to the Taliban takeover in 2021.
"We love the people, and had to evacuate when the Taliban took over, but Ryan kept his business open, and that's why he returned to Afghanistan," said Anna Corbett.
In August 2022, Ryan Corbett and a German business partner returned to Afghanistan to train new hires for their business that offered consulting services and lending. Both were detained by the Taliban, and since then, Anna Corbett has had short calls with him about every two weeks as his condition in prison has deteriorated.
The White House on Sunday confirmed Biden spoke with Corbett's family, along with the families of George Glezmann and Mahmoud Habibi – who have also been unjustly held by the Taliban in Afghanistan since 2022.
White House officials noted that over the last four years, Biden brought home more than 75 Americans unjustly detained around the world. All Americans detained before the U.S. military withdrawal in August 2021 have returned home, according to the White House.
"Globally, President Biden and his team have worked around the clock, often in partnership with key allies, to negotiate for the release of Americans held hostage or unjustly detained abroad so that they can be reunited with their families, and will continue to do so throughout the remainder of the term," according to the statement.
Reports broke last week that the Biden administration was negotiating with the Taliban to swap three U.S. citizens being held in Afghanistan in exchange for a Guantanamo Bay prisoner alleged to have been a close associate of Usama bin Laden.
The deal seemingly stalled, as a senior Taliban official told The Guardian the group would rather wait to negotiate with the incoming Trump administration.
Trump told Fox News’ Peter Doocy last week he would consider a prisoner swap but seemed skeptical.
"I haven't looked at it," Trump said Thursday. "I have not been in favor of the trade, but I'll be taking a look tomorrow. We'll announce something tomorrow."
The talks, which have been ongoing since at least July 2024, involve exchanging suspected senior al Qaeda aide Muhammad Rahim al Afghani for U.S. citizens Ryan Corbett, George Glezmann and Mahmoud Habibi, who were detained in Afghanistan in 2022.
The Taliban has long sought the release of Rahim, who has been held at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba since 2008, because the Pentagon believes he was a close associate of bin Laden.
In November 2023, the Guantánamo Bay prison review board cited Rahim’s work for senior al Qaeda members, and his participation in attacks on U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, as reasons to keep him in custody.
A liberal activist group in Colorado is warning sheriffs in the state that they will hold them personally liable and sue if they cooperate with President-elect Trump's mass deportations plans or with ICE officials in any way, including working to deport illegal immigrants.
In a letter to Colorado sheriffs signed by ACLU of Colorado executive director Deborah Richardson and legal director Tim MacDonald, the group warned of severe personal consequences for law enforcement officials in Colorado if they comply with any ICE requests, including ICE detainers, which often keep the agency from having to undertake dangerous arrests in public spaces.
The group compared Trump’s plans for mass deportations to the Japanese internment camps of the 1940s and said law enforcement aiding in these efforts could face personal legal penalties of tens of thousands of dollars.
MacDonald and Richardson warned Colorado sheriffs that "joining with ICE or other federal officers in mass immigration raids or using the power of your office to hold people solely at ICE request will expose you and your officers to personal liability."
"Any Colorado law enforcement officer who causes the violation of a right protected under the Colorado Constitution is subject to liability for damages and attorneys’ fees including potential personal liability up to $25,000, and their employer – defined to include the elected sheriff – is generally obligated to satisfy the full amount of any uncollectible judgment," said the letter.
The gang members allegedly forced their way into a Venezuelan immigrant couple’s apartment at the Edge at Lowry Apartments in the Denver suburbs and bound, beat, stabbed and kidnapped the victims, leaving them hospitalized. The perpetrators also allegedly stole jewelry from the victims.
MacDonald said the Aurora Police Department’s raid against the TdA-linked criminals "exceeded their authority under Colorado law" and that "this type of behavior inflicts harm and distress on a vulnerable community, and risks depriving residents of their rights guaranteed under the Colorado Constitution and state law."
"We have taken legal action against law enforcement offices that ran afoul of Colorado law, and if necessary, will do so again," said MacDonald. "We are ready to respond to violations of our neighbors’ civil rights and to prevent constitutional violations of the rights of Colorado families and communities."
Roger Hudson, a city council member in nearby Castle Pines, Colorado, responded to the letter, telling Fox News Digital that "it’s disappointing to me that an organization whose sole purpose has been to defend the rights of Americans has now chosen noncitizens – many of whom are in our country illegally – over the rights of hardworking American taxpayers."
"Colorado taxpayers are exhausted from working hard to foot the high bill for failed liberal policies, not just regarding immigration, but also housing, education, transportation, infrastructure, and the economy," he said, adding: "Change is coming soon, and it begins with the inauguration of President Donald Trump."
New Hampshire lawmakers are looking to mirror Maine and Nebraska, and make theirs the third state that divides its presidential electors by congressional district in what a top Republican proponent called a bid to give more power to the voters.
Senate Bill 11, sponsored by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Bill Gannon and seven other Republicans, would award a presidential delegate to the winner of each of its two congressional districts and award two more to the winner of the statewide popular vote.
"Congressional district presidential electors shall cast their ballots for the presidential and vice-presidential candidates who received the highest number of votes in their respective congressional districts," Senate Bill 11 reads.
The bill will receive its first committee hearing Tuesday, Fox News Digital has learned.
The Granite State is known for its "First-in-the-nation" primary contest and midnight canvassing on Election Day in the small community of Dixville Notch.
"We want to stay ‘First-in-the-nation’," Gannon, of Sandown, told Fox News Digital.
"That’s a big, important thing. We want our voters to feel: ‘I go out and vote – my vote counts.'"
Gannon dismissed criticism from state Senate Minority Leader Rebecca Perkins Kwoka, who told WMUR that Republicans should play "fair and square" and claimed state legislature maps are already "very gerrymandered."
"I think this is yet another example of the Republicans kind of trying to change the system to meet their needs," she told the outlet.
Gannon disagreed. "She had a statement; ‘they’re trying to steal a vote’ or something – Not the case at all," he said.
Gannon indicated that if the law were in effect in the contentious 2000 presidential race, the divided electors would’ve benefited Democrats – though Vice President Al Gore took the state under its current winner-take-all system. In 2016, the division would have awarded Donald Trump a lone elector when Hillary Clinton took the state.
