EXCLUSIVE: House Republicans are getting an update on the Trump administration’s probe of billionaire George Soros’ influence on local radio, a source familiar with planning told Fox News Digital.
The Republican Study Committee (RSC), the 175-strong caucus led by Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas, is hosting Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr at its annual closed-door lunch on Wednesday.
The source familiar with planning said Carr is expected to brief GOP lawmakers on the FCC’s investigation into Soros, including an investment firm he’s linked to purchasing over 200 Audacy radio stations nationwide.
Carr and Republicans are also expected to more widely discuss strategy for pushing back against media deemed to be biased against the GOP.
The RSC is the largest grouping of lawmakers within the House GOP and traditionally acts as an informal think tank for the conference.
It’s also been a conduit for several top Trump administration officials to Capitol Hill so far this year.
Trump deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller addressed the RSC on immigration and Trump’s plan for executive action last month. And earlier in February, the group heard from Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
An investment firm linked to Soros, a left-wing businessman who has sunk billions of dollars into liberal causes, became the largest stakeholder in radio giant Audacy at the tail end of the Biden administration late last year.
The Soros Investment Fund acquired roughly 40% of Audacy’s debts after the company filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Republican lawmakers blasted the deal, including Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., both of whom called for intense scrutiny.
Carr signaled he wanted to set his sights on Soros late last year during an interview on "Mornings with Maria."
"There's a petition for reconsideration pending at the FCC right now. And I want to take a very hard look at that," he said in late November.
Fox News Digital reached out to the FCC and Audacy for comment.
In an ad promoting herself as a tough on crime judge, and her opponent as "too extreme," the Democrat-aligned candidate in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race touted the endorsement of a local sheriff who has a long history of promoting sanctuary immigration policies and opposing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
"Take it from a sheriff," Dane County Sheriff Kalvin Barrett said in a recent 15-second ad, paid for by candidate Susan Crawford, criticizing the Republican-aligned candidate Brad Schimel of being too "extreme" for the Wisconsin Supreme Court and for "letting rapists walk free" in a claim involving a backlog of rape kits being processed that Schimel has pushed back on.
Barrett has faced his own share of criticism for policies labeled soft on crime, specifically on illegal immigrant crime, where his office has a history of refusing to cooperate with ICE.
Earlier this year, Barrett withdrew Wisconsin from the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program that ICE uses to locate criminal illegal immigrants in jail, which earned him praise from the ACLU.
"At this point, we will no longer be taking part in the SCAAP grant program, and it is due to the recent change in administration and our understanding, listening, and hearing our community here in Dane County," Barrett told Channel 3000 at the time.
Barrett has also pledged that his department will "not be proactively involved in any sort of round-ups, any sort of immigration enforcement."
ICE listed Dane County as a jurisdiction that was "non-cooperative" in a June 2024 report, as Barrett’s office released individuals suspected of being illegal immigrants out on bail after committing crimes that were in some cases violent.
In 2024, two Republican congressmen in Wisconsin released a statement demanding answers from Barrett on Alejandro Jose Coronel Zarate, a suspected member of the Venezuelan street gang Tren de Aragua, having a warrant for his arrest in Dane County when he was then arrested for allegedly sexually and physically assaulting a woman and her child.
"Sanctuary policies undermine both the rule of law and the safety of American communities," Matt O’Brien, director of investigations at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, told Fox News Digital. "To begin with, states, counties, and municipalities cannot simply ignore any federal laws they dislike. But that’s exactly what sanctuary jurisdictions are doing."
"Secondly, law enforcement officials who are tough on crime and serious about protecting their communities seize every available opportunity to neutralize threats to public safety. Police chiefs and sheriffs in sanctuary jurisdictions actually do the exact opposite. They shield foreign criminals from federal immigration enforcement. And, in so doing, they encourage criminals to take up residence in the very communities they are responsible for protecting. Simply put, it is impossible to be a sanctuary police chief or sheriff and be tough on crime – because the very essence of being a sanctuary jurisdiction is giving preferential treatment to illegal alien bad guys."
Another sheriff featured in the ad, former Dane County Sheriff David Mahoney, has also publicly pushed backagainst ICE raids.
