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 adviser 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 adviser Peter Navarro, communications director Steven Cheung, and homeland security adviser Stephen Miller.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is chief among these, not receiving any compensation for his White House role as national security adviser. 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.
Trump donated his salary to government agencies during his first term in office, but he has not clarified whether he will do the same during his second term.
The White House did not immediately respond when asked about Trump's compensation.
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."
President Donald Trump took to Truth Social early Thursday to call out Republicans who are still refusing to get behind a House procedural vote on the "Big Beautiful Bill."
With the vote having stalled late Wednesday – with five Republican "nays" and another eight Republicans having yet to cast a vote – the president touted the benefits the country is poised to gain with the bill’s passage.
"Largest Tax Cuts in History and a Booming Economy vs. Biggest Tax Increase in History, and a Failed Economy," Trump wrote on Truth Social before turning his ire to GOP holdouts: "What are the Republicans waiting for??? What are you trying to prove??? MAGA IS NOT HAPPY, AND IT’S COSTING YOU VOTES!!!"
Trump later wrote that the vote should be an "EASY YES" for Republicans, calling the holdouts’ refusal to vote, "RIDICULOUS."
A procedural "rule vote" allows lawmakers to debate ahead of a final vote on the "Big Beautiful Bill" before it would head to the president’s desk for a signature.
By early Thursday, the following House Republicans were a no on the procedural vote: Reps. Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Keith Self of Texas, Victoria Spartz of Indiana, and Thomas Massie of Kentucky – who changed his vote from a "yay" to a "nay."
When asked why he switched his vote, Massie told Fox News Digital, "Because most of the world isn’t concerned about the difference between the rule resolution vote and the final passage vote."
The following Republican lawmakers have yet to cast their vote: Reps. Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Eric Burlison of Missouri, Michael Cloud of Texas, Andy Harris of Maryland, Bob Onder of Missouri, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, and Chip Roy of Texas.
Leaving a room with other holdouts and critics of the bill just after 1 a.m. on Thursday, Burchett told reporters, "We're just getting very close, I think, to getting something resolved."
He would not say how he would vote for the legislation, however.
GOP lawmakers can only afford to lose three votes. Republican leaders have now kept the rule vote open for over four hours to try to pressure the holdouts to get a majority vote.
House Speaker Mike Johnson had recalled lawmakers to Washington, eager to seize on the momentum of the bill's passage the day before in the Senate and vowed to press ahead.
"Everybody wants to get to yes," Johnson told Fox News as the voting was underway.
Quickly convening for the vote on the more than 800-page bill was risky gambit, one designed to meet Trump's demand for a holiday finish. Republicans have struggled mightily with the bill nearly every step of the way this year, often succeeding by the narrowest of margins, only one vote.
Their slim 220-212 majority, leaving little room for defections.
The Senate’s version of the "one big, beautiful bill" includes a tiny, 1% tax on international cash transfers — called a remittance tax — which, according to experts, will have a major impact on immigrants working in the U.S.
A remittance is a money transfer to another country outside the U.S., which is a common practice among immigrant workers who send part of their wages back to family in their native countries. Tens of billions of dollars in remittances are sent to other countries from the U.S. every year.
Earlier versions of the bill included higher tax rates and specifically targeted illegal immigrants sending money outside the U.S. The current version of the "big, beautiful bill," however, imposes a 1% fee only on cash transfers, not electronic transfers, sent to other countries. U.S. citizens who want to send cash to other countries will also be subject to the 1% tax.
The tax is expected to generate $10 billion in extra revenue for the federal government, according to an estimate done by Politico.
Besides generating extra revenue, Lora Ries, director of the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital that the remittance tax has the potential to discourage illegal immigration into the U.S. by making it harder to send money back home.
"Illegal aliens generally want five things when coming to the U.S.: to enter, to remain here, work, send money home (remittances), and bring family and/or have children here," she explained. "Prevent those five things, and you prevent illegal immigration and encourage self-deportation."
The administration has been pushing hard for illegal immigrants to self-deport, incentivizing them by offering to front the cost of commercial flights and providing a $1,000 stipend to those who opt to self-deport. Ries said the remittance tax could be another effective strategy besides ICE raids that could help to crack down on illegal immigration into the country and reduce the number of illegal immigrants in the U.S.
Ries said, however, that the 1% needs to be much higher to be effective.