"I hope to pick up some Democrat support unless they vote in lockstep. If they're willing to look at the bill and say ‘jeez, it could benefit either side.' It's just going to represent the people more," he said.
"That's what we're all about in New Hampshire, representing the will of the people."
New Hampshire notably has the largest state legislature in the country at 424 lawmakers. It dwarfs second-place Pennsylvania’s 203-member legislature.
Meanwhile, Democratic state Sen. Debra Altschiler panned the bill and quipped that if New Hampshire wants to follow Maine’s lead in this respect, there are other more progressive initiatives the legislature should take up.
"This bill is completely out of line with New Hampshire values," said Altschiller, of Stratham.
"And if we, as New Hampshire, wanted to follow Maine's lead, then we would have universal free lunch for all students, and we'd have background checks on firearms purchases. But we don't have that."
"So we don't always take our marching orders from other states."
In the past three presidential cycles, neighboring Maine has awarded its divided electors 3-1 to the Democratic candidate. Each time, Trump won the one elector from the state’s rural, interior, 2nd congressional district.
The opposite has been true in Nebraska in 2020 and 2024, when President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris each scored the single delegate from the Omaha-centric 2nd congressional district. Trump earned the other four delegates – and previous to 2016, all electors were often awarded to the Republican.
With the Republicans holding a 16-8 supermajority in the state Senate, the bill is likely to pass the chamber later this month or in February. The measure would then head to the state House of Representatives, where the GOP also holds a wide majority and where Republican lawmakers will likely be receptive to the legislation.
FIRST ON FOX: President-elect Donald Trump's House GOP allies are clearing the runway for him to make good on his vow to acquire Greenland.
Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., is leading a bill to authorize Trump to enter negotiations with Denmark over purchasing Greenland, a territory located in North America but with longstanding cultural and geopolitical ties to Europe.
The bill is titled the "Make Greenland Great Again Act," according to a copy of its text obtained by Fox News Digital.
"Joe Biden took a blowtorch to our reputation these past four years, and before even taking office, President Trump is telling the world that America First is back. American economic and security interests will no longer take a backseat, and House Republicans are ready to help President Trump deliver for the American people," Ogles told Fox News Digital.
It would allow the sitting president to enter into talks with Denmark just after noon on Jan. 20, when Trump is due to be sworn in.
"Not later than 5 calendar days after reaching an agreement with the Kingdom of Denmark relating to the acquisition of Greenland by the United States, the President shall transmit to the appropriate congressional committees the agreement, including all related materials and annexes," the legislation said.
The Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse, meaning the executive branch cannot make any purchases for the federal government without getting the funds first appropriated by the House of Representatives and approved in the Senate.
Ogles' bill is backed by 10 fellow House Republicans, including Reps. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., Diana Harshbarger, R-Tenn., Michael Rulli, R-Ohio, Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., Neal Dunn, R-Fla., Barry Moore, R-Ala., Randy Weber, R-Texas, and the new incoming House Science Committee Chairman, Brian Babin, R-Texas.
While he first floated the idea during his first term in the White House, recent weeks have seen Trump ramping up public comments about acquiring Greenland, as well as other entities like the Panama Canal.
Trump suggested last week that he would not rule out taking both by force. He told a reporter who asked if he would rule out using economic or military coercion, "No, I can't assure you on either of those two."
Meanwhile, the idea of buying Greenland has gained traction with Trump's Republican allies, with supporters of the idea noting its strategic location near Russia – one of the U.S.'s top adversaries.
Ogles argued it was "essential to our national security."
The president-elect's son, Donald Trump Jr., was in Greenland last week for what was billed as a personal tourism visit.
Ogles' introduction is the latest move by a House Republican to help Trump make good on his foreign policy goals.
Last week, Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., chairman of the pragmatist House GOP Main Street Caucus, introduced a bill to allow Trump to purchase the Panama Canal for a symbolic sum of $1.
That bill nabbed more than a dozen Republican co-sponsors.
FIRST ON FOX: Conservatives in states across the U.S. are urging Congress to take action on legislation to crack down on noncitizen voting in federal elections amid continued concerns about how widespread the practice may be.
Twelve state chairs of their respective State Freedom Caucuses, part of the State Freedom Caucus Network, are writing to members of Congress and urging them to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act.
"Illegal immigration was a top electoral issue for millions of voters and their message was heard loud and clear with the election of Donald J. Trump as the 47th President of the United States. Now it’s time for Congress to listen," they say in a letter to lawmakers, obtained first by Fox News Digital.
That bill, re-introduced recently in the House and Senate by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, requires states to obtain documentary proof of U.S. citizenship and identity in person when registering an individual to vote. It also requires states to establish a program to remove noncitizens from the voter rolls, and allows citizens to bring suits against officials that fail to uphold the law.
While only citizens can vote in federal elections, Republicans have claimed that it is impossible to enforce because noncitizens and illegal immigrants are eligible for driver’s licenses and other benefits in states, which can lead them to being registered to vote.
Those fears have been stoked by the border crisis, which exploded in 2021 and only subsided last year. Multiple states have also announced the purging of thousands of noncitizens from voter rolls. Critics of the push have said that actual voting by noncitizens is extremely rare and already illegal. But the chairs raised concerns about the migrant surge and a push to increase voter registration.
"We have a massive surge of illegal aliens in our population in addition to the more than 20 million noncitizens already living in our country, no oversight of where they are or what they are doing, and a government-wide mandate to encourage voter registration without proper safeguards," the state chairs say.
The State Freedom Caucus Network launched in 2021 with the backing of the House Freedom Caucus and has expanded into multiple states. The network helps state-level caucuses set up and work to keep their state parties in line with conservative principles in a similar way to the House Freedom Caucus.
In statements to Fox, the chairs made it clear that they saw the issue of noncitizen voting as an important one for their state.
"SC voters want to feel like the ballot box is secure," South Carolina Freedom Caucus Chairman Jordan Pace said. "The SCFC has repeatedly introduced bills and amendments to accomplish this by barring tax dollars from being spent to provide voter forms to non-citizens, by closing the primaries, and by increasing hand-counted audits of elections. Thus far, the moderates in the House have blocked us at every turn."
