Britain is preparing to take on the ‘heavy lifting’ in Europe if President Donald Trump secures a Ukrainian ceasefire, U.K. Defense Secretary John Healey said, outlining a deployment-ready coalition that London has been quietly organizing for months.

The defense chief insisted that Trump is leading the negotiations for peace, even as leaders from Germany, Britain and France huddled with Volodymyr Zelenskyy this week to try to craft an alternative to a U.S.-brokered proposal the Ukrainian president viewed as too deferential to Russia.

‘We are ready to step in behind the president in his push for peace,’ he said during a briefing with reporters after meeting with War Secretary Pete Hegseth on AUKUS, the Australia-UK-US nuclear submarine-building deal. ‘We are ready to step in as he forces the pace of the negotiations in the way that only President Trump can. Because if he can get a ceasefire agreement, we are ready to do the heavy lifting in Europe.’

Trump has said Ukraine ‘has to be realistic’ about a peace plan that would include ceding territory to Russia — a prospect Zelenskyy has insisted is unacceptable. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Thursday that he, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron had proposed to Trump that they finalize the peace proposal with U.S. officials over the weekend.

Healey said the UK is prepared to send troops and equipment to enforce the peace deal once it is signed. ‘For the last six months we’ve got 200 military planners, over 30 nations working together. We’ve laid reconnaissance visits to Ukraine,’ he said. ‘We have the troops ready, we have the planes available. We have the ships on standby to be able to deploy.’

Healey offered one of the clearest signals yet that Britain expects to play a central role in enforcing any post-war security arrangement — even as Europe remains divided over how a deal should be structured.

While territorial claims appear to be the main sticking point in negotiations, questions remain over what sort of security guarantees the West would offer Ukraine. The initial proposal the U.S. brokered with Russia stipulated that Western troops and jets would remain outside Ukraine in NATO territory.

Western officials have been debating whether any agreement would require a multinational force to monitor front lines or secure key infrastructure inside Ukraine once a ceasefire takes hold. Healey suggested Britain is preparing for that possibility, saying the UK and a coalition of more than 30 nations have already positioned troops, aircraft and ships that could deploy if the terms of a deal allow for an international presence on the ground.

Healey’s meetings in Washington came just after the White House released a national security strategy that took an unusually severe tone toward Europe, warning of political decline and calling for the U.S. to ‘cultivate resistance’ within European nations. The strategy warns that Europe’s economic and social problems are ‘eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure.’

The document also calls for Europe to ‘take primary responsibility for its own defense,’ a point Healey said the UK is already prepared to meet, brushing off questions about whether the strategy had sown division inside the transatlantic alliance.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas grilled prominent left-leaning lawyer Marc Elias this week about a campaign finance law, joining several other conservative justices in voicing skepticism about the law’s restrictions on certain types of political donations.

Thomas’ questions centered on a Federal Election Campaign Act provision that limits how much money state and national political parties can spend when coordinating with specific candidates.

Republicans who brought the lawsuit argued that the coordinated political spending is protected speech and should not be limited by Congress, while Elias, a prolific election lawyer, argued to the high court that Congress has a right to cap those expenses.

Thomas and Elias appeared at odds during oral arguments, as Thomas questioned why coordinated political spending between parties and candidates should face limits — particularly when it covers routine campaign expenses like hotels or food.

‘Just so I’m clear, is there any First Amendment interest in coordinated expenditures?’ Thomas asked.

Elias replied ‘yes,’ but said a party paying an individual campaign’s bills was ‘symbolic speech’ that is not fully protected and should be subject to standard contribution limits.

‘I still don’t understand what you’re saying,’ Thomas told Elias. ‘If the party coordinates with the candidate and pays the bill, does that have a First Amendment protection or is it simply, as you say, a bill-paying exercise?’

‘It is speech,’ Elias said, but he said court precedent says the bill payment ‘is treated as a contribution, and, therefore, though it is speech, it is subject to limit by Congress in how much can be spent on engaging in that speech.’

Congress currently limits individual donations that can be made to a political candidate, and the Supreme Court has in past cases balanced allowing First Amendment-protected political donations while also allowing caps as a safeguard against outsize influence and corruption in elections.

