The United States is releasing Russian prisoner Alexander Vinnik as part of the deal to secure Marc Fogel’s freedom, a Trump administration official told Fox News on Wednesday.

Fogel, an American teacher who had been detained in Russia since 2021, was freed on Tuesday. A plane carrying him landed in the U.S. late last night. 

Vinnik was arrested in 2017 in Greece at the request of the U.S. on cryptocurrency fraud charges. He was later extradited to the United States where he pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov earlier said the Russian prisoner’s name would be revealed when he returns home. 

‘Recently, work has been intensified through the relevant agencies, there have been contacts,’ Peskov said in a conference call with reporters, according to the Associated Press. ‘And these contacts have led to the release of Fogel, as well as one of the citizens of the Russian Federation, who is currently being held in custody in the United States. This citizen of the Russian Federation will also be returned to Russia in the coming days.’ 

The State Department did not immediately respond Wednesday morning to a request for comment from Fox News Digital. 

Fogel, a history teacher from Pennsylvania, was serving a 14-year prison sentence after his arrest in August 2021 at a Russian airport for being in possession of drugs, which his family and supporters said were medically prescribed marijuana. 

Anne Fogel, his sister, told ‘Fox & Friends’ on Wednesday that she is ‘so happy to have this massive boulder’ lifted off her shoulders with her brother’s release. 

‘I am so incredibly grateful to the president,’ she added. ‘Just amazing.’ 

Fogel said her brother’s situation has ‘taken a toll’ on her family but they ‘can’t even believe that he is safe and at home and can get medical attention.’ 

After his arrival in the U.S., Fogel met with President Donald Trump at the White House and called him a hero for securing his release. 

‘I want you to know that I am not a hero in this at all. And President Trump is a hero,’ Fogel said after meeting Trump. 

‘These men that came from the diplomatic service are heroes,’ Fogel continued. ‘The senators and representatives that passed legislation in my honor – they got me home – they are heroes.’ 

When asked by reporters on Tuesday whether the U.S. had given up anything in return for Fogel, Trump replied ‘not much’ without offering additional details. 

Fox News’ Pat Ward, Landon Mion and the Associated Press contributed to this report. 

President Donald Trump is on the cusp of seeing his 14th Cabinet member confirmed in former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard. 

Gabbard is slated for a final Senate confirmation vote to be Trump’s director of national intelligence (DNI) on Wednesday morning, after the planned midnight vote was scrapped due to a snowstorm in Washington.

The 30 hours of post-cloture debate officially expired on her nomination just after midnight. 

Frequently, the debate between the cloture motion and the final vote is minimized in what’s referred to as a ‘time agreement’ between Republicans and Democrats. But with the controversial nature of Gabbard’s nomination and ongoing frustrations with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and its government audit, no such agreement is expected. 

Gabbard is expected to be confirmed and has already amassed support from hesitant Republicans who voted against Trump’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, requiring Vice President JD Vance to break the tie in the upper chamber. 

Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who are often considered the conference’s moderate members, have both already come out in support of Gabbard. Both lawmakers voted against confirming Hegseth. 

Collins is a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and voted in favor of the nomination, helping advance it to the full Senate floor. 

Gabbard also snagged the backing of key Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Todd Young, R-Ind., despite the latter being uncertain before the committee vote. 

Young is also on the Intel Committee and ultimately voted to advance her to the floor, but only after some prodding and discussions with Chairman Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Vance, who operated rigorous operations to ensure the nomination got through. 

Some concerns that followed Gabbard through her confirmation hearing were her past meeting with former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, her previous FISA Section 702 stance and her past support for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. 

But these worries were apparently quelled by her answers and the persuasive support of both Cotton and Vance.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned Europeans this week that ‘realities’ prevent the U.S. from being its security guarantor, and to expect a drawdown of U.S. forces in the region. 

‘We are focusing on security of our own borders. We also face a peer competitor in the Communist Chinese with the capability and intent to threaten our homeland and core national interests in the Indo-Pacific,’ Hegseth told a meeting of a Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Belgium on Wednesday. 

