House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., was mocked by conservatives online after posting a picture holding a baseball bat and promising to push back against President Donald Trump’s "big, beautiful bill."
"House Democrats will keep the pressure on Trump’s One Big Ugly Bill," Jeffries posted on Instagram on Wednesday, along with a photo of himself holding a Louisville Slugger and standing in his office.
The post was widely criticized by conservatives.
"Low energy," Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., posted on X.
"I guess, 'union thug,' is a vibe choice," author Chad Felix Greene posted on X.
"Nah, we beat the Dems at that too," Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., posted on X along with a photo of him helping the Republicans beat the Democrats at the annual congressional baseball game.
"I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to say he may be the worst congressional leader in modern history," GOP communicator Matt Whitlock posted on X.
"The gap between how much charisma he has and how much he thinks he has could fill the Grand Canyon," Targeted Victory President Matt Gorman posted on X.
"Sir, please put the Louisville Slugger DOWN," Sean Southard, communications director for Montana GOP Gov. Greg Gianforte, posted on X.
Jeffries' office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
After posting, Jeffries appears to have changed the photo's caption to, "Protecting your healthcare is as American as baseball, motherhood and apple pie."
Republicans and Democrats debated Trump's signature reconciliation package all night on Wednesday, and the discussions continued into Thursday morning, where Republicans are expected to have the necessary votes to pass the legislation.
Jeffries gave a marathon speech on the House floor that was given a standing ovation from Democrats but criticized by Republicans, including Vice President JD Vance, who posted on X that the speech was actually driving undecided Republicans to support the bill.
"GOP Congressman just texted me: ‘I was undecided on the bill but then I watched Hakeem Jeffries performance and now I’m a firm yes,’" Vance posted.
Fox News Digital's Kiera McDonald and Olivia Patel contributed to this report.
FIRST ON FOX: Courts have repeatedly stymied President Donald Trump's efforts to quickly remove noncitizens living illegally in the country, but a conservative think tank is warning that the judiciary branch could, at times, be overstepping.
The Heritage Foundation's Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the organization and a former Department of Justice official, detailed in a new memorandum how noncitizens' due process rights are minimal when they are facing deportation.
"As provided by Congress and by some court decisions interpreting the Constitution, aliens have only limited due process rights in immigration proceedings," von Spakovsky wrote in the document, reviewed by Fox News Digital in advance of its publishing.
The document makes clear that noncitizens, including illegal immigrants, have the same rights as citizens when it comes to criminal proceedings. If a noncitizen has been charged with a crime, that person is entitled to a lawyer just like a citizen would be, for example.
But outside of that, the legal processes for noncitizens facing deportation vary widely depending on their circumstances. These cases are often handled in immigration courts rather than federal courts.
Heritage’s document suggests how due process, a contentious topic at the heart of many of the Trump administration’s immigration-related court cases, should apply to noncitizens in various scenarios.
"Those rights differ depending on the status of the aliens and whether they are outside the United States and trying to enter this country or are already in the country, either legally or illegally, as well as their visa or other status," von Spakovsky wrote.
Immigration law allows for near-immediate deportations in cases where a migrant has crossed into the country illegally but is apprehended within two years.
"That alien can be removed without a hearing or any other proceeding," von Spakovsky said. But he added a caveat that has become a major source of frustration among border control advocates: "unless the alien requests asylum or asserts a credible fear of persecution if returned to his or her native country."
If a migrant requests asylum, a form of protection for a person who fears they will be persecuted if sent back to their home country, an immigration officer, immigration judge, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and even the federal circuits and Supreme Court could all end up having a say in that migrants’ case before their asylum claim is fully vetted.
Critics of the asylum system say it has been roundly abused and that migrants making bogus asylum claims is common practice and allows migrants to be released into the country and drop off the government’s radar.
That concern came to a head on Wednesday, when a federal judge in Washington, D.C., issued a 124-page order blocking the administration from severely limiting asylum claims. The judge said Trump attempted a "wholesale rewriting" of immigration laws. Attorney General Pam Bondi has signaled an appeal is imminent.
The Heritage Foundation has been a presence in Republican politics for decades and has significant influence over government policy. The organization spearheaded Project 2025, a controversial playbook designed for Trump to use as a blueprint for his second term.
