Welcome to the Fox News Politics newsletter, with the latest updates on the Trump administration, Capitol Hill and more Fox News politics content.
Here's what's happening…
-Elon Musk criticism of Trump tax bill frustrates some Republicans: 'No place in Congress'
-Rubio spearheads massive State Department reorganization set to eliminate, merge more than 300 offices
-Federal judge says attempted deportation of anti-Israel ringleader Mahmoud Khalil may be unconstitutional
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk bid farewell to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in a Wednesday night X post, ending his tenure as the face of the agency as it shifts to a new phase in President Donald Trump's second term.
"As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending," Musk said on X. "The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government."
Musk has been the public face of DOGE since Trump signed an executive order establishing the office on Jan. 20. DOGE has since ripped through federal government agencies in a quest to identify and end government overspending, corruption and fraud…READ MORE
BLUE AMBITIONS: 21 Democrats who may try to succeed Trump in the 2028 presidential election
DEEP CUTS: Trump's drastic NSC cuts spark debate: Does fighting the 'Deep State' put national security at risk?
JUDICIAL PUSHBACK: Federal judge orders Trump admin to resume migrant 'parole' applications
COURT WIN: Federal judge sides against copyright leader who claimed Trump was wrong to fire her
An Iowa congresswoman touted her support for President Donald Trump’s tax and spending bill in back-to-back town halls on Wednesday, even as members of the audience jeered and disrupted her speech.
"They were booing when I was saying, you know, ‘We're preserving tax cuts,’ and I can't believe people would boo tax cuts for themselves," Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, told Fox News Digital on Thursday.
"I think there are a number of people who just show up to these town halls who want to disrupt. They didn't care what I had to say. They just want to boo and yell and be angry."
And there were a significant number of such people at both her town halls in Elkader and Decorah on Wednesday.
At both events, Hinson touted her support for Trump and House Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill and promoted the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) efforts.
Both issues drew largely negative reactions from people there, save for some exceptions.
At one point in the first town hall, a woman named Linda stood on behalf of another woman, Nicole, who was in a wheelchair and had "difficulty speaking." Nicole, who relied on federal health and food programs, was concerned about any cuts to those programs making her life more difficult, Linda said.
The crowd then cheered as Hinson pledged that Republicans were only reforming those programs, "so that people like you can continue to have access to the treatments and medications you need."
The goodwill was short-lived, however, when the next questioner accused Republicans of cutting university funding in favor of tax cuts for the wealthy – despite Hinson pointing out the bill does not change income tax brackets.
The boos grew louder when Hinson accused top universities of "letting men play in girls' sports." People in the crowd could be heard screaming "stop it" and "stop spinning."
At her second town hall, the crowd jeered as Hinson emphasized her support for Trump.
"The president is, I believe, fighting for you and fighting for me. I’m fighting alongside of him. I think God saved President Trump’s life in Butler," Hinson said before briefly pausing as the boos swelled.
"I think He saved his life in Butler, Pennsylvania for a reason. I think he is helping us to save this country," she continued.
Hinson was still unfazed by the protesters when she spoke with Fox News Digital the next day.
"I did exactly what I said I was going to do," Hinson said. "I feel good about what I was able to communicate and correct the record yesterday. And I will not only defend this agenda and answer any questions any day, any time of the week, but I think it is really important that I'm out there on offense, correcting the record."
The congresswoman said the disruptions grew so loud that it prompted a Vietnam War veteran to address her after one of the events and tell her, "I couldn’t hear over all that, and I think that’s a shame because I wanted to hear what you had to say."
"That’s really the disservice. Again, these people who their only intent is to disrupt, someone like that man who served our country, who wanted to come hear what I had to say, had trouble hearing me," Hinson said. "People there want to be able to have civil discourse and ask the questions and hear my answers."
Chicago Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson laid into the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and President Donald Trump's economic policies during his weekly press availability, drawing parallels between the Third Reich in Germany and Trump's second term in the White House.
Johnson said the Windy City is the most "pro-worker" city in the U.S., but faces "hostility" from Washington.
"The fact that the President of the United States of America is cutting off food supply and medicine to working people and families across this country — that is an act of war," Johnson fumed.
"And we're going to need leaders who are prepared and willing to stand up for working people, because this battle has reached our front doors all across America where people are struggling and suffering. And in order to alleviate that pain and discomfort, it's going to require bold leadership. We can't tippy toe."
Addressing a reporter who asked how to work with the Trump administration for the benefit of the city from such an adversarial position, Johnson cited Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s State of the State address in February, which referenced how it "took the Nazi’s one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a Constitutional Republic."
"Governor Pritzker… offered up a warning," Johnson said. "You have a president that is cutting off medicine and food, a president that is working to erase culture. I mean, you can't make this up. He's doing it in plain sight."
Pritzker had compared the rise of former German Chancellor Adolf Hitler to Trump’s popularity, in that the eventual national-socialist dictator was seen as the answer to "inflation and [the public] looking for someone to blame."
In his remarks, Johnson noted how people have wondered how Germany could have descended into Nazism and anti-Semitism so quickly and dreadfully, saying that Trump is "carry[ing] out the playbook that was done against an entire people-group."
"He’s doing it right here in this country, against working people, erasing Black folks from museums and the history and the culture. So, when you ask how we balance that, you have to fight it and resist it with everything that's in you," he said.
"The President of the United States of America is capturing the hopes and aspirations of working people and holding us hostage as he works to implement and annihilate democracy," Johnson said, returning to comment on lawsuits the city has joined to halt DOGE-type efforts.
Chicago is party to a lawsuit filed by several municipalities, including Baltimore; Santa Clara, California; and the county that encompasses Houston, which seeks to stop DOGE’s slashing of the federal bureaucracy.
"Congress created these federal agencies. It funded them. But the president is trying to fire all these people and gut these agencies that Congress created," Chicago Deputy Corporation Counsel Steve Kane told the city’s ABC affiliate, calling the situation unconstitutional.
DOGE-driven cuts affecting the Windy City have included the Energy Department’s 2025 Small Business Expo, originally pinned for June.
The cut came as part of billions in spending reductions for cabinet agencies, and other closures of clean-energy-centric operations have affected the city, according to reports.