But the high court is now being asked to potentially allow millionaires and billionaires to make unlimited individual contributions to a state or national political party, with the expectation that the money would be redirected and spent in coordination with a particular candidate. The decision could upend the current political spending landscape ahead of the 2026 midterm elections by allowing rich donors to flood state or national political parties with more money.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, another skeptic of Elias’ argument, pointed out that outside groups can accept limitless funds and influence elections and that state and national parties appear disadvantaged because of it.

‘I am concerned that a combination of campaign finance laws and this court’s decisions over the years have together reduced the power of political parties, as compared with outside groups, with negative effects on our constitutional democracy,’ Kavanaugh said.

‘That’s the real source of the disadvantage. You can give huge money to the outside group, but you can’t give huge money to the party, so the parties are very much weakened,’ he said.

The case was brought to the high court by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, and two former Ohio Republican candidates: now–Vice President JD Vance and former Rep. Steve Chabot.

The liberal justices leaned toward wanting to avoid further undoing campaign spending limits, which have eroded over time under Chief Justice John Roberts.

‘Every time we interfere with the congressional design, we make matters worse… our tinkering causes more harm than good,’ said Justice Sonia Sotomayor. ‘Once we take off these coordinated expenditure limits, then what’s left? What’s left is nothing. No control whatsoever.’

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the U.S. plans to take control of the oil currently on a tanker off the coast of Venezuela that was seized by U.S. forces Wednesday. 

Trump ‘talks a lot about how he thinks the way to bring down prices for everything would be to bring down the cost of energy,’ Fox News Senior White House Correspondent Peter Doocy said Thursday. ‘Would he use this seized Venezuelan oil to try to help Americans with affordability here in the United States?’

Leavitt responded, ‘The vessel will go to a U.S. port, and the United States does intend to seize the oil. However, there is a legal process for the seizure of that oil and that legal process will be followed.’ 

President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that the U.S. had seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, sharply escalating U.S. tensions with the nation. The tanker was seized for allegedly being used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran, according to Attorney General Pam Bondi. 

‘The vessel is currently undergoing a forfeiture process. Right now, the United States currently has a full investigative team on the ground, on the vessel, and individuals on board the vessel are being interviewed, and any relevant evidence is being seized,’ Leavitt continued, adding that the oil on the tanker will go through a legal process before the U.S. claims the energy source. 

The tanker, called the Skipper, loaded an estimated 1.8 million barrels of oil earlier in December, before transferring an estimated 200,000 barrels just before its seizure, Reuters reported.

The oil on the tanker is likely worth $60 million to more than $100 million, based on current average oil prices. Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for any additional comment on the estimated price tag of the oil but did not immediately receive a reply. 

The U.S. military has carried out strikes on suspected drug trafficking boats near Venezuela since September as part of Trump’s mission to end the flow of drugs into the nation. There have been at least 22 strikes on suspected narcotraffickers near Venezuela, killing 87, since September. 

Doocy pressed Leavitt during the press conference on whether the U.S.’ strikes and heightened tensions with Venezuela, dubbed Operation Southern Spear, are ‘about drugs or is it about oil?’

‘The Trump administration is focused on doing many things in the Western Hemisphere,’ Leavitt responded. ‘The president has taken a new approach that has not been taken by any administration for quite some time to actually focus on what’s going on in our own backyard. And there are two things that are very important to this administration.’

The boat strikes are viewed as part of a U.S. pressure campaign on Venezuela likely aimed to not only curb the flow of drugs, but also to oust dictatorial President Nicolás Maduro as leader of the oil-rich nation. 

‘Number one, stopping the flow of illegal drugs into the United States of America, which we know has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans,’ she continued, before adding that Trump is ‘fully committed to effectuating this administration’s sanction policy. And that’s what you saw, and the world saw take place yesterday.’

‘With respect to the oil and what happened yesterday, the Department of Justice requested and was approved for a warrant to seize a vessel because it’s a sanctioned shadow vessel known for carrying black market sanctioned oil to the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), which, you know, is a sanctioned entity,’ she continued. Venezuela is already subject to extensive U.S. sanctions, but was historically a major crude-oil supplier for the U.S.

Leavitt added that the administration will remain committed to the ‘president’s sanction policies and the sanction policies of the United States.’

‘We’re not going to stand by and watch sanctioned vessels sail the seas with black market oil. The proceeds of which will fuel narco-terrorism of rogue and illegitimate regimes around the world,’ she said. 

