A federal judge blocked President Donald Trump from dismantling the Department of Education on Thursday, ruling that it cannot be done without congressional approval.
U.S. District Judge Myong Joun's order blocks the Trump administration from carrying out the mass-firing at the DOE announced in March and orders that any employees who were already fired be reinstated.
Joun's order noted Trump's repeated calls to shut down the department while on the campaign trail, and argued the reduction in force was his means of doing so.
"The idea that Defendants’ actions are merely a ‘reorganization’ is plainly not true," Joun wrote.
"Defendants do acknowledge, as they must, that the Department cannot be shut down without Congress’s approval, yet they simultaneously claim that their legislative goals (obtaining Congressional approval to shut down the Department) are distinct from their administrative goals (improving efficiency). There is nothing in the record to support these contradictory positions," his ruling continues.
The ruling comes just a day after another federal judge blocked Trump's administration from firing two Democratic members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board on Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton found that allowing unilateral firings would prevent the board from carrying out its purpose.
Walton wrote that allowing at-will removals would make the board "beholden to the very authority it is supposed to oversee on behalf of Congress and the American people."
The oversight board was initially created by Congress to ensure that federal counterterrorism policies were in line with privacy and civil liberties law.
The two plaintiffs, Travis LeBlanc and Edward Felten, argued in their lawsuit that members of the board cannot be fired without cause. Meanwhile, lawyers for Trump's administration argued that members of other congressionally created boards do have explicit job protections, and it would therefore be wrong for Walton to create such protections where they are absent.
"The Constitution gives President Trump the power to remove personnel who exercise his executive authority," White House spokesman Harrison Fields told the Associated Press. "The Trump Administration looks forward to ultimate victory on the issue."
FIRST ON FOX: Foreign entities are snatching up U.S. real estate, even when Americans cannot buy property in their nations, according to Rep. Pat Harrigan, R-N.C., who told Fox News Digital he is introducing legislation to fix the problem.
His bill, the Real Estate Reciprocity Act, would slap a 50% tax on real estate purchases by foreign nationals and entities who have government ties if their governments do not allow Americans to buy property in those countries.
It would require all foreign nationals who purchase land to file with the IRS and require the secretary of state to report each year on which foreign countries prohibit U.S. citizens from owning real estate.
"While American families struggle to afford a home, foreign adversaries are buying up our country with cash – farmland, neighborhoods, even land near military bases. These regimes ban Americans from buying land on their soil, but think they can carve up ours," Harrigan told Fox News Digital in a statement.
"My Real Estate Reciprocity Act stops it cold with a 50% tax on every purchase, mandatory disclosure, and protections for the ground we raise our kids on. If Americans can’t buy land in your country, you won’t be able to buy land in ours."
A surprising number of nations have an outright ban or severe restrictions on foreigners purchasing land within their borders. Switzerland, New Zealand, Denmark, the Phillippines, Poland and Vietnam all have stringent rules on the books. In places like China and Saudi Arabia, foreigners cannot purchase land, but they can invest in real estate.
Foreign buyers have long been accused of snatching up pricey apartments in metropolitan areas like New York City to park their assets, driving up housing costs.
The bill comes amid a slew of legislation designed to address China’s increasing encroachment on U.S. farmland, particularly near military bases.
China owned around 350,000 acres of farmland across 27 states as of last year, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
As of 2022, foreign entities and individuals held 43.4 million acres of U.S. agricultural land, which is nearly 2% of all land in the U.S.
As of 2021, Canada was the largest foreign holder of U.S. land. At 12.8 million acres, Canadian land ownership was bigger than the states of New Hampshire and Vermont combined.
The Supreme Court on Thursday voted in a 4-4 vote to uphold the Oklahoma State Supreme Court's decision in a landmark school choice case.
Justices issued a one-sentence ruling upholding the lower court's decision, saying only: "The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided Court."
The state had ruled that providing state funds for a religious charter school violated the First Amendment.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the ruling, resulting in the 4-4 split.
The Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board approved St. Isidore's contract request in June 2023, making them eligible to receive public funds.
But its ability to receive it was later blocked by the Oklahoma Supreme Court, which ruled that using public funds for the school was in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
That argument was appealed to the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case last October.
During oral arguments, the justices focused on two major questions. The first is whether charter schools should be treated as public schools, which are considered extensions of the state, and therefore subject to the Establishment Cause and its ban establishing or endorsing a religion, or whether it should be considered a private entities or contractor.
The case is the first of its kind to involve religious charter schools.
House Republicans are celebrating the major victory they delivered early Thursday morning for President Donald Trump.
Minutes after the GOP majority in the House of Representatives stood nearly entirely united to pass Trump's sweeping tax and spending cuts package by a razor-thin 215-214, Speaker Mike Johnson touted that "the House has passed generational, truly nation-shaping legislation."
Johnson predicted the measure would, among other things, "reduce spending and permanently lower taxes for families and job creators … and make government work more efficiently and effectively for all Americans."
And Majority Whip Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota said that House Republicans have "shown time and time again that we deliver for the American people, especially when it matters most."
But with Republicans clinging to a fragile House majority, Democrats view the House passage of what's called Trump's "One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act" as political ammunition as they aim to win back control of the chamber in next year's midterm elections.
Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin, in deriding the legislation, pledged that "Democrats will do everything we can to kick those who are responsible for this bill out of office. We have Americans at our side. This vote will cost many, many Republicans their seats in the midterms."
And Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington State said in a Fox News Digital interview ahead of the final House vote that "we’re going to hold Republicans accountable, and there will be a price to pay."
"House Democrats just signed their own political death warrant. Voters won't forget how they betrayed working families. And Republicans won't let them," NRCC spokesman Mike Marinella argued in a statement.
The GOP-crafted measure is stuffed full of Trump's campaign trail promises and second-term priorities on tax cuts, immigration, defense, energy and the debt limit. It includes extending his signature 2017 tax cuts and eliminating taxes on tips and overtime pay, providing billions for border security and codifying his controversial immigration crackdown.
Passage of the bill in the House comes as the national debt currently sits at $36,214,475,432,210.84, according to Fox Business' National Debt Tracker.
The massive package now heads to the Senate, where Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the top Democrat in the chamber, said that "this is not one big, beautiful bill. It’s ugly."
As Democrats attack the measure, they’re highlighting the GOP’s proposed restructuring of Medicaid—the nearly 60-year-old federal program that provides health coverage to roughly 71 million low-income Americans.
The changes to Medicaid, as well as cuts to food stamps, another one of the nation's major safety net programs, were drafted in part as an offset to pay for extending Trump's 2017 tax cuts, which are set to expire later this year. The measure includes a slew of new rules and regulatory requirements for those seeking Medicaid coverage. Among them are a new set of work requirements for many of those seeking coverage.