Schimel, who has been endorsed by over 80 Wisconsin sheriffs and previously served as the state’s attorney general, will face Crawford in an election on April 1 for a 10-year term on the state’s supreme court to replace retiring Judge Ann Walsh Bradley.
Although the Supreme Court seats are considered nonpartisan, Crawford, currently a circuit court judge, has earned the endorsement of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, which received $1 million from George Soros in January before then sending $2 million to Crawford and various liberal activist groups.
Schimel, currently a Waukesha County judge, has the backing of the Wisconsin GOP, several top Republican donors, including Chicago Cubs co-owner Joe Ricketts and Elon Musk’s Building America’s Future PAC.
The race is expected to have significant implications on the future of Wisconsin politics given that the court’s current 4-3 liberal majority would essentially be set in stone through 2028 or, if Schimel were to win, become a conservative-leaning court with Justice Brian Hagedorn serving as a key swing vote.
"In November, Wisconsin voters chose common sense above a far-left agenda. Now, Dangerous Democrat Susan Crawford, wants to be a liberal activist from the bench of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Crawford and Democrats are already plotting to redraw Congressional seats to attack President Trump’s America First Agenda," Wisconsin GOP Executive Director Andrew Iverson told Fox News Digital in a statement.
"While Brad Schimel has a record of protecting Wisconsin’s most vulnerable, Crawford has a record of coddling criminals and has attached herself at the hip with anti-ICE and defund-police Democrats. On April 1, Wisconsin voters will flock to the ballot box to vote for Schimel — to save Wisconsin and save America."
In a statement to Fox News Digital, Schimel campaign spokesperson Jacob Fischer said, "Susan Crawford is backed by George Soros, and she’s not trying to hide it."
"If Crawford wins, she would continue to force-feed us her dangerous, Soros-backed agenda. We must stop her from destroying Wisconsin."
Fox News Digital reached out to both Barrett and Crawford for comment but did not receive a response.
President Donald Trump’s quick work to crack down on illegal immigration has already paid off in the nation’s largest city, according to a New York State lawmaker.
"This is a victory for taxpayers and a disaster for the progressives that have set up policies that have hurt New Yorkers," Republican New York Assemblyman Jake Blumencranz told Fox News Digital in reaction to New York Mayor Eric Adams’ announcement on Monday that the Roosevelt Hotel migrant shelter in Manhattan will be shutting down in the next few months.
The hotel, which was converted into a migrant shelter with about 1,000 rooms, has processed over 173,000 migrants since May 2023, a response to the wave of migrants that began coming to the city in 2022 in search of asylum.
The Roosevelt Hotel’s shelter, along with the Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center located on the site, will now be closed by June, a source told the New York Post.
"While we’re not done caring for those who come into our care, today marks another milestone in demonstrating the immense progress we have achieved in turning the corner on an unprecedented international humanitarian effort," Adams said in a statement.
Adams also touted how his administration "skillfully managed the crisis," in part thanks to "sound policy decisions" and the ability to continue helping "asylum seekers take the next steps in their journeys as they envision an even brighter future."
However, Blumencranz believes much of the credit should go to Trump, whose executive actions on immigration have stemmed the flow entering the country and New York City.
"We’re not seeing the same volume of numbers as we saw during the Biden administration," Blumencranz said.
Blumencranz believes that even Democrats were caught off guard by the "sheer volume" of migrants entering the country as a result of the policies of the Biden administration, but the strain of the pressure on cities like New York has begun to alleviate with the new administration.
"We’re finally seeing some sort of rescue to that problem," Blumencranz said.
Adams highlighted as much in his statement, noting that "there are currently fewer than 45,000 migrants in the city’s care, down from a high of 69,000 in January of 2024 and out of the more than 232,000 that have arrived in New York City seeking city services since the spring of 2022."
Blumencranz now believes it is time for judicial reforms aimed at removing criminals who have entered the country and New York City over the last few years.
"What we need to see now is a system in place that reforms the judicial process, that we can make sure that those 60,000 some odd individuals who have come here and committed crimes are removed," he said. "That needs to be step one."
Nevertheless, Blumencranz viewed the closure of the Roosevelt shelter as a positive start, representing a "realignment" of thinking among government leaders on how to better manage the crisis.
