Politics

Donald Trump’s family circle has new look in second term

Published

2 weeks ago

January 18, 2025

When Donald Trump returns to the White House on Monday, his family circle will look a little different than it did when he first arrived eight years ago.

His youngest son, Barron, was in fifth grade back then. He’s now a college freshman who towers over his 6-foot-plus (1.8-meter-plus) dad. Granddaughter Kai, who was 9 in 2017, is now an aspiring social media influencer and impressive golfer. Grandson Joseph, who posed in Trump’s lap with a Lego model of the White House last time, is 11 now.

The most prominent relatives in Trump’s political sphere, daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared, are in Florida this time around after working in his first administration.

The President-elect has five children — three of whom are married — from his marriages to Ivana Trump, Marla Maples and current wife Melania Trump. He has 10 grandkids, with an 11th on the way.

A look at Trump’s family circle, then and now:

Melania Trump
THEN: She spent the opening months of Trump’s term at the family’s Manhattan penthouse so that 11-year-old Barron wouldn’t have to switch schools in the middle of the year. After moving to the White House, she traveled around the United States and to other countries, alone and with Trump, partly to promote her “Be Best” children’s initiative while fiercely guarding her privacy.

NOW: She avoided active campaigning during Trump’s 2024 run, limiting her public appearances to key moments, such as the campaign’s launch, the Republican National Convention and election night. She released a self-titled memoir late last year and will be the subject of a documentary distributed by Amazon Prime Video that is expected to be released later this year. While some doubt that Trump’s 54-year-old wife will spend much time at the White House, she said on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” that she has already packed and picked out the furniture she wants to take to the executive mansion.

Donald Trump Jr.
THEN: Trump’s eldest son, now 46, campaigned for his father in 2016 and 2020.

NOW: Trump Jr.’s influence has grown to the point that he lobbied his father to choose close friend JD Vance for vice president. He also pushed for former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the President-elect’s picks for Director of National Intelligence and Health and Human Services, respectively. Trump Jr. helps run the family real estate business and is an honorary chairman of Trump’s transition. He has a podcast and has said his role is to prevent “bad actors” from getting into the administration. He recently flew on his father’s airplane to Greenland; the president-elect has expressed a desire to take control of the mineral-rich Danish territory.

Trump Jr. has five children — or “smurfs,” as he sometimes refers to them — with his former wife, Vanessa Trump.

Ivanka Trump
THEN: Ivanka, 43, campaigned for her father in 2016 and moved her family from New York City to Washington to work in his White House as a senior adviser. She was on the campaign trail in 2020, too, but she and her family moved to Florida and retreated from the spotlight after his loss.

NOW: As Trump geared up for the 2024 run, Ivanka announced that she loved and supported him but was getting out of politics to focus on her husband and their three kids. She did, however, join her father and other family members on election night and when he rang the bell at the New York Stock Exchange in early December after Time magazine named him Person of the Year. She told “The Skinny Confidential” podcast that this time around she just wanted to “show up for him as a daughter” and be there to watch a movie or a sports game.

Ivanka and her husband have three children.

Eric Trump
THEN: The 40-year-old helped run the family business and participated in his father’s campaigns.

NOW: Eric is also an honorary chair of the transition and a close adviser to his father. But he continues to focus more on running the family business. In September, he and his brother started a crypto platform called World Liberty Financial, and their father helped launch it in an interview on the X social media platform.”

Eric and his wife, Lara, have two children.

Tiffany Trump
THEN: Trump’s daughter with second wife Marla Maples was 23 and a recent University of Pennsylvania graduate who kept a low profile when Trump was first elected.

NOW: She was more present in the 2024 campaign but still largely avoids the spotlight. Tiffany, 31, and her husband, Michael Boulos, are expecting their first child this year. Boulos is a businessman who traveled with Trump in the final stretch of the campaign. His father is Massad Boulos, a Lebanese American businessman who helped Trump with the influential Arab American community in the swing state of Michigan. Trump has named Massad Boulos to be a senior adviser on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs.

Barron Trump
THEN: At the start of Trump’s first term, Barron and his mother stayed at the family’s Trump Tower penthouse in Manhattan so he could finish his school year. When they got to Washington, his soccer net appeared in what’s known as the first lady’s garden.

NOW: Barron, 18, is a freshman New York University business student. His parents and Trump campaign officials credit him for recommending podcasts popular with young men that the president-elect appeared on during the campaign. Barron will have a bedroom in the White House, Melania Trump said on “Fox & Friends.”

“I’m very proud of him, about his knowledge, even about politics and giving an advice to his father,” his mother said on the program. “He brought in so many young people. He knows his generation.”