"Let’s be clear, all Republicans are talking about right now is how many people and how fast they’re going to take away healthcare. They have these huge cuts to Medicaid, 14 million people lose healthcare across the country, and they’re talking about how fast they can do that," said DelBene.
Schumer argued that "there’s nothing beautiful about stripping away people’s healthcare, forcing kids to go hungry, denying communities the resources they need, and increasing poverty."
And Martin claimed that "the GOP budget will decimate local communities, blow an economic hole in rural America, and make us into a nation governed by and for a handful of elites."
House Republicans push back against the Democrats' attacks and say what they are doing is putting an end to waste, fraud and abuse currently in the Medicaid system, so the program can work for the public in the way that it was intended.
They call any talk that they are cutting aid to mothers, children, people with disabilities and the elderly a "flat out lie."
And NRCC chair Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina told Fox News Digital in a statement ahead of the vote that "Republicans are ending waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicaid so the most vulnerable get the care they need."
"Democrats are lying to protect a broken status quo that lets illegal immigrants siphon off billions meant for American families. We’re strengthening Medicaid for future generations by protecting taxpayers and restoring integrity," Hudson added.
Dating back to last year's presidential campaign, Trump has vowed not to touch Medicaid. On Tuesday, as he made a rare stop on Capitol Hill to meet behind closed doors with House Republicans in order to shore up support for the bill, Trump's message to fiscally conservative lawmakers looking to make further cuts to Medicaid was "Don't f--- around with Medicaid."
While there are divisions between Republicans over Medicaid, and a chasm between the two major parties over the longstanding entitlement program, there is one point of agreement: This issue will continue to simmer on the campaign trail in one form or another long after the legislative battles on Capitol Hill are over.
FIRST ON FOX: Democrat Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy are reaching across the aisle to roll out a measure that would quickly deliver new and effective technologies to strengthen law enforcement’s ability to combat human and drug trafficking at the border, Fox News Digital has learned.
Cortez Masto, D-Nev., and Cassidy, R-La., are working together to introduce the "Emerging Innovative Border Technologies Act," which would make innovation teams at U.S. Customs and Border Protection permanent. Innovation teams were first created at the agency in 2018.
The bill would authorize the Customs and Border Protection commissioner to maintain one or more innovation teams to research and adapt commercial technologies to assist in border security operations and urgent mission needs.
It also would require the Department of Homeland Security to submit a plan to Congress that assesses the performance parameters and security impacts of potential technologies, as well as the deactivation of former Customs and Border Protection technology.
"Technology continues to improve our everyday lives, and it’s just common sense that we look for ways innovative technologies can help keep our border communities secure," Cortez Maso told Fox News Digital. "I am committed to helping CBP continue developing the tools they need to improve border security operations."
"President Trump secured the southern border in his first 30 days," Cassidy told Fox News Digital. "Let’s secure the border forever by using new technology."
He added: "Let’s stop fentanyl from flowing into our country."
The senators told Fox News Digital that investments in border security technology will "strengthen CBP’s detection and response time to cases of trafficking and illicit border crossings in remote areas."
The legislation would make innovation teams a more permanent and long-lasting part of Customs and Border operations.
A Cortez Masto aide told Fox News Digital that the senator has been working to crack down on cross-border crime since she was attorney general in Nevada. The aide highlighted Cortez Masto’s work with Republicans in the state, along with Mexican officials, to combat the rise of methamphetamine manufacturing and cross-border drug trafficking.
In the Senate, she has authored legislation to combat drug trafficking online, which was signed into law; and passed legislation to eliminate illegal fentanyl supply chains. Cortez Masto has also introduced a bill that would crack down on the deadly fentanyl additive xylazine.
Meanwhile, a similar version of the "Emerging Innovative Border Technologies Act" was introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Lou Correa, D-Calif., and Rep. Morgan Luttrell, R-Texas.
Apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border have plummeted 93% under President Donald Trump's administration, according to new data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection released Monday.
Customs and Border Protection says it averaged 279 apprehensions per day at the southern border in April, compared to 4,297 apprehensions in April 2024. The total apprehensions for April landed at 8,383, compared to April 2024's 129,000.
Customs and Border Protection officials also noted that just five illegal aliens were temporarily released into the U.S. during April, compared to 68,000 during the same month in 2024.
Fox News' Anders Hagstrom and Bill Melugin contributed to this report.
A new book sheds light on former White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates’ role in defending President Joe Biden's mental acuity, which the book alleges was done without the White House staff having the full picture of the president’s actual condition.
"Some of Bates’s colleagues believed that Biden’s inner circle took advantage of his loyalty and told him to deny things they knew were true," Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson wrote in their new book "Original Sin," detailing the inner workings of the Biden White House and attempts to downplay concerns about the president’s mental and physical fitness.
"He, along with most of the press team, rarely met with the president and didn’t have firsthand knowledge of the president’s wherewithal," the book continued. "They relied on senior staff for answers. Still, risking his own credibility, Bates willingly became the White House’s tip of the spear when it came to fighting off any reporting on Biden’s acuity."
Outside of White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, Bates was perhaps the most prominent face of the public-facing defense of Biden during his administration, often handling requests for comment from reporters and is mentioned about half a dozen times in the book.
The book goes into detail about an alleged "modus operandi" from the Biden campaign and the White House for "attacking any journalist who covered any questions about the president’s age" with the goal to "shame journalists and create a disincentive structure for those curious about the president’s condition."
"To answer the question on everyone’s minds: No, Joe Biden does not have a doctorate in foreign affairs. He’s just that f---ing good," Bates posted on X following a Biden press conference two weeks after the debate performance that many believe was the beginning of the end of his campaign.
The book looked back on that remark and stated that it "reflected the views of the Politburo but among professional Democrats, it became an instant legend for its sycophancy and tone-deafness."
Bates dismissed the book's narrative about him, telling Fox News Digital it "is distorted, stretching select facts while excluding others."
A former Biden White House staffer also came to Bates' defense, telling Fox News Digital, "This gets important facts wrong."
"Bates served as a senior spokesperson who met with and traveled with the President, including in the Oval and on Air Force One, staffing him around the country and on Capitol Hill. That’s public information. He served as a point person in the press office on major legislative and political issues," the former White House staffer continued. "He was known for being respectful and considerate if a colleague didn't want to do an interview for a challenging story, whether it was about policy or anything else."
The book details one specific instance of the White House successfully killing a story when "weeks" before the explosive Wall Street Journal story detailing concern about Biden's decline came out in June, Steve Ricchetti, former White House deputy chief of staff, strongly denied claims that the president was slipping to another journalist.
"[A] reporter with a different national news outlet had been hearing from White House aides that behind the scenes the president was having serious and disturbing moments, forgetting names and facts, sometimes seeming seriously confused at meetings," the book read.