Arizona Freedom Caucus Chairman Jake Hoffman pointed to a bill in the state he introduced that became law in 2022 and rejects forms not accompanied by proof of citizenship.
"However, we need the SAVE Act's fixes in federal law to eliminate illegal registration of noncitizens under the color of law by using the federal form to register," he said.
The push comes as Congress zeroes in on issues related to illegal immigration, with both chambers of Congress now held by the GOP and with President-elect Trump soon to be inaugurated.
Earlier this month, the Laken Riley Act passed the House and advanced in the Senate with Democratic backing. That bill demands the detention of illegal immigrants charged with theft-related crimes.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., instructed his caucus not to hold back when it comes to confirmation hearings beginning this week for some of President-elect Trump's nominees for top roles.
During last week's caucus lunch, Schumer said these hearings will be an opportunity for them to grill Trump's choices and ask them questions about the incoming president's agenda, a Senate Democratic source told Fox News Digital.
In particular, the Democratic leader told his party that they should press nominees on how they specifically will help carry out some of the items Trump pledged to do during the campaign, the source said.
As both parties compete for working-class Americans, who have been key deciding votes in the past several elections, Schumer and Democrats believe the confirmation hearings are a prime opportunity to put Trump's selections on the record on crucial issues that matter to this group, according to the source.
Additionally, Democrats are not planning on holding back when it comes to the backgrounds of nominees, they added. The caucus could use this time as a chance to lay the groundwork for any future blunders from Trump appointees, in which case they could say they warned colleagues early on.
Confirmation hearings will kick off on Tuesday with Doug Collins being considered at 9 a.m. to serve as secretary of Veterans Affairs. Pete Hegseth's hearing to be Trump's Defense secretary will follow at 9:30 a.m.
Some of the other Trump picks who will appear before committees this week are Gov. Kristi Noem, R-S.D., for secretary of Homeland Security; CEO and founder of Liberty Energy Chris Wright for secretary of Energy; and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., for secretary of State.
Since Republicans will have a 53-seat majority in the Senate, they could manage to confirm Trump's selections without any Democratic support. That is, if they can get all Republicans to back the incoming president's choices.
However, each nominee still needs to go through a confirmation hearing, during which members of both parties will question them. Many Democrats have already expressed their intentions to ask Hegseth, for example, about various allegations of fund mismanagement and sexual assault, which he has denied.
Depending on their answers, hearings can play a role in whether a nominee ultimately gets confirmed.
A member of the Armed Services committee, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has made clear her concerns about Hegseth. "I am deeply concerned by the many ways in which your behavior and rhetoric indicates that you are unfit to lead the Department of Defense," she wrote to the nominee last week.
"Your confirmation as Secretary of Defense would be detrimental to our national security and disrespect a diverse array of service members who are willing to sacrifice for our country," she said.
Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., Armed Services ranking member, is also expected to pose questions on areas of concern. He met with Hegseth last week, but said afterward in a statement, "Today’s meeting did not relieve my concerns about Mr. Hegseth’s lack of qualifications and raised more questions than answers."
"As with any nominee for this critical position, Mr. Hegseth must undergo the same high-level of scrutiny as prior Secretary of Defense nominees."
While Hegseth's confirmation process has been one of the most watched, it's expected that Democrats will keep pressure on a number of Trump picks, with a handful of exceptions, such as for their colleague Marco Rubio, whom several Democrats plan to support.
Wall Street's largest banks simultaneously exited the same net-zero climate alliance that was probed by Republican lawmakers last year, announced just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump will be sworn into office.
Since 2021, banking giants have been prominent members of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), a global group of financial institutions "committed to financing ambitious climate action" to transition the economy to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
However, since December, six of the world's largest banks, J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Bank of America, have all separately announced their leaving the alliance, which encourages its member banks to additionally "design, set, and achieve" science-based, net-zero targets.
The banks said that they remain committed to emission reduction targets, but they will do so independently.
"We will continue to work independently to advance the interests of our Firm, our shareholders and our clients and remain focused on pragmatic solutions to help further low-carbon technologies while advancing energy security," a spokesperson for J.P. Morgan, the latest bank to withdraw from the alliance, said in a statement.
BlackRock, the world's largest investment firm, also announced on Thursday it was separating from a major climate group, the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, which works with asset managers to attain net-zero emissions by 2050 or sooner.
The synchronicity of the exits comes just weeks before Trump, who is expected to break away from President Biden's greenhouse gas emissions reduction target and potentially withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, will assume the presidency.
"The sudden exodus of these big US banks out of the NZBA is a lily-livered effort to avoid criticism from Trump and his climate denialist cronies," said Paddy McCully, a senior analyst at Reclaim Finance, the Guardian reported.
"A few years ago, when climate change was at the front of the political agenda, the banks were keen to boast of their commitments to act on climate," McCully added. "Now that the political pendulum has swung in the other direction, suddenly acting on climate does not seem so important for the Wall Street lenders."
The exits come nearly a year after a group of House Republicans launched a probe into the six banks over their involvement in the international alliance over claims it could impact the agriculture sector.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Allstate insurance company for allegedly illegally collecting, using and selling the driving behavior data of over 45 million Americans.
Paxton filed the suit in the District Court for Montgomery County, Texas, on Monday morning. In the suit, he accuses Allstate, and its subsidiary data analytics company "Arity," of secretly using driving data from over 45 million Americans’ mobile devices, in-car devices and vehicles to build the "world’s largest driving behavior database," consisting of "trillions of miles" worth of data.
"Our investigation revealed that Allstate and Arity paid millions of dollars to install Allstate’s tracking software," Paxton said in a Monday statement. "The personal data of millions of Americans was sold to insurance companies without their knowledge or consent in violation of the law. Texans deserve better and we will hold all these companies accountable."
Allstate is one of the largest auto, home and life insurance companies in the U.S. It is headquartered in Glenview, Illinois.
The suit said that in 2015, Allstate and Arity developed and integrated software into several third-party apps so that when a consumer downloaded these apps onto their phone, they unwittingly downloaded the tracking software. Once Allstate’s software was downloaded onto a customer’s device, they could monitor the consumer’s location and movement in real time.
According to the suit, the company used the driving data to justify raising customers’ insurance rates and further profited by selling the data to third parties, including other insurance companies.
