In a massive victory for President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., the House of Representatives passed a bill Thursday that will set the stage for a massive conservative policy overhaul.

The legislation passed mostly along party lines on Thursday morning after a long night of negotiations between House GOP leaders and fiscal hawks who were critical of its spending cut levels.

Just two Republicans voted against the legislation – Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Victoria Spartz, R-Ind. – which passed 216 to 214. No Democrats supported it, as expected. Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., held a press conference on Thursday morning in a bid to allay conservatives’ concerns.

‘I’m happy to tell you that this morning, I believe we have the votes to finally adopt the budget resolution so we can move forward on President Trump’s very important agenda for the American people,’ Johnson said. ‘Our first big, beautiful reconciliation package here, involves a number of commitments. And one of those is that we are committed to finding at least $1.5 trillion in savings for the American people, while also preserving our essential programs.’

Thune added, ‘We are aligned with the House in terms of what their budget resolution outlined in terms of savings. The speaker has talked about $1.5 trillion. We have a lot of United States senators who believe in that as a minimum.’

It comes after the House’s initial plan to vote on the legislation on Wednesday was quickly scuttled at the last minute in the face of more than a dozen Republican holdouts.

Several of those holdouts said Thune’s public commitment helped sway them in comments to reporters after the vote.

‘As a chief ally of the president and advocate for his agenda, my colleagues and I worked diligently with the Speaker and Senate Leadership to achieve a historic $1.5 trillion agreement to cut spending,’ Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., told Fox News Digital. ‘There is much work ahead, but we are committed to working together and restoring fiscal accountability to Washington DC.’

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, told reporters, ‘We have now three strong statements from the speaker, the president and the Senate Majority Leader. We did not have those 48 hours ago. We do now.’

Congressional Republicans are working on a massive conservative policy overhaul via the budget reconciliation process. By lowering the Senate’s threshold for passage from 60 votes to 51, it allows the party in power to pass significant fiscal and budgetary policy changes.

In this case, Republicans are looking for some added funds for border security, defense, and to raise the debt ceiling – while paring back spending on the former Biden administration’s green energy policies and in other sections of the federal government, likely including entitlement programs.

GOP lawmakers are also looking to extend Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the provisions of which expire at the end of this year. They will also need new funding for Trump’s efforts to eliminate taxes on tipped and overtime wages.

The House passed its own version of the plan earlier this year, calling for at least $1.5 trillion in spending cuts to offset the new spending and attempt to bring down the national debt – which is over $36 trillion. The Senate’s plan closely aligns with the House version, but mandates a minimum of $4 billion in cuts, a significant gap to bridge.

An unrelated vote was held open for over an hour on Wednesday night, with lawmakers growing impatient on the House floor, while Johnson huddled in a back room with holdouts. 

One House Republican told Fox News Digital there was some frustration with how Johnson handled the matter.

‘He kept the entire conference out on the floor for 80 minutes while you play graba– with these people,’ the GOP lawmaker fumed. ‘And all day it was like, ‘Oh, we’re going to get this done.”

That House Republican said, ‘All the chatter we were hearing was [holdouts were] down to single digits. But 17 … 20 people were in that room. So clearly there was a much bigger problem than they were letting on all day.’

Traditionally, the House and Senate must pass identical reconciliation frameworks to begin the work of crafting policy to fit into that framework. 

Republicans are also working up against the clock – the debt ceiling is expected to be reached sometime this summer, after which the U.S. government risks a national default if it does not raise that limit to pay its debts.

Trump’s 2017 tax cuts are also projected to expire at the end of this year if they are not extended. 

Greenpeace’s United Kingdom leader and five other activists reportedly were arrested Thursday after tossing hundreds of liters of ‘blood-red dye’ into a pond at the U.S. embassy in London in a protest against the war in Gaza. 

The environmental group said the action was to ‘highlight the death and devastation caused in Gaza as a direct result of the US’ continued sale of weapons to Israel.’ 

