Trump Strikes Deal With Carrier, Ford, What About Oreo?

President-elect Donald Trump may be open to eating Oreos once again. After famously saying he wouldn’t eat another black and white cookie after Nabisco, owned by Mondelēz International (MDLZ), finished moving some Chicago area jobs to Salinas, Mexico, the company tells FOXBusiness.com it wants to open the lines of dialogue with Trump on future policies.

“We have not had any contact with the new administration, but, as with any new administration, we look forward to working with them and having a constructive dialogue about policies of interest to our business,” said Laurie Guzzinati of Mondelēz Global LLC in a statement to FOXBusiness.com.

Hundreds could still lose jobs at Carrier's Indianapolis plant, despite Trump deal

WASHINGTON –  In persuading Carrier to keep hundreds of jobs in Indiana, President-elect Donald Trump is claiming victory on behalf of factory workers whose positions were bound for Mexico. But the scant details that have emerged so far raise doubts about the extent of the victory.
By enabling Carrier's Indianapolis plant to stay open, the deal spares about 800 union workers whose jobs were going to be outsourced to Mexico, according to federal officials who were briefed by the heating and air conditioning company. This suggests that hundreds will still lose their jobs at the factory, where roughly 1,400 workers were slated to be laid off.
Also, neither Trump nor Carrier has yet to say what the workers might have to give up or precisely what threats or incentives were used to get the manufacturer to change its mind.
"There's excitement with most people, but there's a lot of skepticism and worry because we don't know the details," said TJ Bray, 32, who has worked for Carrier for 14 years and installs insulation in furnaces.
"There's a few that are worried. And there's still a few that don't even believe this is real. They think it's a play, a set-up or a scam."
Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., said he, too, has lingering questions about what the announcement could mean for the workers.
"Who is going to be retained? What is the structure there will be for the retention? What is going to be put in place?" Donnelly said. "Are these the same jobs at the same wage? I would sure like to know as soon as I can."
Fuller answers could emerge Thursday, when Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who is ending his tenure as Indiana governor, are to appear with Carrier officials in Indiana.
On the campaign trail, Trump threatened to impose sharp tariffs on any company that shifted its factories to Mexico. And his advisers have since promoted lower corporate tax rates as a means of keeping jobs in the U.S.
Trump may have had some leverage because United Technologies, Carrier's parent company, also owns Pratt & Whitney, a big supplier of fighter jet engines that relies in part on U.S. military contracts.
Carrier said in a statement that more than 1,000 jobs were saved, though that figure includes headquarters and engineering staff that were likely to stay in Indiana.
The company attributed its decision to the incoming Trump administration and financial incentives provided by Indiana, which is something of a reversal, since earlier offers from the state had failed to sway Carrier from decamping to Mexico.
"Today's announcement is possible because the incoming Trump-Pence administration has emphasized to us its commitment to support the business community and create an improved, more competitive U.S. business climate," the company said.
In February, United Technologies said it would close its Carrier air conditioning and heating plant in Indianapolis and move its manufacturing to Mexico. The plant's workers would have been laid off over three years starting in 2017.
Whatever deal Trump struck with Carrier does not appear to have salvaged jobs at a separate branch of United Technologies in Huntington, Ind., that makes microprocessor-based controls for the heating, air conditioning and refrigeration industries. That branch will move manufacturing operations to a new plant in Mexico, costing the city 700 jobs by 2018.
