President Donald Trump blasted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a ‘dictator without elections’ on Wednesday, after the U.S. left Ukraine out of initial peace talks with Russia this week. 

‘A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left,’ Trump wrote on TRUTH Social. ‘In the meantime, we are successfully negotiating an end to the War with Russia, something all admit only ‘TRUMP,’ and the Trump Administration, can do. Biden never tried, Europe has failed to bring Peace, and Zelenskyy probably wants to keep the ‘gravy train’ going.’  

Trump added, ‘I love Ukraine, but Zelenskyy has done a terrible job, his Country is shattered, and MILLIONS have unnecessarily died – And so it continues…..’

Describing Zelenskyy as a ‘modestly successful comedian,’ Trump said the Ukrainian leader ‘managed to talk the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start, but a War that he, without the U.S. and ‘TRUMP,’ will never be able to settle.’ Trump decried how the United States ‘has spent $200 Billion Dollars more than Europe, and Europe’s money is guaranteed, while the United States will get nothing back.’ 

‘Why didn’t Sleepy Joe Biden demand Equalization, in that this War is far more important to Europe than it is to us — We have a big, beautiful Ocean as separation,’ Trump posed of former President Joe Biden. ‘On top of this, Zelenskyy admits that half of the money we sent him is ‘MISSING.’ He refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden ‘like a fiddle.’’ 

Zelenskyy criticized Trump earlier Wednesday in comments to reporters in Kyiv after canceling a trip to Saudi Arabia, where Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and Special Envoy Ambassador Steve Witkoff held talks with Russian counterparts earlier this week centered on negotiating an end to the three-year conflict with Ukraine. 

‘Unfortunately, President Trump – I have great respect for him as a leader of a nation that we have great respect for, the American people who always support us – unfortunately lives in this disinformation space,’ Zelensky said.

Nearly one year past the expiration of Zelenskyy’s first five-year term, the U.S. and Russia are in agreement that Ukrainians must go to the polls and decide whether to keep their head of state. 

Russia has insisted it will not sign a peace agreement until Ukraine agrees to hold elections, and the U.S. is now ‘floating’ the idea of a three-stage plan: ceasefire, then Ukrainian elections, then inking of a peace deal.

Zelenskyy’s term in office was supposed to end last May, with elections originally slated for April 2024. But the president’s aides have said elections will not be held until six months after the end of martial law. The Ukrainian constitution prohibits holding elections under martial law. With his popularity having plummeted nearly 40% since the war’s outbreak, Zelenskyy’s future could be in jeopardy if peace is reached and elections are triggered. 

Ukraine advocates say post-war elections would be a far better option, but elections offer Russia an opportunity to sow chaos. ‘The only person that benefits from elections before there’s a durable peace deal is Putin,’ Andrew D’Anieri, a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, previously told Fox News Digital. ‘The Kremlin loves elections, not in their own country, but elsewhere, because it provides an opportunity to destabilize things.’

Trump envoy Keith Kellog, a retired 3-star general, arrived in Kyiv to hold talks with Zelenskyy on Wednesday. Ukrainian officials have emphasized that any peace deal will require U.S. security guarantees in order to ensure Russia does not invade again.

‘We understand the need for security guarantees,’ Kellog told Ukrainian media. ‘It’s very clear to us the importance of the sovereignty of this nation and the independence of this nation as well… Part of my mission is to sit and listen.’ 

State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce released a statement after Rubio met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Ridyah on Tuesday. 

Fox News’ Morgan Phillips and Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report. This is a developing news story. Check back for updates.

President Donald Trump’s second term in office presents a historic chance to reverse the Biden administration’s failed Iran policies and prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons, a new report from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) argues.

The report, titled ‘Detecting and Halting an Iranian Weaponization Effort,’ argues that the president should immediately muster the full weight of the U.S. national security establishment to confront this urgent threat.

‘The president made the right call in re-imposing maximum pressure. Now, he needs to ensure Iran can’t dash to nuclear weapons, drawing on the short timeline and technical know-how it possesses,’ Andrea Stricker, author of the FDD report, told Fox News Digital.

‘A nuclear-armed Iran would fundamentally upend security in the region and hinder the ability of the United States, Israel, and their partners to counter Tehran’s aggression out of fear of nuclear escalation,’ she said.

Srickler believes President Trump absolutely cannot tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran and must use all instruments of American power to stop this.

