INTERNACIONAL
Buttigieg says ‘right now I’m not running for anything’ during Iowa stop
CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA – Pete Buttigieg pushed back against criticism from President Donald Trump on the job he did as transportation secretary in former President Biden’s administration and declined to say if Biden experienced cognitive decline during his final years in the White House, as he took questions from reporters on Tuesday night.
Buttigieg, speaking with reporters after headlining a town hall with veterans in this eastern Iowa city that sparked more speculation that the 2020 Democratic presidential contender is mulling another White House run in 2028, told Fox News that ‘right now I’m not running for anything.»
Buttigieg won the 2020 Iowa presidential caucuses and came in a close second in the New Hampshire presidential primary before Biden surged to claim the party’s nomination and later the White House.
While Iowa’s caucuses for half a century kicked off both major political parties’ presidential nominating calendars, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) demoted the Hawkeye State on their 2024 schedule, and it’s unclear if Iowa will regain its early state status in the 2028 calendar.
LESS THAN FOUR WEEKS INTO TRUMP’S SECOND TERM, DEMOCRATS ALREADY EYEING 2028 PRESIDENTIAL RACE
Former U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg headlines a veterans town hall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on May 13, 2025. Buttigieg’s appearance sparked speculation he may make another presidential run in 2028. (Fox News – Paul Steinhauser)
But Buttigieg’s visit, along with his announcement in March that he would pass on a 2026 run for a Democrat-controlled open Senate seat in battleground Michigan, his adopted home state, are seen as signals of his interest in a potential 2028 national run.
Buttigieg told a Substack author in a live interview hours before the town hall that when it comes to 2028, he would consider «what I bring to the table.»
But asked by Fox News if the trip to Iowa – where he also gathered with staffers from his 2020 campaign and was followed around by a videographer from his political group Win the Era – was the beginning of an assessment period, Buttigieg said «right now, I’m not running for anything and part of what’s exciting and compelling about an opportunity like this is to be campaigning for values and for ideas rather than a specific electoral campaign. So that’s what I’m about.»
Told that audience members who said they voted for him in 2020 and would be interested in backing him again if he runs in 2028, Buttigieg said «of course it means a lot to hear that people who supported me then continue to believe in what I have to say.»
The Cedar Rapids event was hosted by VoteVets, a progressive group that represents veterans and military families in the political process. The group told Fox News that 1,800 people attended the event.
WATCH: TRUMP TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY LAYS OUT NEW PLAN TO UPGRADE AGING AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL SYSTEM
The trip by Buttigieg came as he’s faced incoming fire in recent days from Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy over a surge in flight delays and cancellations at New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport, which is one of the three major airports that services the New York City metropolitan area.
Duffy blames his predecessor at the Department of Transportation and the Biden administration for what he claims was a failure to upgrade the busy airport’s air traffic control system.
And Trump, last week, also chimed in, claiming that during his tenure as transportation secretary Buttigieg «didn’t have a clue. And this guy is actually a contender for president?» Trump added. «I don’t think he’s going to do too well.»
The president’s jabs came a few days after Buttigieg, pointing to Trump’s underwater approval ratings in national polling, said in a social media post that «Donald Trump is the most unpopular 100-day-mark president in modern American history.»
WATCH: TRUMP TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY LAYS OUT NEW PLAN TO UPGRADE AGING AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL SYSTEM
The Trump administration argues that Buttigieg oversaw a rocky transition of the Newark airport’s airspace to the Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control (Tracon) last July.
And Duffy, who earlier this week unveiled a major plan to overhaul the nation’s aging air traffic control system, claims the Biden administration is to blame for the recent problems, including air traffic control equipment outages.
«Maybe when you work from home, or maybe when you work from Michigan as a secretary, maybe you’re not focused on the real issues that are taking place throughout the airspace,» Duffy said, as he took aim at Buttigieg, who lives in Michigan.
Buttigieg, responding, told reporters on Tuesday night that «when you’re the secretary of transportation, you have a tough job and your responsibility is to fix tough problems. You don’t have time to indulge in trying to point fingers or blame other people.»