‘The U.S. is prioritizing deterring war with China in the Pacific. Recognizing the reality of scarcity and making the resourcing trade-offs to ensure deterrence does not fail. Deterrence cannot fail.‘

This was Hegseth’s first trip to the headquarters of the NATO alliance. 

The U.S. defense secretary called on Europe to ‘take ownership of conventional security on the continent.’

‘European allies must lead from the front,’ he went on. ‘Together, we can establish a division of labor that maximize our comparative advantages in Europe and Pacific, respectively.’

Hegseth said on Tuesday the U.S. has no active plans to draw down forces in Europe but remains committed to analyzing U.S. troop postures across the globe. Speaking at U.S. Africa Command headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, he said the U.S. is committed to having a presence in Europe while emphasizing the continent should not rely on that presence for security. 

‘The European continent deserves to be free from any aggression, but it ought be those in the neighborhood investing the most in that defense,’ he said. ‘That’s common sense. You defend your neighborhood, and the Americans will come alongside you in helping in that defense.’

Roughly 100,000 U.S. troops are deployed across Europe, about a third of which are in Germany, according to Defense Department figures. Some 375,000 U.S. forces are assigned to the Indo-Pacific Command. 

During his first term, President Donald Trump began pulling thousands of troops out of Europe. 

Under the Trump administration, the U.S. has begun to bolster its troop presence on the southern border. Some 1,500 more U.S. troops deployed to the southern border last week, bringing the total up to 3,600. 

Hegseth also said that any European peacekeeping forces sent to help Ukraine win the war against Russia must not be from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and would not be protected under Article 5, a provision that states an attack on one NATO country is an attack on all. 

The defense secretary said the U.S. does not believe allowing Ukraine into NATO is a ‘realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement.’

Hegseth also called on NATO countries to step up after Trump recently called on them to boost defense spending to 5%. 

‘The United States will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship which encourages dependency.’

Earlier this week, Ukrainian President Voldymyr Zelenskyy suggested that security guarantees for Ukraine without the U.S. are ‘not real security guarantees.’ 

‘There are voices which say that Europe could offer security guarantees without the Americans, and I always say no,’ he told The Guardian. ‘Security guarantees without America are not real security guarantees.’

Elon Musk announced on Tuesday that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was looking into a limestone mine in Pennsylvania, where the cost-cutting organization says federal employee retirements are processed manually using a system that could take months. 

Musk told reporters about the mine on Tuesday during an appearance with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, as the president prepared to sign an executive order concerning the billionaire’s work leading DOGE.

‘And then we’re told this is actually, I think, a great anecdote, because we’re told the most number of people that could retire possibly in a month is 10,000,’ Musk said.

‘We’re like, well, what? Why is that? Well, because all the retirement paperwork is manual on paper,’ he continued. ‘It’s manually calculated and written down on a piece of paper. Then it goes down to mine and like, what do you mean, a mine?’

DOGE wrote on X that an old limestone mine in Boyers, Pennsylvania, about 60 miles north of Pittsburgh, is where about 700 workers operate more than 230 feet underground to process about 10,000 federal retirement applications per month.

The applications are processed by hand using paper, and are stored in manila envelopes and cardboard boxes, DOGE said.

The Washington Post described the facility as a ‘sinkhole of bureaucracy’ in a 2014 article. At the time, the report said the total spending on the retirement system was $55.8 million. 

Multiple attempts to digitize the system have been made since 1987, according to the report. Each attempt largely failed and was eventually scrapped, with reported costs totaling over $130 million.

Musk said the facility was started in 1955 and looks ‘like a time warp.’ He noted the slow processing speed, which DOGE says can take multiple months.

‘And then the speed, the limiting factor is the speed at which the mine shaft elevator can move, determines how many people can retire from the federal government,’ Musk said. ‘And the elevator breaks down and sometimes, and then you can’t, nobody can retire. Doesn’t that sound crazy?’

