It was an off-year when it comes to elections, but 2025 was on fire on the campaign trail, as next year’s looming midterm showdowns took shape.

While it was never expected to match the intensity of the tumultuous 2024 battles for the White House and Congress, this year’s off-year elections grabbed outsized national attention and served as a key barometer leading up to the 2026 midterm contests for the House and Senate majorities.

Here are five of the biggest moments that shaped the campaign trail.

5. Trump pushes mid-decade congressional redistricting

Aiming to prevent what happened during his first term in the White House when Democrats reclaimed the House majority in the 2018 midterms, President Donald Trump in June first floated the idea of rare but not unheard of mid-decade congressional redistricting.

The mission was simple: redraw congressional district maps in red states to pad the GOP’s razor-thin House majority to keep control of the chamber in the 2026 midterms, when the party in power traditionally faces political headwinds and loses seats.

Trump’s first target: Texas.

A month later, when asked by reporters about his plan to add Republican-leaning House seats across the country, the president said, ‘Texas will be the biggest one. And that’ll be five.’

The push by Trump and his political team triggered a high-stakes redistricting showdown with Democrats to shape the 2026 midterm landscape in the fight for the House majority.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas called a special session of the GOP-dominated state legislature to pass the new map.

But Democratic state lawmakers, who broke quorum for two weeks as they fled Texas in a bid to delay the passage of the redistricting bill, energized Democrats across the country.

Among those leading the fight against Trump’s redistricting was Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.

California voters earlier this month overwhelmingly passed Proposition 50, a ballot initiative which will temporarily sidetrack the left-leaning state’s nonpartisan redistricting commission and return the power to draw the congressional maps to the Democratic-dominated legislature.

That is expected to result in five more Democratic-leaning congressional districts in California, which aimed to counter the move by Texas to redraw their maps.

The fight quickly spread beyond Texas and California.

Right-tilting Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio have drawn new maps as part of the president’s push.

Republicans are looking to GOP-controlled Florida, where early redistricting moves are underway in Tallahassee. A new map could possibly produce up to five more right-leaning seats. But conservative Gov. Ron DeSantis and GOP legislative leaders don’t see eye-to-eye on how to move forward.

‘We must keep the Majority at all costs,’ Trump wrote on social media this month.

In blows to Republicans, a Utah district judge this month rejected a congressional district map drawn up by the state’s GOP-dominated legislature and instead approved an alternate that will create a Democratic-leaning district ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

And Republicans in Indiana’s Senate defied Trump, shooting down a redistricting bill that had passed the state House.

But Trump scored a big victory when the conservative majority on the Supreme Court greenlighted Texas’ new map.

Other states that might step into the redistricting wars — Democratic-dominated Illinois and Maryland, and two red states with Democratic governors, Kentucky and Kansas.

4. Jay Jones text messages revealed, rocking Virginia’s elections

Virginia Democrats were cruising toward convincing victories in the commonwealth’s statewide elections when a scandal sent shockwaves up and down the ballot.

Democratic attorney general nominee Jay Jones instantly went into crisis mode after controversial texts were first reported earlier by the National Review in early October.

Jones acknowledged and apologized for texts he sent in 2022, when he compared then-Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert to mass murderers Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot, adding that if he was given two bullets, he would use both against the GOP lawmaker to shoot him in the head.

But Jones faced a chorus of calls from Republicans to drop out of the race.

And the GOP leveraged the explosive revelations up the ballot, forcing Democratic Party nominee, former Rep. Abigail Spanberger, back on defense in a campaign where she was seen as the frontrunner against Republican rival Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears.

Earle-Sears didn’t waste an opportunity to link Spanberger to Jones. And during October’s chaotic and only gubernatorial debate, where Earle-Sears repeatedly interrupted Spanberger, the GOP gubernatorial nominee called on her Democratic rival to tell Jones to end his attorney general bid.

‘The comments that Jay Jones made are absolutely abhorrent,’ Spanberger said at the debate. But she neither affirmed nor pulled back her support of Jones.

While the scandal grabbed national headlines, in the end it didn’t slow down the Democrats, as Spanberger crushed Earle-Sears by 15 points. Democrats won the separate election for lieutenant governor by 11 points and Jones even pulled off a 6-point victory over Republican incumbent Jason Miyares.

