The White House is in ongoing discussions with Capitol Hill to amend a proposed sanctions bill targeting Russia, Fox News Digital has learned, and prefers that route over sanctions led by the executive branch. 

Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., introduced the legislation months ago and garnered 82 co-sponsors, but the Senate has delayed a vote to give President Donald Trump room to pursue a diplomatic settlement between Russia and Ukraine.

Now, with Trump increasingly skeptical of Vladimir Putin’s intentions to end the war, the bill could soon come to the floor. According to three sources familiar with the matter, talks between lawmakers and the White House are active, though no firm timeline has been set.

‘The House has appetite to move it, too,’ said one congressional source. 

Companion legislation has 70 House co-sponsors.

State Department policy planner Michael Anton has privately indicated to allies that the White House isn’t interested in imposing unilateral sanctions, but also won’t stand in the way of the Graham–Blumenthal legislation.

Behind the scenes, the White House is pushing for revisions that would grant the president greater discretion in enforcement. Specifically, officials are seeking to replace any ‘shall’ with ‘may’ in the bill’s text — a subtle but significant shift that would weaken mandatory enforcement.

‘The White House, no matter who is there, always wants the bill watered down — it’s normal,’ the source said. ‘Whenever any committee, congressman or senator wants to do a sanctions bill, career officials always email back and say, ‘Change the ‘shall’ to ‘may.’’

The legislation would impose sweeping economic penalties, including 500% tariffs on any country that does business with Moscow, and sanctions on key Russian officials and entities.

Graham has acknowledged that revisions are likely, including potential carve-outs from the tariff provision for nations providing aid to Ukraine. The exception would offer relief to European allies that are still dependent on Russian energy.

‘Why don’t we carve out for countries who are helping Ukraine?’ Graham said in an interview with Semafor earlier in June. ‘If you’re providing military economic assistance to Ukraine, you get a carve-out. So China, if you don’t want to get sanctioned, help Ukraine.’

Trump, speaking candidly on a podcast published Wednesday, questioned whether Putin has any interest in ending the conflict.

‘I’m starting to think maybe he doesn’t,’ Trump said when asked whether the Russian president minds losing thousands of soldiers in Ukraine each week.

On Capitol Hill, Trump’s top military advisors were pressed Wednesday on whether they believe Putin intends to halt his offensive.

‘I don’t believe he is,’ said Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

‘Remains to be seen,’ added Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The European Union unveiled a fresh sanctions package, that still needs to be voted on, which would ban transactions with the Nord Stream energy pipelines. 

Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. has imposed sweeping sanctions: cutting Russian banks off from the U.S. financial system, freezing over $300 billion in Kremlin assets, banning key technology exports, and blocking imports of Russian fuel.

The House of Representatives passed President Donald Trump’s $9.4 billion plan to claw back federal funds for foreign aid, PBS and NPR.

The 214 to 212 vote was mostly along party lines, with no Democrats voting for the bill. Four Republicans voted against the measure, however – Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., Mike Turner, R-Ohio, Mark Amodei, R-Nev., and Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y.

A dramatic scene played out on the House floor on Thursday afternoon as the bill appeared poised to fail, with six Republican lawmakers having voted ‘no.’

Fox News Digital observed Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., huddled with several moderate Republicans who either voted ‘no’ or had not yet voted.

In the end, two of those holdouts – Reps. Nick LaLota, R-N.Y., and Don Bacon, R-Neb. – elected to support the bill, enabling it to pass on a narrow margin.

Trump allies largely viewed the package as a test run to see whether congressional Republicans could stomach cuts that were widely seen across the GOP as low-hanging fruit.

Spending cuts in the legislation include a $8.3 billion rollback of funding to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and just over $1 billion in cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funnels federal dollars to NPR and PBS.

Republican leaders argued the majority of the USAID dollars getting cut were going toward ‘woke’ programs like $1 million for voter ID in Haiti and $3 million for Iraqi Sesame Street.

On NPR and PBS, conservatives have long accused the two networks of taking federal money while growing increasingly liberal in their bias, rather than focusing on impartiality.

But some moderate Republicans had concerns about the legislation’s effect on critical disease prevention research in Africa.

Others argue that entirely slashing federal funding to public broadcasting would disproportionately hurt small local news outlets that rely on it most, and which are situated in areas that otherwise would be an information desert without those resources.

The legislation ultimately passed, however, and will now be sent to the Senate for consideration.