Musk said the flawed system of ‘carrying manila envelopes to, you know, boxes in a mine shaft’ could be remedied with ‘practically anything else.’

‘That’s an example, like at a high level, if you say like, how do we increase prosperity is we get people to shift from roles that are low to negative productivity to high productivity roles,’ he said.

In recent weeks, Democrats have largely criticized the work of Musk and DOGE to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse in federal spending and trim the more than 2 million-person federal workforce.

Musk has pushed back, telling reporters Tuesday that ‘the people voted for major government reform, and that’s what the people are going to get.’ 

President Donald Trump continued his successful Cabinet confirmation roll on Wednesday, with Tulsi Gabbard officially being approved by the Senate to become his director of national intelligence (DNI). 

She became his 14th Cabinet confirmation following the 52-48 Wednesday vote. The vote was party-line, with the exception of former GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who opposed Gabbard. 

Despite an uphill battle before her first hurdle in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the former Democratic representative managed to come back and get key Republicans to support her in her bid to oversee the nation’s intelligence agencies. 

With the coordinated and persuasive assistance of Chairman Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Vice President JD Vance, crucial senators who had lingering concerns about Gabbard were convinced to back her in the crucial committee vote last week, including Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Todd Young, R-Ind.

Her success came despite the impassioned plea of Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., and Democrats, who all opposed Trump’s DNI pick. 

‘We need leaders in the Intelligence Community and throughout government who are prepared to stand up to short-sighted attempts to attack our workforce at the expense of our national security. Unfortunately, I do not believe Ms. Gabbard is such a leader. Nor is she well-suited, by dint of experience or judgment, to serve as director of national intelligence,’ he explained on the chamber floor on Monday. 

But Warner failed to persuade any Republicans, and Gabbard’s nomination advanced past its last obstacle on Monday evening. The vote passed by a party-line margin of 52-46. 

Gabbard’s Senate comeback was achieved despite concerns regarding her past meeting with former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, her previous FISA Section 702 stance and her past support for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. 

Trump announced his selection of Gabbard for DNI in November shortly after being elected. ‘I am pleased to announce that former Congresswoman, Lieutenant Colonel Tulsi Gabbard, will serve as Director of National Intelligence (DNI),’ he said in a statement at the time. 

‘For over two decades, Tulsi has fought for our Country and the Freedoms of all Americans. As a former Candidate for the Democrat Presidential Nomination, she has broad support in both Parties – She is now a proud Republican! I know Tulsi will bring the fearless spirit that has defined her illustrious career to our Intelligence Community, championing our Constitutional Rights, and securing Peace through Strength. Tulsi will make us all proud!’

Gabbard notably left the Democratic Party and subsequently endorsed Trump in the 2024 election. 

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told allies at NATO headquarters Wednesday that ‘returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective,’ as President Donald Trump is working to bring an end to the war. 

Hegseth, speaking to the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Belgium, also said ‘stark strategic realities prevent the United States from being primarily focused on the security of Europe’ because the U.S. is focusing on ‘securing our own borders’ and ‘deterring war with China in the Pacific.’ 

‘President Trump has been clear with the American people — and with many of your leaders — that stopping the fighting and reaching an enduring peace is a top priority,’ Hegseth said about Ukraine, noting that the war is approaching its third anniversary. 

‘He intends to end this war by diplomacy and bringing both Russia and Ukraine to the table.  And the U.S. Department of Defense will help achieve this goal,’ Hegseth continued. ‘We want a sovereign and prosperous Ukraine. But we must start by recognizing that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective. Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering.’ 

In early 2014, Russia first invaded Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula before annexing the region. Russian President Vladimir Putin then launched a larger military conflict with Ukraine in 2022, which remains ongoing. 

‘A durable peace for Ukraine must include robust security guarantees to ensure that the war will not begin again,’ Hegseth said Wednesday. ‘The United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement. Instead, any security guarantee must be backed by capable European and non-European troops.’

