A group of House Republicans is pushing to give President Donald Trump more control over the federal spending process, as his administration continues to crack down on funding that does not align with the GOP agenda.

Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., is leading legislation to repeal the Impoundment Control Act, a 1974 Nixon-era law aimed at stopping the president from having unilateral say over government spending.

It would give Trump greater ability to accomplish his goals for Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Clyde told Fox News Digital in an interview.

‘I think it goes hand in hand with what DOGE is doing right now and with what the president has in mind to do, and that is to make our government more effective and more efficient,’ Clyde said.

‘They’re simply bringing the fraud, waste and abuse to light. And, then the rest of us, you know, the president and the executive need to take action on it. And then Congress needs to look at that and say, hey, we need to codify that into law to make sure that it stays beyond just this presidency.’

His legislation has more than 20 House GOP co-sponsors and a companion bill in the Senate led by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah.

Clyde told Fox News Digital that he intends to raise his bill with members of the Trump administration, which has also driven significant pushback against the Impoundment Control Act.

Russell Vought, Trump’s recently confirmed director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), has previously called the Impoundment Control Act unconstitutional.

Trump himself has made similar arguments.

‘Since the Empowered Control Act of ‘74, we have seen a tremendous increase in spending. And I think that’s part of the problem right there. The president is required now by law to spend the exact amount that Congress authorizes or appropriates for a specific program,’ Clyde said.

‘Well, as a small business owner, I understand the rules of business. And I think that if you can accomplish the same goal and be more financially efficient, I think you should be allowed to do that. And I think the president has always had the authority to do that under the Constitution.’

Trump has already exercised significant control over existing federal spending commitments. He paused most foreign aid funding soon after taking office last month, as well as other funding streams his administration said necessitated review. 

Parts of Trump’s federal funding freezes have been challenged in court, with a federal judge ordering the White House just this week to comply with an earlier legal order directing them to reinstate funding.

President Donald Trump’s nominees to run the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are part of a group of scientists who just launched a new research journal focused on spurring scientific discourse and combating ‘gatekeeping’ in the medical research community. 

The journal, titled the Journal of the Academy of Public Health (JAPH), includes an editorial board consisting of several scientists who complained of facing censorship during the COVID-19 pandemic.

JAPH’s co-founders include Martin Kulldorff, a former Harvard Medical School professor who is a founding fellow at Hillsdale College’s Academy for Science and Freedom, and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of health policy at Stanford University who is also Trump’s nominee to be the next NIH director. Kulldorff and Bhattacharya became known during the pandemic for authoring The Great Barrington Declaration, which sought to challenge the broader medical community’s prevailing notions about COVID-19 mitigation strategies, arguing that – in the long run – the lockdowns that people were facing would do more harm than good.

Dr. Marty Makary, a surgeon and public policy researcher at Johns Hopkins University, who is Trump’s nominee to be the next director of the FDA, is on the journal’s editorial board as well.  

JAPH is adopting a novel approach by publishing peer reviews of prominent studies from other journals that do not make their peer reviews publicly available. The effort is aimed at spurring scientific discourse, Kulldorff said in a paper outlining the purposes of the journal’s creation.

The journal will also seek to promote ‘open access’ by making all of its work available to everyone in the public without a paywall, he said, and the journal’s editorial leadership will allow all scientists within its network to ‘freely publish all their research results in a timely and efficient manner,’ to prevent any potential ‘gatekeeping.’

‘Scientific journals have had enormous positive impact on the development of science, but in some ways, they are now hampering rather than enhancing open scientific discourse,’ Kulldorff said. ‘After reviewing the history and current problems with journals, a new academic publishing model is proposed – it embraces open access and open rigorous peer review, it rewards reviewers for their important work with honoraria and public acknowledgment and it allows scientists to publish their research in a timely and efficient manner without wasting valuable scientist time and resources.’

Kulldorff, Bhattacharya, Makary and others on the new journal’s leadership team have complained that their views about the COVID-19 pandemic were censored. These were views that were often contrary to the prevailing ideas put forth by the broader medical community at the time, which related to topics such as vaccine efficacy, natural immunity, lockdowns and more.

‘Big tech censored the [sic] all kinds of science on natural immunity,’ Makary said in testimony to Congress following the pandemic. During his testimony, Makary also shared how one of his own studies at Johns Hopkins during the pandemic that promoted the effectiveness of natural immunity, which one scientific journal listed as its third most discussed study in 2022, ‘was censored.’

‘Because of my views on COVID-19 restrictions, I have been specifically targeted for censorship by federal government officials,’ Bhattacharya added in his own testimony to Congress the same year.