Huntington Mayor Brooks Fetters suggested that local officials lack the political clout to preserve those jobs.
"At a local level, there was not much that anybody was going to do to make global, publicly traded companies make a decision other than what they made for the benefit of their shareholders," Fetters said.
Donnelly said he worries about other factory job losses threatening his state. Bearing maker Rexnord, which has a factory near the Carrier plant in Indianapolis, plans to lay off about 350 workers. And electronics manufacturer CTS plans to eliminate more than 200 jobs at its Elkhart plant, he said.
Union leaders who represent the Carrier workers were not involved in the negotiations that the Trump team had with their employer.
Chuck Jones, president of United Steelworkers Local 1999, which represents Carrier workers, said of Tuesday's news: "I'm optimistic, but I don't know what the situation is. I guess it's a good sign. ... You would think they would keep us in the loop. But we know nothing."
Trump's deal with Carrier may be a public relations success for the incoming president. It also suggests that he has unveiled a new presidential economic approach: actively choosing individual corporate winners and losers — or at least winners.
To critics who see other Indiana factories on the verge of closing, deals like the one at Carrier are unlikely to stem the job losses caused by automation and cheap foreign competition.
The prospect that the White House might directly intervene is also a concern to some economists. The incentives needed to keep jobs from moving often come at the public's expense. They note that Trump's activism might encourage companies to threaten to move jobs overseas in hopes of receiving tax breaks or contracts with the government.
"It sets up a race to the bottom," said Diane Lim, chief economist at the nonprofit Committee for Economic Development.
Carrier's parent company indicated that moving production to Mexico would save the company $65 million annually. Because of pressures like that, states routinely give manufacturers incentives, and "economists who recoil at the thought of this are living in a dream world," said Scott Paul, president of the American Alliance for Manufacturing.
For Trump, a challenge will be trying to duplicate the Carrier feat many times over to retain and increase the nation's 12.3 million manufacturing jobs.
Since the start of 2015, the Labor Department has issued over 1,600 approvals for layoffs or plant closings as a result of shifts of production overseas or competition from imports, the American Alliance of Manufacturing noted.
But other forces, such as consumer demand and the value of the dollar, also determine whether assembly lines keep humming.
Payroll services provider ADP said Wednesday that manufacturers shed 10,000 jobs in November. U.S. manufacturers have struggled in the past year as a stronger dollar has cut into exports and domestic businesses have spent less on machinery and other equipment.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Wednesday that Trump would have to replicate the Carrier deal 804 times to meet President Barack Obama's record. He said that Obama created 805,000 jobs in manufacturing and that the figure is much higher if existing jobs that have been protected are included.
Trump acknowledged the extent of the problem on the campaign trail this year.
"So many hundreds and hundreds of companies are doing this," he said. "We have to stop our jobs from being stolen from us. We have to stop our companies from leaving the United States."
Carrier wasn't the only company Trump assailed during the campaign. He pledged to give up Oreos after Nabisco's parent, Mondelez International, said it would replace nine production lines in Chicago with four in Mexico. He criticized Ford after the company said it planned to invest $2.5 billion in engine and transmission plants in Mexico.