‘If these troops are deployed as peacekeepers to Ukraine at any point, they should be deployed as part of a non-NATO mission and not covered under Article 5. There also must be robust international oversight of the line of contact,’ he continued. ‘To be clear, as part of any security guarantee, there will not be U.S. troops deployed to Ukraine.’ 

Trump, during an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier on ‘Special Report,’ said ‘tremendous progress’ has been made over the last week when it comes to a Ukraine-Russia peace deal. 

‘They have tremendously valuable land in terms of rare earth, in terms of oil and gas, in terms of other things. I want to have our money secured because we’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars,’ Trump said about Ukraine. ‘And, you know, they may make a deal. They may not make a deal. They may be Russian someday, or they may not be Russian someday.’

‘I told them that I want the equivalent, like $500 billion worth of rare earth. And they’ve essentially agreed to do that. So at least we don’t feel stupid. Otherwise, we’re stupid,’ Trump added. ‘I said to them, we have to, we have to get something. We can’t continue to pay this money, you know.’ 

In an interview this week with The Guardian, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said ‘There are voices which say that Europe could offer security guarantees without the Americans, and I always say no’ and that ‘Security guarantees without America are not real security guarantees.’

Hegseth also said he is in Brussels today to ‘directly and unambiguously express that stark strategic realities prevent the United States from being primarily focused on the security of Europe.’  

‘The United States faces consequential threats to our homeland. We must — and we are — focusing on securing our own borders,’ he said. ‘We also face a peer competitor in China with the capability and intent to threaten our homeland and core national interests in the Indo-Pacific.’  

‘The U.S. is prioritizing deterring war with China in the Pacific, recognizing the reality of scarcity, and making the resourcing tradeoffs to ensure deterrence does not fail,’ Hegseth added. ‘As the United States shifts its attention to these threats, European allies must lead from the front.’ 

Senate Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Caucus Chairwoman Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, said she talks to Trump-aligned billionaire Elon Musk every couple of days as he spearheads the administration’s effort to slash wasteful spending. 

‘We communicate back and forth every few days or so,’ she told Fox News Digital in an interview. ‘I’ll send additional ideas that we come up with.’

According to Ernst, during a meeting at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in November, she gave Musk ‘an eight-page memorandum blueprint with a number of cost-saving ideas.’

‘He literally is taking that and running with it,’ the Iowa Republican remarked. 

She said she simply sends new ideas directly to Musk, and ‘pretty soon you’ll see a tweet out on X.’

When asked whether she thought she would ever be working to audit the government with the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, as well as the owner of X, Ernst laughed, ‘Never in a million years.’

Since Trump took office last month, DOGE has taken swift action to audit agencies and departments within the executive branch, rooting out contracts, programs and spending that Trump and Musk consider unnecessary or wasteful. 

The effort has been met by Democrats with protests, as lawmakers have shown up outside the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Department of Treasury and the Department of Education to demonstrate. Some Democrats have even attempted to enter the buildings, but were prevented. 

On the other hand, Republicans have cheered the initiative. For example, Ernst told Fox News Digital that DOGE’s actions so far have been ‘tremendous.’ 

As for criticisms of how DOGE’s staffers are conducting their audit and what information they are gaining access to, the Iowa Republican maintained that it is completely legal in her opinion. ‘This is the executive branch and they are scrutinizing the executive branch. So, of course, it’s legal,’ she said. 

‘There is nothing in the Constitution that says the president cannot scrutinize the expenditures, especially when those dollars are going to programs that members here in Congress did not anticipate,’ she noted, referencing jaw-dropping programs being uncovered by DOGE, showing significant money going towards Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), among other initiatives. 

Fox News Digital reached out to Musk’s DOGE for comment.

Former aides to President Barack Obama admitted on an episode of ‘Pod Save America’ they should have done ‘some of the stuff’ President Donald Trump is doing with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). 

When discussing DOGE’s initiatives to cut federal spending, the ‘Obama bros’ admitted to ‘lamenting’ their situation. Jon Lovett, a former Obama speechwriter, implied he ‘didn’t know’ the executive branch could radically cut federal spending as the Trump administration has done. 