Heritage's new memorandum comes as due process has become the bane of the administration as it attempts to deliver on Trump's vows to deport all illegal immigrants.
Stephen Miller, Trump's immigration adviser and White House deputy chief of staff, has been railing against the courts and immigration rights groups, who he claims have overplayed their hand and are illegally derailing Trump's agenda.
"The only process illegals are due is deportation," Miller wrote online in May.
The topic has cropped up in numerous heated, high-profile court cases, many of which remain pending.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia alleged he was wrongly deported to El Salvador despite an immigration judge forbidding it. A group of deportees bound for Sudan, but held up in inhumane conditions in Djibouti, argued in court that they got no due process. And numerous men deported under the Alien Enemies Act to a Salvadoran megaprison have claimed in courts that they were not afforded a chance to contest their removal.
Von Spakovsky indicated that the Supreme Court would ultimately continue to decide where lower courts were, or were not, overstepping.
"Federal courts that assume jurisdiction over banned, prohibited, or limited claims by aliens are violating federal law, and the Supreme Court should tell them so," he wrote.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that the Constitution extends due process to anyone on U.S. soil, but illegal immigrants do not have the same rights as citizens to it.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed noncitizens are entitled to some form of due process.
"It is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in deportation proceedings," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in Reno v. Flores in 1993.
In an order in April, the Supreme Court cited Scalia’s words when it directed the Trump administration to give "reasonable" notice to the alleged transnational gang members at risk of being deported under the Alien Enemies Act.
The high court said those who are subject to the Alien Enemies Act must be given a chance to "seek habeas relief" before they are deported. Habeas corpus petitions are a form of legal recourse for those who believe they have been wrongly detained.
The Department of Justice’s unveiling this week of sweeping charges against more than 300 defendants who allegedly defrauded Medicare and other taxpayer-funded programs came as part of the department’s annual "takedown" event.
The healthcare fraud takedowns have been a practice at the DOJ for more than a decade, but officials touted this one as the largest on record. It stood out not only for its size but also because it focused on transnational criminals and broached artificial intelligence.
"This takedown represents the largest healthcare fraud takedown in American history," DOJ Criminal Division head Matthew Galeotti said. "But it’s not the end. It’s the beginning of a new era of aggressive prosecution and data-driven prevention."
This year’s operation led to 324 defendants being charged for submitting billions of dollars in allegedly fraudulent healthcare claims, including for medical care that patients never ended up receiving or that they received unnecessarily.
A DOJ official told reporters after the announcement that the work was "strategically coordinated" so that the takedown involved "all new indictments, complaints, [and] informations."
Charges were brought across 50 federal districts and, according to the official, all were brought or unsealed during a three-week period leading up to the takedown announcement.
Galeotti said the intended false claims totaled $14.6 billion, and the actual losses reached $2.9 billion.
Another DOJ official told Fox News Digital the purpose of the annual takedowns is "to raise public awareness and deter wrongdoers from engaging in this crime." The official noted that Operation Brace Yourself, a 2019 takedown, led to an estimated reduction of $1.9 billion being charged to Medicare for certain types of orthotic braces.
"Every fraudulent claim, every fake billing, every kickback scheme represents money taken directly from the pockets of American taxpayers, who fund these essential programs through their hard work and sacrifice," Galeotti said.
The charges announced this week spanned the globe, and DOJ officials said that in addition to four arrested in Estonia and another seven arrested at airports on the U.S.-Mexico border, the department was working to extradite others overseas who are accused of crimes.
Those defendants were part of an alleged scheme coined "Operation Gold Rush," which resulted in at least 20 members of a transnational criminal organization, including defendants based in Russia, being charged as part of a Medicare and money laundering operation that centered on catheters.
The group behind the scheme allegedly used foreign ownership entities to buy dozens of medical supply companies and then used stolen identities and confidential health data to create and file $10.6 billion in claims with Medicare.
"We are seeing a disturbing trend of transnational criminal organizations engaging in increasingly sophisticated and complex criminal schemes that defraud the American healthcare system," Galeotti said.
Two owners of Pakistani marketing organizations were among those charged in an alleged $703 million scheme in which they used artificial intelligence to create fake recordings of Medicare recipients consenting to receive medical supplies.