The $9.4 billion proposal is called a rescissions package, a mechanism for the White House to block congressionally approved funding it disagrees with.

Once transmitted to Capitol Hill, lawmakers have 45 days to approve the rescissions proposal, otherwise it is considered rejected. 

Such measures only need a simple majority in the House and Senate to pass. But that’s no easy feat with Republicans’ thin majorities in both chambers.

If passed, Republican leaders hope the bill will be the first of several rescissions packages codifying spending cuts identified by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Sen. Lindsey Graham is pushing forward to fund President Donald Trump’s border security agenda despite objections from a key Senate Republican who wants to cut the spending in half.

The South Carolina Republican, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, unveiled the Senate’s plan to fund the president’s border security desires, with billions of dollars slated to go toward building a wall at the Southern border, beefing up Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) detention capacity and hiring more Border Patrol Agents, among others.

But Graham’s decision to plow ahead with the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee’s $128.4 billion bill, which funds the lion’s share of the administration’s border security request, comes after the committee’s chair, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., proposed to cut half the funding baked into the House GOP’s bill.

Paul’s concerns mobilized White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller to hold a closed-door meeting with Senate Republicans on Thursday to justify the price tag.

‘As Budget Chairman, I will do my best to ensure that the President’s border security plan is fully funded because I believe it has been fully justified,’ Graham said in a statement to Fox News Digital. ‘I respectfully disagree with Chairman Paul’s proposal to cut the Trump plan by more than 50 percent.’

‘The President promised to secure our border,’ he continued. ‘His plan fulfills that promise. The Senate must do our part.’

The Homeland Security Committee accounts for the bulk of the White House’s $150 billion request, but not all. The remaining money is expected to come from the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees.  

Graham’s bill, which closely mirrors the House GOP’s version, includes $46.5 billion in funding to build the border wall and additional infrastructure, $4.1 billion to hire more border patrol agents, $2 billion for retention and signing bonuses for the new agents, $5 billion to improve border patrol facilities and $855 million to repair the Border Patrol’s vehicle fleet.

The measure also includes $45 billion to beef up ICE’s detention capacity, $6 billion to improve border surveillance, $6 billion to the Department of Homeland Security to ‘ensure adequate funding for border security across the board’ and $10 billion in grant funding to reimburse states for border security efforts during the Biden years.

Paul, who did not attend Miller’s meeting with Senate Republicans, said the White House ‘threw a number at the wall to see what would stick’ and that certain line items, like the tens of billions for border wall construction, could be drastically reduced to roughly $6.5 billion when breaking down the cost of construction per mile.

He presented his number to the Senate GOP on Wednesday and noted that there were ‘half a dozen senators’ who agreed with him.

When asked why Graham and the leadership opted to skip over him as chair of the committee to release the text of the bill, he said ‘because they disagree with me.’

‘I think Sen. Graham’s job, as he sees it, is to do what the president tells him to do, and my job is to do what I think is fiscally most responsible,’ he said. ‘And so we just have different agendas.’

Senate Republicans are in the midst of producing their version of the House GOP’s ‘big, beautiful bill.’ They’re using the budget reconciliation process to pass a sweeping bill advancing Trump’s agenda on taxes, immigration, energy, defense and the national debt. They are also working to use it to bring down the national debt – nearing $37 trillion – with the aim of cutting $1.5 trillion in federal spending.

But whatever comes from the Senate has to pass muster with the House before making its way to Trump’s desk.

And Miller’s meeting with the Senate GOP was meant to shore up support behind the funding detailed in the House’s bill and answer lingering concerns from fiscal hawks who are trying to find ways to further cut spending in the reconciliation process.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., lauded Miller after the meeting but noted that there were some lawmakers who ‘were upset, and some that just didn’t want to hear.’

‘I mean, Rand Paul’s solution is to cut everything in half and call it good,’ he said. ‘That’s not real budgeting.’

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said there was ‘a little frustration’ from some lawmakers who wanted to see a spreadsheet of the funding. He dismissed the notion that the meeting became tense and said ‘there’s no way to precisely calculate what the administration is going to need’ to clean up the ‘enormous mess’ left by the Biden administration.

‘If anything, we maybe ought to need more. It’s such a big problem,’ Johnson said. ‘I don’t think we’re going to move the number up, but we’re not going to shortchange it.’

‘This is a mess we have to clean up,’ he said. ‘It’s going to cost a lot of money, and we want to make sure this administration has the money to clean up.’

Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., tore into a fellow Empire State lawmaker Thursday after the latter accosted Lawler on the House floor.

Chaos briefly broke out in the House of Representatives during the chamber’s final vote series of the week, when Rep. John Mannion, D-N.Y., began shouting at Lawler that he was on the wrong side of the floor.

Democrats and Republicans traditionally sit on opposite sides of the chamber, but it’s not unusual for lawmakers of either party to enter through any door and cross to their side.

Mannion was then heard shouting at Lawler, ‘Get over there and tell them the country is falling apart.’

‘F—ing get over there and get some f—ing balls,’ Mannion could be heard shouting. ‘You know who I am. I’m a New Yorker, just like you.’

Lawler responded to Mannion on X, writing, ‘John Mannion was entirely unhinged and unprofessional. That was a shameful display that exposed his complete lack of temperament.’

‘No wonder numerous staffers have previously alleged a toxic work environment. He should go seek help for anger management — and f— off.’

Unverified accusations arose during Mannion’s campaign that he had created a toxic work environment for staffers in the New York State Senate, which the New York Democrat dismissed at the time as a ‘false political attack.’

Fox News Digital reached out to Mannion’s office for comment but did not immediately hear back.

The New York Democrat was heard shouting at reporters ahead of the confrontation, ‘We need you. We need you to hold them accountable. Media, it’s your country too.’

‘Don’t cover the distractions. Cover the actions that lead us towards authoritarianism, please,’ Mannion yelled, according to Politico.

Mannion is a first-term Democrat who unseated former Rep. Brandon Williams, R-N.Y., whose district boundaries were changed last year to include more blue-leaning areas.

Lawler’s office referred Fox News Digital to his statement on X when reached for comment.

The dust-up was brief but is a sign of the sky-high tensions in the current political climate.

Democrats were already furious over the forced ejection of Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., from a media event being held by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem Thursday.

Israeli Defense Forces launched a sweeping strike on Iran following months of attempted, and seemingly failed, nuclear negotiations between the Trump administration and Tehran.

Fox News’ Trey Yingst reported that Israel carried out strikes in Iran, adding that explosions were heard in the capital of Tehran.

A state of emergency has been declared across Israel as the country braces for an Iranian response.

The strikes came after Israel first threatened to go after Iran’s nuclear facilities in early November following a series of back-and-forth missile attacks between April and October last year.

Direct engagement between Israel and Iran began after Tehran in April 2024 levied its first ever direct strikes against Israeli territory. Israel responded less than a week later and destroyed part of Iran’s S-300 long-range air defense system.

On Oct. 1, Iran levied a ballistic missile strike on Israel, to which Jerusalem responded with a series of hits on Oct. 26 that targeted military facilities and missile storage locations.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later confirmed that Israel’s October strike partially degraded part of Iran’s nuclear program, and international concerns remained heightened that the security threat could escalate in the region. 

Some hoped that President Donald Trump’s administration would be able to make headway in nuclear negotiations where the Biden administration, and others in the international community could not. 

Negotiations between Washington and Tehran, mediated by Oman, resumed in Muscat on April 12 and Trump repeatedly called on Netanyahu not to hit Tehran and to let negotiations proceed. 

Following the first round of talks, Middle East Special Envoy Steve Witkoff told Fox News that the U.S. was looking to limit Iran’s uranium enrichment to 3.67%, a level generally used for civil nuclear energy needs. 

Under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which Trump pulled out of in 2018, Iran committed to maintaining no more than this level of enrichment until 2031 – though it has been found to have repeatedly violated this agreement. 

But the next day, on April 15, Witkoff backtracked his comments and said in a statement that ‘Iran must stop and eliminate its nuclear enrichment and weaponization program.’

Four days later the U.S. entered its second round of nuclear talks in Rome on April 19, before a third round was held in Muscat on April 26. Both sides expressed optimism following the talks.

Details of the negotiations were not released, but reports suggested the discussions largely focused on limiting Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanction relief.

Talks appeared to take a turn after the U.S. hit Iran with another round of sanctions in late April, which resulted in the postponement of the previously scheduled May 3 talks.

The fourth round of talks began to show signs of strain when Iran described the negotiations as ‘difficult but useful,’ and Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi made clear that Washington’s zero enrichment demand was a ‘non-negotiable.’

Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi reported that ‘some but not conclusive progress’ was made following the fifth round of talks held in Rome on May 23. 