"The reporter reached out to members of the White House press office, which not only aggressively—and angrily—disputed her reporting but also took the unusual step of having Steve Ricchetti call her," the book said. "He talked to her off the record, so she couldn't use any of what he said or even attribute it to ‘a White House source.’ But he told her that everything the others were saying was false, and that he was at the meetings as a counselor to the president."
According to Tapper and Thompson, the Biden White House was going all out trying to control the perception of his health.
"The message from the White House was clear, this reporter believed: If she went forward with the story from anonymous aides, the White House would aggressively dispute it, on the record, and portray her as a liar," the book reads. "The tacit threat worked."
The book has sparked intense reactions from both sides of the aisle, leading many to slam the media's coverage of Biden's mental acuity and blame the media and Biden's team for covering up the facts of the situation.
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.
Others have pushed back against the framing of the book, including Naomi Biden, Joe Biden's granddaughter, who delivered a scathing rebuke to the new book, calling it "silly" and "political fairy smut."
CNN, Tapper's network, has also faced pushback for its promotion of the book, including from "The View" and Daily Show host Jon Stewart, who took issue with the network promoting the book under the backdrop of Biden's recent cancer diagnosis.
In a statement to Fox News Digital, a Biden spokesperson said, "There is nothing in this book that shows Joe Biden failed to do his job, as the authors have alleged, nor did they prove their allegation that there was a cover up or conspiracy."
"Nowhere do they show that our national security was threatened or where the President wasn’t otherwise engaged in the important matters of the Presidency. In fact, Joe Biden was an effective President who led our country with empathy and skill."
Fox News Digital's Hanna Panreck and Rachel del Guidice contributed to this report
Four months into his second tour of duty in the White House, President Donald Trump's approval ratings remain slightly underwater.
The president stands at 46% approval and 54% disapproval in a new national survey by Marquette Law School. And Trump is at 42% approval and 52% disapproval in a Reuters/Ipsos poll.
Most, but not all, of the latest national surveys place the president's approval rating in negative territory, with a handful indicating Trump is above water.
Trump has aggressively asserted executive authority in his second term, overturning longstanding government policy and aiming to make major cuts to the federal workforce through an avalanche of sweeping and controversial executive orders and actions, with some aimed at addressing grievances he has held since his first term.
Trump started his second administration with poll numbers in positive territory, but his poll numbers started to slide soon after his late-January inauguration.
But two issues where the president remains at or above water in some surveys are border security and immigration, which were front and center in Trump's successful 2024 campaign to win back the White House.
Trump stands at 56% approval on border security and 50% approval on immigration in the Marquette Law School poll, which was conducted May 5-15.
But Trump's muscular moves on border security and immigration, which have sparked controversy and legal pushback, don't appear to be helping his overall approval ratings.
"Immigration is declining now as a salient issue," said Daron Shaw, who serves as a member of the Fox News Decision Team and is the Republican partner on the Fox News poll.
Shaw, a politics professor and chair at the University of Texas, said "immigration and especially border security are beginning to lose steam as one of the top-three issues facing the country. Republicans still rate them fairly highly, but Democrats and independents, who had kind of joined the chorus in 2024, have moved on and in particular moved back to the economy as a focal point."
Pointing to Trump, Shaw added that "when you have success on an issue, it tends to move to the back burner."
Contributing to the slide over the past couple of months in Trump's overall approval ratings was his performance on the economy and, in particular, inflation, which were pressing issues that kept former President Joe Biden’s approval ratings well below water for most of his presidency.
Trump's blockbuster tariff announcement in early April sparked a trade war with some of the nation's top trading partners and triggered a massive sell-off in the financial markets and increased concerns about a recession.
But the markets have rebounded, thanks in part to a truce between the U.S. and China in their tariff standoff as Trump tapped the brakes on his controversial tariff implementation.
Trump stood at 37% approval on tariffs and 34% on inflation/cost of living in the Marquette Law School poll. And he stood at 39% on the economy and 33% on cost of living in the Reuters/Ipsos poll, which was conducted May 16-18.
Doug Heye, a longtime GOP strategist and former RNC and Bush administration official, pointed to last year’s election, saying, "The main reason Trump won was to lower prices. Prices haven’t lowered, and polls are reflecting that."
"With the exception of gas prices, there hasn’t been much of a reduction in prices," Shaw said.
"Prices haven’t come down, and it’s not clear that people will say the absence of inflation is an economic victory. They still feel that an appreciable portion of their money is going to pay for basic things," he added. "What Trump is realizing is that prices have to come down for him to be able to declare success."
A federal judge blocked President Donald Trump's administration from firing two Democratic members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board on Wednesday.
Trump fired all three Democratic members of the five-person board in February, resulting in two of them filing a lawsuit. U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton found that allowing unilateral firings would prevent the board from carrying out its purpose.
Walton wrote that allowing at-will removals would make the board "beholden to the very authority it is supposed to oversee on behalf of Congress and the American people."
The oversight board was initially created by Congress to ensure that federal counterterrorism policies were in line with privacy and civil liberties law.
"To hold otherwise would be to bless the President’s obvious attempt to exercise power beyond that granted to him by the Constitution and shield the Executive Branch’s counterterrorism actions from independent oversight, public scrutiny, and bipartisan congressional insight regarding those actions," Walton wrote.
Trump's firings left just one Republican on the board. The third Democratic member had just two days left in her term when she was removed, and she did not sue the administration.
The two plaintiffs, Travis LeBlanc and Edward Felten, argued in their lawsuit that members of the board cannot be fired without cause. Meanwhile, lawyers for Trump's administration argued that members of other congressionally created boards do have explicit job protections, and it would therefore be wrong for Walton to create such protections where they are absent.
"The Constitution gives President Trump the power to remove personnel who exercise his executive authority," White House spokesman Harrison Fields told the Associated Press. "The Trump Administration looks forward to ultimate victory on the issue."
The plaintiffs also argued that their firings left just one member on the board, a Republican, and that falls short of the quorum required for the board to function.
President Donald Trump's "one big, beautiful bill" passed the House of Representatives early on Thursday morning with few Republican defections.
It is a significant victory for House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who navigated deep inter-party friction within the House GOP Conference to deliver a product that few Republican lawmakers ultimately defected from.
The bill is a sweeping multi-trillion-dollar piece of legislation that advances Trump's agenda on taxes, immigration, energy, defense and the national debt.
Republicans spent more than 48 hours continuously working on the bill from the time it came before the House Rules Committee – the final gatekeeper before a House-wide vote – at 1 a.m. on Wednesday to when it passed the chamber just after sunrise on Thursday.
"It quite literally is morning again in America," Johnson said. "What we're achieving today is nothing short of historic."