"A 1% tax only on cash transfers does very little. The tax should be much higher and cover all types of money transfers," she said.
"Until now, the U.S. government has not touched the annual billions of dollars going out of the country, not benefiting the U.S. economy," she went on. "Remittances should be taxed to discourage unauthorized employment and its earnings."
Meanwhile, Ariel Ruiz Soto, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, told Fox News Digital that though he believes the remittance tax will have a significant impact, it may not be in the way the Trump administration hopes.
He argued that discouraging remittances to countries like El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras — where such payments account for more than 20% of the GDP — could actually drive more migration from those nations.
"If you're Honduras, if you're El Salvador and Guatemala, even a 1% tax, if it decreases the remittances, could actually be a significant toll in the development of those countries," he said. "If the remains were actually to decrease significantly, that could potentially backfire on President Trump's agenda to reduce irregular migration because he could actually make circumstances, economic circumstances in these countries more difficult and spur new irregular immigration in the future."
The House of Representatives is currently considering the Senate’s version of the "big, beautiful bill."
President Donald Trump’s Justice Department filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court on Wednesday, seeking to overturn lower court rulings that blocked the administration from firing three Biden-appointed regulators.
The emergency appeal asks the High Court to allow the Trump administration to fire three members of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), a five-member independent regulatory board that sets standards and oversees safety for thousands of consumer products. The appeal comes after the Supreme Court, in May, granted a separate emergency appeal request from the Trump administration pertaining to the firing of two Biden-appointed agency officials from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB).
"It's outrageous that we must once again seek Supreme Court intervention because rogue leftist judges in lower courts continue to defy the high court's clear rulings," said White House spokesperson Harrison Fields.
"The Supreme Court decisively upheld the president's constitutional authority to fire and remove executive officers exercising his power, yet this ongoing assault by activist judges undermines that victory," he continued. "President Trump remains committed to fulfilling the American people's mandate by effectively leading the executive branch, despite these relentless obstructions."
Mary Boyle, Alexander Hoehn-Saric and Richard Trumka Jr. were appointed to serve seven-year terms on the independent government agency by former President Joe Biden. Their positions have historically been protected from retribution, as they can only be terminated for neglect or malfeasance.
After Trump attempted to fire the three Democratic regulators, they sued, arguing the president sought to remove them without due cause. Eventually, a federal judge in Maryland agreed with them, and this week an appeals court upheld that ruling.
However, according to the emergency appeal from the Trump administration, submitted to the High Court on Wednesday morning, the three regulators in question have shown "hostility to the President's agenda" and taken actions that have "thrown the agency into chaos."
The emergency appeal to the Supreme Court added that "none of this should be possible" after the High Court ruled in favor of the Trump administration's decision to fire two executive branch labor relations officials.
"None of this should be possible after Wilcox, which squarely controls this case. Like the NLRB and MSPB in Wilcox, the CPSC exercises 'considerable executive power,' 145 S. Ct. at 1415—for instance, by issuing rules, adjudicating administrative proceedings, issuing subpoenas, bringing enforcement suits seeking civil penalties, and (with the concurrence of the Attorney General) even prosecuting criminal cases," Solicitor General John Sauer wrote in the emergency appeal to the Supreme Court.
The request, according to Politico, will go to Chief Justice John Roberts, who is in charge of emergency appeals stemming from the appeals court that upheld the previous Maryland court ruling blocking the Trump administration's firings.
A Biden-appointed federal judge on Tuesday stepped in to halt the Trump administration's efforts to dramatically reorganize the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) after 19 Democratic attorneys general sued to stop the reforms.
HHS announced in March it would be laying off around 20,000 full-time agency employees, while also reducing the number of regional offices across the country and consolidating several HHS divisions. A fact sheet from HHS about the cuts said the reforms were aimed at making the agency more efficient, saving money and ensuring Americans' most critical health needs are adequately met.
In response, 19 Democratic state attorneys general sued to block the Trump administration's reforms. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose granted a temporary injunction in their favor.
DuBose's ruling Tuesday temporarily blocks the Trump administration from enforcing its proposed workforce reduction or sub-agency restructuring, and HHS was also ordered to file a status report by July 11.
"We stand by our original decision to realign this organization with its core mission and refocus a sprawling bureaucracy that, over time, had become wasteful, inefficient and resistant to change," HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said in response to the ruling.
