The Senate is expected on Thursday to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary in President Donald Trump’s cabinet.

The final showdown over Kennedy’s controversial nomination was set in motion after the Republican-controlled Senate on Wednesday – in a 53-47 party-line vote – invoked cloture, which started the clock ticking toward the final confirmation roll call.

Kennedy, the well-known vaccine skeptic and environmental crusader who ran for the White House in 2024 before ending his bid and endorsing Trump, needs a simple majority to be confirmed by the Senate.

Kennedy survived back-to-back combustible Senate confirmation hearings late last month, when Trump’s nominee to lead 18 powerful federal agencies that oversee the nation’s food and health faced plenty of verbal fireworks over past controversial comments, including his repeated claims in recent years linking vaccines to autism, which have been debunked by scientific research.

During the hearings, Democrats also spotlighted Kennedy’s service for years as chair or chief legal counsel for Children’s Health Defense, the nonprofit organization he founded that has advocated against vaccines and sued the federal government numerous times, including a challenge over the authorization of the COVID-19 vaccine for children.

With Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee voting not to advance Kennedy, the spotlight was on Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., a physician and chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP).

Cassidy issued a last minute endorsement before the committee level vote, giving Kennedy a party-line 14-13 victory to advance his confirmation to the full Senate.

Cassidy had emphasized during Kennedy’s confirmation hearings that ‘your past of undermining confidence in vaccines with unfounded or misleading arguments concerns me,’ which left doubt about his support.

However, after speaking again with the nominee, Cassidy rattled off a long list of commitments Kennedy made to him, including quarterly hearings before the HELP Committee; meetings multiple times per month; that HELP Committee can choose representatives on boards or commissions reviewing vaccine safety; and a 30-day notice to the committee, plus a hearing, for any changes in vaccine safety reviews.

‘These commitments, and my expectation that we can have a great working relationship to make America healthy again, is the basis of my support,’ the senator said.

Earlier this week, another Republican senator who had reservations regarding Kennedy’s confirmation announced support for the nominee.

‘After extensive public and private questioning and a thorough examination of his nomination, I will support Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,’ GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine announced on Tuesday.

Another Republican who was on the fence, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, also voted to advance Kennedy’s nomination.

Murkowski noted that she continues ‘to have concerns about Mr. Kennedy’s views on vaccines and his selective interpretation of scientific studies,’ but that the nominee ‘has made numerous commitments to me and my colleagues, promising to work with Congress to ensure public access to information and to base vaccine recommendations on data-driven, evidence-based, and medically sound research.’

Former longtime Senate GOP leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, a major proponent of vaccines, also voted to advance Kennedy’s nomination.

Kennedy, whose outspoken views on Big Pharma and the food industry have also sparked controversy, has said he aims to shift the focus of the agencies he would oversee toward promotion of a healthy lifestyle, including overhauling dietary guidelines, taking aim at ultra-processed foods and getting to the root causes of chronic diseases.

The push is part of his ‘Make America Healthy Again’ campaign.

‘Our country is not going to be destroyed because we get the marginal tax rate wrong. It is going to be destroyed if we get this issue wrong,’ Kennedy said as he pointed to chronic diseases. ‘And I am in a unique position to be able to stop this epidemic.’

The 71-year-old scion of the nation’s most storied political dynasty, launched a long-shot campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination against then-President Joe Biden in April 2023. However, six months later, he switched to an independent run for the White House.

Trump regularly pilloried Kennedy during his independent presidential bid, accusing him of being a ‘Radical Left Liberal’ and a ‘Democrat Plant.’

Kennedy fired back, claiming in a social media post that Trump’s jabs against him were ‘a barely coherent barrage of wild and inaccurate claims.’

However, Kennedy made major headlines again last August when he dropped his presidential bid and endorsed Trump. 

While Kennedy had long identified as a Democrat and repeatedly invoked his late father, former Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and his late uncle, former President John F. Kennedy – who were both assassinated in the 1960s – Kennedy in recent years built relationships with far-right leaders due in part to his high-profile vaccine skepticism.

After months of criticizing him, Trump called Kennedy ‘a man who has been an incredible champion for so many of these values that we all share.’

Trump announced soon after the November election that he would nominate Kennedy to his Cabinet to run HHS.

The final vote on Kennedy’s nomination comes one day after another controversial pick, director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, was confirmed by the Senate in a 52-48 vote.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Lee Zeldin said Wednesday that his team has located $20 billion in tax dollars that the Biden administration purposely wasted.

