President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy exchanged terse insults on Wednesday, following meetings between U.S. and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday without representatives from Ukraine. 

Trump repeatedly has said that he is the only one who can bring an end to the war between Ukraine and Russia, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump was in contact with Zelenskyy and was working to ensure ‘that all parties are heard’ during the peace talks. 

Yet Ukraine’s absence from the negotiations on Tuesday appears to have exacerbated a wedge between Washington and Kyiv. 

While Zelenskyy accused Trump of perpetuating Russian ‘disinformation’ on Wednesday, Trump clapped back and labeled Zelenskyy a ‘dictator’ who has failed his country. 

‘A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left. In the meantime, we are successfully negotiating an end to the War with Russia, something all admit only ‘TRUMP,’ and the Trump Administration, can do,’ Trump wrote in a social media post Wednesday. 

‘I love Ukraine, but Zelenskyy has done a terrible job, his Country is shattered, and MILLIONS have unnecessarily died.’ 

Trump’s post included a series of inaccurate statements, including that Zelenskyy ‘talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start.’ Meanwhile, Congress has appropriated $175 billion since 2022 for aid to Ukraine, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. 

Trump’s comments build on statements he delivered Tuesday at his Florida Mar-a-Lago estate, where he said that Russia wasn’t the only one exerting pressure to force Ukraine to hold an election. One of Russia’s conditions for signing a peace deal includes Ukraine holding an election, nearly a year after Zelenskyy’s five-year term was slated to end. 

But Zelenskyy has remained in his position leading Kyiv because the Ukrainian constitution bars holding elections under martial law. Ukraine has been under martial law since February 2022. 

Additionally, Trump chastised Ukraine on Tuesday for not ending the war sooner, and also appeared to suggest that Ukraine started the conflict, even though Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

‘I think I have the power to end this war, and I think it’s going very well. But today I heard, ‘Oh, we weren’t invited,” Trump said Tuesday at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. ‘Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it three years (ago). You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.’

In response, Zelenskyy delivered his own jabs toward Trump, and said the U.S. president lived in a ‘disinformation space’ peddling inaccurate information that originated from Russia. 

‘We have seen this disinformation,’ Zelenskyy said Wednesday at a news conference before meeting with retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellog, the U.S. special envoy for Ukraine and Russia. ‘We understand that it is coming from Russia.’

‘I think Putin and the Russians are very happy, because questions are discussed with them,’ he added. 

Zelenskyy has stressed in recent days that Ukraine must be involved in negotiations for a peace deal with Russia, and said Sunday that Ukraine wouldn’t accept a peace deal if his country was absent from negotiations. 

He also announced on Tuesday that he would postpone a scheduled trip to Saudi Arabia until March, after revealing during a joint press conference with Turkish President Recept Tayyip Erdoğan that Ukraine wasn’t invited to the U.S.-Russia discussions in Riyadh.  

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House national security advisor Mike Waltz and Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff met in Riyadh with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin’s foreign affairs advisor Yuri Ushakov to hash out ways to end the conflict. 

The first action the U.S. plans to take after the meetings with Russian officials is to ‘reestablish the functionality of our respective missions in Washington and in Moscow,’ Rubio told reporters from The Associated Press and CNN.

‘For us to be able to continue to move down this road, we need to have diplomatic facilities that are operating and functioning normally,’ Rubio said, according to a State Department transcript. 

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and Trump vowed on the campaign trail in 2024 that he would work to end the conflict if elected again.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

The Trump administration designated several gangs and cartels, such as Tren de Aragua, MS-13 and the Sinaloa Cartel, as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs).

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a public notice set to be published in the Federal Register on Thursday, that he had concluded there is a ‘sufficient factual basis’ under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act to designate eight groups as FTOs.

The eight groups consist of Tren de Aragua; Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13; the Sinaloa Cartel; New Generation Cartel of Jalisco; United Cartels; Northeast Cartel; Gulf Cartel; and La Nueva Familia Michoacana, or LNFM, many of which go under multiple different names.

This comes after President Donald Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office to direct the State Department and other executive agencies to move to designate cartels and other criminal groups as FTOs.

The order specifically mentioned Tren de Aragua – which is also known as ‘TdA’ – as well MS-13, as groups needing to be designated as terror organizations.

Trump gave Rubio 14 days to make policy recommendations – in consultation with the secretaries of the Treasury and Homeland Security as well as the U.S. attorney general and director of national intelligence – to make a recommendation regarding the designation of criminal groups to be designated as terrorist organizations.