Earlier in May, Chicago hired Ernst & Young, an international consulting firm, to find ways to bridge its own budget gaps, according to Bloomberg. The Trump administration has threatened to withhold funding from sanctuary cities, a definition within which Chicago falls.
While city-specific data was not immediately available for DOGE-related cuts, the Trump administration saw the Department of Health & Human Services cut its regional office in Illinois, which served 28,000 low-income families.
Efforts to consolidate federal real estate and office space affected America’s third-largest city as well. The Federal Transit Administration, Securities and Exchange Commission, Labor Relations Authority and Civil Corps of Engineers all saw their offices there shut down. A federally-owned art collection in Chicago also sees some of its staffing on the chopping block, according to Axios.
Fox News' Remy Numa and Patrick McGovern contributed to this report.
State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce indicated Thursday that the increased scrutiny the Trump administration is placing on foreign student visas will not be a "one-time" check, but rather a process that lasts the entire time foreign students remain studying in the country.
Bruce was peppered with questions at a Thursday press briefing about the Trump administration's plans for increased vetting for foreign students. The briefing came amid news that the Trump administration has paused new student visa appointments at embassies across the globe. The Trump administration also indicated this week it would begin "aggressively" revoking the visas of Chinese students that pose national security threats, and has plans to implement expanded social media vetting for foreign student visas.
"Everyone who's here on a visa has to recognize – certainly it is what they've seen over the last few months – that America takes their visa seriously, that vetting is not a one-time process – it's continuing," Bruce said in response to questions about what the new scrutiny and vetting will entail. "When things, if things happen, if you get arrested, if there's some kind of an issue, it's probably going to be seen at some point," Bruce added.
"There's an interest in making sure that those who are here from China on a visa understand that we are taking our national security seriously," she continued. "And, if everything's fine, terrific. But, that will be a vetting that certainly continues and is important."
Citing national security concerns, Bruce did not reveal many details about what the new scrutiny on foreign students will look like. However, she did tell reporters that the student visa interviews will likely resume "sooner-than-later," once a formalized process has been agreed upon.
Bruce framed the new student visa scrutiny as part of President Donald Trump's "America First" agenda aimed at reducing alleged political indoctrination on campuses and ensuring that American students can receive the highest quality education possible without interference.
"There's a reason why people come here – it's because of what the country represents. Yes, the excellence of our schools. And we want to keep it that way," Bruce told reporters Thursday.
"We want parents who send their children, whether they be from a different country or America – to an American university – that they can recognize their child when that child returns home … making sure that everyone who does want to send their child to a school in this country can do so knowing that they're going to be safe, they're going to be able to get into a building and not held hostage in a library because it's been occupied, or that they're going to be able to actually learn things that you're paying that kind of money for."
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced his departure from DOGE on social media Wednesday after five months of viral moments and cuts that sparked both praise and controversy nationwide. Fox News Digital compiled five of the top memorable moments from that span.
As Musk’s efforts to cut government waste resulted in outrage from Democrats and violent protests at Tesla dealerships across the country, along with a dip in Tesla’s stock price, President Donald Trump announced he was going to purchase a Tesla and met with Musk outside the White House to look at options.
"I’m going to buy a brand-new Tesla tomorrow morning as a show of confidence and support for Elon Musk, a truly great American," Trump announced.
"To Republicans, Conservatives, and all great Americans, Elon Musk is ‘putting it on the line’ in order to help our Nation, and he is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! But the Radical Left Lunatics, as they often do, are trying to illegally and collusively boycott Tesla, one of the World’s great automakers, and Elon’s 'baby,' in order to attack and do harm to Elon, and everything he stands for," Trump said on Truth Social.
Trump and Musk were photographed examining different Tesla models and sitting inside them.
Musk got in on the passenger side and joked about "giving the Secret Service a heart attack" as they talked about how to start a vehicle that can reach 60 miles per hour in a few seconds.
"That's beautiful, this is a different panel . . . everything's computer!" Trump remarked, in a comment that went viral on social media. "That's beautiful! Wow!"
Trump told reporters that he would write a check for the car he chose, which retails for roughly $80,000, and leave it at the White House, so his staff could drive it. The president also said he hopes his purchase will boost Tesla, which was struggling with sagging sales and declining stock prices at the time.
One of the most notable DOGE revelations as it scoured the government for waste, fraud, and abuse was Musk’s announcement in February that his agency was looking into a limestone mine in Pennsylvania where he said federal employee retirements are processed manually using a system that could take months.
"We're like, well, what? Why is that? Well, because all the retirement paperwork is manual on paper," Musk said. "It's manually calculated and written down on a piece of paper. Then it goes down to mine and like, what do you mean, a mine?"
DOGE wrote on Xthat an old limestone mine in Boyers, Pennsylvania, about 60 miles north of Pittsburgh, is where about 700 workers operate more than 230 feet underground to process about 10,000 federal retirement applications per month.
The applications are processed by hand using paper, and are stored in manila envelopes and cardboard boxes, DOGE said.
The Washington Post described the facility as a "sinkhole of bureaucracy" in a 2014 article. At the time, the report said the total spending on the retirement system was $55.8 million.
"And then the speed, the limiting factor is the speed at which the mine shaft elevator can move, determines how many people can retire from the federal government," Musk said. "And the elevator breaks down and sometimes, and then you can't, nobody can retire. Doesn't that sound crazy?"
Musk’s 4-year-old son, Æ A-12, also known as "Lil X," was often seen accompanying his father for visits to the White House and Capitol Hill in recent months, often going viral on social media.
In February, Lil X made headlines after attending an Oval Office meeting and mimicking his father while he spoke, at one point sitting on Musk’s shoulders and putting his fingers in the former DOGE chief’s ears, and holding onto the Resolute Desk.
"This is X, and he's a great guy. High IQ," a chuckling Trump said, adding that the boy is a "high-IQ individual."
In March, heartwarming photographs of Trump walking to the president's helicopter, Marine One, with Elon Musk’s son went viral on social media, with internet users doting over the joyful moment.
Musk sat down with "Special Report" executive editor Bret Baier for a revealing behind-the-scenes interview with members of his team earlier in March and offered previously unseen glimpses into the work being done.
