The U.S. Institute of Peace has been formally rebranded as the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace, marking the latest step in the president’s months-long effort to dismantle the congressionally created agency.

The name change comes after a turbulent year for the organization, which the Trump administration has sought to shut down while shifting its authority to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

The institute has been fighting the move in federal court, but layoffs proceeded after an appeals court stayed a lower-court ruling that temporarily blocked the administration’s plan.

The agency’s website briefly went offline Wednesday morning before returning with promotion for Trump’s upcoming peace-agreement ceremony between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly defended the renaming, telling Fox News Digital the former institute had been ‘a bloated, useless entity that blew $50 million per year while delivering no peace.’

‘Now, the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace, which is both beautifully and aptly named after a President who ended eight wars in less than a year, will stand as a powerful reminder of what strong leadership can accomplish for global stability,’ Kelly said. 

She added Trump ‘ended eight wars in less than a year,’ framing the institute’s new name as recognition of his ‘peace through strength’ approach.

‘Congratulations, world!’ Kelly said.

Secretary Marco Rubio echoed that sentiment in a post responding to the announcement.

‘President Trump will be remembered by history as the President of Peace,’ Rubio wrote. ‘It’s time our State Department display that.’

The U.S. Institute of Peace was created by Congress in 1984 as a nonpartisan organization supporting conflict-prevention and peace-building efforts abroad. The dismantling and rebranding into a Trump-named entity represents one of the most sweeping agency overhauls of Trump’s second term.

Earlier this year, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ruled that the administration’s shutdown effort was unlawful. But the ruling was stayed on appeal, clearing the way for terminations to move forward in July as the administration restructured the agency and continued transferring functions elsewhere.

The institute did not immediately respond to Axios’ request for comment on the rebranding or the status of its ongoing legal challenge.

The State Department did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Absent direct military action, President Donald Trump is running low on options amid his standoff with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, according to experts.

Strikes near Venezuelan waters aimed at drug traffickers, sanctions and a $50 million bounty have so far been unsuccessful in forcing Maduro, whom the U.S. has designated as a leader of the Tren de Aragua drug cartel, to step down from power.

After repeated threats, adversaries may now view a lack of direct military action as a sign of weakness from the U.S. But Maduro is in an equally difficult position — his own military capabilities are dwarfed in comparison to Trump’s, and experts say China and Russia lack the will to directly challenge the U.S. in its own hemisphere.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking: Trump’s unprecedented military buildup in the Caribbean — including sending the world’s largest aircraft carrier to the region — is taking away resources from other theaters.

Katherine Thompson, a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute, said that there are very few tools left at Trump’s disposal to oust Maduro, aside from a targeted strike against the Venezuelan leader or a land invasion. 

While the White House has not directly said that it is seeking regime change, recent media reports indicate that Trump and Maduro have spoken about the Venezuelan leader departing his post.

Thompson noted that previous efforts to squeeze out Maduro, including imposing sanctions on Venezuela and backing opposition leader Juan Guaidó during Trump’s first term, have proven unsuccessful. 

‘It does not seem like there is — outside of the military option — anything new on the table that hasn’t really been tried,’ Thompson said.

Even so, Thompson cast doubt on whether military action would prove successful. 

‘If the offer on the table from the Trump administration is we’re going to potentially execute an invasion unless you talk to us, perhaps that’s a strong enough diplomatic, strategic move that gets Maduro to capitulate,’ Thompson said. ‘But it just doesn’t seem like we’re picking up that many signals from the Maduro regime that that is going to be palatable.’ 

Meanwhile, Thompson said that adversaries like Russia and China are probably confused about why the Trump administration has fixated on the Maduro regime, which doesn’t jeopardize U.S. interests as much as other actors, when the Trump administration has adopted an ‘American First’ mantra. 

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

As a result, the Trump administration’s actions focusing on Venezuela likely leave a bit of ‘befuddlement’ on the part of Russia and China about how serious the U.S. is about putting American interests first, Thompson said.

She added that China may be wondering if the U.S. diverting resources, such as directing the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford to the Caribbean, could provide an opportunity for it to invade Taiwan if the U.S. is tied up with operations in Venezuela. Multiple U.S. officials have said they believe China will be capable of invading Taiwan by 2027. 

Will Russia and China back Venezuela? 

While there may be greater interest from China to take action within its own theater, experts agreed it was unlikely that Russia or China would actually get involved and back Venezuela should military operations between the U.S. and Caracas escalate — even though Moscow and Beijing are strategic allies with Venezuela. 

Some analysts said Maduro would find himself largely isolated if Trump launched military strikes against Venezuela. Russia, still consumed by its war in Ukraine, is unlikely to offer anything beyond denunciations of U.S. action, and China, despite years of deep economic engagement with Caracas, is also expected to stop well short of military involvement, they said. 