‘Honestly, some of this is pretty annoying because it’s some of the stuff we should’ve done. We didn’t know you could do some of this,’ Lovett said. 

Jon Favreau, also a former Obama speechwriter, shared Lovett’s frustration, admitting the Obama administration tried to cut through bureaucracy and create government efficiency, but ‘it’s hard to do.’

‘We all know that government is slow. We all know government can be inefficient. We all know that the bureaucracy can be bloated. We all worked in f—ing the White House. We tried to reorganize the government. We tried to find efficiency. It’s hard to do,’ Favreau said. 

The liberal podcasters also complained about the federal government’s technology during the Obama era. 

‘The technology in the federal government, at least when we were there, sucked. There was no service in the basement of the West Wing. You couldn’t use your phone because there was no service.’ Favreau added. 

‘Pod Save America’ did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on which DOGE initiatives the Obama administration should have done. 

The podcast episode was released ahead of Trump signing an executive order on Tuesday directing agencies to coordinate with DOGE to reduce the size of the federal government. The executive order is the latest in a slew of government slashes these past few weeks, which have targeted everything from DEI funding to migrant hotel bills. 

The ‘Obama Bros’ have been on a media circuit in recent weeks, directing Democrats on how to politically engage during Trump’s second term. Former Obama spokesman and ‘Pod Save America’ co-host, Tommy Vietor, joined ‘Jesse Watters Primetime’ last month to discuss the future of the Democratic Party. 

Americans are giving a big thumbs up to some of the early actions taken by President Donald Trump during the opening weeks of his second administration.

However, a new national poll also indicates that the public also gives a thumbs down to other moves made by Trump during his avalanche of action since returning to the White House on Jan. 20.

Trump has signed 63 executive orders since his inauguration, according to a count from Fox News, which far surpasses the rate of any presidential predecessors during their first weeks in office.

According to a Marquette Law School Poll national survey released on Wednesday, the most popular action sampled is Trump’s executive order mandating the federal government recognize only two sexes – male and female.

Sixty-three percent of adults nationwide supported the move, with just 37% opposed, the survey indicates.

The gender order, signed by Trump hours after his inauguration, states that it will ‘defend women’s rights and protect freedom of conscience by using clear and accurate language and policies that recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male.’

The order required that the federal government, going forward, use the term ‘sex’ rather than ‘gender’ and mandated that ‘government-issued identification documents, including passports, visas, and Global Entry cards, accurately reflect the holder’s sex.’

It reversed a 2022 move by former President Joe Biden’s administration to allow U.S. citizens to be able to select the gender-neutral ‘X’ on their passports.

During his successful 2024 campaign to win back the White House, Trump repeatedly pledged to roll back protections for transgender and nonbinary people. His campaign spotlighted an ad which ran in key battleground states that claimed former Vice President Kamala Harris ‘is for they/them. President Trump is for you.’

The poll indicates a large partisan divide, with 94% of Republicans and two-thirds of independents but just 27% of Democrats supporting the executive order.

Another popular move, according to the poll: 6 in 10 said they favor expanding oil and gas production.

Some of Trump’s numerous actions on immigration and border security also grabbed a thumbs up.

Sixty percent said they support deporting immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally, and 59% favored declaring a national emergency at the nation’s southern border with Mexico due to migrant crossings.

However, the survey also found that 57% opposed deporting immigrants who have resided in the United States illegally for a number of years, but who have jobs and no criminal record.

Also getting a big thumbs down – Trump’s Day One pardon or commuting the sentences of nearly all the Trump supporters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 to upend congressional certification of Biden’s 2020 Electoral College victory over Trump. Sixty-five percent opposed the move by the president.

An equal number of respondents also do not support Trump’s repeated declarations that the U.S. will take back the Panama Canal.

Additionally, Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America is opposed by 71% of adults nationwide, according to the poll.