Still, there is more work to be done to reassure New Yorkers who have seen the handling of the crisis stretch tax dollars thin and threaten government services.
"Our state budget has ballooned to $250 billion, the largest in state history and one of the largest in the United States of America, more than most countries," Blumencranz said.
"What we’re seeing is a continuation of services being cut because we’re dealing with prices that are created through bad policies from the state legislature and from City Hall. It’s time we start to put our money where our mouth is, fully fund programs that matter to taxpayers, and stop playing this game where compassionate services should matter more than making sure your kids get a world class education when you’re paying top dollar to live here in New York."
The percentage of Americans identifying as LGBT has risen to record highs, especially among Generation Z, a new Gallup poll released on Thursday shows, but that trend could see a departure under President Donald Trump, according to one expert, as the administration pushes back against gender treatments for minors.
The poll found that 23% of Generation Z Americans, those born between 1997 and 2006, identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. For comparison, 14.2% of millennials, those born between 1981 and 1996, identify the same way. Both groups identify as non-heterosexual compared to older generations, like Generation X and "Baby Boomers."
The Gallup poll surveyed more than 14,000 U.S. adults last year – collected through phone interviews with adults 18 and older – and found that 9.3% identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or another non-heterosexual identity. This marks a significant increase from 2020, when the figure was about half that, and a sharp rise from 2012, when Gallup first started tracking sexual orientation and gender identity, recording only 3.5%.
"The rate of LGBTQ+ identification is likely to continue to grow, given the generational shifts underway," Gallup senior editor and researcher Jeffrey M. Jones wrote in the study.
"One reason for higher LGBTQ+ identification among younger generations of adults is that they are much more likely to consider themselves bisexual than are older people," Jones wrote.
The study also found differences among those with political ideologies, as people identifying as LGBT were more likely to be female, liberal, White, and live in urban areas. Among them, 21% identified as liberal, 8% as moderate, and 3% as conservative. The rate of LGBT identification has nearly tripled over more than a decade, with a growing number of Americans in their teens, 20s and 30s identifying as bisexual, particularly more women compared to men, researchers noted.
However, Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow Sarah Parshall Perry said the findings are a snapshot in time – due to the "onslaught" of the Biden administration's rulings on sex and gender over the last four years– but will likely begin to reverse under the Trump administration's crackdown on transgender medical procedures for minors.
"I think now that we're seeing this return to common sense, we are going to see fewer and fewer young people begin to identify as LGBTQ," Perry told Fox News Digital in an interview. "I would be very curious what the numbers look like four years into the future, after some of these policies have trickled down to the granular level."
"It was entirely unsurprising to me that it was the Generation Z who experienced the most precipitous increase, because they are the younger ones they are currently, right now, in the throes of sort of this battle between reality and cultural conformity," Perry said. "That's exactly where these kids are, and I think it's exactly why we're seeing these level of increases."
While the poll found 85.7% of respondents identified as straight, 5.2% identified as bisexual, 2.0% as gay, 1.4% as lesbian and 1.3% as transgender. Fewer than 1% of participants identified with other non-traditional LGBT labels, including pansexual, asexual or queer. Five percent of respondents declined to answer.
Trump has signed a slew of gender-related executive orders during his first 100 days in office which have already racked up multiple lawsuits. One of those orders, "Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government," mandates that federal agencies recognize gender strictly as male or female, based on biological sex, and prohibits the use of gender pronouns on federal documents. It also directs agencies to cease funding for transgender medical treatments for transgender federal inmates and to remove policies promoting radical "gender ideology."
FIRST ON FOX: GOP Rep. Darrell Issa has introduced a bill aimed at preventing federal judges from issuing nationwide injunctions with the sole purpose of derailing a president’s political agenda, which Issa says has been the case since President Donald Trump was sworn in.
The legislation, known as the No Rogue Rulings Act (NORRA), amends Chapter 85 of title 28, United 5 States Code by adding a "Limitation on authority to provide injunctive relief."
"Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no United States district court shall issue any order providing for injunctive relief, except in the case of such an order that is applicable only to limit the actions of a party to the case before such district court with respect to the party seeking injunctive relief from such district court," the legislation states.
