Trump to nominate Steven Mnuchin for Treasury Secretary, sources say

President-elect Donald Trump will nominate former Goldman Sachs banker Steven Mnuchin to be his Treasury Secretary, two sources close to the transition told Fox News late Tuesday.
One source told Fox that a formal announcement of Mnuchin's nomination could come as early as Wednesday.
Mnuchin had long been considered a favorite for the Treasury position. Two weeks ago, businessman and close Trump associate Carl Icahn tweeted that Trump was considering Mnuchin for the post.
Mnuchin, 53, was appointed Trump's campaign finance chair this past May. Through his work, Mnuchin grew close to Trump's children and son-in-law, Jared Kushner -- a top adviser to Trump -- and worked with them on fundraising events.

The campaign raised at least $169 million, in addition to the $66 million Trump spent out of his own pocket. Though that was far short of what Hillary Clinton raised, it represented an impressive haul given that Trump didn't begin fundraising in earnest until the end of May.
If approved by the Senate, Mnuchin would follow in the tradition of two previous treasury secretaries -- Robert Rubin in the Clinton administration and Henry Paulson in George W. Bush's. All had vast Wall Street experience gained from years spent working at Goldman Sachs.

Yet unlike Rubin and Paulson and unlike President Barack Obama's two treasury secretaries, Timothy Geithner and Jacob Lew, Mnuchin would bring no government experience to Treasury, something that could prove a hurdle in navigating the tricky politics of Washington.

After graduating from Yale in 1985. Mnuchin worked for Goldman Sachs for 17 years. His father, Robert Mnuchin, had himself worked for Goldman for three decades, becoming a partner in charge of equity trading.

The younger Mnuchin amassed his own fortune at the firm and then left in 2002. He worked briefly for Soros Fund Management, a hedge fund led by George Soros, before starting his own investment firm, Dune Capital Management.

As head of this firm, Mnuchin and other investors participated in the purchase of failed mortgage lender IndyMac in 2009 and renamed it OneWest. The failure of IndyMac in 2008 with $32 billion in assets was one of the biggest casualties of the housing bust.

Mnuchin became chairman of OneWest, which was sold to CIT Group in 2015. Before the sale, OneWest faced a string of lawsuits over its home foreclosure practices.

This month, housing advocates filed a complaint asking the Department of Housing and Urban Development to investigate OneWest for possible violations of the Fair Housing Act. The lender failed to place branches in minority communities, provided few mortgages to black homebuyers and preserved foreclosed properties in white neighborhoods while allowing similar homes in minority communities to fall into disrepair, according to the California Reinvestment Coalition and Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California.

CIT declined to respond directly to the complaint but stressed in a statement that it is "committed to fair lending and works hard to meet the credit needs of all communities and neighborhoods we serve."

Mnuchin also became a major investor in Hollywood, helping finance a number of movies, including the 2009 blockbuster "Avatar."

As treasury secretary, Mnuchin would be the administration's chief economic spokesman, serving as a liaison not only to Wall Street but also to global investors, a critical role given the trillions of dollars in treasury bonds owned by foreigners. In addition, it would be his job to sell the new administration's economic program to Congress.

Mnuchin will also oversee a sprawling bureaucracy that includes the Internal Revenue Service and the agency that issues millions of Social Security and other benefit checks each month. Treasury also runs the agency that wages the financial war on terrorism.
Earlier Tuesday, Trump officially nominated Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., as Health and Human Services Secretary and tapped Elaine Chao, former President George W. Bush's Labor Secretary, to be secretary of transportation.
Price, a former surgeon, supports the repeal of ObamaCare and has offered a replacement that would provide tax credits to subsidize the purchase of individual and family health insurance policies. His proposal would also allow insurers to sell policies across state line, boost incentives for health savings accounts, and create high-risk pools to help individuals afford coverage, while barring assistance for nearly all abortions.
Price has emerged as a top advocate of House Speaker Paul Ryan's plan to transform Medicare from a program that supplies a defined set of benefits into a "premium support" model that would, similar to Obamacare, offer subsidies for participants to purchase health care directly from insurance companies. He also wants the Medicare eligibility age to rise to 67.
Price also backs, as does Trump, a plan by House Republicans to sharply cut the Medicaid health program for the poor and disabled and turn it over to the states to run. Like Trump and most other Republicans, Price wants federal funding withdrawn from Planned Parenthood, which has come under attack for its practice of supplying tissue from aborted fetuses to medical researchers.
If confirmed as Transportation Secretary, Chao would face many pressing issues, such as how to boost the nation's aging infrastructure so that it can accommodate population growth and not become a drag on the economy, modernizing the nation's air traffic control system, ensuring that new transportation technologies are adopted in a safe manner and responding to a surge in traffic fatalities.
After serving in the Bush administration, Chao served on the board of directors for Bloomberg Philanthropies, run by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. She resigned last year after learning the organization planned to expand an environmental initiative to shutter coal-fired power plants.
Almost 90 percent of Kentucky's electricity comes from coal, and Chao's ties to the organization were used against her husband, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, during his 2014 re-election campaign.