All the while, Democratic lawmakers attempted a variety of delay tactics, from introducing amendments targeting key Trump policies to forcing several procedural votes on the House floor ahead of debate on the legislation.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., notably spoke on the House floor for over 30 minutes just before the vote in a last-ditch effort to stretch out the seemingly endless day of debate and votes.
"This bill represents a failed promise. Last year, Donald Trump and House Republicans spent all of their time to lower the high cost of living in the United States of America," Jeffries said on the House floor. "We're now more than 120 days past the inauguration. Costs aren't going down, they're going up."
Tensions flared at multiple points as visibly weary lawmakers continued to fight their ideological battle into the early morning.
Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., who was presiding over the House at the time, warned Jeffries multiple times to address the chair in his remarks rather than directly attacking Republicans sitting across the chamber.
"Every time I'm interrupted, that's going to add another 15 minutes to my remarks," Jeffries said as Democrats sitting around him sounded off in support.
The bill seeks to permanently extend Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) while also implementing newer Trump campaign promises like eliminating taxes on tips and overtime pay, and giving senior citizens a higher tax deduction for a period of four years.
The legislation also included new funding for the border and defense, including more money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations and $25 billion to kick-start construction of a "Golden Dome" defense system over the U.S.
At the same time, the legislation seeks to make a dent in the federal government's spending trajectory by cutting roughly $1.5 trillion in government spending elsewhere. The U.S. government is more than $36 trillion in debt.
Cuts include new work requirements for able-bodied Medicaid recipients, as well as putting more of the cost-sharing burden on states that took advantage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)'s expanded Medicaid enrollment by giving illegal immigrants access to the healthcare program.
The legislation would also roll back a host of green energy tax credits awarded in former President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) – which Trump vowed to repeal in its entirety on the campaign trail.
It also would cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by roughly 20% by introducing some cost-sharing burdens on the states and increasing the amount of able-bodied Americans facing work requirements to be eligible for food stamps.
All House Democrats rejected the bill, accusing Republicans of disproportionately favoring the wealthy at the expense of critical programs for working Americans. Republicans, on the other hand, have contended that they are preserving tax cuts that prevent a 22% tax increase on Americans next year if TCJA was allowed to expire, as well as streamlining programs like Medicaid and SNAP for vulnerable Americans who need it most.
Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas, chair of the House's 189 member-strong Republican Study Committee, told Fox News Digital, "This transformational legislation permanently extends President Trump's historic tax cuts, provides unprecedented funding for border security, and obliterates the last four years of catastrophic Democratic policies."
And while most GOP lawmakers united on the final bill, divisions appeared to persist until the final moments. Conservatives had pushed for more aggressive targeting of Medicaid waste and Biden green energy subsidies, while blue state Republicans pushed for tax relief for Americans in high-cost-of-living areas.
To resolve outstanding differences, House Republican leaders released a list of eleventh-hour changes to President Donald Trump's "one big, beautiful bill," hours before their full chamber is expected to consider the legislation.
New provisions in the bill include a ban on federal funding for transgender adults' medical care, and $12 billion in new funding to reimburse states for money they spent countering the former Biden administration's border policies.
A key request from fiscal conservatives was also honored, with House GOP leaders apparently agreeing to speed up the implementation of work requirements for certain able-bodied recipients of Medicaid.
The bill initially had Medicaid work requirements going into effect in 2029.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, one of the fiscal hawks leading GOP opposition to the bill, told Fox News Digital just after midnight Thursday that he was not sure if the legislation went far enough – but suggested the White House could persuade him with other avenues for change.
"There are things in the executive space, executive actions that we think could take care of … some of our concerns on the Medicaid expansion," Roy said.
The legislative update also included a victory for blue state Republicans who have been pushing for a higher state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap – the current $10,000 cap would be quadrupled to roughly $40,000, but only for people making less than $500,000 per year. The $10,000 cap was first instituted in TCJA.
"This is what real leadership looks like. President Trump and House Republicans made a promise to the American people to secure our border, protect seniors, cut taxes on tips and overtime, and shut off the spigot of benefits for illegal immigrants," first-term Rep. Mike Haridopolos, R-Fla., told Fox News Digital.
Rep. Randy Feenstra, R-Iowa, told Fox News Digital, "More than 77 million Americans made clear at the polls that they want President Trump’s America First agenda codified into law, and our ‘One, Big, Beautiful Bill’ delivers on this promise."
But while House GOP leaders are enjoying their hard-fought victory now, the battle over Trump's "big, beautiful bill" is not over.
Senate Republicans have already signaled they expect to make changes to the bill when it reaches the upper chamber, despite House GOP leaders publicly urging them to amend as little as possible.
There is a significant number of senators who have expressed wariness at the level of Medicaid and SNAP cuts sought by the House. An increase to the SALT deduction cap could also be met with skepticism in the Senate, where no Republican represents a blue state – unlike the House, where New York and California districts are critical to the majority.
The House and Senate must pass identical bills before sending them to Trump's desk for a signature. GOP leaders have signaled they hope to do that by the Fourth of July.
EXCLUSIVE: Alexis Nungaray, the mother of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, whose murder authorities say was at the hands of two illegal immigrants suspected to be Tren de Aragua gang members, told Fox News Digital that renaming a local wildlife refuge in her daughter’s honor would mean "the world" to her family.
Jocelyn Nungaray was sexually assaulted and strangled to death, allegedly by two Venezuelan illegals, Franklin Jose Pena Ramos and Johan Jose Rangel Martinez, who were let through the southern border during the Biden administration. Her body was found tied up in a bayou in Houston.
Since her daughter’s murder, Alexis Nungaray has become a vocal advocate for increased border security and a supporter of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Nungaray said the tragic manner of Jocelyn’s death "takes away [from] who she was as a person." However, she said that the renaming of a 39,000-acre wildlife refuge on the Texas Gulf Coast preserves Jocelyn’s memory for what she loved in life.
Trump issued an executive order on March 5 renaming the former Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge in southeast Houston to the Jocelyn Nungaray National Wildlife Refuge.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas, have since introduced bills to enshrine Trump’s executive order into law, making it more difficult for a future president to change the name of the refuge back. The Senate has already passed the bill, and Babin is working to pass it in the House.
Babin told Fox News Digital that his bill to codify Trump’s renaming of the refuge after Jocelyn is receiving bipartisan support and that he expects it will be passed by the House soon and be immediately signed by the president.
"This is a beautiful place. And if we name it after her, I think we will preserve her legacy," he said.
"The main thing we need to remember is that this can never be allowed to happen again," he added. "We get this thing in law, codified, no future president can ever undo this. And so, we will have a memory of what happens when you have bad policies that can create a system that will allow this to happen to innocent people like Jocelyn."
Nungaray said the effort to rename the refuge "touches every part of my heart and my family's heart."