Dozens of activist and legal groups, elected officials, local jurisdictions and individuals have launched more than 50 lawsuits against the Trump administration since Jan. 20 in response to his more than 60 executive orders, as well as executive proclamations and memos, Fox News Digital reported earlier this month.
Issa says NORRA would limit the scope of nationwide injunctions by preventing federal judges from issuing injunctions that extend beyond parties directly involved in a case, while also ensuring that any injunction restricts only the specific parties requesting relief, regardless of whether the injunction involves outright enforcement of actions or policy actions.
"The founders could never have envisioned judges and part of the legislative branch teaming up to tie down the executive and disempower the people," Issa told Fox News Digital, adding that the current judge-shopping climate in the United States amounts to "judicial tyranny" and a "weaponization of courts."
Issa's office told Fox News Digital they are optimistic that this is a bill that will pass through Congress with Republican support and be signed by President Trump, adding that the bill has "maximum momentum."
"Nowhere in our Constitution is a single federal judge given absolute power over the President or the people of the United States," Issa posted on X last week.
Issa's bill comes as the Trump administration has publicly pushed back against the flurry of injunctions from courts across the country.
"Many outlets in this room have been fear mongering the American people into believing there is a constitutional crisis taking place here at the White House," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a press briefing last week. "I've been hearing those words a lot lately, but in fact, the real constitutional crisis is taking place within our judicial branch, where district court judges in liberal districts across the country are abusing their power to unilaterally block President Trump's basic executive authority."
"We believe these judges are acting as judicial activists rather than honest arbiters of the law and they have issued at least 12 injunctions against this administration in the past 14 days, often without citing any evidence or grounds for their lawsuits," she continued. "This is part of a larger concerted effort by Democrat activists, and nothing more than the continuation of the weaponization of justice against President Trump."
House Republicans' mammoth budget resolution survived its final hurdle late Monday night before heading for a chamber-wide vote.
The legislation passed the House Rules Committee on a party-line vote in a measure combining several bills that are expected to get a full House vote this week.
House GOP leaders aim to have it pass on Tuesday evening, Fox News Digital was told, but various concerns about spending cut levels could put that goal out of reach.
Under the current margins, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., can only lose one Republican vote to pass a bill without Democrats.
Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., announced over the weekend that she is against the current text, while several other fiscal hawks suggested their support is still up in the air.
Two other conservatives, Reps. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., signaled they would oppose the resolution as well.
Some Republicans are worried about potentially damaging cuts to Medicaid and other federal benefit programs that their constituents rely on. Johnson met with some of those potential holdouts on Monday night for what he called a "very productive conversation."
The speaker sounded optimistic leaving the Capitol late on Monday, telling reporters, "We’re on track. We got the resolution through rules, and we're expecting to vote tomorrow evening."
The bill aims to increase spending on border security, the judiciary and defense by roughly $300 billion, while seeking at least $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion in spending cuts elsewhere.
As written, the bill also provides $4.5 trillion to extend President Donald Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) provisions, which expire at the end of this year.
An amendment negotiated by House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, and conservatives on his panel would also force lawmakers to make $2 trillion in cuts, or else risk the $4.5 trillion for Trump's tax cuts getting reduced by the difference.
That agreement alarmed Republicans on the House Ways & Means Committee, like Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y.
"I don't think that is doable without affecting beneficiaries, and I've expressed that concern to leadership and in talking to some of my colleagues," Malliotakis told Fox News Digital last week.
Johnson met with Malliotakis and other members of the Congressional Hispanic Conference, a House GOP group, on Monday night to discuss their concerns about spending cuts in the bill.
The New York Republican was more optimistic when leaving the meeting late on Monday night, telling reporters that GOP leaders had eased her concerns.
"I'd say now I've shifted from undecided to lean yes," Malliotakis told reporters. "This is moving in the right direction."
GOP lawmakers are working to pass a broad swath of Trump policies – from investments in defense and border security to eliminating taxes on tipped and overtime wages – via the budget reconciliation process.
The mechanism allows the party in control of both houses of Congress to pass a tax and budget bill without help from the opposing party. To do so, it lowers the threshold for passage in the Senate from two-thirds to a simple majority, where the House already sits.