"The reorganization was designed to restore the department around bold, measurable public health goals like reversing the chronic disease epidemic and advancing U.S. leadership in biomedical research. While we strongly disagree with the decision by a Biden-appointed district court judge, HHS remains committed to modernizing a health workforce that for too long prioritized institutional preservation over meaningful public health impact."
In DuBose's ruling Tuesday, she asked both parties to address how that ruling affects the scope of her order, if at all, by July 11.
"HHS is the backbone of our nation’s public health and social safety net – from cancer screenings and maternal health to early childhood education and domestic violence prevention," said New York Attorney General Letitia James, one of the 19 state attorneys general who sued to stop the Trump administration's reduction in force at HHS.
"Today's order guarantees these programs and services will remain accessible and halts the administration’s attempt to sabotage our nation’s healthcare system. My office will continue fighting to stop this unlawful dismantling and defend the essential services that protect our most vulnerable communities."
Since the Trump administration began its restructuring at HHS, some employees who were let go have been brought back.
During a CBS News interview in April, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said, in some instances, personnel were cut that should not have been.
"We're reinstating them. And that was always the plan. Part of the — at DOGE, we talked about this from the beginning, is we're going to do 80% cuts, but 20% of those are going to have to be reinstated, because we'll make mistakes," Kennedy said in April.
Former President George W. Bush joined up with former President Barack Obama and U2 singer Bono to comfort United States Agency for International Development employees Monday, while also taking shots at President Donald Trump and his administration for shuttering the agency plagued by accusations of fraud and abuse.
"Gutting USAID is a travesty, and it’s a tragedy," Obama said in a video that was shown to departing USAID employees Monday, according to the Associated Press. "Because it’s some of the most important work happening anywhere in the world."
Obama summed up the decision to shutter the agency as "a colossal mistake," and added that "sooner or later, leaders on both sides of the aisle will realize how much you are needed."
Bush, Obama and Bono spoke to departing USAID employees Monday in a videoconference as the agency officially was shuttered following the Trump administration's reporting that it was overrun with alleged corruption and mismanagement. The videoconference did not include members of the media, with the Associated Press reviewing and reporting on clips of the conference later that day.
USAID is an independent U.S. agency that was established under the Kennedy administration to administer economic aid to foreign nations. It was one of the first agencies investigated by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in early February for alleged mismanagement and government overspending, with DOGE's then-leader Elon Musk slamming the agency as "a viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America."
USAID officially was absorbed by the State Department Tuesday.
Bush, who overwhelmingly has shied away from publicly criticizing Trump, lamented in his recorded message to the staffers that the end of USAID marks an end to his administration's work rolling out an AIDS and HIV program that is credited with saving 25 million people nationwide.
"You’ve showed the great strength of America through your work — and that is your good heart,’’ Bush told USAID staffers, according to the Associated Press. "Is it in our national interests that 25 million people who would have died now live? I think it is, and so do you."
Bono of U2 fame recited a poem he wrote reflecting on USAID's closure and his claims that millions around the world will likely now die, according to the Associated Press.
"They called you crooks. When you were the best of us," Bono said.
Fox News Digital reached out to Obama's and Bush's respective offices Wednesday morning for additional comment, but did not receive responses.
Other longtime Trump foes, such as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, thanked foreign service officers for their work before USAID's closure.
"In all my years of service, I found that foreign service officers and development professionals were among the most dedicated public servants I encountered," Clinton posted to X Tuesday. "Their work saves lives and makes the world safer. Today, and every day, I stand with them."
Obama and Bush overwhelmingly have remained tight-lipped on their views of Trump under his second administration, with both former presidents attending Trump's inauguration and not weighing in on the majority of Trump's policies. Obama has taken issue with Trump's "big, beautiful bill," which is clearing its final hurdles to passage and will fund Trump's agenda on social media, while Bush has consistently shied away from public rebukes of Trump in recent history.
Bono previously has claimed that cuts to USAID would kill hundreds of thousands of people, and had slammed Trump in 2016 as "potentially the worst idea that ever happened to America."
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was serving as acting administrator of USAID, announced the State Department absorbed USAID's foreign assistance programs Tuesday after decades of failing to ensure the programs it funded actually supported America's interests.