Lara Trump
THEN: Trump’s daughter-in-law, 42, campaigned for him during all his runs. After Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020, she considered running for a U.S. Senate seat from her home state of North Carolina but ultimately decided against it. She became a Fox News commentator.

NOW: As Trump revved up his 2024 campaign, he installed his daughter-in-law as co-chair of the Republican National Committee, where she was a TV-ready advocate overseeing fundraising, voter outreach and the party’s “election integrity” initiative. She stepped down from the RNC after the election and removed her name from consideration as a possible successor to Sen. Marco Rubio.

Lara Trump is passionate about fitness and has her own line of activewear. She also has explored a side venture as a singer and has released some songs. Daughter Carolina is named after her home state.

Jared Kushner
THEN: Kushner, 44, was also a key figure in Trump’s 2016 campaign. He joined his wife in the White House as a senior adviser, a role that included working on U.S. policy toward Israel and the broader Middle East.

NOW: Kushner has stepped out of the political spotlight — but his father could soon step in. Trump announced after the election that he intends to nominate Charles Kushner, a real estate developer, to be U.S. Ambassador to France. The elder Kushner was pardoned by Trump in December 2020 after he pleaded guilty years earlier to tax evasion and making illegal campaign contributions.

Kai Trump
THEN: Kai was in elementary school when her grandfather became president.

NOW: Donald Trump Jr.’s 17-year-old granddaughter is an aspiring social media influencer. Her behind-the-scenes video from election night garnered 3.7 million views on YouTube. Other posts related to her grandfather have been watched millions more times on TikTok. Kai delivered her first public speech at the Republican convention and is an avid golfer who sometimes plays with her grandfather.

“If I’m not on his team, he’ll try to get inside of my head, and he’s always surprised that I don’t let him get to me,” she said at the convention. “But I have to remind him, I’m a Trump, too.”

Arabella Kushner

THEN: Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner’s daughter was 6 when her grandfather showed China’s Xi Jinping a video of her, in a traditional Chinese dress, belting out Chinese-language songs.

“It’s very good, right? She’s very smart,” Trump said. Xi responded that Arabella was her grandfather’s “little angel” and a “messenger of China-U.S. relations.”

NOW: Arabella is 13 and enjoys singing, playing the piano, horseback riding and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, according to a social media post from her mother.

___

Republished with permission of the Associated Press.

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Politics

Anna Paulina Luna seeks significant restrictions on immigrants claiming asylum

Published

7 minutes ago

January 31, 2025

May Greene

As Republicans look at changing legal immigration, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna wants Congress to change asylum rules.

She filed the House version of the Refugees Using Legal Entry Safely (RULES) Act.

“The days of open-border chaos are over,” the St. Petersburg Republican said.

Sen. Bernie Moreno, an Ohio Republican, filed similar legislation in the Senate earlier this month.

“I’m joining Senator Moreno in introducing the RULES Act to put an end to the rampant fraud and abuse in our asylum system. America is a nation of law and order—not a free-for-all for illegal aliens gaming the system,” Luna said.

“If you want asylum in the greatest country on Earth, you follow our rules, period. No more loopholes, no more catch-and-release, no more second chances for lawbreakers. We are taking our border back.”

The bill would restrict asylum claims only to those entering the country at legal ports of entry. It also stated individuals making any claims cannot be released or paroled into the U.S. until cases are adjudicated in court.

As written, the legislation would bar anyone denied asylum in the process to apply again at a later date. It would also prohibit anybody who had previously entered the country from seeking “this cherished humanitarian help.”

More than 100,000 individuals were granted asylum in the fiscal year that ended in 2024, President Joe Biden’s last year in office, according to the Immigration Policy Institute. By comparison, the last full year under President Donald Trump’s first term saw about 11,400 admissions to the U.S. on asylum claims.

Luna’s bill was filed after Trump took several steps to restrict legal immigration, including revoking humanitarian parole programs for Cubans, Venezuelans and Haitians in the United States. That is something other representatives from Florida, such as Rep. María Elvira Salazar, a Hialeah Republican, have asked the President to reconsider.

The Homeland Security Department also just vacated any extension of Temporary Protected Status for refugees of Venezuela.

It’s unclear how a change in asylum status and the restrictions on new applications would apply to individuals already in the United States who will lose legal status under the new changes.

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Politics

Ron DeSantis says legislators know he’d get cheered for vetoing TRUMP Act

Published

38 minutes ago

January 31, 2025

May Greene

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to tub-thump against the TRUMP Act, a “grotesque” and “weak, weak, weak” legislative bill fighting illegal immigration that he says he will veto if they ever send it his way.

