Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced that state authorities working with the Department of Homeland Security are conducting an immigration and law enforcement operation in Colony Ridge, a huge development known for attracting masses of illegal immigrants.
"Colony Ridge is being targeted today," Abbott, a Republican, announced on X on Monday.
Colony Ridge, which is less than an hour's drive from Texas’ biggest city, Houston, is a housing development that advertises in Spanish for quality land for low down payments. There are believed to be thousands of illegal immigrants living in the community, which also reportedly has significant cartel activity and very little police presence.
The governor said Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) troopers and special agents were cooperating with Homeland Security Investigations in an operation in Colony Ridge this morning, "targeting criminals & illegal immigrants."
Abbott said he has been working on this operation with President Donald Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, "for months."
In response to concerns that his post would endanger law enforcement’s operation in Colony Ridge, Abbott said the operation began hours before his post and that "long before my post anyone in the area would’ve known about the operation."
A spokesperson for DHS, however, declined to comment on the operation, citing the need to preserve secrecy about the details of the operations and concerns for the safety of the agents involved.
Local outlet ABC13 reported that officials at the nearby Liberty County Sheriff’s Office further confirmed that DPS and ICE operations were underway.
Another outlet called The Vindicator reported that at least one local man, Roberto Alfaro, 24, saw "undercover" agents he believed to be from ICE "forcefully" arresting a Mexican national outside his house.
Alfaro told The Vindicator he had never seen anything like the operation underway in Colony Ridge before and that it "feels scary." He mentioned his concern that his mother and father would be deported back to Honduras and El Salvador. He also said he and some others were "chasing" ICE so "we could go behind them and warn others."
The Trump administration has unleashed a slew of immigration enforcement actions since taking office last month, one of the most notable being a string of ICE raids in cities across the country.
"I'm happy with the numbers," he said. "But I'm not going to be satisfied until every criminal alien gang member, every criminal alien, every Tren de Aragua [gang member] is eradicated from this country and [we've] sent their a-- to Gitmo, where they belong."
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is cutting more than 1,400 probationary workers occupying "non-mission critical positions," according to a Monday news release.
"Those dismissed today are bargaining-unit probationary employees who have served less than a year in a competitive service appointment or who have served less than two years in an excepted service appointment," the VA noted.
As a result of the financial savings, the VA said it will be able to "redirect all of those resources back toward health care, benefits and services for VA beneficiaries."
"As an additional safeguard to ensure VA benefits and services are not impacted, the first Senior Executive Service (SES) or SES-equivalent leader in a dismissed employee’s chain of command can request that the employee be exempted from removal," the VA noted.
This newly announced round of cuts comes after the VA previously announced the elimination of more than 1,000 workers earlier this month.
"These and other recent personnel decisions are extraordinarily difficult, but VA is focused on allocating its resources to help as many Veterans, families, caregivers, and survivors as possible," VA Secretary Doug Collins said in the Monday news release.
The VA specifically said these decisions to let some employees go "will not hurt VA health care, benefits or beneficiaries" and even noted that veterans will "notice a change for the better."
"In the coming weeks and months, VA will be announcing plans to put these resources to work helping the department fulfill its core mission: providing the best possible care and benefits to Veterans, their families, caregivers and survivors," Collins said.
FIRST ON FOX: President Donald Trump's White House is warning that a key Democrat's move to end the president's energy national emergency would kill hundreds of jobs and cost $3.6 trillion in higher prices and lost energy output.
"Tim Kaine wants to impoverish Americans. President Donald Trump’s executive order brings America into the future and unleashes prosperity. Senator [Tim] Kaine wants to cost the economy trillions and risk losing nearly a million jobs," said deputy press secretary Anna Kelly in an exclusive statement to Fox News Digital.
The White House's statement is in response to Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., filing a joint resolution to end Trump's energy national emergency and teeing up a vote on the Senate floor this week.
Ending the energy emergency would lead to the loss of 869,800 jobs, according to a White House document obtained by Fox News Digital.