Bret Baier: A new path for the US and Cuba? What Ike and JFK might tell President-elect Trump

On January 19, 1961, under the threat of a storm that would dump eight inches of snow on Washington D.C., President Dwight Eisenhower held a final transition meeting with his young successor, John F. Kennedy. One day before the inauguration, Eisenhower’s mind was on the looming threats to American security, and Cuba was high on that list.
Writing about this critical moment in U.S.-Cuban relations in my new book, “Three Days in January: Dwight Eisenhower’s Final Mission” (out from William Morrow on January 10, 2017), I was struck by the parallels between then and now, especially as we grapple with the implications of the death of Fidel Castro.

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Then, at the height of the Cold War, the threat posed by a Soviet-backed dictator off our southern coast was grave, and the need to formulate the right response in a nuclear age was a grave concern for Eisenhower.
On the campaign trail during the 1960 presidential election, Kennedy had been bullish about dealing with and confronting Castro. Now Ike wanted to give him a more measured perspective.

If Eisenhower were advising President-elect Trump today, he would likely suggest, as he did with Kennedy, that the best way to approach such a complex matter as Cubas was to proceed cautiously, to hold his cards close to his vest, and to strategize in private.

In a cabinet meeting following their private discussion, Kennedy learned the details of a plan in development under the auspices of the CIA to train Cuban exiles for a potential invasion of Cuba.  The aim was to overthrow Castro’s brutal regime. But, Ike stressed, the plan was only in the early stages, and certain conditions would have to occur if it had any chance of success—including the creation of a government in exile and a strong leader who was capable of replacing Castro. Kennedy listened respectfully, but he mostly ignored Ike’s caveats.  Kennedy was impatient with the process Ike favored, which involved extensive debates from national security advisers.  He preferred a looser, more shoot-from-the-hip style, and relied on a couple of key men who had his ear.  In the case of Cuba, the absence of sound advice had disastrous consequences.
Within three months of becoming president, Kennedy approved a poorly planned invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs by a disorganized group of exiles. When he withdrew critical air support, Castro’s forces easily swept in and killed or captured the exiles. It was a complete failure—and Kennedy knew it. “How could I have been so stupid?” he raged.
In desperation he turned to Eisenhower.  On April 22 he sent a helicopter to bring Ike from his home in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania for a private consult at Camp David.  As the two men strolled along the wooded paths, Kennedy lamented, “No one knows how tough this job is until he’s been in it a few months.”
Eisenhower smiled wryly. “Mr. President,” he replied softly, “if you will forgive me, I think I mentioned that to you three months ago.” And indeed he had. But Kennedy, bursting with confidence, hadn’t taken him seriously.
Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs fiasco unleashed the rage of Castro and emboldened the Soviet Union to begin erecting missile sites in Cuba pointed at the United States. The Cuban Missile Crisis, over half a century ago, remains America’s most chilling encounter with an immediate nuclear threat.
Once again, Kennedy turned to Ike. In a tape recording of their conversation on file at the JFK Library, one can hear the nervous uncertainty in Kennedy’s voice—and the unruffled calm in Eisenhower’s. Kennedy knew he had to act, even if it meant attacking Cuba and removing the missile sites by force. But he was worried about making a fatal mistake. “What about if the Soviet Union, Khrushchev, announces tomorrow, which I think he will, that if we attack Cuba, that it’s going to be nuclear war, and what’s your judgment as to the chances they’ll fire these things off if we invade Cuba?” he asked Eisenhower.
Ike, the old warrior who had stared down Hitler as commander of the allied forces in World War II, saw through the bluster of our enemies. “Something may make these people shoot ‘em off,” he said. “I just don't believe this will.”  Reassured, Kennedy went on to negotiate the removal of the missile sites, and did it without having to attack Cuba. But it was a very close call.
Today, the wounds from the conflicts of the early 1960’s remain exposed and painful. When President Obama opened relations with Cuba in May of this year, six in ten Americans supported normalization. But for many others, especially in South Florida, the atrocities of Castro’s regime cannot so easily be forgotten, and its future commitment to freedom for its people is not so clear.
In conversations during the transition, Eisenhower told Kennedy that the easy decisions a president faces are handled by staff.  Only the impossible ones fall on the president himself.
President-elect Trump will likely find that to be true as well, and Cuba is a good example. As president he will oversee the beginning of the post-Fidel Castro era, with all the complexity that entails. The decisions he makes early in his term could shape our relationship with the island nation for decades to come. He has already signaled his intention to renegotiate President Obama’s deal and perhaps even terminate it, but no matter what his strategy it will have significant consequences.
If Eisenhower were advising President-elect Trump today, he would likely suggest, as he did with Kennedy, that the best way to approach such a complex matter was to proceed cautiously, to hold his cards close to his vest, and to strategize in private.
In particular, Ike would have advised bringing voices from all sides into the room--those who agreed with the president and those who did not--and letting them engage in a rigorous debate.
We don’t know what could have changed if President Kennedy had listened to Ike’s same advice at the time.
More than five decades later, without the looming Soviet nuclear threat, a President Trump has an opportunity to steer a new course in U.S. Cuba relations.
Tuesday, the Obama administration sent Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes and U.S. Ambassador to Cuba, Jeffrey DeLaurentis to attend a memorial service for Fidel Castro in Havana.   The administration insisted it was not “honoring” the dictator, who executed thousands of Cuban citizens and persecuted many more, because they didn’t send “an official delegation” to the ceremony.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters about the move, “We believe that this was an appropriate way for the United States to show our commitment to an ongoing future-oriented relationship with the Cuban people.”
No matter which path the 45^th president chooses when it comes to Cuba, one can be assured, it will be different in some way to the path the 44^th president has pursued.  