The FDD report recommends that the administration and allies should re-establish the threat of credible military force to deter Iran from breaking the nuclear threshold and, along with Israel, be prepared to target Iranian nuclear sites.

‘The United States or Israel should demonstrate their ability to eliminate any detected Iranian weaponization facilities and activities.’

U.S. intelligence learned recently that a secret team of Iranian scientists are working on a short-cut to the country’s path to develop a nuclear weapon. The revelations come as Iran’s position in the region has significantly weakened as Tehran became embroiled in conflict with Israel after Oct. 7. 

Then-President Joe Biden allowed Tehran’s nuclear program to progress largely unimpeded, the report said, and Iran now likely has the capability and know-how to produce nuclear weapons. Although Iran may lack confidence in the functionality of certain components, it may be able to detonate a crude nuclear device within six months from starting. 

‘An advancing Iranian weaponization capability, matched with Tehran’s enrichment of uranium to near-weapons-grade, limits the window of time in which the United States and its allies could intervene to stop an Iranian dash to nuclear weapons, known as a breakout,’ the report notes.

In a sign of the administration’s toughening position on Iran, Trump signed a memorandum reimposing the ‘maximum pressure’ policy, a hallmark of his first term administration’s crippling sanctions on Tehran.

It is ‘in the national interest to impose maximum pressure on the Iranian regime to end its nuclear threat, curtail its ballistic missile program, and stop its support for terrorist groups,’ the president’s executive order read.

Trump withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran nuclear deal, during his first term in 2018 and reapplied harsh economic sanctions. The Biden administration had initially looked at re-engaging with Iran on the nuclear issue upon taking office, but on-again-off-again talks went nowhere, complicated by Iran’s domestic politics and Iran’s role in supporting its terror groups in the region. 

Stricker says the clerical regime has an additional incentive to seek nuclear weapons to secure its hold on power with a more confrontational administration in Washington. It could also sprint for the bomb to bolster its offensive and defensive capabilities to deter further Israeli strikes against the regime itself, she warned.

In addition to the military threat, the report recommends the U.S. and Israel should cooperate on intelligence-related operations to detect and disrupt Iranian weaponization. It also suggests that the U.S. and Israel should work toward identifying key Iranian officials and nuclear scientists and to cultivate them as human intelligence sources. 

It additionally encourages the U.S. and other nations to urgently mobilize the International Atomic Energy Agency to strengthen inspections of weaponization activities in Iran.

A November 2024 report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said that Iran has enough fissile material to produce over a dozen nuclear weapons if it continues to enrich uranium. 

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) said it has uncovered that the U.S. government currently has more than 4 million active credit cards on its books.

‘The US government currently has ~4.6M active credit cards/accounts, which processed ~90M unique transactions for  ~$40B of spend[ing] in FY24,’ DOGE said in a post on X on Tuesday. 

Attached to the post was a breakdown of multiple federal agencies and their credit card use, with the Department of Defense leading the way in both the number of transactions (about 27.2 million), and number of individual accounts (roughly 2.4 million).

DOGE’s activities have come under increasing scrutiny over the last few weeks, with opponents arguing that President Donald Trump has given billionaire Elon Musk, who was tapped to head the department, too much power to shrink the size of the federal government.

The new department has also been at the center of numerous lawsuits, with opponents attempting to block Musk and the Trump administration from carrying out many of DOGE’s recommendations for cuts.

However, Trump has not wavered in his support from the efforts, publicly supporting DOGE’s work while also releasing a memo on Tuesday ordering government agencies to be ‘radically transparent’ with the American people about its spending.

The memo argues that the federal government ‘spends too much money on programs, contracts, and grants that do not promote the interests of the American people.’

‘For too long, taxpayers have subsidized ideological projects overseas and domestic organizations engaged in actions that undermine the national interest,’ the note continues. ‘The American people have seen their tax dollars used to fund the passion projects of unelected bureaucrats rather than to advance the national interest.’

‘The American people have a right to see how the Federal Government has wasted their hard-earned wages.’

Meanwhile, DOGE promised to update its efforts to streamline the government’s credit card usage within a week.

‘DOGE is working w/ the agencies to simplify the program and reduce admin costs – we will report back in 1 week,’ DOGE said on X.

A top European Union official is warning President Donald Trump against letting Russian President Vladimir Putin succeed in dividing a decades-old alliance between the U.S. and Europe as Trump seeks to bring an end to the war in Ukraine. 

