A federal office dedicated to the research of long COVID is set to close following the Trump administration’s decision to slash the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) workforce.

Ian Simon, head of the Office of Long COVID Research and Practice (OLC), made the announcement in an email on Monday, Politico reported.

‘The Office of Long COVID Research and Practice will be closing as part of the administration’s reorganization coming this week,’ the email read, according to Politico. ‘We are proud of what we have accomplished together, advancing understanding, resources, and support for people living with Long COVID.’

Fox News Digital reached out to HHS and Simon for more information, but they did not immediately respond.

It is unclear when the OLC will close nor whether its staff will remain employed by the federal government.

The Biden-era office was established as a federal response to the widespread and long-term effects of COVID, which can result in chronic conditions that require comprehensive care.

The decision to shutter the office comes after HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said during his confirmation hearing in January that he was committed to continuing funding and prioritizing long COVID research.

However, President Donald Trump directed HHS in a presidential action last month to ‘terminate the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Long COVID.’

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) said more than $1.5 billion was approved in the last several years for its Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER) Initiative, which studies the impact of long COVID. 

The NIH reported in 2023 that 23 million people were affected by the illness, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated in 2023 that 6% of American adults suffered from long COVID, down from 7.5% in 2022.

‘While our office is closing, we hope that the work we have been dedicated to will continue in some form,’ the email read.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe clashed with a Democratic senator Tuesday over the lawmaker’s description of the Trump administration’s leaked Signal chat – pushing back multiple times before snapping, ‘I didn’t say any of those things.’

The exchange between Ratcliffe and Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., happened Tuesday morning during the Senate Intelligence Committee’s annual ‘Threats to the Homeland’ hearing. 

Much of this year’s hearing, however, centered on the extraordinary news that more than a dozen of Trump’s top national security officials, including Ratcliffe, had inadvertently included Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Golberg in a Signal group chat that discussed plans for a forthcoming strike on the Houthis in Yemen. 

The news was first reported by Golberg Monday, in a first-person account that sent shockwaves throughout Washington, D.C. 

Ratcliffe, especially, was grilled by lawmakers over the Trump administration’s use of the encrypted messaging app to exchange purported classified security information. Senators demanded to know who added Goldberg, a well-known editor and journalist, to the so-called ‘Houthi PC Small Group,’ where he remained unnoticed for several days.

Bennet asked Ratcliffe if it was his view that there was nothing wrong with the Signal thread in question, and whether he shared the view of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard that the chat in question did not include any targeting information or battle sequence.

Bennet said this was in Ratcliffe’s testimony, before noting, ‘I’m a little staggered that that is your view, Director Ratcliffe.’

‘Does the CIA have any rules about [the] handling of classified information?’ he asked. ‘Yes or no?’

‘Yes,’ Ratcliffe responded. He added that he had not previously heard of Goldberg, though he acknowledged ‘clearly he was added’ to the Signal thread by someone in the group.

‘I don’t know how he was added,’ Ratcliffe said, before Bennet interrupted, asking, ‘You don’t know that the president’s national security advisor invited him to join the signal thread,’ referring to national security advisor Mike Waltz. 

‘Everybody in America knows,’ Bennet said. 

Ratcliffe said he does not use the app to share classified information, or to share targeting information.

‘And your testimony as the director of the CIA, is that it’s totally appropriate’ to conduct conversations like this on Signal, Bennet asked. ‘Is it appropriate?’

Ratcliffe began to respond, saying ‘No, that is not what I—’ before the Democratic senator cut him off. 

He then tried again, challenging Bennet: ‘Did I say it was? When did I use the word ‘appropriate’?’’

‘Clearly, ‘nothing to see here,’ is what your testimony is,’ Bennet said. ‘It was just a normal day at the CIA where we chat about this kind of stuff over Signal. In fact, it’s so normal that the last administration left it here for us.’ That’s your testimony today.’

‘No, that is not my testimony,’ Ratcliffe fired back. ‘I didn’t say any of those things that you just related, senator.’

The back-and-forth wrapped with a blistering remand from Bennet, who told Ratcliffe of the Signal chat: ‘This sloppiness, this incompetence, this disrespect for our intelligence agencies and the personnel who work for them is entirely unacceptable. It’s an embarrassment,’ he said. ‘You need to do better. You need to do better.’ 

During the hearing, other Democrats, including Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, called for Waltz and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to resign over the Signal chat in question.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt previously attempted to brush off the Signal chat, telling reporters Monday that the attacks on the Houthis discussed in the group chat ‘have been highly successful and effective.’ 

‘President Trump continues to have the utmost confidence in his national security team, including national security advisor Mike Waltz,’ she said.