A foreign terrorist designation expands the government’s ability to crack down on criminal groups operating in the U.S., allowing all government agencies, including the Department of the Treasury, to target that group from every angle. 

The order stated that these groups ‘present an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States,’ and invokes the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEP) to declare a national emergency to ‘deal with those threats.’

‘It is the policy of the United States to ensure the total elimination of these organizations’ presence in the United States and their ability to threaten the territory, safety, and security of the United States through their extraterritorial command-and-control structures, thereby protecting the American people and the territorial integrity of the United States,’ the order read.

Joseph Humire, executive director of the Center for a Secure Free Society, authored a report on how to dismantle TdA in 2024. He previously explained to Fox News Digital that designating these groups as foreign terrorist organizations places them ‘at the highest level’ of U.S. national security interest, meaning their funding and any organizations enabling them can be targeted as well.

‘Trump just put all of them on notice,’ Humire said. ‘This said: ‘We know you’re here; we know you’re up to no good, and we’re going to come after you.”

Fox News Digital’s Peter Pinedo contributed to this report.

Three new national polls released on Wednesday indicate President Donald Trump’s approval ratings are edging down slightly since taking over the White House one month ago.

Forty-five percent of voters questioned in a Quinnipiac University survey said they approve of the way Trump is handling his job as president, with 49% disapproving.

That’s down from a 46%-43% approval/disapproval in a Quinnipiac poll conducted in late January, during the president’s first week back in office following his inauguration.

And a new national poll from Gallup indicated the president at 45% approval and 51% disapproval, down from 47%-48% approval/disapproval late last month.

And according to a Reuters/Ipsos national survey also released on Wednesday, the president stood at 44% approval and 51% disapproval. Trump registered at 45%-46% approval/disapproval in the previous poll by Reuters/Ipsos, which was conducted late last month during the first week of the president’s second administration.

The latest Quinnipiac poll was conducted Feb. 13-17, with Gallup in the field Feb. 3-16, and Reuters/Ipsos conducting their survey Feb. 13-18.

Recent surveys from other polling organizations indicate Trump’s approval ratings remain above water.

Trump has kept up a frenetic pace during his opening weeks back in the White House, with an avalanche of executive orders and actions. His moves not only fulfilled some of his major campaign trail promises, but also allowed the returning president to flex his executive muscles, quickly put his stamp on the federal government, take a meat cleaver to the federal workforce, and also settle some longstanding grievances.

Trump has signed nearly 70 executive orders since his inauguration, according to a count from Fox News, which far surpasses the rate of any recent presidential predecessors during their first weeks in office.

The president, never shy about advertising his accomplishments, took to social media last week to tout ‘THREE GREAT WEEKS, PERHAPS THE BEST EVER.’

And at a news conference Tuesday, Trump argued that ‘incredible things are happening in our country.’

‘I think we’ve made more progress in three weeks than they’ve made in four years,’ he added, as he appeared to point to his predecessor in the White House, former President Biden.

While Trump’s approval ratings for his second term are an improvement from his first term — he started in 2017 in negative territory and remained underwater throughout his tenure in the White House — his numbers are below where Biden began his single term in office.

Biden’s approval rating hovered in the low to mid 50s during his first six months in the White House, with his disapproval in the upper 30s to low to mid 40s. 

However, Biden’s numbers sank into negative territory in the late summer and autumn of 2021, in the wake of his much-criticized handling of the turbulent U.S. exit from Afghanistan and amid soaring inflation and a surge of migrants crossing into the U.S. along the nation’s southern border with Mexico.

Biden’s approval ratings stayed underwater throughout the rest of his presidency.

The new polls indicate a massive partisan divide over Trump’s performance.

Nine in 10 Republicans questioned in the Quinnipiac survey gave Trump a thumbs-up. But his approval dropped to 43% among independents and just 4% among Democrats.

It was a similar story in the Gallup poll.

‘Ninety-three percent of Republicans, 37% of independents and 4% of Democrats approve of Trump’s job performance overall,’ the release from Gallup highlighted.

Meanwhile, the Gallup poll noted that while Trump’s ratings have edged down, Americans’ approval of Congress has surged 12 points since early January, to 29% in their latest survey. That’s the highest approval rating for Congress in Gallup polling since May 2021.