3. Democrats overperform at the ballot box

Just eight days into Trump’s second term in the White House, demoralized Democrats had something to cheer about.

Democrat Mike Zimmer defeated Republican Katie Whittington in a special state Senate election in Iowa, flipping a Republican-controlled vacant seat in a district that Trump had carried by 21 points less than three months earlier.

Zimmer’s victory triggered a wave of Democrats overperforming in special elections and regularly scheduled off-year ballot box contests.

Among the most high profile was the victory by the Democratic candidate in Wisconsin’s high-stakes and expensive state Supreme Court showdown.

With inflation, the issue that severely wounded them in the 2024 elections, persisting, Democrats were laser focused on affordability, and the wins kept coming.

In November’s regularly scheduled elections, they won the nation’s only two gubernatorial showdowns — in New Jersey and Virginia — by double digits. And they scored major victories in less high-profile contests from coast to coast.

The year ended with Democrats winning a mayoral election in Miami, Florida for the first time in a quarter-century, and flipping a state House seat in Georgia.

The Democratic National Committee, in a year-end memo, touted, ‘In 2025 alone, Democrats won or overperformed in 227 out of 255 key elections — nearly 90% of races.’

But Democrats are still staring down a brand that remains in the gutter, with historically low approval and favorable numbers.

Among the most recent to grab headlines: Only 18% of voters questioned in a Quinnipiac University survey this month said they approved of the way congressional Democrats were handling their job, while 73% percent disapproved.

That’s the lowest job approval rating for the Democrats in Congress since the Quinnipiac University Poll began asking this question 16 years ago.

2. Democrats’ primary problem

The Democrats overperformed in this month’s special congressional election in a GOP-dominated seat in Tennessee — losing by nine points in a district that Trump carried by 22 points just a year ago,

But there were plenty of centrist Democrats who argued that state Rep. Aftyn Behn, the Democratic nominee in the race, was too far to the left for the district.

Republicans repeatedly attacked Behn over her paper trail of past comments on defunding the police.

And the U.S. Senate campaign launch this month in red-leaning Texas by Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a progressive champion and vocal Trump critic and foil, compounded the argument by centrists.

‘The Democratic Party’s aspirations to win statewide in a red state like Texas simply don’t exist without a centrist Democrat who can build a winning coalition of ideologically diverse voters,’ Liam Kerr, co-founder of the Welcome PAC, a group which advocates for moderate Democratic candidates, argued in a statement to Fox News Digital.

And the center-left Third Way, in a memo following the Tennessee special election, argued that ‘there are two projects going on in the Democratic Party right now. One is winning political power so we can stop Trump’s calamity. The other is turning blue places bluer.’

‘If far-left groups want to help save American democracy, they should stop pushing their candidates in swing districts and costing us flippable seats,’ the memo emphasized.

1. Mamdani wins NYC mayoral primary

It was the story that has dominated campaign politics for the past six months.

Zohran Mamdani‘s convincing June 24 victory in New York City’s Democratic Party mayoral primary was the political earthquake that rocked the nation’s most populous city and sent powerful shockwaves across the country.

The capturing of the Democratic nomination by the now-34-year-old socialist state lawmaker over frontrunner former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and nine other candidates propelled Mamdani to a general election victory.

Mamdani’s primary shocker, and later, his general election victory, energized the left.

But it also handed Republicans instant ammunition as they worked to link the first Muslim New York City mayor with a far-left agenda to Democrats across the country, as the party aimed to paint Democrats as extremists.

But Trump, who had repeatedly called Mamdani a ‘communist,’ appeared to undercut that narrative with a chummy Oval Office meeting with the mayor-elect last month.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said his country is engaged in what he described as a ‘total war’ with the U.S., Israel and Europe.

In an interview published Saturday by Iranian state media, Pezeshkian said that he believes the Western powers want to bring Iran ‘to its knees,’ The Times of Israel reported.

‘In my opinion, we are at total war with the United States, Israel and Europe,’ Pezeshkian said. ‘They want to bring our country to its knees.’