The Senate Committee on Finance voted along party lines Tuesday afternoon to advance Dr. Mehmet Oz, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, to a full confirmation vote. 

The party-line vote, which saw 14 GOP senators vote in favor of Oz’s nomination and 13 Democrats vote against it, follows two hearings by the Senate Finance Committee that probed Oz over his plans for the federal healthcare programs, his views on abortion, potential conflicts of interest in the healthcare industry and more.

‘Dr. Oz has years of experience as an acclaimed physician and public health advocate. His background makes him uniquely qualified for this role, and there is no doubt that he will work tirelessly to deliver much-needed change at CMS,’ Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, the chairman of the committee, said Tuesday. 

Oz graduated from Harvard University and received medical and business degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. He is a former heart surgeon who saw his fame rise through his appearances on daytime TV and 13 seasons of ‘The Dr Oz Show.’

Oz later transitioned into politics, launching an unsuccessful bid for Pennsylvania’s open Senate seat in 2022. He ultimately lost to John Fetterman, then the state’s lieutenant governor. 

If confirmed by the full Senate, Oz would be in charge of nearly $1.5 trillion in federal healthcare spending. Medicare, a federal healthcare program for seniors aged 65 and up, currently provides coverage for about 65 million Americans, according to the Center for Medicare Advocacy. Medicaid, which assists people with low incomes, covers roughly 72 million Americans, according to Medicaid.gov.

Oz’s leadership would direct decisions related to how the government covers procedures, hospital stays and medication within the federal healthcare programs, as well as the reimbursement rates at which healthcare providers get paid for their services.

Earlier this month, Trump’s pick to lead the NIH and FDA, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Dr. Marty Makary, respectively, were also approved in committee and are awaiting full confirmation votes in the Senate scheduled for later Tuesday. It is unclear when Oz’s full Senate vote will take place.

Around the same time that Bhattacharya and Makary won committee approval, Trump withdrew his nomination of former Florida Rep. David Weldon to run the CDC, over fears he did not have the GOP support to clear full confirmation. On Monday, the Trump administration named Susan Monarez, acting director of the CDC, as its new nominee.

The federal office in charge of ensuring cybersecurity at all levels of the government cited the use of encrypted messaging app Signal as a ‘best practice’ for ‘highly targeted’ government officials, the Biden-era document shows. 

Fox News Digital found that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) outlined in a guide for federal employees late last year that encrypted messaging platforms such as Signal better protected officials against foreign enemy hackers amid a Chinese-linked cyber breach. CISA is an office under the Department of Homeland Security’s umbrella that is charged with ensuring cybersecurity across all levels of government. 

Under the Biden administration in 2024, CISA released a ‘Mobile Communications Best Practice Guidance’ for ‘highly targeted individuals,’ who were defined as high-ranking government officials or politicians who are ‘likely to possess information of interest to these threat actors.’ The document specifically addressed high-targeted politicos and officials, though it noted the guide was ‘applicable to all audiences.’ 

‘CISA strongly urges highly targeted individuals to immediately review and apply the best practices below to protect mobile communications. Highly targeted individuals should assume that all communications between mobile devices – including government and personal devices – and internet services are at risk of interception or manipulation. While no single solution eliminates all risks, implementing these best practices significantly enhances protection of sensitive communications against government-affiliated and other malicious cyber actors,’ the guide reads. 

The document, published in December, details that highly-targeted government officials should use ‘end-to-end encrypted communications’ as part of its ‘best practices’ advice. End-to-end encryption is understood as a secure method of communication, where a sender’s message is encrypted and can only be decrypted by the recipient of the message. 

The CISA guidance specifically cited that government officials should download ‘end-to-end encrypted communications’ platforms to their cellphones and computers, specifically citing Signal as an app to download to comply with the best practices. 

‘Adopt a free messaging application for secure communications that guarantees end-to-end encryption, such as Signal or similar apps,’ the guidance states. ‘CISA recommends an end-to-end encrypted messaging app that is compatible with both iPhone and Android operating systems, allowing for text message interoperability across platforms. Such apps may also offer clients for MacOS, Windows, and Linux, and sometimes the web. These apps typically support one-on-one text chats, group chats with up to 1,000 participants, and encrypted voice and video calls. Additionally, they may include features like disappearing messages and images, which can enhance privacy.’ 

Signal is an encrypted messaging app that operates similarly to texting or making phone calls, but with additional security measures that help ensure communications are kept private to those included in the correspondence. 

Signal’s popularity grew in the last few months, after it was discovered that Chinese-linked hackers were targeting cellphone data in the U.S., including data belonging to President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance during the campaign, Politico reported this week. 

