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Hamas released three more hostages on Saturday in exchange for dozens of Palestinian prisoners as part of the ceasefire deal reached with Israel.

Or Levy, 34; Eli Sharabi, 52; Ohad Ben Ami, 56, were released by Hamas after they were abducted during the terror group’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack against Israel that prompted the war in Gaza.

The trio were released from Deir al-Balah in the central part of the Gaza Strip. The hostages arrived at the hand-over point in a Hamas vehicle.

Red Cross vehicles also arrived at the location. 

This was the fifth time since the ceasefire began on Jan. 19 that Hamas released hostages in exchange for prisoners. Eighteen hostages and more than 550 Palestinian prisoners have been released thus far.

The ceasefire paused the 15-month war in Gaza sparked by Hamas’ attack on the Jewish State, leading to military retaliation from Israeli forces.

Fox News’ Yael Rotem-Kuriel and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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President Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order cutting all foreign aid to South Africa, citing concerns about the country ‘seizing’ ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation.

Trump alleged South Africa’s recently enacted Expropriation Act 13 of 2024 ‘dismantles equal opportunity in employment, education, and business.’

The order notes ‘hateful rhetoric’ and government actions have been ‘fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners.’

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa previously released a statement arguing that no land was confiscated.

‘We look forward to engaging with the Trump administration over our land reform policy and issues of bilateral interest,’ according to the statement. ‘We are certain that out of those engagements, we will share a better and common understanding over these matters.’

The act permits the country to take land for a public purpose or in the public interest, while offering just and equitable compensation. 

However, Fox News Digital previously reported expropriation has yet to happen.

Elon Musk, leader of the DOGE team, publicly commented on the matter, accusing Ramaphosa of having ‘openly racist ownership laws.

The executive order also claims South Africa has taken ‘aggressive’ positions toward the U.S. by accusing Israel of genocide – instead of Hamas, and ‘reinvigorating’ its relationship with Iran to develop commercial, military, and nuclear arrangements.

Pointing to those concerns, the executive order states the U.S. cannot support the South African government’s alleged commission of rights violations.

In addition to eliminating aid and assistance, the order notes the U.S. will promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored, race-based discrimination -which includes racially discriminatory property confiscation.

The Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security will prioritize humanitarian relief, including admission and resettlement through the United States Refugee Admissions Program, according to the order.

Fox News Digital’s Paul Tilsley contributed to this story.

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Democratic attorneys general from 19 states have filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration over the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) access to sensitive, personal data belonging to Americans at the Treasury Department. 

The lawsuit claims the Elon Musk-run agency illegally accessed the Treasury Department’s central payment system at the Trump administration’s behest. 

On Thursday, the Treasury agreed to limit the Musk team’s access to its payment systems while a judge hears arguments in a previous lawsuit filed by a group of employee unions and retirees. 

The lawsuit, filed Monday, claimed Musk’s team violated the law by being given ‘full access’ to the Treasury’s payment systems.

The payment systems have information about Americans’ Social Security, Medicare and veterans’ benefits, tax refund information and much more. 

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told FOX Business Wednesday the concerns are not valid. 

‘DOGE is not going to fail,’ he said. ‘They are moving a lot of people’s cheese here in the capital, and when you hear this squawking, then some status quo interest is not happy.

‘At the Treasury, our payment system is not being touched. We process 1.3 billion payments a year. There is a study being done — can we have more accountability, more accuracy, more traceability that the money is going where it is? But, in terms of payments being stopped, that is happening upstream at the department level.’

DOGE was launched to root out wasteful spending in the government, and it has already come close to closing the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). 

The lawsuit was filed in New York by the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James, a vocal Trump critic. 

It includes attorneys general from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.

‘President Trump does not have the power to give away Americans’ private information to anyone he chooses, and he cannot cut federal payments approved by Congress,’ James said in a statement. ‘Musk and DOGE have no authority to access Americans’ private information and some of our country’s most sensitive data.’

Treasury officials on Wednesday denied violating privacy laws, saying only two members of the DOGE team had been given ‘read-only’ access to information in the payment systems. 

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. 

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday addressed events in Afghanistan, saying they created the perception of ‘American weakness.’

While speaking to the Department of Defense and Pentagon workforce during a town hall on Friday, Hegseth said America ‘deserves to take accountability for’ events in Afghanistan, the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel, and the war that was unleashed in Ukraine. 

‘Chaos happens when the perception of American strength is not complete,’ Hegseth said. ‘We aim to re-establish that deterrence.’