By early June, Trump and Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei had repeatedly made clear they both would refuse to bend when it comes to the issue of enrichment, but a sixth round of talks was still set for June 15 in Oman.

It is unclear if those talks will continue following the Israeli strike.

Elmo has a friend, indeed.

Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries,D-N.Y., brought along a stuffed friend to help make a point on the House floor Thursday.

Jeffries held up a stuffed Elmo doll while accusing Republicans of targeting beloved children’s shows like ‘Sesame Street’ in their push to slash federal spending.

‘Today, we are on the floor of the House of Representatives debating legislation that targets Elmo. And Big Bird. And Daniel Tiger and ‘Sesame Street,” Jeffries said, waving the puppet as he railed against the GOP-led rescissions package.

The moment, widely circulated online, came during debate over the Republican-backed Proposed Rescissions of Budgetary Resources from President Trump, which would eliminate over $9 billion in unspent or low-priority federal funds.

Among the targeted programs: $3 million in taxpayer support for an international version of Sesame Street in Iraq.

Democrats objected to what they characterized as cultural and humanitarian vandalism disguised as fiscal responsibility. Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, D-Calif., delivered one of the sharpest lines of the day: ‘While you all have killed off Elmo, I urge my colleagues to vote no on this trash and I yield back,’ Garcia said.

Republicans dismissed the theatrics and defended the package as a commonsense rollback of bloated, ideological spending. The bill also includes broader cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports PBS and NPR, long-time targets of fiscal conservatives who argue the taxpayer shouldn’t subsidize public media.

Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., rebutted, ‘I never realized Elmo was more important to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle than the American people.’

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., pushed back forcefully: ‘The Minority Leader held up a Sesame Street character here on the floor as if Sesame Street’s somehow going to go away,’ Scalise said. 

‘I was watching a commercial on TV yesterday where the Cookie Monster was actually doing an advertisement for Netflix because a private company is paying money to run Sesame Street. It’s not going away. It’s doing just fine. Very lucrative.’

Scalise argued the bill doesn’t threaten Sesame Street’s survival, only its taxpayer subsidy, and called out what he described as ‘far-left, radical views’ being promoted through outlets like NPR and PBS.

‘There is still going to be a plethora of options for the American people,’ he said. ‘But if they are paying their hard-earned dollars to get content, why should your tax dollars go to only one thing that the other side wants to promote?’

He concluded bluntly: ‘They can still watch Sesame Street in Iraq. But let the Iraqi people pay for it — not the taxpayers of the United States of America’s children.’

Even more eyebrow‑raising was the inclusion of taxpayer‑funded global health spending for procedures like circumcisions.

Among the line items flagged by GOP lawmakers: $3 million to subsidize circumcisions, vasectomies and condoms in Zambia, alongside similar grants for transgender surgeries in Nepal. Republicans contended that pulling back these types of low-impact or ideological slush funds was a logical first step toward returning more than $9 billion to the U.S. Treasury.

The bill passed the House Appropriations Committee earlier this week and Senate Democrats have signaled strong opposition.

The bill passed the House in a 214–212 vote. Four Republicans, Reps. Mark Amodei, R-Nev.; Mike Turner, R-Ohio; Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa.; and Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., broke ranks to vote against the bill. All Democrats voted no.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed that one of Iran’s top nuclear facilities had been hit in Thursday night’s strike against the regime.

‘Iran has produced enough highly enriched uranium for nine atom bombs, nine,’ Netanyahu said. ‘In recent months, Iran is taking steps that it has never taken before, steps to weaponize this enriched uranium. And if not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time.’

The Natanz Nuclear Facility – one of Tehran’s key nuclear sites and which has been flagged by security experts that in coordination with the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, could produce enough weapons-grade uranium to produce 11 nuclear weapons within a month – has been hit in the strikes, though the extent of the damage remains unknown. 

‘We struck at the heart of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. We struck at the heart Iran’s nuclear weaponization program,’ Netanyahu said in live remarks. ‘We targeted Iran’s main enrichment facility in Natanz. 

‘We targeted Iran’s leading nuclear scientists working on the Iranian bomb,’ he added. 

The Nantaz Nuclear Facility was at least partially destroyed in 2020 following an explosion, and satellite imagery has suggested Iran began constructing deep underground tunnels to further secure and obscure their nuclear program, reported the Institute for Science and International Security earlier this year. 

It is unclear at this time if any of the underground structures were hit in the Thursday night strikes. 