‘Twelve activists tipped the non-toxic, biodegradable dye from containers emblazoned with the words ‘Stop Arming Israel’ into the large pond located in front of the embassy building in Nine Elms, south-west London,’ Greenpeace said in a statement. ‘The containers were delivered to the Embassy on bicycles with trailers disguised as delivery bikes.’ 

Greenpeace later said Will McCallum, the co-executive director of Greenpeace UK, was one of six people taken into custody.  

He was charged with suspicion of conspiracy to cause criminal damage, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, according to the organization. The others reportedly received similar charges. 

‘At 07:30hrs on Thursday, 10 April, officers on duty at the US Embassy in Nine Elms became aware of a group of Greenpeace protesters putting red dye into the pond at the side of the building. The group made off, but officers responded quickly and carried out a search of the area,’ a Metropolitan Police spokesperson told Fox News Digital. ‘Six people have so far been arrested nearby on suspicion of criminal damage and conspiracy to cause criminal damage.

‘The pond is accessible via a public footpath. There was no breach or attempted breach of the secure perimeter of the site,’ the spokesperson added.

The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond Thursday to a request for comment from Fox News Digital. 

Footage released by Greenpeace UK purportedly showed the activists dumping the dye into the pond at the American embassy Thursday. 

‘We’ve turned the embassy pond blood-red because U.S. weapons continue to fuel an indiscriminate war that’s seen bombs dropped on schools and hospitals, entire neighborhoods blasted to rubble, and tens of thousands of Palestinian lives obliterated,’ Areeba Hamid, co-executive director at Greenpeace UK, said in a statement. 

‘The ceasefire Trump claimed credit for has collapsed and full-scale war is back. If Trump has any real interest in stopping the war, he should listen to the majority of Americans and stop arming Israel now,’ she added. ‘And the UK government should do the same.’ 

Big media and big finance insisted the financial sky was falling this week, but with President Donald Trump, you never know exactly where you are in any deal-making process. Weighing in too soon can make you look stupid.

On Wednesday, the deal-maker in chief announced a 90-day pause on sky-high tariffs directed at 75 nations which did not retaliate against his measures and have asked the administration for a reprieve and time to negotiate.

Democrats, and a fair number of free-marketeer conservatives to boot, celebrated Trump ‘caving’ to the pressure of the financial markets. But when the smoke settled, it was clear that, far from folding, Trump had instituted a historic tariff regime, and somehow got a stock market rally out of it.

By Thursday morning, Trump had slammed communist China with a whopping 125% tariff, maintained a 25% penalty on certain goods from Canada and Mexico, placed a blanket tariff of 10% on most of the rest of world, and had nations lined up outside the White House to negotiate like it was the Olympic opening ceremonies.

Make no mistake, as little as two months ago, those accusing Trump of folding would have called the tariffs he landed at on Wednesday unconscionable, but after the past week’s turmoil, the largest tariff increase in decades looked like a moderate, market-soothing compromise.

And the good news for working-class Americans, now the solid core of Trump’s support and that of the Republican Party, is that the effort to restore American manufacturing is only getting started.

You see, while the Ebenezer Scrooges at libertarian think tanks have long since written off small industrial towns as gone for good, Donald Trump has not. 

And it isn’t just a matter of sympathy or fairness for these far-flung factory towns, it is also a matter of national security, of being capable of making our own weapons, pharmaceuticals and computer chips.

The point of Trump’s tariff turmoil was never tariffs for their own sake; it was and is to reshape American trade and make our nation less dependent on geopolitical and ideological foes such as China.

Those who support the president’s effort to reshore manufacturing and reinvigorate forgotten America don’t care if it happens through tariffs or trade deals. They only care that the jobs come home, even if it means paying more for Chinese widgets.

Of course, this infuriates the free-marketeers for whom cheapness is next to godliness, but what did they think populism was? Mitt Romney in cowboy boots?

Of course, this infuriates the free-marketeers for whom cheapness is next to godliness, but what did they think populism was? Mitt Romney in cowboy boots?