"Defendants [Allstate and Arity] never informed consumers about their extensive data collection, nor did Defendants obtain consumers’ consent to engage in such data collection," the suit said. "Finally, Defendants never informed consumers about the myriad of ways Defendants would analyze, use, and monetize their sensitive data."
Because tens of millions of Americans, including millions of Texans, were never informed about their driving data being gathered, Paxton argues that Allstate’s data-gathering scheme violates the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act, the Data Broker Law, and the Texas Insurance Code’s prohibition on unfair and deceptive acts and practices in the insurance business.
He is asking the court to permanently block Allstate from continuing to gather and use customers’ data and to impose thousands of dollars in civil penalties per customer.
According to Paxton, this suit is the first enforcement action ever filed by a state attorney general to enforce a comprehensive data privacy law.
Fox News Digital reached out to Allstate but did not immediately receive a response.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Allstate insurance company for allegedly illegally collecting, using and selling the driving behavior data of over 45 million Americans.
Paxton filed the suit in the District Court for Montgomery County, Texas, on Monday morning. In the suit, he accuses Allstate, and its subsidiary data analytics company "Arity," of secretly using driving data from over 45 million Americans’ mobile devices, in-car devices and vehicles to build the "world’s largest driving behavior database," consisting of "trillions of miles" worth of data.
"Our investigation revealed that Allstate and Arity paid millions of dollars to install Allstate’s tracking software," Paxton said in a Monday statement. "The personal data of millions of Americans was sold to insurance companies without their knowledge or consent in violation of the law. Texans deserve better and we will hold all these companies accountable."
Allstate is one of the largest auto, home and life insurance companies in the U.S. It is headquartered in Glenview, Illinois.
The suit said that in 2015, Allstate and Arity developed and integrated software into several third-party apps so that when a consumer downloaded these apps onto their phone, they unwittingly downloaded the tracking software. Once Allstate’s software was downloaded onto a customer’s device, they could monitor the consumer’s location and movement in real time.
According to the suit, the company used the driving data to justify raising customers’ insurance rates and further profited by selling the data to third parties, including other insurance companies.
"Defendants [Allstate and Arity] never informed consumers about their extensive data collection, nor did Defendants obtain consumers’ consent to engage in such data collection," the suit said. "Finally, Defendants never informed consumers about the myriad of ways Defendants would analyze, use, and monetize their sensitive data."
Because tens of millions of Americans, including millions of Texans, were never informed about their driving data being gathered, Paxton argues that Allstate’s data-gathering scheme violates the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act, the Data Broker Law, and the Texas Insurance Code’s prohibition on unfair and deceptive acts and practices in the insurance business.
He is asking the court to permanently block Allstate from continuing to gather and use customers’ data and to impose thousands of dollars in civil penalties per customer.
According to Paxton, this suit is the first enforcement action ever filed by a state attorney general to enforce a comprehensive data privacy law.
Fox News Digital reached out to Allstate but did not immediately receive a response.
Wu failed to respond to repeated requests for comment from Fox News Digital, despite the migrant shelter involved being just a short drive from Downtown Boston.
Leonardo Andujar Sanchez, a 28-year-old illegal immigrant from the Dominican Republic, is facing criminal charges in federal court for illegally possessing an AR-15 and ammunition and over 400 grams of fentanyl with intent to distribute, according to a statement by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts.
Boston 25 News also reported that Sanchez was also caught possessing cocaine with "an estimated street value of at least $750,000." He is currently being kept in custody by state authorities.
Sanchez was storing his weapon and drugs in his room at the Quality Inn Hotel in Revere, Massachusetts, which is a government-funded shelter for migrants.
Despite this, Healey expressed anger over the incident, saying, "It’s outrageous that this individual took advantage of our shelter system to engage in criminal activity."
Healey ordered an inspection of all shelters, starting with the Quality Inn Hotel in Revere, as well as a "full review" of the state’s shelter intake processes.
"This further underscores our broken federal immigration system and the urgent need for Congress and the White House to act on a border security bill to prevent criminals from entering our communities," said Healey. "The people of Massachusetts should not continue to have to deal with the impacts of federal inaction."
However, Wu, who has said Boston’s sanctuary policies "make everyone safer," has remained silent. Although Fox News Digital spoke with Wu’s office, neither she nor her office have issued any response to Sanchez’s arrest.
Since Trump’s 2024 electoral victory, Wu has doubled down on Boston’s sanctuary city status, saying police and city officials would not assist federal authorities with deportations.
Trump’s incoming border czar Tom Homan has called out Wu for pledging resistance to the administration’s immigration agenda, telling Newsmax in November that "she’s not very smart."
"President Trump is going to prioritize public safety threats," said Homan. "What mayor or governor doesn’t want public safety threats out of their communities? I mean that’s your number one responsibility is to protect your communities and that’s exactly what we’re going to do."
Longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon has pledged to have tech billionaire Elon Musk "run out" of the White House amid fiery debate over H-1B visas for skilled foreign workers.
Bannon made the remarks about Musk, who President-elect Trump has tapped to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency, in an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. Bannon’s former employer, Breitbart, published excerpts of the interview in English.
"I will have Elon Musk run out of here by Inauguration Day," said Bannon, a former Trump White House adviser. "He will not have full access to the White House. He will be like any other person."
"He is a truly evil guy, a very bad guy," Bannon continued. "I made it my personal thing to take this guy down. Before, because he put money in, I was prepared to tolerate it; I’m not prepared to tolerate it anymore."
Bannon’s spat with Musk appeared to be over immigration, specifically Musk’s support of H-1B visas that allow U.S. companies to hire foreign workers for specialty occupations and is overwhelmingly used by the tech industry.
"This thing of the H-1B visas, it's about the entire immigration system is gamed by the tech overlords, they use it to their advantage, the people are furious," Bannon said.
Software engineers and others in the tech industry have used H-1B visas for skilled foreign workers and say they are a critical tool for hard-to-fill positions. It has long been controversial for some conservatives, who say it is abused by tech companies to bring in cheap labor to replace American workers.
Born in South Africa, Musk was once on an H-1B visa himself and defended the industry's push to bring in foreign workers.
"There is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent," he said in a post. "It is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley."
Online debate over H-1B visas led Musk to label those in the Republican Party opposed to the visas as "hateful, unrepentant racists," and emphasize the need for "a meritocratic society."