"Everyone who knew Jocelyn knew she loved animals so much, knew she loved nature, wildlife," explained Nungaray. "She truly loved all animals and all creatures, and she wanted every animal to have a place to call home."
"Knowing that this national wildlife refuge is a place for a bunch of wild animals that travel through the country, and it is somewhere that they can call home, and it is somewhere that they can find a place of safety for them. I just know it would absolutely mean the world to her to know she has something in honor of her in that nature."
She said that seeing the signs going up around Houston bearing her daughter’s name is "bittersweet."
"I went out there to just go see what it was about, what it was like, and the amount of peace I felt just being there, it was just so pure and so peaceful," said Nungaray. "Immediately I thought Jocelyn would love this. She would love to be out here."
"She wasn't just a 12-year-old girl who was strangled and left in a bayou of water," Nungaray went on. "She was a very creative, talented, free-spirited 12-year-old girl."
Smiling, Nungaray added that Jocelyn "was very quirky" and "an old soul." She liked dressing in 1990s-style cargo jeans and Converse and loved listening to music from as far back as the 1940s and 1950s.
"She was very different and unique. She was an amazing friend," said Nungaray.
Nungaray said she is very grateful to Trump for both his support and for "keeping his promises" regarding immigration enforcement.
"I support immigration, but I say there's just a right way and a wrong way to do it," she explained. "He's protecting the people, and he's taking consideration to the people, us the citizens and making sure we're safe and our kids are safe, women are safe, that we're all safe in our communities."
"We've still got a long way to go," she went on. "But I will always advocate for her and be her voice and stand up for better border control and immigration laws. Because I know one-million percent Jocelyn's death should have been preventable."
EXCLUSIVE: First lady Melania Trump is launching an audiobook of her memoir using artificial intelligence (AI) audio technology in multiple languages, Fox News Digital has learned.
This week, she is breaking new ground by releasing "Melania, the Audiobook," which has been "created entirely" with AI.
"I am proud to be at the forefront of publishing’s new frontier – the intersection of artificial intelligence technology and audio," Trump told Fox News Digital.
The first lady said ElevenLabs AI developed "an AI-generated replica of my voice under strict supervision, which will establish an unforgettable connection with my personal story, in multiple languages for listeners worldwide."
ElevenLabs AI CEO Mati Staniszewski told Fox News Digital that they are "excited that the first lady and her team trusted our technology to power this first-of-its-kind audiobook project."
"We look forward to helping bring this book to the public in many other languages, in the first lady’s own voice, soon," Staniszewski said.
The English version of the audiobook is expected to be available on MelaniaTrump.com. Later this year, it will be released in multiple languages, including Spanish, Hindi and Portuguese.
Meanwhile, billboards to promote the audiobook will be up in Times Square in New York City as well as in Los Angeles and Miami; the billboards will be up for one month in all three cities. The Times Square billboard will feature the video below.
Upon the release of the memoir last year, the first lady told Fox News Digital that writing her story was "an amazing journey filled with emotional highs and lows."
"Each story shaped me into who I am today," she said. "Although daunting at times, the process has been incredibly rewarding, reminding me of my strength, and the beauty of sharing my truth."
"Melania" is the first lady’s first book. She released the original book along with a special collector’s edition that includes photos hand-selected by the first lady, many she photographed herself of her home and of various trips she has taken around the world.
Marco Rubio told Fox News that far-left Democrats espousing regret over voting to confirm him as secretary of state is likely just "confirmation" that he is doing a good job.
Democrat Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen told Rubio during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing yesterday that he "regret[ted] voting" to confirm him as secretary of state after indicating as much on "Fox News Sunday" in March. Rubio shot back at the hearing that Van Hollen's regret just proves he is doing a good job, and he subsequently told Fox News that the same goes for other Democrats who are expressing regret over their nod of approval to him earlier this year when he was confirmed by the Senate 99-0.
"In some cases, depending on … whoever you're talking about and what they stand for, the fact that they don't like what I'm doing is a confirmation I'm doing a good job," Rubio said. "That's how I feel about it."
A growing number of Democrats are coming out against Rubio despite voting to confirm him, with the bulk of the criticism describing him as a sell-out to the Trump administration.
"I don't recognize Secretary Rubio," Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., added during the Tuesday Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing with Van Hollen, noting that in the past she had viewed him as "a bipartisan" and "pragmatic" person.
"I'm not even mad anymore about your complicity in this administration's destruction of U.S. global leadership. I'm simply disappointed," Rosen said.
Last week, Democrat Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz lamented that Rubio has aligned himself "so closely" with President Donald Trump.
"President Trump’s narrow and transactional view of the world is not news to anybody. But what is genuinely surprising to me is that Secretary Rubio is aligning himself so closely with it," Schatz said during a live event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations last week.
"This is someone who, up until four months ago, was an internationalist. Someone who believed in America flexing its powers in all manners, but especially through foreign assistance," Schatz continued. "And yet, he is now responsible for the evisceration of the whole enterprise. He’s a colleague. I voted for him. We talk all the time. But what I’m trying to understand is: What happened?"
Schatz noted that he hopes to see Rubio "reemerge, reassert himself and save the enterprise."
Rubio's supportive stance on Trump's foreign aid cuts, his defense of the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and his alleged lack of action to help get him back to the U.S., his approach to the Russia-Ukraine war, and Rubio's decision to pull visas from foreign college students in the U.S. for stoking anti-Israel sentiment on university campuses are all issues Democrats have pointed to for why they regret voting to confirm Rubio.
The secretary's alleged role in bringing white South African refugees to the U.S. was also something for which Rubio was chastised by Democrats during his Tuesday testimony on Capitol Hill.
"I think a lot of us thought that Marco Rubio was going to stand up to Donald Trump," Democrat Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy said in March during an interview on CNN. "Marco Rubio has not, and that's been a great disappointment to many of his former colleagues in the Senate."
President Donald Trump’s "big, beautiful bill" could be headed for a House-wide vote as soon as Wednesday night after its approval by a key committee.
The House Rules Committee, the gatekeeper for most legislation before it gets to the full chamber, first met at 1 a.m. Wednesday to advance the massive bill in time for Speaker Mike Johnson’s Memorial Day deadline for sending it to the Senate.
Proceedings crept on for hours as Democrats on the committee repeatedly accursed Republicans of trying to move the bill "in the dead of night" and of trying to raise costs for working class families at the expense of the wealthy.
Democratic lawmakers also dragged out the process with dozens of amendments that stretched from early Tuesday well into Wednesday.
Republicans, meanwhile, contended the bill is aimed at boosting small businesses, farmers, and low- and middle-income families, while reducing waste, fraud, and abuse in the government safety net.
In a sign of the meeting’s high stakes, Johnson, R-La., himself visited with committee Republicans shortly before 1 a.m. and then again just after sunrise.
