President-elect Donald Trump is keeping up his push to make Canada the United States’ 51st state.

‘Canada and the United States. That would really be something,’ Trump said Tuesday at a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. ‘They should be a state.’

Trump highlighted that if Canada were to join the U.S., it wouldn’t be by using military force but instead through ‘economic force.’

A day earlier, the president-elect argued in a social media post that ‘many people in Canada LOVE being the 51st State.’

Trump emphasized that ‘if Canada merged with the U.S., there would be no Tariffs, taxes would go way down, and they would be TOTALLY SECURE from the threat of the Russian and Chinese Ships that are constantly surrounding them. Together, what a great Nation it would be!!!’

In recent weeks, the former and now president-elect has trolled the United States’ neighbor to the north, musing about it becoming the 51st state, and posting a doctored photo of him standing beside a Canadian flag high atop a mountain.

Additionally, his recent mocking of longtime Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, repeatedly referring to him as ‘governor,’ along with his threat to impose massive tariffs on Canada, was likely a contributing factor in Trudeau’s resignation announcement this week.

Trump’s fixation on Canada comes as he also turns up the volume on his calls for Denmark to sell the sparsely populated but massive North Atlantic island of Greenland to the U.S.

However, what if the unlikely expansionist scenario of Canada joining the U.S. actually came to fruition?

Hypothetically, it could be a massive political boon for Democrats at the expense of Republicans.

Canada’s modern political history points to the left.

‘The Liberals have been in charge of the Canadian federal government for the majority of the time since World War Two,’ longtime Republican strategist Dave Carney noted to Fox News.

It is likely the voters supporting those governments would vote for Democrats rather than Republicans if Canada became the 51st state.

With a population of slightly more than 40 million, Canada would become the most populous state in the U.S., edging out blue-state California for the honors.

Canada’s addition to the U.S. as the nation’s largest state could give a big boost to the Democrats in the battle for Congressional majorities and the electoral vote count in presidential elections.

Rich Lowry, editor-in-chief of the prominent conservative magazine National Review, warned in an opinion piece for the New York Post that ‘Canada would be a blue-state behemoth, matching California in population…and, presumably, in reliably Democratic politics.’

‘We might think we’d annex Canada and make it more like us, but — with two Democratic senators and a huge tranche of electoral votes for Democratic presidential candidates — Canada would surely make us more like it,’ Lowry predicted.

Veteran political scientist Wayne Lesperance agreed, noting that ‘Canada as a state would bring millions of voters more likely to align with the Democrats’ agenda and ideology. And with 40 million voters, the new 51st state would be the largest state in the union with a congressional delegation much more likely to oppose Trump and his party’s political agenda.’

Lesperance, president of the New Hampshire-based New England College, said if Trump ‘is serious, and does bring a proposal forward, I would expect tremendous support for his initiative…especially from Democrats.’

Democratic strategist and political analyst Van Jones, on CNN, said that Canada would ‘be a huge blue state’ and that ‘if Canada wants to come here and rescue us, I am more than happy.’

However, Carney, noting that the likelihood of Canada joining the U.S. is extremely slim, said that it is a great negotiating strategy by Trump when it comes to negotiations with America’s northern neighbor.

‘He has an ability to use tools that no one would have ever thought of,’ Carney said. ‘He has the ability and the willingness to use every tool in his toolbox.’

Carney, the top political adviser to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a veteran of numerous Republican presidential campaigns, added that Trump ‘uses the soft power of the presidency to get people to pay attention and get what he wants.’

House Republicans are pushing to abolish the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) ahead of President-elect Donald Trump taking office later this month.

Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., is unveiling the bill on Tuesday and already has several co-sponsors in Reps. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., Mike Collins, R-Ga., Bob Onder, R-Mo., Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., Mary Miller, R-Ill., Keith Self, R-Texas, and Paul Gosar, R-Ariz.