The White House emphasized that ending the emergency would usher back in the Biden administration's policies. The document stressed that under those policies, during Biden's first two years, families spent an additional average of $10,000 in energy costs, citing a study published by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity.
The document cited that estimates of liquefied natural gas growth in the new administration were projected to bring in half a million jobs annually and boost U.S. GDP by $1.3 trillion through 2040, per a study by S&P Global in December.
"The Trump Administration is living in a fantasy land," Kaine and Heinrich told Fox News Digital in a joint statement. "Energy demand is high and only getting higher, which is why it’s great that America is producing more energy than at any other point in our history. Decreasing the supply of American-made energy when demand is high is the quickest way to raise prices—and that’s exactly what President Trump’s sham energy emergency will do. By tampering with the market to favor some forms of energy over others and making it easier for fossil fuel companies to take Americans’ private property, Trump’s emergency declaration will benefit Big Oil, but leave American consumers with fewer choices and higher bills."
"At the same time, Trump’s decision to illegally halt investments appropriated by Congress in energy projects that are creating jobs in communities across the country is costing Americans valuable, good-paying jobs," they added.
The two Democrats unveiled their privileged legislation against Trump's order earlier this month.
"Senate Democrats are yet again attempting to block President Trump's efforts to secure cheaper, more reliable energy—just when America needs it most," Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Mike Lee, R-Utah, said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
"Their message to families is clear: pay more, expect less. Luckily, President Trump is committed to unleashing American energy and rescuing the country from the energy crisis that they have perpetuated. Senate Republicans won't let Democrats delay and obstruct any longer and will ensure the President has the tools necessary to deliver the results the American people expect."
Georgia Republican Rep. Andrew Clyde, who earlier this month announced he was drafting articles of impeachment against a Rhode Island judge overseeing one of President Donald Trump's legal challenges, condemned judges who continue to bar Trump's agenda from being implemented.
Clyde is working in conjunction with Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., who is also preparing impeachment articles against U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer. The Georgia Republican said the real victims of judicial pushback against Trump's policies are the American people.
"You're not just hurting the president," Clyde told Fox News Digital. "You're hurting the American people because they're the ones who elected him, and they're the ones who want him to do this – to exercise these specific authorities. And these judges are really denying the American people their rights."
Clyde threatened to file articles of impeachment against District Judge John McConnell who, at the time, filed a motion ordering the Trump administration to comply with a previous restraining order. The order temporarily blocked the administration’s efforts to pause federal grants and loans.
McConnell has since come under fire from Trump supporters and conservatives who have accused him of being a liberal activist after a 2021 video of him saying courts must "stand and enforce the rule of law, that is, against arbitrary and capricious actions by what could be a tyrant or could be whatnot" resurfaced online.
"You have to take a moment and realize that this, you know, middle-class, White, male, privileged person needs to understand the human being that comes before us that may be a woman, may be Black, may be transgender, may be poor, may be rich, may be – whatever," McConnell said in the video, according to WPRI.
Clyde acknowledged that judges have their own opinions and "they're certainly entitled to them, but they're not overt and political in mentioning them," saying "they don't want to be seen as potentially having a conflict of interest."
"And I think that's very, very much the case when it comes to both Judge Engelmayer and Judge McConnell," the lawmaker said.
Since taking office in January, activist and legal groups, along with elected officials, local jurisdictions and individuals, have launched more than 70 lawsuits against the administration. The legal challenges cover Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship, the Department of Government Efficiency's (DOGE) efforts to slash unnecessary government spending, and Trump's removal of various federal employees.
With regard to the specific suits over DOGE's actions, Clyde told Fox News Digital he expects the president to "prevail on the merits of his case."
"I think the president will certainly prevail on the merits of his case. He has the authority under Article II of the Constitution," Clyde said. "But yet for the entire time of the restraining order, the judge will have prevented this duly elected authority from being exercised by the president. And also, they will have prevented the American people from dealing with waste, fraud and abuse in their government."
Clyde said he hopes other members of Congress join his and Crane's efforts to continue holding judges accountable, saying those barring Trump's agenda from being implemented "need to understand that they're not going to get away with it."