Kulldorff, who has also complained about censorship of his views on COVID-19, argued he was asked to leave his medical professorship at Harvard that he held since 2003, for ‘clinging to the truth’ in his opposition to COVID-19 lockdowns and vaccine mandates.

‘The JAPH will ensure quality through open peer-review, but will not gatekeep new and important ideas for the sake of established orthodoxies,’ Andrew Noymer, JAPH’s incoming editor-in-chief told Fox News Digital. 

‘To pick one example, in my own sub-field of infectious disease epidemiology, we have in the past few years seen too little published scholarship on the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID. Academic publishing as it exists today is too often concerned with preservation of what we think we know, too often to the detriment of new ideas.’

Bhattacharya and Makary did not wish to comment on this article.

A federal appeals court dismissed the appeal charges brought against President Donald Trump aides Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira by former Special Counsel Jack Smith in his classified documents case, Fox News Digital has learned. 

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the case against Nauta and De Oliveira on Tuesday morning, two weeks after the Justice Department moved to drop the charges.

Nauta, Trump’s valet, and De Oliveira, the property manager of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, had pleaded not guilty to federal charges alleging they conspired to obstruct the FBI investigation into classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago. 

The Justice Department had filed a motion in January to drop all criminal proceedings against Nauta and De Oliveira, putting an end to Smith’s probe more than two years after it began.

Former Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith, a former Justice Department official, as special counsel in November 2022. 

Smith, a former assistant U.S. attorney and chief to the DOJ’s public integrity section, led the investigation into Trump’s retention of classified documents after leaving the White House and whether the former president obstructed the federal government’s investigation into the matter. 

Smith also was tasked with overseeing the investigation into whether Trump or other officials and entities interfered with the peaceful transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election, including the certification of the Electoral College vote on Jan. 6, 2021. 

Smith charged Trump in both cases, but Trump pleaded not guilty.

The classified records case was dismissed in July 2024 by U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida Judge Aileen Cannon, who ruled that Smith was unlawfully appointed as special counsel. 

Smith charged Trump in the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C., in his 2020 election case, but after Trump was elected president, Smith sought to dismiss the case. Judge Tanya Chutkan granted that request. 

Both cases were dismissed. 

The Justice Department, in January, fired more than a dozen key officials who worked on Smith’s team prosecuting the president, after then-acting Attorney General James McHenry said they could not be trusted in ‘faithfully implementing the president’s agenda.’ 

Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove has also directed acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll to identify agents involved in Jan. 6 prosecutions for internal review. 

Republicans lawmakers are renewing efforts to gut federal funding to NPR and PBS amid the Trump administration’s upheaval of the federal bureaucracy.

Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., is leading a bill in the House of Representatives that would halt taxpayer dollars from going to either media broadcaster and reroute existing federal funds to reducing the national debt, according to legislative text previewed by Fox News Digital.

‘As a former newspaper owner and publisher, I understand the vital role of balanced, non-partisan media. Unfortunately, these taxpayer-funded outlets have chosen advocacy over accuracy, using public dollars to promote a political agenda rather than report the facts,’ Tenney told Fox News Digital.

The legislation’s Senate counterpart is being led by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, who told Fox News Digital, ‘Americans have hundreds of sources of news and commentary, and they don’t need politically biased, taxpayer-funded media choosing what they should see and hear. PBS and NPR are free to compete in the marketplace of ideas using donations, but their public subsidy should end.’

Republicans have long targeted NPR and PBS, accusing both outlets of sharing a liberal bias while receiving government funding.

Less than 1% of NPR’s funding comes directly from the federal government, though other funding comes indirectly from grants and dollars allocated to local member stations who then pay fees back to NPR. More than a third of its funding comes from corporate sponsorships.

PBS also gets a mix of federal funds through other avenues.

However, the GOP’s demands to end federal allocations to both outlets now come at a time when the executive branch is fervently searching for places to block government spending that does not align with the Trump administration’s agenda.

Elon Musk, who is leading Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative, has been critical of NPR in the past.

‘Defund NPR. It should survive on its own,’ Musk wrote on his X platform earlier this month.

Soon after he acquired X, Musk briefly hit NPR with a ‘State-Affiliated’ media label, which is normally reserved for the media arm of authoritarian governments.

Tenney’s bill is one of multiple efforts targeting NPR and PBS during this Congress. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who chairs the DOGE subcommittee under the House Oversight Committee, said she wants the heads of each organization to come testify before her new panel.