From Moscow’s perspective, there is both ideological and strategic discomfort with an American intervention — but little appetite or capability to counter it.

‘Moscow opposes unilateral U.S. military intervention, especially when aimed at toppling a friendly authoritarian regime. That said, Russia lacks the will and ability to stop U.S. intervention in this part of the world should Trump decide to go that route,’ said John Hardie, a Russian military analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).

Hardie said Russia is watching Washington’s internal debate carefully. 

‘Analysts in Moscow interpret the internal debate in Washington over Venezuela as evidence that although Republican views on foreign policy are shifting, the more traditional, hawkish camp still retains influence,’ Hardie said. ‘This whole episode probably also reinforces Russian views of Trump as unpredictable and impulsive, though I suspect Moscow is glad to see Trump prioritizing the Western Hemisphere over other regions more central to Russian interests.’

China’s likely response would mirror its recent behavior in other conflicts. Beijing has major financial stakes in Venezuela but has shown little willingness to risk confrontation with the United States, especially in the Western Hemisphere.

Jack Burnham, a China analyst at FDD, said Maduro should take note of how China behaved during the 12-Day War, when Iran came under intense U.S.- and Israeli-led strikes.

‘If Maduro is expecting support from China, he should have had his expectations corrected by Tehran’s recent experience under fire,’ Burnham said. ‘Despite China providing key war-related materials to Iran prior to the 12 Day War, once the conflict escalated, Beijing stood down, content to stand on the sidelines and offer statements.’

Burnham said that same pattern would likely apply now: ‘If American military action accelerates, look for Beijing to engage in a war of words rather than send badly needed supplies to Caracas.’

Trump’s crusade against drugs

The Trump administration has beefed up its military presence off the coast of Venezuela and has adopted a hard-line approach to address the flow of drugs into the U.S. For example, it designated drug cartel groups like Tren de Aragua, Sinaloa and others as foreign terrorist organizations in February.

The Trump administration has repeatedly said it does not recognize Maduro as a legitimate head of state, but instead, a leader of a drug cartel. In August, the Trump administration upped the reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest to $50 million, labeling him ‘one of the largest narco-traffickers in the world.’

On Sunday, Trump confirmed that he spoke to Maduro over the phone last week, after the New York Times reported that the two had talked, but declined to provide specifics on what they discussed. However, The Miami Herald reported on Sunday that Trump gave Maduro an ultimatum, guaranteeing the Venezuelan leader and his family safety — if he resigned immediately. 

The White House did not provide comment when asked if the Trump administration is pushing a regime change, and whether Maduro had been offered any incentives to step down. However, the officials said all options are on the table to mitigate the influx of drugs into the U.S. 

‘President Trump has been clear in his message to Maduro: stop sending drugs and criminals to our country,’ White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement to Fox News Digital on Tuesday. ‘The President is prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding in to our country.’

The White House did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital on The Miami Herald’s report. 

Additionally, the New York Post reported on Tuesday that U.S. officials are discussing potentially sending Maduro to Qatar, although officials familiar with Qatar’s role in the negotiations said Maduro will not head there. It’s unclear where Maduro would flee to, and no countries have confirmed they will accept him. 

Trump’s reported negotiation with Maduro comes as the strikes in the Caribbean are facing heightened scrutiny from the legal community and lawmakers.

While lawmakers have questioned the legality of the strikes since the beginning, the attacks have come under renewed scrutiny after the Washington Post reported on Friday that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth verbally ordered everyone onboard the alleged drug boat to be killed in a Sept. 2 operation. The Post reported that a second strike was conducted to take out the remaining survivors on the boat. 

On Monday, the White House confirmed that a second strike had occurred, but disputed that Hegseth ever gave an initial order to ensure that everyone on board was killed when asked specifically about Hegseth’s instructions.

The White House also said Monday that Hegseth had authorized Adm. Frank ‘Mitch’ Bradley to conduct the strikes, and that Bradley was the one who ordered and directed the second one. 

At the time of the Sept. 2 strike, Bradley was serving as the commander of Joint Special Operations Command, which falls under U.S. Special Operations Command. He is now the head of U.S. Special Operations Command. 

According to Hegseth, carrying out a subsequent strike on the alleged drug boat was the right call. 

‘Admiral Bradley made the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat,’ Hegseth said Tuesday. 

Altogether, the Trump administration has conducted more than 20 strikes against alleged drug boats in Latin American waters, and has enhanced its military presence in the Caribbean to align with Trump’s goal to crack down on drugs entering the U.S.

The last confirmed strike occurred on Nov. 15. Hegseth said Tuesday that although there has been a pause in strikes in the Caribbean because alleged drug boats are becoming harder to find, the Trump administration’s crusade against drugs will continue. 