Burlison argued that the ATF was an ‘unconstitutional agency’ and that its mission and goals are duplicates of existing state and local regulations. 

‘The Constitution makes it very clear that when it comes to the federal government, there shall be no laws restricting firearms,’ he told Fox News Digital. ‘It’s in the purview of the states, and so I don’t think it belongs on the federal level.’

‘But here’s the thing I want to reiterate – they don’t have the manpower to enforce the laws that they implement. So they go and they solicit help from every local state law enforcement official to help them implement their stupid new rules.’

He said assisting the ATF ‘takes them out of the things they should be prioritizing to keep the community safe.’

Burlison said he has not spoken with members of President-elect Trump’s orbit on the bill, but added, ‘I’m sure there’s quite a few people in Trump world that would be open to this.’

One possible supporter the bill could find is Vice President-elect JD Vance, who previously called for abolishing the ATF and vowed to fight toward that goal in the Senate.

The ATF makes federal regulations for firearm handling and storage, gun licenses and other matters. It also assists in law enforcement investigations like the recent New Orleans attack.

The modern iteration of the ATF was formed as a bureau under the Treasury Department in 1972. It was transferred to the Department of Justice in 2003 as a law enforcement agency after laws on gun control and explosives were added to the ATF’s purview in the 1990s.

Supporters of the ATF’s existence include gun control advocates who argue it does important work to fight gun violence.

However, opponents like Burlison argue its regulations are unnecessary.

ATF Director Steven Dettelbach warned earlier this week that he believes curbing the ATF will result in more unnecessary deaths.

‘People who don’t think that law enforcement, including ATF, has anything to do with driving down violent crime are just wrong — it didn’t happen by accident,’ he told the New York Times.

‘What I am concerned about is that people will take their eye off the ball, that they’ll either get complacent or political, or some combination of those things.’

The ATF has gotten public blowback for its handling of the infamous standoffs in Ruby Ridge and Waco, Texas, however.

Trump previously promised to fire Dettelbach on his first day in office. He told an audience at a National Rifle Association event that the Biden administration appointee was a ‘radical gun-grabber.’

It is not clear if he would abolish it altogether, however. 

Fox News Digital reached out to Trump and the ATF for comment.

Jimmy Carter, the centenarian former president who lived long enough to see Donald Trump elected again but died just before the start of the new year, has a foreign policy legacy that wasn’t just defined by his four years in the White House. 

Over the term of his presidency, the former Georgia governor could boast of helping to establish peace between Israel and Egypt and reestablishing relations with China. But by the time he suffered one of the nation’s most decisive defeats by President Ronald Reagan in 1980, Carter still had ambitions that he was not ready to stop pursuing. 

Carter is largely celebrated for the altruistic nature of his post-presidency, volunteering with Habitat for Humanity well into his 90s. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his peace negotiations, but some accused the former president of meddling in international affairs without any official title. 

Here’s a look Carter’s forays on the world stage, both as president and beyond: 

Unauthorized North Korea peace treaty 

In 1994, Bill Clinton was in office in the midst of a standoff with North Korea over the communist country’s nuclear program. The U.S. was floating the idea of sanctions – and even considered a preemptive strike on North Korea’s nuclear facilities to destroy their capabilities. 

Carter had received invitations from North Korea to visit, and was eager to try his hand at defusing the situation and hashing out an agreement to unify the north and the south. As Clinton weighed his options, Carter called. He had negotiated the framework of a peace agreement, without authorization. 

Carter had flown to North Korea with a CNN crew and hashed out the deal. He called Clinton to warn him he was about to go on CNN to announce the deal, which infuriated the Clinton White House, according to Carter biographer Douglas Brinkley’s book, ‘The Unfinished Presidency.’

Carter also accepted a dinner invitation from Kim Il-Sung, where he stated the U.S. had stopped pursuing sanctions at the U.N., which was untrue. Backed into a corner, Clinton had to accept the peace deal and stop pursuing sanctions. 

