Hasta La Gadget!

With Republicans backing off a demand for money to fund President Donald Trump’s border wall in the upcoming spending bill, Fox News is stepping in with some ideas.

“Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade spoke with Republican strategist Noelle Nikpour, who suggested private funding for the wall. 

In a video clip Media Matters posted online, Nikpour said: 

“Donald Trump is a negotiator, he’s a deal maker. And everybody knows this. And here’s something that’s kind of interesting: If I were advising Donald Trump, I’m a national fundraiser, I would say, ‘You know what, here’s an idea, why don’t you see if you can’t get it privately funded?’

Privately funded, meaning, if you donate a certain amount ― let’s just say that the number is $12 billion to get this wall implemented, all right? So you had the $12 billion dollar figurehead, and you go to donors, you go to different people and you say, ‘Look, if you will contribute towards this privately, look what your money’s going to. I mean, what a better deal that you’re a part of this.’”

Kilmeade suggested that those who pay could get a tax break, and the wall could have corporate sponsors. 

“This wall brought to you by Modell’s. Or Aetna,” he suggested. “Why not do it?”

“Yeah yeah yeah, and look at you know what Ted Turner I think gave a billion dollars to the U.N. Foundation,” Nikpour said. “And look at this, I don’t think he paid federal taxes for a lifetime.”

Turner donated $1 billion to the United Nations in 1997, paid out over a period of nearly two decades.

It’s not clear if he has been able to avoid federal taxes “for a lifetime” because of it.  

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This police officer in San Antonio, Texas, has sure got some smooth moves.

When a neighbor called cops out to shut down a children’s dance club event that was being held in a backyard late Saturday, the unidentified officer went off script — and ended up teaching the attending youngsters how to dance salsa.

See how it went down here:

Leslie Sapp, whose daughter was attending the Next Generation Dance Crew event, shared the above footage of the heartwarming moment to Facebook. It’s now going viral.

“Instead of shutting it down or even interrupting, the officer asked to play a song and then his song came on, and well, the video speaks for itself,” Sapp told KSAT.

The officer danced with several children and posed with the crew once the song had ended. 

Sapp said the officer had helped alter her daughter’s perception of law enforcers. “As a parent, especially these days, there is a lot of negativity in the world when it comes to cops, and he broke that stereotype,” she said.

HuffPost has reached out for comment.

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Twitter wants to air more live videos on its platform, and it wants to air them all day every day. In an interview with Buzzfeed News, the company’s COO and CFO Anthony Noto said Twitter plans to show live sports, news and entertainment videos in its…

On Tuesday night’s “Late Night With Seth Meyers,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer gave answers to the questions that everyone’s been dying to ask.

Well, kind of.

Via some crafty editing, Meyers joined a fake press pool to ask Spicer such humdingers as: “Where did you find Steve Bannon?” and “How long until President (Donald) Trump causes the end of the world?”

Spicer replied in a surprisingly candid fashion.

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When Bill de Blasio ran for New York City mayor in 2013, his plan to enact a universal preschool program for 4-year-olds was treated more like a lofty ideal than a workable promise. American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten suggested the goal was unrealistic, and called the proposal’s early iteration “non-serious.” Experts were skeptical that he could adequately overcome the obstacles to providing pre-K for so many children. 

Four years later, de Blasio has successfully implemented a Pre-K for All program that serves about 70,000 kids. But as he gears up to run for his second term, he has ambitious plans to expand the early education services offered to city families. On Monday, de Blasio announced plans for 3-K for All, a program that could roll out free pre-K for all the city’s 3-year-olds by 2021.

It’s a plan that is undoubtedly ambitious for the largest city in the country, and its scope stands out even among other progressive states and municipalities with preschool programs. Yet, unlike when de Blasio first proposed universal pre-K on the campaign trail, this proposal is getting taken seriously, he says. 

“When I first introduced pre-K, I can’t tell you how many people told me it was a pipe dream,” de Blasio told The Huffington Post on Tuesday. “The press was openly dismissive,” questioning where the money to pay for the plan would come from, and whether it could serve so many children so quickly, he said.  

This time around, neither “political insiders” nor “everyday people” seem flippant about the plan, “even if it’s going to take a lot of work and time.”

3-K for All will face obvious obstacles ― and it is rolling out at a slow, incremental pace compared to its Pre-K for All predecessor, which took two years. The city already struggled to find space for centers for 4-year-olds, and de Blasio predicts that it will have to “build early childhood centers from scratch” over the next few years. The state budget helped fund the first pre-K program, and the city will need significant funding commitments from the state and federal government to fully enact the new plan as well. 

The mayor is optimistic that the city’s efforts on this front will inspire people in both red and blue areas to continue to fight for young children on the local level. There are few indications that Donald Trump’s administration will prioritize early childhood education, and even when Barack Obama was president and pushed the issue, Congress didn’t pass funding for a nationwide pre-K program. Democratic and Republican voters both express support for the issue, though. 

“This is something happening to the grassroots and bubbling up all over the country,” said de Blasio. “What we do know is what happens locally, that’s the tangible reality. Local dynamics around the country add up to something.”

Pre-K for all has generally received successful marks, although it has not been without criticism. Preschool classrooms tend to be heavily segregated by race, similar to the city’s K-12 system. 

But overall it has succeeded in its goals of giving parents greater early childhood education options. This is a luxury that de Blasio did not have when his kids were growing up, and he worried about whether his kids would get a spot at the competitive preschool center near them. He says the experienced helped spur him to champion this issue. 

“I think there’s a real argument here that we got to create a less stressful environment for parents,” said de Blasio. “This is the march of history, and it’s about showing it can happen and work in places all over the country.” 

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