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Ohio State police officer hailed hero for quick reaction to campus attacker

Officer Alan Horujko

An Ohio State police officer was being hailed a hero for his quick reaction after killing a man a minute after he drove his car into a crowd and then stabbed multiple people Monday.
Officer Alan Horujko, who had only joined the department in January 2015, was responding to reports of a nearby gas leak when the suspect jumped a curb on campus at around 9:52 a.m.

Ohio State police officer Alan Horujko. (Ohio State University Police via AP)

Horujko ordered the attacker, later identified as Abdul Razak Ali Artan, to drop the butcher’s knife and then shot him when he didn’t obey the command, university president Michael Drake said.
"The officer encountered the individual by 9:53 — the subject was neutralized by 9:53," Drake said, underscoring how quickly events unfolded.
Director of Ohio State’s Department of Public Safety Monica Moll echoed Drake’s sentiments, saying Horujko is owed a debt of gratitude.
"He did a fabulous job today," she said.
University police Chief Craig Stone said it was fortunate Horujko had gone to investigate the gas leak at the same time the attack was unfolding. It helped him respond quickly to the attacker.
Artan, 18, plowed a small gray Honda into the crowd outside Watts Hall, an engineering classroom building. Two law enforcement sources told Fox News that Artan came into the United States as a Somali refugee, and was granted status as a legal permanent resident.
The motive behind the attack is still unclear, but law enforcement sources told Fox News the FBI was examining a Facebook post that may have been written by Artan earlier Monday. The post appeared to condemn U.S. military action in Muslim countries.

More on this...

• Somali student behind car, knife attack at Ohio State University that injured 11

• How Ohio State University harnessed tech to alert students of campus attack

• Ohio State attack latest stain on Somali community of Columbus

Mayor Andrew Ginther called Horujko an “outstanding young law enforcement officer.
“There has never been a more dangerous or complicated and challenging time to be a police officer, and we had a dynamic well-trained professional today save the lives of many of our residents and students," Ginther added.
Horujko, 28, was placed on administrative leave Monday and the investigation turned over to Columbus police, consistent with protocol for police shootings. Horujko appears to be an avid runner, with several half-marathons under his belt, according to online race results.
Gov. John Kasich praised the speed with which Horujko and other officers acted.
Kasich, a Republican, described the response as "an unbelievable, amazing and outstanding and heroic performance on the part of our first responders."
The university police department is accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies. It has officers on the main campus in Columbus and on regional campuses in Lima, Mansfield, Marion, Newark and Wooster.

Trump wins Michigan's 16 electoral votes, state board says

President-elect Trump mocks efforts to recount the ballots

President-elect Donald Trump has won Michigan's 16 electoral votes.
The Board of State Canvassers certified Trump's 10,704-vote victory on Monday, nearly three weeks after the election. The two-tenths of a percentage point margin out of nearly 4.8 million votes is the closest presidential race in Michigan in more than 75 years.
Trump's win in Michigan gives the Republican 306 electoral votes to Democrat Hillary Clinton's 232.
Trump is the first Republican presidential nominee to win Michigan since 1988.
Green Party candidate Jill Stein is expected to ask for a recount. She has until Wednesday. Trump would have seven days to file objections to her request.

Trump to nominate Rep. Tom Price for HHS secretary, sources say

President-elect Donald Trump will nominate Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., to head the Department of Health and Human Services, two sources close to the transition told Fox News late Monday.
Trump was expected to formally announce Price's nomination Tuesday morning.
If confirmed by the Senate, Price will play a central role in Republican efforts to repeal and replace ObamaCare. Trump has pledged to move quickly on overhauling his predecessor's signature measure, but has been vague about what he hopes to see in a replacement bill.
The president-elect has said he favors keeping provisions that allow young people to stay on their parents' health insurance and that prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to those with pre-existing conditions.
Price, a 62-year-old six-term congressman and orthopedic surgeon, has chaired the House Budget Committee for the past two years. A bookish conservative from the Atlanta suburbs, Price has worked closely with House Speaker Paul Ryan to assemble GOP budgets aimed at reducing the annual deficit.
Last week, Price said whatever Republicans do to replace Obama's health care law will bear a "significant resemblance" to a 2015 measure that was vetoed by the president. That bill would have gutted some of the health care law's main features: Medicaid expansion, subsidies to help middle-class Americans buy private policies, the tax penalties for individuals who refused to get coverage and several taxes to support coverage expansion. The bill would have delayed implementation for two years.
Price insisted that Republicans can keep the protections for those with existing medical conditions without mandating that all individuals carry coverage or pay a penalty to support an expanded insurance pool. Price said Republicans want to address "the real cost drivers" of health care price spikes, which he said were not necessarily sicker patients, but a heavy regulatory burden, taxes and lawsuits against medical professionals.

