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WASHINGTON (AP) — As a former and potentially future president, Donald Trump hailed what would become Project 2025 as a road map for “exactly what our movement will do” with another crack at the White House. As the blueprint for a hard-right turn in America became a liability during the 2024 campaign, Trump pulled an about-face . He denied knowing anything about the “ridiculous and abysmal” plans written in part by his first-term aides and allies. Now, after being elected the 47th president on Nov. 5, Trump is stocking his second administration with key players in the detailed effort he temporarily shunned. Most notably, Trump has tapped Russell Vought for an encore as director of the Office of Management and Budget; Tom Homan, his former immigration chief, as “border czar;” and immigration hardliner Stephen Miller as deputy chief of policy . Those moves have accelerated criticisms from Democrats who warn that Trump's election hands government reins to movement conservatives who spent years envisioning how to concentrate power in the West Wing and impose a starkly rightward shift across the U.S. government and society. Trump and his aides maintain that he won a mandate to overhaul Washington. But they maintain the specifics are his alone. “President Trump never had anything to do with Project 2025,” said Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt in a statement. “All of President Trumps' Cabinet nominees and appointments are whole-heartedly committed to President Trump's agenda, not the agenda of outside groups.” Here is a look at what some of Trump's choices portend for his second presidency. As budget chief, Vought envisions a sweeping, powerful perch The Office of Management and Budget director, a role Vought held under Trump previously and requires Senate confirmation, prepares a president's proposed budget and is generally responsible for implementing the administration's agenda across agencies. The job is influential but Vought made clear as author of a Project 2025 chapter on presidential authority that he wants the post to wield more direct power. “The Director must view his job as the best, most comprehensive approximation of the President’s mind,” Vought wrote. The OMB, he wrote, “is a President’s air-traffic control system” and should be “involved in all aspects of the White House policy process,” becoming “powerful enough to override implementing agencies’ bureaucracies.” Trump did not go into such details when naming Vought but implicitly endorsed aggressive action. Vought, the president-elect said, “knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State” — Trump’s catch-all for federal bureaucracy — and would help “restore fiscal sanity.” In June, speaking on former Trump aide Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, Vought relished the potential tension: “We’re not going to save our country without a little confrontation.” Vought could help Musk and Trump remake government's role and scope The strategy of further concentrating federal authority in the presidency permeates Project 2025's and Trump's campaign proposals. Vought's vision is especially striking when paired with Trump's proposals to dramatically expand the president's control over federal workers and government purse strings — ideas intertwined with the president-elect tapping mega-billionaire Elon Musk and venture capitalist Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a “Department of Government Efficiency.” Trump in his first term sought to remake the federal civil service by reclassifying tens of thousands of federal civil service workers — who have job protection through changes in administration — as political appointees, making them easier to fire and replace with loyalists. Currently, only about 4,000 of the federal government's roughly 2 million workers are political appointees. President Joe Biden rescinded Trump's changes. Trump can now reinstate them. Meanwhile, Musk's and Ramaswamy's sweeping “efficiency” mandates from Trump could turn on an old, defunct constitutional theory that the president — not Congress — is the real gatekeeper of federal spending. In his “Agenda 47,” Trump endorsed so-called “impoundment,” which holds that when lawmakers pass appropriations bills, they simply set a spending ceiling, but not a floor. The president, the theory holds, can simply decide not to spend money on anything he deems unnecessary. Vought did not venture into impoundment in his Project 2025 chapter. But, he wrote, “The President should use every possible tool to propose and impose fiscal discipline on the federal government. Anything short of that would constitute abject failure.” Trump's choice immediately sparked backlash. “Russ Vought is a far-right ideologue who has tried to break the law to give President Trump unilateral authority he does not possess to override the spending decisions of Congress (and) who has and will again fight to give Trump the ability to summarily fire tens of thousands of civil servants,” said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, a Democrat and outgoing Senate Appropriations chairwoman. Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico, leading Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, said Vought wants to “dismantle the expert federal workforce” to the detriment of Americans who depend on everything from veterans' health care to Social Security benefits. “Pain itself is the agenda,” they said. Homan and Miller reflect Trump's and Project 2025's immigration overl ap Trump’s protests about Project 2025 always glossed over overlaps in the two agendas . Both want to reimpose Trump-era immigration limits. Project 2025 includes a litany of detailed proposals for various U.S. immigration statutes, executive branch rules and agreements with other countries — reducing the number of refugees, work visa recipients and asylum seekers, for example. Miller is one of Trump's longest-serving advisers and architect of his immigration ideas, including his promise of the largest deportation force in U.S. history. As deputy policy chief, which is not subject to Senate confirmation, Miller would remain in Trump's West Wing inner circle. “America is for Americans and Americans only,” Miller said at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Oct. 27. “America First Legal,” Miller’s organization founded as an ideological counter to the American Civil Liberties Union, was listed as an advisory group to Project 2025 until Miller asked that the name be removed because of negative attention. Homan, a Project 2025 named contributor, was an acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement director during Trump’s first presidency, playing a key role in what became known as Trump's “family separation policy.” Previewing Trump 2.0 earlier this year, Homan said: “No one’s off the table. If you’re here illegally, you better be looking over your shoulder.” Project 2025 contributors slated for CIA and Federal Communications chiefs John Ratcliffe, Trump's pick to lead the CIA , was previously one of Trump's directors of national intelligence. He is a Project 2025 contributor. The document's chapter on U.S. intelligence was written by Dustin Carmack, Ratcliffe's chief of staff in the first Trump administration. Reflecting Ratcliffe's and Trump's approach, Carmack declared the intelligence establishment too cautious. Ratcliffe, like the chapter attributed to Carmack, is hawkish toward China. Throughout the Project 2025 document, Beijing is framed as a U.S. adversary that cannot be trusted. Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, wrote Project 2025's FCC chapter and is now Trump's pick to chair the panel. Carr wrote that the FCC chairman “is empowered with significant authority that is not shared” with other FCC members. He called for the FCC to address “threats to individual liberty posed by corporations that are abusing dominant positions in the market,” specifically “Big Tech and its attempts to drive diverse political viewpoints from the digital town square.” He called for more stringent transparency rules for social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube and “empower consumers to choose their own content filters and fact checkers, if any.” Carr and Ratcliffe would require Senate confirmation for their posts. ___Hanna Cavinder cozies up to Carson Beck with Georgia QB’s CFP status unclearArizona Speaker-elect Steve Montenegro told Breitbart News Saturday that Arizonans rejected Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) and Democrats’ agenda by expanding Republicans’ control over the state House. Montenegro spoke to Breitbart News Saturday host Matthew Boyle after Arizona Republicans in the state legislature successfully expanded their majority. He said that Democrats tried to move heaven and earth to flip the Republican majority. “It’s really powerful to see what happened because, in a certain way, it was ground zero. Democrats made it their centerpiece, they spent over $20 million on their messaging, on their, to flip the House,” Montenegro told Breitbart News Saturday . The Arizona Speaker-elect said that Gov. Hobbs pitched her vision and Arizona voters said, “Absolutely not.” Montenegro said that Republicans have a three-pillar platform agenda to protect Arizonans’ freedom: Protecting the American dream by advancing sound economic policy Making sure Arizonans have safe communities by cracking down on illegal immigration, fentanyl trafficking, and curbing cartel activity Protecting Arizonans’ individual rights and liberties Montenegro said that Arizona Republicans are discussing how to help Tom Homan — Trump’s former Immigration and Customs Enforcement head and now-border czar — combat illegal immigration and “protect our people.” He noted that his family legally immigrated to the United States from El Salvador. Montenegro wrote on Friday, “Common-sense measures will better secure our elections, like government-issued photo ID for in-person voting, banning unsupervised ballot drop boxes & more. Hopefully, our Governor respects the will of the people and joins us, but we can always take these improvements directly to the voters if we must.” He added , “Another area of elections we can and should improve deals with signature verification. Stronger Voter ID requirements for absentee ballots can speed and better secure the process. Growing support for this in the State House.” Breitbart News Saturday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 10:00 A.M. to 1:00 P.M. Eastern. Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on X @SeanMoran3 .
Banque Cantonale Vaudoise cut its stake in iShares MSCI South Korea ETF ( NYSEARCA:EWY – Free Report ) by 28.1% in the third quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 4,365 shares of the exchange traded fund’s stock after selling 1,710 shares during the period. Banque Cantonale Vaudoise’s holdings in iShares MSCI South Korea ETF were worth $279,000 as of its most recent SEC filing. Other large investors also recently bought and sold shares of the company. Headlands Technologies LLC purchased a new stake in shares of iShares MSCI South Korea ETF in the 2nd quarter valued at about $29,000. Hara Capital LLC purchased a new stake in iShares MSCI South Korea ETF in the third quarter valued at approximately $34,000. Farther Finance Advisors LLC boosted its holdings in shares of iShares MSCI South Korea ETF by 1,964.3% in the third quarter. Farther Finance Advisors LLC now owns 578 shares of the exchange traded fund’s stock valued at $37,000 after acquiring an additional 550 shares during the period. International Assets Investment Management LLC acquired a new stake in shares of iShares MSCI South Korea ETF in the second quarter valued at approximately $49,000. Finally, Prudential PLC purchased a new position in shares of iShares MSCI South Korea ETF during the second quarter worth approximately $81,000. iShares MSCI South Korea ETF Price Performance EWY stock opened at $58.13 on Friday. The company has a market cap of $4.62 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 9.60 and a beta of 1.25. The company has a fifty day moving average price of $61.44 and a 200 day moving average price of $63.66. iShares MSCI South Korea ETF has a 12 month low of $55.69 and a 12 month high of $69.51. iShares MSCI South Korea ETF Company Profile iShares MSCI South Korea Capped ETF (the Fund) is an exchange-traded fund (ETF). The Fund seeks investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance, before fees and expenses, of the MSCI Korea 25/50 Index (the Index). The Index consists of stocks traded primarily on the Stock Market Division of the Korean Exchange. Featured Articles Receive News & Ratings for iShares MSCI South Korea ETF Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for iShares MSCI South Korea ETF and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter .Women sided with Mahayuti for Ladki Bahin Yojana’s monthly doleThe social media industry is fiercely competitive. As President-elect Donald Trump nears his inauguration, could he sell his stock in Trump Media & Technology Group Corp DJT ? The Competition: Trump Media’s Truth Social faces competition from the usual suspects, Meta Platforms -owned Facebook and Instagram. It also is a competitor of Elon Musk ‘s X, formerly known as Twitter. Musk is a close ally and benefactor of Trump’s campaign. Bluesky , a newcomer on the social media scene, is making headlines. The Jack Dorsey -founded app saw a large influx of users following Trump’s win in November, apparently those displeased with Musk’s leadership of X in recent years. Could Trump Sell?: Trump is technically able to sell his stake in Truth Social ahead of his inauguration. The billionaire owns 115 million shares in the Sarasota, Florida-based company, placing his total position at around $3.9 billion. The company has 216,924,448 shares outstanding. Trump has denied the rumors of possible share sales, calling them “fake and untrue.” Shares of the company rose following Trump’s statement . While Trump Media has a market capitalization of $7.7 billion, it reported $1 million in revenue last quarter on a $19.2 million net loss. The loss includes $12.1 million in legal fees and $3.9 million in research and development spending, according to the company. The company has a book value of over $800,000,000; most of its assets are in cash and short-term investments, proceeds from issuing common stock. Also Read: Chinese Stocks Sink On Weak Trade Data Amid Rush ‘To Get Goods To The US’ Before Tariffs Photo via Shutterstock. © 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.