"They can't just stop the president from doing what the Constitution gives him the authority to do, and the people have given him the authority to do," Clyde said.
Fox News Digital's Elizabeth Elkind and Diana Stancy contributed to this report.
The Trump administration's Friday evening shakeup at the Pentagon saw the firing of six senior officers as Secretary Pete Hegseth made good on promises to upend the agency's leadership.
President Donald Trump and Hegseth fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. C.Q. Brown, and replaced him with a relatively unknown figure in Lt. Gen. Dan Caine.
The choice of Caine shows the president’s preference for irregular warfare and special operations: Caine was among a group of military leaders who met with the president in December 2018 at the Al Asad airbase in Iraq. Trump was there to deliver a Christmas message and hear from commanders on the ground, and there Caine told Trump they could defeat ISIS quickly with a surge of resources and a lifting of restrictions on engagement.
"'We’re only hitting them from a temporary base in Syria,'" Trump said Caine told him. "'But if you gave us permission, we could hit them from the back, from the side, from all over – from the base that you’re right on, right now, sir. They won’t know what the hell hit them.'"
"It was a different message than [Trump] had gotten from leadership at the Pentagon, and I think that really made an impression," according to Rob Greenway, a former National Security Council official who was on the trip and has known Caine since they graduated from Virginia Military Institute together.
Trump, on picking Caine Friday, lauded him as "an accomplished pilot, national security expert, successful entrepreneur, and a ‘warfighter’ with significant interagency and special operations experience."
He’d plucked the retired general from relative obscurity to serve as his senior military adviser after accusing his predecessor, C.Q. Brown of pushing a "woke" agenda at the Pentagon. Brown had been behind a 2022 memo laying out diversity goals for the Air Force.
Caine does not meet the position's prerequisites, such as being a combatant commander or service chief, and will require a waiver to be confirmed to the position.
But the choice leaves Pentagon watchers curious on what direction Caine will take at his new high-level post.
"Caine hasn’t written much, we’re sort of trying to read the tea leaves here," said Mark Cancian, a senior defense advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Greenway called Caine "an absolutely inspired pick, a tremendous officer with a remarkable background, and he has the confidence in the president."
Trump was undoubtedly attracted to his reputation as an aggressive fighter pilot that earned him the nickname "Razin" Caine. But Caine’s nontraditional path throughout the military ranks and the business world was surely a selling point, according to Greenway.
"It’s a priority of the president to have the Pentagon pass an audit, to have someone who knows what a balance sheet looks like, and can hopefully help the department get to the right side of it."
The Pentagon has failed seven straight audits and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has set its sights on budget cuts at DOD.
Caine, an F-16 pilot by background, spent time as the top military liaison to the CIA, an Air National Guard officer and regional airline founder in Texas. He was a White House fellow at the Agriculture Department and a counterterrorism specialist on the White House’s Homeland Security Council.
From 2018-19, he was deputy commander of Special Operations Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve, which has been fighting the Islamic State since 2014, though little is publicly known about his role in that operation. The role of airstrikes, however, grew during that time, including clandestine ones, and Trump designated airstrike approval to commanders rather than the White House.
But critics say Caine, like Hegseth, does not have the command experience for the role as Trump's top military advisor.
"Trump sees [the role] as somebody who has the ability to move forces and direct funding, and it just doesn't work that way. That's not what the role is. So now you have a president who has people around him who are his principal advisors, [Hegseth] and this new chairman, who really have limited qualifications at the more senior levels," said Gene Moran, former advisor to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and founder of lobbying firm Capitol Integration.
The administration also relieved Adm. Lisa Franchetti, chief of naval operations – who Hegseth believed had been given the job because she was a woman – Gen. Jim Slife, Air Force vice chief of staff, and the judge advocates general of the Army, Navy and Air Force.
"If naval operations suffer, at least we can hold our heads high. Because at least we have another first! The first female member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – hooray," Hegseth wrote in his 2024 book, "The War on Warriors."