President Donald Trump will sign an executive order Wednesday that will require federal agencies to evaluate all of their regulations that could violate the Constitution, in the latest effort from his administration to prioritize slashing red tape. 

The executive order — which senior administration officials are calling a first of its kind and an attempt to ensure the government isn’t weaponized against the American people — will require agencies to submit a list to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) within the next 60 days of all regulations that could violate the Constitution or could cause harm.

OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will spearhead the effort and evaluate regulations across the federal agencies, senior administration officials told Fox News Digital Wednesday. 

DOGE officials at federal agencies will gather an inventory of regulations that could violate the Constitution and then share them with OMB. After the 60 days, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs will go through the list of regulations and make individual decisions on which regulations are unconstitutional and will launch the process of repealing the regulations on a case-by-case basis, the senior administration officials said. 

OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs oversees executive branch regulations, while the newly created DOGE aims to eliminate government waste, fraud and spending. 

The order comes as the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled against federal agencies who’ve sought to broadly enforce their own regulations outside the scope of their jurisdiction, including when the Supreme Court ruled against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in May 2023 in the case Sackett v. EPA. 

In that case, Mike and Chantell Sackett purchased a residential lot near Priest Lake, Idaho, in 2005 to build a home. However, the EPA stepped in as the Sacketts kicked off leveling the ground and told them to halt plans to start construction — or face massive fines — because the property fell on federally protected land covered under the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act of 1972. 

The law sets standards for regulating pollutants into ‘waters of the United States,’ and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion that the EPA sought to classify the wetlands on the Sackett’s property as ‘waters of the United States’ because they were ‘near a ditch that fed into a creek, which fed into Priest Lake, a navigable, intrastate lake.’ 

Ultimately, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that the Clean Water Act applies only to waters that are ‘relatively permanent, standing, or continuously flowing bodies of water.’ 

‘Understanding the (Clean Water Act) to apply to wetlands that are distinguishable from otherwise covered ‘waters of the United States’ would substantially broaden (existing statute) to define ‘navigable waters’ as ‘waters of the United States and adjacent wetlands,” Alito wrote.

Wednesday’s executive order will build on the Trump administration’s efforts to cut down on regulations. 

For example, Trump signed an executive order in January ordering that federal agencies eradicate 10 regulations for every new one implemented. 

Trump said at the World Economic Forum Jan. 23 that his administration would launch the ‘largest deregulation campaign in history, far exceeding even the record-setting efforts of my last term.’

Previous steps Trump took during his first term to cut regulations included ordering federal agencies to nix two regulations for every new regulation issued. The White House has touted that agencies ultimately cut five and half regulations for every new one introduced during Trump’s first term. 

: Senate Republican conference Chairman Tom Cotton, R-Ark., is set to meet with an embattled Trump nominee for a key position in the Department of Defense (DOD) after Cotton faced backlash from some MAGA-aligned figures over the weekend.

Cotton will meet with President Donald Trump’s nominee for Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Elbridge ‘Bridge’ Colby, in the coming days, a source familiar shared with Fox News Digital. 

According to the source, senators on the Senate Committee on Armed Services (SASC) had come to Cotton with concerns regarding some of Colby’s stances, particularly past comments on Iran potentially obtaining a nuclear weapon. 

Turning Point USA founder and CEO Charlie Kirk told Fox News Digital in an exclusive statement, ‘I’m very happy to hear that Sen. Cotton is willing to meet with Bridge,’ touting the nominee’s accomplishments and ‘thoughtful’ approach.

Whether his own public pressure on the senator via X played a part in the meeting, he said, ‘Both public and private pressure are important. Ideally, these debates don’t play out in public, but sometimes it’s necessary.’

‘What has become very clear to me in recent days is that the base is paying close attention to this confirmation, and there will be political consequences for any senator who stands in the way of the personnel President Trump wants,’ Kirk continued, adding that he hopes Cotton will ultimately back Colby. 

The source told Fox News Digital that issues with Colby’s positions on the war between Russia and Ukraine had surfaced from some members. But what was ultimately fostering hesitance was his previously stated stance on Iran’s nuclear capabilities and whether the U.S. should contain a nuclear Iran.

As for Cotton, a source familiar explained that the GOP Conference and Intel Committee chairman is ‘comfortable’ with nominees who say they support Trump’s position in preventing Iran from accessing nuclear weapons. 