"We are concerned about the criminals’ advancement in technology here, obviously," Galeotti said.
Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator who oversees the Medicare program, was pressed by a reporter about why fraudsters were so easily able to penetrate the Medicare payment system.
Oz said CMS is working to meet the moment. The agency has "already launched a model. It is designed to use artificial intelligence and other more cutting-edge tools to address the fraud that exists in healthcare," Oz said.
Investigating and prosecuting fraudsters is work that relies heavily on data. The DOJ’s healthcare fraud unit has since 2018 had its own in-house team that analyzes data, one of the DOJ officials told Fox News Digital.
The team’s techniques include identifying "aberrant billing levels" and other suspicious billing patterns, as well as fraudulent practices that appear to move from one region to another. The team's ability to spot emerging trends, such as medical care professionals using skin grafts for wound care, also helps.
One set of charges in the takedown involved three defendants in Arizona who allegedly purchased these types of skin grafts, known as "amniotic wound allografts," and unnecessarily applied them to elderly Medicare recipients, including hospice patients in their final days. The defendants allegedly reaped millions of dollars from the practice.
"Patients and their families trusted these providers with their lives. Instead of receiving care, they became victims of elaborate criminal schemes," Galeotti said.
DOJ officials said they plan to use a "fusion center" as part of their healthcare fraud crackdown. The center will combine data across agencies and is designed to create a more efficient analysis process.
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is also involved in healthcare fraud work. A DEA official said during the takedown announcement that the agency's investigations included doctors, pharmacists and pharmacy owners.
Fifty-eight cases involved the illegal distribution of an estimated 15 million pills of opioids and other controlled substances, he said.
"These pills ended up on our streets in the hands of dealers and in the path of addiction," the DEA official said.
Overall, dozens of medical care professionals, including 25 doctors, were charged in the takedown.
President Donald Trump's administration released its annual report revealing the salaries for every staffer inside the White House on Thursday.
The report shows employees' earnings in a range of $59,070 at the lowest to $225,700 at the highest, though a few aren't accepting salaries at all.
The top-paid staffer at the White House is Jacalynne Klopp, a senior advisor and the sole staffer earning $225,700. Behind her is Edgar Mkrtchian, an associate counsel, making $203,645.
Behind them comes a group of 33 staffers making $195,200, which includes many well-known names. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt takes in this level of salary, as does border czar Tom Homan, chief of staff Susan Wiles, trade advisor Peter Navarro, communications director Steven Cheung and police chief of staff and homeland security advisor Stephen Miller.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is chief among these, not receiving any compensation for his White House role as national security advisor. Special envoy Steve Witkoff also receives compensation from the State Department rather than the White House.
Trump's own compensation is not listed in the report, but the pay scheme for the president is laid out in federal law. As president, Trump earns a base salary of $400,000, as well as a $50,000 expense allowance, $100,000 for travel and $19,000 for entertainment.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of California has filed a class-action lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) demanding an immediate halt to what it describes as unlawful immigration raids across the Los Angeles area targeting migrants with "brown skin."
The non-profit accuses Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of carrying out unconstitutional raids and then keeping migrants in inhumane conditions without beds and deprived of food and legal counsel. Homeland Security has denied all the claims in the lawsuit, saying that any accusations of racial profiling are "disgusting and categorically false."
ICE has carried out sweeping raids since June 6, arresting around 1,500 immigrants, including Latino day laborers, car wash workers, farmworkers and vendors – all in a bid to meet certain arrest quotas, the habeas petition states.
"The raids in this district follow a common, systematic pattern. Individuals with brown skin are approached or pulled aside by unidentified federal agents, suddenly and with a show of force and made to answer questions about who they are and where they are from," the lawsuit reads.
"If they hesitate, attempt to leave, or do not answer the questions to the satisfaction of the agents, they are detained, sometimes tackled, handcuffed, and/or taken into custody. In these interactions, agents typically have no prior information about the individual and no warrant of any kind."
The lawsuit accuses the federal government of keeping detainees at an overcrowded holding facility, referred to as "B-18," inside windowless rooms that are extremely cramped.
"In these dungeon-like facilities, conditions are deplorable and unconstitutional," the lawsuit reads.