He discussed the three pillars he will focus on during his term – reviving the warrior ethos, restoring trust in the military and rebuilding it by matching threats to capabilities, and reestablishing deterrence by defending the homeland.

Hegseth also spoke about the broken windows theory in policing, explaining that disregarding the small things in the military can create large problems.

‘I think the same thing exists inside our services – making sure at every level, there [are] standards and accountability, and that we live it at the highest levels,’ he said.

That is why, Hegseth said, the U.S. will look back at what happened in Afghanistan.

He added the department will hold people accountable.

‘Not to be retrospective, not for retribution, but to understand what went wrong and why there was no accountability for it,’ Hegseth said.

Going forward, the military will find strength in unity, not diversity, according to Hegseth.

‘I think the single dumbest phrase in military history is ‘our diversity is our strength,’’ he said. ‘Our strength is our shared purpose – regardless of our background, regardless of how we grew up, regardless of our gender, regardless of our race. 

In the department, Hegseth said everyone will be treated equally.

‘We will treat everyone with fairness,’ he said. ‘We will treat everyone with respect.’

Service members and department civilian employees will be judged by their merit, commitment to the team, and the mission, according to Hegseth.

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President Donald Trump on Friday announced he is revoking former President Joe Biden’s security clearances and stopping his daily intelligence briefings.

‘There is no need for Joe Biden to continue receiving access to classified information,’ Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social Friday night.

The privileges will be revoked immediately, according to the president.

He added the precedent was set by Biden himself.

‘He set this precedent in 2021, when he instructed the Intelligence Community (IC) to stop the 45th President of the United States (ME!) from accessing details on National Security, a courtesy provided to former Presidents,’ Trump wrote. 

The president noted the Hur Report, which he claimed ‘revealed that Biden suffers from ‘poor memory’ and, even in his ‘prime,’ could not be trusted with sensitive information,’ according to the post.

Special Counsel Robert Hur submitted a report on Biden’s alleged improper retention of classified records, which confirmed the former president’s frequent memory lapses and contradicted his claims.

Hur also testified in March that he found evidence that ‘pride and money’ motivated Biden to retain classified documents.

However, he did not recommend criminal charges against Biden.

Trump wrote in the post that he will always protect National Security.

‘JOE, YOU’RE FIRED. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,’ he wrote.

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Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) chief Elon Musk’s efforts to clean up waste and fraud in the federal government will soon shift its focus to the Social Security Administration (SSA) in a move likely to create a firestorm with Democrats.

The SSA, created by the Social Security Act under President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935 and tasked with establishing a federal benefits system for older Americans, will soon become a focus of DOGE, according to a report from Semafor that was not denied by the White House when contacted by Fox News Digital.

While several Democrats — including Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., in a post on X — have been quick to accuse this move as being aimed at slashing Social Security benefits for the elderly, several areas with potential waste exist in the agency that don’t involve cutting current benefits. 

Just Facts, a nonprofit research institute, previously reported that the agency disbursed roughly $2 billion in fraudulent or improper payments in 2022, which it calculated was enough ‘to pay 89,947 retired workers the average annual old-age benefit of $21,924 for 2023.’

Just Facts explained that through a policy known as ‘administrative finality,’ once the ‘SSA mistakenly overpays a beneficiary for more than four years, it does not recover past overpayments and deliberately continues to make future overpayments excepting cases of fraud.’

The SSA sent roughly 7,000 federal employees disability benefits in 2008 while they were still taking wages from federal jobs, according to a 2010 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The GAO estimated that about 1,500 of those individuals ‘may have improperly received benefits’ since their wages went beyond maximum income thresholds. The GAO investigation also found that over 71,000 ‘stimulus checks’ were sent by the Obama administration to people who were deceased, including 63,481 people whose deaths had been previously reported to the agency.

‘Social Security will not be touched, it will only be strengthened,’ President Donald Trump said during a press conference on Friday. ‘We have illegal immigrants on Social Security and we’re going to find out who they are and take them out.’

Trump added, ‘We’re going to strengthen our Social Security, etc. We’re not going to touch it other than to make it stronger. But we have people that shouldn’t be on, and those people we have to weed out, most of them, or many of them, so far, have been illegal immigrants.’

On Friday afternoon, White House Principal Deputy Communications Director Alex Pfeiffer posted a report on X from the Center for Immigration Studies in 2021 that said, ‘We estimate that there are 2.65 million illegal immigrants with Social Security numbers.’

Trump added that DOGE will go through ‘everything’ when it comes to waste and fraud in the federal government.