Bannon said Musk "should go back" to South Africa.
"Why do we have South Africans, the most racist people on earth, White South Africans, we have them making any comments at all on what goes on in the United States?" Bannon said.
"He will do anything to make sure that any one of his companies is protected or has a better deal or he makes more money," Bannon said of Musk. "His aggregation of wealth, and then — through wealth — power: that's what he's focused on."
Bannon was released from prison in October after completing a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena related to a congressional investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, incident at the U.S. Capitol.
While Musk’s influence on the incoming Trump administration remains unclear, Trump has appeared to side with the tech billionaire on the matter of H-1B visas.
"I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them," Trump said in an interview with the New York Post last month. "I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program."
Trump has in the past criticized the H-1B visas, calling them "very bad" and "unfair" for U.S. workers, and even unveiled a "Hire American" policy that directed changes to the program to try to ensure the visas were awarded to the highest-paid or most-skilled applicants.
Fox News Digital's Adam Shaw and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Canada’s outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suggested that President-elect Trump's suggestion that Canada become America's "51st state" was a distraction from the tariff threat.
"I know that as a successful negotiator, he likes to keep people a little off balance. The 51st state, that’s not going to happen," Trudeau told MSNBC’s "Inside with Jen Psaki" on Sunday. "It’s just a non-starter. Canadians are incredibly proud of being Canadian. But people are now talking about that, as opposed to talking about what impact 25% tariffs [has] on steel and aluminum coming into the United States, on energy, whether it's oil and gas or electricity."
"No American wants to pay 25% more for electricity or oil and gas coming in from Canada," Trudeau said in the interview with Psaki, President Biden’s former White House press secretary. "That’s something I think people need to pay a little more attention to. And perhaps the idea of a 51st state is distracting a little bit from a very real question that will increase the cost of living for Americans and harm a trading relationship that works extremely well."
Trump has threatened to impose 25% tariffs on all Canadian imports. The president-elect also said that if Canada merged with the U.S., taxes would decrease and there would be no tariffs.
The president-elect has also taken shots at Trudeau, referring to him as the "governor" of Canada. Last Monday, Trudeau announced that he would resign as Canada's prime minister once his Liberal Party chooses a new leader on March 9.
"From my very first conversations with him back in 2016, he told me how much he admires Canada, how much he appreciates and likes us, so there is a certain amount of flattery in this that he thinks that we are as great as we are," Trudeau said of Trump on Sunday. "He’s right, we are great. We’re also very, very proud of being Canadian. If you talk to any Canadian, you ask them to define what it is to be Canadian, they’ll talk about all sorts of different things, but one of the things we will point out is, ‘and we’re not Americans.’"
On Trudeau’s trip to Mar-a-Lago in November, the Canadian prime minister said the topic of the U.S. annexing Canada did come up, but Trudeau said once he joked that Canada could annex Vermont or California as a sort of trade, Trump "immediately decided it was not that funny anymore, and we moved on to a different conversation."
"This isn’t out of the blue that he’s doing this, but my focus has to be not on something that he’s talking about that will not ever happen, but more on something that might well happen, that if he does choose to go forward with tariffs that raise the costs of just about everything for American citizens, that on top of that, we’re going to have a robust response to that," Trudeau said.
"We are ready to respond with tariffs as necessary," Trudeau said.
Canadian officials say that if Trump follows through with his threat of punishing tariffs, Canada would consider slapping retaliatory tariffs on American orange juice, toilets and some steel products.
Trudeau recalled that Trump previously put tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum during his first term, and Canada responded by putting tariffs on bourbon, Harley Davidson motorcycles, orange juice, playing cards and other such items that Trudeau argued Canadians could easily find replacements for.
"It ended up causing a lot of loss in American businesses for whom Canada is their number one export partner. We are the number one export partner for about 35 different U.S. states, and anything that thickens the border between us ends up costing American citizens and American jobs. That’s not what President Trump got elected to do," Trudeau said. "I know he got elected to try and make life easier for all Americans, to support American workers. These are things that are going to hurt them."
Trump said last week that the U.S. does not need oil – or anything else – from Canada, but almost a quarter of the oil that the U.S. consumes each day comes from Canada. The energy-rich western province of Alberta exports 4.3 million barrels of oil a day to the U.S., according to the Associated Press. Data from the United States Energy Information Administration shows that the U.S. consumes 20 million barrels a day, and produces about 13.2 million barrels a day.
Canada, a founding partner of NATO and home to more than 40 million people, is also the top export destination for 36 U.S. states. Nearly $2.7 billion worth of goods and services cross the border each day.
Trump has said that he would reconsider his tariff threat if Canada made improvements in managing security at the Canada-U.S. border, which he and his advisers see as a potential entry point for illegal immigrants.
Trudeau has said that less than 1% of illegal immigrants and fentanyl cross into the U.S. from Canada.
Nevertheless, after his meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Trudeau announced an increase in spending on border security, expressing willingness to address Trump’s concerns in hopes that he would reconsider his tariff threat.
The Democratic National Committee has hired the social media staffers who ran the @KamalaHQ account during Vice President Kamala Harris' failed presidential campaign, the organization announced Monday.
The social team will now focus on building a new @FactPostNews brand for the Democratic Party across X, Threads and Bluesky, with plans to expand to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. The account will seek to counter so-called "misinformation" from President-elect Trump's administration in real time.
"The Republican disinformation machine is powerful, but we believe a stronger weapon is giving people the facts about how Trump and his administration are screwing over the American people," DNC chief mobilization officer Shelby Cole told Axios.
The DNC did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital on Monday morning.
The team's first set of marching orders will be to harass the confirmation process for Trump's cabinet nominees, namely by highlighting their personal wealth, according to Axios. An internal memo calls the nominees "unfit billionaire picks."
The new initiative comes as Democrats are re-evaluating their election strategies across the board following Trump's commanding victory in November.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., conceded last week that Democrats should regard the 2024 election as a loss and reflect on what went wrong for the party after losing both the White House and Senate and failing to flip the House of Representatives.
Schumer appeared on NBC’s "Meet the Press," where he was asked about Democratic strategist James Carville’s assertion that the reason Democrats lost was because of "the economy, stupid."