‘CISA is releasing this best practice guidance to promote protections for mobile communications from exploitation by PRC-affiliated and other malicious cyber threat actors,’ the CISA guidance states, referring to the Chinese cyber breach in 2024. 

Fox News Digital reached out to CISA for additional comment or information on the use of Signal among government employees, but did not immediately receive a reply. 

The guidance was released months before the Trump administration came under fire from Democrats and other critics after it was revealed top national security officials discussed a planned strike in Yemen against terrorist forces in a Signal group chat that also included the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic. 

The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg published a first-hand account on Monday of what he read in the Signal group chat, called ‘Houthi PC Small Group,’ after he was added to the chain on March 13 alongside high-ranking federal officials stretching from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to national security advisor Mike Waltz and Trump chief of staff Susie Wiles. 

The Atlantic’s report set off condemnation among Democratic lawmakers, who have slammed the Trump administration for risking national security by using an app to communicate about a planned attack on Iran-backed Houthi terrorists in Yemen. 

‘This is one of the most stunning breaches of military intelligence I have read about in a very, very long time,’ Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a floor speech on Monday. 

CIA Director John Ratcliffe appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday morning for an annual hearing on the global threats facing the U.S., and was also grilled about the Signal group chat. 

The CIA chief confirmed he was in the group chat that included the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, adding that Signal was already downloaded on his computer when he was sworn in as director in January, and that the app has a long history as a communication platform for government employees that stretched to the Biden administration. 

‘One of the first things that happened when I was confirmed as CIA director was Signal was loaded onto my computer at, the CIA, as it is for most CIA officers, one of the things that I was briefed on very early, Senator, was by the CIA records management folks about the use of Signal as a permissible work use,’ he said. 

‘It is, that is a practice that preceded the current administration to the Biden administration,’ he continued. 

A former Biden national security official confirmed to the Associated Press that the previous administration used Signal if a staffer was granted permission to download the app on their White House-administered phones. The staffers, however, were told to use it sparingly, according to the report. 

‘It is my understanding that the Biden administration authorized Signal as a means of communication that was consistent with presidential recordkeeping requirements for its administration, and that continued into the Trump administration,’ Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said during an appearance on ‘Fox & Friends’ on Tuesday morning. 

A Department of Defense memo from 2023 under the Biden administration detailed that while Signal was approved for some use by government officials, they could not use the platform to ‘access, transmit, process non-public DoD information.’ CISA’s guidance related to Signal was released after the Department of Defense guidance. 

The Trump administration has defended the group chat, saying it did not include sensitive information, and that the Atlantic’s story ‘is nothing more than a section of the NatSec establishment community running the same, tired gameplay from years past.’

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt posted to X on Tuesday that ‘no classified material was sent to the thread’ and that ‘no ‘war plans’ were discussed.’

White House communications director Steven Cheung slammed the Atlantic’s coverage in an X post on Tuesday afternoon as an example of ‘anti-Trump forces’ trying to ‘peddle misinformation.’ 

‘From the ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ hoax of the first term to the fake documents case of the last four years… at every turn anti-Trump forces have tried to weaponize innocuous actions and turn them into faux outrage that Fake News outlets can use to peddle misinformation,’ Cheung posted to X. 

Trump told NBC News on Tuesday that a staffer in Waltz’s office included the journalist in the high-profile group chat, but did not reveal the staffer’s identity or if the individual would face disciplinary action. 

‘It was one of Michael’s people on the phone.A staffer had his number on there,’ Trump told NBC News in a phone interview when asked how Goldberg was added to the high-profile chat.

Trump defended Waltz in comment to Fox News earlier on Tuesday, as well as during his NBC interview. 

‘He’s not getting fired,’ Trump told Fox News of Waltz. The president said the incident was a ‘mistake,’ though there was ‘nothing important’ in the Signal text thread. 

‘Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,’ Trump said in the NBC interview. 

The president added that Goldberg’s inclusion in the group chat had ‘no impact at all’ on the strike in Yemen. 

The Signal group text leak comes roughly 10 years after news broke that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used a private email server for official government correspondence. 

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for additional comment on the Signal chat leak, but did not immediately receive a reply. 

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday directing the FBI to immediately declassify files concerning the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, the agency probe launched in 2016 that sought information on whether Trump campaign members colluded with Russia during the presidential race. 

After signing the order, Trump said that now the media can review previously withheld files pertaining to the investigation — although he cast doubt on whether many journalists would do so. 