Fox News Digital’s Morgan Phillips contributed to this report. 

President Donald Trump clapped back at a report that was just released about the global artificial intelligence arms race, which claimed China has more than double the electrical power-generation capacity of the United States.

Trump, in a pointed social media post on his platform Truth Social, called the report’s findings ‘WRONG,’ adding that every big artifical intelligence plant being built in the United States will have its own private power plants that will also send excess energy back to the country’s broader energy grid. 

‘The Wall Street Journal has another ridiculous story today that China is dominating us, and the World, on the production of Electricity having to do with AI,’ Trump said in his Truth Social post responding to the news report. ‘AI has far more Electricity than they will ever need because they are building the facilities that produce it, themselves.’

‘We are leading the World in AI, BY FAR, because of a gentleman named DONALD J. TRUMP!’ the president contended. 

The Wall Street Journal report Trump was targeting indicated that China now has 3.75 terawatts of power-generation capacity, which the outlet said is more than double what the United States holds. The Journal called China’s electrical generation capacity the country’s ‘Ace to play’ in the global artificial intelligence arms race, since the United States is still home to the most powerful artificial intelligence models and controls access to the most advanced computer chips. 

In Trump’s Truth Social post responding to the Journal’s claims, the president said that the approvals for new artificial intelligence plants and their accompanying ‘Electric Generating Facilities’ are being approved ‘quickly’ and ‘carefully,’ indicating the process has generally been taking ‘a matter of weeks.’

Trump also highlighted that any ‘excess’ electrical energy produced by these electric generation facilities would be ‘going to our Electric Grid,’ which the president said was being ‘strengthened, and expanded … like never before.’

On Thursday, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright was quoted in TIME Magazine piece saying that artificial intelligence is the Trump administration’s ‘No. 1 scientific priority.’ Wright was quoted in a wide-ranging piece titled ‘The Architects of AI Are TIME’s 2025 Person of the Year.’

In its reporting on Wright, the magazine noted that the Energy Department is working ‘in tandem with other agencies like the EPA to slash regulations around the construction of data centers and power plants.’

Fox News Digital’s Alexander Hall contributed to this report.

In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, Liz Truss pulls back the curtain on what really happened during her 49-day reign as prime minister of the United Kingdom in 2022.

The free speech advocate served just 49 days as British prime minister in 2022 before resigning amid market turmoil over her administration’s dramatic attempt to implement a pro-growth economic agenda. Now that the dust has settled, Truss has launched a private club for ‘pro-growth leaders,’ the Leconfield, and a YouTube show, ‘The Liz Truss Show.’

‘My new show will tell the truth about what happened in 2022,’ Truss told Fox News Digital. ‘The fact that I was sabotaged by the Bank of England, who announced the sale of gilts the day before my mini-budget and then failed to properly regulate the pension market. That was actually the cause of the crisis in 2022.’

While Truss is now recasting the narrative on the Bank of England, the financial institution has blamed Truss for the British market crash of 2022, concluding that her mini-budget triggered a sudden plunge in gilt prices, driving up the government’s borrowing costs. The spike rippled across financial markets, pushing pension funds to offload gilts and forcing the Bank of England to intervene to stabilize the market.

The Bank of England declined to comment when reached by Fox News Digital. 

‘I will be talking about that. I’ll also be talking about the conservatives in name only who undermined me while I was in power,’ Truss said of her show, eliciting President Donald Trump’s ‘RINO’ nickname for Republicans in name only who thwart his agenda. 

It’s not Truss’ only commonality with Trump.

‘I’m very frustrated by the mainstream media,’ Truss said. ‘I share President Trump’s annoyance with the BBC. He is currently suing them for propagating fake news about him, but they do fake news the whole time.’

Trump has announced plans to file a $5 billion lawsuit against the British Broadcasting Corporation over an edit of his Jan. 6, 2021, remarks that appeared in a BBC investigative series. The BBC did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Truss said she wants her YouTube show to ‘help change the economic and political debate in Britain.’

‘I know the truth wasn’t told about my time as prime minister,’ Truss said. ‘That’s very frustrating, but I know about other issues, whether it’s free speech or migration, people are not hearing about what’s actually happening in Britain, so I want my show to tell the truth and to hear from the people that are the victims of these problems.’