But the committee kicked off its meeting to advance the bill with several key outstanding issues – blue state Republicans pushing for a raise in state and local tax (SALT) deduction caps, and conservatives demanding stricter work requirement rules for Medicaid as well as a full repeal of green energy subsidies granted in former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
Johnson told Fox News Digital during his earlier visit that he was "very close" to a deal with divided House GOP factions.
Returning from that meeting, Johnson signaled the House would press ahead with its vote either late Wednesday or early Thursday.
But the legislation’s passage through the House Rules Committee does not necessarily mean it will fare well in a House-wide vote.
A pair of House Rules Committee members, Reps. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., and Chip Roy, R-Texas, were two of the conservative House Freedom Caucus members who had called for the House-wide vote to be delayed on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the White House bore down hard on those rebels, demanding a vote "immediately" in an official statement of policy that backed the House GOP bill.
Republicans are working to pass Trump’s policies on tax, immigration, energy, defense and the national debt all in one massive bill via the budget reconciliation process.
Budget reconciliation lowers the Senate’s threshold for passage from 60 votes to 51, thereby allowing the party in power to skirt the minority — in this case, Democrats — to pass sweeping pieces of legislation, provided they deal with the federal budget, taxation or the national debt.
House Republicans are hoping to advance Trump’s bill through the House and Senate by the Fourth of July.
House Republicans believe they are close to passing Trump's Big, Beautiful Bill.
After the meeting at the White House, with the president and members of the Freedom Caucus, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) suggested that the House could vote in the overnight on the Big, Beautiful Bill.
But it quickly became apparent that was a physical – and parliamentary – impossibility.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) later introduced a "manager’s amendment" to make final changes to the bill. Those alterations were designed to coax holdouts to vote yes.
It’s now likely that the House debates the bill in the early hours of Thursday with a vote in perhaps the late morning.
But Democratic dilatory tactics could further delay passage of the bill.
It’s possible Democrats could engineer protest votes to "adjourn" the House. Calls to "adjourn" hold special privileges in the House and require immediate consideration.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) could also take advantage of a special debate time on the floor to "filibuster" the measure. Top House leaders from both parties are afforded what’s called the "Magic Minute." That’s where they are allotted a "minute" to speak on an issue. But the House really allows them to speak as long as they wish out of deference to their position. Then-House Minority Leader and future Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) set the record for the longest speech in November, 2021, delaying considering of former President Biden’s "Build Back Better" Act. McCarthy spoke for eight hours and 32 minutes.
The House Freedom Caucus seems much more satisfied with the upcoming changes to the bill. Especially after the meeting with the president.
But here is the main reason the House wants to move this as quickly as possible:
Republicans don’t want the bill to fester. Problems develop the longer this sits out there. So when you think you have the votes, you put it on the floor and force the issue. There could also be attendance problems later on Thursday or beyond.
This subject has been jawboned to death for weeks. Johnson said weeks ago he wanted this passed by Memorial Day. So Johnson – and President Trump – want GOPers who are skeptical or holdouts to put up or shut up. You do that by putting the bill on the floor and requiring a vote.
That said, it’s possible the GOP leadership might not have the votes ahead of the actual roll call vote. So calling a vote applies pressure on those holdouts. Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) used to "grow" the vote on the House floor. In other words, they would start the vote – not having all the ducks in order – and then "grow" the vote during the actual roll call and cajoling or twisting arms. The same may happen today.
Also, if the vote is a little shy of passage, Republican leaders could hold the vote open and then single out those Republicans who have either voted no or have not cast ballots. Then the leadership can really turn up the heat and accuse them of not supporting the president’s agenda. If push comes to shove, they can then have the President weigh in and use his powers to coax those holdouts to vote yes.
Here’s the long-term outlook: If the House passes the bill, this goes to the Senate. This will be a project which will consume most of June. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) wants this done by July 4. But the question is what the Senate actually produces. The House and Senate must be on the same page. If the Senate crafts a different legislative product, then this must return to the House to sync up. Either the House eats what the Senate put together. Or the House and Senate must blend their differing versions together into a single, unified bill. That could take most of July. Remember that this bill includes an increase in the debt ceiling. The Treasury says Congress must lift the debt ceiling by early August.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Wednesday that the Trump Gold Card, which makes it possible for any foreigner to buy a visa for $5 million, will be available online within weeks.
Lutnick was a guest at Axios’ streamed event, Building the Future, Wednesday, where he was interviewed by company co-founder Mike Allen about several topics, including President Donald Trump’s offering of a Gold Card.
In March, Trump said the Gold Card would go on sale "very, very soon," explaining it would be like a green card, "but better and more sophisticated." He said the newest path to citizenship in the U.S. would allow the "most successful job-creating people from all over the world to buy a path to citizenship."
Allen asked Lutnick when the $5 million Gold Card would be available, and Lutnick said he expected a website called trumpcard.gov to be up and running in about a week.
"The details of that will come soon after, but people can start to register. And all that will come over a matter of the next weeks — not month, weeks," Lutnick said.
He also shared a story about a recent "great dinner" in the Middle East with about 400 people.
During the dinner, Lutnick said, he had his phone out when one of the senior leaders walked by and asked why his phone was out.
"I go, ‘I am selling him cards,’" Lutnick said. "So, basically everyone I meet who’s not an American is going to want to buy the card if they have the fiscal capacity."
He acknowledged that not everyone will be able to afford a Gold Card, but it will be available to those who can afford to help America pay off its debt.
"Why wouldn’t they want a plan B that says God forbid something bad happens, you come to the airport in America and the person in immigration says, ‘Welcome home.’ Right? As opposed to, ‘Where the heck am I going if something bad’s happening in my country,’" Lutnick continued.
He noted that everyone will be vetted for a card, adding those who come in with $5 million for a visa are going to be "great people who are going to come and bring businesses and opportunity to America. And they’re going to pay $5 million."
Lutnick offered one more hypothetical scenario, saying if 200,000 people purchase the Gold Card for $5 million, that's $1 trillion.
"Remember, we get 280,000 visas per year now for free, not counting the 20 million people who broke into this country for nothing under Biden," Lutnick said. "And, so, I want you to think about that. We give it away for free and said Donald Trump’s gonna bring in a trillion dollars for what purpose? To make America better. And it makes perfect sense to me."
Trump has previously touted his plan before to attract the world’s wealthiest to become U.S. citizens, though it comes at a time when he is both clamping down on illegal migration and as universities are increasingly in the spotlight amid soaring school costs and crippling student loans.
After Trump’s announcement in March, Lora Ries, director of the Heritage Foundation's Border Security and Immigration Center, warned it could invite fraud.
"Any immigration benefit draws fraud. … People are willing to do anything and say just about anything to come to the U.S.," Ries told Fox News Digital.