Plane crash in Colombia carrying members of Brazilian soccer team leaves at least 76 dead

At least 76 people died in a plane crash in Colombia and there were five survivors, police said Tuesday.
The chartered aircraft was carrying 81 people, including members of first division Chapecoense soccer team which was on its way to Colombia for a regional tournament final, crashed on its way to Medellin's international airport.
Gen. Jose Acevedo, head of police in the area surrounding Medellin, provided the information.
La Ceja Mayor Elkin Ospina, where the plane had crashed, confirmed at least three of the passengers were found alive. The British Aerospace 146 short-haul plane, operated by the charter airline LaMia, declared an emergency at 10 p.m. Monday because of an electrical failure.
"It's a tragedy of huge proportions," Medellin Mayor Federico Gutierrez told Blu Radio.
Authorities and rescuers were immediately activated but an air force helicopter had to turn back because of low visibility. Heavy rainfall is complicating the nighttime search and authorities urged journalists to stay off the roads to facilitate the entry of ambulances and rescuers.
Images broadcast on local television showed three male passengers arriving to a local hospital in ambulances on stretchers and covered in blankets connected to an IV. All were apparently alive and one of them was reportedly a Chapecoense defender named Alan Ruschel.
A video published on the team's Facebook page showed the team readying for the flight earlier Monday in Sao Paulo's Guarulhos international airport.
The team, from the small city of Chapeco, was in the middle of a fairy tale season. It joined Brazil's first division in 2014 for the first time since the 1970s and made it last week to the Copa Sudamericana finals -- the equivalent of the UEFA Europa League tournament -- after defeating two of Argentina's fiercest squads, San Lorenzo and Independiente, as well as Colombia's Junior.
The team is so modest that its 22,000-seat arena was ruled by tournament organizers too small to host the final match, which was instead moved to a stadium 300 miles (480 kilometers) to the north in the city of Curitiba.
"Chapecoense was the biggest source of happiness in the town," the club's vice-president, Ivan Tozzo, told Brazil's SporTV. "Many in the town are crying."

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Priebus: Trump will void Cuba deal unless Castro regime moves to concessions

President-elect Donald Trump will keep his campaign promise to void a 2014 deal that improves diplomacy and commerce between the U.S. and Cuba, incoming White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said Sunday, a day after the announcement of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro’s death.
“President-elect Trump has been pretty clear,” Priebus told “Fox News Sunday,” in a wide-ranging interview. “We’ve got to have a better deal.”
Trump, during his successful White House bid, argued against President Obama’s 2014 executive action that attempts to “normalize” relations between the United States and the communist country.
Obama used executive actions to ease sanctions against Cuba. The president ended the 180-day ban on ships docking at U.S. ports after sailing from Cuba, paved the way for doctors to work with Cuban researchers on medical investigations and allowed Americans to travel to Cuba in cultural exchange programs.
Obama visited Cuba in March, becoming the first president since Calvin Coolidge to visit the island nation. Coolidge took the trip in 1928.
Trump, during a campaign stop in September, said if elected president he would void Obama’s deal unless Cuba met his demands, which included “religious and political freedom for the Cuban people and the freeing of political prisoners.”
The incoming Republican president and other critics said Obama's deal vastly improves the island nation’s isolated economy, while the U.S. gets nothing in return.
Priebus repeated that Cuban leader Raul Castro, the brother of Fidel Castro, will have to “meet our demands” for such a deal to continue.
He cited such issues as Cuba opening up its economic markets and putting an end to religious oppression and other human rights violations.
“These things need to change,” said Priebus, making clear that the continuing Castro regime has to at least show signs of moving in those directions.
“This isn’t going to be one way,” he said. “I think the president-elect has been clear on this.”
Priebus also slammed 2016 Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s efforts to have vote recounts in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, calling the effort, which Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton joined Saturday, a “fundraising scheme.”
He called the effort a “total waste of time.”
Priebus also downplayed rumors about vicious infighting within the transition team about whether Trump should pick former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani or former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney as his secretary of state.
“He’s going to have the best possible people,” said Priebus, while acknowledging “teams of rivals” in the debate over who will run the State Department. “He’s going to make the best decision for the American people.”