‘We’ve only just begun striking narco-boats and putting narco-terrorists at the bottom of the ocean because they’ve been poisoning the American people,’ Hegseth said Tuesday. 

Here we go again.

After a resounding 99–1 defeat in the Senate earlier this year, the Big Tech oligarchs are hard at work doing what they do best: trying to sneak a massive corporate giveaway into must-pass legislation in the dead of night. This time, they’re targeting the National Defense Authorization Act, a bill essential to our military and national security, as the vehicle for decade-long AI amnesty. Or another must-pass bill, if the NDAA doesn’t work for them. Or even a legally questionable executive order, as their Hail Mary.

They tried this in July. And now, led once again by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., they want to ram through a federal takeover of AI with zero meaningful rules or even guardrails. They call it ‘federal preemption.’ But let’s be blunt: federal preemption with no federal rules is not governance. It’s amnesty. Total, blanket, corporate amnesty for trillion-dollar Big Tech monopolists who have spent decades crushing competition, shuttering small businesses, canceling conservatives and harming children.

If their idea is so great, why are they terrified of public debate? Why are they running from votes? Why do they only try to pass this through 9,000-page must-pass bills in the dead of night?

Because they know the truth: If the American people ever saw what’s really in these proposals, the answer would be the same as last time: Hell. No.

Big Tech already showed us exactly what it does with immunity. Section 230 created a legal shield for Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple. These trillion-dollar monopolists used their government-granted amnesty to censor conservatives, manipulate elections, destroy competition and turn the Internet into a surveillance empire. Now they want the same deal for AI. But bigger. And more dangerous.

This ‘AI amnesty’ blocks states from protecting their own citizens. No state rules. No local safeguards. And absolutely no federal guardrails. A total vacuum, and the perfect playground for tech oligarchs who want to scrape every work of American creativity, censor every voice they dislike, experiment on children’s developing minds with unsafe AI tools and plant data centers wherever they please while working-class families foot the energy bill.

Big Tech insists this is necessary to ‘compete with China.’ That is nonsense. These companies spent years doing China’s bidding. Google killed America’s Project Maven, our drone AI program, because its woke employees protested helping the U.S. military. At the same time, Google was running Project Dragonfly, a censorship system built for the Chinese Communist Party. They wouldn’t help our troops, but they were happy to help the CCP censor its own citizens.

And now these same companies claim they’re our last defense against China? Please.

Their real concern isn’t China. It’s profit. They want carte blanche to steal every copyright in America, train their machines on it and cash in, all without paying a dime to the creators whose work built this country’s entertainment, journalism and cultural industries. They want to replace America’s creative economy with a copy-paste machine. And they want Congress to bless it.

The American people deserve better, and President Trump consistently demonstrates the leadership needed to stop this scam. When Big Tech and its lobbyists pressured him to accept AI amnesty earlier this year, he stood firm. He refused to sell out the American people to Silicon Valley. And that courage helped kill the deal 99–1.

The American people understand what’s at stake. We know Big Tech can’t be trusted, not with our data, not with our elections, and certainly not with artificial intelligence. We know we can’t ‘steal like China to compete against China,’ nor can we become digital sharecroppers on our own soil just to pad corporate profits.

If Congress wants to discuss federal preemption, fine. But it must get done through regular order. Public hearings. Public debate. Up-or-down votes. And only after legislation is drafted that protects the people Big Tech has targeted for years: conservatives, children, creators and communities. The 4 Cs must get protection in any AI deal.

Conservatives must finally gain protection from the censorship that these monopolists weaponized for decades. We must protect children from predatory AI systems, including chatbots that have advised depressed minors to kill themselves – and their parents. Or AI teddy bears – Pedo Bears – that speak in sexually explicit terms to kids. Creators deserve protection from the copyright theft that Big Tech openly admits it needs to train its models. And we must safeguard our communities from data centers that raise energy costs, drain water supplies and bulldoze residential neighborhoods, so Silicon Valley can build another server farm.

These are not radical demands. These are basic, commonsense protections in a free society. But Big Tech insists that any safeguards, any at all, will ‘slow innovation,’ ‘harm national security,’ ‘hurt competitiveness’ or even ‘help China.’ Those talking points are as dishonest as they are insulting.

Big Tech executives think they can buy Congress, hide behind fake national-security arguments and bully America into agreeing to their terms. They thought they could get away with it last time. They were wrong. With President Trump’s leadership, with grassroots conservatives mobilized, and with the sunlight of exposure, we beat them. And we will beat them again.

But only if Congress hears loud and clear: No AI amnesty. Not in the NDAA. Not in any other must-pass legislation. Not in an executive order. Not ever.