Musk, along with DOGE members Steve Davis, Joe Gebbia, Aram Moghaddassi, Brad Smith, Anthony Armstrong, Tom Krause and Tyler Hassen, illustrated key efforts of the department to achieve Trump's goal. Davis brought up federal credit cards, which he labeled a "mundane" but "illustrative" example of DOGE's work.
"There are in the federal government around 4.6 million credit cards for around 2.3 to 2.4 million employees. This doesn't make sense. So one of the things all of the teams have worked on is we've worked for the agencies and said, 'Do you need all of these credit cards? Are they being used? Can you tell us physically where they are?'" Davis explained.
"Clearly there should not be more credit cards than there are people," Musk responded.
The eight-man group also discussed DOGE's work relating to the federal workforce, financial management, government infrastructure, computer systems, Social Security and more.
"They may characterize it as shooting from the hip, but it is anything but that," Musk said, noting that the agency's approach to cuts is to "measure twice, if not thrice, and cut once."
Earlier this month, Musk and his team gave a second revealing interview to "Jesse Watters Primetime," outlining examples of waste they had discovered in government.
As the team shared cases of wasteful spending from top departments to smaller agencies, Watters asked how the findings made Musk and the DOGE members feel.
"Unfortunately, like the 100th time you've heard it, it's hard not to get a little numb, and by the 200th time, you're like, well, OK, it was just another day at the office," Musk replied.
One DOGE member, who joined Musk on "Jesse Watters Primetime," revealed that he had dropped out of Harvard University to "serve my country," but faced backlash.
"It's been unfortunate to see lost friendships. Most of campus hates me now, but I think, fundamentally, I hope people realize through conversations like this that reform is genuinely needed," he said.
In the interview, 19-year-old DOGE team member Edward Coristine revealed how he got the nickname "Big Balls," which had received significant chatter online.
Coristine went on to say that the system that distributes government or taxpayer money "literally has no checks and no accountability to the actual American taxpayer."
"So, it’s a huge vector for fraud, waste, and abuse."
Out of the many agencies that experienced cuts during Musk’s time at DOGE, USAID was perhaps the most discussed and most affected by DOGE’s findings.
In March, Secretary of State Marco Rubioannounced that 83% of USAID programs would be canceled following the conclusion of a six-week review by DOGE.
In total, 5,200 contracts were to be terminated, Rubio wrote on X, announcing the new reforms. He said the canceled contracts amounted to "tens of billions of dollars" being spent "in ways that did not serve," or even harmed, the national interests of the U.S.
Rubio added that the remaining 18% of USAID programs—approximately 1,000—would now be managed by the State Department. The move to transfer that authority, he said, was made in consultation with Congress.
Several examples of questionable spending were made public by DOGE, including where Biden's USAID awarded $20 million to a nonprofit called Sesame Workshopto produce a show called "Ahlan Simsim Iraq" in an effort to "promote inclusion, mutual respect and understanding across ethnic, religious and sectarian groups."
More than $900,000 went to a "Gaza-based terror charity," called Bayader Association for Environment and Development, and $1.5 million went to a program slated to "advance diversity, equity and inclusion in Serbia's workplaces and business communities."
Fox News Digital’s Alec Schemmel, Stephen Sorace and Associated Press contributed to this report.
FIRST ON FOX – Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., asked the Justice Department Thursday to investigate a Chinese-owned self-driving trucking company, one of the largest in U.S., citing allegations that it had shared proprietary data and other sensitive technology with state-linked entities in Beijing.
The letter, sent to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and previewed exclusively to Fox News Digital, asks the Justice Department to open a formal investigation into the autonomous truck company TuSimple Holdings, a Chinese-owned company and one of the largest self-driving truck companies in the U.S.
In it, Hawley cites recent reporting from the Wall Street Journal that alleges that TuSimple "systematically shared proprietary data, source code, and autonomous driving technologies" with Chinese state-linked entities— what he described as "blatant disregard" of the 2022 national security agreement with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS.
"These reports also revealed communications from TuSimple personnel inside China requesting the shipment of sensitive Nvidia AI chips and detailed records showing ‘deep and longstanding ties’ with Chinese military-affiliated manufacturers," Hawley said.
He noted that to date, TuSimple "has not faced serious consequences" for sharing American intellectual property with China, despite having continued to share data with China after signing a national security agreement with the U.S. government in 2022, which was enforced by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S.
"If the reports about TuSimple are accurate, they represent not just a violation of export law, but a breach of national trust and a direct threat to American technological leadership," Hawley said.
"The American people deserve to know how and why a supposedly U.S.-based company was allowed to serve as a conduit for the transfer of sensitive innovations to the Chinese Communist Party," he added.
The letter asks Bondi and the Justice Department to take certain steps to investigate the company's actions, as alleged by the recent reports – including investigating whether TuSimple provided protected information to any Chinese-based entities, and what activities were covered by the company's national security agreement with CFIUS, struck more than two years ago.
Hawley also asked Bondi what actions, if any, DOJ has taken to date to ensure that Bot Auto—a new Texas-based self-driving vehicle company staffed by many former TuSimple employees, "is not engaging in similar behavior."
According to the Wall Street Journal report, TuSimple's actions helped shape new Commerce Department regulations, which blocked the sale of internet-linked cars and different components with links to China. According to the report, a CFIUS investigation determined TuSimple's tech sharing did not violate the official national security agreement— but the company was finned for other infractions, and ultimately paid out a $6 million settlement.
The letter comes as Hawley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, has emerged as one of the Senate's more vocal critics of the Chinese Communist Party, especially as it relates to the conduct of certain U.S. companies, and the sharing of certain intellectual property.
The Trump administration has a new goal of 3,000 arrests of illegal immigrants daily, which was publicly confirmed by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.
"Under President Trump’s leadership, we are looking to set a goal of a minimum of 3,000 arrests for ICE every day," Miller told "Hannity" on Wednesday night, saying the number is going to keep getting bumped higher over time.
His response comes after an Axios report that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Miller were said to be backing the 3,000 daily figure in a meeting last week at ICE headquarters.
On "America’s Newsroom" on Thursday morning, border czar Tom Homan reaffirmed his statement, saying that officials are "asking for an increase" in arrests.
