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By JOSH BOAK WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday voiced his support for the dockworkers union before their contract expires next month at Eastern and Gulf Coast ports, saying that any further “automation” of the ports would harm workers. Related Articles National Politics | Will Kamala Harris run for California governor in 2026? The question is already swirling National Politics | Senate begins final push to expand Social Security benefits for millions of people National Politics | Trump taps immigration hard-liner Kari Lake as head of Voice of America National Politics | Trump extends unprecedented invites to China’s Xi and other world leaders for his inauguration National Politics | Pressure on a veteran and senator shows what’s next for those who oppose Trump The incoming president posted on social media that he met Harold Daggett, the president of the International Longshoreman’s Association, and Dennis Daggett, the union’s executive vice president. “I’ve studied automation, and know just about everything there is to know about it,” Trump posted. “The amount of money saved is nowhere near the distress, hurt, and harm it causes for American Workers, in this case, our Longshoremen. Foreign companies have made a fortune in the U.S. by giving them access to our markets. They shouldn’t be looking for every last penny knowing how many families are hurt.” The International Longshoremen’s Association has until Jan. 15 to negotiate a new contract with the U.S. Maritime Alliance, which represents ports and shipping companies. At the heart of the dispute is whether ports can install automated gates, cranes and container-moving trucks that could make it faster to unload and load ships. The union argues that automation would lead to fewer jobs, even though higher levels of productivity could do more to boost the salaries of remaining workers. The Maritime Alliance said in a statement that the contract goes beyond ports to “supporting American consumers and giving American businesses access to the global marketplace – from farmers, to manufacturers, to small businesses, and innovative start-ups looking for new markets to sell their products.” “To achieve this, we need modern technology that is proven to improve worker safety, boost port efficiency, increase port capacity, and strengthen our supply chains,” said the alliance, adding that it looks forward to working with Trump. In October, the union representing 45,000 dockworkers went on strike for three days, raising the risk that a prolonged shutdown could push up inflation by making it difficult to unload container ships and export American products overseas. The issue pits an incoming president who won November’s election on the promise of bringing down prices against commitments to support blue-collar workers along with the kinds of advanced technology that drew him support from Silicon Valley elite such as billionaire Elon Musk. Trump sought to portray the dispute as being between U.S. workers and foreign companies, but advanced ports are also key for staying globally competitive. China is opening a $1.3 billion port in Peru that could accommodate ships too large for the Panama Canal. There is a risk that shippers could move to other ports, which could also lead to job losses. Mexico is constructing a port that is highly automated, while Dubai, Singapore and Rotterdam already have more advanced ports. Instead, Trump said that ports and shipping companies should eschew “machinery, which is expensive, and which will constantly have to be replaced.” “For the great privilege of accessing our markets, these foreign companies should hire our incredible American Workers, instead of laying them off, and sending those profits back to foreign countries,” Trump posted. “It is time to put AMERICA FIRST!”
In a remarkable turn of events, Austria's far-right Freedom Party clinched its first-ever victory in Styria's state election, according to a projection on Sunday. This win mirrors the sentiments of September's general election, underscoring the party's strengthening position in the Austrian political landscape. The projection, conducted by pollster Foresight for national broadcaster ORF and the APA news agency, indicates that the eurosceptic and Russia-friendly Freedom Party (FPO) secured 35.4% of the votes. The conservative People's Party followed with 26.7%, highlighting a notable shift in voter preferences. This electoral outcome, projected with a 1.2 percentage point margin of error, signifies the Freedom Party's growing clout even as national coalition negotiations persist, excluding the far-right faction. (With inputs from agencies.)