In a statement to Fox News Digital, a spokesperson for the SSA said, ‘We remain focused and vigilant on the integrity of our programs and take seriously our responsibilities to deter fraud, waste, and abuse.’

DOGE has dominated news headlines over the past week as Musk’s team has moved to slash USAID’s $40 billion spending budget and put on leave the vast majority of its employees, as photos of the sign at the door of the agency’s Washington, D.C., headquarters being taken down have circulated on social media.

Musk has said that both he and Trump ‘agreed’ that the agency should be ‘shut down.’ Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has been named acting director of the independent agency, on Monday echoed the sentiment, telling reporters, ‘USAID is not functioning.’

‘It needs to be aligned with the national interest of the U.S. They’re not a global charity, these are taxpayer dollars. People are asking simple questions. What are they doing with the money?’ Rubio continued. ‘We are spending taxpayers’ money. We owe the taxpayers assurances that it furthers our national interest.’

Democrats held a rally outside the Treasury Department earlier this week blasting the DOGE efforts as a threat to democracy. 

‘Elon Musk is a Nazi nepo baby, a godless lawless billionaire, who no one elected,’ Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., said at a rally, sparking pushback from conservatives on social media.

‘Elon, this is the American people. This is not your trashy Cybertruck that you can just dismantle, pick apart, and sell the pieces of.’

Fox News Digital’s Stephen Sorace contributed to this report.

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Rep. Jim Jordan, GOP chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., sent employees from the Fulton County District Attorney’s office requests Thursday to hand over documents and interviews related to the Jan. 6 Committee as they continue investigating District Attorney Fani Willis. 

‘The committee previously wrote to District Attorney Willis requesting documents relating to her coordination with the January 6 Select Committee. Because District Attorney Willis has declined to cooperate, the committee must pursue other avenues to obtain this information,’ a press release states. 

Jordan and Loudermilk sent letters to Assistant Chief Investigator Michael Hill, Assistant Chief Investigator Trina Swanson-Lucas, Chief Senior District Attorney Donald Wakeford and Deputy District Attorney Will Wooten, requesting ‘all documents and communications’ between the employees and ‘any member, staff member, agent, or representative of the January 6 Selection Committee.’ 

The letters also request the employees hand over ‘all documents and communications referring or relating to records in your possession obtained’ from the Jan. 6 Committee. 

All employees were asked to submit the requested documentation no later than Feb. 20. 

The letters sent Thursday say the lawmakers had previously written to Willis ‘requesting documents relating to her coordination with the January 6 Select Committee.’

The lawmakers say they received a letter from Willis in December in which she confirmed the requested documents existed ‘but declined to produce such materials on the grounds that the materials were ‘protected from disclosure by attorney-client privilege, work product privilege, and other common law protections.”

The DA’s office asserted the same claim in a court filing that same month when it declined to turn over any new communications between Willis and special counsel Jack Smith, who had also been investigating alleged efforts by President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The filing asserted that the documents either did not exist or were exempt from disclosure under Georgia law.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney had previously ordered Willis to produce any records of communication with either Smith or the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 within five business days. In doing so, the judge sided with Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group that had filed suit against Willis, determining that Willis had violated the state’s open records act by failing to respond to the lawsuit. 

The House Judiciary Committee launched its investigation into whether Willis coordinated with the House Jan. 6 Committee in December 2023. Jordan and Loudermilk took the lead on the probe after learning that Willis’ office ‘coordinated its investigative actions with the partisan Select Committee.’

The lawmakers said at the time that Willis asked the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 to share evidence with her office.

Willis charged Trump with one count of violation of the Georgia RICO Act, three counts of criminal solicitation, six counts of criminal conspiracy, one count of filing false documents and two counts of making false statements. 

Trump pleaded not guilty to all counts.

Fox News Digital reached out to Hill, Swanson-Lucas, Wakeford, Wooten and the DA’s Office but did not immediately hear back. 

Fox News Digital’s Breanne Deppisch and Brooke Singman contributed to this report. 

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President Donald Trump hosted Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba at the White House Friday and said the U.S. will have relations with the North Korean regime of dictator Kim Jong Un.

‘We will have relations with North Korea, with Kim Jong Un. I get along with them very well,’ Trump told reporters alongside Ishiba.

Trump, who first met Kim in 2018 in Singapore and became the first sitting president to meet with the leader of North Korea, is looking to build off his personal diplomacy he established with Kim during his first term.

‘We had a good relationship. And I think it’s a very big asset for everybody that I do get along with them,’ the president said. 

Trump met Kim again in 2019 and became the first president to step foot inside North Korean territory from the demilitarized zone.