Carter’s discussions with leader Kim Il-Sung may have averted conflict with North Korea in the 1990s. The nation, of course, continued pursuing nuclear weapons and acquired them in 2006. 

Carter tells Arab states to abandon US in Bush’s Gulf War 

In the Middle East, Carter declared he could have resolved the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians in a second term, a prospect that has still not been achieved by any president. 

‘Had I been elected to a second term, with the prestige and authority and influence and reputation I had in the region, we could have moved to a final solution,’ he told The New York Times in 2003. 

Throughout the 1990s, Carter befriended Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat and coached him on how to appear more moderate to the west, even as Arafat continued to lead attacks on Israel and led the Second Intifada in 2000. 

When President George H.W. Bush decided to launch the Persian Gulf War after Iraq’s Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Carter was vehemently opposed to the idea. Five days before Bush’s deadline for Hussein to withdraw, Carter wrote to leaders of nations on the U.N. Security Council and key Arab states – Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria – imploring them to abandon the U.S. and its war efforts.

‘I urge you to call publicly for a delay in the use of force while Arab leaders seek a peaceful solution to the crisis. You may have to forego approval from the White House, but you will find the French, Soviets, and others fully supportive. Also, most Americans will welcome such a move.’ 

The move prompted former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft to accuse Carter of violating the Logan Act, which says private citizens cannot negotiate with foreign governments. 

Carter meets with Hamas, angering Bush administration 

In 2008, President George W. Bush’s secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, publicly tore into Carter for meeting with Hamas, a designated terrorist group, after the administration explicitly told him not to. 

Rice told reporters Carter’s meeting could confuse the message that the U.S. would not work with Hamas.

‘I just don’t want there to be any confusion,’ Rice said. ‘The United States is not going to deal with Hamas and we had certainly told President Carter that we did not think meeting with Hamas was going to help’ further a political settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

Carter, a strong advocate of the Palestinians after his presidency, claimed that Israel’s policies amounted to an apartheid worse than South Africa’s. 

Egypt-Israel peace treaty

In 1978, the groundbreaking possibility of Egypt and Israel normalizing relations had screeched to a halt. President Anwar Sadat of Egypt suggested ceasing contact with the Israelis. 

In September of that year, Carter brought Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to Camp David, where Carter spent more than a week mediating negotiations on an agreement between the two sides. A framework of a treaty known as the Camp David Accords came out of that meeting, and six months later, Egypt became the first Arab state to establish relations with Israel. 

The agreement included the return of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt and a ‘pathway’ for Palestinian self-rule in Gaza. Sadat was assassinated in 1981 after Arab fury over the peace agreement. 

Normalization of US-China relations

In 1978, following months of secret negotiations, Carter established formal U.S. relations with China, breaking decades of hostility between the two nations. That meant rescinding a defense treaty with Taiwan, where Carter remains a controversial figure. 

It also prompted Congress to pass the Taiwan Relations Act to continue to provide arms to Taiwan and ‘maintain the capacity to resist’ any attempts to take it over. 

1979 Iranian hostage crisis

In 1979, the Iranian regime’s shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, and Carter had a strategic relationship, with Carter quiet on his questionable human rights record even as the shah’s grip on power was slipping. 

Protests had kicked up in Iran over the shah’s oppressive policies, but Carter continued to support him, fearing the alternative: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. 

Pahlavi fled into exile in January 1979, and Carter initially resisted requests to grant him refuge in the U.S. before allowing him to seek cancer treatment in New York City in October of that year. And on Nov. 4, Iranian students angry at the decision stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking 52 hostages. 

The hostage crisis spanned the rest of Carter’s term and, for many, defined his legacy on the world stage. Without any resolution, in April 1980, Carter moved to a military rescue. 

The mission ended in tragic failure: several helicopters were grounded outside Tehran in a sandstorm, and eight special forces members were killed when their helicopter crashed. Iran then captured U.S. equipment and intelligence. 