As well as seeking to block the raids, the suit demands that ICE refrain from using the B-18 center, as it is supposed to be a short-term ICE processing site, and that the federal government be held legally accountable for systemic racial profiling and due process violations.
The defendants include Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, Attorney General Pam Bondi and multiple regional ICE, CBP, and FBI officials operating in Los Angeles.
The lawsuit was filed by a coalition of individual immigrants and immigrant advocacy organizations, led by the ACLU and the non-profit Public Counsel as well as other legal partners.
Los Angeles has become a battleground in resisting President Donald Trump’s election promise of carrying out the largest deportation raids in U.S. history. Protests in the City of Angels last month descended into riots as masked agitators burned driverless cars, damaged other property and threw rocks at moving law enforcement vehicles.
The lawsuit comes as an estimated 150 to 200 anti-ICE protesters shut down the Sixth Street Bridge in Los Angeles on Tuesday afternoon. The bridge links downtown Los Angeles and Boyle Heights early.
The protesters carried signs with messages reading: "Sick of ICE!" and "Eviction moratorium now!" while others chanted "ICE out of L.A."
"This bridge has been the entry to Boyle Heights to kidnap community members and take them who knows where," organizer Christian Alcaraz told Fox 11.
The protest was one of several rallies in the county on Tuesday as part of a day of action against immigration raids. In Koreatown, another rally was held.
Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin refuted the claims made in the lawsuit.
"Any claims that individuals have been ‘targeted’ by law enforcement because of their skin color are disgusting and categorically false," she told Fox 11 via a statement on Wednesday, adding that the lawsuit's claims were "garbage."
She also denied the claims about poor conditions at ICE facilities.
"Any claim that there are subprime conditions at ICE detention centers are false," McLaughlin said. "In fact, ICE has higher detention standards than most US prisons that hold actual US citizens. All detainees are provided with proper meals, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with lawyers and their family members."
President Donald Trump's $3.3 trillion "big, beautiful bill" has reportedly set the House record for the longest vote in the history of the lower chamber of Congress.
The procedural vote on the Senate-amended version of the bill lasted for more than seven hours. In 2021, the House spent seven hours and six minutes voting on former President Joe Biden's "Build Back Better" legislative package.
Wednesday night's voting surpassed the previous record at 9:15 p.m. ET Wednesday by at least 15 minutes, according to Axios.
Assistant House Minority Leader Joe Neguse, D-Colo., goaded House Republicans by claiming the protracted voting period Wednesday violated House rules, Axios reported.
The extended voting period came as House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., wrangled with members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. They pushed back on the Senate's version of the megabill over its projected increase to the federal deficit, as well as what they deemed insufficient Medicaid reforms and spending cuts. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, took issue with Senate revisions reintroducing green energy tax credits despite House efforts to roll back such programs.
With the Democrats united in opposition, the future of the more than 800-page, Trump-backed legislative package depends on a handful of GOP holdouts.
Following the overnight session, Johnson said Thursday he was determined to get the Senate-amended bill passed by the House and to the president's desk by the Independence Day deadline on Friday.
Lawmakers voted to proceed with debate on the Trump agenda bill in the early hours of Thursday – a mechanism known as a "rule vote" – teeing up a final House-wide vote sometime later Thursday morning.
Speaking to reporters Thursday morning, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said that beyond the House Freedom Caucus, some moderate Republicans also have final questions about how the megabill would be implemented.
"Some of them wanted to talk to some of the different agencies about, you know, how they're planning on implementing it, which obviously the agency heads have been planning for months on these changes," Scalise said. "So they walk through those things and that was helpful to members just to at least get a good idea of what to expect once the bill becomes law. Of course, none of it happens if the bill doesn't become law. So the focus has always been, let's get this bill passed."
The Senate passed the "big, beautiful bill" by a razor-thin, 51-50 margin last week, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote.
Fox News' Liz Elkind and Tyler Olson contributed to this report.
Data indicating the federal workforce shrank by just 1% over the first few months of President Donald Trump’s second term shows a "disappointing effect of DOGE" and the level of bureaucracy’s entrenchment in America, experts told Fox News Digital.