The Senate advanced a narrower version of the plan last week, which does not include Trump's tax cut priorities. Because the president favors all of the issues being wrapped up into one bill, however, it's been relegated to a de facto backup plan if the House fails to pass its plan on a reasonable timeline.
The House Rules Committee is the final gatekeeper for most pieces of legislation before a chamber-wide vote.
The committee will normally debate a set of bills, not necessarily related ones, before setting terms for amendments and debate and advancing those terms out of committee as a single "rules package."
House lawmakers will then vote on the rules package before the final reconciliation framework.
Once this bill passes the House, the relevant committees will get to work filling the framework out with detailed policy priorities, which will then be returned as a final bill that will need to face House passage again.
Johnson said at the Americans for Prosperity event Monday that he wants that to happen sometime in April.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced encounters at the southern border hit a record 15-year low on Saturday.
"On Saturday, CBP encountered just 200 aliens at the US Southern Border. That’s the lowest single apprehension day in over 15 years," Noem posted to X on Monday afternoon.
"Thank you to President [Donald Trump] and our brave men & women of [Customs and Border Protection]," she continued. "Make America Safe Again."
The low figure comes amid sweeping changes in border policy since President Donald Trump took office last month, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and sending more service members down to the border.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) apprehended just 29,116 illegal immigrants along the southern border during the month of January, down from 47,000 in December and hitting a low mark not seen since May 2020, when 32,349 arrests were made at ports of entry, according to a White House press release.
Overall, CBP apprehended 61,465 illegal immigrants at the southern border in January, down 36% from the prior month, the release notes, citing new data.
Last week, border czar Tom Homan touted how only 229 illegal immigrants were caught by federal authorities during a 24-hour timeframe, which was also considered to be a jaw-dropping number.
"That is down from a high of over 11,000 a day under Biden," he posted to X on Feb. 17. "I started as a Border Patrol Agent in 1984 and I don’t remember the numbers ever being that low. President Trump promised a secure border and he is delivering."
The swift policy changes resulted in a ripple effect nationwide.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced on Monday that the Roosevelt Hotel will no longer be used as a shelter for people who came to the country hoping to obtain asylum.
"While we’re not done caring for those who come into our care, today marks another milestone in demonstrating the immense progress we have achieved in turning the corner on an unprecedented international humanitarian effort," the Democrat said in a statement on Monday.
"Now, thanks to the sound policy decisions of our team, we are able to announce the closure of this site and help even more asylum seekers take the next steps in their journeys as they envision an even brighter future, while simultaneously saving taxpayers millions of dollars," he continued.
Still, this could just be the tip of the iceberg for the administration, as Trump swapped out the acting leader of ICE in hopes of increasing deportation numbers even higher.
FIRST ON FOX: Border czar Tom Homan is firing back against attacks from local politicians in a major "sanctuary city" while warning illegal immigrants that they need to be "looking over their shoulder" in the days and weeks ahead.
Fox News Digital asked Homan about comments made by Boston City Councilor Sharon Durkan, who responded to comments made by Homan at CPAC, who said he was "bringing hell" with him to Boston and criticized the police commissioner for not working with ICE.
"She needs to put her U.S. citizen taxpayer constituency ahead of illegal aliens who rape children," Homan told Fox News Digital. "I'm not coming for her, she shouldn't be afraid of me. Who should be afraid of me are those in the country illegally. They need to be looking over their shoulder, because we’re coming."
"You're not a police commissioner," Homan said about Commissioner Michael Cox last week. "Take that badge off your chest. Put it in the desk drawer. Because you became a politician. You forgot what it’s like to be a cop."
Durkan responded by mocking Homan for serving as a police officer in the village of West Carthage, New York, in the 1980s before eventually heading Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and serving as a Border Patrol agent.
"Laughable that someone who spent their career policing a town smaller than a Fenway Park crowd thinks they can lecture Boston on public safety," Durkan's post on X read.
"Commissioner Michael Cox serves with distinction and earns trust with integrity," the city official continued. "Tom Homan should know, we don’t scare easy."
"Yes, I understand that Tom Homan spent his career as a federal agent within Border Patrol & ICE, but that’s a world away from the realities of policing a major city," she later clarified. "His background is in immigration enforcement, not community policing—where trust and accountability are key."