"The Navy, in particular, has been unable to complete a procurement program on time and on budget and notoriously has decommissioned more ships than it’s made," said Greenway. "So I think the message there was accountability has to be restored."
The switch-up of judge advocates general could be the biggest signal of policy change, where Hegseth has looked to grant greater authority to forces on the ground without having to worry about legal constraints.
The judge advocates general, the top uniformed attorneys of the Army, Air Force and Navy, oversee the legal advisors for each branch and the defense counsel and prosecutors for courts-martial.
Hegseth has spoken out against what he sees as an "obsessive" prosecution of war crimes. "He wants to give the benefit of the doubt to the warfighter, if there’s not, you know, an absolute massacre," one source familiar with the defense secretary’s thinking said.
"Ultimately, we want lawyers who give sound constitutional advice and don’t exist to attempt to be roadblocks to anything that happens," the Pentagon chief told Fox News on Sunday.
"Hegseth has said the troops should do what they need to achieve victory and not feel constrained by the lawyers," said Cancian. "But then you could have some actions that are contrary to international law or treaties, that could make a huge controversy, both domestically and with our allies."
But the advancement of Caine, with his covert operations background, and the removal of the top lawyers would signal a new focus on covert operations – a push that would line up with new terrorism designations for cartels in Latin America – and could set the military up for covert counter-narcotics strikes south of the border.
"We could definitely see a change in troop postures in some of these regions we've been in for too long, and new missions in Mexico going after the cartels," another Hegseth ally said.
President Donald Trump’s decision to fire several high-ranking military leaders is a first step in helping the president achieve his goal of a military more focused on lethality.
"It’s a bold move… you could even say it’s fairly aggressive," William Ruger, the President of the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) and a former Trump nominee for ambassador to Afghanistan, told Fox News Digital. "There’s a sense that I get that this isn’t merely a challenge to one or two individuals, but that there needed to be a greater push to change the direction the Pentagon has been going… in terms of lethality, warrior ethos."
Ruger, who serves as an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve, was "a prominent advocate for ending America’s participation in the Afghanistan War," according to his AIER profile page.
The comments come after Trump fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. C.Q. Brown, as well as several other top military officers over the weekend, a list that also included the U.S. Navy's top officer, Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead one of the military branches.
The dramatic move reportedly caused "upheaval" at the Pentagon, according to a Reuters report, while critics were quick to pounce on Trump’s decision.
"Firing uniformed leaders as a type of political loyalty test, or for reasons relating to diversity and gender that have nothing to do with performance, erodes the trust and professionalism that our service members require to achieve their missions," the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Jack Reed, of Rhode Island, told Reuters, whose report called the firings "unprecedented."
But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pushed back against that characterization, arguing during an appearance on "Fox News Sunday" that Trump "deserves to pick his key national security advisory team."
"Nothing about this is unprecedented," Hegseth said, noting that there have been "lots of presidents who made changes," specifically citing Franklin D. Roosevelt, George H.W. Bush and Barack Obama, who Hegseth argued "fired or dismissed hundreds" of military officials.
In the most recent example, Obama made the decision to relieve Army Gen. David McKiernan as the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan five months into the president’s term in office in 2009, marking the first time a wartime commander had been dismissed since 1951.
According to Ruger, the main point of the firings will be to allow Trump to have trusted military advisors to carry out his vision for the future of the force.
"The president had good reason for trying to do this, believing that the military was not led by the admirals and generals that were necessary to implement his vision of our defense structure," Ruger said. "We should have some caution here in thinking that there’s anything amiss."
Ruger also noted that the moves align more closely to Hegseth’s vision for the military, which he believes will "focus on lethality and the warrior ethos, as opposed to some of the more… identitarianism that we had seen creeping into the military."
Perhaps more importantly, Ruger stressed that Trump’s ability to shake up military leadership as he sees fit is critical to the U.S.’s time-tested tradition of civilian leadership over the military.
"It’s important that for good civil military relations purposes, that it’s clear who is the decision maker, and that should be the civilians, and that what they say will be faithfully implemented," Ruger said. "That’s the hallmark of good civil military relations."