Figures released by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) show that the United States employs 2,289,472 federal workers as of March 31, which is down from 2,313,216 on September 30, 2024. The reduction of more than 23,000 positions "reflects the administration’s early efforts to streamline government and eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy," OPM said in a press release.
"That's just through the end of March. So I suspect those numbers will be higher by the end of September this year, which is when a lot of the early retirement packages– and buyouts – go into effect," Alex Nowrasteh, the Cato Institute’s vice president for economic and social policy studies, told Fox News Digital.
"Regardless of what those numbers are, this is not enough people having been terminated. It is not enough shrinkage in the federal workforce. And it is a disappointing effect of DOGE that it wasn't able to increase the size of the decrease in the federal workforce," he added.
Trump signed an executive order in February instructing the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to coordinate with federal agencies and execute massive cuts in federal government staffing numbers.
That order is reflected in the new data, OPM said, showing that agencies averaged 23,000 new monthly hires from April 2024 to January 2025 but dropped by nearly 70% to just 7,385 per month once the hiring freeze was fully implemented.
Peter Morici, an economist and business professor at the University of Maryland, told Fox News Digital that "Basically, Elon Musk poured a few teacups of ice water into the ocean to combat its rising temperature."
"It's very hard to get rid of people unless you get rid of functions. See, he was able to decimate USAID because he took away all their money," Morici said. "It's very, very hard to cut down the Commerce Department unless you, for example, don't want the numbers collected."
"It takes more than four years," Morici also said. "Look at the problems they're having just with Medicare reform, how all the special interests come out. Over the years, the federal bureaucracy is not just in Washington, but it's been spread throughout the country."
"And as you talk about cutting it down, you're talking about affecting local economies, the interests of congressmen, and so forth," he added.
DOGE did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
David Hebert, an economist with the American Institute for Economic Research, said the reduction reported by OPM "is certainly a start."
"The real challenge that President Trump is facing is the fact that the federal government has taken upon itself far too many responsibilities," he added in a statement to Fox News Digital. "If the President and Congress are serious about streamlining government, they need to move beyond ‘waste, fraud, and abuse’ and look to shedding responsibilities that the federal government ought not have in the first place."
OPM said "hundreds of thousands more workers" will drop from the rolls in October 2025, when more workers depart via the Deferred Resignation Program that was offered to employees in an effort to trim the workforce.
Tens of thousands of employees who are in the process of being terminated remain on the government payroll due to court orders that are currently being challenged by the administration, according to OPM.
"The American people deserve a government that is lean, efficient, and focused on core priorities," Acting OPM Director Charles Ezell said in a statement.
"This data marks the first measurable step toward President Trump’s vision of a disciplined, accountable federal workforce, and it’s only the beginning."
Trump's effort to shrink the federal workforce has faced stiff resistance from Democrats and various courts, with opponents saying that the administration is cutting critical jobs.
Fox News Digital’s Andrew Mark Miller contributed to this report.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., plans to introduce a bill that would require a new census that only counts U.S. citizens, the results of which would be utilized in determining how many House seats each state is allotted.
The upcoming measure, which is still being drafted, would also require proof of American citizenship to vote in federal elections, the lawmaker told Fox News Digital on Wednesday.
Greene says she has spoken to President Donald Trump about her proposal and that he supports it.
When the president was asked about the proposal this week, he said that he loved it.
The congresswoman called the issue a "matter of national security," asserting that Democrats "would love non-citizens to have the right to vote," would "love amnesty for all," and would essentially allow for a "world takeover" of the country.
Currently, the U.S. Census Bureau notes that unauthorized immigrants are included in decennial census population counts used in determining how many seats each state gets in the House of Representatives.
"Apportionment is the process of dividing the 435 memberships, or seats, in the U.S. House of Representatives among the 50 states based on the apportionment population counts from the decennial census," census.gov notes.
The 14th Amendment to the Constitution reads, in part, "Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed."
Counting only citizens in the census would likely reshape the nation's political landscape, with some states getting fewer House seats than they currently have, and other states getting more seats.
That would impact presidential elections, because each state's number of Electoral College votes is determined by the total number of seats it holds in both chambers of Congress.
Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist candidate for New York City mayor, has come under fire from critics who label him a "communist" – a charge he dismisses as a distraction.