I would say that the free traders and libertarians have no answers for small-town America, but actually they do. It appears to be flooding them with tens of thousands of Haitian migrants. Seriously.

What the free-market fanboys fail to realize is that tariffs and trade deals are not just economic issues, they are very much cultural issues as well. The question isn’t just how big a number we can ring up on the national cash register, it’s also quality of life.

Let’s take the COVID lockdowns as an example. 

Five years ago last month, the stock market crashed as the Chinese virus was unleashed. For the rest of the year, many, if not most, Americans stayed home all day and night, streamed video, and ordered from Amazon and DoorDash.

By December, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was higher than it was before COVID hit. 

Now, would any of us say that 2020 was a great time? Does anyone other than a hypochondriac New Yorker magazine essayist look back fondly on being locked in our homes and out of our houses of worship?

Of course not.

The American novelist Jack Kerouac once famously quipped, ‘I don’t want a living, I want a life.’ To be sure, those of us who are not committed to life on the road as beat poets need both, but thankfully President Trump understands that global trade is about much, much more than money.

Importantly, Trump is not doing this alone. Had his supporters panicked as so many conservative commentators did last week, he would not have achieved the tariffs we’ve arrived at or the upcoming negotiations.

The reason that Canada is buying billboards in Florida blaring the message ‘Tariffs Are Taxes’ is that they want Americans to be as freaked out over the tariffs as the Canadians I met last month in Calgary are.

But that isn’t happening. Those who believe in Trump’s vision to transform American manufacturing are heeding the president’s soothing advice to ‘be cool,’ and support his America first agenda.

JERUSALEM — A leading U.S. research institute devoted to monitoring Iran’s illicit nuclear weapons program published an alarming report ahead of this weekend’s U.S.-Iran talks, declaring Tehran’s atomic weapons system has reached an extremely dangerous stage.

The Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Science and International Security titled its shocking new report, ‘The Iran Threat Geiger Counter: Extreme Danger Grows.’ 

According to the study, ‘Since February 2024, the date of its last report, the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program has worsened significantly. Major negative factors include Iran’s greater nuclear weapon capabilities, its shorter time frames to build nuclear weapons, and the growing normalization of internal Iranian discussions favoring building nuclear weapons.

‘The possibility of Iran deciding to build nuclear weapons has been increased by the ongoing military conflicts in the Middle East, pitting Iran and its proxy forces against Israel and its allies, a conflict Iran is losing. The volatile security situation is now combined with the perception, if not the reality, that Iran is preparing to build nuclear weapons.’

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump said, ‘We have a little time, but we don’t have much time, because we’re not going to let them have a nuclear weapon. We can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.’  He added ‘I’m not asking for much. I just — I don’t — they can’t have a nuclear weapon.’

When asked about the potential for military action if Iran does not make a deal on their nuclear weapons, Trump said, ‘Absolutely.’

‘If it requires military, we’re going to have military,’ the president told reporters at the White House. ‘Israel will obviously be very much involved in that. They’ll be the leader of that. But nobody leads us. We do what we want to do.’

Trump withdrew from the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal—the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—in 2018 because, he argued, that the accord did not stop Tehran’s drive to build a nuclear weapons device.

A state-controlled Iranian news outlet claimed on Monday that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s alleged fatwa against nuclear weapons does not outlaw their production but bans their use. Fox News Digital sought to obtain a copy of the alleged religious fatwa from Iran, but the regime has so far refused to provide the document. Iran experts have claimed that the fatwa is non-existent. 

The Institute for Science and International Security report also warned that ‘Iran still possesses military capabilities that threaten the region. It has large stockpiles of drones, ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles that it can employ against Israel and its allies. Iran also continues to be a major player in the Ukraine war, backing Russia with vast arms transfers, including drones and missiles.’

The mouthpiece of Iran’s Khamenei—the anti-American paper Kayhan—just urged the assassination of Trump.

A State Department spokesperson told Fox News Digital that ‘Threatening language from the Iranian regime or its mouthpiece against the President, or any American, is unwise.’