‘An extremely disturbing video circulated two months ago, featuring a Biden EPA political appointee talking about how they were ‘tossing gold bars off the Titanic,’ rushing to get billions of your tax dollars out the door before Inauguration Day,’ Zeldin said in a video posted to X, citing another video from December. ‘The ‘gold bars’ were tax dollars and ‘tossing them off the Titanic’ meant the Biden administration knew they were wasting it.’

Zeldin said the EPA has plans to recover the ‘gold bars’ that were found ‘parked at an outside financial institution,’ which he does not mention by name.

He said that ‘this scheme was the first of its kind in EPA history, and it was purposefully designed to obligate all the money in a rush job with reduced oversight’ before Inauguration Day.

Zeldin said ‘there is zero reason to suspect any wrongdoing by the bank,’ but he thinks an agreement with the institution ‘needs to be instantly terminated’ and all the money should be immediately returned.

He says the EPA needs to resume responsibility for all of these funds, adding that his team will ‘review every penny that has gone out the door.’

‘The days of irresponsibly shoveling boatloads of cash to far-left activist groups in the name of environmental justice and climate equity are over,’ Zeldin said. ‘The American public deserves a more transparent and accountable government than what transpired these past four years.’

He also said that he would be referring this matter to the inspector general’s office and that he would work with the Department of Justice to assist President Donald Trump in regaining control.

‘Now we will get them back inside of control of government as we pursue next steps. As President Trump has vowed, we’re going to usher in a new Golden Age of American success for the citizens of every race, religion, color and creed,’ Zeldin said at the end of the video.

Elon Musk also commended Zeldin on X for an ‘awesome job’ saving taxpayer money.

President Donald Trump’s agenda has been met with a wave of lawsuits since he took office in January, and legal experts say many of them will likely end up in the Supreme Court’s hands. 

‘President Trump is certainly being aggressive in terms of flexing executive power and not at all surprised that these are being challenged,’ John Malcolm, vice president of the Institute for Constitutional Government at the Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital.

Trump kicked off his second term with a flurry of executive orders and directives that have since been the targets of a flood of legal challenges. Since Trump’s day 1, more than 40 lawsuits have been filed over the administration’s actions, including the president’s birthright citizenship order, immigration policies, federal funding freezes, federal employee buyouts, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and legal action against FBI and DOJ employees.

‘Many of these cases may end up on the Supreme Court, but certainly the birthright citizenship,’ Malcolm said. ‘If there ends up being a split among the courts, that issue will certainly be taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court.’

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean at UC Berkeley School of Law, said Trump ‘has issued a myriad of orders violating the Constitution and federal laws’ and noted that ‘Many already have been enjoined by the courts.’

‘The crucial question is whether the president will defy these orders,’ Chemerinsky told Fox News Digital. 

‘Almost without exception, throughout American history, presidents have complied with Supreme Court orders even when they strongly disagree with them.’

In one of the most recent developments, a Rhode Island federal judge ordered the Trump administration to unfreeze federal funds, claiming the administration did not adhere to a previous order to do so. The Trump administration appealed the order to the First Circuit shortly thereafter, which was ultimately denied. 

‘Judges ordering the federal government to spend billions of dollars when the administration is saying that that is not in the best interests of the United States, I would expect that issue to be on a fast track to the U.S. Supreme Court,’ Malcolm said. 

Many of these lawsuits have been filed in historically left-leaning federal court jurisdictions, including Washington federal court and D.C. federal court. Various challenges have already been appealed to the appellate courts, including the Ninth and First Circuits, which notably hand down more progressive rulings. The Ninth Circuit, in particular, has a higher reversal rate than other circuit courts. 

‘Judge shopping is nothing new,’ Malcolm said. ‘So I’m not at all surprised that these lawsuits challenging the Trump administration are being filed, for the most part, in the bluest of blue areas where the odds are high that the judge who’s going to be considering the issue has a liberal orientation.’

Despite the variety of ongoing legal challenges, Malcolm said he believes the Trump administration is on more solid footing when it comes to cases concerning firing political appointees. On Monday, Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden to lead the Office of Special Counsel, sued the Trump administration in D.C. federal court after he was fired on Friday. 

Malcolm said Trump’s second term will continue to see a wave of litigation as he continues to implement his agenda, similar to his predecessors, including Biden. 

Malcolm particularly noted the Biden administration’s efforts to redefine sex in Title IX as ‘gender identity.’ A Kentucky federal judge blocked the Biden administration’s attempt in early January. 

‘There are a lot of these issues that end up coming up,’ Malcolm said, looking back on Biden’s Title IX legal challenges. ‘And I suspect that the same sorts of issues will come up during the Trump administration, and they’ll be full employment for lawyers throughout his entire term.’

It is said that talk is cheap. 