‘We will not let the world’s most dangerous regime get the world’s most dangerous weapons, and Iran plans to give those weapons, nuclear weapons, to its terrorist proxies,’ Netanyahu said. ‘That would make the nightmare of nuclear terrorism all too real. 

‘The increasing range of Iran’s ballistic missiles would bring that nuclear nightmare to the cities of Europe, and eventually to America,’ he added. 

Reporting by The New York Times also said the Parchin military complex had been hit in the overnight strikes, though Fox News Digital could not independently confirm the hit.

The extent of the damage also remains unknown as it was reported in November that the Parchin military complex had been significantly damaged in Israel’s October strikes which housed a nuclear weapons research facility. 

Another five military bases surrounding Tehran were also reportedly hit. 

When it comes to the nation’s federal government, GOP Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin is ‘not a fan.’ 

He believes that it ’causes or exacerbates more problems than it actually solves,’ telling Fox News Digital during an interview on Wednesday that the bulk of his oversight is ‘to expose how awful government is’ in order to obtain ‘public support for reducing it, limiting its size, limiting its cost, limiting its influence over our lives.’

‘As our federal government grows, our freedoms recede,’ he said. ‘You see what the federal government does, how it wastes money.’

The national debt has ballooned to the eye-watering sum of more than $36 trillion, with lawmakers and presidents from both parties presiding over the deficit spending that has led the nation to this point. 

Johnson said he’s ‘trying to force reality’ upon everyone in the nation’s capital, regardless of whether they want to face that reality.

He said for decades the nation has been suffering a ‘chronic debt crisis,’ illustrating the dramatic decline in the value of the U.S. dollar by noting that ‘the dollar you held back in 1998 is now only worth $0.51 cents,’ while ‘a dollar you held in … 2019 is only worth $0.80 cents.’

The senator referred to inflation as ‘the silent tax.’

But he’s certainly not staying silent.

Johnson indicated that the elected leaders are mortgaging the future of American children, but ‘don’t talk about it.’

‘I’m forcing everybody to look at it,’ he said, noting that his ‘primary role’ is to force ‘acknowledgment of our problem.’

But as keenly as Johnson advocates the idea of slashing the sprawling tentacles of the massive federal bureaucracy, right now he’s just pushing to pare spending down to pre-pandemic levels.

The conservative fiscal hawk has been making headlines for taking a stand against the Trump-backed One Big Beautiful Bill Act that cleared the GOP-controlled House of Representatives last month. 

But Johnson told Fox News Digital that he actually likes a lot of the measure.

‘I’m really not critical of the bill as far as it goes,’ Johnson explained, noting that he’s a ‘big supporter’ of much of what’s in it, though he noted that has not read all of it — the measure is more than 1,000 pages long. 

‘My main beef is it just doesn’t go far enough,’ he said, noting that after the COVID-19 pandemic Democrats failed to return to pre-COVID spending and deficit levels.

The Congressional Budget Office’s estimated budgetary impact for the measure indicates that the net effect on the deficit would be a more than $2.4 trillion increase over the fiscal years 2025-2034.

But White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought has said the measure would decrease deficits.

‘The bill REDUCES deficits by $1.4 trillion over ten years when you adjust for CBO’s one big gimmick–not using a realistic current policy baseline. It includes $1.7 trillion in mandatory savings, the most in history. If you care about deficits and debt, this bill dramatically improves the fiscal picture,’ Vought said in a post on X.

Johnson also noted during the interview that there has not been a ‘reckoning’ regarding the ‘abuse’ at all levels of government during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He noted that he does not refer to the COVID-19 jab as a vaccine. Instead, he referred to it as an ‘injection,’ asserting that it is ‘not a vaccine,’ and that it caused injuries and death.

The senator said that he thinks the shots should have ‘black box warnings.’ 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website states that the ‘CDC recommends a 2024-2025 COVID-19 vaccine for most adults ages 18 and older’ and claims that the ‘vaccine helps protect you from severe illness, hospitalization, and death.’

Johnson, who has served in the Senate since 2011 and won election to a third term in 2022, said he’d prefer not to seek another term in office.

‘I don’t covet this job,’ he said, noting that he wants to leverage his post to help save America and aid those who are ‘ignored by the system.’

While he’s not ruling out another run, Johnson, who turned 70-years-old earlier this year, said he’d ‘be happy’ to return to Oshkosh and ‘live a nice, peaceful life.’