Pezeshkian argued that the current conflict is more complex than the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, saying his country is now under pressure ‘from every angle,’ according to The Times of Israel.

‘If one understands it well, this war is far more complex and difficult than that war. In the war with Iraq, the situation was clear, they fired missiles, and we knew where to hit,’ Pezeshkian said, according to The Jerusalem Post. 

‘Here, they are besieging us from every aspect, they are creating problems for us in terms of livelihood, culturally, politically, and security-wise.’

Despite the strain, Pezeshkian claimed Iran’s military emerged stronger following its June conflict with Israel, according to The Times of Israel.

‘Our beloved military forces are doing their jobs with strength and now, in terms of equipment and manpower, despite all the problems we have, they are stronger than when they attacked. So if they want to attack, they will naturally face a more decisive response,’ he said.

The interview with Pezeshkian was released ahead of a planned meeting this coming week at Mar-a-Lago between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump, according to The Jerusalem Post.

Tensions remain high following a brief but intense air conflict in June that was kicked off by Israel. 

The fighting resulted in roughly 1,100 deaths in Iran, including senior military commanders and nuclear scientists, while Iranian missile attacks killed 28 people in the Jewish State.

On June 22, President Donald Trump announced U.S. forces had launched attacks on Iranian nuclear sites, including Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan.

‘Our objective was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s number one state sponsor of terror,’ the president said. ‘Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.’

A US-brokered ceasefire between Iran and Israel took effect on June 24.

Fox News Digital’s Landon Mion contributed to this report.

 Millions of Christians in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), spending Christmas under the reported threat of persecution, kidnapping, sexual violence and in some cases, death from Islamist militants, have seen Friday’s U.S. strikes on Islamic State militants in Nigeria as a real sign that President Trump is serious in his efforts to stop the killing of Africa’s Christians.

Over 16 million Christians are estimated to have been displaced and ripped from their homes across the region. The alleged release of 130 kidnapped schoolchildren in Nigeria this week has done little to reduce fears, as many on the continent try to worship at Christmas.

But this year, Fox News Digital has highlighted the catastrophe from Africa on multiple occasions. The situation led to senior members of Congress, including Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas., Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., and ultimately, President Donald Trump who threatened to send U.S. troops into the worst-affected country, Nigeria, ‘guns-a-blazing’, to stop the killing of Christians, has shone a light on the violence.

In Africa this Christmas, so far there’s reportedly little sign of improvement. ‘The militant Islamist onslaught across SSA is a catastrophe of global proportions unfolding before us,’ Henrietta Blyth, CEO of Open Doors UK & Ireland, told Fox News Digital this week.

Open Doors is a global Christian charity supporting Christians persecuted for their faith.

Blyth continued, ‘the last year has seen a non-stop stream of reports from sub-Saharan Africa. (including) reports of militant Islamist groups brutally attacking, among others, defenseless Christian communities.’

‘At Open Doors, we have been sounding the alarm through our Arise Africa campaign. We’ve prayed repeatedly that the campaign of terror will reach public awareness.’

Referring to Nigeria and the thousands of Christians reported to have been killed there each year and the speeches, articles and posts against the violence, Open Doors’ Blyth states, ‘There is no sign that this has abated in 2025’.

‘The lack of global outrage and action on this issue is a moral disgrace,’ South Africa’s Chief Rabbi, Dr. Warren Goldstein, told Fox News Digital. He added, ‘It seems as if black lives do not matter if they are murdered by Islamists in Africa. The persecution of Christians in Africa needs to be seen in its global context. It is part of a multi-continental jihadi war on the ‘infidels’ — Jews and Christians — and on Western values.’

He continued ‘it is a world war, with Israel at the epicenter of the fire of the jihadi forces of Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and others. The Islamist war on Christians in Africa is another front of this world war that stretches from Sudan in the north to Mozambique in the South.’

Fox News Digital has highlighted where persecution has hit hardest in Africa in 2025:

NIGERIA

According to Open Doors, the continent’s most populous nation saw the worst persecution in Africa in 2025, with ‘non-stop stories of deadly attacks and kidnappings’ across Nigeria’s north and Middle Belt — a litany of villages torched, citizens raped, abducted, shot and beheaded.

