The Trump administration’s move to eliminate a swath of Biden-era power plant emissions standards will be a game changer for the U.S. economy, National Association of Manufacturers CEO Jay Timmons told Fox News Digital.

Timmons hailed EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin for the move announced this week but noted that even more red tape remains to be cut.

“It really sent a signal to manufacturers that the administration was listening to our concerns,” Timmons said of the cuts to power plant emissions standards.

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He said NAM and other groups had objected to former President Joe Biden’s 2024 standards “very, very clearly” at the time, saying the standards were “simply unworkable.”

“The timeline that they had proposed was just, it wasn’t feasible. Not that the aspirations for, you know, for cleaner air and a healthier environment aren’t good aspirations,” Timmons said.

“I think we all share that. I know the current EPA and Administrator Zeldin certainly share those objectives, but how you get there really matters and whether manufacturers are able to meet the challenge.

Timmons noted that the Biden administration had heard its concerns but simply disagreed.

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The emissions regulations cut this week were removed by executive fiat, but Timmons says more lasting change must come through Congress as manufacturers hope to avoid regulatory whiplash between administrations.

“Uncertainty is the absolute worst enemy for manufacturers because manufacturers are on a very long-term horizon when it comes to planning and strategy, product development, research development. So, when administrations change, there has often been kind of that pendulum swing,” Timmons said.

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One area he said could use further reform is permitting. NAM polling found that 80% of manufacturers say the length and complexity of the permitting process is harmful to increasing investment.

As many as 87% of manufacturers told NAM they would expand business operations, hire more workers or increase wages and benefits if the permitting process was more streamlined.

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Timmons said it is critical for Congress to hear directly from manufacturers when drafting legislation, however.

“There needs to be more opportunities for business to be at the table. To really explain what the art of the possible is. No one is saying that we should not be working hard to achieve cleaner air, cleaner water, healthier communities. In fact, we’re saying exactly that. We should be part of the solution to make that happen,” he said.

President Donald Trump announced Saturday that he is creating an “AI Force” and plans to name an artificial intelligence czar as his administration pushes to accelerate the growth of AI in the U.S.

Trump said in a lengthy Truth Social post that his administration would resist efforts to restrict the rapidly developing technology while using the existing criminal and civil justice systems to address potential wrongdoing.

“We will not in any way hinder or stifle the Growth of this incredible Industry,” the post read. “Rather, we will cherish it, help it, and watch over it, as it grows!”

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Trump added that the government would also be “looking for BAD” and said existing criminal and civil laws could be used to address problems involving the technology.

“For this purpose, I am forming the AI Force, much like I did Space Force, which has been a tremendous SUCCESS, in my First Term,” the president’s post continued. “To that end, I will be announcing, in the near future, the AI ‘Czar’ — Only High I.Q. individuals need apply!”

Trump did not provide details about the structure, authority or membership of the proposed AI Force, or identify potential candidates to serve as its czar.

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Trump’s announcement comes as lawmakers grapple with whether and how to regulate the rapidly developing technology.

Some Republicans have questioned calls for additional government oversight, while others have pushed for safeguards after AI industry leaders raised concerns about increasingly capable models.

Earlier this week, Trump joined the debate by rejecting calls for additional government regulation of the industry, arguing that restrictions could hinder the U.S. in its competition with China.

In Saturday’s post, Trump compared criticism of AI and data centers to several other political controversies and argued that opposition to data-center construction had largely failed.

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Trump also predicted that AI could eventually account for as much as 25% of U.S. gross domestic product, though he did not cite a source for the estimate.

“AI is the next Industrial Revolution, or Internet, but will be even larger and more impactful, possibly as much as 25% of our Country’s GDP,” he wrote. “We are leading China, and the rest of the World, and I intend to keep it that way!”

In a separate Truth Social post, Trump asked people to choose within the post on what to call AI.

“Many people think that the words “Artificial Intelligence” are inaccurate, and very ineloquent, relative to AI, or Artificial Intelligence. A far more elegant and accurate description of this new phenomena would be Superior Intelligence (SI) or, Extreme Intelligence (EI) or, Supreme Intelligence (SI),” he wrote. “This is a Poll, and I would appreciate everybody voting! Which is the best name for this ever growing “Revolution?” President DONALD J. TRUMP”

Federal charges alleging that millions of dollars were siphoned from Los Angeles homelessness programs are exposing what one lawmaker told Fox News Digital is a deeper failure in the way Washington funds and measures such programs.

The latest cases out of Los Angeles fuel the concern of Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas that only are corrupt providers stealing taxpayer money, but that the programs aren’t meeting their goal of getting people off the streets.

“The only people really getting upward mobility in these programs, it would seem, is the people running the programs,” Cloud told Fox News Digital after a House Oversight hearing examining federally funded homelessness programs in Los Angeles, Seattle and elsewhere. “And that’s not really what the program’s supposed to be about.”

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Federal prosecutors charged three defendants Wednesday in separate homelessness-fraud cases involving alleged misuse of taxpayer funds, including money allegedly spent on a nightclub and adjacent bingo hall and bribes allegedly tied to fake housing referrals.

Los Angeles’ homelessness agency paid one of the suspect nonprofits more than $75 million, according to federal prosecutors, leading Cloud to seek out the real culprits blazing the money trail.

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Cloud said the fraud itself is only one piece of a broader problem, and that the system appears to reward spending and program activity without adequately measuring lasting outcomes.

Government too often judges success by “how much money we send out the door” instead of whether the spending is “actually helping people” or whether safeguards are in place to ensure taxpayer dollars are being used properly, Cloud said – describing the system as having been “incentivized for fraud.”