Trump said Japan would welcome renewed dialogue with North Korea because relations between Japan and North Korea remain tense since diplomatic relations have never been established.

‘And I can tell you that Japan likes the idea because their relationship is not very good with him,’ Trump said.

Ishiba said it’s a positive development Trump and Kim met during Trump’s first term. And now that he has returned to power, the U.S., Japan and its allies can move toward resolving issues with North Korea, including denuclearization.

‘Japan and U.S. will work together toward the complete denuclearization of North Korea,’ Ishiba added.

Prime Minister Ishiba also addressed a grievance involving the abduction of Japanese citizens by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s. Although North Korea released some of the prisoners in the early 2000s, Pyongyang never provided Japan with any explanation for the abduction of its citizens, and there can be no normalization of relations between Japan and North Korea until the issue is resolved.

‘And so our time is limited,’ Ishiba warned.

‘So, I don’t know if the president of the United States, if President Trump is able to resolve this issue. We do understand that it’s a Japan issue, first and foremost. Having said that, we would love to continue to cooperate with them,’ the prime minister added.

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President Donald Trump on Friday announced he is revoking former President Joe Biden’s security clearance and stopping his daily intelligence briefings.

‘There is no need for Joe Biden to continue receiving access to classified information,’ Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social Friday night.

The privileges will be revoked immediately, according to the President.

He added the precedent was set by Biden himself.

‘He set this precedent in 2021, when he instructed the Intelligence Community (IC) to stop the 45th President of the United States (ME!) from accessing details on National Security, a courtesy provided to former Presidents,’ Trump wrote. 

The president noted the Hur Report, which he claimed ‘revealed that Biden suffers from ‘poor memory’ and, even in his ‘prime,’ could not be trusted with sensitive information,’ according to the post.

Trump said he will always protect National Security.

‘JOE, YOU’RE FIRED. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,’ he wrote.

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Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor criticized the Court’s 2024 presidential immunity case in her first public appearance since the start of the second Trump term, saying it places the Court’s legitimacy on the line. 

Sotomayor made the comments during an appearance in Louisville, Kentucky, during which she was asked a range of questions, including the public’s perception of the high court, according to the Associated Press. Sotomayor’s comments are her first in public since President Donald Trump took office last month. 

‘If we as a court go so much further ahead of people, our legitimacy is going to be questioned,’ Sotomayor said during the Louisville event. ‘I think the immunity case is one of those situations. I don’t think that Americans have accepted that anyone should be above the law in America. Our equality as people was the foundation of our society and of our Constitution.’

In a 6-3 decision in July 2024, the Supreme Court ruled in Trump v. United States that a former president has substantial immunity from prosecution for official acts committed while in office, but not for unofficial acts.

The case stemmed from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s federal election interference case in which he charged Trump with conspiracy to defraud the U.S.; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights. 

Sotomayor notably wrote the dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, saying the decision ‘makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law.’

‘Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law,’ the dissent continued. ‘Moving forward, however, all former Presidents will be cloaked in such immunity. If the occupant of that office misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backstop. With fear for our democracy, I dissent.’

During her Louisville appearance, Sotomayor shared that she ‘had a hard time with the immunity case,’ saying the Constitution contains provisions ‘not exempting the president from criminal activity after an impeachment.’

Sotomayor warned that if the Court were to continue down the same path, the Court’s legitimacy would ultimately be at risk. 

‘And if we continue going in directions that the public is going to find hard to understand, we’re placing the court at risk,’ Sotomayor said. 

When asked for comment, a White House spokesperson told Fox News Digital, ‘This historic 6-3 ruling speaks for itself.’

The justice suggested that one way to resolve the public’s distrust in the Court would be to slow down in overturning precedent. The Court has, in recent years, overturned various landmark decisions, including Roe v. Wade in 2022, and striking down affirmative action in college admissions in 2023 and the Chevron doctrine in 2024. 

‘I think that creates instability in the society, in people’s perception of law and people’s perception of whether we’re doing things because of legal analysis or because of partisan views,’ Sotomayor said. ‘Whether those views are accurate or not, I don’t accuse my colleagues of being partisan.’

Sotomayor made similar comments in 2023, saying she had a ‘a sense of despair’ about the Court’s direction following the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which overturned Roe. Sotomayor did not name the case specifically. 

However, the justice said she did not have the luxury to dwell on those feelings.

‘It’s not an option to fall into despair,’ Sotomayor said. ‘I have to get up and keep fighting.’

Fox News Digital’s Ronn Blitzer and the Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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