"Beyond creating a globe-spanning NGO industrial complex at taxpayer expense, USAID has little to show since the end of the Cold War," Rubio wrote in his announcement. "Development objectives have rarely been met, instability has often worsened, and anti-American sentiment has only grown."
"This era of government-sanctioned inefficiency has officially come to an end," he continued. "Under the Trump Administration, we will finally have a foreign funding mission in America that prioritizes our national interests. As of July 1st, USAID will officially cease to implement foreign assistance. Foreign assistance programs that align with administration policies—and which advance American interests—will be administered by the State Department, where they will be delivered with more accountability, strategy, and efficiency."
The shuttering comes after DOGE gutted USAID as part of Trump's effort to remove waste, fraud and abuse from the federal government earlier in 2025.
Trump repeatedly had touted DOGE's work uncovering fraud and mismanagement within the federal government, including in his March address before Congress celebrating that DOGEidentified $22 billion in government "waste," including at USAID.
"Forty-five million dollars for diversity, equity and inclusion scholarships in Burma," Trump said as he rattled off various examples of federal waste. "Forty million to improve the social and economic inclusion of sedentary migrants. Nobody knows what that is. Eight million to promote LGBTQI+ in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of. Sixty million dollars for indigenous peoples and Afro-Colombian empowerment in Central America. Sixty million. Eight million for making mice transgender."
MSNBC host Rev. Al Sharpton has called on Andrew Cuomo to drop out of the New York City mayoral race, urging the former governor to consider what would be in the best interest of New York City residents.
"I think Andrew Cuomo should look at what is best for the city and let them have a one-on-one race," Sharpton said on MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ on Wednesday.
Sharpton, adding that he had previously reached out to the Cuomo camp to encourage the former governor to drop out, said that Cuomo removing his name from the NYC mayoral ballot this fall would also be in "the best interest" of the legacy of the 56th Governor of New York.
"He can endorse one or the other and let them have a battle over what is best for New York," Sharpton said.
In response to a question about Sharpton's comments, a spokesperson for Cuomo's campaign told Fox News Digital in an email that "everyone is entitled to their own political opinion."
"We understand President Trump supports Eric Adams, and do not believe socialism is the answer," the spokesperson said. "Most New Yorkers are not Trumpers, and most New Yorkers are not socialists — the majority lies in the middle. We will continue to assess the current situation in the best interest of the people of the City of New York."
Also on Wednesday, President Donald Trump vowed to "save New York City" from mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. Mamdani has faced criticism from conservatives and even some Democrats over his socialist policies and refusal to condemn terrorism-linked rhetoric.
"As President of the United States, I’m not going to let this Communist Lunatic destroy New York," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "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!"
In a victory over Cuomo and nine other candidates, Mamdani on Tuesday was officially declared the winner of New York City's Democratic Party primary for mayor.
The New York City Board of Elections posted the official results of three rounds of the ranked choice voting from last week's mayoral primary, and Mamdani grabbed a majority in the third round, with 56% of the vote.
Eric Adams and Zohran Mamdani did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
There is a healthcare crisis brewing in the nation’s heartland, as evidenced by a landmark study conducted by the RAND Corporation in conjunction with top national emergency physicians.
The study from the Arlington nonprofit research institute found that emergency rooms (ERs) are no longer the safety net but the proverbial "front door" to the U.S. healthcare system, particularly after a 1986 law passed requiring ERs to stabilize patients or deliver babies from women in labor regardless of their ability to pay.
That has led to instability and hospital closures across the heartland, including in states where a dozen or more have closed, like Texas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. States like West Virginia, Pennsylvania, the Carolinas and Alabama have also been affected.
"This RAND study is the first ever that points to this crisis, which is that the emergency departments and the care that patients receive in them usually is so critical that, especially for time-sensitive conditions that patients can have, just the fact that you have to travel as far as you might have to, or that even in some cases if a hospital is close to you, but it still doesn't have the resources to operate efficiently," said Dr. Randy Pilgrim, an ER doctor and chief medical officer for emergency room services company SCP Health in Atlanta.
"[I]n emergency medicine, we do time-sensitive, high-quality care as long as we have the resources to do it. And this study shows that we really have a crisis brewing here."
Nearly $5.9 billion in emergency services go unpaid every year, the study found. Overcrowding and spates of violence towards staff have exacerbated the problem.