Although she was just in her mid-20s, Tulsi Gabbard's hair had already started turning white shortly before she first set foot in the U.S. Senate as a legislative aide in 2006. Coming from her native Hawaii, she had landed a job with longtime Hawaii Democratic Sen. Daniel Akaka, chair of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who would become her mentor. Now, almost 20 years later, the former Democratic congresswoman returns to the Senate to meet with lawmakers, including members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, as President-elect Donald Trump's pick to be director of national intelligence after appearing with him a number of times on the campaign trail and serving as an honorary co-chair of his transition team. Gabbard spent the past week in Oklahoma on Army National Guard duty. She currently holds the rank of lieutenant colonel, something supporters argue qualifies her for the job as critics cite her lack of experience. She's also facing renewed scrutiny over her past comments on Syria and her meeting with now-overthrown dictator Bashar Assad. From Hawaii to Kuwait to Congress By the time she came to the Senate, Gabbard had already made history in Hawaii as one of the youngest lawmakers elected to a state legislature at age 21. Serving alongside her father, Hawaii state Sen. Mike Gabbard, she became part of the first father-daughter combination in a legislature in the country. As a Senate staffer, Gabbard remained in Hawaii's National Guard, drilling on the weekends. During her first yearlong deployment at Joint Base Balad in Iraq, nicknamed "Mortaritaville" for being hit with daily attacks, she's said fumes from a nearby burn pit would regularly sicken her fellow service members, causing flu-like symptoms they called the "crud." In 2007, she attended the Accelerated Officer Candidate School at the Alabama Military Academy, graduating at the top of her class as its first distinguished woman honor graduate. After two years working in the Senate, Gabbard volunteered for a deployment to Kuwait. As a military police platoon leader and trainer for the Kuwait National Guard's counterterrorism unit, Gabbard achieved another milestone in 2009, becoming one of the first women to set foot in a Kuwaiti military facility and the first woman to be honored by the Kuwait National Guard. In her limited free time, Gabbard continued working on her bachelor's degree from Hawaii Pacific University, taking online classes in an education tent. Although her hair returned to its natural color, she told ABC News in 2019 she eventually kept a distinctive streak of white. "It's a reminder, every single day of the cost of war of those we lost and my mission in life to to seek peace and to fight for peace," Gabbard said. Gabbard later returned to Hawaii and ran for Honolulu City Council, serving from 2010 until 2012, before being elected to Congress as the then-youngest female member. Bipartisan outreach As a new member of Congress, Gabbard worked to forge relationships with members on both sides of the aisle. She arrived armed with 434 boxes of macadamia nut toffee, homemade by her mother, for every member of Congress and an additional 435 boxes for staffers. Each box came with a handwritten letter, a form of diplomacy as a Democrat facing a Republican-controlled House. During her freshman year in Congress in 2013, Gabbard was appointed vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, but stepped down from that position to endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential bid. She co-chaired the Future Caucus, a bipartisan effort to engage members of Congress under 40 years old. Gabbard also bonded with lawmakers over sports, playing on the Congressional Softball Team with New York Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and joining early morning workouts with colleagues such as Oklahoma GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin. She and Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul co-sponsored legislation, including the Stop Arming Terrorists Act. After an unsuccessful bid for the party's 2020 presidential nomination, she left the Democratic Party and became an independent and campaigned for Republicans, including Sens. Mike Lee and Chuck Grassley. She told Trump on a rally stage in October that she was registering as a Republican. Controversial views on Russia, Syria Gabbard was one of the first to enter the crowded Democratic 2020 primary and was one of the last three remaining candidates. One of her rivals in that race, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, announced she would oppose Trump's choice of Gabbard, alleging she had suggested NATO had provoked Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine. "Do you really want her to have all the secrets of the United States and our defense intelligence agencies when she has so clearly has been in Putin's pocket? That just has to be a hard no," Warren said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" in November. However, Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri defended Gabbard in November on NBC's "Meet The Press," taking aim at accusations that Gabbard was a "Russian asset." "It's a slur, quite frankly. You know, there's no evidence that she is an asset of another country. She served this country honorably," Schmitt said. Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, who entered the Senate as the first female combat veteran while Gabbard was doing the same in the House, has opposed her pick for DNI, alleging she's been compromised. "The U.S. intelligence community has identified her as having troubling relationships with America's foes. And so my worry is that she couldn't pass a background check," Duckworth said on CNN's "State of the Union" in November. Mullin struck back at Duckworth's comments, saying "That's the most dangerous thing she could say -- is that a United States lieutenant colonel in the United States is compromised and is an asset of Russia." "If she was compromised, if she wasn't able to pass a background check, if she wasn't able to do her job, she still wouldn't be in the Army," he said. Now, with the rebel takeover of Syria and the fall of Assad, Gabbard is drawing renewed attention to her controversial visit to Syria in 2017 -- what she called a fact-finding mission -- and sympathy she expressed after meeting with the Syrian dictator, saying the U.S. should stop aiding the "terrorists" trying to overthrow him. Gabbard noted in 2019 that a CIA program "was directly and indirectly helping to equip and train and provide support to different armed groups, including those who are allied with and affiliated with al-Qaeda, to overthrow the Syrian government." The "Stop Arming Terrorist Act" she worked on with Paul in the Senate said the U.S. should stop aiding the "terrorists" trying to overthrow Assad. Assad has been accused of war crimes against his own people during the Syrian civil war, in which hundreds of thousands have been killed. A few months after meeting with Assad, Gabbard said she was skeptical he had used chemical weapons against his own people, despite evidence from the U.S. government that he had, to argue against military intervention during Trump's first administration. Gabbard warned in June of 2019 that she was concerned that the toppling of Assad's regime could lead to terrorist groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda to step in to fill the void and "completely massacre all religious minorities there in Syria." In a 2019 interview on ABC's "The View" while running for president, she called Assad a "brutal dictator," but said the U.S. regime-change strategy had not improved the lives of the Syrian people.BERLIN: Germany, France, Austria and several Nordic countries said Monday they would freeze all pending asylum requests from Syrians, a day after the ouster of president Bashar Al-Assad. While Berlin and other governments said they were watching the fast-moving developments in the war-ravaged nation, Vienna signaled it would soon deport refugees back to Syria. Far-right politicians elsewhere made similar demands, including in Germany, home to Europe’s largest Syrian community, at a time when immigration has become a hot-button issue across the continent. Alice Weidel of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany reacted with disdain to Sunday’s mass rallies by jubilant Syrians celebrating Assad’s downfall. “Anyone in Germany who celebrates ‘free Syria’ evidently no longer has any reason to flee,” she wrote on X. “They should return to Syria immediately.” World leaders and Syrians abroad watched in disbelief at the weekend as Islamist-led rebels swept into Damascus, ending Assad’s brutal rule while also sparking new uncertainty. A German foreign ministry spokesman pointed out that “the fact that the Assad regime has been ended is unfortunately no guarantee of peaceful developments” in future. Germany has taken in almost one million Syrians, with the bulk arriving in 2015-16 under ex-chancellor Angela Merkel. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said many Syrian refugees “now finally have hope of returning to their Syrian homeland” but cautioned that “the situation in Syria is currently very unclear”. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees had imposed a freeze on decisions for ongoing asylum procedures “until the situation is clearer”. She added that “concrete possibilities of return cannot yet be predicted and it would be unprofessional to speculate in such a volatile situation.” Rights group Amnesty International slammed the freeze on asylum decisions, stressing that for now “the human rights situation in the country is completely unclear”. The French interior ministry said it too would put asylum requests from Syrians on hold. ‘Repatriation and deportation’ In Austria, where about 100,000 Syrians live, conservative Chancellor Karl Nehammer instructed the interior ministry “to suspend all ongoing Syrian asylum applications and to review all asylum grants”. Interior Minister Gerhard Karner added he had “instructed the ministry to prepare an orderly repatriation and deportation program to Syria”. “The political situation in Syria has changed fundamentally and, above all, rapidly in recent days,” the ministry said, adding it is “currently monitoring and analyzing the new situation”. Denmark, Sweden and Norway also said Monday they were suspending the examination of asylum applications from Syrian refugees. The leader of the far-right Sweden Democrats, a coalition partner in the government, said residence permits for Syrian refugees should now be “reviewed”. “Destructive Islamist forces are behind the change of power” in Syria, wrote their leader Jimmie Akesson on X. “I see that groups are happy about this development here in Sweden. You should see it as a good opportunity to go home.” In Greece, a government spokesman voiced hope that Assad’s fall will eventually allow “the safe return of Syrian refugees” to their country, but without announcing concrete measures. ‘Populist and irresponsible’ In Germany, the debate gained momentum as the country heads towards February elections. The center-right opposition CDU suggested that rejected Syrian asylum-seekers should now lose so-called subsidiary protection. “If the reason for protection no longer applies, then refugees will have to return to their home country,” CDU legislator Thorsten Frei told Welt TV. CDU MP Jens Spahn suggested that Berlin charter flights to Syria and offer €1,000 to “anyone who wants to return”. Members of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats criticized the debate as “populist and irresponsible”. Greens party deputy Anton Hofreiter also said “it is completely unclear what will happen next in Syria” and deportation talk was “completely out of place”. Many Syrians in Germany have watched the events in their home country with great joy but prefer to wait and see before deciding whether to return home. “We want to go back to Syria,” said Mahmoud Zaml, 25, who works in an Arabic pastry shop in Berlin, adding that he hopes to help “rebuild” his country. “But we have to wait a bit now,” he told AFP. “We have to see what happens and if it is really 100 percent safe, then we will go back to Syria.” – AFP