Truss’ early guests included Trump-ally Steve Bannon and British political commentator Matt Goodwin. The former prime minister spoke to Fox News Digital in Washington, D.C., ahead of its inaugural episode.

‘I want America, first of all, to understand what happens when you lose things like free speech, and you lose the battle on mass migration, and you lose the battle on the economy,’ Truss said. ‘It’s a warning for America, but I also want to get inspiration from what’s happened here at fighting back against these forces, and that’s what the show is about. I want to encourage people. It’s not just doom and gloom. It is about what do we actually do? How do we get a Trump-style revolution in Britain and Europe to make our countries great again?’

At the core of the cultural battles dominating popular culture, Truss said, ‘All of these people hate Western civilization.’

‘They hate the nation state,’ Truss continued. ‘They want to undermine the family, and that is why I’m so passionate about fighting back against them, because I believe in our country. I believe in the Christian values that formed Britain and America. I believe in free speech, and I think we’re just in real danger of losing them to these forces.’

Truss has applauded Trump’s leadership on the world stage, calling him ‘very forward-leaning’ in negotiating peace in the Middle East.

Truss said she wants a solution in Ukraine, but not one that makes President Vladimir Putin appear to walk away from the conflict on his own terms. She urged Europe to ‘step up’ and ‘spend more of our own money on defense’ — reflecting many congressional Republicans’ message as the war in Ukraine has waged on. 

Congress has voted to send more than $175 billion to Ukraine since the war began, according to The Council on Foreign Relations. And while the U.S. has committed more aid to Ukraine than any other country, European countries have collectively committed more than the U.S.

‘We need to grow our economies to be in a position to be able to stand up to Putin ourselves,’ Truss said.

While Trump continues to pursue peace negotiations in the Middle East and between Russia and Ukraine, Truss applauded the president for taking action against suspected drug traffickers from Venezuela.

‘There’s definitely very, very serious issues with Venezuela, and it’s sadly a country that used to be successful and rich and has now been ruined essentially by a communist regime,’ Truss said. ‘I understand the United States needs to take action because the cartels that come out of countries like Venezuela are a direct security threat to the United States.’

The Trump administration deployed two fighter jets over the Gulf of Venezuela on Tuesday and has faced scrutiny in recent days for allegedly authorizing a second strike on suspected drug trafficking boats in Venezuela.

The White House told Fox News Digital last week that as commander in chief, Trump has ‘full authority to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our country.’

‘As President Trump has said, all options are on the table as he works to combat the scourge of narcoterrorism that has resulted in the needless deaths of thousands of innocent Americans,’ White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement to Fox News Digital. ‘All of these decisive strikes have been in international waters against designated narcoterrorists bringing deadly poison to our shores.’

Fox News Digital’s Diana Stacy contributed to this report.

The Trump administration is relying on a sharply different legal justification for seizing a Venezuelan oil tanker than striking alleged narco-traffickers, even if both moves are intended to ramp up pressure on Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.

Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday framed the U.S. seizure of a Venezuelan crude oil tanker as a straightforward sanctions enforcement action rooted in a federal court warrant. Bondi said the tanker, long sanctioned for moving illicit Venezuelan and Iranian oil in support of foreign terrorist organizations, was taken into custody by the Coast Guard with help from the War Department after investigators executed a warrant off the coast of Venezuela.

A senior administration official told Fox News the sanctions designation is the sole legal basis for seizing the ship — not the armed-conflict authority the administration has invoked to justify kinetic strikes on drug-trafficking vessels. The distinction highlights the administration’s reliance on two very different legal frameworks in the same region: traditional sanctions and forfeiture statutes for the tanker, and a contentious assertion of wartime authority against drug cartels for the maritime strikes.

The tanker, known as the Skipper, has been on a U.S. sanctions list for several years for allegedly moving crude tied to a clandestine Venezuela–Iran oil network that Washington says helped generate revenue for foreign terrorist organizations. 

According to officials, that designation rendered the vessel ‘blocked property’ under U.S. law, allowing the Justice Department to seek and obtain a federal warrant to seize it under civil forfeiture statutes. That process — rooted in domestic law and executed through a U.S. court — is the basis for Thursday’s operation, administration officials said.