Among the critics who posted on X Sunday after my Fox News show was one who made an argument that surprised me.
Don’t pay attention to what President Trump says, this person wrote. Pay attention to what he does.
Now that’s a novel idea. What the President of the United States says is unimportant and should be ignored. I doubt that this person applied the same standard to President Joe Biden.
And yet there’s an interesting thought exercise here. Trump says a lot of things, especially since he talks to journalists at length virtually every day. Not everything rises to the same level of seriousness. I say this as someone who has interviewed him many times over the years, including our sitdown two weeks before the election.
Sometimes the president says things just to rile up the press. Sometimes he says things that aren’t true, or are exaggerations or taken out of context.
But more often he says the quiet part out loud, signaling what he plans to do or insulting those with whom he disagrees, the kind of stuff that reporters used to have to attribute to unnamed aides, and he does it in front of the cameras.
At the top of the list right now would be Ukraine. Donald Trump is a smart guy, he knows that Russia invaded its much smaller sovereign neighbor with the aim of wiping it off the map and putting it under Moscow’s control. But he has chosen to blame Ukraine for starting the war, and to insult Volodomyr Zelenskyy as a dictator when everyone knows that label perfectly describes Vladimir Putin.
The most charitable interpretation is that Trump believes the only way to end the war is through an alliance with Putin for a settlement that could then be sold to Ukraine. (The United States voted with Russia yesterday against a U.N. resolution condemning the invasion.)
Of course, Trump has cozied up to Putin for a long time. During their Helsinki summit in the first term, the president accepted Putin’s denial that the Kremlin had hacked into Democratic emails, despite the evidence gathered by his own intelligence agencies.
Trump has repeated again and again that Zelenskyy bears responsibility for the war that just marked its three-year anniversary. Is this aimed at the American public or at Moscow or Kyiv (to put pressure on Ukraine)?
Journalists keep asking Trump aides and Republican supporters if they agree with the president’s blame-Ukraine approach, and many have simply tried to deflect the question.
In my "Media Buzz" interview with Jason Miller, the longtime Trump confidante and senior adviser to the Trump transition team, he deftly avoided contradicting the president.
"What President Trump has done," he said, "is he has forced the sides to the table to actually stop the killing and come up with a peace deal. For the last several years. Joe Biden has sat there completely incompetent, doing nothing but fueling and funding more killing and more death."
When I tried again, Miller said of his boss that "his legacy really will be as a peacemaker."
I came back a third time, quoting conservative radio host Mark Levin as saying, "This is sick. Ukraine didn't start this war. What were they supposed to do? Roll over and play dead? They're just trying to survive."
And I asked: "Why is President Trump blaming Zelenskyy for the beginning of the war?"
"Well, Zelenskyy has a lot of blame. I think that would go to this as well. But again, you want to look into the past, I want to look into the future, what we do to save lives."
Jason Miller was doing his job. A similar scenario played out on the other Sunday shows.
On "Fox News Sunday," my colleague Shannon Bream asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth whether it was fair to say that Russia was unprovoked when it attacked Ukraine. He replied that it was "fair to say it’s a very complicated situation."
Stressing that Trump wants to end the war, Hegseth said: "‘You’re good, you’re bad; you’re a dictator, you’re not a dictator; you invaded, you didn’t.’ It’s not useful. It’s not productive."
Another part of my Sunday interview also shed light on Trump’s use of language.
The president had told reporters: "I think we should govern the District of Columbia, make it absolutely flawlessly beautiful."
The District has enjoyed home rule for 50 years, although Congress retains the power to overturn its laws. The capital, like most cities, grapples with crime, poverty and other urban ills.
I asked point blank: Is the president ready to end home rule in D.C.?
Miller said Mayor Muriel Bowser is largely doing a good job, adding: "I think part of the reason why President Trump won is because he said he was going to clean up our cities to make them safe. Of course he's going to put pressure on the District of Columbia."
So Trump’s words in this instance had a different meaning, as a warning signal to the District.
Oh, I also wondered why Trump keeps referring to Canada as the 51st state when that’s not going to happen.