EMTALA, the aforementioned law, is essentially an unfunded mandate in many cases, and lack of funding for hospitals that treat a large proportion of that uncompensated care — which tends to fall in rural areas or poor neighborhoods in cities — leads to the dual issue of higher patient volumes and more uninsured patients being seen.
Many hospitals outside of cities cannot fully account for the funding gap, Pilgrim said.
"The economics of reimbursement for physician care play a huge role. … We need more physicians generally in America, and we need physicians to feel like they can and will go to where they're needed," he said.
"Physicians won't go where they are needed if there's not enough resources or reimbursement to attract them."
Rural hospitals characteristically pay less than higher-end urban hospitals and have fewer local resources.
With hospital demand "higher than ever," all of the above factors mean help is needed now.
Pilgrim said he has met with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and other top officials at the agency, to discuss the issue — and hopes Washington can help.
"Secretary Kennedy… did a beautiful job of listening to what we were saying about the impending crisis that would probably happen during this administration," Pilgrim said.
"And he was concerned about it because he could tell that you can't make patients healthy unless you have a healthy healthcare system for them to engage. So I'm very encouraged about what Secretary Kennedy and his staff are doing to try to make a difference on the pieces that they control."
He also said Congress must act, particularly as 10,000 Americans turn 65 every day and are therefore eligible for Medicare, which presents a different environment than separate Medicaid.
"That's where we see more volume of patients, more complexity, and much more clinical demand. But if the reimbursement in Medicare doesn't keep pace with that demand, once again, you're in this vicious cycle where emergency departments will be at greater risk, starting with the rural and underserved areas and moving forward from there."
Some in Congress have banded together to advocate for healthcare-related issues, including members of the bicameral "Doctors Caucus."
One member, Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., is a urologist from Greenville who previously served as chief of staff at a Level-I trauma center. "Congress cannot leave rural America behind," he said.
"The most important thing Congress can do is to fix dwindling Medicare reimbursements for rural providers and ensure health insurance companies don’t play games with denied care and denied payments," he said, pinning the decrease at 33% since 2001 if adjusted for inflation," Murphy told Fox News Digital.
The lawmaker added that many hospitals in his area do not have commercial payers as part of their funding sources to help offset losses from Medicare and Medicaid disbursement amounts — and that all hospitals must root out waste as well.
Pilgrim was also asked why Americans outside the heartland with more reliable emergency care should be supportive of added funding or resources miles away from them.
"In a large city like Atlanta, if rural healthcare is not healthy and patients have to go somewhere else, they will eventually end up in your hospital… So spending a dollar somewhere else besides in your own hospital if you're in a better place makes a lot of sense for you…" he said.
The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Brendan Carr, delivered his first major speech in his new role with the Trump administration, announcing six priorities he plans to focus on during his tenure, including pushing the United States to dominate the "space economy."
"Continuing to move vertically from the ground to the airwaves. Next up is space," Carr said during a speech in South Dakota Wednesday afternoon. "The Build America agenda will expand America's space economy. The Final Frontier is home to an emerging constellation of satellites that have become an essential part of America's economic and geopolitical strategy. So I want to see U.S. companies dominate in orbit.
"Our efforts on this front will be driven by a few key guiding principles: speed, simplicity, security and satellite spectrum abundance," Carr continued.
Carr served as an FCC commissioner since 2017, before Trump tapped him to serve as the agency's chair as of Trump's inauguration in January. Carr traveled to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on Wednesday to deliver his speech at the headquarters of a telecommunications infrastructure construction company called VIKOR.
The speech was dubbed the "Build America Agenda" and outlined six priorities the Federal Communications Commission will tackle under Carr's leadership.
On the topic of dominating the space economy, Carr said the FCC is already making progress.
The FCC is "clearing backlogs of applications for satellite systems," he said. "And this type of acceleration is certainly needed. In fact, if you look back over the past couple of years, it actually took a faster amount of time for America's innovators and entrepreneurs to build and launch satellite constellations, than it would take for federal agencies in Washington to process the paperwork necessary to approve those launches. But that ends here."
"The Build America agenda will inject rocket fuel into our licensing process by standardizing our reviews through more objective metrics, protecting America's orbital advantage for years to come," he said.
Carr outlined that the other five priorities include: unleashing high-speed infrastructure builds, restoring America’s leadership in wireless, cutting red tape and modernizing FCC operations, advancing national security and public safety and strengthening America’s workforce.