‘You probably won’t bother because you’re not going to like what you see,’ Trump said. ‘But this was total weaponization. It’s a disgrace. It should have never happened in this country. But now you’ll be able to see for yourselves. All declassified.’

The FBI on July 31, 2016, opened a counterintelligence investigation into whether Trump, then a presidential candidate, or members of his campaign were colluding or coordinating with Russia to influence the 2016 election. That investigation was referred to inside the bureau as ‘Crossfire Hurricane.’

The opening of the investigation came just days after a July 28 meeting during which then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed then-President Barack Obama on a purported proposal from one of Hillary Clinton’s campaign foreign policy advisors ‘to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.’ Clinton was the Democrat nominee for president that year.

By January 2017, then-FBI Director James Comey had notified Trump of a dossier, known as the Steele dossier, that contained salacious and unverified allegations about Trump’s purported coordination with the Russian government, a key document prompting the opening of the probe. 

The dossier was authored by Christopher Steele, an ex-British intelligence officer, and commissioned by Fusion GPS. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign hired Fusion GPS during the 2016 election cycle.

It was eventually determined that the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee funded the dossier through the law firm Perkins Coie.

Trump fired Comey in May 2017. Days later, Robert Mueller was appointed as special counsel to take over the ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ probe and investigate whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election cycle.

While Mueller investigated, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence opened its own investigation into alleged Trump-Russia collusion. 

By February 2018, Kash Patel — then chief investigator for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes and now the FBI Director — had uncovered widespread government surveillance abuses, including the improper surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

Patel was an integral part of the creation of a memo released by Nunes in February 2018, which detailed the DOJ’s and FBI’s surveillance of Page under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Nunes and Patel revealed that the infamous anti-Trump dossier funded by Democrats ‘formed an essential part’ of the application to spy on Page.

The memo referred to closed-door testimony from former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who said that ‘no surveillance warrant would have been sought’ from the FISA court ‘without the Steele dossier information.’

But when applying for the FISA warrant, the FBI omitted the origins of the dossier, specifically its funding from Hillary Clinton, then Trump’s 2016 presidential opponent.

The memo also said Steele, who worked as an FBI informant, was eventually cut off from the bureau for what the FBI described as the most serious of violations, ‘an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI.’

The memo noted that the FBI and DOJ obtained ‘one initial FISA warrant’ targeting Page and three FISA renewals from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The statute required that every 90 days a FISA order on a U.S. citizen ‘must be reviewed.’

The memo revealed that Comey signed three FISA applications for Page, while McCabe, former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and former Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente signed at least one.

The memo was widely criticized by Democrats but was ultimately correct.

The Justice Department inspector general, Michael Horowitz, reviewed the memo and confirmed the dossier served as the basis for the controversial FISA warrants obtained against Page.

Meanwhile, Special Counsel Robert Mueller completed his investigation into a possible Trump-Russia connection in April 2019. The extensive probe yielded no evidence of criminal conspiracy or coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.

After Mueller’s report was made public, then-Attorney General Bill Barr tapped John Durham, a U.S. attorney for Connecticut, to serve as special counsel to investigate the origins of ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ itself. 

Durham, in his final report released in May 2023, said he found, after years of investigating, that the FBI did not have any actual evidence to support the start of that investigation. He also found that the Department of Justice and FBI ‘failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law’ when it launched the Trump-Russia investigation. 

Durham also found that the FBI ‘failed to act’ on a ‘clear warning sign’ that the bureau was the ‘target’ of a Clinton-led effort to ‘manipulate or influence the law enforcement process for political purposes’ ahead of the 2016 presidential election. 

Durham was referring to intelligence suggesting that the Clinton campaign had a plan to link Trump to Russia, potentially as a distraction from the ongoing investigation into her use of a private email server and alleged handling of classified information.

Durham found that Brennan ‘realized the significance’ of the intelligence that Clinton was stirring up a plan to tie Trump to Russia — so much so, that he ‘expeditiously’ briefed Obama, then-Vice President Joe Biden, and other top national security officials.

But nothing came of that briefing or of his subsequent referral of the information to the FBI, according to Durham’s final report.

‘The aforementioned facts reflect a rather startling and inexplicable failure to adequately consider and incorporate the Clinton Plan intelligence into the FBI’s investigative decision-making in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,’ Durham’s report states.

‘Indeed, had the FBI opened the Crossfire Hurricane investigation as an assessment and, in turn, gathered and analyzed data in concert with the information from the Clinton Plan intelligence, it is likely that the information received would have been examined, at a minimum, with a more critical eye,’ the report continued.

This is a breaking story. 

The full Senate voted Tuesday evening to confirm President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.