Pope Leo XIV spoke out this year against killings attributed to Muslim Fulani tribesmen in Nigeria’s Benue State in June, saying ‘Some 200 people were murdered, with extraordinary cruelty’. 

Bishop Wilfred Anagbe’s Makurdi Diocese in north-central Nigeria is almost exclusively Christian. But the constant and escalating attacks by Islamist Fulani militants led him to testify at a congressional hearing  in Washington in March. Back in Nigeria, he was threatened, and some 20 of his parishioners killed.

THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO (DRC)

The war-torn country is Christian, yet the faithful are being targeted by jihadists. In February, terrorists linked to Islamic State from the so-called ADF group, who want the eastern part of the country to become a Muslim caliphate, rounded up 70 Christians and reportedly beheaded them — in a church. In September, at least Christians were reportedly slaughtered by jihadists at a funeral and in surrounding fields.

SUDAN

Sudan’s estimated 2 million Christians make up an estimated 4% of the country’s population,

Like the rest of Sudan’s people, they face chronic food shortages and the horror of a yearslong war. But Christians are also allegedly singled out for discrimination and persecution by both sides in the conflict.

A senior Sudanese church leader  told Fox News Digital that in the Darfur city of El Fasher, that ‘now Christians are eating animal feed and grass. No wheat, no rice, nothing can get in.’

CAMEROON

A civil conflict and weak governance have allowed armed militants to step into the vacuum of law and order, Open Doors reported. In the far north, Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province regularly swoop into villages in overnight raids, killing, abducting and destroying. Thousands of people have fled their homes for displacement camps.

Ali, a villager, said ‘It never ends. I want it to end, but it doesn’t. We must sleep in the mountains for safety.’ 

MOZAMBIQUE

Situated in the southwest of the continent, Mozambique has a Christian population of . Islamic State Mozambique is causing havoc in the far north, targeting Christian communities, burning their churches and destroying homes. The killings have multiplied this year, and thousands more are fleeing their homes, joining more than who have already been displaced.

In one mass attack on the village of Napala in October, Open Doors reported militants killed 20 Christians and displaced some 2,000. A local pastor described how four elderly sisters were tied up and burned to death inside a house.

On the airstrikes in Nigeria, Open Doors’ Henrietta Blyth told Fox News Digital, ‘a military operation like this is not going to provide any sort of quick fix for decades of violence. The Nigerian government must pursue lasting solutions that ensure peace, protection of civilians and religious freedom for everyone.’

Chief Rabbi Goldstein concluded, ‘The West can only win this war if it can find the moral clarity to call it by its name and see all the theaters of war as part of the same fight.’

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar blasted the Palestinian Authority (PA) for emboldening terrorism with its infamous ‘Pay-for-Slay’ program after a Palestinian on Friday murdered two Israelis.

Palestinian terrorists murdered 19-year-old Aviv Maor from Kibbutz Ein Harod and Mordechai Shimshon, 68, from Beit She’an on Friday in northern Israel.

The Palestinian Authority ‘Pay-for-Slay’ policy gained wide public attention when Taylor Force, a West Point graduate who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, was savagely knifed to death by a Palestinian terrorist on March 8, 2016, while on a tour of Israel. President Donald Trump signed the Taylor Force Act into law in October 2018, after a vigorous campaign by Force’s parents, Robbi and Stuart Force.

Prior to Friday’s terrorist attacks, Sa’ar issued warnings to the international community about alleged Palestinian leadership deception. He wrote on X: ‘Don’t believe Mahmoud Abbas’ lies. The Palestinian Authority’s payments to terrorists and their families haven’t stopped. The PA decided to continue its ‘Pay-for-Slay’ policy. This includes payments to the families of ‘martyrs’ and injured terrorists, jailed terrorists and released terrorists.  The PA is also disguising the payments to the released murderers as payments to pensioners of the Palestinian Security Services!   This is distorted.  End ‘Pay-for-Slay’ now!’

Abbas is the 90-year-old chain-smoking president of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank (the region is known in Israel by its biblical names of Judea and Samaria.)

Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, told Fox News Digital that contrary to Palestinian Authority claims about stopping the ‘Pay-for-Slay’ program, there has been ‘no substantial change in Palestinian Authority policy with regard to the payments to terrorists.’

He continued that ‘They are making noises as if they are changing their policies.’ But he termed it a ‘façade’ with no change in policy.

Michael said that ‘Pay-for-Slay will continue in a different manner. Donors and the international community [who finance the PA] will find it more difficult to monitor it.’

The counter-terrorism expert, Michael, who is also a fellow at the Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy, said the PA ‘defines terrorists as social welfare. They continue to support incitement against Israel. They continue remaining dysfunctional.’

According to a Dec. 19 report in the Times of Israel, a PA-linked organization –The Palestinian National Economic Empowerment Institution (also known as Tamkeen) — disputed the Israeli government claim that ‘Pay-for Slay’ is still intact.

Tamkeen noted in its statement that it ‘confirms that the payment system linked to the number of years of imprisonment has been completely and permanently abolished and is no longer in effect in any way.’ It added that ‘Claims regarding its continuation fall under the category of deliberate misinformation and falsification of facts.’

Fox News Digital reached out numerous times to the Palestinian Authority for a comment and sent press queries to the Palestinian National Economic Empowerment Institution (Tamkeen.)

When asked by Fox News Digital what donor nations can do to stop ‘Pay-for-Slay,’ Michael said, ‘Be strict when it comes to financial donations,’ adding there are ‘many ways to pressure the Palestinian Authority.’

He sharply criticized Western European leaders who recognized an independent Palestinian state in 2025 without ensuring that the state would be a non-sponsor of terrorism. ‘Western leaders, the British prime minister, the French president and the Spanish prime minister are rushing and running to recognize a Palestinian state, and they don’t care what takes place under the Palestinian Authority in the territories.’ He said their recognition is ‘an incentive to continue to ‘Pay for Slay.’’

Michael said the Trump administration is the only one ‘applying pressure on the Palestinian Authority.’

He stressed that if the U.S.-designated terrorist movement Hamas is not dismantled and disarmed in Gaza, ‘it will be another achievement of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.’

The U.S. State Department and American Embassy in Jerusalem did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital press queries.

President Donald Trump is taking his pressure campaign to the next level against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and making it clear he doesn’t believe the strongman should be leading the country — all while China and Russia are speaking out on the escalating conflict involving their ally.

The Trump administration has launched a series of strikes targeting alleged drug boats off the coast of Latin America in recent months and announced this month a ‘complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers going into and out of Venezuela’ as his administration has significantly beefed up its naval assets in the region. 

While the Trump administration has said that these efforts align with the administration’s effort to curb the influx of drugs into the U.S., the campaign also appears geared toward removing Maduro from power. This isn’t the first attempt by Trump to squeeze out Maduro. He previously imposed sanctions on Venezuela and backed opposition leader Juan Guaidó during his first term. 

As a result, Trump said Monday that Washington’s pressure campaign against Venezuela would ‘probably’ be sufficient to coerce Maduro to step down and made it clear he believes that’s something Maduro should be doing.

‘That’s up to him, what he wants to do,’ Trump said Monday. ‘I think it would be smart for him to do that. But, again, we’re going to find out.’

The White House has historically refused to comment on whether it is pursuing regime change in Venezuela even though it does not recognize Maduro as a legitimate head of state and insists he is the leader of a drug cartel. 

China and Russia are speaking out about U.S. actions in the region, accusing the U.S. of breaking international law after the U.S. seized multiple oil tankers off the coast of Venezuela. The first seizure occurred Dec. 10, and Trump confirmed Monday that the U.S. is still pursuing another oil tanker that a U.S. official told Fox News Digital is a ‘sanctioned dark fleet vessel that is part of Venezuela’s illegal sanctions evasion.’

‘The U.S. practice of arbitrarily seizing other countries’ vessels grossly violates international law,’ Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian told reporters Monday. Jian said Beijing opposes anything that ‘infringes upon other countries’ sovereignty and security, and all acts of unilateralism or bullying.’

Meanwhile, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Venezuela’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Yván Gil spoke over the phone Monday, and the ‘Russian side reaffirmed its all-out support and solidarity with the leaders and people of Venezuela in the current context.’ 