The FCC chief remarked that the FCC still has rules on the books related to the use of telegraphs and "rabbit ear broadcast TV receivers" and that his leadership will clear the agency of outdated guidance and focus on the future.
"The FCC right now still has rules on the books regulating telegraph service, rabbit ear broadcast TV receivers and phone booths," he said. "Starting next month, that will change, and doing so in eliminating those outdated rules, the FCC will move directly to delete 40 rules or requirements, and over 7,000 words from the Code of Federal Regulations. A good step forward."
Carr said that he and President Donald Trump are focused on keeping America as a tech leader, including broadening its 5G capabilities and beating China in the artificial intelligence race.
"One of the very first actions that I took when I became chairman of the FCC was to establish a new council on National Security within the agency," he said. "Our Build Agenda will ensure that the U.S. extends its lead over China in the race for critical technologies. Whether it's 5G, 6G or AI, we're going to do so by making sure that U.S. businesses and the standards they set continue to be the gold standard for businesses all across the world."
President Donald Trump's legislative agenda temporarily ground to a halt in the House of Representatives Wednesday afternoon.
Plans for an early afternoon vote to begin debate on Trump's "big, beautiful bill" slipped away as both conservative concerns and weather delays led to issues in passing two procedural votes ahead of the critical measure.
It's not clear if the key vote will proceed today at this point. House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., one of the bill's biggest critics, told reporters a vote was still "possible."
"No, not yet," he said when asked if he was getting what he needed from the White House to support the measure. "But the evening is so young."
House GOP leaders had hoped to vote to begin debate on the vast tax and immigration bill, a maneuver known as a "rule vote," with the goal of teeing up a vote on the legislation's final passage by late Wednesday or early Thursday at the latest.
The president has directed Republicans to get a bill to his desk for a signature by the Fourth of July, though he's suggested in some recent comments he would not mind a delay of a few days.
The rule vote was meant to be the third in an early afternoon series of three votes. As of early evening Wednesday, that vote is still being held open, and the House floor is effectively paralyzed.
Lawmakers who expected a vote were told to return to their offices to await further instructions.
Multiple House Freedom Caucus members who left a meeting next to the House floor declined to comment on what they discussed, but several have made clear in recent days that they have serious issues with the Senate's version of Trump's agenda bill.
The mammoth piece of legislation includes Trump's agenda on taxes, the border, energy, defense and the national debt.
Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought was seen briefly entering and exiting the room where the fiscal hawks were gathered.
He said little to reporters other than announcing they were "making good progress" on his way out of the room.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, suggested that conservatives were speaking with the Trump administration about how Republicans could make up for what they saw as deficiencies in the current version of the bill.
Fiscal hawks were angered by last-minute moves made to placate Senate GOP moderates who were uneasy about the bill's near-immediate phase-out of most green energy tax subsidies in former President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
They've also argued the Senate's bill would add more to the federal deficit than the House's earlier version, though Senate Republicans have pushed back.
"We were not happy with what the Senate produced. We thought there was a path forward as of late last week, even though I had concerns in public about them. But then they jammed it through at the last minute in a way that, you know, we're not overly excited about," Roy said. "So, now we're trying to understand what our options are from this point."
Other representatives, like Keith Self, R-Texas, and Josh Brecheen, R-Okla., declined to comment about the meeting to reporters.
Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., who is not a member of the Freedom Caucus but had some concerns about the bill, told reporters when leaving the meeting, "I’m just waiting to see what’s going on honestly. Everybody’s just discussing what’s going on and trying to get to some [resolution]."
Burchett told reporters earlier he was leaning in favor of voting to debate the bill.
But Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., can afford just three defections to still pass the bill along party lines.
"We're going to get there tonight," Johnson told reporters.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey played a leading role on the eight-member team that prosecuted rapper Sean "Diddy" Combs in a sex trafficking and racketeering trial that came to a close Wednesday with mixed results.
The daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, Maurene Comey faced a setback when the jury found the performer not guilty of some of the most serious charges, including racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking. However, the jury did side with prosecutors on two counts, finding Combs guilty of violating the Mann Act of 1910 by transporting women across state lines for prostitution.
SDNY is the same stepping stone her father, James Comey, used to catapult himself to national prominence.