Speaking to Fox News Digital, Homan said Durkan should be grateful for ICE’s involvement.
"ICE has recently arrested nine illegal aliens, sexual predators in Mass., and removed them from the streets of Mass. She ought to be thanking ICE for making the streets safer," he said.
"And me coming there saying, ‘I'm going to bring some law enforcement resources to keep removing sexual predators from their communities and protect their children.’ She ought to be applauding ICE. She ought to support us. She ought, as the representative of a community, ought to be begging the governor and state legislature to end the sanctuary city policies and help ICE remove significant public safety trust from the communities," he said.
Boston is one of a number of "sanctuary" cities that limits state and local law enforcement cooperation with ICE, meaning that illegal immigrants with convictions or pending charges will be released back onto the streets rather than being turned over to ICE custody. Proponents of sanctuary policies argue it encourages cooperation with police from otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants.
The Trump administration has ramped up interior ICE enforcement, with arrests skyrocketing compared to the same period last year. The administration has made international agreements to increase deportations and has taken certain Biden-era limits off ICE officers. Homan has been leading the charge.
Homan has said repeatedly that the target of the operations are public safety threats but that no one in the U.S. illegally is off the table. Speaking to Fox, Homan said critics of ICE’s work should speak to the victims of illegal immigrant crime.
"She ought to sit down and talk to a mother of one of these children that were raped by an illegal alien. This child will never be the same again. You would think she'd be putting them ahead of illegal aliens," he said.
He also dismissed the criticism of his background from Durkan.
"As far as me starting my career as a town cop, I truly believe it’s the community that raises you, it takes a community to raise a child, and the community that raises you, the first thing you do is to serve that community," he said. "I think it's the right thing to do. It's an American thing to do, and for a kid that grew up in a small community to become the ICE director – an agency of 21,000 law enforcement officers – I consider that the biggest honor of my life."
He also noted that ICE enforces hundreds of laws, many that have nothing to do with immigration enforcement, including drug smuggling, firearms trafficking and weapons of mass destruction.
"I want her to understand that ICE is a well-rounded federal enforcement agency, one of the biggest agencies," he said. "We’ve got over 400 statutes we enforce."
Fox News' Andrea Margolis and Bill Melugin contributed to this report.
The deadline for federal workers to respond to Elon Musk's request to verify their weekly work output passed on Monday night, but the consequences of declining to respond remain vague.
Musk confirmed shortly before Monday's deadline that federal workers would be given another chance to respond, and that failure to do so "will result in termination."
Several government agencies, including those led by loyalists to President Donald Trump, told their employees not to respond to the original request from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). While Musk himself suggested on social media that refusing to respond to the email would be "taken as a resignation," the actual email from OPM made no mention of such consequences.
"Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager," the OPM request read, making no threats of termination.
The FBI and Department of Defense, led by Trump allies Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth, also instructed their employees not to respond, citing the confidential nature of their work.
"When and if further information is required, we will coordinate the responses. For now, please pause any responses," Patel wrote to FBI employees.
Trump argued there was no rift in his administration despite the conflicting orders, however.
"They don’t mean that in any way combatively with Elon," he told reporters late last week. "Everyone thought it was a pretty ingenious idea."
"What he’s doing is saying, ‘Are you actually working?’" Trump said in the Oval Office on Monday. "And then, if you don’t answer, like, you’re sort of semi-fired or you’re fired, because a lot of people aren’t answering because they don’t even exist."
Musk nevertheless appeared angry at the lack of response to the request, turning to X to express his frustration just hours before the 11:59 p.m. Monday deadline.
"The email request was utterly trivial, as the standard for passing the test was to type some words and press send!" he wrote. "Yet so many failed even that inane test, urged on in some cases by their managers. Have you ever witnessed such INCOMPETENCE and CONTEMPT for how YOUR TAXES are being spent? Makes old Twitter look good. Didn’t think that was possible."
Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is in the midst of auditing various federal agencies in search of wasteful spending, corruption and mismanagement.
DOGE’s work comes as President Donald Trump ordered the federal workforce to return to the office after five years of remote work stemming from the coronavirus pandemic, and has vowed to clean house of bad actors within the government and ax overspending.
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.