"We’ve gotta increase these arrests and removals," Homan said.
"The numbers are good, but I’m not satisfied. I haven’t been satisfied all year long," noting that there’s a major "public safety" risk with hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants still in the country from the Biden administration and earlier. For those that do not already have rap sheets, DHS is encouraging them to self-deport with a covered commercial flight and an $1,000 stipend for exiting.
During Trump’s first 100 days, ICE arrested 66,463 illegal immigrants, and more than 65,000 illegal immigrants were deported. Of that figure, more than 17,000 had criminal convictions or charges for crimes such as driving under the influence, assault, or "weapon offenses," according to ICE.
The agency deported 17,200 people in April, which is roughly 4,000 higher than the year prior, when former President Joe Biden was in office, according to NBC News.
"Under Secretary Noem, we are delivering on President Trump and the American people’s mandate to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens and make America safe," DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin stated.
The goal increases as the administration pushes Congress to pass the reconciliation bill, which has just been passed by the House. The bill is expected to ramp up funding to get 10,000 more ICE agents and tens of thousands more beds for detention facilities.
"This bill will add infrastructure and technology to make our gains on the borders permanent. It puts more boots on the ground to target cartel activity, alien smuggling, child trafficking and drug smuggling. It will provide the needed funds and manpower to increase the great work of ICE on our deportation operations nationwide," Homan said of the bill after its House passage, according to the White House.
In a report released just two days prior to Musk stepping down, financial watchdog Open The Books published a report finding it is likely impossible for the average American taxpayer to track the savings associated with the contracts and grants that were terminated by the DOGE team.
According to Open The Books' analysis, which mined all the data published on DOGE's official website, the average American taxpayer would likely only be able to confirm 42% of contracts and 27% of grants through an independent review of public federal spending databases.
"This doesn’t mean these targets aren’t real, it simply means it’s very hard for taxpayers who want to see additional savings to find proof and evidence of savings," Open The Books points out in its analysis, shared in a report the group released Tuesday.
"Because taxpayers don’t have access to real-time transparency and a real-time look at the Treasury Payment System, it’s still too difficult for even a highly motivated Joe Taxpayer to confirm the savings claims DOGE is making," the analysis, released ahead of Elon Musk stepping down from running the agency, continued. "It’s also far too easy for critics to sew [sic] doubt and confusion."
DOGE says on its website that the group's work up to this point has provided the American taxpayer with $175 billion in "estimated" savings from the elimination of contracts, grants and leases, as well as through renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion and other mechanisms.
However, DOGE's estimated savings have been contested by watchdog groups and budget experts. Such critics have posited that the inclusion of already canceled contracts, double-counting or misrepresentation of contract values, and the unaccounted cost burden that could be imposed on the government when it has to re-hire folks down the line, or revamp its productivity, due to DOGE cuts, have led to inflated savings estimates.
Nate Malkus, a senior fellow at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, has accused DOGE of "overestimating contracts by a factor of two," according to CBS News.
But White House spokesperson Harrison Fields told Fox News Digital that DOGE has produced "historic savings" for the American people.
"DOGE is working at record speed to cut waste, fraud, and abuse, producing historic savings for the American people," Fields said. "The DOGE Wall of Receipts provides the latest and most accurate information following a thorough assessment, which takes time. Updates to the DOGE savings page will continue to be made promptly, and departments and agencies will keep highlighting the massive savings DOGE is achieving."
"DOGE and Elon Musk have done the country an incredible service by identifying savings targets," added Open The Books CEO John Hart. "Having worked on the last major deficit commission with the late Senator Tom Coburn, we would have been elated to have had Musk in our corner. Now it's up to Congress to not only turn DOGE's recommendations into durable savings but to go beyond DOGE's scope and truly tackle our long-term debt and deficit crisis."
Open The Books highlighted two "common sense" standards to help establish an "intellectually honest" approach to understanding the true impact of government cuts, such as those being recommended by DOGE.
The first is the "durable standard," which asks whether a proposed cut can be easily reversed.
"Describing something as ‘durable’ does not mean it is permanent or irreversible; it simply means it is hard to reverse," the Open The Books' analysis stated. "The most durable budget cut in our constitutional system would be passed by Congress, signed into law by the president and be clearly constitutional, or unassailable in a court challenge. Budget cuts become less durable when they lack any of these three elements."
The second is called a "duty standard," which illuminates the power behind certain cuts based on who is trying to impose them.
"In our constitutional system, the founders gave the job of budget savings to three branches but primarily to Congress," Open The Books points out. "DOGE’s job is to identify, not enact, savings targets. It’s up to Congress to do the heavy lifting. And We the People have a responsibility to be informed and hold our elected officials accountable."
Open The Books ultimately concluded that due to various limitations associated with publicly available data on government spending and revenue, in particular a lack of real-time access to the government's Treasury Payment System, it is still too difficult for even the most motivated average American citizen to either confirm, or deny, the savings claimed by DOGE.
Elon Musk officially stepped down from his role as DOGE chief Thursday evening, as his position of "special government employee" in the Trump administration was limited by law to a few months. Amid the transition, Musk criticized Republicans' spending bill that was passed ahead of Memorial Day in the House, indicating he was "disappointed" it would increase the federal deficit.
"I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing," Musk told CBS News in an interview that will air in full on June 1.
EXCLUSIVE: The Department of Labor is suspending operations of Job Corps centers across the nation after revelations that the program, which costs taxpayers more than $1.7 billion per year, is no longer achieving its intended outcomes and is putting students in danger.
Job Corps was originally created to help young adults build a pathway to a better life through education and community. But Trump administration officials told Fox News Digital that an "in-depth fiscal analysis and a startling number of serious incident reports reveal the program is not helping students achieve intended outcomes or keeping them safe."
The decision to suspend the program comes after the Job Corps transparency report was compiled and released in April, finding that the average graduation rate for the program was just 38.6%.
The graduation rate of the program costs as much as $155,600 per student, the report states. The average cost of a four-year college education in the United States is $153,080, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
Additionally, once those students move through the program, the study found that they are largely being hired in minimum-wage positions, with participants earning $16,695 annually on average after they leave the program.