‘It is clear that any deal on Ukraine that doesn’t involve Europe will fail,’ EU policy chief Kaja Kallas told Fox News Digital from South Africa. ‘Europe and the U.S. are stronger together, this is exactly why Putin is trying to divide us. 

‘Let’s not do him the favor,’ she added. 

Kallas’ comments came after she held a call with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the foreign ministers of France, the U.K., Italy and Germany on Tuesday night to discuss the U.S. talks with Russian in Saudi Arabia, in which Washington agreed to re-establish diplomatic ties with Moscow through reopening embassies and re-engaging geopolitically and economically.  

Concern in Europe has been mounting over the Trump administration’s push to find a solution to end the war in Ukraine, as neither Kyiv nor any European official has yet been present for the discussions. 

‘When they say ‘these are our plans for the end of the war,’ it raises questions for us,’ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters from Turkey on Wednesday following a meeting with Turkish President Recep Erdoğan. ‘Where are we at this negotiating table? This war is taking place inside Ukraine. Putin is killing Ukrainians, not Americans.’

‘We want a just peace, a lasting peace, a sustainable peace,’ he added.

While Rubio looked to set the record straight following the talks on Tuesday by agreeing that Ukraine, Europe and Russia will need to be involved in any ceasefire terms, some comments by Trump have prompted frustration in Kyiv and concern across Europe.

‘We need American strength not concessions to end this war on Ukraine’s terms,’ Kallas told Fox News Digital. ‘Handing Ukrainian territory to Putin on a plate is a losing strategy.’

Kallas, along with other European leaders, took issue this week when Trump said Ukraine needs to hold presidential elections – something that Ukraine constitutionally cannot do during a state of war.

‘Elections in Ukraine are impossible amid Russia’s daily attacks, which have displaced millions of Ukrainians,’ Kallas said. ‘Let’s not forget Russia hasn’t held a free election in 25 years.’

Kallas, who told Fox News Digital that she has submitted a proposal that would see EU nations ramp up military aid to Ukraine this year, argued, ‘Kyiv must be able to negotiate from a place of strength.’

Reports indicated that European leaders were set to hold a second emergency summit on Ukraine in Paris on Wednesday after a smaller group of leaders from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, Denmark and the U.K. reportedly convened on Monday following the Munich Security Conference.

Despite concerns that Putin could be dividing the West, one former DIA intelligence officer and author of ‘Putin’s Playbook,’ Rebekah Koffler, argued the Trump administration’s strategy on ending the war is not an indication the U.S. is abandoning its allies.

‘The U.S. is not turning against Europe,’ she said. ‘NATO had 10 years, a decade to prepare for and deter this war.’

‘In the course of several years, my colleagues and I briefed senior military and intelligence officials of top European nations on the Russian threat. In vain,’ Koffler said, noting that she and her American intelligence colleagues warned European nations in 2013 ahead of Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014. ‘NATO ignored the threat for a decade and did not bother to develop a counter-strategy to Putin’s Playbook.

‘Trump is handing over the responsibility for Europe’s protection to the Europeans,’ she added, noting the West was already divided given some NATO nations’ failures to meet defense spending agreements. 

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) still employs more people than it did in 2019, despite ‘Democrat hysteria’ over recent cuts within the department’s agencies, Fox News Digital exclusively learned. 

A senior Trump administration official told Fox News Digital that there have been 6,000 departures from HHS since Jan. 20, Inauguration Day. The agency, however, still employs nearly 6,000 more people than it did in 2019, including more than 2,000 employees at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) relative to 2019 numbers, and 1,200 employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 

Hiring at HHS ballooned between fiscal year 2019 and 2024, the senior Trump administration official said, with 17% more full-time employees by 2024. Fifty percent of overall jobs in the U.S. that were created in 2024 were indirect or direct government jobs, the official added. 

‘Democrat hysteria about essential offices in HHS being culled — again, every operating division has either more or roughly stagnant headcount relative to’ fiscal year 2019, a senior Trump administration official told Fox News Digital. 

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed and sworn-in as the nation’s 26th secretary of Health and Human Services on Thursday, when President Donald Trump also signed an executive order creating the Make America Healthy Again Commission, which is ‘investigating and addressing the root causes of America’s escalating health crisis.’ The commission initially will focus its investigations into childhood chronic diseases, such as autism. 