“We’ve got to take those incentives out and get back to making sure that all these programs have incentives for oversight and that the dollars are managed well,” Cloud said.

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Some programs can keep a person “kind of in a cycle of dependency so that the program manager has job security, in a sense, and gets to live off the government dime,” Cloud said

“You [are seeing] as we begin to look into waste, fraud and abuse, why is it that these Democrat-led states are saying, no, we don’t want the controls in place,” he said, pointing to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ decision to step down from the LAHSA commission.

Los Angeles is not alone, he said, citing what has been called the feds’ “Housing First” philosophy – generally prioritizing placing homeless in housing with less immediate regard for sobriety, mental-health treatment or overall stabilizing services.

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Cloud did not use the term “Housing First” during the interview, but he described the concern behind that critique, arguing that some homelessness programs define success in ways that leave people dependent on government rather than moving toward independence.

Housing First is distinct from HUD’s “Continuum of Care” framework, which is the local funding and coordination structure through which nonprofit providers, state and local governments and other organizations receive federal homelessness money.

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In Los Angeles, LAHSA leads the local Continuum of Care, which HUD says received nearly $1 billion in taxpayer dollars over the previous five years.

Under Secretary Scott Turner, HUD moved to suspend LAHSA this year, citing alleged failures involving financial management, internal controls and safeguards against conflicts of interest. LAHSA has challenged the federal action in court.

“The ‘housing first’ experiment failed Americans by warehousing the vulnerable without results,” Turner said in June when HUD announced a $4.04 billion Continuum of Care funding opportunity.

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“This ideology promised to end homelessness. Instead, billions of taxpayer dollars were spent while homelessness increased to record levels.”

That funding will focus on organizations aiding treatment and recovery, while setting aside $1.3 billion for new projects prioritizing transitional housing and supportive services and adding measures intended to prevent fraud, waste and abuse.

President Donald Trump’s proposed 250-foot arch at Memorial Circle in Washington, D.C.—which he said would be the largest in the world—is being opposed by three Vietnam veterans who say the project would block views between the Lincoln Memorial, Arlington National Cemetery, and Arlington House, some of the most well-known views in and around the city.

Veterans Michael Lemmon, Shaun Byrnes, and Jon Gundersen—along with architectural historian Calder Loth—have been engaged in a months-long legal battle with the Trump administration over the “Great Triumphal Arch”.

“Our plaintiffs are three Vietnam veterans and an architectural historian. All of them have a deep personal relationship with Arlington National Cemetery,” Nicolas Sansone, an attorney with the Public Citizen Litigation Group representing the plaintiffs, told Fox News Digital. “Two of our veteran plaintiffs hope to be buried there.”

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Trump has said the arch should be built near Arlington National Cemetery, which serves as the final resting place for more than 400,000 military service members.

Critics of the project contend that the planned structure is disrespectful to the solemn character of the cemetery. In addition, the Trump administration acknowledged in a planning document that the project will have “adverse effects on historic properties”.

“Such adverse effects cannot be fully avoided while retaining the location-dependent purpose of the undertaking,” the National Park Service wrote in the document.

The nation’s capital was designed to keep historic landmarks from being obscured by other structures, Sansone said.

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“One of the sort of central design features is that the capital has been laid out in a very deliberate way to create this uninterrupted view between the Lincoln Memorial on the east side of the Potomac River and Arlington House, the Robert E. Lee Memorial, on the west side in Arlington National Cemetery,” he said.

“So our plaintiffs… are really sort of concerned about the impact that this sort of enormous structure is going to have on that sort of historic symbolic view that each of them finds really meaningful,” he added.

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Earlier this month, the administration announced that excavation work for the project would begin within the next two weeks.

The plaintiffs have asked a federal judge to issue a temporary restraining order to keep the project from moving forward, saying it can’t be built without authorization from Congress.

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The Trump administration has cited a 1925 law that originally authorized a pair of 166-foot columns in Washington, D.C., that were never built.

Administration officials argue that past congressional approval grandfathers the triumphal arch project and allows them to avoid authorization from Congress.

“The idea is that really it’s just an institutional question of who gets to decide: Is it one person, the person sitting in the White House, or should it be a sort of democratic deliberative process to sort of figure out what these monuments should look like, where they should be situated, what they should commemorate, and the like,” Sansone said.

“Congress’s authorization to have a particular project built at a particular time subject to a specific price cap by a now-disbanded commission can’t reasonably be relied on to authorize a totally different independent project that’s going to cost way more money centuries into the future,” he added.

A NORAD F-16 fighter jet intercepted an aircraft that violated restricted airspace over the area of Camp David Saturday morning while President Donald Trump is spending the weekend there, according to officials.

There is a permanent no-fly zone over Camp David in Maryland, with additional restrictions when the president is there.

NORAD dispensed flares during the intercept to get the pilot’s attention, and were able to safely escort them out of the area, the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS) said in a release.

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“Should NORAD aircraft intercept a general aviation aircraft, the pilot should immediately come up on frequency 121.5 or 243.0 and turn around to reverse course until receiving additional instructions on one of those frequencies,” the release said.

NORAD F-16S INTERCEPT MULTIPLE AIRCRAFT VIOLATING FLIGHT RESTRICTIONS OVER NEW JERSEY

Turmp left for Camp David on Friday evening.

“Pilots! @NORADCommand fighter aircraft intercepted an aircraft violating restricted airspace over Thurmont, MD, resulting in flares being deployed,” the First Air Force, part of NORAD, wrote on X on Saturday. “Make sure to check NOTAMs before takeoff to ensure you have current information about TFRs in your area. Stay Safe, Fly Informed!”

A plane was last intercepted over Camp David in June when Trump was staying there. That pilot was also safely escorted away.