And that’s why House Republicans have done so much of it as they attempted to forge an internal agreement on a budget plan to slash taxes and cut spending. 

It is now the middle of February. House Republicans struggled to finalize plans for what President Donald Trump terms a ‘big beautiful bill.’ Especially when you consider all of the talking Republicans did – among themselves – since the start of the year.

House Republicans cloistered themselves for not one but two daylong sessions on Saturday, Jan. 4, and Sunday, Jan. 5, at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C. That’s where House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, and Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith, R-Mo., presented their ideas to slash spending and engineer a budget reconciliation package.

Keep that term in mind. Budget reconciliation. More on that in a moment.

Back on Capitol Hill, House Republicans convened multiple large and small meetings to lay out details on their package. That included a three-day session at President Trump’s golf club in Doral, Florida. 

Republicans returned to Washington with claims of ‘unity.’ But still no agreement.

Arrington hoped to prepare the budget plan in his committee last week. Such a meeting would produce a ‘budget reconciliation’ package. Budget reconciliation is a process where the Senate can bypass a filibuster and approve a bill with a simple majority. But the package must be fiscal in nature, such as addressing spending cuts and taxes. Thus, this plan likely qualifies for reconciliation. Senate Republicans must lean on budget reconciliation because they only have 53 GOP members. Not 60, which are required to break a conventional filibuster. But reconciliation is part of the annual budget process. And the reconciliation option isn’t available unless a budget blueprint is in place. No budget? No reconciliation.

House Republicans grappled last week to reach a deal. So the House GOP brass set off for the White House for a meeting with the president.

‘He’s going to have to make some decisions,’ said one senior House Republican of President Trump, noting he’s the only one who could help the party coalesce around an idea.

The session lasted for nearly five hours, although President Trump wasn’t in the session the entire time. Meantime, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., was supposed to meet at the Capitol with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But Netanyahu was left cooling his heels on Capitol Hill as Republicans debated plans and scribbled figures on whiteboards. 

‘[President Trump] set the tone for us to push through some things that we were stuck on,’ said Arrington when he returned to the Capitol. 

‘We made serious progress and have narrowed the gap to where we’re very close to getting ready to bring this to Budget Committee,’ said Senate Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La. 

Johnson even predicted the plan may be ready later that evening. Hence, a group of Republicans retreated for another set of meetings until well after midnight.

‘I’d like to see their plan,’ complained Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn. ‘They’re not going to force me into something.’ 

By Friday morning, Johnson was again diminishing expectations.

‘It may not be today,’ said Johnson. 

However, the speaker hinted that the details could be ready later that weekend. 

‘We’ve got a few more people we’ve got to talk with and a couple more boxes to check,’ said Johnson. ‘The expectation is it we’ll be marking up a budget next week, potentially as early as Tuesday.’

But the weekend optimism died when the speaker appeared on ‘Fox News Sunday.’

‘We were going to do a Budget Committee markup next week. We might push it a little bit further because the details really matter,’ said Johnson on Sunday. ‘But we’re getting very, very close.’

Johnson attended the Super Bowl in New Orleans later that day with President Trump. So could there have been a breakthrough amid the confetti, étouffée and Cooper DeJean madness of the Super Bowl?

‘Are we going to have this bill this week, yes or no?’ yours truly asked the speaker as he entered the Capitol on Monday afternoon.

Johnson deployed his favorite verbal placeholder.

‘Stay tuned,’ said the speaker, who uses this line as frequently as a 1950s radio announcer.

‘You said last week we were going to have it,’ I countered.

‘I know,’ said Johnson. ‘I’ve got 220 people that have shared their opinions on this.’

‘Did you overpromise?’ I followed up.

‘No. No,’ responded Johnson. ‘The hard work of the negotiation has to be done on the front end so that we can deliver a product that we know everybody will support.’

Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., tired of the House GOP’s dithering last week, wrote his own budget package, which significantly differs from what the House intends to do. While the House blueprint will focus on taxes and government cuts, Graham’s measure would boost energy production and also call for spending money to tighten the border. The South Carolina Republican has long observed that people voted for border security in the election. He argues that provision should come first.

Johnson said he talked with Graham at the Super Bowl and ‘he and I are on the same page.’

When asked by CNN’s Manu Raju whether Graham’s gambit was ‘complicating this,’ Johnson answered, ‘Not much.’ 

But when yours truly asked if the Senate moving first would help ‘increase the sense of urgency’ in the House, the speaker responded differently.

‘I wouldn’t say it’s helpful,’ said Johnson. 

An hour later, reporters again peppered Johnson for timing details.

‘I’m not going to give a projected date yet because then you’ll tell me that I overshot,’ said Johnson. ‘So just wait. Everybody relax.’