News reports spread shortly after Kennedy’s confirmation that widespread layoffs were headed to HHS employees, including within the CDC and FDA. The Trump administration is in the midst of working to streamline the federal government by cutting overspending and stamping out potential fraud or mismanagement, which has included mass layoffs at various agencies. 

The head of the FDA’s food division, Jim Jones, submitted his resignation letter Monday, according to various news reports, arguing the administration’s ‘indiscriminate firing’ of staff in his division will be a ‘roadblock to achieving the Secretary’s stated objectives of making America healthy again.’

‘I was looking forward to working to pursue the Department’s agenda of improving the health of Americans by reducing diet-related chronic disease and risks from chemicals in food,’ Jones said. ‘It has been increasingly clear that with the Trump Administration’s disdain for the very people necessary to implement your agenda, however, it would have been fruitless for me to continue in this role.’

Federal employees also staged a protest outside HHS in Washington, D.C., on Friday, while a cohort of academic unions around the country are rallying the science community to join another protest outside HHS on Wednesday, billed as a ‘National Day of Action.’

The Trump administration explained to Fox News Digital that those who were terminated over the weekend included probationary employees — who are individuals recently hired by the agency and still under consideration for long-term employment. 

‘Not people carrying longtime essential ‘institutional’ knowledge,’ the admin official said of those terminated. 

The recent HHS culling over the weekend did not include key personnel focused on emergency preparedness and response within the Administration for Strategy Preparedness and Response (ASPR), the CDC and other divisions of HHS, nor did it cull research scientists at the CDC or National Institutes of Health, or frontline healthcare providers at the Indian Health Service, employees working on Medicare and Medicaid at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or those reviewing and approving drugs or conducting inspections at FDA. 

Additionally, employees working on refugee resettlement within the Administration of Children and Families were exempt from the weekend layoffs. 

‘Cuts we made at HHS over the weekend did not compromise health and safety of Americans,’ the admin official added.

Kennedy vowed during his Senate confirmation hearings that he would scrutinize the department’s previous modus operandi, remove potential financial conflicts and ensure tax dollars were spent on both bolstering healthy foods for Americans, and providing ‘unbiased’ scientific reports. 

‘We will make sure our tax dollars support healthy foods. We will scrutinize the chemical additives in our food supply. We will remove the financial conflicts of interest in our agencies,’ he told the Senate Finance Committee in describing his goals. ‘We will create an honest, unbiased, science-driven HHS, accountable to the president, to Congress, and to the American people.’

Both Kennedy and Trump pledged on the campaign trail to ‘Make America Healthy Again,’ including directing their focus on autism among youths in recent years. The recently minted MAHA commission will investigate chronic conditions for both adults and children, including those related to autism, which the White House said affects one in 36 children.

The commission is expected to publish ‘an assessment that summarizes what is known and what questions remain regarding the childhood chronic disease crisis, and include international comparisons,’ within 100 days of the commission’s founding. Within 180 days, it is expected to ‘produce a strategy, based on the findings of the assessment, to improve the health of America’s children,’ Fox Digital reported. 

Since Kennedy’s confirmation, state-level lawmakers have introduced a wave of bills aimed at advancing priorities championed by Kennedy and the MAHA movement, including prohibiting junk food like candy and soda from school lunches and other bills aimed at amending state vaccine rules. 

Fox News Digital’s Alec Schemmel contributed to this report. 

President Donald Trump’s return to the White House appears to have sparked a change in tune on K Street, the heart of lobbyist influence in Washington, D.C., as several prominent lobbyist voices are now pledging to work with the new president after previously criticizing him.  

‘Manufacturers are ready to work with @realDonaldTrump to roll back the federal regulatory onslaught, unleash American energy and build on the success of the pro-growth Trump Tax Cuts,’ Jay Timmons, president and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), posted on X after Trump’s victory, adding in a press release that he congratulates Trump on ‘on his historic victory and strong performance across manufacturing intensive states.’

The praise of Trump comes after years of vigorously criticizing him, including after the January 6 riot, when he said that Trump ‘incited violence in an attempt to retain power, and any elected leader defending him is violating their oath to the Constitution and rejecting democracy in favor of anarchy.’

Additionally, Timmons called on then-Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump from office.

‘What we saw on January 6th was absolutely one of the most horrifying things that any of us who love America could have ever witnessed,’ Timmons said.

