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.’ 

President Donald Trump’s new Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Tulsi Gabbard, was sworn in at the White House on Wednesday, just hours after being confirmed by the Senate. 

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters during her briefing, ‘Senate Republicans continued to confirm President Trump’s exceptionally qualified nominees, most recently Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who will be joining us later at the White House for her swearing-in ceremony.’

‘It’s imperative that the remainder of the president’s Cabinet nominees are confirmed as quickly as possible,’ she added. 

Gabbard was sworn in by Attorney General Pam Bondi in the Oval Office. The event took place just after 4 PM and Trump was in attendance for the ceremony. 

The Senate confirmed Gabbard in a 52-48 vote. The divide was along party lines, with the exception of former GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who opposed her. 

‘In my assessment, Tulsi Gabbard failed to demonstrate that she is prepared to assume this tremendous national trust,’ McConnell said in a lengthy statement on his vote. 

‘The nation should not have to worry that the intelligence assessments the president receives are tainted by a Director of National Intelligence with a history of alarming lapses in judgment.’ 

Gabbard notably faced scrutiny over 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 those  concerns were mostly quelled by Gabbard herself, in coordination with the significant efforts of Chairman Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Vice President JD Vance, who worked behind the scenes to get party members on board. 

She is the 14th Cabinet official to be confirmed in Trump’s second term. 

Next up will be Trump’s similarly controversial pick Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is nominated to be secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). He will get a vote early Thursday morning after clearing his last procedural hurdle Wednesday afternoon. 

Russian missiles struck Kyiv in the early hours of Wednesday, killing at least one civilian, Ukrainian officials said. 

The barrage of ballistic missiles hit hours before Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent visited the Ukrainian capital, the first Cabinet-level Trump official to do so, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy aide Andriy Yermak wrote on Telegram. 

Bessent is visiting the city to meet with Zelenskyy and discuss President Donald Trump’s demand for access to $500 billion worth of rare Earth minerals as payment for U.S. military aid to Ukraine. He is also expected to talk about energy, having promised to ramp up sanctions on Russia’s oil sector. 

Zelenskyy said the recent attack proved Russian President Vladimir Putin is not interested in pursuing peace. 

Reporters from the French newswire AFP heard explosions ring out early Wednesday before discovering the body of one person killed, covered with a black plastic sheet. Zelenskyy said at least one person was killed, and four others were wounded – including a child. He said the attack damaged apartments and office buildings.

Russia’s defense ministry claimed it had conducted a ‘group missile strike’ on Ukrainian sites producing drones and added that all targets were hit. 

Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, is expected to visit Kyiv next week as he hashes out a plan for peace with Russia. 

Kellogg, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are all traveling to Europe for the Munich Security Conference this week, when they will discuss peace options with Ukrainian and European officials.

In the region north of Kyiv, Chernihiv, local Gov. Vyacheslav Chaus said Russians had targeted critical infrastructure and at least two were wounded. 

The Ukrainian air force said it shot down six missiles and 71 of 123 drones, which included Iranian-designed Shahed attack vehicles.

House Republicans have released their framework for a massive conservative policy overhaul to advance President Donald Trump’s agenda, just as the Senate advances its own version of the plan.

House and Senate GOP lawmakers have been at odds over how to go about executing Trump’s policy goals, and an earlier delay by House GOP leaders to kick-start the process in their chamber frustrated Senate Republicans, who released a narrower version of the House’s proposal.

Both chambers are aiming to advance their proposals on Thursday, with the Senate beginning its process Wednesday.

House and Senate Republicans are aiming to use the budget reconciliation process to pass a broad range of Trump policy goals, from border security to eliminating taxes on tipped and overtime wages.

By lowering the threshold for passage in the Senate from two-thirds to a simple majority, it will allow the GOP to use their razor-thin majorities to get legislation signed into law with zero Democratic support, provided the measures included relate to the budget and other fiscal matters.

The House’s 45-page legislation directs $300 billion in new spending for homeland security, defense and the judiciary, while directing at least $1.5 trillion in spending cuts for other areas of the federal government.

The text also calls for $4.5 trillion in new spending for the House Ways & Means Committee, aimed at extending measures in Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that are expiring at the end of this year.

The bill notably lifts the debt ceiling by $4 trillion – a key demand by Trump after projections showed the U.S. could run out of cash to pay its debts in the middle of this year if Congress does not act.

The bill would also set a goal of reducing mandatory spending by $2 trillion, with the caveat that a failure to find $2 trillion in savings would result in a reduction to the $4.5 trillion sum aimed toward Trump’s tax cuts. All sums are factored over a 10-year window. 

Senate Republicans had advocated for a two-bill strategy, arguing that separating border, defense and energy priorities from taxes would enable Trump to score a quick victory on issues that Republicans broadly agree on.

House Republicans are concerned that the significant political capital needed to pass a reconciliation bill with razor-thin majorities will mean Trump’s tax cuts will expire before the GOP can reckon with them this year.

The plan being advanced by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., includes new funding for border security and defense while offsetting those costs by rolling back green energy policies and other progressive Biden administration priorities.

Graham has dismissed multiple public pleas by Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to allow the House to go first in the process. The House had delayed initial plans to advance a resolution last week after GOP fiscal hawks demanded deeper spending cuts than what leaders initially offered, between $300 billion and $600 billion.

Johnson said this week that Graham’s bill is a ‘nonstarter’ in the House.

It’s not clear as of Wednesday afternoon, however, whether all the House’s differences are resolved.

Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., a fiscal hawk on the budget panel, told reporters that conservatives were still seeking additional items to be included in the resolution before the scheduled meeting to advance it on Thursday morning.

‘It’s dependent on what we add to it,’ Norman said when asked if he would support the bill on Thursday. ‘And it’s not just coming from me, it’s others too.’

He said of the public bill text, ‘We had to get this out as a skeleton. We’ve got to fill the skeleton in. And a lot of us have some real feelings, strong feelings, about what’s being included.’

Meanwhile, Republicans on the Ways & Means Committee are concerned that $4.5 trillion may not be enough to enact Trump’s tax policies over the next 10 years.

‘I have some concerns regarding Ways & Means not being provided with the largest amount to cover President Trump’s tax cuts – especially [State and Local Tax deduction (SALT)] relief and a tax reduction for senior citizens, which are both also priorities of mine,’ committee member Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., told Fox News Digital. 

‘We will need to play with the parameters to see what we can come up with to satisfy members of our committee and conference,’ Malliotakis said.

House GOP Conference Vice Chair Blake Moore, R-Utah, told reporters that Republicans needed to be realistic about their expectations.

‘We may not have every tax benefit. Everybody’s going to have to give,’ Moore said.