The anticipated meeting between the top Republican and Colby comes after Cotton was the target of ‘MAGA’ ire over the weekend for his hesitance to get behind the nominee. 

Figures such as billionaire White House advisor Elon Musk and Kirk, a fierce MAGA ally, took to X to discuss Colby’s nomination and Cotton’s purported hesitance. 

‘The effort to undermine President Trump continues in the US Senate,’ Kirk wrote. 

He further claimed Cotton ‘is working behind the scenes to stop Trump’s pick, Elbridge Colby, from getting confirmed at DOD.’

‘Colby is one of the most important pieces to stop the Bush/Cheney cabal at DOD. Why is Tom Cotton doing this? Comment below your theories,’ he added. 

X owner Musk replied, ‘Why the opposition to Bridge? What does he think Bridge will do?’

‘Senator Cotton is focused on ensuring all defense nominees commit to supporting President Trump’s position that Iran must not have a nuclear weapon, and Cotton will be addressing this in meetings and hearings with the nominees,’ a source familiar with the matter told Fox News Digital earlier this week as they awaited Colby’s paperwork to proceed with the nomination process.

The White House did not provide comment when asked by Fox News Digital whether Colby’s stance on a nuclear Iran had changed. 

Colby had written in an op-ed in 2010 that ‘[c]ontaining a nuclear Iran is an eminently plausible and practical objective.’

He did, however, cede that ‘preventing an Iranian nuclear capability should be the objective of Washington and the international community.’

Some key pro-life activists are raising ethical questions about President Donald Trump’s executive order to expand access to pricey in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures, arguing the technology ‘is not pro-life’ because some embryos ‘are destroyed’ in the process.

‘IVF doesn’t address the root causes of the infertility health crisis in America,’ Live Action founder Lila Rose wrote on X. ‘It’s a Big Pharma bandaid, with major ethical issues, like millions of frozen & destroyed embryos. If we want to Make America Healthy Again, we should invest in addressing and healing the underlying causes of infertility.’

Trump signed the executive order Tuesday, fulfilling part of a key campaign promise to mandate free IVF treatment for women. The order came shortly after Democrats criticized him for his role in appointing Supreme Court justices who reversed the landmark Roe v. Wade case, leaving abortion access up to each state,

IVF ‘offers hope to men and women experiencing fertility challenges,’ the executive order states, and ‘Americans need reliable access to IVF and more affordable treatment options’ as the cost for treatments can range anywhere from $12,000 to $25,000.  

‘Therefore, to support American families, it is the policy of my Administration to ensure reliable access to IVF treatment, including by easing unnecessary statutory or regulatory burdens to make IVF treatment drastically more affordable,’ the order states.

Patrick T. Brown, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, explained that IVF raises a unique ethical issue within the conservative pro-life movement due to the technology’s potential to create new life, which is causing some splintering among some on the right.

‘I think that there are questions about what exactly are we doing with IVF, where we’re creating something that has the potential to become a human person,’ Brown said. ‘All of us were embryos at one stage or another, so they deserve some respect, at the very least, if not legal protection of some form or another.’

‘There’s actual guardrails that need to be pursued, rather than just going full speed ahead,’ he added.

Brown predicted that the most likely outcome is that after the White House comes up with a plan in the next three months, the Trump administration may consult with experts who have long been focused on IVF who are aware of the ethical concerns.

‘The U.S. allows people to select sex or to screen for different genetic traits in a way that most other countries don’t,’ Brown said. ‘We’re kind of the ‘Wild West’ when it comes to some of this stuff. And it opens the can of worms for eugenics and some of these other things that I don’t think President Trump actually intends. But, you know, it could actually go that way if we’re not careful about it.’

Several conservative social media influencers opposed Trump’s executive order on Tuesday. 

‘IVF ends more precious lives than it creates,’ Turning Point USA influencer Alex Clark wrote on X. ‘President Trump’s executive order pushing for expanded access is just fueling the same industry that competes with Planned Parenthood. More babies will also be born without a right to know both of their biological parents, and that’s a tragedy in itself.’

Conservative commentator Liz Wheeler, who is Catholic, called IVF ‘dreadful’ in another post. 

‘Over 90% of children created by IVF die, either left frozen and abandoned, destroyed due to eugenics, experimented on, or miscarried. Only 7% are born. It’s dreadful,’ she wrote.