Timmons also said that Trump’s handling of the coronavirus appeared to have been ‘weaponized, and it became a political tool.’

Timmons also had a long history of praising the Biden administration for its accomplishments, saying that he ‘built a substantial legacy’ in four years and celebrating Biden’s work on the coronavirus when he was elected by saying ‘it is fantastic to have a partner in the White House’, adding that ‘we felt like we were fighting this fight, frankly, all alone for the last year.’

In a statement to Fox News Digital, a NAM spokesperson said, ‘President Trump wants to grow manufacturing in the United States. The NAM is working with him to do that.’ 

Shortly after Biden announced he was dropping out of the presidential race, NAM put out a press release saying that Biden ‘Has Rallied the World to the Cause of Democracy.’ NAM would then invite Trump to call into their board meeting a little over a month before the presidential election, where he discussed taxes, energy, and regulations stifling the manufacturing industry.

Stephen Ubl, president and chief executive officer of PhRMA, also spoke out about January 6, calling it ‘appalling,’ and took issue with some aspects of Trump’s agenda items, including his executive order push to ‘Buy American,’ which Ubl said would create ‘even more barriers to innovation and efforts to develop a vaccine for COVID-19.’

Ubl’s company, along with other organizations, filed a lawsuit in 2020 ‘against the Trump administration’s new rules for lowering drug prices.’

Ubl, who has donated at least $15,000 to Democrats, has struck a more positive tone since Trump’s victory, posting on X that he is ‘committed to working with the Trump administration and the new Congress to make our health care system work better for patients while preserving our unique ecosystem that enables greater innovation and lower costs for patients.’ 

Ubl met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in early December, and PhRMA donated funds to Trump’s inauguration. 

‘With President Trump now officially sworn into office, I look forward to working with his administration to address key challenges facing our industry and fighting for solutions to help patients access and afford the treatments they need,’ Ubl posted on X in January. 

Neil Bradley, the vice president of the Chamber of Commerce, said after January 6 that Trump’s words and actions ‘have no place in a free and Democratic society’ and the New York Times reported that he said the chamber is ‘evaluating how lawmakers voted last week during the electoral vote certification process and how they vote in the coming days when the House moves to impeach Mr. Trump when making decisions about donations.’

Bradley was also critical of President Trump’s decision to end DACA, saying in 2017 that it ‘runs contrary to the president’s goal of growing the U.S. economy.’

Bradley, a Democratic donor who donated to former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney after she voted to impeach Trump, said after Trump’s election that ‘his actions are a long overdue change in direction that will help unleash the American economy, resulting in more innovation and faster growing paychecks for American workers.’

Shortly after Trump’s victory, the Business Roundtable (BRT) put out a press release saying that it ‘congratulates President-elect Donald Trump on his election as the 47th President of the United States.’

‘We look forward to working with the incoming Trump Administration and all federal and state policymakers.’

Before Trump’s re-election, several members of the BRT were highly critical of Trump, including CEO Joshua Bolten, who called Trump unfit for office in 2016, before he joined BRT in 2017, and donated to prominent Trump critic Liz Cheney in 2021 and 2022. 

Bolten also donated to Trump critic and former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger in 2021 after he voted to impeach Trump. 

Kristen Silverberg, president and COO of BRT, signed a letter opposing Trump’s election in 2016, before she joined BRT in 2019, and donated several thousand dollars to Cheney’s re-election efforts after she voted to impeach Trump, FEC records show. 

Records also show that Silverberg donated multiple times to Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign against Trump in the Republican primary in 2023, as well as Chris Christie’s campaign in the same primary. 

BRT hosted President Trump twice during CEO Quarterly Meetings with Bolten and Silverberg at the helm, and the group also met with then-vice presidential candidate JD Vance during their Q3 2024 meeting with CEOs in September. 

The organization pointed to Bolten and Silverberg making no public anti-Trump statements since 2016 and said they have worked ‘closely’ with both Trump administrations on important policy initiatives. The organization also said that donations to Cheney, a former colleague, were for her reelection and not her anti-Trump efforts.

‘Business Roundtable worked with President Trump to advance tax reform and USMCA during his first term, and we look forward to working together in his second to continue advancing economic policies that expand opportunity for all Americans,’ BRT spokesperson Michael Steel told Fox News Digital. ‘Those policies include extending and strengthening the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, securing major regulatory and permitting reforms, and ensuring a skilled U.S. workforce.’