However, the criticisms may not be as unfounded as Mamdani claims. Videos show the NYC mayoral candidate espousing language and theories rooted in communist revolutionary language.
In one 2021 video, Mamdani urges fellow socialists at a conference to not compromise on goals like "seizing the means of production." In a second video, released on YouTube by progressive advocacy group The Gravel Institute that same year, Mamdani discusses the need to turn housing from a private commodity to a public one, calling for luxury condos to be replaced with communal style living that would include things like shared laundry facilities and food co-ops.
"Why do so many people end up homeless?" Mamdani asks in the video. "It's not because there aren't enough homes to go around, there are plenty of empty homes. No. It's because housing people is not a primary goal of developers or landlords. Their goal, simply put, is to make a profit."
According to Mamdani, this is a problem. He lamented in the video that housing is "a consumer product, just like clothes or cars" that private businesses sell on the market to make a profit. As a result, Mamdani complains, there is plenty of housing for "the rich" but not nearly enough opportunities for poor and working-class people.
"[It's] not efficient or beneficial for the rest of society," Mamdani says. "Housing doesn't have to be seen as a market at all."
In the video, Mamdani points to post-war communist Vienna as an example of how removing privatization from the housing market can be good for society. However, he does concede that currently in Vienna, "residents still pay part of their earnings in rent to cover operational costs and a sizable chunk of the population lives in private housing."
After describing the so-called Vienna model, during which he puts forth a vision of communal living with shared laundry, kitchens, food co-ops, bathhouses, pharmacies, lecture halls, swimming pools and more, he suggests a way forward that includes establishing "community land trusts to gradually buy up housing on the private market and convert it to community ownership."
"If we want to end the housing crisis, the solution has to be moving toward the full de-commodification of housing," Mamdani says. "In other words, moving away from the status quo in which most people access housing by purchasing it on the market and toward a future where we guarantee high quality housing to all as a human right."
President Donald Trump has referred to Mamdani as a "100% Communist Lunatic" and vowed to "save New York City" from Mamdani if he gets elected. He has suggested a willingness to withhold federal funds from the city if Mamdani doesn't "behave."
"As President of the United States, I’m not going to let this Communist Lunatic destroy New York," Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social Wednesday. "Rest assured, I hold all the levers, and have all the cards. I’ll save New York City, and make it 'Hot' and 'Great' again, just like I did with the Good Ol’ USA!"
Fox News Digital reached out to Mamdani's campaign for comment but did not receive a response.
Omaha City Councilman Brinker Harding has launched a bid to succeed outgoing U.S. Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., who announced that he will not seek re-election next year.
"I’m a husband, father, businessman, and Omaha City Councilman. Today, I am announcing my run for Congress in NE-02 to make America more like its Heartland and to make the next 250 years a New Golden Age for America. I hope you’ll join me!" Harding declared in a July 1 post on X.
Bacon, who has served in Congress since 2017, has announced that he will finish his current term, but will not run for re-election in 2026.
"Thank you, @DonJBacon, for your 30 years of distinguished service in the Air Force and a decade of dedicated leadership representing NE-02 in Congress," Harding declared in a June 30 post on X. "You’ve been a true statesman who’s served with integrity and heart. Wishing you and Angie all the best in this next chapter."
While Republicans have been divided on the issue, Bacon is a staunch proponent of U.S. aid to Ukraine.
"It is a time for honesty. Peace talks are having zero effect on Putin. His goal is to dominate Ukraine & he won’t stop until he realizes he cannot win. The U.S. & Allies must arm Ukraine to the teeth, sanction Russia to the max, & confiscate the $300B in overseas Russian assets," the congressman declared in a post on X in late May.
U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., is backing Harding for the House seat.
"Throughout a lifetime of service to Omaha and Nebraska, Brinker Harding has always championed public safety, economic development, and fiscal responsibility. Brinker will make America safer, stronger, and more prosperous. I am honored to endorse him for Congress," Fischer noted in a post on X.
In a dramatic escalation of military involvement in immigration enforcement, the U.S. Air Force and Navy are taking over vast new swathes of federal land along the southern border, under a directive from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
One 250-mile stretch, located in Texas’ Cameron and Hidalgo counties, is being transferred to Air Force control and will fall under the jurisdiction of Joint Base San Antonio and be managed as part of a newly established National Defense Area (NDA).