This entire imbroglio boils down to one factor: the math. 

House Republicans currently boast 218 votes in the 433-member House. There are two vacancies. They can barely lose a vote on their side. Getting any bill across the floor is a monster. 

A major snowstorm was in the forecast for Washington, D.C., on Tuesday afternoon and into the day on Wednesday. House Republican leaders huddled in the Radio/TV Gallery in the Capitol Visitor Center for their weekly press conference Tuesday morning.

‘Ready for snowmageddon?’ House Republican Conference Chair Lisa McClain, R-Mich., asked the press corps. ‘And the question is: Are we going to get it today or not?’

‘Well, you were supposed to get a budget last week, and we didn’t,’ observed your trusty reporter, drawing laughter from scribes and lawmakers alike.

At the press conference, Johnson insisted that the budget was on track. He announced that the Budget Committee would meet Thursday on the package. 

But what unfolded in the news conference wasn’t nearly as interesting as what happened afterward. 

Arrington hustled over to the Radio/TV Gallery to privately meet Johnson and other GOP leaders in an adjacent anteroom. Johnson and Arrington had not been on the same page with the budget. Fox is told that Arrington and Johnson had to make sure they were aligned. Arrington had pushed for deeper cuts than Johnson.

By Wednesday morning, Arrington delivered a budget blueprint. It called for $2 trillion in cuts from what’s called ‘mandatory spending,’ like entitlements. It features $4.5 trillion in tax reductions. And it lifts the debt ceiling by $4 trillion.

The question now is whether House Republicans can pry a bill out of committee, let alone pass it on the floor.

But after weeks of jawboning, House Republicans finally had a budget.

And, for the record, Washington, D.C., also got snow.

About 7 inches.

Egypt has apparently released the initial details of a proposal Cairo has put together to rebuild the Gaza Strip within three to five years, though there’s no mention of a plan to work with the Trump administration or Israel.

According to a reporter for i24 News, Egyptian sources told Qatari Al Araby TV the plan is a move to counter the proposal first put forward by President Donald Trump last week suggesting the U.S. would ‘take over’ Gaza and forcibly displace all Palestinians living there. 

The Egyptian proposal for reconstruction will reportedly be carried out in cooperation among Arab countries, the European Union and the United Nations.

Fox News Digital could not immediately reach the White House, U.N., Qatari or Egyptian officials to confirm details of the plan.

Sources within the European Union confirmed that while they were aware a plan would be released later this month at a summit with fellow Arab nations, they were not aware of the EU’s or the U.N.’s involvement in the reconstruction plans.

More details of the proposal will reportedly lay out a two-phase project that will first focus on rubble removal and residential building construction. 

Details of the plan were reported less than 24 hours after the Egyptian foreign ministry released a statement saying it has ‘aspirations’ to ‘cooperate’ with President Donald Trump and the U.S., but that it also condemned Trump’s proposal to take over the Gaza Strip.  

In addition, the ministry said the only way to achieve regional peace was to address the ‘root cause of conflict’ by ending ‘Israel’s occupation’ and implementing a two-state solution, a proposal that would look vastly different from what Trump has said he plans to do. 

While speaking alongside Jordan’s King Abdullah in the Oval Office Tuesday, Trump reaffirmed his plans to take over the Gaza Strip, telling reporters, ‘We’re going to take it. We’re going to hold it. We’re going to cherish it.’

Though both Jordan and Egypt have pushed back on Trump’s plan to ‘take over’ Gaza, Richard Goldberg, senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former National Security Council official during the first Trump administration, pointed out that the president’s comments got them moving to take action.

Abdullah on Tuesday announced he will accept up to 2,000 children from Gaza who have cancer or require other medical treatment. Neither Jordan nor Egypt had previously agreed to accept Gazans after the war that ensured Gaza in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks.

‘These governments are most certainly scrambling to respond to a president who outlined a pretty clear vision and a determination to make it happen,’ Goldberg told Fox News Digital. ‘I’d expect their first round of responses to be wholly unserious, hoping they can put lipstick on a pig and make Trump go away.

‘But this president doesn’t fall for those old tricks.’ 

Trump has claimed there is potential to turn the Gaza Strip into the ‘Riviera of the Middle East’ and on Tuesday said it could be a ‘diamond.’

But King Abdullah would not directly answer reporters’ questions on his position regarding the U.S. takeover.

‘I think the point is, how do we make this work in a way that is good for everybody?’ Abdullah wondered. ‘Obviously, we have to look at the best interests of the United States, of the people in the region, especially to my people of Jordan.

‘We will be in Saudi Arabia to discuss how we can work with the president and with the United States. So, I think let’s wait until the Egyptians can come and present it to the president and not get ahead of ourselves.’