‘The ministers expressed grave concern in connection with Washington stepping up its escalation actions in the Caribbean, actions fraught with far-reaching consequences for the region and creating a threat for international shipping,’ the statement said.

Katherine Thompson, a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute, previously told Fox News Digital that adversaries like Russia and China are likely perplexed as to why the Trump administration has zeroed in on the Maduro regime. That’s because Caracas doesn’t jeopardize U.S. interests as much as other actors, in addition to the Trump administration’s ‘American First’ mantra, Thompson said. 

‘I imagine, for them, it’s probably a bit puzzling if they’re looking at it through a real, brass tacks, realist lens why this administration would be prioritizing ousting the Maduro regime as opposed to conflicts in other theaters,’ Thompson said earlier in December. 

The Trump administration has conducted nearly 30 strikes in Latin American waters since September as part of its hard-line approach to crack down on the influx of drugs into the U.S. 

For example, the Trump administration designated drug cartel groups like Tren de Aragua, Sinaloa and others as foreign terrorist organizations and bolstered its naval assets in the region in recent months, including signing off on the unprecedented step of sending the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford to the region.

In addition to the strikes against alleged drug vessels, Trump has suggested for months that strikes on land could be the next step.

‘We’re knocking out drug boats right now at a level that we haven’t seen,’ Trump said Dec. 3. ‘Very soon we’re going to start doing it on land too.’

Although the Trump administration has said it has the authority to conduct these attacks against alleged drug boats, Democrats and some Republicans have questioned the legality of the strikes.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and senators Tim Kaine, D-Va., Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., introduced a war powers resolution this month to bar Trump from using U.S. armed forces to engage in hostilities within or against Venezuela.

Fox News’ Lucas Tomlinson contributed to this report. 

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is expecting a baby girl, Fox News Digital has learned. 

Leavitt and her husband Nick are expecting their second bundle of joy to be born in May 2026. Their first son, Niko, was born in July 2024.

‘My husband and I are thrilled to grow our family and can’t wait to watch our son become a big brother,’ Leavitt told Fox News Digital. ‘My heart is overflowing with gratitude to God for the blessing of motherhood, which I truly believe is the closest thing to Heaven on Earth.’

Leavitt told Fox News Digital that she is ‘extremely grateful to President Trump and our amazing Chief of Staff Susie Wiles for their support, and for fostering a pro-family environment in the White House.’

‘Nearly all of my West Wing colleagues have babies and young children, so we all really support one another as we tackle raising our families while working for the greatest president ever,’ Leavitt said.

Leavitt added: ‘2026 is going to be an amazing year for the President and our country, and personally, I am beyond excited to become a girl mom.’ 

A senior White House official told Fox News Digital that Leavitt will remain in her post as press secretary.

Leavitt will be the first pregnant press secretary in U.S. history.

President Donald Trump said he will call the final shots on a peace deal to end the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy preparing to unveil a new peace plan when the two meet Sunday. 

‘He doesn’t have anything until I approve it,’ Trump told Politico Friday. ‘So we’ll see what he’s got.’

Zelenskyy told reporters Friday he will meet with Trump Sunday in Florida and will share a 20-point peace proposal for the president to review. 

Additionally, Zelenskyy said the meeting will likely focus on security guarantees for Ukraine, adding it was unclear if ‘territorial issues will be discussed.’

‘The 20-point plan that we worked on is 90% ready. Our task (is) to make sure that everything is 100% ready. It is not easy, and no one says that it will be 100% right away, but nevertheless we must bring the desired result closer with each such meeting, each such conversation,’ Zelenskyy told reporters Friday.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital to confirm the meeting. 

Trump voiced optimism about the meeting with Zelenskyy and future conversations with Putin. 

‘I think it’s going to go good with him. I think it’s going to go good with [Vladimir] Putin,’ Trump told Politico. Trump also said that he expects to speak with Putin ‘soon.’

Trump said in November he would not meet with Zelenskyy again — or Putin — unless a deal to end the war was in its final stages. 