The land is being transferred from the International Boundary and Water Commission, an agency traditionally responsible for handling water and boundary disputes between the U.S. and Mexico, marking a significant shift in the use and oversight of federal land at the border.
Another 140-mile stretch of land along the border near Yuma, Arizona, will be transferred to Navy jurisdiction.
These mark the third NDAs created under the Trump administration, following similar moves in New Mexico and near El Paso, Texas. The areas are designated as military zones to bolster border security operations amid a surge in illegal crossings under the Biden administration.
Presidents since Richard Nixon have deployed active-duty troops and reservists to the border. But until Trump, they’ve largely been restricted to logistical support: surveillance, building roads, etc. U.S. troops stationed in the NDAs will now be authorized to apprehend, search and detain migrants until Customs and Border Protection agents arrive. Migrants entering these zones may also face trespassing charges for entering military property.
The move is part of a broader mission managed by the Joint Task Force – Southern Border (JTF-SB), a joint effort between the Air Force and U.S. Northern Command to consolidate and strengthen military presence along the border.
To support these efforts, the military has deployed Stryker vehicles, ground-based radar systems, and even begun 3D-printing drones to enhance surveillance capacity and reduce costs.
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said the coordinated efforts between DoD and Customs and Border Patrol led to zero "gotaways," or migrants that escape authorities, across the entire southern border from June 28-30.
Civil liberties groups have sounded the alarm, warning the policy blurs the lines between military and law enforcement roles and may violate the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of federal troops in domestic policing without congressional approval.
"Using the military purpose doctrine to justify direct military involvement in immigration enforcement is a transparent ruse to evade the Posse Comitatus Act," the Brennan Center for Justice said in a statement. "The nominal justification is protecting the installation, but the installation itself was created to apprehend and detain migrants."
Critics also warn the policy could set a dangerous precedent. "If soldiers are allowed to take on domestic policing roles at the border, it may become easier to justify military deployments within the U.S. interior," the Center added.
Andy Gould, former Arizona supreme court justice, said he thought the move was "extremely effective against the cartels and completely legal."
"He's created No Trespassing zones on the border, and by taking federal land and declaring a national emergency and transferring it to the military, and then also using the military as an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act where he says, ‘This is a military purpose to deal with the emergency on the border.’"
"The idea that the President United States can use a military presence to defend an American border, I think that's going to be tough to challenge."
Since President Donald Trump took office, the number of active-duty troops at the southern border has surged from under 2,000 to more than 8,000, with Hegseth authorizing up to 10,000 earlier this year.
This militarized approach has also prompted drug traffickers to shift tactics, turning to maritime smuggling routes in response to intensified land enforcement. The Pentagon has responded by deploying naval vessels with Coast Guard teams to interdict sea-based drug operations.
"We know terrorists are trying to get in through our border," said Brig Barker, former FBI advisor to U.S. Special Operations Command and counterterrorism expert. "Swarming this with different inter-agencies is a good thing. … The military has a lot of refined skills and capabilities that civilian law enforcement doesn't have.
He predicted that military counternarcotics missions would push further into Latin America, "bringing that out to that fight farther out from our border, really kind of preempt before they can get closer to our border."
The House of Representatives' progress on President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill" has temporarily come to a screeching halt thanks to the chamber's top Democrat.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., began speaking in the chamber minutes before 5 a.m. and appears to be poised for hours more.
One GOP lawmaker told Fox News Digital that Jeffries was seen arriving with multiple binders, one of which he read from for roughly three hours. If the rest of the binders also hold portions of his speech, the New York Democrat could keep the House floor paused into the afternoon.
He's able to command the House floor via a "magic minute," a privilege for party leaders in the chamber that allows them to speak for however long they want.
It comes after the House of Representatives voted to advance Trump’s $3.3 trillion "big, beautiful bill" to its final phase in Congress, overcoming fears of a potential Republican mutiny.
It’s a significant victory for House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., though the fight is not over yet.
Lawmakers voted to proceed with debate on the mammoth-sized Trump agenda bill in the early hours of Thursday – a mechanism known as a "rule vote" – teeing up a final House-wide vote sometime later Thursday morning.