While the administration argues the seizure is fully authorized under U.S. sanctions and forfeiture law, the use of domestic legal authorities to detain a foreign vessel on the high seas historically has generated debate in maritime law circles, particularly when the ship is not under the U.S. flag. The allegation that the Skipper was stateless or fraudulently flagged could prove significant in that debate.

If true, ‘the U.S. could treat this vessel as ‘stateless’ and subject to seizure since it is otherwise acting in violation of U.S. law,’ law professor Julian Ku told Fox News Digital. ‘That would be the strongest legal basis.’

Under the sanctions framework, the government is not claiming battlefield authority or self-defense powers. Instead, officials are relying on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and related OFAC regulations, which allow the U.S. to target property linked to sanctioned entities, even when that property is located abroad. 

A senior administration official emphasized that this is the only legal theory the government is using for the Skipper seizure and said it carries none of the Article II wartime arguments the administration has invoked to justify its strikes on cartel boats in international waters.

The result is a civilian enforcement action carried out with help from the military, alongside a separate military campaign premised on the assertion that the United States is ‘at war’ with foreign drug cartels. But both efforts are rooted in what onlookers believe to be the president’s intended goal: pressuring Maduro to step down from power.

Senate Republicans rammed through the first procedural hurdle on their road to confirming nearly 100 of President Donald Trump’s nominees on Wednesday.

The move tees up a later vote on 97 of Trump’s picks and marks the third time Senate Republicans advanced a bloc of the president’s nominees since changing the confirmation rules in September.

The final vote to confirm the latest tranche of picks is expected next week. Once Republicans clear this latest package, they will have confirmed over 400 of Trump’s picks during the first year of his second term.

That benchmark would place him well ahead of former President Joe Biden, who at the same point in his presidency had 350 of his nominees confirmed.

Among the list of nominees are former Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, R-N.Y., to serve as inspector general at the Department of Labor, and two picks for the National Labor Relations Board, James Murphy and Scott Mayer, among several others across nearly every federal agency.

The inclusion of Murphy and Mayer in the package comes after Trump fired National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox, a move that was ultimately found to be legal by the Supreme Court earlier this year.

It’s also Senate Republicans’ second attempt to move this package after Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., objected last week in a bid to derail the process.

Senate Republicans went nuclear and changed the rules surrounding the confirmation process in a bid to break through Senate Democrats’ monthslong blockade of Trump’s nominees and limited the scope to only sub-Cabinet-level positions that would be advanced through a simple, 50-vote majority.

But one of the nominees in the original package, Sara Carter, a former Fox News contributor whose legal name is Sara Bailey, was considered a ‘Level 1’ nominee, meaning she would hold a Cabinet-level position.

Trump tapped Carter in March to be his drug czar as director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Carter’s inclusion in the package meant that if Republicans wanted to confirm the 87 other nominees and her, they would have to break the 60-vote filibuster threshold. That outcome was highly unlikely, given Senate Democrats’ near-universal disapproval of several of Trump’s picks and accusations that many were not qualified to serve in the positions they had been tapped to fill.

Senate Republicans took advantage of the opportunity, however, and moved instead to offer a new, more beefed-up package that added nine more nominees.

The U.S. has seized a Venezuelan oil tanker, President Donald Trump announced Wednesday, marking a sharp escalation in tensions with Caracas.

‘We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela. Large tanker, very large. Largest one ever seized action. And, other things are happening. So you’ll be seeing that later. And you’ll be talking about that later with some other people,’ Trump said at the White House.

The move is likely to further strain relations with Nicolás Maduro’s government, which already is subject to extensive U.S. sanctions targeting Venezuela’s oil sector. It comes after U.S. military strikes have targeted alleged narcotraffickers near Venezuela at least 22 times since September, killing 87 people.

The seizure was led by the Coast Guard and supported by the Navy, a U.S. official told the Associated Press. The Coast Guard and U.S. Southern Command directed Fox News Digital back to the White House, which could not be reached for comment. 

The Trump administration is considering launching land strikes on Venezuelan territory in an effort to further ramp up pressure on Maduro, who the U.S. views as the illegitimate leader of Venezuela and the leader of the Cartel de Los Soles drug trafficking cartel. 

Trump recently said Maduro’s ‘days are numbered’ and refused to rule out a ground operation in the South American country. 