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Zee Spearman and Jewel Spear scored 18 points apiece to lead six Tennessee scorers in double figures as the undefeated No. 18 Lady Volunteers held off host Memphis 90-75 on Wednesday night. Talaysia Cooper was among three players to score 12 points for Tennessee (8-0). She had eight in the fourth quarter as the Lady Rebels turned back the Tigers' attempt to rally from a 15-point deficit in the third quarter. Memphis scored the first eight points of the fourth to pull within 69-62, but Tennessee's Samara Spencer nailed a 3-pointer to push the lead back to 10. The Tigers were back within eight with more than seven minutes to go, but Spearman scored four of the Lady Volunteers' five straight points, and the lead was back to 13. Spearman added 12 rebounds, seven on the offensive end, and three blocked shots. Cooper collected 11 boards, six assists and four steals, and Spencer and Tess Darby scored 12 points apiece. Ruby Whitehorn chipped in 10. Tilly Boler led Memphis (2-8) with 23 points, and DeeDee Hagemann made her debut with 19 points. The transfer from Michigan State missed the Tigers' first nine games due to academic issues. Tanyuel Welsh supplied 16 points. No. 9 Duke 93, Wofford 58 Toby Fournier scored 10 of her 23 points as the Blue Devils built a 16-3 lead and never looked back in the nonconference mismatch with the visiting Terriers in Durham, N.C. Oluchi Okananwa amassed a season-best 20 points to go with six rebounds, five assists and four steals, and Delaney Thomas chipped in 15 points for Duke (10-2), which had not played since beating Virginia Tech on Dec. 8. The Blue Devils shot 50.7 percent from the floor and dominated on the boards (56-20) and in bench points (53-14). Fournier was coming off a 27-point showing against the Hokies. Rachael Rose scored 23 points on 9-of-15 shooting for Wofford (6-3), but the rest of the team went just 13 of 50. Maddie Heiss added 13 points but was just 5 of 17 from the floor. No. 13 Kansas State 83, New Mexico State 39 Ayoka Lee poured in a season-high 34 points -- 19 in the first half -- as the Wildcats clobbered the nonconference opponent Aggies in Manhattan, Kan., for their seventh straight win. The 6-foot-6 Lee went 14 of 18 from the floor and added 11 rebounds and three blocks, and Serena Sundell added 18 points. The Wildcats (12-1) shot 59.3 percent from the floor, including 9 of 12 in the third quarter as they outscored the Aggies 28-7 to put the game away. Molly Kaiser scored 15 points but was only 6 of 16 from the floor and had seven of New Mexico State's 19 turnovers. The Aggies (6-5) shot just 30.8 percent from the floor. The Wildcats began the day fifth in the nation in points allowed at 50.1 per game. No. 17 Georgia Tech 88, Rice 57 Rusne Augustinaite exploded for 23 points on 7 of 11 shooting from long range as the unbeaten Yellow Jackets warmed up in the second quarter and put away the Owls in the nonconference matchup in Atlanta. Augustinaite, a sophomore, came off the bench to nail four treys in the first four-plus minutes of the second quarter, and Georgia Tech (12-0) went on to outscore Rice 21-7 in the period and lead 37-18 at halftime. She began the day averaging just 5.6 points after posting 10.8 per game as a freshman. Kara Dunn scored 17 points, Zoesha Smith notched 11 points and 11 rebounds and Tonie Morgan chipped in 10 points for the Yellow Jackets, who shot 49.3 percent for the game, including 44.8 percent (13 of 29) from long range. Hailey Adams led Rice (7-5) with 12 points and Dominique Ennis added 10. Both players chipped in five rebounds, three assists and two steals. Georgia Tech outrebounded the Owls 48-31. Rice shot 36.9 percent from the field, including a disastrous 12.5 percent (2 of 16) in the second quarter. No. 19 North Carolina 77, Florida 57 Maria Gakdeng scored 14 points and Lanie Grant added 13 and the Tar Heels used 3-pointers to build an early lead and cruise past the Gators in the Jumpman Invitational in Charlotte, N.C. Alyssa Ustby added 11 points and Gakdeng chipped in eight rebounds as the North Carolina (11-2) bounced back from a six-point loss to then-No. 25 Georgia Tech on Sunday. Alexia Mobley's layup trimmed North Carolina's lead to five with 3:18 left in the first quarter, but the Tar Heels responded with the final 11 points of the period: Gakdeng's layup, two consecutive 3-pointers from Grant and another trey from Trayanna Crisp. The cushion grew to 21 at halftime and never dropped below 13 the rest of the way. Liv McGill led Florida (7-4) with 15 points but went only 5 of 21 from the floor. Laila Reynolds added 10 points and Ra Shaya Kyle collected eight points and 11 rebounds. The Gators managed just 31.6 percent shooting from the floor, including 2 of 13 on 3-pointers. --Field Level MediaIvanka Trump and Jared Kushner Make Guest List for Bezos’ Holiday Party
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