The House adopted the rules for debate on the measure in a dramatic 219 to 213 vote – with all but moderate Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., voting to proceed.
The vote had been stalled for hours, since Wednesday afternoon, with five House Republicans poised to kill the measure before lawmakers could weigh the bill itself.
Several members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus and their allies, meanwhile, appeared ready to skip the vote altogether in protest of GOP leaders' compromise bill.
But both Johnson and Trump spent hours negotiating with holdouts, apparently to some success.
But the process could still take hours. Democrats could still call up various procedural votes to delay the final measure, as they did when the legislation passed the House by just one vote for the first time in late May.
Plus, the bill itself could still face opposition from both moderates and conservative Republicans.
Conservative lawmakers were threatening to derail the rule vote as recently as Wednesday over changes the Senate made to the legislation, which fiscal hawks argued would add billions of dollars to the federal deficit.
But those concerns appear to have been outweighed by pressure from House GOP leaders and the president himself – who urged House Republicans to coalesce around the bill.
The Senate passed its version of the bill late on Tuesday morning, making modifications to the House’s provisions on Medicaid cost-sharing with states, some tax measures, and raising the debt ceiling.
Moderates are wary of Senate measures that would shift more Medicaid costs to states that expanded their programs under Obamacare, while conservatives have said those cuts are not enough to offset the additional spending in other parts of the bill.
Two members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus who also sit on the House Rules Committee, Reps. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., and Chip Roy, R-Texas, voted against the measure during the Rules Committee's 12-hour hearing to consider the bill.
Johnson himself publicly urged the Senate to change as little as possible in the run-up to the vote. But the upper chamber’s bill ultimately passed by a similarly narrow margin as the House – with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote.
"I’m not happy with what the Senate did to our product," Johnson told reporters late on Tuesday afternoon. "We understand this is a process that goes back and forth, and we'll be working to get all of our members to yes."
But Trump took to Truth Social after the Senate passed the bill to urge House Republicans to do the same.
"It is no longer a ‘House Bill’ or a ‘Senate Bill’. It is everyone’s Bill. There is so much to be proud of, and EVERYONE got a major Policy WIN — But, the Biggest Winner of them all will be the American People, who will have Permanently Lower Taxes, Higher Wages and Take Home Pay, Secure Borders, and a Stronger and More Powerful Military," the president posted.
"We can have all of this right now, but only if the House GOP UNITES, ignores its occasional ‘GRANDSTANDERS (You know who you are!), and does the right thing, which is sending this Bill to my desk. We are on schedule — Let’s keep it going, and be done before you and your family go on a July 4thvacation. The American People need and deserve it. They sent us here to, GET IT DONE."
Both the House and Senate have been dealing with razor-thin GOP majorities of just three votes each.
The bill would permanently extend the income tax brackets lowered by Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), while temporarily adding new tax deductions to eliminate duties on tipped and overtime wages up to certain caps.
It also includes a new tax deduction for people aged 65 and over.
The legislation also rolls back green energy tax credits implemented under former President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, which Trump and his allies have attacked as "the Green New Scam."
The bill would also surge money toward the national defense, and to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the name of Trump's crackdown on illegal immigrants in the U.S.
The bill would also raise the debt limit by $5 trillion in order to avoid a potentially economically devastating credit default sometime this summer, if the U.S. runs out of cash to pay its obligations.
New and expanded work requirements would be implemented for Medicaid and federal food assistance, respectively.
Democrats have blasted the bill as a tax giveaway to the wealthy while cutting federal benefits for working-class Americans.
But Republicans have said their tax provisions are targeted toward the working and middle classes – citing measures eliminating taxes on tipped and overtime wages – while arguing they were reforming federal welfare programs to work better for those who truly need them.
Progressive Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., told reporters it was Democrats' intent to delay proceedings on Wednesday for as long as possible.
"This last go around, we were able to delay the bill upwards of 30 hours. And so we're going to do the same thing, do everything we can from a procedural point of view to delay this," Frost said.
Meanwhile, there were earlier concerns about if weather delays in Washington could delay lawmakers from getting to Capitol Hill in time for the planned vote.
"We're monitoring the weather closely," Johnson told reporters. "There's a lot of delays right now."