Later Tuesday, Abdullah confirmed Jordan’s position on X. And while he thanked the president for a ‘warm welcome’ and ‘constructive meeting,’ he said, ‘I reiterated Jordan’s steadfast position against the displacement of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. This is the unified Arab position.

‘Rebuilding Gaza without displacing the Palestinians and addressing the dire humanitarian situation should be the priority for all,’ he added, echoing a statement released by Egypt’s foreign ministry. ‘Achieving just peace on the basis of the two-state solution is the way to ensure regional stability.’

A federal judge restored President Donald Trump’s deferred resignation program for federal workers in a decision on Wednesday.

The deferred resignation program, also known as the administration’s ‘fork in the road’ offer, involved asking government workers to either stay or leave after Trump mandated them to return to their offices shortly after his inauguration. The legal group Democracy Forward had filed a lawsuit over the program on behalf of labor unions that represent thousands of employees. 

U.S. District Judge George O’Toole of Massachusetts made the ruling in favor of the White House on Wednesday evening. In his decision, who wrote that the plaintiffs in the case ‘are not directly impacted by the directive,’ and denied their case on that basis.

‘[T]hey allege that the directive subjects them to upstream effects including a diversion of resources to answer members’ questions about the directive, a potential loss of membership, and possible reputational harm,’ O’Toole wrote. 

‘The unions do not have the required direct stake in the Fork Directive, but are challenging a policy that affects others, specifically executive branch employees. This is not sufficient.’

Additionally, the judge wrote that his court ‘lacks subject matter jurisdiction to consider the plaintiffs’ pleaded claims,’ and noted similar cases where courts were found to have lacked authority.

‘Aggrieved employees can bring claims through the administrative process,’ O’Toole said. ‘That the unions themselves may be foreclosed from this administrative process does not mean that adequate judicial review is lacking.’

In a statement to Fox News, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the decision ‘the first of many legal wins for the President.’

‘The Court dissolved the injunction due to a lack of standing,’ Leavitt said. ‘This goes to show that lawfare will not ultimately prevail over the will of 77 million Americans who supported President Trump and his priorities.’

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) began emailing more than 2 million federal civilian employees offering them buyouts to leave their jobs shortly after Trump’s inauguration. The offers quickly outraged labor leaders, with the president of the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) calling the offers ‘shady’ and claiming that the deals ‘should not be taken seriously.’

‘The offer is not bound by existing law or policy, nor is it funded by Congress,’ NFFE National President Randy Erwin said. ‘There is nothing to hold OPM or the White House accountable to the terms of their agreement.’ 

‘Federal employees will not give in to this shady tactic pressuring them to quit. Civil servants care way too much about their jobs, their agency missions, and their country to be swayed by this phony ploy. To all federal employees: Do not resign.’

Republican attorneys general previously signaled support for Trump’s program, writing in an amicus curiae brief on Sunday that a challenge to the constitutionality of the order ‘would inevitably fail.’

‘Courts should refrain from intruding into the President’s well-settled Article II authority to supervise and manage the federal workforce,’ the filing said. ‘Plaintiffs seek to inject this Court into federal workforce decisions made by the President and his team. The Court can avoid raising any separation of powers concerns by denying Plaintiffs’ relief and allowing the President and his team to manage the federal workforce.’ 

Fox News Digital’s Louis Casiano and Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., is already planning future hearings for her new subcommittee panel, which was named to correspond with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Greene told reporters after her subcommittee’s first public event that the next two would examine the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and media outlets NPR and PBS.

Musk has also targeted NPR and USAID since leading President Donald Trump’s DOGE advisory team.

‘We’re working on filling the calendar with many more important issues, departments, government programs that the American people deserve direct, hard transparency into,’ Greene told reporters. ‘And then we’re going to be coming up with solutions.’

When asked if one of those hearings could feature Musk himself, Greene suggested that was not in the works.

‘I think Democrats want Elon Musk in front of the committee so they can berate him, attack him and harass him,’ Greene said. ‘Right now, President Trump, myself and many others really want Elon Musk to stay focused on what he’s doing, and that is rooting out the waste, fraud and abuse that has continued on for years within the federal government agencies.’

She said her committee would release a report ‘in a matter of days’ on its findings from its first hearing, which focused on government spending through the lens of the $36 trillion national debt. 

Greene said the report ‘is going to highlight what we found in this hearing and the solutions that we have to implement in Congress.’ 

‘I’ll be meeting with chairs of committees of jurisdiction, and I’ll be talking with the speaker, our leader and our whip and all of Congress to put these solutions into practice as soon as possible,’ she said.