Iran’s regime has sought to assassinate Iranian American dissidents on American soil.

Fox News Digital reporter Alec Schemmel contributed to this report.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) account on X shared eyebrow-raising findings from a survey of unemployment insurance claims.

The ‘initial survey of Unemployment Insurance claims since 2020’ found that thousands of people with future birthdates claimed benefits.

The survey also indicated that thousands of supposedly very young and very old people had claimed benefits.

The DOGE post states that the survey found, ‘24.5k people over 115 years old claimed $59M in benefits,’ ’28k people between 1 and 5 years old claimed $254M in benefits,’ and ‘9.7k people with birth dates over 15 years in the future claimed $69M in benefits.’

‘In one case, someone with a birthday in 2154 claimed $41k,’ the post also notes.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Department of Labor for comment early on Thursday morning, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

‘Your tax dollars were going to pay fraudulent unemployment claims for fake people born in the future! This is so crazy that I had to read it several times before it sank in,’ Elon Musk tweeted.

Musk is spearheading the DOGE effort to uncover waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government.

‘The oldest living American is 114 years old, so it is safe to say that anyone 115 or older is collecting ‘unemployment’ due to being dead. There was no sanity check for impossibly young or impossibly old people for unemployment insurance,’ he noted in another post.

Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah replied to Musk, writing, ‘Reckless incompetence.’

Russian-American ballerina Ksenia Karelina, who has been wrongfully detained in Russia for more than a year, is on her way back to the United States, Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed early Thursday.

Moscow released Karelina in exchange for German-Russian citizen Arthur Petrov, who was arrested in 2023 in Cyprus at the request of the U.S. on charges of exporting sensitive microelectronics, the Wall Street Journal reported.

‘American Ksenia Karelina is on a plane back home to the United States. She was wrongfully detained by Russia for over a year and President Trump secured her release. @POTUS will continue to work for the release of ALL Americans,’ Rubio wrote on X.

Karelina was sentenced to 12 years in a Russian penal colony after pleading guilty to treason for donating $51.80 to a Ukrainian charity in early 2024.

She was initially detained for ‘petty hooliganism’ while visiting family in Russia in February 2024, but the charge was later upgraded to treason after accusations that she was acting as an American spy.

Russian authorities claimed that Karelina, who lived in Los Angeles, raised money for the Ukrainian army and took part in ‘public actions’ that supported Ukraine while in the U.S. 

Her boyfriend, boxer Chis Van Deerden, told Fox News Digital last year that she was ‘proud to be Russian, and she doesn’t watch the news. She doesn’t intervene with anything about the war.’

She was left out of a massive August 2024 prisoner swap that resulted in the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, Paul Whelan and Alsu Kurmasheva.

Details surrounding Karelina’s arrival on U.S. soil were not immediately released.

She is the latest American prisoner detained in another country to be freed under President Donald Trump’s administration. In February, Trump brought American history teacher Marc Fogel, who had been detained in Russia since 2021, back to the U.S.

This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.

President Donald Trump told reporters that if Iran does not give up its nuclear weapons program, military action led by Israel is a real possibility, adding he has a deadline in mind for when the two countries must come to an agreement.

The U.S. and Iran are expected to hold negotiations Saturday in Oman as the Trump administration continues to try to rein in the country’s nuclear program, threatening ‘great danger’ if the two sides fail to come to an agreement. 

Trump told reporters from the Oval Office Wednesday he did have a deadline in mind for when the talks must culminate in an agreed-upon solution, but the president did not go into details about the nature of the timeline.

‘We have a little time, but we don’t have much time, because we’re not going to let them have a nuclear weapon. We can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.’ Trump said when pressed on details about his potential timeline. ‘I’m not asking for much. I just — I don’t — they can’t have a nuclear weapon.’

When asked about the potential for military action if Iran does not make a deal on their nuclear weapons, Trump said ‘Absolutely.’ 