«What I can tell you is we inherited a shrinking air traffic control workforce. We turned it into a growing air traffic control workforce,» he added. «My successor is, of course, not asking for my advice, but my advice would be to making sure that it grows and actually delivering the technological change that’s needed.»
Then-President Joe Biden speaks at the State Department, during the closing days of his presidency, on Jan. 13, 2025. (AP)
Buttigieg’s Iowa trip also came on the same day that excerpts from a new book offered details on Biden’s supposed mental and physical decline during his last two years in the White House.
Asked whether Biden experienced cognitive decline, Buttigieg would only say that «every time I needed something from him from the West Wing, I got it.»
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
But he said «maybe» when asked whether the Democratic Party would have been better off if Biden had not run for re-election in 2024. «Right now with the benefit of hindsight, I think most people would agree that that’s the case.»
Biden dropped out of the race last July, one month after a disastrous debate performance with Trump sparked a chorus of calls from fellow Democrats for the then-81-year-old president to end his re-election bid. He was replaced at the top of the ticket by then-Vice President Kamala Harris, who ended up losing in November to Trump.
Politics,Donald Trump,Pete Buttigieg,Elections,Iowa,Transportation
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Republican and Democratic congressional leaders left a meeting with President Donald Trump with no deal to avert a government shutdown as the deadline fast approaches.
Leaders met with Trump on Monday for roughly an hour to negotiate a path forward to avert a partial government shutdown, but it appeared neither side was willing to budge from their position.
Vice President JD Vance said after the meeting, «I think we’re headed into a shutdown because the Democrats won’t do the right thing. I hope they change their mind.»
«If you look at the original they did with this negotiation, it was a $1.5 trillion spending package, basically saying the American people want to give massive amounts of money, hundreds of billions of dollars to illegal aliens for their health care, while Americans are struggling to pay their health care bills,» Vance said. «That was their initial foray into this negotiation. We thought it was absurd.»
DEMS NOT BUDGING ON GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN DEMANDS AHEAD OF HIGH-STAKES TRUMP MEETING, JEFFRIES SUGGESTS
Vice President JD Vance, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought spoke to reporters after congressional leaders met with President Donald Trump on Sept. 29, 2025. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Democrats, however, have pushed back on assertions that they’re looking to salvage healthcare for anyone but the American people.
«There was a frank and direct discussion with the President of the United States and Republican leaders. But significant and meaningful differences remain,» Jeffries said. «Democrats are fighting to protect the health care of the American people, and we are not going to support a partisan Republican spending bill that continues to gut the health care of every day America, period.»
Congress has until midnight Oct. 1 to pass a short-term funding extension, or continuing resolution (CR), to avert a partial government shutdown. The House already passed a funding extension, but the bill was blocked in the Senate earlier this month.
Republicans and the White House want to move forward with their «clean,» short-term funding extension until Nov. 21, while Democrats have offered a counter-proposal that includes a permanent extension of expiring Obamacare tax credits and other wishlist items that are a bridge too far for the GOP.
Vance appeared alongside Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russ Vought in a show of Republican unity after the meeting, but made clear both sides are still far apart.
Thune, holding up a copy of the funding extension, panned Jeffries and Schumer’s accusation that the bill was partisan in nature.
Congressional Republicans argue that the House GOP’s is everything that Democrats pushed when they controlled the Senate: a «clean,» short-term extension to Nov. 21 without partisan policy riders or spending, save for millions in new spending for increased security for lawmakers.
SHUTDOWN EXPLAINED: WHO WORKS, WHO DOESN’T AND HOW MUCH IT COSTS
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., left, hold a news conference on the GOP reconciliation bill, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, June 11, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, file)
«To me, this is purely a hostage-taking exercise on the part of the Democrats,» Thune said. «We are willing to sit down and work with them on some of the issues they want to talk about, whether it’s an extension of premium tax credits, with reforms, we’re happy to have that conversation. But as of right now, this is a hijacking.»