The hearing, which ran roughly two hours, saw Democrats repeatedly try to shift the focus onto Musk and his activities, earning rebukes from Republican lawmakers in the room.

‘You’re having to defend all of this crazy spending, all of this crazy waste. So how do you do it? You do ad hominem attacks, you attack the messenger,’ Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., said during the hearing. ‘Oh, Elon Musk, right? He’s rich. He must be evil, right? That’s the attacks. Really? You can’t do any better than that?’ 

Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, dismissed concerns after the hearing that Democrats’ focus on Musk would be a potent attack strategy.

‘I don’t think it’s going to win with the American people,’ Cloud told Fox News Digital. ‘I think what they’ll see is that the American people voted for what is happening right now, and they want to see dramatic change. They know that the federal government is not working for their benefit, and want to see a major course correction.’

The DOGE subcommittee operates under the House Oversight Committee. It’s the first committee gavel for Greene.

Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday personally stripped the Justice Department’s walls of portraits of former President Joe Biden, former Vice President Kamala Harris, and her own predecessor, former Attorney General Merrick Garland, saying it was ‘ridiculous’ for the portraits to still be hanging nearly three weeks into President Donald Trump’s tenure

Bondi’s role in personally removing the portraits, first shared on X by the New York Post’s Miranda Devine, was confirmed to Fox News Digital by a Justice Department official.

Bondi ‘saw portraits of Garland, Biden, Harris were still up, and she took the initiative to take them off the walls herself and stack them in the corner,’ the official told Fox News. 

The actions come after Bondi, who was sworn in earlier this month, vowed during her confirmation hearing in January not to politicize the Justice Department. 

Bondi, a longtime state prosecutor in Florida and two-time state attorney general, used her roughly five-hour confirmation hearing last month to vow that, if confirmed, the ‘partisanship, the weaponization’ at the Justice Department ‘will be gone.’ 

‘America will have one tier of justice for all,’ she said. 

Trump, for his part, praised Bondi during her swearing-in ceremony earlier this month as ‘unbelievably fair and unbelievably good,’ and someone who he said will ‘restore fair and impartial justice’ at the department. 

‘I know I’m supposed to say, ‘She’s going to be totally impartial with respect to Democrats,” Trump told reporters then, ‘and I think she will be as impartial as a person can be.’

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has dominated headlines during President Donald Trump’s second term. Nigel Farage, the Reform UK party leader who initiated Britain’s departure from the European Union, has been taking notes. 

Farage posted a social media video on Tuesday proclaiming, ‘Britain needs its own DOGE!’ He said it was the ‘first in a series’ of videos that will highlight the misuse of British taxpayer money. 

‘Do you ever wonder where your taxes go, whether your money is being spent properly?’ Farage asked. ‘Well, have a look at what’s come across my desk. Oh, you’ll like this. The environmental impact of filmmaking using Star Wars to improve sector sustainability practices. No, I’m not even making it up – over £200,000. Try this. The cultural legacies of the British Empire, classical music’s colonial history 1750-1900 – £1.2 million funded by U.K. Research and Innovation, a non-departmental government body.’

Farage said Elon Musk’s DOGE investigations inspired him to reevaluate where British taxpayer money is going. Farage said programs, like studying the impact of Star Wars on the environment, are a waste of federal funds and keep workers ‘in jobs who don’t deserve them.’

‘When you see what they’re doing in America, do you get the feeling we ought to be doing it here? This is all a complete waste of your taxpayer money. It’s keeping people in jobs who don’t deserve to have them.’

In December 2024, The Times of London first reported Musk was considering a $100 million donation to Farage’s Reform UK Party. A photo at Mar-a-Lago of Musk, Farage and Nick Candy, the party’s treasurer, released by Reform UK confirmed talks were underway. 

On Jan. 5, Musk created a rift when he advocated for the release of Tommy Robinson, a British political figure controversial for his views on free speech. Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is imprisoned for releasing a documentary with defamatory comments about a Syrian refugee. 

Farage was quick to distance himself from Musk’s view on Robinson, maintaining that ‘Tommy Robinson is not right for Reform.’ In response, Musk called for a new leader of Reform, saying Farage ‘doesn’t have what it takes.’

Despite the social media tension, Farage was one of several European political leaders at Trump’s inauguration in January. He joined Éric Zemmour of France, Tom Van Grieken of Belgium and former Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in Washington, D.C.

Farage’s post aligns with the growing ‘woke waste’ movement in the United Kingdom, a group advocating for government transparency and a DOGE of their own. Since the end of 2024, The Procurement Files has been searching through over 300,000 contracts on the United Kingdom’s public government database to show Brits where their taxpayer money is going. 