In an interview in February with Fox News’ Chief Political Anchor Bret Baier on "Special Report," Lutnick said all candidates will be "deeply vetted."
"These are vetted people," Lutnick told Baier. "These are going to be great global citizens who are going to bring entrepreneurial spirit, capacity and growth to America. If one of them comes in, think of the jobs they are going to bring with them, the businesses they are going to bring with them, and they are going to pay American taxes as well. So, this is huge money for America."
Fox News Digital’s Caitlin McFall contributed to this report.
The Army on Wednesday said it is approaching its second phase of separation with service members experiencing gender dysphoria, an initiative that follows the Trump administration's directive of prioritizing military excellence and readiness.
A new memo issued by Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll and obtained by Fox News Digital outlines two phases in the separation process, the first of which will be completed at the beginning of June.
The first phase, which ends June 6, allows service members who have been diagnosed with or have a history of gender dysphoria to identify themselves and volunteer to separate from the military branch, an Army spokesperson told Fox Digital.
Once a service member notifies an immediate commander, that commander will then notify a superior, initiating the separation process.
Soldiers who reached a threshold for years of service qualify for voluntary separation pay or double the pay a service member would get by separating from the Army for various reasons, the spokesperson said.
In the case of pending administrative action against them, their discharge may also not be honorable.
The Army said those who volunteer for separation, but do not qualify, will still be separated and afforded benefits; they will only forfeit the additional separation pay, according to the spokesperson.
After the June 6 deadline for voluntary separation, the Army will enter the involuntary separation phase.
In the second phase, "there will be means of identifying those who did not want to self-identify," the spokesperson said.
Fox News' Peter Doocy has some unique insight on former President Joe Biden as questions continue to persist about whether there was a coverup to hide his declining mental state while serving as commander-in-chief.
Doocy, a senior White House correspondent, posted multiple videos to X on Wednesday showing him questioning Biden and the White House about the then-president's cognitive decline.
"I have some unique insight on President Biden, having dedicated six years of my life to covering him," he wrote. "If you are wondering why nobody asked about his mental fitness, and why nobody asked if White House staffers were covering up his decline… then you weren’t paying attention."
In one video, Doocy is seen questioning Biden about Special Counsel Robert Hur's report that concluded that one of the reasons Biden wasn't charged for his handling of classified Obama-era documents found in his former office and at home was because he was a "well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."
"I'm well-meaning and I'm an elderly man and I know what the hell I'm doing. I put this country back on its feet. I don't need his recommendation," Biden replied.
Doocy then asked how bad Biden's memory was and would he be able to continue to serve as president.
"My memory is so bad, I let you speak," Biden shot back.
Much of the media has been criticized for its reluctance to question Biden or the White House about his health concerns. The former president's health is once again in the headlines after CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios correspondent Alex Thompson's new book, "Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again," was released on Tuesday.
The book alleges that Biden’s inner circle concealed his cognitive decline for years and was released just days after news broke that Biden had been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer.
In one instance, during a news briefing, Doocy questioned then-White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre about a campaign event in which Biden was present.
"At a fundraiser this week, President Biden told donors about how Charlottesville inspired his campaign, and according to the pool, a few mins later he told the story again nearly word for word. What's up with that?"
"What I can tell you is, and I'm going to be careful not to talk about it because this was a campaign event,… the president was making very clear why he decided to run in 2019," Jean-Pierre responded.
In another briefing, Jean-Pierre said Biden was making a "light-hearted joke" and "speaking off the cuff" when she was asked by Doocy about Biden's remarks that his "health is fine. It's just his brain."
In another video, Jean-Pierre was asked about Biden's gaffe when he appeared to mix up French President Emmanuel Macron with François Mitterrand, the former president of France who died in 1996.
"How is President Biden ever going to convince the three-quarters of voters who are worried about his physical and mental health that he's OK even though in Las Vegas he told a story about recently talking to a French president who died in 1996?"
"I'm not even going to go down that rabbit hole with you," she replied.
Doocy also asked if Biden had been tested for Parkinson's Disease or dementia following his disastrous debate performance against then-candidate Donald Trump.
"What we shared with you was comprehensive, but he's had a full physical. We've shown the results of those this past three years," Jean-Pierre said. "We showed it just four months ago, and it is in line with what we have done, similar to President Obama, similar to George W. Bush. We are committed to continue to be transparent. We are committed to continue to show the results of those physicals, and look, it's the president's medical team that makes a decision."
In another briefing, Jean-Pierre was questioned about why Biden was treated by White House staffers "like a baby."
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has been hard at work this week meeting with as many factions within the House GOP as possible to quell concerns ahead of a chamber-wide vote on President Donald Trump’s "big, beautiful bill."
Managing a razor-thin House majority isn’t easy in the best of times, but negotiating the vast tax-immigration-energy-defense-debt limit bill has revealed both old and new fractures within the Republican Conference.
Fox News Digital took a look at what the key factions have been looking for.
The House Freedom Caucus and their allies have been pushing the bill to go further on curbing Medicaid’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) expansion, and implementing work requirements for able-bodied Americans on the government healthcare program sooner than the current bill’s 2029 deadline.
There’s broad consensus among Republicans on needing work requirements for able-bodied Americans on healthcare, but cutting too deeply into the Obamacare-era expanded population has some moderate GOP lawmakers worried.
The conservatives have consistently argued that they are only seeking to reshuffle the program to make it more available for vulnerable people who truly need it, including low-income women and children.
That same group has argued in favor of a total repeal of President Joe Biden’s green energy tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) – a push that has pitted them against Republicans whose districts have businesses that benefitted from those subsidies.
Moderate Republicans in California, New York, and New Jersey have been taking a stand on raising the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap.
SALT deduction caps primarily benefit people living in high-cost-of-living areas like New York City, Los Angeles, and their surrounding suburbs.
Republicans representing those areas have argued that raising the SALT deduction cap is an existential issue — and that a failure to address it could cost the GOP the House majority in the 2026 midterms.
Several of the Republicans vying for higher SALT deduction caps have pointed out that their victories are critical to the party retaining control of the House in 2024.
SALT deduction caps did not exist before Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), which notably instilled a $10,000 ceiling for married and single tax filers.
That cap has been received positively by the majority of Republicans, however – and those in lower-tax, GOP-controlled states have dismissed the push for a higher SALT deduction cap as an unearned reward for Democratic states with high-tax policies.
Republicans in places like Tennessee and Missouri have argued it was their tax dollars subsidizing wealthier, blue-leaning areas’ tax breaks. Blue state Republicans, meanwhile, have contended that they send more tax dollars back to the federal government which in turn helps pay for lower-tax states.
There is some overlap between Republicans looking for more modest cuts to the IRA and those seeking a higher SALT deduction cap – but not completely.