‘I don’t want to rule in or out,’ Trump told Politico. ‘I don’t talk about it.’ 

Venezuela has some of the largest oil reserves in the world and exports close to 750,000 barrels per day. Around half goes to China, according to Kplr data. 

Prior to broad sanctions, Venezuela was historically a major crude-oil supplier for the U.S.

After sanctions on Venezuela’s state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) in 2019, imports dropped sharply. Limited sanctions relief and occasional licensing, notably for Chevron, allowed some Venezuelan crude to flow again to U.S. refineries in 2024 and 2025. Trump revoked Chevron’s license to purchase oil from Caracas earlier in 2025. 

The region around Venezuela has seen the largest U.S. military buildup in decades, including the presence of the world’s largest aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford, and the deployment of 10 F-35 jets to Puerto Rico to support Southern Command operations. On Tuesday, two F/A-18 flew over the waters north of Venezuela in training. 

In November, President Trump directed airlines to steer clear of the area — a move that raised speculation among analysts that Washington was preparing for land strikes. 

Trump and Maduro recently held a phone call, but the two sides failed to come to an agreement that would have seen Maduro leave power.

Oil revenue remains the central pillar of Venezuela’s collapsing economy, with the country relying heavily on discounted exports to China and other buyers willing to navigate sanctions exposure.

The nation moves much of its crude through a shadow network of reflagged tankers, shell companies and ship-to-ship transfers designed to conceal the origin of its oil. Many vessels operate with their transponders off or spoofing locations to avoid detection.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

A group of moderate Republicans is defying House GOP leaders to try and force a vote on extending enhanced Obamacare subsidies that expire at the end of this year.

Republicans led by Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., on Wednesday filed a measure known as a discharge petition, a mechanism designed to force a vote on legislation over the wishes of leadership, provided it gets support from a majority of House lawmakers.

A dramatic series of events unfolded on the House floor as House GOP leaders worked to win support for an unrelated vote that first appeared poised to fail.

While a group of conservatives threatened to mutiny Republicans on that vote for separate reasons, several moderates also appeared to withhold their votes altogether, and Fox News Digital witnessed them in tense discussions with Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and other GOP leaders.

Those moderates eventually voted in favor of passing the legislation at hand before marching to the front of the House chamber to file their discharge petition. They lined up one by one to sign the document that would move their healthcare agenda full steam ahead despite Johnson signaling little appetite to entertain it.

So far, the petition has support from six House Republicans and two Democrats but is expected to grow in numbers as the clock ticks on the looming healthcare cost cliff awaiting millions across the country.

‘We know we need a temporary extension of the tax credits — with reforms — and then we can do more serious things, but we’re not gonna do serious changes to the [Affordable Care Act] in the next two or three weeks,’ Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., one of the signatories, told Fox News Digital. ‘So, we just felt like, since there doesn’t seem to be any impetus to do this, we’re gonna try to force the issue.’

Asked if he believed they would get House GOP leaders’ blessing, Bacon said, ‘Probably not.’

Fitzpatrick’s bill is aimed at advancing a two-year extension of Obamacare subsidies that Democrats expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Democrats in Congress voted twice during the pandemic to expand the availability of premium tax credits for Obamacare, also called the Affordable Care Act (ACA), to make sure more Americans had access to healthcare coverage.

A majority of House Republicans have signaled they are not open to extending them, at least not without significant reforms. Conservatives in particular have panned the enhanced subsidies as a COVID-19-era relic that benefited insurance companies rather than Americans.

But some GOP lawmakers have joined Democrats in warning that failing to extend them at least temporarily at this point will result in millions of Americans seeing their healthcare premiums skyrocket while Congress refuses to act.

Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, R-Pa., another Republican who signed the petition, said House GOP leaders signaled they would be ‘putting forward’ a number of healthcare reforms ‘that are very positive in nature,’ but ‘an extension of the ACA tax credits was not included in that package.’

‘So, we have been talking about and advocating for that to move forward, and so this seems like the best vehicle to do that,’ Mackenzie said. 

He told Fox News Digital, ‘The reason we’re in this mess to begin with is that things were done in a partisan fashion. And, so, I think if we want longevity and reforms and changes, we should be doing it in a bipartisan fashion.