‘If it requires military, we’re going to have military,’ the president told reporters. ‘Israel will obviously be very much involved in that. They’ll be the leader of that. But nobody leads us. We do what we want to do.’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed support for Iran’s complete denuclearization. During a visit to the White House, he expressed support for a deal similar to the one Libya sealed with the international community in 2003. The country gave up its entire nuclear arsenal.

‘Whatever happens, we have to make sure that Iran does not have nuclear weapons,’ Netanyahu said during the meeting.

The talks with Iran scheduled for Saturday in Oman have been characterized as ‘direct’ talks by Trump, but Iran’s foreign leaders have disputed that assertion, describing the talks as ‘indirect.’ Iran’s leaders have said if the talks go well Saturday, they would be open to further direct negotiations with the U.S. 

The House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday to limit federal district judges’ ability to affect Trump administration policies on a national scale.

The No Rogue Rulings Act, led by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., passed the House and limits district courts’ power to issue U.S.-wide injunctions, instead forcing them to focus their scope on the parties directly affected in most cases.

All but one Republican lawmaker voted for the bill, which passed 219 to 213. No Democrats voted in favor.

The Trump administration has faced more than 15 nationwide injunctions since the Republican commander-in-chief took office, targeting a wide range of President Donald Trump’s policies, from birthright citizenship reform to anti-diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts.

Issa himself was confident the bill would pass, telling Fox News Digital on Tuesday morning, ‘We’ve got the votes.’

He was less certain of the bill getting Democratic support, though he noted former Biden administration solicitor general Elizabeth Prelogar made her own complaints about district judges’ powers during the previous White House term.

‘We’re hoping some people look at it on its merits rather than its politics,’ Issa said.

Rep. Derek Schmidt, R-Kan., who has an amendment on the bill aimed at limiting plaintiffs’ ability to ‘judge shop’ cases to favorable districts, told Fox News Digital before the vote, ‘A lot of things get called commonsense around here, but this one genuinely is.’

‘The basic policy of trying to rein in the overuse of nationwide injunctions was supported by Democrats before. It’s supported by Republicans now, and I’m hoping [this vote will] be supported by both,’ he said.

Rep. Lance Gooden, R-Texas, who, like Schmidt and Issa, is a House Judiciary Committee member, told Fox News Digital after the bill’s passage, ‘Many Democrat-appointed lower court judges have conducted themselves like activist liberal lawyers in robes while attempting to stop President Trump’s nationwide reforms. The No Rogue Rulings Act limits this unchecked power.’

Another GOP lawmaker, Rep. Randy Feenstra, R-Iowa, told Fox News Digital, ‘More than 77 million Americans voted for [Trump’s] pro-American policies and want to see them implemented quickly. There is no reason that activist judges whose authority does not extend nationally should be allowed to completely stop [his] agenda.’

Republicans’ unity on the issue comes despite some early divisions over how to hit back at what they have called ‘rogue’ and ‘activist’ judges.

Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., who supported impeachment and Issa’s bill, told Fox News Digital, ‘The judicial vendetta against President Trump’s agenda needs to be checked. Nationwide injunctions by activists judges have stood in the way of the American people’s will and in come cases their safety, since the President was sworn into office.’

Stutzman said Issa’s bill ‘will stop individual judge’s political beliefs from preventing the wants and needs of our citizens from being implemented.’

A group of conservatives had pushed to impeach specific judges who have blocked Trump’s agenda, but House GOP leaders quickly quashed the effort in favor of what they see as a more effective route to take on the issue.

Despite its success in the House, however, the legislation does face uncertain odds in the Senate, where it needs at least several Democrats to hit the chamber’s 60-vote threshold.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is delaying a key vote on legislation aimed at advancing President Donald Trump’s agenda in the face of a likely rebellion on Wednesday evening.

It comes as fiscal hawks in the lower chamber have raised alarms at the Senate’s version of the plan, which guarantees far fewer spending cuts than the House’s initial offering.

Johnson told reporters he would aim to hold the vote Thursday, the last scheduled day in session for House lawmakers before a two-week recess. He added, however, that lawmakers could be kept in session next week if needed to pass the legislation.