The hostages were not released until Jan. 20, 1981 – minutes after President Ronald Reagan was inaugurated.

Signing Panama Canal back to Panama 

President-elect Trump has brought Carter’s Panama Canal treaties back into the spotlight, musing on Tuesday that offering control of the canal to Panama lost Carter the 1980 election.

Despite fierce opposition from the right, Carter believed returning the canal would improve U.S. relations in Latin America and ensure peace between U.S. shipping lanes, fearing that opposition to U.S. control could lead to violence on the waterway. 

‘It’s obvious that we cheated the Panamanians out of their canal,’ Carter wrote in a diary. But he’d also received intelligence that it could take up 100,000 troops to defend the canal in the event of an uprising. 

In recent days, Trump has suggested taking the canal back – claiming the U.S. is paying too much to use it, and it is controlled by China. 

‘Giving the Panama Canal to Panama was a big reason why Jimmy Carter lost the election, even more so than the hostages,’ Trump said. 

Hawaii’s Democratic Governor and practicing physician, Josh Green, is visiting Capitol Hill this week to lobby lawmakers against the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary. In a Tuesday op-ed for The New York Times, he argued that ‘our children’s lives depend’ on preventing Kennedy from leading the agency.

Green, who worked as a physician before entering politics, has continued practicing emergency room medicine throughout his legislative career. In 2019, as Hawaii’s lieutenant governor, Green helped spearhead efforts to increase vaccination rates in Samoa amid a measles outbreak in the region. Green arrived in the nation’s capital on Sunday evening to begin his meetings that will go until he returns to Hawaii on Thursday. 

‘As the only physician governor, I need to explain what are good picks and what maybe aren’t so good picks for the cabinet,’ Green said in a video ahead of his planned trip to Washington, noting that his lobbying against Kennedy is not anything personal or politically motivated. ‘[RFK Jr’s] appointment to be the head of Health and Human Services is not consistent with safety for our children,’ he said. 

During his trip to Washington, Green said that he would be discussing with lawmakers and other leaders to explore ‘a better place for [RFK Jr.] to be’ rather than HHS, calling his potential confirmation ‘a bad idea.’

Questions over the likelihood of Kennedy’s confirmation took a turn this week after Sen. Bill Cassidy, R–La., the incoming chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, called out the potential future HHS Secretary for being ‘wrong’ on the issue of vaccines. The criticism follows concerns that Kennedy may seek to get rid of the polio vaccine, after news broke that one of his previous colleagues at Childrens Health Defense, a health-focused nonprofit Kennedy previously chaired, petitioned the government in 2019 to revoke its approval.

Green’s criticism of Kennedy has largely revolved around his anti-vaccine views as well, in particular Kennedy’s response to a measles outbreak in Samoa, during which the potential future HHS Secretary promoted doubts around vaccine efficacy, according to Green and others, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. Those efforts included a letter Kennedy sent to the country’s prime minister, as chairman of Children’s Health Defense, suggesting that the measles vaccine could have potentially exacerbated the outbreak.

The Democratic governor penned an op-ed published in The New York Times on Tuesday, continuing to drill at Kennedy’s anti-vaccine efforts in 2019 amid Samoa’s measles outbreak. According to Greene, Kennedy ‘used misinformation to scare all the people of Samoa away from being vaccinated’ and served to ‘torpedo’ the country’s vaccination efforts.

‘Too much depends on our commitment to truth and the lifesaving power of vaccines to entrust Mr. Kennedy with the direction of these programs. Our children’s lives depend on it,’ Green wrote.

Kennedy’s team has not responded to repeated efforts by Fox News Digital to get in touch, but in 2023, Kennedy said during an appearance in a short film that he ‘never told anybody not to vaccinate’ and that he ‘didn’t go [to Samoa] with any reason to do with that.’ Furthermore, amid concerns about how Kennedy might approach the polio vaccine, he told reporters on Capitol Hill last month that he is ‘all for the polio vaccine.’