Neither Schumer nor Jeffries took questions after their remarks, but appeared slightly more optimistic than their GOP counterparts after the meeting concluded.
«I think for the first time, the president heard our objections and heard why we needed a bipartisan bill,» Schumer said. «Their bill has not one iota of Democratic input. That is never how we’ve done this before.»
Vance said he was «highly skeptical» that it was Trump’s first time hearing the issue and said there was a bipartisan path forward on healthcare – but panned Democrats’ push to include an extension of COVID-19 pandemic-era Affordable Care Act (ACA) extensions in the bill.
«We want to work across the aisle to make sure that people have access to good healthcare,» he said, but added, «We are not going to let Democrats shut down the government and take a hostage unless we give them everything that they want. That’s not how the people’s government has ever worked.»
The meeting in the Oval Office comes after Trump canceled a previously scheduled confab last week with just Schumer and Jeffries. At the time, the president railed against their demands on his social media platform Truth Social and contended that congressional Democrats were pushing «radical Left policies that nobody voted for» in their counter-CR.
President Donald Trump speaks at a hearing of the Religious Liberty Commission at the Museum of the Bible, Monday, Sept. 8, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Democrats’ demands center on an extension to expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies, though their counter-proposal also included language to repeal the healthcare section of the GOP’s «big, beautiful bill» and a clawback of canceled NPR and PBS funding.
Senate Republicans have argued that Democrats’ desires are unserious, and Thune has publicly said that Republicans would be willing to have discussions on the ACA subsidies, which are set to sunset at the end of this year, after the government is funded.
Schumer insisted Democrats needed it addressed immediately, however, in a press conference back on Capitol Hill after the meeting.
«We think when they say later, they mean never. We have to do it now, first because of the timing issue and second, because now is the time we can get it done,» he said.
The White House is also leveraging the threat of mass firings should the government shut down that go beyond the standard furloughing of nonessential employees. Still, Schumer and Senate Democrats have not buckled.
The Senate is expected to vote again on the bill on Tuesday.
politics,house of representatives politics,government shutdown,senate,jd vance
INTERNACIONAL
La reunión entre Trump y los líderes demócratas terminó sin acuerdo para evitar el cierre del Gobierno
La reunión entre los líderes demócratas del Congreso y el presidente estadounidense, Donald Trump finalizó este lunes sin que se alcanzara un entendimiento para tratar de evitar el cierre del Gobierno federal que se activaría a partir de este miércoles.
“Tenemos grandes diferencias en materia de salud y en su capacidad para revertir cualquier presupuesto que acordemos mediante rescisiones y embargos”, declaró a la prensa el líder de la minoría demócrata en el Senado, Chuck Schumer, al salir de la Oficina Oval de la Casa Blanca tras su reunión con el mandatario.
De acuerdo con los demócratas que asistieron a la reunión, se hizo ver a Trump “las consecuencias de lo que sucede en la atención médica al buscar recortes de seguros de salud”.
“Por su rostro, parecía que era la primera vez que escuchaba sobre este problema”, dijo Schumer a la prensa sobre la reacción del presidente durante el encuentro, en el que también estuvo el líder de la minoría demócrata en la Cámara de Representantes, Hakeem Jeffries, así como los líderes republicanos en la Cámara Alta y Baja, John Thune y Mike Johnson.
Por su parte, el vicepresidente estadounidense, J.D. Vance, dijo a medios al salir de la reunión: “Creo que nos encaminamos hacia un cierre porque los demócratas no harán lo correcto”.
En menos de dos días las expira el plazo para lograr un acuerdo de financiamiento para el Gobierno, y ambas partes insisten en señalar al opositor como responsable por no ceder.
Los demócratas exigen que se prorroguen los subsidios de la ley para el cuidado asequible de la salud (Obamacare) que expiran a final de año, así como la reversión de los recortes al programa Medicaid que resultaron de la gran ley de recortes presupuestarios y fiscales aprobada en julio pasado.