‘It’s a time-sensitive matter, and it’s an existential matter for people back home who we care about where this is a very real problem,’ Fitzpatrick told reporters. ‘You try to do things through the normal course, you try to do things through regular order. When all those remedies are exhausted, then you’ve got to go this route, unfortunately.’

Asked if it was spurred at all by moderates’ conversation on the House floor with Johnson, Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., said, ‘It was clear that, given the timeframe and given some of the differences within our conference on particular issues, that a bill was not going to be put forward. And so I think we all recognize the importance of getting an extension passed.’

But it’s not clear whether House Democratic leaders, who have their own discharge petition for a three-year extension of the Obamacare subsidies, will support the bill. It likely will not succeed without buy-in from all House Democrats.

Asked if his leaders would back it, Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, said, ‘Go ask them. But I think they ought to.’

Johnson, for his part, told reporters discharge petitions were ‘typically used as a tool against the majority’ but said he was ‘very sympathetic’ to moderate Republicans’ concerns.

‘We have spent many, many hours trying to find a way out of the conundrum that we’re in. With regard to those extensions, there’s a lot of people who are very concerned about Obamacare and the fact that the subsidies were created by Democrats for COVID-era limited use,’ Johnson said.

‘We just can’t get Republican votes on that for lots of reasons, not enough of them. And, so, look, my colleagues have made a decision. I don’t take it against them personally, I don’t operate that way. I have great respect for those guys, I understand the situation they’re in for their districts, and we’ll see how it plays out.’

The Trump administration is weighing whether to pursue terrorism-related sanctions against the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), as officials review allegations the agency has ties to Hamas and consider steps that could further pressure its leadership and operations, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters. 

The United Nations agency provides aid, schooling, healthcare, shelter and social services to millions of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. U.N. officials have described UNRWA as the backbone of Gaza’s aid effort during the two-year war between Israel and Hamas, but the Trump administration has accused the group of ties to Hamas – an allegation the agency vehemently disputes.

Washington, once UNRWA’s biggest donor, froze funding in January 2024 after Israel accused roughly a dozen staff members of involvement in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack that triggered the war.

In October, Secretary of State Marco Rubio referred to UNRWA as a subsidiary of Hamas.

‘UNRWA’s not going to play any role in it,’ Rubio said at the time when asked whether the agency would assist in delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza. ‘The United Nations is here. They’re on the ground. We’re willing to work with them if they can make it work, but not UNRWA. UNRWA became a subsidiary of Hamas.’

Reuters reported it was unclear whether recent internal discussions focused on sanctioning the entire agency or specific officials or operations, and that U.S. officials have not yet settled on what type of sanctions they might pursue.

The sources said the State Department has discussed declaring UNRWA a ‘foreign terrorist organization,’ or FTO – a step that would financially isolate the agency.

Any broad move against UNRWA could disrupt refugee aid across the region, as the agency is already facing a severe funding crisis. Such sanctions would be highly unusual, since the U.S. is both a U.N. member and the host nation of the body that created the agency in 1949.

William Deere, who heads UNRWA’s Washington office, said the group would be ‘disappointed’ if officials were discussing an FTO designation, calling such a step ‘unprecedented and unwarranted.’

He pointed to multiple investigations – including one by the U.S. National Intelligence Council – that concluded UNRWA remains a neutral and essential humanitarian actor.

The White House and State Department did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment. The U.S. and Israel have maintained tough positions towards the agency, particularly in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre.

President Donald Trump in February reaffirmed that the U.S. would not fund UNRWA. In the executive order, Trump said that ‘UNRWA has reportedly been infiltrated by members of groups long designated by the Secretary of State as foreign terrorist organizations, and UNRWA employees were involved in the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel.’

When the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in April 2025 demanded Israel work with UNRWA, Washington backed Israel, saying it was under no obligation to work with the agency and had ‘ample grounds to question UNRWA’s impartiality.’

UNRWA announced in August 2024 the end of an investigation by the Office of Internal Oversight Services into whether its staff participated in the attacks, as Israel claimed.

The probe examined 19 employees and resulted in nine dismissals over evidence that ‘could indicate’ involvement. The investigation found one case with no evidence of involvement and nine others in which ‘the evidence obtained by OIOS was insufficient’ to prove participation, the agency said.

Fox News Digital’s Rachel Wolf and Reuters contributed to this report.