Operating much like DOGE’s X account, The Procurement Files searches the government’s database to reveal wasteful spending. Much like we’ve seen play out with Musk cutting DEI and USAID spending, many posts spotlight spending on sustainability initiatives and international humanitarian aid. 

One post revealed U.K. taxpayers spent £50,000 to study ‘shrimp health in Bangladesh.’ Another post highlighted a £15.5 million U.K. investment in a ‘Climate Smart Jobs Programme in Uganda.’ 

Charlotte Gill, who runs DOGE UK on social media, is working alongside The Procurement Files to reveal government waste and misuse of taxpayer money. Trump granted Musk the executive authority to investigate and implement the DOGE agenda to ‘maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.’ Gill has created an online community in the absence of an official DOGE UK. 

When Mete Coban, the deputy mayor of London for environment and energy, announced a program giving away 70,000 trees, Gill took her frustration to social media.

The United Kingdom proposed government spending regulations in November 2024. With a goal of saving £1.2 billion by 2026, the new plan increases government oversight to cut unnecessary spending. 

‘We’re taking immediate action to stop all non-essential government consultancy spend in 2024-25 and halve government spending on consultancy in future years, saving the taxpayer over £1.2 billion by 2026,’ Georgia Gould, parliamentary secretary at the Cabinet Office, announced in November. ‘It comes alongside our work to develop a strategic plan to make the Civil Service more efficient and effective, with bold measures to improve skills and harness digital technology.’

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer referenced Trump’s long-standing commitment to ‘draining the swamp’ during a speech promising ‘change and reform’ for the United Kingdom in December 2024. 

‘I don’t think there’s a swamp to be drained here, but I do think too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline,’ Starmer said. 

DOGE UK, Farage and Starmer did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment. 

The Biden administration slow-walked its designation of American Marc Fogel as a ‘wrongful detainee’ in Russia, Republicans and officials who previously worked on the effort to free Fogel told Fox News Digital.

‘Marc Fogel was viewed by the Biden administration as just an average White guy from flyover country in Western Pennsylvania,’ House Chief Deputy Whip Guy Reschenthaler, R-Pa., told Fox News Digital Tuesday. ‘He didn’t have any celebrity status; he wasn’t a military veteran; he wasn’t a journalist. So, the Biden administration overlooked him, and I think that’s absolutely appalling.’ 

Fogel, an American teacher from Western Pennsylvania, returned to the United States late Tuesday, after President Donald Trump secured his release. 

Fogel had been arrested at an airport in Russia in 2021 for possession of medical marijuana and was sentenced to 14 years in a Russian prison. 

The Biden administration did not designate Fogel a wrongful detainee until October 2024 and did not make that designation public until December 2024 – weeks after Trump was elected and the month before his inauguration. 

Reschenthaler was first notified in 2021 of Fogel’s detention and began leading efforts with congressional colleagues to work with the Biden administration to bring Fogel home. 

Along with a group of bipartisan lawmakers from Pennsylvania – including Reps. Brendan F. Boyle, Mike Doyle, Dwight Evans, Fred Keller, Mike Kelly, Conor Lamb, Dan Meuser, Glenn ‘GT’ Thompson, Susan Wild, and Sen. Pat Toomey — Reschenthaler penned an August 2022 letter to then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken urging him to classify Fogel as having been ‘wrongfully detained.’ 

The lawmakers argued that Fogel’s case was similar to that of WNBA player Brittney Griner, who had been imprisoned for a drug offense in Russia in February 2022. Griner, however, quickly was designated as being wrongfully detained and was returned home in December 2022. 

Reschenthaler told Fox News Digital he spoke to Blinken ‘multiple times’ about Fogel but said the secretary of state ‘refused to give me or my colleagues any kind of explanation for why (Fogel) was not put on wrongfully detained status.’ 

When determining whether an American is wrongfully detained, the individual’s case is measured against criteria established by the Robert Levinson Hostage Recovery and Hostage-Taking Accountability Act. There were 11 criteria established by that law, and lawmakers said Fogel had met at least six of the criteria. 

But the secretary of state has discretion over designations.

‘There are a lot of things that President Trump brings to the table that secured the release of Fogel,’ Reschenthaler told Fox News Digital. ‘For one, the Biden administration knew that Marc Fogel was going to be put on wrongfully detained status under Trump – and they didn’t want to give him the win, so they went ahead and did it on their way out the door.’ 

But Reschenthaler said Trump ‘has a lot more gravitas in talking to foreign leaders and adversaries.’