Currently, there are approximately fewer than 25,000 students enrolled in the Job Corps program, and participants’ safety is "often at risk."
Officials said there were 14,913 serious incident reports filed in 2023. In 2023, 373 instances of inappropriate sexual behavior and sexual assaults were reported; 1,764 acts of violence were reported; 1,167 breaches of safety or security were reported; 2,702 instances of drug use were reported; and 1,808 hospital visits for students were reported.
Trump administration officials told Fox News Digital that the Department of Labor is beginning a phased pause in operations at contractor-operated Job Corp centers nationwide, initiating an orderly transition for students, staff and local communities.
Currently, there are 123 Job Corps centers across the United States, and 99 of the centers are run by contractors administered by the Department of Labor.
An official said that those contracts will be terminated to pause operations. The remaining 24 centers are run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and will not be impacted by the suspension.
The pause of operations at all contractor-operated Job Corps centers will occur by June 30. During the transition, the Department of Labor will collaborate with state and local workforce partners to assist current students in advancing their training and connecting them with education and employment opportunities.
Once the phased suspension occurs, students will be connected to other resources and will be registered within the American Job Center closest to their home and the Labor Exchange system in their home states.
"Job Corps was created to help young adults build a pathway to a better life through education, training, and community," Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer told Fox News Digital. "However, a startling number of serious incident reports and our in-depth fiscal analysis reveal the program is no longer achieving the intended outcomes that students deserve."
Chavez-DeRemer added: "We remain committed to ensuring all participants are supported through this transition and connected with the resources they need to succeed as we evaluate the program’s possibilities."
The Jobs Corps will cost taxpayers $1.7 billion during fiscal year 2025.
The program began in 1964 as part of former President Lyndon B. Johnson’s war on poverty under the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. The program was intended to give young people from low-income backgrounds a chance to gain academic, vocational and social skills in a residential setting.
For program year 2024, Job Corps was operating at a $140 million deficit, requiring centers to be paused to save approximately $119 million to reach the end of this program year.
Department of Labor officials project that in program year 2025 the deficit would grow to $213 million.
"The program has been in a financial crisis for years, creating constant uncertainty for participants and administrators," a Department of Labor official told Fox News Digital.
The official stressed, though, that the Department of Labor is "not eliminating Job Corps," and stressed that only Congress has that authority.
In December 2024, the Biden administration’s Department of Labor instituted a similar pause in operations at two of the Job Corps centers, amid concerns of issues and rising program costs.
Officials said that, at this point, the Job Corps program is financially underwater, and the funds appropriated by Congress for the year will not cover the costs of operations for the remaining program year.
Officials said the pause will allow the department to reassess program alignment with the Trump administration’s "workforce priorities, proposed budget framework, and overall vision for building a modern and effective workforce development program for America’s youth."
There will soon be a leadership shake-up within Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the Department of Homeland Security, Fox News has learned.
The changes include the retirement of Kenneth Genalo, who currently serves as acting executive associate director of ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), sources at the White House and ICE told Fox News. The sources also say that Robert Hammer, executive associate director of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) is being reassigned.
Current deputy special agent in charge Derek Gordon is expected to take over as acting HSI director.
The role changes are only part of a "massive realignment" within ICE, the sources told Fox News. ICE and HSI have not responded to requests for comment.
Word of the changes comes just days after White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller reportedly lashed out at top immigration officials at a May 21 meeting in ICE headquarters, Axios reported Wednesday.
Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem reportedly demanded that ICE start arresting 3,000 people per day as part of the illegal immigration and deportation crackdown.
This week, ICE officers also launched a nationwide initiative to begin arresting illegal immigrants at their immigration and asylum hearings.
The effort targets illegal immigrants who have been in the U.S. fewer than two years. The DHS strategy is to drop their immigration case, arrest the migrant, then place them into expedited deportation proceedings.
The initiative requires the DHS to drop the cases because migrants cannot be put forward for expedited removal if they have a pending case.
GOP Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin indicated that he does not want to run for a fourth Senate term, but he isn't ruling it out.
Johnson, who is serving his third six-year Senate term, said during remarks at a Wednesday event hosted by the Milwaukee Press Club and WisPolitics.com that he learned from his run for a second term that "you can't say … never."
In a 2022 Wall Street Journal piece, Johnson explained his about-face on seeking another term.
"During the 2016 campaign, I said it would be my last campaign and final term. That was my strong preference and my wife’s. We both looked forward to a normal private life," he said. "I believe America is in peril. Much as I’d like to ease into a quiet retirement, I don’t feel I should."
The senator, who has been vocal in objecting to the Trump-backed One Big Beautiful Bill Act that most in the House GOP voted to pass last week, said during his remarks on Wednesday that he would like to place America on a "sustainable course" and return home.
"No, God, what an awful job," he said when asked whether he'd ever run for the presidency. He said he wouldn't want to make the decisions that a commander in chief must make.
FIRST ON FOX — Senate Republicans plan to launch their own investigation next month that delves into the alleged "conspiracy" behind former President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline.
Senators Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, announced plans to hold a Senate Judiciary hearing June 18 to look into the alleged cover-up of the 82-year-old former president’s mental decline while in office by the media and those closest to him.
The lawmakers are still gathering witnesses for the probe, which would be the first full congressional committee hearing on the subject.
"It’s time to expose how a cadre of Biden aides and family members were the de facto commander in chief, while President Biden was sidelined," Schmitt said in a statement to Fox News Digital. "I look forward to getting the American people the answers they deserve."
Both lawmakers contend Biden’s decline was hidden for "years."
Cornyn argued the country depended "on having a president who has the mental capacity to do the job, and it's clear that President Biden did not, so we must use this hearing to uncover the facts."
"For this conspiracy between the mainstream media, Joe Biden’s family and his inner circle to have hidden the impairment of the president of the United States for years, and lied consistently to the American people about his capacity to make decisions, which are solely vested by the Constitution, is unacceptable," Cornyn said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
Schmitt and Cornyn join a growing chorus of Republicans demanding answers about what really went on behind the scenes during Biden’s presidency.
In the House, lawmakers are pushing to create a select committee that would investigate the Biden administration’s alleged cover-up.