Allie Beth Stuckey, an evangelical Christian who hosts The Blaze podcast ‘Relatable,’ wrote that IVF ‘is anti-MAHA,’ referring to the Make America Healthy Again movement.

‘It’s the perfect example of what’s wrong with much of modern medicine in America,’ she wrote. ‘Instead of getting to the root cause of infertility, it masks the symptoms with a ‘solution’ that is a threat to women’s health. The process almost always involves the destruction or indefinite freezing of embryos. It is unbelievably unregulated in the United States, and I fear this latest EO will only make it worse.’

IVF rose to become a high-profile issue during the presidential campaign. In February 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children, leading to paused IVF services in the state. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey later codified access to IVF services in state law a few months later.

‘When frozen embryos are thawed and prepared for transfer, there is a very small possibility that they may be damaged or destroyed and therefore unable to be successfully transferred,’ Joanne Rosen, a practice professor in Health Policy and Management at Johns Hopkins University, wrote in a blog post after the state’s high court ruling. ‘Even fresh embryos may be damaged and not able to be transferred. So there was real concern about the legal consequences given that these embryos, these in vitro embryos, have been declared persons under the law in Alabama.’

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the head of the Health and Human Services (HHS) department, wrote in a September post that while he and Trump are not opposed to IVF, ‘we are going to investigate the alarming decline in fertility.’

‘We will evaluate research implicating chemicals like glyphosate, BPA, heavy metals, xenoestrogens, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and so on,’ he wrote. ‘We will look into nutritional factors too. Why are sperm counts declining year after year? Why are girls reaching puberty so early? Why are so many couples infertile? The American people deserve answers, and we will provide them. So yes, IVF – but this issue is so much bigger than IVF.’

Fox News Digital has reached out to the White House for comment. 

Republican lawmakers are backing President Donald Trump’s insistence that Ukraine hold elections, even if they don’t share his belief that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a ‘dictator.’ 

‘I think you have to give them some space… There is a negotiation going on,’ said Sen. Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D.

Trump on Tuesday night said Ukraine ‘never should have started’ the war, and doubled down by calling Zelenskyy a ‘dictator’ because Ukraine hasn’t held elections since Russia invaded the country in 2022.

‘Ukraine clearly did not start this war,’ Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., wrote on X. ‘The fact is that Russia invaded Ukraine and must be held accountable. Otherwise, aggressors will be encouraged in their bad actions.’

Still, the Nebraska senator commended Trump for trying to end the war.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., backed up the president’s push for elections.We held elections during World War Two. Britain held elections during World War Two. If they’re a democracy, they should hold elections. I don’t think that’s difficult,’ he told reporters Thursday. 

‘[Zelenskyy] is the elected leader of the country,’ said Hawley. ‘But, you know, at a certain point you’ve got to hold elections.’

Vice President JD Vance was on Capitol Hill for a lunch with Republican senators, but the president’s bold assertion about the Ukrainian leader was not a topic of discussion, according to Hawley. 

Zelenskyy was originally up for reelection in April 2024, but Ukraine’s constitution bars holding elections until the president lifts the martial law order he instituted after the 2022 invasion.

‘Well, we’ve got to have elections,’ Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said when asked about the comments.

‘When it comes to blame for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I blame Putin above all others,’ Graham added in a post on X, claiming Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden were ‘pathetically weak in handling Putin and failed to protect Ukraine from invasion.’ 

Still, Graham called Trump Ukraine’s ‘best hope’ to end the war. Trump ‘will achieve this goal in the Trump way,’ he said. 

Graham spoke with Zelenskyy on Wednesday, according to the Ukrainian leader. ‘As always, Senator Graham is constructive and doing a lot to help bring peace closer,’ he said. 

‘Make no mistake about it, that invasion was the responsibility of one human being on the face of this planet. It was Vladimir Putin,’ Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told reporters. 

Tillis said he believed Putin planned to roll through the Baltic States and ‘send the signal to China that now is the time’ they can take over Taiwan. 

‘That’s what this is about, and that’s what we have to communicate.’ 

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., signaled that he disagreed with Trump’s comments on Zelenskyy, calling Putin a ‘gangster’ and an ‘evil person.’

Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., called Zelenskyy the ‘duly elected president of Ukraine’ but said he did not believe U.S. policy was aligning with Ukraine. 

‘I think he’s factually wrong on those points,’ said Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-S.D.  ‘I also don’t know what his motive [is] behind it. As a negotiator, he’s always positioning, and he’s in a negotiating mood these days.’