Zelenskyy has indicated progress is being made and touted that he had a ‘a very good conversation’ with Jared Kushner and U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff Thursday. Specifically, Zelenskyy said, talks focused on ending the war and efforts to ensure lasting peace in the region.

Trump has met with Zelenskyy multiple times since taking office in January, including in February when Zelenskyy sparred openly with Trump and Vance in the Oval Office over engaging in diplomacy with Russia to end the conflict. Additionally, Trump met with Putin in Alaska in August. 

Fox News’ Rachel Wolf contributed to this report. 

The president of the Kennedy Center on Friday sharply criticized longtime jazz musician Chuck Redd for canceling his Christmas Eve performance days after the White House announced that President Donald Trump’s name would be added to the iconic performing arts institution in Washington, D.C.

Kennedy Center president Richard Grenell said Redd’s decision financially harmed the nonprofit institution, and he would seek $1 million in damages, accusing him of carrying out a ‘political stunt.’

‘Your decision to withdraw at the last moment — explicitly in response to the Center’s recent renaming, which honors President Trump’s extraordinary efforts to save this national treasure — is classic intolerance and very costly to a non-profit Arts institution,’ Grenell wrote in a letter to Redd, obtained by Fox News Digital.

Fox News Digital could not immediately reach Redd for comment.

Redd, who has hosted holiday Jazz Jams at the venue since 2006, abruptly canceled his Christmas Eve performance after Trump’s name was added to the facility.

‘When I saw the name change on the Kennedy Center website and then hours later on the building, I chose to cancel our concert,’ Redd told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

On Dec. 18, the Kennedy Center’s board voted unanimously to rename the institution the ‘Trump-Kennedy Center.’

The update was immediately criticized by members of the Kennedy family who argued it undermined the legacy of President John F. Kennedy.

Maria Shriver, Kennedy’s niece, reacted harshly to the decision, saying it was ‘beyond comprehension.’

Several artists have canceled performances at the Kennedy Center since Trump’s return to office, including Lin-Manuel Miranda, who called off a production of ‘Hamilton.’

Kennedy Center vice president of public relations Roma Daravi told Fox News Digital Friday that Redd was politicizing art by calling off his performance.

‘Any artist canceling their show at the Trump Kennedy Center over political differences isn’t courageous or principled—they are selfish, intolerant, and have failed to meet the basic duty of a public artist: to perform for all people,’ she said in a statement.

Daravi stated that art is ‘a shared cultural experience meant to unite, not exclude,’ calling the venue ‘a true bipartisan institution that welcomes artists and patrons from all backgrounds.’

She added that ‘great art transcends politics,’ and that ‘America’s cultural center remains committed to presenting popular programming that inspires and resonates with all audiences.’

Last week, workers added President Trump’s name to the building’s exterior, and the website header was updated to read, ‘The Trump Kennedy Center.’

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

As a writer, there are times when I read something and think, ‘Wow, that’s good, this cat has chops.’ Very rarely do I read something that’s new, that I didn’t know was possible. Ben Sasse, he just wrote one of those.

The former Republican senator from Nebraska was informing the nation that he has stage four cancer and is going to die soon.

‘Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence,’ he write. ‘But I already had a death sentence before last week too — we all do.’

It may seem trivial, or even cruel to ponder Sasse’s written words when we know the pain he and his family must feel, but it is not trivial to me, and never has been in the history of man.

Shakespeare called death the undiscovered country, but Sasse preferred to focus on what we know, writing, ‘To be clear, optimism is great, and it’s absolutely necessary, but it’s insufficient. It’s not the kinda thing that holds up when you tell your daughters you’re not going to walk them down the aisle. Nor telling your mom and pops they’re gonna bury their son.’

‘Kinda,’ as a writer, this casual usage that my editors often change when I employ it is the embodiment of what Sasse has wrought here. His words make me think that beauty always portends tragedy, but that’s okay. To invoke a New Yorkism, it is what it is.

Sasse, who went from the Senate to serve as president of University of Florida until last year, goes on to say, ‘A well-lived life demands more reality — stiffer stuff. That’s why, during Advent, even while still walking in darkness, we shout our hope — often properly with a gravelly voice soldiering through tears’

Aside from a few modern references, Sasse’s letter to our nation would have been understood perfectly 2,500 years ago in Athens, where such writing of the examination of the human condition was born.