"I told my caucus, and I’ll say it here, too… certainly it was a loss, but it’s also a challenge," Schumer said of the election.
Schumer said Democrats faced "severe headwinds" to win four of seven contested Democratic Senate seats, though conceded that "we did some things wrong and we have to look in the mirror and see what we did wrong."
"What we’re going to do is spend time talking to working families, showing them how much we care for them," Schumer added. "And not just talk about legislation, but talk about the conditions that have made so many working families worried about their futures."
Fox News' Stephen Sorace contributed to this report
FIRST ON FOX: A powerful, fiscally conservative political advocacy group is launching what it says is an eight-figure campaign to urge Congress "to protect prosperity" by renewing the sweeping tax cuts signed into law by President-elect Trump during his first administration.
Americans for Prosperity (AFP), the influential and deep-pocketed grassroots network founded by the billionaire Koch Brothers, is announcing that it's spending $20 million to launch a wide-ranging campaign to urge the extension of Trump's signature Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA).
The campaign, which includes an ad blitz starting this week in all 50 states, was shared first with Fox News on Monday.
"Americans must unite and tell Washington now is not the time for higher taxes. By extending and improving the Trump tax cuts, we can make America more affordable, create greater opportunity, and reignite the American dream," the narrator in one of the AFP ads argues.
The 2017 law revised the nation's tax code and gave a financial break to nearly all taxpayers. Many of the provisions are scheduled to expire at the end of this year, which would likely result in a tax increase for many Americans if Congress is unable to pass legislation to extend the cuts.
AFP says Congress is "facing a countdown to crisis that threatens the family budgets of virtually every American."
The group also said that millions of Americans will pay an extra $1,500 or more next year in taxes if the cuts are not extended.
AFP President and CEO Emily Seidel, highlighting that her group worked alongside Trump to pass the tax cuts last decade, called them the most pro-growth tax reform in American history.
"Renewing the TCJA must be a top priority so we can ensure this historic achievement continues to fuel decades of economic prosperity – and AFP is fully committed to mobilizing millions of people to ensure it gets done," Seidel told Fox News in a statement.
AFP Vice President of Government Affairs Akash Chougule argued that the expiration of the tax cuts would "result in crippling tax increases for millions of families," but "by extending and improving on the TCJA, we can make America more affordable, create greater opportunity, and reignite the American dream."
The group, and its aligned political wing, has a wide-ranging grassroots network across the country that it touts has reached nearly 30 million voters the past two years.
AFP says it will once again activate its grassroots army "to ensure pro-growth tax reform is Congress’ top priority" through "calls to lawmakers, community phone banks, and 20,000 contacts at constituent doors planned in February alone."
The group says its campaign will also include more than 1,000 meetings at congressional offices, in-district events with their activists, roundtables with job creators and "shared testimonials from real American families and businesses who would suffer if Congress fails to renew the Trump tax cuts."
Also being utilized: op-eds at the national and state levels, TV and radio interviews, direct mail efforts and AFP's highly visible podcast.
During his campaign last year to win back his old job in the White House, Trump repeatedly pledged to extend his tax cuts.
No Democrats voted for the original tax cuts, which passed when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress, as they do once again.
While GOP House and Senate leaders are prioritizing extending the tax cuts, the massive price tag for extending them, which would likely even further balloon the nation's $2 trillion deficit, is sparking divisions among congressional Republicans.
While AFP had its differences with Trump during his first administration, it was a major supporter of his tax cuts as well as his bipartisan criminal justice reform law.
But the group's political wing, which has long backed fiscally conservative causes and candidates, endorsed and supported Trump rival Nikki Haley in late 2023 as the 2024 GOP presidential nomination race got started. Haley was the last remaining rival to Trump, but after she ended her White House bid, AFP Action, the group's political, wing concentrated its political efforts on down-ballot races.
FIRST ON FOX: A select group of tech industry titans and venture capitalists will gather in Washington, D.C., this week to welcome the incoming Trump administration and celebrate new opportunities for global innovation in artificial intelligence and entrepreneurship.
Presidents and CEOs from companies on the cutting edge of AI tech and their big financial backers, along with personnel from the incoming administration, will attend a dinner on Thursday organized by Outside the Box Ventures, a firm founded last year by journalist-turned-investment banker Katherine Tarbox, along with Laurent Bili, the French ambassador to the U.S.
The list of those invited to Thursday's dinner includes "DOGE" chief Elon Musk, Silicon Valley investor and GOP mega-donor Peter Thiel, NVCA chief executive Bobby Franklin, incoming White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks, OpenAI's Sam Altman, investor Joe Lonsdale and Narya co-founder Colin Greenspon.
"This gathering represents more than discussion. We hope it symbolizes a new chapter in public-private collaboration to harness technology’s transformative power for the nation’s future," a source close to the planning told Fox News Digital. The event comes days before President-elect Trump is inaugurated as the nation's 47th president.
America's leading entrepreneurs want to seize what Microsoft's Brad Smith has called a "golden opportunity for American technology and economic competitiveness." The aim is for the joined forces of industry leaders and government resources that Trump brought together for Operation Warp Speed, his first administration's lauded COVID-19 vaccine program, to be reproduced for advancements in AI.
The participation of Bili reflects how France is interested in being a leader in AI, with a global action summit on the rapidly developing technology to be held in Paris this February, and believes the U.S. is a valuable partner in this effort.
"We believe this is the hottest ticket for tech and venture capital up to the inauguration," the source said. The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Franklin, the CEO of the National Venture Capital Association, the industry trade group for venture capital, confirmed he plans to attend. He told Fox News Digital there is great excitement in his industry for several of Trump's hires who have backgrounds in venture capital, including Sacks, a billionaire tech executive, and Vice President-elect JD Vance.
"One of our challenges is always educating, and there's always a lack of understanding of what the venture industry does, how it works with entrepreneurs, how it creates great tech and drugs and everything else in the economy," Franklin said. "And so having folks that understand that coming into the administration is a wonderful, welcome situation from our perspective."
The dinner comes at a critical juncture for the U.S., which leads the world in AI startups but faces tough competition from China and other foreign adversaries.