Trump’s remarks came just after Secretary of State Marco Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff traveled to Saudi Arabia to meet with their Russian counterparts. 

The team came back with an agreement to increase diplomatic presence in each other’s nation and an agreed-upon need for elections in Ukraine. 

Russia has insisted it will not sign a peace agreement until Ukraine agrees to hold elections, and the U.S. is now ‘floating’ the idea of a three-stage plan: ceasefire, then Ukrainian elections, then inking of a peace deal.

General Valerii Zaluzhny, likely Zelenskyy’s most formidable opponent in a reelection campaign, said he would not entertain the idea of running against Ukraine’s president until the war is over. 

‘When such conditions come, I will be ready to give an answer to such a question. For now, our task is to endure and save our nation. And only after that will we think about other things.’

Zelenskyy, according to Trump, ‘refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden ‘like a fiddle.’’

‘A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left. In the meantime, we are successfully negotiating an end to the War with Russia, something all admit only ‘TRUMP,’ and the Trump Administration, can do,’ Trump said.  ‘Biden never tried, Europe has failed to bring Peace, and Zelenskyy probably wants to keep the ‘gravy train’ going. I love Ukraine, but Zelenskyy has done a terrible job, his Country is shattered, and MILLIONS have unnecessarily died.’ 

Dmitry Medvedev, a top Kremlin security official, remarked: ‘If you’d told me just three months ago that these were the words of the US president, I would have laughed out loud. [Trump] is 200 percent right [about Zelenskyy]. Bankrupt clown.’

On my first day as secretary of Transportation, we witnessed the midair collision in Washington, D.C., that took 67 lives. 

While the investigation is ongoing, the tragedy highlighted the urgent need to modernize our air traffic systems — and to move past the broken promises and political inertia of the past. 

The Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) unsustainable software systems that we’ve inherited are symptomatic of the endemic problems that plagued the Biden administration: a bloated bureaucracy that pushed overregulation instead of innovation, and radical DEI instead of merit. As a result, innovation stagnated and safety was sacrificed. 

Unlike my predecessors, I won’t run from difficult problems; I will fix them. 

This week, I’ve invited software engineers from SpaceX to visit the FAA as part of a fact-finding mission to better understand the issues afflicting our air traffic systems. SpaceX is America’s leading space launch company tracking thousands of satellites, and we thank these patriotic engineers for volunteering their time and expertise. 

This is just the start. Over the coming weeks and months, I will arrange similar meetings with America’s leading high-tech companies to identify our most urgent needs in air safety. Put simply, if you can help, my door is open.  

These candid conversations with the private sector are crucial because the old methods have failed. In 2012, President Barack Obama signed the ‘FAA Modernization and Reform Act’ into law, which provided $63.4 billion in FAA funding over four years, $11 billion of which was directed toward air traffic management. 

Flash forward to December 2024, when an alarming report from the Government Accountability Office stated that among the FAA’s 138 systems, 51 are unsustainable and the agency doesn’t plan to complete modernization projects for some of these systems for at least 10 years. Additionally, the FAA doesn’t yet have plans to modernize other systems in need — three of which are at least 30 years old. 

This status quo is unacceptable. It’s dangerous. And it must change immediately. 

The Biden administration was asleep at the switch and handed us a mess. An investigation by the New York Times in August 2023 revealed a pattern of near-collisions between commercial airlines — with near-misses happening multiple times a week, and occurring at all major airports in the U.S. This included 503 air traffic control lapses that the F.A.A. preliminarily categorized as ‘significant’ — 65% more than in the prior year. 

The FAA is also facing critical disruptions with its Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) system, which is vital for sharing safety-critical flight information between air traffic controllers and pilots. In 2023, a complete failure of the NOTAM system caused a nationwide ground stop, causing significant flight delays. 

The systemic problems are not limited to software. Aging networks at thousands of FAA sites must be upgraded in order to avoid severe service disruptions. In the meantime, the FAA is spending millions of taxpayer dollars per month just to maintain the legacy copper wire and connections. 

That level of dysfunction might be expected in a developing nation, but in the United States, it’s intolerable. President Donald Trump has already started implementing his bold vision to rebuild our nation, and modernizing our air traffic systems will be a crucial part of that legacy.  