‘I don’t think we’ll have a vote on this tonight, but probably in the morning,’ the speaker said. ‘We want everybody to have a high degree of comfort about what is happening here, and we have a small subset of members who weren’t totally satisfied with the product as it stands. So we’re going to we’re going to talk about maybe going to conference with the Senate or add an amendment, but we’re going to make that decision.’

He also said there were multiple ways the House could move forward and Republicans would look at each one. Johnson said, ‘Everything is moving along just fine. We have a little bit of room here to work, and we’re going to use that.’

The House floor was paralyzed for over an hour during an earlier unrelated vote as Johnson met with Republican holdouts behind closed doors.

Two sources in the room said the holdouts did not speak with Trump, though it’s not clear if he called people individually.

Outside that room, in the cavernous House chamber, lawmakers began filtering out or impatiently pacing as time went by with little information.

Democrats, meanwhile, began calling for Republican leaders to close the lingering vote.

Tensions were high for those GOP lawmakers who remained on the House floor, Fox News Digital was told – and much of that frustration is aimed at Johnson.

‘I think he’s quickly losing faith from the rest of us. I mean, he kept the entire conference out on the floor for 80 minutes while you play grab-a– with these people,’ one House Republican fumed. ‘And all day it was like, ‘Oh, we’re going to get this done.”

That House Republican said, ‘All the chatter we were hearing was [holdouts were] down to single digits. But 17, 20 people were in that room. So clearly there was a much bigger problem than they were letting on all day.’

The gap between the House and Senate versions is significant; the House version that passed in late February calls for at least $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, while the Senate’s plan mandates at least $4 billion.

Some conservatives are also wary of congressional leaders looking to use the current policy baseline to factor the total amount of dollars the bill will add to the federal deficit. The current policy baseline allows lawmakers to essentially zero out the cost of extending Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) because they are already in effect.

‘We’ve got to have something more substantive out of the Senate. If you were going to sell your house, and I offered you a third of the price, you would laugh,’ Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., one of the earliest holdouts, told reporters on Wednesday.

Trump has directed Republicans to work on ‘one big, beautiful bill’ to advance his agenda on border security, defense, energy and taxes.

Such a measure is largely only possible via the budget reconciliation process. Traditionally used when one party controls all three branches of government, reconciliation lowers the Senate’s threshold for passage of certain fiscal measures from 60 votes to 51. As a result, it has been used to pass broad policy changes in one or two massive pieces of legislation.

The first step traditionally involves both chambers of Congress passing an identical ‘framework’ with instructions for relevant committees to hash out policy priorities in line with the spending levels in the initial legislation.

The House passed its own version of the reconciliation framework earlier this year, while the Senate passed an amended version last week. House GOP leaders now believe that voting on the Senate’s plan will allow Republicans to enter the next step of crafting policy.

‘Why does President Trump call it one big, beautiful bill? Because it does a lot of critically important things, all in one bill, that help get this country back on a strong footing. And what else it does is it produces incredibly needed savings,’ House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said during debate on the bill.

The legislation as laid out would add more money for border security, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as well as some new funding for defense. 

Republicans are also looking to repeal significant portions of former President Joe Biden’s green energy policies, and institute new Trump policies like eliminating taxes on tipped and overtime wages.

But House conservatives had demanded added assurances from the Senate to show they are serious about cutting spending.

The House and Senate must pass identical versions of the final bill before it can get to Trump’s desk to be signed into law.

They must do so before the end of this year, when Trump’s TCJA tax cuts expire – potentially raising taxes on millions of Americans.

Trump himself worked to persuade holdouts both in a smaller-scale White House meeting on Tuesday and in public remarks at the National Republican Congressional Committee.

He also fired off multiple Truth Social posts pushing House Republicans to support the measure, even as conservatives argued it would not go far enough in fulfilling his own agenda.

‘Republicans, it is more important now, than ever, that we pass THE ONE, BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL. The USA will Soar like never before!!!’ one of the posts read.