Proponents of Kennedy’s nomination have suggested his proposed plans, if confirmed, will be rooted in logic and science.

‘I think that Kennedy has aimed to stand for evidence-based changes to policy,’ said Nina Teicholz, a nutrition expert and founder of The Nutrition Coalition, a New York-based nonprofit organization. 

‘Right now, the media is covering RFK Jr. poorly and unfairly, giving him no credit for ideas that are well within the bounds of discussion,’ added Dr. Vinay Prasad, in an article published by The Free Press. ‘Many of RFK Jr.’s ideas have a logic.’

Fox News Digital reached out to Green’s office for comment but did not hear back by publication time.  

A prominent fact-checking organization used by Facebook to moderate political content reacted to news that it will revamp its fact-checking to better avoid bias with an article outlining its disappointment and disagreement with the move. 

‘Lead Stories was surprised and disappointed to first learn through media reports and a press release about the end of the Meta Third-Party Fact-Checking Partnership of which Lead Stories has been a part since 2019,’ Lead Stories editor Maarten Schenk wrote on Tuesday in response to an announcement from Meta that it would be significantly altering its fact-checking process to ‘restore free expression.’

Lead Stories, a Facebook fact checker employing several former CNN alumni including Alan Duke and Ed Payne, has become one of the more prominent fact checkers used by Facebook in recent years. 

Fox News Digital first reported on Tuesday that Meta is ending its fact-checking program and lifting restrictions on speech to ‘restore free expression’ across Facebook, Instagram and Meta platforms, admitting its current content moderation practices have ‘gone too far.’ 

‘After Trump first got elected in 2016 the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy,’ Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a video message on Tuesday. ‘We tried in good faith to address these concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth. But fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they created, especially in the U.S..’

‘What political bias?’ the article from Lead Stories asks before explaining that it is ‘disappointing to hear Mark Zuckerberg accuse the organizations in Meta’s U.S. third-party fact checking program of being ‘too politically biased.’’

‘Especially since one of the requirements Meta imposed for being part of a partnership included being a verified signatory of the IFCN’s Code of Principles, which explicitly requires a ‘commitment to non-partisanship and fairness,’’ the article states. ‘In all the years we have been part of the partnership, we or the IFCN never received any complaints from Meta about any political bias, so we were quite surprised by this statement.’

Meta said in its announcement that it will move toward a system of moderation that is more in line with Community Notes at X, which Lead Stories seemed to take issue with. 

‘However, In our experience and that of others, Community Notes on X are often slow to appear, sometimes downright inaccurate and unlikely to appear on controversial posts because of an inability to reach agrement [sic] or consensus among users,’ Lead Stories wrote. ‘Ultimately, the truth doesn’t care about consensus or agreement: the shape of the Earth stays the same even if social media users can’t agree on it.’

Lead Stories added that Community Notes is ‘entirely non-transparent about its contributors: readers are left guessing about their bias, funding, allegiance, sources or expertise and there is no way for appeals or corrections’ while ‘fact-checkers, on the other hand, are required by the IFCN to be fully transparent about who they are, who funds them and what methodology and sources they use to come to their conclusions.’

Schenk added, ‘Fact-checking is about adding verified and sourced information so people can make up their mind about what to believe. It is an essential part of free speech.’

In a statement to Fox News Digital, Duke said that Lead Stories plans to press on.

‘Lead Stories will continue, although we have to reduce our output with no support from Meta,’ Duke said. ‘We are global, with most of our business now outside the USA. We publish in eight languages other than English, which is what will be affected.’

Some conservatives took to social media to blast Lead Stories over their article lamenting the change at Meta after years of conservative pushback to Facebook’s fact checkers as a whole on key news stories, including the suppression of the bombshell reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop.  