American companies received more than 40% of global AI funding in 2023, surpassing China and the European Union combined. That same year, U.S. venture capital firms unleashed $17.9 billion in funds for AI startups, contributing to the leaps and bounds in generative AI tech popularized by ChatGPT, Google's Gemini and Grok from xAI.
More than 10,000 AI-related patents have been filed by U.S. entities in the past five years, showcasing the deep bench of American innovators that Franklin and others believe Trump stands ready to support.
But analysts warn that China's recent developments in AI technology pose a challenge to American dominance in this field and may even threaten U.S. national and economic security.
A recent report published by American Edge Project cautions that "China is rapidly advancing its own open-source ecosystem as an alternative to American technology and using it as a Trojan horse to implant its CCP values into global infrastructure."
The report called China's progress "both significant and concerning."
"Chinese-developed open-source AI tools are already outperforming Western models on key benchmarks, while operating at dramatically lower costs, accelerating global adoption. Through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which spans more than 155 countries on four continents, and its Digital Silk Road (DSR), China is exporting its technology worldwide, fostering increased global dependence, undermining democratic norms, and threatening U.S. leadership and global security."
There is a broad expectation that the Trump administration will let the private sector lead the way as the U.S. confronts China. Whereas the Biden administration prioritized establishing "guardrails" for AI development through regulatory bodies, analysts for Perkins Coie note that Trump has promised to revoke a Biden-era executive order that set policy for federal agency AI purchases and uses. The 2024 Republican platform claimed Biden's policy "hinders innovation and imposes Radical Leftwing Ideas," apparently in reference to requirements that the National Institute of Standards and Technology create guidance to ensure AI models are unbiased and do not discriminate based on race or sex.
Additionally, Trump's appointment of Sacks as AI czar signals his thinking on AI is in line with Sacks' associates Musk and Thiel, who each co-founded PayPal and favor a deregulatory agenda.
"The new czar will likely be tasked with coordinating with federal agencies and outside stakeholders to ensure consistent guidance regarding AI use in the federal government. We would expect Sacks to be less focused on the potential harms of AI and more focused on promoting and facilitating AI innovation with fewer restraints," Perkins Coie said.
Thursday's gathering is a strictly nonpartisan event, though Silicon Valley's high interest in building relationships with a Republican administration would seem to signal shifting political priorities.
Previously, issues like immigration and climate change distanced Big Tech from the GOP. And when Trump first ran for president, his populist MAGA movement was an unknown factor that led many entrepreneurs to keep that distance.
But a growing recognition of AI as a national priority has appeared to bridge that gap. So has a more clearly defined Trump, with key players in his second administration that have ties to the venture capital world.
"You know, it was certainly a political outsider that won in 2016," Franklin said. "Now, he's not an outsider."
President Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday to discuss ongoing ceasefire and hostage release negotiations.
During the phone call, the two discussed a release deal first talked about in May of last year, according to White House officials. That deal was endorsed unanimously by the UN Security Council.
"The President discussed the fundamentally changed regional circumstances following the ceasefire deal in Lebanon, the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, and the weakening of Iran's power in the region," the White House reported in a statement.
The Biden administration, Egypt and Qatar have been attempting to reach a compromise for the last year in efforts to secure a release for the captured hostages and end the war between Israel and Hamas.
There has been a firm divide in the negotiations and Hamas has said it won’t release the captives without a clear end to the war, while Netanyahu has said he will continue until "total victory" over the militant group.
Biden has stressed the immediate need for the ceasefire and return of the hostages with a surge in humanitarian aid.
Netanyahu has said he is only committed to the first phase with a partial hostage release in exchange for a week-long halt in the fight. Hamas is demanding a full withdrawal and a complete end to the fighting.
During the call, Netanyahu thanked Biden for his support of Israel and America's support for Israel’s security and national defense.
The Department of Education was established more than 40 years ago in an effort to refine the U.S. school system. But as incomingpolitical leaders, including President-elect Trump, consider dismantling the agency, a Fox News Digital review examines the trends in test scores, graduation rates and federal funding since its inception. What follows is the results of those findings.
When former President Jimmy Carter was in office, Congress passed the Department of Education Organization Act in October 1979, which officially established the agency in 1980.
The department was created to determine policy for, administer and coordinate federal assistance to educational institutions around the country, but has seen opposition since its founding – commonly from Republican lawmakers.
Trump said he is going to dissolve the agency when he assumes office, asking whether the department is crucial in the development of education or if schools would benefit from a more localized education system.
The modern-day educational system appears vastly different to that of the agency's founding. And a decades-long debate on whether individual states should have more control over local school systems, rather than the federal government, has been reignited as Trump prepares to take office.
"Federal government efforts to improve education have been dismal," Lindsey Burke, director of the right-leaning think tank the Heritage Foundation's Center for Education Policy, wrote of the current education system amid years of low test scores. "Even if there were a constitutional basis for its involvement – which there isn’t – the federal government is simply ill-positioned to determine what education policies will best serve the diverse local communities across our vast nation."
It has been argued that having such a department allows people with the right expertise to make decisions as it relates to funding.
Clare McCann, the managing director of policy and operations at the Postsecondary Equity & Economics Research (PEER) Center, told ABC News in November: "There's a reason the Department of Education was created, and it was to have this kind of in-house expertise and policy background on these [education] issues.
"The civil servants who work at the Department of Education are true experts in the field."
Average test scores among students have fallen significantly since the Department of Education was created more than 40 years ago.
Both math and reading scores among 13-year-old students are at their lowest levels in decades, according to data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for the 2022–2023 school year.
While the Department of Education doesn't control how students perform on tests, it is responsible for issuing the requirement for schools to conduct standardized testing in schools – which have reached their lowest scoresin decades in 2024, according to NAEP.
The average U.S. ACT composite score in the 1990s was about 20.8, data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) shows. But, since then, standardized test scores have dropped.
According to 2024 ACT data, Nevada has the lowest test scores in the country, with an average score of 17.2, while Oklahoma follows with the second-lowest average score of 17.6.
"The results are sobering," National Center for Educational Statistics Commissioner Peggy G. Carr told ABC News of today's test scores.
Most schools reopened after shifting to an all-online learning environment during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, but Carr said that "this decline that we're seeing was there in 2015, so all of this cannot be blamed on COVID."
Average test scores in the U.S. are commonly based off the standardized testing average. Europe and East Asian countries, which don't use ACT or SAT testing as required by the U.S., usually rank as having higher test scores, comparably.