Rep. Buddy Carter, R-Ga., is leading the charge to create the panel and introduced legislation Thursday to start the committee that would dive into "the potential concealment of information from the American public" regarding Biden’s health.
And House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., has called on several high-ranking staffers from the Biden White House to participate in transcribed interviews regarding their alleged roles in covering up the former president’s decline.
Comer called on Neera Tanden, the former director of the Domestic Policy Council; former assistant to the President and deputy chief of staff Annie Tomasini; former senior adviser to the first lady Anthony Bernal; former deputy director of Oval Office operations Ashley Williams; and Biden’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, to participate.
The growing fervor among Republicans to uncover whether Biden’s allies and family hid concerns about his health from the public comes after the release of "Original Sin" by CNN host Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson.
Their book claimed the Biden White House was trying to control the narrative about the former president’s health and that his allies worked to cover up his decline.
A federal judge in Washington, D.C., sided with a Chicago-area toy company on Thursday, blocking five executive orders signed by President Donald Trump that imposed tariffs on Chinese imports.
U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras determined the International Economic Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not authorize Trump to impose the tariffs in his executive orders.
Contreras granted a motion for a preliminary injunction, filed by the toy company, Learning Resources, Inc., which will be stayed for 14 days in case the administration decides to appeal the decision.
Trump announced his "Liberation Day" reciprocal tariff plan on April 2, imposing a 10% baseline tariff on all countries.
In certain countries, hostile negotiations led to even higher levies, with taxes on Chinese imports reaching 145%.
Rick Woldenberg, CEO of Learning Resources, said in April the third-generation family business that had been manufacturing in China for four decades would face an almost 98% increase in its tariff bill.
He said the $2.3 million the company paid in 2024 would jump to $100.2 million in 2025.
"I wish I had $100 million," Woldenberg wrote in a statement. "Honest to God, no exaggeration: It feels like the end of days."
China produces 97% of America’s imported baby carriages, 96% of its artificial flowers and umbrellas, 95% of its fireworks, 93% of its children’s coloring books and 90% of its combs, according to a report from the Macquarie investment bank.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled the administration overstepped its authority over tariffs under IEEPA.
"The Constitution assigns Congress the exclusive powers to ‘lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises,’ and to ‘regulate Commerce with foreign Nations,’" the court wrote in its opinion. "The question in the two cases before the court is whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 ('IEEPA') delegates these powers to the President in the form of authority to impose unlimited tariffs on goods from nearly every country in the world."
Three judges, appointed by former Presidents Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, and Trump, found IEEPA did not "confer such unbounded authority."
The Trump administration appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, but it is unclear what goods will be subject to tariffs in the meantime, Reuters reported.
"Foreign countries’ nonreciprocal treatment of the United States has fueled America’s historic and persistent trade deficits," White House spokesperson Kush Desai told FOX Business after the decision. "These deficits have created a national emergency that has decimated American communities, left our workers behind, and weakened our defense industrial base — facts that the court did not dispute."
"It is not for unelected judges to decide how to properly address a national emergency," Desai added. "President Trump pledged to put America First, and the Administration is committed to using every lever of executive power to address this crisis and restore American Greatness."
FOX Business' Greg Wehner and Bill Mears, and Reuters contributed to this report.
FIRST ON FOX— The Justice Department on Thursday formally notified the American Bar Association that it will no longer comply with its ratings process for judicial nominees, the result of what it argues is a biased system and one that "invariably and demonstrably" favors nominees put forth by Democratic administrations.
The letter, sent by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to ABA President William R. Bay, was previewed exclusively to Fox News. It marks the latest escalation in a protracted legal fight that Republicans have waged against the nation's largest association of legal workers.
"For several decades, the American Bar Association has received special treatment and enjoyed special access to judicial nominees," Bondi said in the letter. "In some administrations, the ABA received notice of nominees before a nomination was announced to the public. Some administrations would even decide whether to nominate an individual based on a rating assigned by the ABA."
The Justice Department said in the letter that it will no longer grant the ABA the "special treatment" and first access it has received for years.
"Accordingly, while the ABA is free to comment on judicial nominations along with other activist organizations, there is no justification for treating the ABA differently from such other activist organizations and the Department of Justice will not do so."
It also ended an Office of Legal Policy that directed judicial nominees to provide waivers allowing the ABA access to non-public information for nominees, including bar records.
"Nominees will also not respond to questionnaires prepared by the ABA and will not sit for interviews with the ABA," Bondi said.
The Trump administration's decision to excise the ABA from the judicial nomination process comes after several Republican senators on the Senate committee tasked with vetting judicial nominees told the ABA in a letter earlier this year that they planned to ignore its rating system.
The ABA, established in the late 1800s, has grown into a sprawling organization that touts a membership of over 400,000 legal workers.
But it has sparked criticism from Republicans, including members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, previously blasted the ABA as a "radical left-wing advocacy group."
He and others on the panel previously took aim at the group for embracing so-called "woke initiatives," including its heavy use of diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI efforts, in many facets of its work.
This is not the first time Republican administrations have broken with the ABA. The George W. Bush administration ended the practice of giving the ABA a first look at nominees, and Trump also did so in his first presidential term.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
President Donald Trump and members of his cabinet will spearhead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) efforts, now that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is stepping aside from leading the initiative.
"The DOGE leaders are each and every member of the president's cabinet and the president himself, who is wholeheartedly committed to cutting waste, fraud and abuse from our government," White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Thursday at a White House press briefing.
Since January, Musk has been heading up DOGE, which was tasked with cutting $2 trillion from the federal government's budget through efforts to slash spending, government programs and the federal workforce.
Musk announced his departure in an X post.
"As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending," Musk said on X Wednesday. "The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government."
The estimated revenue impact of the GOP tax plan would be nearly $4 trillion in the negative over a decade, the Joint Committee on Taxation — a nonpartisan committee of the U.S. Congress — has indicated.
A document issued by the committee puts the net total estimated revenue effects at -$3.939368 trillion for fiscal years 2025-2034.
"The problem with all of these studies is they willfully ignore current tax policy. You can’t do that and be taken seriously," an Office of Management and Budget spokesperson indicated.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Joint Committee on Taxation for comment, but no comment had been provided by the time of publication.
