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

Torey Alston named new President of Broward College by Governor-packed Board of Trustees

Published

52 seconds ago

January 31, 2025

May Greene

Broward College has a new President: Torey Alston, a former appointed member of the Broward County School Board, who beat out one finalist for the job.

The college’s Board of Trustees unanimously selected Alston — whom voters ousted from the School Board last August, two years after his installation there by Gov. Ron DeSantis — to lead the public institution.

Of note, all five members of the Broward College Board of Trustees are DeSantis appointees, too.

“God is so good,” Alston, a Republican, said in a statement.

“As the son of two parents who attended community college including my father who completed the police academy forty years ago from then-Broward Community College, I know the value of the state college system first-hand.”

Alston’s selection is the latest in a series of leadership changes at the top level of the college. He takes over for Donald Astrap, a 10-year administrator of the school who was named Interim President in May 2024 after then-Acting President Barbara Bryan confirmed she would not extend her six-month contract. Bryan, in turn, succeeded ex-President Gregory Haile, who resigned in September 2023 after five and a half years as President.

Broward College officially launched its search for a new permanent President in April 2024. Trustees soon set their eyes on Henry Mack III, a chancellor in the Department of Education, but Mack declined the job just hours after being offered it.

The panel ultimately whittled down its list of candidates to two. On Friday, they picked Alston over co-finalist Jose Llontop, an investor and building materials executive who lives in Washington, D.C.

Alston’s nearly two decades of government work included stints at the Governor’s Office, an Executive Director post at the state Office of Supplier Diversity, and Chief of Staff positions in Broward County and at the Florida Department of Transportation.

DeSantis appointed Alston to the Broward County Commission in November 2021. Alston left for the School Board less than a year later. He also serves as Executive Director and CEO of the Greater Miami Expressway Authority, which oversees Miami-Dade County’s five toll roads.

Before working in education in Broward, Alston worked for three years at Miami-Dade County Public Schools as the district’s Executive Director of Economic Opportunity and as an economic equity and diversity compliance officer. He also served on the Board of Trustees for Florida A&M University.

Public servants from both sides of the aisle celebrated Alston’s appointment Friday. Tallahassee Democratic state Rep. Frank Gallop, the Ranking Member of the House Higher Education Budget Subcommittee, recalled working alongside Alston on the FAMA Board.

“(He) still carries that same passion for education today,” Gallop said in a statement. “He would be a great college President.”

House Speaker Daniel Perez, a Miami Republican, said Alston has “a bold vision for Broward College and its students, and he will be a phenomenal college President.”

Similar plaudits came from Miami-Dade School Superintendent Jose Dotres; Dotres’ predecessor in the job, Alberto Carvalho; Broward School Board member Brenda Fam; Broward County Commissioner Robert McKinzie; and Adrian Lukis, DeSantis’ former Chief of Staff.

Alexis Yarbrough, Chair of the Broward College Board of Trustees, said Alston and Llontop were both “very strong candidates,” but “Alston’s legislative experience, coupled with his relationships in the community made him the obvious choice.”

But some disagreed the choice is cause for celebration. Andrea Apa, a senior professor at Broward College and the school’s President of the United Faculty of Florida said the process lacked transparency and did not appropriately consider a complaint against Alston.

She noted in an op-ed published by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that Alston still faces a complaint over alleged self-dealing while on the School Board. The complaint, filed with the State Ethics Commission in July by School Board member Allen Zeman, accuses Alston of advocating for more than $100 million in funding for charter schools before disclosing that his wife did business with some of them.

“Faculty and employees have left Broward College at a higher rate in the past two years than ever in the history of the institution … creating the highest student-faculty ratio among nine comparable state colleges, (and) faculty compensation at Broward College has increased only 0.03% over the past nine years while neighboring institutions like Palm Beach State College and Valencia College have gone up 14.7% and 16.9%, respectively,” she wrote.

“The allegations against Alston raise legitimate questions about his ability to lead ethically and address these challenges.”

Broward College serves roughly 56,000 students annually, according to its website. It was established in 1959 as the Junior College of Broward County, renamed Broward Junior College in 1968 and Broward Community College in 1970. It was rechristened Broward College in 2008.

Today, the school operates across three main campuses and several additional centers across the county, with an approximate annual budget of $221 million.

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Gov. DeSantis teases budget proposals, including tax cuts and Highway Patrol pay hike

Published

31 minutes ago

January 31, 2025

May Greene

‘They’ve done a lot of missions in addition to just the normal stuff. So they deserve that.’

While formal budget and spending proposals aren’t available yet, Gov. Ron DeSantis says they’re coming by the “end of the weekend” as required.

And though he was true to his word when he told a Destin audience that he was “not going to necessarily go into a lot of it” on Friday, DeSantis mentioned some ways he wanted to help people keep more of their money.

On at least one of them, Floridians will be able to make that decision if DeSantis gets his way.

He said that “any taxes we can eliminate” are up for grabs, including a move to “crack down on property taxes in the state” through a constitutional amendment on next year’s ballot.

“Homestead deduction needs to dramatically increase for people,” DeSantis said, given the increasingly high cost of housing driven by “demand” and other factors, including insurance rates.

The administration will “be working over the next year, year and a half to see what we can present for voters to be able to vote in the next election for some major, major property tax limitations and relief,” along with “some other tax stuff.”

Spending will increase in one way, meanwhile, with proposed pay increases for highway patrol troopers pending in light of deployments to the Mexican border.

“They’ve done a lot of missions in addition to just the normal stuff. So they deserve that, and we’re going to make sure that we get that done,” DeSantis said.

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Politics

Tom Fabricio measure would keep some complaints against law enforcement, correction officers confidential

Published

1 hour ago

January 31, 2025

May Greene

Law enforcement officers and correctional officers could have certain complaints lodged against them kept off their records if a new bill filed Thursday passes.

Miami Lakes Republican Rep. Tom Fabricio’s measure (HB 317) would exempt records of any investigations made into complaints against a law enforcement officer or a correctional officer from their personnel file under certain conditions.

Complaints filed against officers would be required to be given under oath and submitted in writing, and if an officer is subject to an interrogation that could lead to disciplinary action, then all information related to the investigation would have to be given to the officer or their representative before any interrogation into the allegations could begin, according to the bill.

That would include the names of the person or persons who filed the complaint, all witness statements, and any supporting evidence such as incident reports, GPS locator information, and video and audio recordings.

Florida statute currently states, “all information obtained pursuant to the investigation by the agency of the complaint is confidential,” and is exempt from public record until the investigation “ceases to be active” or until the agency decides whether to file charges against the officer.

The measure would amend that statute, adding that the officer be “provided a copy of the complaint signed by the complainant under oath before the effective date of the action.”

Current law already allows officers facing disciplinary action the right to address the findings with their respective agency heads before any disciplinary action can be imposed.

However, the new measure would allow such records to be left out of an officer’s personnel file if the investigation into their conduct did not end in disciplinary action. Furthermore, the existence of the investigation would not affect an officer’s ability to be promoted, get a pay raise, or receive a commendation.

Under the bill, the contents of both the complaint and the investigation would remain confidential until a final determination is made by investigators. The bill does not guarantee continued employment for officers under investigation.

The bill would further protect law enforcement and correctional officers protections by establishing penalties against those who make false complaints. Under the bill, someone found guilty of filing a false complaint could be charged with a third-degree felony, punishable by up to five years in prison.

If passed, the bill would become law on July 1.

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