The ex-FBI director and prominent Trump foe worked similarly as a federal prosecutor there in the 1980s, when noted Trump ally Rudolph Giuliani was the Reagan-appointed U.S. attorney.
He returned to Manhattan in the 2000s after former President George W. Bush appointed him to the role once held by "America’s Mayor."
Lately, the elder Comey received blowback for posting a photo of stones on a beach in the shape of "86 47," which many observers considered to be a wish for President Donald Trump's death – with "86" being a cipher for "kill" and "47" denoting Trump as the 47th president.
In court, Maurene Comey offered the prosecution’s rebuttal prior to the jury being sent off to deliberate the charges against Combs.
Maurene Comey argued from the dais that Combs "never thought the women he abused would have the courage to speak out loud what he had done to them," and suggested the rapper believed he was "untouchable."
She also offered arguments that Combs had been involved in firebombing a Porsche owned by rapper Scott "Kid Cudi" Mescudi, according to TMZ.
At the close of the trial, Maurene Comey argued to Judge Arun Subramanian that Combs should be denied the bond requested by defense attorney Marc Agnifilo.
"There is serious relevant conduct here that will merit a lengthy period of incarceration," she said, according to the New York Post.
While occupationally a proverbial chip off the old block, Maurene Comey has remained largely silent during James Comey’s recurring controversies, from his "86 47" post that drew demands for investigation by the Secret Service to his rhetorical battles with Trump.
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…
- Trump to begin enforcing birthright citizenship order as early as this month, DOJ says
- Trump could arm Israel with US' most effective weapons against Iran's nuclear threat under new proposal
- Dems at a crossroads as establishment plans 'Project 2029' while socialist candidate wins NYC mayoral primary
President Donald Trump on Tuesday visited "Alligator Alcatraz" — the newest illegal immigrant detention facility in the nation that's located in the Florida Everglades and surrounded by swamplands teeming with alligators and pythons.
"It's known as ‘Alligator Alcatraz,’ which is very appropriate because I looked outside, and that's not a place I want to go hiking anytime soon," Trump said Tuesday during his tour. "But very soon this facility will have some of the most menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet."
"We're surrounded by miles of treacherous swampland, and the only way out is really deportation," the president added. "And a lot of these people are self-deporting back to their country where they came from…" READ MORE.
CLOCK STARTS NOW: Trump to begin enforcing birthright citizenship order as early as this month, DOJ says
'LOT OF RESPECT': Trump says his relationship with one-time rival DeSantis now a '9.9'
EXCEEDS AUTHORITY: Judge strikes down Trump order preventing asylum requests, protections for illegal immigrants
'TRADECRAFT CONCERNS': Ex-Obama intel boss wanted anti-Trump dossier included in 'atypical' 2016 assessment despite pushback
'CREDIT IS DUE': Elon takes a break from slamming BBB, doles out praise for Trump amid Israel ceasefire announcement
NUCLEAR DETERRENCE: Trump could arm Israel with US' most effective weapons against Iran's nuclear threat under new proposal
GREEN LIGHT: Pentagon's weapons pause to Ukraine could ‘encourage’ and ‘escalate’ Putin’s war ambitions: security experts
'DANGEROUS PRECEDENT’: Bernie Sanders blasts Paramount, says lawsuit settlement will further embolden Trump to attack media
'ENCOURAGING': Blue state GOP lawmaker says major sanctuary city lawsuit is 'encouraging,' but urges further crackdown
'GO HOME': ICE flips script on Los Angeles mayor after telling authorities to 'go home'
$100M DECISION: Wisconsin Supreme Court decides abortion case that prompted most expensive judicial election in US history
WHITE HOUSE APPROVED: Colorado Capitol replaces 'distorted' Trump portrait following monthslong backlash
POTUS PROMISE: Trump vows to 'save New York City' from Zohran Mamdani: 'I hold all the levers'
DEMOLITION PLAN: Dems at a crossroads as establishment plans 'Project 2029' while socialist candidate wins NYC mayoral primary
POWER PLAY ESCALATES: New York Democrats unite in defense of socialist NYC mayoral nominee after Trump threatened his arrest
'READY TO SWEEP?': ‘Don’t Maryland my Virginia’: Youngkin, 2025 GOP ticket rallies together for first time ahead of key election
Get the latest updates on the Trump administration and Congress, exclusive interviews and more on FoxNews.com.