Republicans in swing districts in Arizona and Pennsylvania have argued that upending those tax credits now would harm businesses in their districts that had begun changing their operations already to conform to those new tax breaks.
"Countless American companies are utilizing sector-wide energy tax credits – many of which have enjoyed broad support in Congress – to make major investments in domestic energy production and infrastructure for traditional and renewable energy sources alike," they wrote.
But conservative fiscal hawks pushing for a total repeal said in their own letter that the U.S.' growing green energy sector was the product of government handouts rather than genuine sustainable growth.
"Leaving IRA subsidies intact will actively undermine America’s return to energy dominance and national security," they said. "They are the result of government subsidies that distort the U.S. energy sector, displace reliable coal and natural gas and the domestic jobs they produce, and put the stability and independence of our electric grid in jeopardy."
Singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen continued his criticism of President Donald Trump Wednesday by releasing a six-track digital extended play (EP) that included his political rants while performing in Manchester, United Kingdom, last week.
"The Boss" included four songs on the 31-minute EP, "Land of Hope & Dreams." The songs included "Land of Hope and Dreams," "Long Walk Home," "My City of Ruins" and "Chimes of Freedom."
All four songs were recorded live May 14, 2025, when Springsteen publicly lambasted Trump.
During his intro to "Land of Hope and Dreams," Springsteen said it was great to be back in Manchester, calling on the "righteous power of art, of music, of rock and roll, in dangerous times."
"In my home, the America I love, the America I've written about, that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration," he said. "Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us, raise your voices against authoritarianism and let freedom ring."
Springsteen went on another political rant against Trump and the U.S. government before the E Street Band kicked into the song "My City of Ruins."
"There's some very weird, strange and dangerous s--- going on out there right now," Springsteen told the British crowd. "In America, they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now. In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction and abandoning the world's poorest children to sickness and death.
"This is happening now," he added. "In my country, they're taking sadistic pleasure in the pain that they inflict on loyal American workers. They're rolling back historic civil rights legislation that led to a more just and plural society. They're abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom."
Springsteen also accused the government of defunding American universities that "won’t bow down to their ideological demands."
"They're removing residents off American streets and, without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons," he said. "This is all happening now. A majority of our elected representatives have failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government. They have no concern or idea of what it means to be deeply American.
"The America that I've sung to you about for 50 years is real and, regardless of its faults, is a great country with a great people," Springsteen added. "So, we'll survive this moment."
The crowd responded with applause when Springsteen continued to pontificate his stance on the current administration.
The comments went viral last week, and Trump responded by slamming Springsteen and calling him "highly overrated" Friday.
"I see that Highly Overrated Bruce Springsteen goes to a Foreign Country to speak badly about the President of the United States," Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. "Never liked him, never liked his music, or his Radical Left Politics and, importantly, he’s not a talented guy — Just a pushy, obnoxious JERK, who fervently supported Crooked Joe Biden, a mentally incompetent FOOL, and our WORST EVER President, who came close to destroying our Country.
"Sleepy Joe didn’t have a clue as to what he was doing, but Springsteen is ‘dumb as a rock,’ and couldn’t see what was going on, or could he (which is even worse!)? This dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country, that’s just ‘standard fare.’ Then we’ll all see how it goes for him!"
Springsteen declared last year that "I'll be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz" in the presidential election. Harris lost the race to Trump.
Fox News Digital's Greg Norman, Lindsay Kornick and Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
Sparks flew on Capitol Hill Wednesday as Education Secretary Linda McMahon faced off with Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J., in a fiery exchange during a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing in the latest clash over the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the Department of Education.
The war of words began when Watson Coleman asked, "Do you believe that there is illegal discrimination against people who are Black or brown, and other types of discrimination in jobs and education in this country?"
Watson Coleman pressed further: "Then can you tell me why the Office of Civil Rights and the Department of Education is being decimated?"
McMahon responded, "Well, it isn’t being decimated. We have reduced the size of it. However, we are taking on a backlog of cases that were left over from the Biden administration."
Watson Coleman grew visibly frustrated and accused the administration of racial bias in immigration and education policies, saying its actions amounted to "favoritism and prioritization of white over color."
In a blistering rebuke, Watson Coleman said, "Your rhetoric means nothing to me. What means something to me is the actions of this administration. I’m telling you, the Department of Education is one of the most important departments in this country. And you should feel shameful to be engaged with an administration that doesn’t give a damn."
McMahon, remaining composed, replied, "I am the secretary of Education who has been approved to run this agency by Congress. And I was appointed by the president. And I serve at his pleasure under his mandate. So, therefore, the direction of his administration is what I will follow."
The exchange came as part of a larger hearing in which McMahon laid out President Donald Trump’s 2026 education budget proposal, which calls for a $12 billion cut to the Education Department, a 15% reduction.
McMahon described her work as the department’s "final mission": to wind it down and restore education oversight to states, parents and local educators.
"Let’s focus on literacy. What we’re seeing in those scores is a failure of our students to learn to read," McMahon said. "We’ve lost the fundamentals."
Chairman Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., praised McMahon’s approach, noting, "Despite $3 trillion in federal education spending since 1980, student achievement has not improved. The answer is not more money. It’s more accountability and local control."
The plan consolidates 18 federal programs into a single $2 billion block grant to states. Democrats labeled the proposal as a backdoor effort to gut federal support for public schools.
On student loans, McMahon said the department has begun recovering repayments after years of Biden-era pauses and confusion.
"Since we restarted collections in May, we have recovered nearly $100 million," she said.
She also defended staffing cuts and administrative restructuring, stating, "We’re delivering on all of our statutory requirements with fewer people and lower overhead."
Republicans on the subcommittee shared their support for charter schools and school choice. McMahon, in agreement, pointed to a proposed $60 million increase in charter school funding.
"We’ve got about a million students on charter school waiting lists," she said. "Parents should be deciding where their children can go to school and get the best education."
Democrats also criticized McMahon for not defending early childhood education, particularly Head Start, even though the program technically falls under the Department of Health and Human Services.
"Every Head Start program in the country has three days of funding. That’s not someone else’s problem. It’s America’s children," said Rep. Josh Harder, D-Calif.
McMahon responded, "The earlier we can start education, the better, but I don’t believe the federal government is responsible for everything. That’s where states can lead."
The Trump administration also defended its position forcefully outside the hearing room.
"On the topic of corruption, let’s not forget that the Department of Education was created by President Carter in an attempt to win voters," Savannah Newhouse, Education Department press secretary, said in a statement to Fox News Digital following the exchange.
"Since then, we have spent over $3 trillion pretending the department is necessary as student learning outcomes have not improved," she continued. "While the congresswoman from New Jersey basks in her five minutes of fame, the Trump administration is working to improve student outcomes and ensure American families have access to the quality education that they deserve."