Immigration Cartoons

Immigration violations are majority of federal cases for first time

For the first time, immigration violations now make up more than half of all federal prosecutions, easily outpacing drugs, fraud, organized crime, weapons charges and other crimes.

In the last fiscal year, 52 percent of all federal prosecutions - 69,636 cases - involved an immigration violation, compared to 63,405 prosecutions for all other federal crimes, according to a new study by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Clearinghouse, which sued the Justice Department to obtain the information.

"Imagine the other crimes that are not being prosecuted because immigration is such a priority," study co-author Susan Long told Fox News.

The two most common charges pursued by prosecutors relate to illegal entry or re-entry to the U.S. The penalty for a conviction on either charge can range from a few months to typically two years in federal prison for a person who re-enters the U.S. after being deported.

However, a more serious outcome from a conviction isn't jail, but a 10-year prohibition from entering the U.S.

"The worst consequence isn't that you go to jail for six months, but you are legallly barred from entering the U.S. for a decade," said Peter Nunez, a former U.S. Attorney for San Diego. "It really screws up immigration status. If word got out, from the White House on down, that the goal is to prosecute every single person who enters the U.S. illegally, and we don't care if you go to jail for an hour or a month, we want the conviction on the record - because that is the greatest deterrent you can achieve to prevent further illegal entries not only by those people but other people."

A study by the Congressional Research Service found that criminal prosecution was the number one factor in reducing recidivism, or illegal immigrant re-entry. The Border Patrol calls it "consequence delivery" and it was first rolled out in 2005 on a pilot basis called Operation Streamline.
Since the operation requires the cooperation of Customs and Border Protection, the U.S. Attorney's Office and the courts, its use was not widespread and immigrants quickly moved to other sectors to re-enter.
The Syracuse study found that Texas saw the most prosecutions, with almost 44,000, compared to just under 3,000 in California.

"When they say half of all criminal prosecutions are immigration related, I say 'so what'," said Jessica Vaughn, a policy analyst with the Center for Immigration Studies. "These are bread and butter, slam-dunk cases. It is not a big deal to prosecute an illegal alien when you catch them in the act. To me, it is a dog-bites-man story. Most immigration cases are handled on an administrative basis."

While Long questioned the expense of prosecuting so many low -level offenders, Nunez said the cases are not complicated and do not represent say '50 percent' of a prosecutor's office budget. Under Operation Streamline guidelines, up to 40 defendants can be tried simultaneously before a judge in a trial lasting as little as an hour because typically the facts are not in dispute.

"If you are a previously deported immigrant and return to the U.S., it's a pretty easy prosecution," said Nunez. "The role of the prosecutor is to convict people as quickly and easily as possible. There is nothing wrong that."