Sin embargo, los republicanos en el Congreso han dicho que aceptarán negociar ambos apartados solo si los demócratas dan su apoyo a un presupuesto provisional en una votación que tendría lugar mañana en el Senado y que mantendría el Gobierno operativo hasta noviembre.
Los republicanos presentaron el pasado 19 de septiembre ese presupuesto provisional en el Senado para su ratificación, pero este resultó rechazado porque su mayoría en la Cámara es insuficiente y requiere de al menos siete votos demócratas para la aprobación del proyecto de ley.
Al riesgo de una paralización del Gobierno federal se añade la posibilidad de despidos masivos de funcionarios públicos, según un memorando de la Oficina de Gestión y Presupuesto, que ha ordenado a las agencias que identifiquen programas clasificados como no esenciales para continuar su misión y reducir el personal federal.
Si el Congreso no toma medidas, miles de trabajadores del Gobierno federal podrían ser suspendidos, desde la NASA hasta los parques nacionales, y una amplia gama de servicios se verían interrumpidos.
Los tribunales federales podrían tener que cerrar y las subvenciones a las pequeñas empresas podrían retrasarse.
Los enfrentamientos presupuestarios se han convertido en algo relativamente rutinario en Washington en los últimos 15 años y a menudo se resuelven en el último minuto. Sin embargo, la voluntad de Trump de anular o ignorar las leyes de gasto aprobadas por el Congreso ha inyectado una nueva dimensión de incertidumbre.
Los demócratas han presentado un plan que prorrogaría la financiación actual entre siete y diez días, según fuentes del partido, lo que podría dar tiempo a alcanzar un acuerdo más duradero. Se trata de un plazo más corto que el respaldado por los republicanos, que ampliaría la financiación hasta el 21 de noviembre.
El líder republicano en el Senado, John Thune, trató de presionar a los demócratas programando una votación el martes sobre el proyecto republicano, que ya fracasó una vez en el Senado.
Ha habido 14 cierres parciales del Gobierno desde 1981, la mayoría de los cuales duraron solo unos días. El más reciente fue también el más largo, 35 días en 2018 y 2019 debido a una disputa sobre inmigración durante el primer mandato de Trump.
(Con información de EFE y Reuters)
Corporate Events,North America,Government / Politics,WASHINGTON
INTERNACIONAL
Estados Unidos publicó su plan para Gaza ante Benjamin Netanyahu: prevé que Donald Trump presida un comité de transición en la Franja y que se liberen los rehenes
Lázaro Báez deberá seguir cumpliendo su condena en una prisión federal
El escándalo de Mauro Icardi con sus dos hijas con Wanda Nara que pone en riesgo su futuro: No podrá viajar a la Argentina por la deuda de alimentos
JD Vance says government likely ‘headed into a shutdown’ after Trump meets with Dems
Súper lunes argentino en la Serie A: Marco Pellegrino le dio la victoria al Parma y Taty Castellanos marcó en el triunfo de la Lazio
La reunión entre Trump y los líderes demócratas terminó sin acuerdo para evitar el cierre del Gobierno
El Gobierno pide investigar la empresa que organizó el viaje de egresados en el que se entonaron cánticos antisemitas
Mario Massaccesi confesó toda la verdad detrás de su fuerte pelea con Paula Bernini
Flor Jazmín Peña reveló la profunda crisis que tuvo por culpa de Nico Occhiato
Mirtha Legrand bloqueó a una famosa periodista en WhatsApp y ella está desesperada para que le vuelva a hablar
El Gobierno empezó a recuperar reservas: se aceleró la liquidación y el Tesoro aprovechó para comprar unos USD 700 millones
CHIMENTOS3 días agoFlor Jazmín Peña reveló la profunda crisis que tuvo por culpa de Nico Occhiato
CHIMENTOS3 días agoMirtha Legrand bloqueó a una famosa periodista en WhatsApp y ella está desesperada para que le vuelva a hablar
- POLITICA2 días ago
Francos apuntó al gobierno de Kicillof por el triple femicidio narco: “¿Qué dirá la gente que votó a Magario?»