Fifty-seven percent of Republicans support the renaming, but backing drops to just 16% among independents and 4% among Democrats.

The Marquette Law School Poll, which was conducted Jan. 27-Feb. 5, indicates Trump starts his second term with a 48% approval rating and a 52% disapproval rating.

‘In the new poll, as in the past, approval is closely related to partisanship, with 89% of Republicans approving of Trump, a view shared by 37% of independents and 9% of Democrats,’ the poll’s release noted, as it spotlighted the massive partisan divide.

Fox News’ Mary Schlageter contributed to this report

Federal judges have blocked President Donald Trump’s executive orders related to stemming the flow of illegal immigration, as well as slimming the federal bureaucracy and slashing government waste. 

‘Billions of Dollars of FRAUD, WASTE, AND ABUSE, has already been found in the investigation of our incompetently run Government,’ Trump wrote on TRUTH Social on Tuesday. ‘Now certain activists and highly political judges want us to slow down, or stop. Losing this momentum will be very detrimental to finding the TRUTH, which is turning out to be a disaster for those involved in running our Government. Much left to find. No Excuses!!!’ 

Judges in U.S. district courts – the lowest level in the three-tier federal court system – have mostly pushed back on Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency. Here are the six times judges have blocked Trump’s executive orders so far:

Federal Funding Pause

The Trump administration quickly pushed to withhold Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) money sent to New York City to house migrants, saying it had ‘significant concerns’ about the spending under a program appropriated by Congress. The Justice Department had previously asked the appeals court to let it implement sweeping pauses on federal grants and loans, calling the lower court order to keep promised money flowing ‘intolerable judicial overreach.’

McConnell, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, is presiding over a lawsuit from nearly two dozen Democratic states filed after the administration issued a memo purporting to halt all federals grants and loans, worth trillions of dollars. 

‘The broad categorical and sweeping freeze of federal funds is, as the Court found, likely unconstitutional,’ McConnell wrote, ‘and has caused and continues to cause irreparable harm to a vast portion of this country.’

The administration has since rescinded that memo, but McConnell found Monday that not all federal grants and loans had been restored. He was the first judge to find that the administration had disobeyed a court order.

The Democratic attorneys general allege money for things like early childhood education, pollution reduction and HIV prevention research remained tied up even after McConnell ordered the administration on Jan. 31 to ‘immediately take every step necessary’ to unfreeze federal grants and loans. The judge also said his order blocked the administration from cutting billions of dollars in grant funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 

The Boston-based First Circuit Court of Appeal on Tuesday rejected the Trump administration’s effort to reinstate a sweeping pause on federal funding. 

The federal appeals court said it expected U.S. District Judge John McConnell in Rhode Island to clarify his initial order.

DOGE Treasury Department access

U.S. District Judge Jeannette A. Vargas, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden, on Monday ordered lawyers to meet and confer over any changes needed to an order issued early Saturday by another Manhattan judge, Obama-appointee Judge Paul A. Engelmayer, that banned Elon Musk’s DOGE team from accessing Treasury Department records. Vargas instructed both sides to file written arguments if an agreement was not reached. 

The order was amended on Tuesday to allow Senate-confirmed political appointees access to the information, while special government employees, including Musk, are still prohibited from accessing the Treasury Department’s payment system.

On Friday, 19 Democrat attorneys general, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, sued Trump on the grounds that Musk’s DOGE team was composed of ‘political appointees’ who should not have access to Treasury records handled by ‘civil servants’ specially trained to protect sensitive information like Social Security and bank account numbers. 

Justice Department attorneys from Washington and New York told Vargas in a filing on Sunday that the ban was unconstitutional and a ‘remarkable intrusion on the Executive Branch’ that must be immediately reversed. They said there was no basis for distinguishing between ‘civil servants’ and ‘political appointees.’

They said they were complying with the Saturday order by Engelmayer, but they asserted that the order was ‘overbroad’ so that some might think even Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was banned by it. 