Trump's pick for HHS could be the key to dismantling ObamaCare

President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement Monday that he'll nominate longtime ObamaCare nemesis Rep. Tom Price to lead the Department of Health and Human Services is perhaps the clearest and most concrete sign yet from the incoming president that he is serious about dismantling President Obama’s signature health care law.
Price, R-Ga., a former orthopedic surgeon, has been one of a number of physicians who has worked to form a Republican Party alternative to the Affordable Care Act amid claims by Democrats that the GOP has no realistic plan to replace the law.
Trump has made the repeal-and-replace of ObamaCare a signature issue of the campaign, although he has rarely gone into specifics. Through the primaries and campaign, he said that he would remove restrictions that prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines, a move he claims will lead to greater competition and therefore lower premiums.
Since his election, Trump has appeared to shift somewhat on the issue, saying there are elements of the Affordable Care Act he may keep – including provisions preventing insurance companies from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions, and allowing children to stay on their parents’ health care plans until the age of 26.
Conservatives, grass-roots and congressional Republicans immediately welcomed the Price pick, with House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., calling him the “perfect choice.”
“As a legislator, he has played a leading role in developing conservative health care solutions that put patients first. We could not ask for a better partner to work with Congress to fix our nation's health care challenges,” Ryan said.
The reason for the excitement among conservatives at the Price pick is that he has a proven record of being committed to replacing ObamaCare, and has even spearheaded what some experts call the Republican’s best idea to replace it in 2017.
“He’s a fabulous choice, a visionary leader who gets down in the details and really does the hard work,” Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, told FoxNews.com. “He’s an incredible spokesman for free market ideas.”
“There’s no question, this guy is a serious guy,” Robert Moffit, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a former senior official at HHS during the Reagan administration, told FoxNews.com.
Price’s plan, the Empowering Patients First Act -- which he has introduced regularly since 2009 -- offers free-market solutions that include providing tax relief for individually-bought health insurance, and would offer customers the ability to own and control their health care policies, taking it with them from job to job. It would also allow those in government programs Medicare and Medicaid to opt out and receive tax credits with which to buy a private plan instead.
Price’s fundamental principle is to mix transparency with competition in order to give customers greater choice, and subsequently bring down premiums.
Experts say that Price’s experience not only as a physician, but in Congress, where many of the features of his plan were included in the House Republican’s official plan to replace ObamaCare, will make him a a secretary who can get things done.
“For sheer compatibility, collegiality and competence in terms of grasping the nuances of what has to be done in health policy, I can’t think of a better candidate,” Moffit said. “He’s best understood by his legislative record, he is author of a lot of amendments and bills, but especially the Empowering Patients First Act, because it’s a highly detailed legislative proposal.”
Turner said that because he has been so deep in policy, he will not merely be a foot soldier for the White House, but will know the powers and options available to him to act right away.
“When they wrote the Affordable Care Act, they gave the HHS secretary 2000 powers about how the law was to be implemented, so the secretary now has enormous power,” Turner said. “He understands the law and the powers the law gives him to protect people right away from things such as the individual mandate.”

Carrier says it has deal with Trump to keep jobs in Indiana

Air conditioning company Carrier said Tuesday that it had reached an agreement with President-elect Donald Trump that would keep 1,000 jobs in Indianapolis.
Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence, Indiana's outgoing governor, planned to travel to the state Thursday to unveil the agreement alongside company officials.
Details of the agreement were not immediately available. A Trump transition source told Fox News that Carrier executives went to Trump Tower Tuesday to hash out the deal.
Trump spent much of his campaign pledging to keep companies like Carrier from moving jobs overseas. His focus on manufacturing jobs contributed to his unexpected appeal with working-class voters in states like Michigan, which has long voted for Democrats in presidential elections.
In a September debate against Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, he railed against Carrier's decision to move hundreds of air-conditioner manufacturing jobs from Indianapolis to Mexico.

"So many hundreds and hundreds of companies are doing this," Trump said. "We have to stop our jobs from being stolen from us. We have to stop our companies from leaving the United States."

In February, Carrier said it would shutter its Indianapolis plant employing 1,400 workers and move its manufacturing to Mexico.
The plant's workers would have been laid off over three years starting in 2017.

United Technologies Electronic Controls also announced then that it planned to move its Huntington manufacturing operations to a new plant in Mexico, costing the northeastern Indiana city 700 jobs by 2018. Those workers make microprocessor-based controls for the HVAC and refrigeration industries.

Carrier and UTEC are both units of Hartford, Connecticut-based United Technologies Corp. -- which also owns Pratt & Whitney, a big supplier of fighter jet engines that relies in part on U.S. military contracts.

Carrier wasn't the only company Trump assailed. He pledged to give up Oreos after Nabisco's parent, Mondelez International, said it would replace nine production lines in Chicago with four in Mexico. He criticized Ford after the company said it planned to invest $2.5 billion in engine and transmission plants in Mexico.
Trump tweeted on Thanksgiving Day that he was "making progress" on trying to get Carrier to stay in Indiana.
Chuck Jones, president of United Steelworkers Local 1999, which represents Carrier workers, said of Tuesday's news: "I'm optimistic, but I don't know what the situation is. I guess it's a good sign. ... You would think they would keep us in the loop. But we know nothing."
Thursday's event will mark a rare public appearance for Trump, who has spent nearly his entire tenure as president-elect huddled with advisers and meeting with possible Cabinet secretaries. He plans to make other stops later this week as part of what advisers have billed as a "thank you" tour for voters who backed him in the presidential campaign.

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.