The GOP-controlled House of Representatives passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last week, even with the U.S. national debt at more than $36 trillion.
The measure cleared the chamber with zero Democrat votes, and two House Republicans — Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Warren Davidson of Ohio — voting against it.
House Freedom Caucus Chair Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., voted present, explaining in a statement, "I voted to move the bill along in the process for the President. There is still a lot of work to be done in deficit reduction and ending waste, fraud, and abuse in the Medicaid program."
Some Senate Republicans have indicated that they would not be willing to support the measure as it stands coming out of the House.
Elon Musk is not happy with it either. The business tycoon said during an interview for "CBS Sunday Morning" that he was "disappointed to see the massive spending bill," and that the measure undermines the Department of Government Efficiency team's work.
"I'm not happy about certain aspects of it, but I'm thrilled by other aspects of it," President Donald Trump said of the measure when asked about Musk's comments.
Last week, Trump hailed the House's passage of the proposal, calling for the Senate to pass it as well.
"Great job by Speaker Mike Johnson, and the House Leadership, and thank you to every Republican who voted YES on this Historic Bill! Now, it’s time for our friends in the United States Senate to get to work, and send this Bill to my desk AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!" the president declared in part of a Truth Social post last week.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller asserted in a post on X, "I see some self-described libertarians siding with lefty bureaucrats at CBO who claim the Big Beautiful Bill will ‘explode the debt.’ This is based entirely on CBO claiming that extending the current tax rates (not raising them) will 'cost' the government $4 trillion in revenue.
"Since when have libertarians argued that NOT raising taxes ‘costs’ the government money? Private money yet to be earned does not "belong" to the government. This is a Democrat-collectivist argument and I’m shocked to see libertarians deploying it. Under this ludicrous theory, one could raise taxes to 90% on everyone and declare the deficit solved. BBB cuts taxes, cuts spending, reforms welfare and *ends mass migration*," he declared.
The Louisiana rapper who was pardoned by President Donald Trump once said "F--- Donald Trump" in a 2017 song.
NBA YoungBoy, whose real name is Kentrell Gaulden, has been thanking Trump for the reprieve, writing in a recent Instagram post that the president is "giving me the opportunity to keep building -- as a man, as a father, and as an artist."
However, in his song "Red Rum," the 25-year-old Gaulden once rapped "And f--- Donald Trump b----, that NBA s---."
Pardon czar Alice Marie Johnson was asked about the remark during an appearance on "Fox & Friends" earlier this morning.
"So a couple of rappers have come out or let’s say one in particular -- YoungBoy. One of his lyrics in 2017 that he put out is "F Donald Trump" and some more disparaging things to say. He had a violent past of assault and battery. Multiple cases of that, and firearm, drug and fraud charges. What sold you on him getting a second chance?" co-host Brian Kilmeade asked her.
"I looked at the age and how this young man grew up. He grew up in a very impoverished neighborhood. And the things that he had to face, NBA YoungBoy growing up. Most of those were gun charges without the guns being discharged," she said.
"But I also looked at what happened to him on a set where he was filming a video and he had a prop in the set. That’s really where this came from. He didn’t come out of prison. He was given a pardon so he could have a new beginning. And the officers who in this particular case they came at him as though he was a terrorist and he was on a set, filming for a video. They gave him a gun charge for that... the officers who did this were all investigated and fired. So I look at the elements of what happened to this young man," Johnson added.
Last year, Gaulden was sentenced by a federal judge in Utah after he acknowledged possessing weapons despite being a convicted felon. However, he reached an agreement that resolved Utah state charges against him and settled two sets of federal charges against him -- one carried a 23-month sentence and the other ordered five years of probation and a $200,000 fine.
"I want to thank President Trump for granting me a pardon and for giving me the opportunity to keep building -- as a man, as a father, and as an artist," Gaulden, whose stage moniker stands for "Never Broke Again," wrote on his Instagram. "This moment means a lot."
"It opens the door to a future I’ve worked hard for and I am fully prepared to step into this," Gaulden added.
Gaulden was released from federal prison in March and sent to home confinement after receiving credit for time served, his attorney Drew Findling told the Associated Press. With home confinement finished last month, the pardon means he won't have to follow the terms of his probation, including drug testing, he said.
The rapper has acknowledged that he possessed a Glock 21 .45-caliber pistol and a Masterpiece Arms MPA30T 9mm handgun while filming a rap video in Baton Rouge. He has also said he had a Sig Sauer 9mm semi-automatic pistol at his home in Huntsville, Utah. He had agreed to give up the guns.
Gaulden had previously been convicted in Louisiana of aggravated assault with a firearm. He had also pleaded guilty in November to his role in a prescription drug fraud ring that operated out of his home in Utah. He had to pay a $25,000 fine and was given no prison time.
Only a single member of former President Joe Biden's Cabinet responded to a massive outreach effort from Fox News Digital asking if the more than two dozen Cabinet-level officials stood by previous remarks that Biden was mentally and physically fit to serve as president.
And even that lone statement, from former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, skirted addressing head-on whether he had witnessed instances of Biden's now widely acknowledged cognitive issues.
"I met with President Biden when needed to make important decisions and to execute with my team at HHS," Becerra said. "It’s clear the President was getting older, but he made the mission clear: run the largest health agency in the world, expand care to millions more Americans than ever before, negotiate down the cost of prescription drugs, and pull us out of a world-wide pandemic. And we delivered."
Roughly four months after Biden's Oval Office exit, a handful of political books detailing the 2024 campaign and Biden administration have hit store shelves and are painting a bleak picture of Biden's health. Adding fuel to the fire, audio recordings of Biden's October 2023 interview with former Special Counsel Robert Hur showed the former president tripping over his words, slurring sentences, taking long pauses between answers and struggling to remember key moments in his life, including the year his son Beau died of cancer.
Fox News Digital has written extensively dating back to the 2020 presidential campaign about Biden's cognitive decline and his inner circle’s role in covering it up.
Becerra's statement stood in marked contrast to the silence emanating from the rest of his former colleagues. Fox News Digital reached out to 26 Biden administration officials with Cabinet-level positions — from former Vice President Kamala Harris to former Chief of Staff Jeff Zients — asking whether they still believe that Biden was fit to serve as president, or whether they've had a change of heart amid the cascade of damning evidence and anecdotes portraying a mental decline.