‘Basic democratic accountability requires that every executive agency’s work be supervised by politically accountable leadership, who ultimately answer to the President,’ DOJ attorneys wrote, adding that the ban on accessing the records by Musk’s team ‘directly severs the clear line of supervision’ required by the Constitution.

Over the weekend, Musk and Vice President JD Vance reacted to the escalating conflict between the Trump administration and the lower courts. 

 ‘If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal,’ Vance wrote broadly. ‘Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.’ 

Musk said Engelmayer is ‘a corrupt judge protecting corruption,’ who ‘needs to be impeached NOW!’

‘Fork in the Road Directive’

Boston-based U.S. District Judge George O’Toole Jr., who was nominated by former President Bill Clinton, kept on hold Trump’s deferred resignation program after a courtroom hearing on Monday. 

O’Toole on Thursday had already pushed back the initial Feb. 6 deadline when federal workers had to decide whether they would accept eight months of paid leave in exchange for their resignation. 

A ‘Fork In the Road’ email was sent earlier last week telling two million federal workers they could stop working and continue to get paid until Sept. 30. The White House said 65,000 workers had already accepted the buyout offer by Friday. 

The country’s largest federal labor unions, concerned about losing membership, sued the Office of Personnel Management, asking the court to delay the deadline and arguing the deferred resignation program spearheaded by Musk is illegal.

Eric Hamilton, a Justice Department lawyer, called the plan a ‘humane off ramp’ for federal employees who may have structured their lives around working remotely and have been ordered to return to government buildings.

Birthright Citizenship

The Trump administration on Tuesday said it is appealing a Maryland federal judge’s ruling blocking the president’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship for people whose parents are not legally in the country.

In a filing, the administration’s attorneys said they were appealing to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. It’s the second such appeal the administration has sought since Trump’s executive order was blocked in court.

The government’s appeal stems from Biden-appointed U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman’s grant of a preliminary injunction last week in a case brought by immigrant rights groups and expectant mothers in Maryland. Boardman said at the time her court would not become the first in the country to endorse the president’s order, calling citizenship a ‘precious right’ granted by the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

The president’s birthright citizenship order has generated at least nine lawsuits nationwide, including suits brought by 22 states.

On Monday, New Hampshire-based U.S. District Judge Joseph N. Laplante, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush, said in relation to a similar lawsuit that he wasn’t convinced by the administration’s arguments and issued a preliminary injunction. It applies to the plaintiffs, immigrant rights groups with members who are pregnant, and others within the court’s jurisdiction.

Last week, Seattle-based U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour, who was nominated by former President Ronald Reagan, ordered a block of Trump’s order, which the administration also appealed.

U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)

The Trump administration is expected to argue before a federal judge Wednesday that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is rife with ‘insubordination’ and must be shut down for the administration to decide what pieces of it to salvage.

The argument, made in an affidavit by political appointee and deputy USAID administrator Pete Marocco, comes as the administration confronts a lawsuit by the American Foreign Service Association and the American Federation of Government Employees – two groups representing federal workers.

Washington-based U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, on Friday ordered a temporary block on plans by the Trump administration to put 2,200 USAID employees on leave. He also agreed to block an order that would have given just 30 days for the thousands of overseas USAID workers the administration wanted to place on abrupt administrative leave to move their families back to the U.S. at the government’s expense. 

Both actions by the administration would have exposed the workers and their families to unnecessary risk and expense, according to the judge.

The judge reinstated USAID staffers already placed on leave but declined to suspend the administration’s freeze on foreign assistance.

Nichols is due to hear arguments Wednesday on a request from the employee groups to keep blocking the move to put thousands of staffers on leave as well as broaden his order. They contend the government has already violated the judge’s order. 

In the court case, a government motion shows the administration pressing arguments by Vance and others questioning if courts have the authority to check Trump’s power.

‘The President’s powers in the realm of foreign affairs are generally vast and unreviewable,’ government lawyers argued.

Fox News’ Landon Mion and the Associated Press contributed to this report.