Steve Bannon, a longtime ally of President Donald Trump, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a charge that he defrauded donors who gave money to a private campaign to build a wall along the U.S. southern border.

Bannon was sentenced to three years conditional discharge but will avoid jail time as part of a plea agreement.

When reporters asked Bannon how he felt as he left the courtroom, he responded: ‘Like a million bucks.’

Bannon’s lawyer told reporters outside the court that there was no way his client could get a fair trial.

This is a breaking news story; check back for updates.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime suggested relations between Washington, D.C., and Moscow are on ‘the brink’ of collapse this week.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov made the announcement during a Monday press conference. Ryabkov reiterated Putin’s stance that there would be no peace in Ukraine unless the country dropped its ambitions to join NATO and ceded Russian-occupied regions.

‘We simply imperatively need to get … the new U.S. administration to understand and acknowledge that without resolving the problems that are the root causes of the crisis in Ukraine, it will not be possible to reach an agreement,’ Ryabkov said.

While President Donald Trump said on Sunday that he has spoken to Putin, a spokesman for the Russian leader declined to confirm the call this week.

Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday that he expects to have ‘many more conversations. We have to get that war ended.’

‘I hate to see all these young people being killed. The soldiers are being killed by the hundreds of thousands,’ he added.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is preparing to meet with Vice President JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference later this week after confirming on Friday he is ready to ‘do a deal’ with President Donald Trump.

According to an interview with Reuters, Zelenskyy said he was ready to supply the U.S. with rare-earth minerals in exchange for Washington’s continued backing of its war effort.

‘If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,’ Zelenskyy said. 

The Ukrainian president has made clear he is also open to engaging in peace talks with Russia to end the three-year-long war, though possible terms for securing a peace deal remain varied and unknown. 

Though Zelenskyy has said he is looking for ‘guarantees’ when it comes to future security assurances for the war-torn country.

These security assurances will likely need to be more than a formal handshake paired with a signed document, as Russia has twice violated its last agreement with Ukraine, known as the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.

Zelenskyy apparently first floated the idea of trading Ukraine’s mineral resources – roughly 20% of which are located in now Russian-controlled territory, including half of the rare-earth variety – under his ‘victory plan’ first presented to Western allies last fall, reported Reuters. 

President Donald Trump has the highest approval rating now compared to any point during his first term in office, according to a new poll. 

Forty-seven percent of Americans approve of Trump’s job performance in the less than a month since he was sworn in as the 47th president, the latest national survey by the Pew Research Center found. 

While that’s higher than at any point while he served as the 45th president, Trump’s inaugural approval rating sinks below that of most other presidents since Ronald Reagan. George W. Bush’s approval rating early in his second term, however, was about the same as that of Trump now. 

The poll, conducted Jan. 27 to Feb. 2 among 5,086 adults, found nearly three in ten adults, or 28%, view Trump’s actions as better than expected, while 36% said they have been what they expected. 

His actions are viewed as worse than expected by 35% of adults. 

Americans are fairly evenly split over how they believe Trump’s White House will affect the federal government. The survey found 41% of adults said they believe Trump’s administration will improve the way the federal government works, and 42% said they believe the state of the federal government will worsen with him in office. 

Public opinion on Trump’s agenda remains starkly divided along partisan lines. The poll found 67% of Republicans, including those who lean red, support all or most of Trump’s plans and policies. For Democrats and those who lean blue, 84% support few or none. Almost an identical share of Republicans, 76%, said Trump will improve the way the federal government operates, as Democrats, 78%, said Trump will make the federal government run worse. 

For Republicans, 53% viewed Trump’s recent actions as better than expected, while the poll found 60% of Democrats view the president’s accomplishments as worse than expected. 

As Trump enters his fourth week back in office, his efforts to slash wasteful federal government spending through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have caused a stir in Washington. 

His threat of tariffs against Canada and Mexico and levied against China over the flow of deadly fentanyl across American borders has similarly raised concerns. Trump’s angling for the Panama Canal and Greenland amid the increasing Chinese presence in the Western Hemisphere, as well as his administration overseeing a collapsing ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel in the Middle East have put the world on notice. 

Trump’s advisers are expected to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy this week in Munich as the war with Russia stretches into its third year. Raging wildfires in California, a deadly military helicopter-passenger jet collision in D.C., and the continuing aftermath of last year’s hurricane devastation in the southeast, particularly in North Carolina, are putting Trump’s new Cabinet chiefs to the test on the domestic front, as is Trump’s crackdown on criminal illegal immigration.