As has been the case all week, DeSantis is delivering his verdict at press conferences, the latest in Destin on Friday where he urged legislators to buck Senate President Ben Albritton and House Speaker Daniel Perez. He suggested the bill hadn’t been transmitted yet because legislators can’t handle the rejection he believes will inevitably come.

“If this is such good legislation, why have they not sent me the bill yet to act on? Why are they holding the bill for me to act on? And I think the reason is because if we get the bill and we do an event where we have a lot of people and I veto the bill in front of this crowd, is the crowd going to cheer or is the crowd going to boo? The crowd’s going to cheer and we know that.”

DeSantis suggested that legislators were cowed by the power leadership has in the Senate and House.

“A lot of these guys get spooked by that… because they get a lot of pressure from the leadership. If you buck the leadership, they take away your committee assignments. They won’t hear your bills, they take away your projects. And a lot of these guys get spooked by that, although let me just tell you, you need to be willing to take consequences to stand to do what’s right. You shouldn’t let them bully you,” DeSantis said, before issuing a threat of his own.

“We’re going to get involved in some of these legislative primaries because I just think that if you’ve campaigned one way and you get up and you do something different, we need to expose that for the voters,” DeSantis said.

DeSantis’ frustration voiced Friday about legislators who “fall into line” under “pressure” to support a “jalopy” of a bill from legislative leadership didn’t stop there, as he said many in Tallahassee would vote for the “stronger” product he prefers.

“I’m so sick of politicians campaigning, telling you they’re going to be tough on it and then squish out,” DeSantis said, blasting Senate and House leaders for saying his call for a Special Session was a “stunt” and “premature” before not complying with enacting his proposals.

“They fought back, they had their excuses,” DeSantis said, accusing House and Senate leaders of creating legislation that “didn’t answer the call” and would make immigration enforcement less effect under “willing partner” Donald Trump than even under Joe Biden with current law.

“It actually undercuts what we’re already doing,” DeSantis said, citing Haiti as an example.

“We’ve interdicted thousands and thousands of illegals,” he said, “saving lives” from the contraband carried by refugees.

“The bill the Legislature sent me actually terminates the state of emergency,” he said, adding that it disempowers his authority as Governor.

“They eliminated any immigration enforcement from the Governor and state agencies … and they lodged it in the Commissioner of Agriculture,” DeSantis complained, reprising his “fox in the henhouse” harrumph about Wilton Simpson, the egg farmer from Trilby who would be charged with immigration enforcement in the legislature’s bill. DeSantis further lamented the legislature’s approach to immigration enforcement offers a “mother may I” process for coordination between state, local, and federal officials.

“The reason they did it,” he said, was to “stymie” immigration enforcement and allow illegal “cheap labor” for various industries under Simpson’s watch, creating a “massive corporate subsidy” with socialized costs “on our communities” via policy choices that would make Florida a “sanctuary state.”

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Politics

UCF President gets a contract extension and a 20% pay raise

Published

1 hour ago

January 31, 2025

May Greene

University of Central Florida (UCF) President Alexander Cartwright’s contract was extended this week, giving him a $900,000 base salary — a 20% raise — to continue leading one of the biggest schools in the country for the next year.

The Florida Board of Governors approved Cartwright’s deal Thursday after the trustees at the Orlando school voted yes last month.

The new contract will pay him a $900,000 base salary starting April 13 until April 12, 2026. In addition, he is eligible to receive bonuses up to $375,000, which would put Cartwright’s total compensation at $1.275 million.

His previous annual base salary was $750,000.

“Dr. Cartwright’s efforts have also positioned UCF as a national leader in higher education,” UCF Trustees Chair Alex Martins, who is the Orlando Magic CEO, wrote in a Jan. 14 letter to the state board. “Under President Cartwright’s leadership, UCF is on track to achieve preeminence by 2026, unlocking new opportunities and resources that will propel the university to even greater heights.”

Cartwright was hired at the school in April 2020.

Since Cartwright took over, the school’s four-year graduation rates improved while 72% of UCF graduates are finishing their schooling without taking any federal loans, Martins wrote in his letter.

Martins also praised Cartwright for helping grow the school foundation’s endowment from $163 million to $262 million.

Several major projects are underway, from building a bigger nursing school to expanding the football stadium.

“President Cartwright firmly believes that a vision without resources is just a hallucination, and he has worked closely with state leaders, community partners, and university supporters to secure the investments necessary for UCF’s future,” Martins wrote.

Cartwright thanked the state after his contract was renewed, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

“I do want to thank the state of Florida, our legislature, the governor’s office, everybody who has supported us in this vision of being Florida’s premier engineering and technology university,” Cartwright said. “It is the future. It’s what we need to be doing for Florida.”

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