Proponents of a dedicated education agency say federal involvement aids the system, while many critics say it is a waste of taxpayer dollars.
In its early years, the department made specific requirements when allocating funding to schools, such as requiring higher education institutions to offer a campus drug and alcohol abuse prevention program under the Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act, passed in 1989.
However, under President Biden, the Department of Education has seen funds spent on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts in K-12 schools across the country – an initiative critics say diverts funding away from core educational objectives.
A recent study found that Biden's Department of Education spent $1 billion on grants advancing DEI in hiring, Fox News Digital reported.
Since 2021, the Biden administration spent $489,883,797 on grants for race-based hiring; $343,337,286 on general DEI programming; and $169,301,221 on DEI-based mental health training and programming, totaling $1,002,522,304.81, according to Parents Defending Education, a right-leaning nonprofit.
Rethinking the department could be as simple as giving states the funding and then allowing its leaders to decide how it is dished out, Neal McCluskey, an education analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute public policy think tank, told ABC News in November.
In the 1970-1971 school year, high school graduation rates were at 78%.
But those rates fell, dropping to a 72.9% average graduation rate in 1982, shortly after the Department of Education was established.
Rates remained in the low 70th percentiles until the early 2000s, data from the National Center for Education Statistics shows.
However, data from the 2021–2022 school year shows that the average graduation rate for public high school students was 87% – an increase of seven percentage points higher than a decade earlier.
Technological advances have transformed the educational environment for students, with typing often taking the place of lessons on cursive writing, digital tools enhancing math instruction, and GPS technology reducing the reliance on traditional map reading skills.
Today's technology-driven workforce has also reshaped the school system, as computer and artifical intelligence classes take precedence over home economics, such as sewing or baking.
The Department of Education does not establish curriculum requirements for schools, but rather it is left to the state and local school boards to decide.
However, curriculum changes have still been at the forefront of recent political conversations, specifically as it relates to parents seeking more involvement in their child's classroom. Parents from all around the country have spoken out against certain topics being included in their child's curriculum, usually related to gender and sex, and reportedly not being informed about the content before it was shared in class.
Fox News Digital recently reported on an elementary school in the New York City suburbs that was teaching a "gender curriculum" to elementary-level children in an effort to promote "inclusion" in school.
Meanwhile, in 2016, the Washington Office (OSPI) set health education standards for all public schools, requiring children in kindergarten and first grade to learn that "there are many ways to express gender."
In Oregon, the state board of education adopted health education standards, also in 2016, requiring kindergartners and first-graders to "recognize that there are many ways to express gender," while third-graders in the state have been expected to be able to "define sexual orientation," Fox reported in 2022.
Opponents of the Department of Education, such as Trump, have used such examples of controversial curriculum to argue that parents should be granted more power in their child's learning.
The incoming Republican president, however, was not the first to propose the idea. Former President Ronald Reagan called for the department to be abolished to "ensure that local needs and preferences, rather than the wishes of Washington, determine the education of our children."
"There's only one way to shrink the size and cost of big government, and that is by eliminating agencies that are not needed and are getting in the way of a solution," Reagan said in 1981.
David Kanani, president of Los Angeles ORT College, a Jewish education nonprofit, suggested the department be cleaned up rather than completely eradicated.
"The Department of Education ensures consistency and quality across schools, particularly in STEM education, which is critical for national security and global competitiveness," Kanani told Fox News Digital in January. "Instead of elimination, we should clean up and reform the department to collaborate more effectively with state and local systems, prioritizing STEM as a national imperative."
Andrew Clark, president of advocacy group yes. every kid., recently said Trump should establish pathways to redesign the education system rather than bulldozing the entire department.
"To make real change, you have to do it in ways that benefit people's lives, and so if you just drop the hammer overnight you are going to cause pain for people [who] are dependent. So you're going to have to come up with pathways to make changes," Clark told Ravi Gupta, a former Obama staffer turned school principal and host of the "Lost Debate" podcast.
Trump would need congressional approval in order to make any changes to the Education Department.
Republicans currently have the majority in both the House and the Senate, meaning lawmakers could pass new legislation addressing the laws establishing and sanctioning the department.
Fox News' Kristine Parks and Jessica Chasmar contributed to this report.
Republicans will hold confirmation hearings this week for more than a dozen high-profile administration picks for President-elect Trump's next term, including those for Pete Hegseth, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Gov. Kristi Noem, R-S.D.
Hegseth, Trump's Secretary of Defense pick, will have one of the first hearings on Tuesday, when he will go before the Senate Armed Services Committee at 9:30 a.m. and face questions from both Democrats and Republicans.
Rubio and Noem were tapped by Trump to be his Secretaries of State and Homeland Security, respectively. Noem will appear before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on Wednesday at 9 a.m., while Rubio is set to face the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations at 10 a.m.
Other Tuesday hearings include those for Doug Collins to serve as Secretary of Veterans Affairs and former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum for Secretary of the Interior.
Trump also chose Pam Bondi for attorney general, John Ratcliffe to direct the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Russell Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Sean Duffy for Secretary of Transportation and Chris Wright to be Secretary of Energy. Hearings for each of them will be on Wednesday.
Eric Turner, who Trump tapped to be his next Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and Scott Bessent, whom the president-elect announced as his pick to lead the Treasury Department, have hearings scheduled for Thursday.
The hearing blitz comes as Republicans prepare to confirm as many Trump nominees as they can, as quickly as they can.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., explained his hope to confirm his choices promptly, on "Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street" on Friday, saying, "In the past, the minority party has not obstructed at least a handful of high-ranking Cabinet members to be approved in the first week. So I'm hopeful that Secretary of State, as well as Department of Homeland Security, will be approved either on the day of the inauguration, the day after or that week, as well as a few others — Department of Defense."
"So, I'm hoping we get to it quickly and that we don't muddle it around. And I still have my fingers crossed that that's going to happen. As far as the two that I'm in charge of, I've seen no resistance on the Republican side. And some indication that we may get some Democrat support as well," he added.
Republicans are particularly motivated to confirm Trump's national security team, especially in the wake of a recent terror attack in New Orleans, Louisiana, in which 14 were killed, and 35 people were injured.