Despite the obvious need for reform, partisans are certain to criticize this upcoming SpaceX visit, manufacturing illusory controversy rather than welcoming progress. That cynical approach exemplifies why the situation has deteriorated year after year; assigning blame is easy, but solutions take hard work. Americans will understand the facts: upgrading our nation’s air traffic systems will mean safer skies, fewer delays and less wasted time sitting in airports or stuck on tarmacs.  

We also won’t be derailed by misleading media coverage. As part of a larger government-wide restructuring that affected every federal agency, 0.8% of the FAA’s 45,000 employees were recently laid off — and we worked to ensure that all air traffic controllers and those in the most safety-critical positions were retained. 

Nevertheless, CNN blared its clickbait headline: ‘Hundreds of FAA probationary workers fired by Trump administration, union says.’ Only in paragraph 8 did CNN admit the truth: ‘The firings did not include air traffic controllers.’ 

In fact, we’ve begun boosting our recruitment of air traffic controllers. And thanks to Trump’s strong leadership, we are hiring on the basis of competence instead of ideology. As a result, we will see an immediate increase in talent, morale and retention, which will enable the most important result: safety. 

When I took the oath of office, I swore a commitment to defend our nation, and that means ensuring that our country’s skies are the safest in the world. Since the tragic events of January 30, I’ve met with grieving families and sincerely believe the best way to honor their loved ones is to urgently overhaul and upgrade our air traffic systems immediately. 

We can no longer rely on outdated code that hasn’t changed since the Clinton Administration. We must move past the bureaucratic delays and stale excuses that defined the last administration. Thankfully, Americans elected the world’s greatest problem solver, President Trump. 

This visit with SpaceX marks the beginning of a new era. Our nation needs an urgent upgrade to first-class. And it’s coming. 

Sean Duffy is the 20th U.S. Secretary of Transportation.

Fox News’ Julia Johnson contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday requesting the Domestic Policy Council examine ways to make in vitro fertilization, known as IVF, more affordable and accessible for Americans – despite the fact Democrats cautioned that Trump would seek to ban the procedure. 

‘Americans need reliable access to IVF and more affordable treatment options, as the cost per cycle can range from $12,000 to $25,000,’ the executive order said. ‘Providing support, awareness, and access to affordable fertility treatments can help these families navigate their path to parenthood with hope and confidence.’

Specifically, the order requires the assistant to the president for domestic policy to provide a list of policy recommendations aimed at ‘protecting IVF access and aggressively reducing out-of-pocket and health plan costs for IVF treatment’ within 90 days, according to the order. 

The directive comes months after former Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate in the 2024 election against Trump, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, accused the Trump administration of being ‘anti-IVF.’ 

Specifically, Walz singled out Trump’s running mate, then-Sen. JD Vance, a practicing Catholic who voted in June against the Right to IVF Act. The Catholic Church opposes IVF, saying unused embryos pose a moral dilemma. 

But Vance said in August 2024 he doesn’t believe all his religious views should translate to public policy since the U.S. is a ‘democratic society,’ he told the New York Post. 

‘Catholic social teaching is obviously very robust,’ he told the Post. ‘I think that no person who, or at least no one I know who’s Catholic, doesn’t accept that just because the Catholic Church teaches something, doesn’t mean you necessarily as a legislator need to affect that to public policy.’ 

The Right to IVF measure would establish a nationwide right to IVF and other assisted reproductive technology, but it failed to pass in the Senate. 

‘JD Vance opposing the miracle of IVF is a direct attack on my family and so many others,’ Walz said in a social media post on X in July 2024. 

Walz previously claimed that he and his wife, Gwen, struggled to conceive and shared details during the 2024 campaign about the couple’s experience using IVF to become pregnant with their two children. 

But Gwen Walz later clarified in August 2024 in an interview with Glamour magazinethat the couple actually used intrauterine insemination, known as IUI, to conceive. The process involves using a catheter to place the sperm directly into the uterus to increase odds of conception. 

In contrast, IVF requires the removal of a woman’s eggs and injecting them with sperm to create embryos, which then are placed back into the woman’s uterus. 

More than 85,000 babies born in 2021 were from IVF, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. 

Costly IVF treatments are rarely fully covered by health insurance, and only 25% of employers report providing coverage to their employees, according to the White House.

Trump unveiled plans in August 2024 that he’d seek to require insurance companies to cover the cost of IVF, stating he was pushing the policy ‘because we want more babies, to put it nicely.’

The Associated Press contributed to this report.