If a majority of those Cabinet-level officials believed Biden to be unable to perform his duties, they could have attempted to remove him from office through the 25th Amendment. Instead, those officials repeatedly said at the time that Biden was competent and in command.
That talking point hasn't abated among the former officials.
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg weighed in on Biden's presidential health earlier in May during a town hall with veterans and military families in Iowa.
When asked during the event whether Biden experienced cognitive decline, Buttigieg told reporters that "every time I needed something from him from the West Wing, I got it."
"The time I worked closest with him in his final year was around the Baltimore bridge collapse," he added. "And what I can tell you is that the same president the world saw addressing that was the president I was in the Oval with, insisting that we do a good job, do right by Baltimore. And that was characteristic of my experience with him."
Buttigieg did not elaborate when responding to a separate inquiry from Fox News Digital.
Biden's office recently revealed that the former president was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer that had metastasized and was undergoing treatment.
The diagnosis sparked an outpouring of well-wishes from political leaders across both aisles, and shock from some doctors who said such cancer should have been caught before it advanced and metastasized.
None of Biden's annual physical health reports as president tested for prostate cancer, Fox News Digital previously reported, with a representative confirming Biden's last-known prostate blood test was conducted in 2014.
The 2024 presidential debate between Biden and President Donald Trump opened the floodgates of criticism surrounding Biden's mental acuity after the 46th president's poor performance, which included Biden losing his train of thought and stumbling over his words.
Concerns over Biden's mental acuity had simmered for years among conservatives, but it wasn't until the June 2024 presidential debate that traditional Democrat allies and media outlets began questioning Biden's health and openly called for him to drop out of the race.
Despite mounting concerns, members of Biden's Cabinet vowed he was of sound health and mind.
Then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement in September 2024, for example, that he has "full confidence in President Biden’s ability to carry out his job."
"As I’ve said before, I come fully prepared for my meetings with President Biden, knowing his questions will be detail-oriented, probing, and exacting," he said. "In our exchanges, the President always draws upon our prior conversations and past events in analyzing the issues and reaching his conclusions."
Conservatives in 2024 floated calling for the invocation of the 25th Amendment to remove Biden, which would have required Harris and the majority of the Cabinet to declare him unfit to lead. Harris and the Cabinet did not take such steps during the administration, and instead defended his health.
In July 2024, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo called Biden "one of the most accomplished presidents in American history and continues to effectively lead our country with a steady hand."
"As someone who is actually in the room when the President meets with the Cabinet and foreign leaders, I can tell you he is an incisive and extraordinary leader," Raimondo said at the time.
Since Biden's exit from the White House in January, political journalists have published a handful of books arguing that, behind the scenes of the administration, staffers were concerned about Biden's health.
"Biden's physical deterioration — most apparent in his halting walk — had become so severe that there were internal discussions about putting the president in a wheelchair, but they couldn't do so until after the election," according to a new book written by CNN's Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson, "Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again."
"Given Biden's age, (his physician Kevin O'Connor) also privately said that if he had another bad fall, a wheelchair might be necessary for what could be a difficult recovery," the authors wrote.
While another newly released book by longtime D.C. reporters Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, "Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House," investigated Biden's mental decline in the lead-up to the general election, calling him a "shell of himself."
"All of them," Parnes told Vanity Fair in April of who in Biden's inner circle was most to blame for covering up his mental decline when he was in office.
"It’s pretty remarkable how they kept him very closed off," Parnes said. "He was a shell of himself. When he entered the White House, he was so, so different from the man who I covered as vice president, a guy who would hold court in the Naval Observatory with reporters until the wee hours."
"We’d been watching Biden’s decline for a long period of time and, honestly, thought he had lost his fastball some when he was running in 2020," Allen added of Biden's mental decline. "And it was still so shocking to see the leader of the free world so bereft of coherent thought."
Earlier in May, hours of Biden's October 2023 interview with Hur's office were released to the public and underscored the president's apparent mental decline from his days as a senator from Delaware.
Hur led an investigation into Biden's handling of classified documents after Biden's departure as vice president during the Obama administration. The then-special counsel announced in February 2024 he would not recommend criminal charges against Biden for possessing classified materials after his vice presidency, saying Biden is "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."
Hur came under fire from Biden, Harris and other Democrats in 2024 for suggesting in the report that Biden could not remember when his son Beau died. Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015.
In February 2024, following the release of the report, Biden shot back at Hur: "There’s some attention paid to some language in the report about my recollection of events. There’s even a reference that I don’t remember when my son died. How in the hell dare he raise that?"
The recently released audio recordings show it was Biden who brought up his son and could not remember when Beau died.
"So, during this time when you were living at Chain Bridge Road and there were documents relating to the Penn Biden Center, or the Biden Institute, or the Cancer Moonshot or your book, where did you keep papers that related to those things that you were actively working on?" Hur asked Biden in the interview.
"Well, um … I, I, I, I, I don't know. This is, what, 2017, 2018, that area?" Biden responded.
"Yes, sir," Hur said.
"Remember, in this timeframe, my son is either been deployed or is dying, and, and so it was and by the way, there were still a lot of people at the time when I got out of the Senate that were encouraging me to run in this period, except the president," Biden continued. "I'm not — and not a mean thing to say. He just thought that she (Hillary Clinton) had a better shot of winning the presidency than I did. And so I hadn't, I hadn't, at this point — even though I'm at Penn, I hadn't walked away from the idea that I may run for office again. But if I ran again, I'd be running for president. And, and so what was happening, though — what month did Beau die? Oh, God, May 30th."
Others present during the interview responded that Beau Biden died in 2015.
Trump has called an alleged cover-up of Biden's health a "scandal" and has argued that White House staffers were controlling the administration through the use of an autopen.
Autopen signatures are automatically produced by a machine, as opposed to an authentic, handwritten signature. The conservative Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project first investigated the Biden administration's use of an autopen earlier in 2025 and found that the same signature was on a bevvy of executive orders and other official documents, while Biden’s signature on the document announcing his departure from the 2024 race varied from the apparent machine-produced signature.