Sasse tells us that, ‘Remembering Isaiah’s prophecies of what’s to come doesn’t dull the pain of current sufferings. But it does put it in eternity’s perspective: 

‘When we’ve been there 10,000 years…We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise.’

Maybe what stands out the most in this incredible piece of writing is that it is not performative at all, in an age in which everything is. In the law, a dying declaration holds special weight. In Sasse’s pen, it holds our hearts.

Much of our languages’ great work involves death, Dylan Thomas imploring his father in poetry: ‘Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

As I read his profound letter to us, I couldn’t help but see the image of Sasse in his running clothes, stooped on a stone wall at the capitol, chopping it up with Schumer and McCain. Just a regular guy, one of us.

Reading his words about his own mortality, I see now he is much more than that. I spend almost the whole time I’m awake reading, when I’m not writing. At 50, little surprises me. This did.

My mother died of damnable cancer when I was 24, her final request of me was to write and deliver her eulogy, and I’ll be honest the request felt too hard. But when she died, I had a job to do, and for two days I did nothing but write, it was her last gift, she knew me, and she got me through it.

I’m so grateful for Sasse’s words, and that at a time when everything is so ugly, he took the occasion of personal horror to buck us up. His great-great-grandchildren will know of it and feel rightful pride.

God bless Ben Sasse and his family, and may his profound and beautiful words echo down the centuries as the epitome of grace in a falling world.

As a writer, I want to say, thank you senator, I know right now it must seem completely insignificant, but there is a scribe in West Virginia today who will be forever changed by those words, and I’m grateful for it.

A fresh Russian attack against Kyiv involving hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles is putting the ‘true attitude of Putin and his inner circle’ on display, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday, as he prepared to meet with President Donald Trump. 

The overnight blitz in Ukraine’s capital left at least one person dead and 27 injured, local authorities told the Associated Press. It unfolded as Zelenskyy is set to meet with Trump in Florida on Sunday, where he said he will share a 20-point peace proposal to end the conflict with Russia. 

‘Another Russian attack is still ongoing: since last night, there have been almost 500 drones – a large number of ‘shaheds’ – as well as 40 missiles, including Kinzhals. The primary target is Kyiv – energy facilities and civilian infrastructure,’ Zelenskyy wrote on X on Saturday morning. ‘Regrettably, there have been hits, and ordinary residential buildings have been damaged. Rescuers are searching for a person trapped under the rubble of one of them.’ 

‘There have been many questions over the past few days – so where is Russia’s response to the proposals to end the war offered by the United States and the world? Russian representatives engage in lengthy talks, but in reality, Kinzhals and ‘shaheds’ speak for them. This is the true attitude of Putin and his inner circle,’ Zelenskyy added. ‘They do not want to end the war and seek to use every opportunity to cause Ukraine even greater suffering and increase their pressure on others around the world.’

Zelenskyy also said Saturday that, ‘If Russia turns even the Christmas and New Year period into a time of destroyed homes and burned apartments, of ruined power plants, then this sick activity can only be responded to with truly strong steps.’ 

‘The United States has this capability. Europe has this capability. Many of our partners have this capability. The key is to use it,’ he declared. 

Trump, ahead of the meeting with Zelenskyy, has said he will call the final shots on a peace deal to end the conflict.

‘He doesn’t have anything until I approve it,’ Trump told Politico Friday. ‘So we’ll see what he’s got.’ 

The Russian Defense Ministry said Saturday that it carried out a ‘massive strike’ overnight, using ‘long-range precision-guided weapons from land, air, and sea, including Kinzhal hypersonic aeroballistic missiles’ and drones, on energy infrastructure facilities ‘used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces,’ as well as ‘Ukrainian military-industrial complex enterprises.’ 

The ministry said the strike came in response to Ukraine’s attacks on ‘civilian objects’ in Russia.

Earlier on Saturday, the ministry said its air defenses shot down seven Ukrainian drones over the Russian regions of Krasnodar and Adygeya overnight. 

Fox News Digital’s Diana Stancey and The Associated Press contributed to this report.