"The president's having a little bit of fun with it. But he's also making some very serious points."
My online detractor was wrong. It’s important to pay attention to the president’s words, especially for the media, which have a tendency to overreact to some of his language. The challenge is deciphering when he’s dead serious, when he’s sending signals, and when he’s just trolling.
President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk on Monday separately endorsed entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy in Ohio's gubernatorial race.
Ramaswamy, who ran against Trump in the 2024 GOP presidential primary, announced his candidacy earlier on Monday to replace term-limited Republican Gov. Mike DeWine in the 2026 election.
Trump announced his endorsement in a post to his social media platform Truth Social.
"VIVEK RAMASWAMY is running for Governor of the Great State of Ohio. I know him well, competed against him, and he is something SPECIAL," Trump wrote.
"He’s Young, Strong, and Smart! Vivek is also a very good person, who truly loves our Country," he continued. "He will be a GREAT Governor of Ohio, will never let you down, and has my COMPLETE AND TOTAL ENDORSEMENT!"
Musk, a senior advisor to Trump, also offered Ramaswamy his endorsement a short time later.
"Good luck, you have my full endorsement!" Musk responded to Ramaswamy in a post on X.
Ramaswamy formally declared his candidacy during a rally on Monday in his hometown of Cincinnati.
"I will lead Ohio to become the state of excellence in America," Ramaswamy told the crowd.
"Think that sounds unrealistic? It’s not," he said. "In fact, it wasn’t long ago that Ohio was that state. Today, young people on the internet make fun of something by saying ‘that’s so Ohio.’ But less than a century ago, people weren’t making fun of Ohio, they were aspiring to be Ohio."
Ramaswamy, 39, dropped out of the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination to endorse Trump and become a surrogate for the current president.
President Donald Trump turned his attention to the Keystone XL Pipeline on Monday evening, calling for the company building it to "come back to America, and get it built — NOW!"
Trump said he was "just thinking" about how construction on the pipeline was "viciously jettisoned by the incompetent Biden Administration," and promised things are different now under his leadership.
"I know they were treated very badly by Sleepy Joe Biden, but the Trump Administration is very different — Easy approvals, almost immediate start! If not them, perhaps another Pipeline Company. We want the Keystone XL Pipeline built!"
The pipeline has been at the forefront of political debate since the project began construction in 2010, and was eventually halted by former President Barack Obama before it was finished. Trump revived it during his first term.
However, former President Joe Biden ordered the pipeline cancelation via executive order on his first day in office in January 2021, leading to thousands of job losses.
TC Energy, the operator of the Keystone XL pipeline, ultimately gave up on the project in June 2021 as a result of Biden's decision to cancel its federal permits.
Then, in 2023, a federal judge tossed a legal challenge from nearly two dozen states asking the court to reinstate the pipeline's permits.
The pipeline had been scheduled to be completed in early 2023 and would transport an additional 830,000 barrels of crude oil from Canada to the U.S. through an existing pipeline network, according to TC Energy. It was also projected to create thousands of jobs, many of which would have been union jobs.
In December 2022, the Biden administration's Department of Energy (DOE) published a report that said the Keystone XL project would have created between 16,149 and 59,000 jobs and would have had a positive economic impact of between $3.4 and $9.6 billion, citing various studies.
"Joe Biden’s action cost tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars and every American family is still paying more every day," Daniel Turner, the founder and executive director of Power the Future, shared with Fox News Digital in a previous statement.
The system was designed to carry oil from Alberta to states like Illinois, Texas and Oklahoma.
In January, Danielle Smith, the premier of Alberta, Canada, said that she was interested in talking to the Trump administration about potentially reopening the pipeline project.
"Restarting the Keystone XL pipeline aligns with President Trump’s agenda to lower food and energy costs by bolstering North American energy infrastructure and reducing reliance on costly imports," Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute (AEI), previously told Fox News Digital.
Another expert said that Trump will likely face litigation if he chooses to proceed with construction of the pipeline, but that Congress could help limit legal action.
Fox News Digital's Aubrie Spady and Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.