The party-line vote followed approval from the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, which also voted along party lines to advance Bhattacharya, leading to today’s full Senate vote.  

A physician, Stanford professor of medicine and senior fellow at the university’s Institute for Economic Policy Research, Bhattacharya was a leading voice during the COVID-19 pandemic against lockdown measures and vaccine mandates. 

He was one of the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, a document published in October 2020 by a group of scientists advocating against widespread COVID lockdowns and promoting the efficacy of natural immunity for low-risk individuals as opposed to vaccination.

Bhattacharya was probed by the Senate HELP Committee earlier this month over various issues related to his potential role as NIH director. However, for much of the hearing, he was forced to defend the president’s decision to cut certain research funds at NIH, including a 15% cap on indirect research costs, also known as facilities and administrative costs, dispersed by the NIH.

Bhattacharya would not explicitly say he disagreed with the cuts, or that, if confirmed, he would step in to stop them. Rather, he said he would ‘follow the law,’ while also investigating the effect of the cuts and ensuring every NIH researcher doing work that advances the health outcomes of Americans has the resources necessary.

‘I think transparency regarding indirect costs is absolutely worthwhile. It’s something that universities can fix by working together to make sure that where that money goes is made clear,’ Bhattacharya said of the indirect costs going to universities, hospitals and research clinics from the NIH. 

In addition to addressing questions about the Trump cuts, Bhattacharya also laid out what he called a new, decentralized vision for future research at NIH that he said will be aimed at embracing dissenting ideas and transparency, while focusing on research topics that have the best chance at directly benefiting health outcomes of Americans. Bhattacharya added that he wants to rid the agency’s research portfolio of other ‘frivolous’ efforts that he says do little to directly benefit health outcomes.

‘I think fundamentally what matters is do scientists have an idea that advances the scientific field they’re in?’ Bhattacharya said last week during his confirmation testimony. ‘Do they have an idea that ends up addressing the health needs of Americans?’

Prior to his confirmation, Bhattacharya, alongside several other scientists, including Trump’s pick to head the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Marty Makary, launched a new research journal focused on spurring scientific discourse and combating ‘gatekeeping’ in the medical research community. The journal, the Journal of the Academy of Public Health (JAPH), aims to spur scientific discourse by publishing peer reviews of prominent studies from other journals that do not make their peer reviews publicly available.

President Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Johns Hopkins School of Medicine professor Dr. Marty Makary, cleared a key vote in the Senate on Tuesday, the last such test before his final confirmation vote. 

The Senate voted 56-44 to invoke cloture on the nomination. 

A final vote to confirm the FDA nominee is slated for after 8 p.m. Tuesday. 

Makary, a former Fox News medical contributor, went before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) earlier this month and answered various questions on vaccines, chronic illness, food safety and abortion. 

During his hearing, the nominee faced scrutiny over an FDA vaccine meeting that was reportedly postponed at the last minute. 

‘So if you are confirmed, will you commit to immediately reschedule that FDA Vaccine Advisory Committee meeting to get the expert views?’ Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., asked Makary at the time. 

He responded that he ‘would reevaluate which topics deserve a convening of the advisory committee members on [Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee] and which may not require a convening.’ 

When this response wasn’t good enough for Murray, Makary flipped the question, telling her to confront the Biden administration. ‘Well, you can ask the Biden administration that chose not to convene the committee meeting for the COVID vaccine booster,’ he said. 

He was referring to the Biden administration in 2021 pushing through FDA approval for a COVID-19 booster for everyone over the age of 18. 

‘The FDA did not hold a meeting of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee on these actions,’ read a press release at the time, ‘as the agency previously convened the committee for extensive discussions regarding the use of booster doses of COVID-19 vaccines and, after review of both Pfizer’s and Moderna’s EUA requests, the FDA concluded that the requests do not raise questions that would benefit from additional discussion by committee members.’

Committee member Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, criticized the administration’s move, saying, ‘We’re being asked to approve this as a three-dose vaccine for people 16 years of age and older, without any clear evidence if the third dose for a younger person when compared to an elderly person is of value.’

Makary has long been a critic of the administration he is poised to lead. He wrote an opinion piece in 2021, calling for ‘fresh leadership at the FDA to change the culture at the agency and promote scientific advancement, not hinder it.’

‘We now have a generational opportunity in American healthcare,’ he said at his hearing. ‘President Trump and Secretary Kennedy’s focus on healthy foods has galvanized a grassroots movement in America. Childhood obesity is not a willpower problem, and the rise of early-onset Alzheimer’s is not a genetic cause. We should be, and we will, be addressing food as it impacts our health.’