‘Because when President Trump talks – when he makes a threat or draws a red line – he will actually deliver on that promise,’ Reschenthaler said. ‘Biden would not make bold assertions, and there was nothing to back them off. The Russians did not take Biden or Tony Blinken seriously – and there was nothing to compel them to release Fogel.’ 

A former Biden administration official pushed back and defended Biden and Blinken’s work. 

‘Whether someone is designated or not doesn’t change our level of advocacy, which is how we brought home over 70 people who’d been detained abroad,’ the former official told Fox News Digital. ‘We fought day after day to secure Marc’s release and we celebrate his return home.’ 

By June 2023, two years into Fogel’s detention without the wrongful detainee designation, Reschenthaler, Rep. Mark Kelly, R-Pa., and Pennsylvania Democrat Reps. Chris Deluzio and Brendan Boyle introduced the Marc Fogel Act, which would require the State Department to provide Congress with copies of documents and communications on why a wrongful determination had or had not been made in cases of U.S. nationals detained abroad within six months of arrest. 

‘When you talked to career State Department officials, they understood what they were waiting for was a green light from the executive branch – but they could never say why they wouldn’t do these things,’ Kelly told Fox News Digital Tuesday. ‘They would say, ‘Well, we’re working on it. We’re working on it.’ But the stopping point was that they would not designate him the right way, and it seemed like they had no interest in getting it at all.’ 

Kelly told Fox News Digital that, within the ‘political State Department,’ there ‘just didn’t seem to be any energy toward getting that designation done.’ 

‘There have been so many things since I’ve been in Congress that you get stonewalled on, and that was just one of those things I felt at the beginning – we were just getting stonewalled,’ Kelly said. ‘They were just giving us conversation.’ 

Kelly said, though, that he could ‘feel that the career State Department personnel wanted to do something.’ 

‘But the political State Department was disinterested,’ Kelly said. 

It wasn’t just Republican and Democratic lawmakers trying to aid the Biden administration in securing the return of Fogel to the United States. 

Former White House national security advisor Robert O’Brien, who served during the first Trump administration, also got involved. 

O’Brien told Fox News Digital that he sent a letter to the Russian ambassador as ‘a humanitarian gesture.’ 

‘I sent a letter to the Russian ambassador during the Biden years asking if they would consider a humanitarian release of Mr. Fogel,’ O’Brien told Fox News Digital. ‘The Russian ambassador sent a cordial, but non-committal, letter of response.’ 

O’Brien told Fox News Digital that he informed Ambassador Roger Carstens, Biden’s special envoy for hostage affairs, of his outreach. O’Brien told Fox News Digital that the Biden administration encouraged that outreach. 

Carstens told Fox News Digital that he was ‘well aware that O’Brien sent the letter on Marc Fogel’s behalf.’ 

‘Robert O’Brien and his predecessor, Jim O’Brien, and I all worked together quite closely over the last four years to keep doing the hard work of bringing Americans home,’ Carstens, who also served during the final year of the first Trump administration, told Fox News Digital. 

‘Robert’s efforts on Marc’s behalf, and his efforts on behalf of others that are unsung, showcase the bipartisan nature of these efforts and the importance that the senior leadership in this country places on bringing Americans home,’ Carstens said, calling O’Brien a ‘good personal friend and mentor.’ 

‘We worked hand-in-hand throughout my entire time in the Biden administration to devise ways to bring people home,’ Carstens said. 

But as for Fogel, Carstens told Fox News Digital that the Biden administration did ‘work tirelessly to bring home Marc Fogel on the sides of negotiations of humanitarian release; negotiated separately as humanitarian release; and when designated, we included him in ongoing negotiations with the Russians.’ 

‘Fogel’s return is fantastic news, and the Trump administration is to be commended for bringing this American home and bringing so many Americans home in just the last few weeks from places like Venezuela, Gaza and now Russia,’ Carstens told Fox News Digital. 

He added: ‘Bringing Americans home might very well be the last nonpartisan issue in this country and any administration that brings an American home should be congratulated for their efforts and their successes.’ 

And O’Brien, reacting to the news of Fogel’s return to the United States, told Fox News Digital: ‘If you asked me to define ‘America First,’ I’d define it as President Trump’s commitment to bringing Americans who were held overseas home.’ 

Meanwhile, Reschenthaler was at the White House Tuesday night with Trump to welcome Fogel back to the United States. 

‘I was honored to be alongside President Trump at the White House to welcome Fogel back to the United States,’ Reschenthaler told Fox News Digital. ‘President Trump promised to bring him home and kept his word – building on the already great success of his weeks-old presidency.’  

Reschenthaler added: ‘While President Biden refused to prioritize this Pennsylvanian, President Trump delivered and secured his release. The American people are overjoyed to have strong and skilled leadership back in charge.’