‘Of all the fact-checking companies, Lead Stories is the worst,’ British American conservative writer Ian Haworth posted on X. ‘Couldn’t be happier that they’ll soon be circling the drain.’

The executive director of Politifact, a fact checker also used by Facebook, issued a strong rebuke of Zuckerberg following Tuesday’s announcement. 

‘If Meta is upset it created a tool to censor, it should look in the mirror,’ Aaron Sharockman said in a statement he posted on X following Zuckerberg’s announcement.

Sharockman fumed, ‘The decision to remove independent journalists from Facebook’s content moderation program in the United States has nothing to do with free speech or censorship. Mark Zuckerberg’s decision could not be less subtle.’

He threw back Zuckerberg’s accusation of political bias, stating that Meta’s platforms, not the fact-checkers, were the entities that actually censored posts. 

‘Let me be clear: the decision to remove or penalize a post or account is made by Meta and Facebook, not fact-checkers. They created the rules,’ Sharockman said.

At the conclusion of his Lead Stories post, Schenk wrote, ‘Even though we are obviously disappointed by this news, Lead Stories wishes to thank the many people at Meta we have worked with over the past years and we will continue our fact checking mission. To paraphrase the slogan on our main page: ‘Just because it’s now trending without a fact-checking label still won’t make it true.’’

Fox News Digital’s Gabriel Hays and Brooke Singman contributed to this report.

The White House’s outgoing cyber czar, Harry Coker, called for three key things to meet the growing threat of digital attacks: more funding, deregulation and opening up cyber jobs to those without college degrees.

As adversaries like Iran, China and Russia lob near-constant attacks on the U.S. digital infrastructure, ‘we have to prioritize cybersecurity within federal budgets’ President Joe Biden’s national cyber director said at an event with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C.

‘I would love for the incoming administration, or any administration, to recognize the priority of cybersecurity,’ Coker said. 

He added that he understands the U.S. is in a ‘tough budget situation.’

‘I get that, and I support making progress towards reducing the deficit, but we have to prioritize cybersecurity within our current budgets,’ he said.

At the same time, the Biden appointee railed against ‘duplicative federal regulation’ and said he’d heard from those working to protect the nation’s online infrastructure that they spend ‘a staggering 30 to 50%’ of their time working to comply with regulation, rather than ensuring protection from hacks.

‘Armed with the industry’s call to streamline, we worked with Congress to write bipartisan legislation that would bring all stakeholders, including independent regulators, to the table to advance the regulatory harmonization,’ he went on.

‘Many of us were disappointed that this has not become law yet, but we have laid the groundwork for the next administration in Congress to do the right thing for our partners in the private sector.’

His urging comes as the U.S. is grappling with the fallout of one of China’s biggest attacks on American infrastructure in history, dubbed Salt Typhoon. 

A Chinese intelligence group infiltrated nine U.S. telecommunications giants and gained access to the private text messages and phone calls of Americans, including senior government officials and prominent political figures. 

The Salt Typhoon hackers also gained access to an exhaustive list of phone numbers the Justice Department had wiretapped to monitor people suspected of espionage, granting them insight into which Chinese spies the U.S. had caught onto and which they had missed.

China was also behind a ‘major’ hack of the Treasury Department in December, gaining access to unclassified documents and the workstations of government employees. 

And earlier this year, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo’s communications were intercepted by Chinese intelligence, just as she was making determinations about new export controls on semiconductors and other key technologies. The same hacking group also targeted officials at the State Department and members of Congress.

Amid this onslaught of attacks, Coker said the cyber industry is suffering a recruitment issue. 

‘Today there are nearly 500,000 open cyber jobs in this great nation,’ he said. 

‘The federal government is leading by example… removing federal employee and contractor hiring from a focus on college degrees to a focus on what we’re really after: skills.

‘When we do away with the four-year college degree requirement, we expand our talent pool,’ Coker went on. ‘Many Americans don’t have the time or the means to go to college for four years, but they can do it for two years or less.’