The Big Tech oligarchs spent hundreds of millions of dollars chasing Trump out of office in 2020. They’ve censored, silenced, de-platformed and canceled Trump, his aides and his allies. If we give these Big Tech oligarchs AI amnesty, it’s only so they can continue to censor conservatives, prey on children, drive-up electricity and water bills in communities and rip off creators.

If the tech oligarchs want a debate, they can step into the arena. They can defend their ideas in the open. They can answer for the children harmed, the conservatives censored, the creators robbed and the communities exploited. They can stop hiding behind lobbyists and must-pass bills and make their case like everyone else.

Until then, Congress must reject any attempt to slide this corporate giveaway into the NDAA, any other must-pass legislation or any executive order. No shortcuts. No back-room tricks. No surrender to the Silicon Valley oligarchy.

The stakes are too high. The consequences are too great. And the American people are watching.

Hell no to AI amnesty. Protect our children. Protect our creators. Protect our communities. Protect our country.

President Donald Trump said Tuesday he still likes ‘Elon a lot,’ despite their high-profile split earlier this year over the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

At the end of the administration’s monthly Cabinet meeting, FOX Business’ Edward Lawrence asked Trump whether Musk was ‘back in [his] circle of friends’ after their falling-out.

Trump responded: ‘Well, I really don’t know. I mean, I like Elon a lot.’ He praised Musk’s endorsement during the 2024 campaign before noting their disagreement over electric-vehicle policy.

Musk was a fixture in the White House in the early days of the second Trump administration as he took on the role as the Department of Government Efficiency’s de facto leader. He served as a special government employee with the Trump administration to help lead DOGE, frequently attending Cabinet meetings and joining Trump during public events. Musk’s tenure with DOGE wrapped up at the end of May. 

Musk had also championed Trump during the 2024 election cycle, criss-crossing battleground states that ultimately all voted for the Republican candidate over former Vice President Kamala Harris. 

Trump repeatedly celebrated Musk for his efforts at DOGE to remove potential federal overspending, fraud and mismanagement – an effort assailed by government employees and Democrats who protested both the Trump administration and Musk repeatedly earlier this year. 

The cozy friendship fell to pieces in June, however, when Musk began publicly ridiculing the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill,’ which was a massive piece of legislation Trump signed into law in July that advances his agenda on taxes, immigration, energy, defense and the national debt. 

Musk railed against the legislation, which Trump had been rallying Republican lawmakers to pass since the beginning of his second term, posting on X that it would be the ‘BIGGEST DEBT ceiling increase in HISTORY’ and also claimed in a personal attack on Trump that ‘@RealDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files.’ 

Trump previously told the media that his relationship with Musk changed when he began discussing plans to eliminate the electic vehicle mandate, which would affect Musk’s signature electric company, Tesla. Trump signed a trio of congressional resolutions in June ending California’s restrictive rules for diesel engines and mandates on electric vehicle sales, with Trump celebrating that his signature ‘will kill the California mandates forever.’

The pair abruptly parted ways in June, with Musk weeks later offering some support to Trump’s presidential actions on social media, such as praising a ceasefire deal between Israel and Gaza in July.

Musk was seen physically back in Trump’s orbit in September during the memorial service for Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA’s founder who was assassinated on Sept. 10. The pair was seen sitting next to each other and chatting during the ceremony. 

Musk most recently attended a Trump event on Nov. 18 at the White House for a dinner with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, as well as dozens of high-profile business leaders. 

Trump’s latest remarks on Musk unfolded during his Cabinet meeting, which marked his ninth such meeting since the start of his second administration and matched the total number of full Cabinet meetings former President Joe Biden held across his four-year tenure. 

Senate Republicans are divided on their view of the deadly Sept. 2 strikes in the Caribbean as congressional inquiries into the matter mount, with some arguing that subduing suspected drug boats is the right move while others question the legality of the so-called double-tap attacks.

The Senate and House Armed Services committees are gearing up for hearings into the strikes after reports that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, later confirmed by the White House, authorized a second strike to eliminate survivors on a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean.

But there is a growing tension among Republicans over what to do. Some support the desire of Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker, R-Miss., for stringent oversight of the incident, while others see the strikes as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on drugs flowing into the country.

Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, told Fox News Digital he was ‘very, very, very supportive of killing drug dealers. I think the more narco-terrorists that we kill, that we save American lives.’

‘I’m not concerned about killing people whose intent was to kill Americans at all,’ Moreno said.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that Hegseth gave the green light for the second strike, but noted that it was Adm. Frank Bradley, the head of U.S. Special Operations Command, who ordered and directed it.

That confirmation came after a report from The Washington Post claimed Hegseth had ordered to ‘kill them all,’ which some on the Hill have disputed.

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said he read the article and charged that there ‘wasn’t an exact quote from Secretary Hegseth. There was an anonymous source paraphrased what the secretary allegedly said.’

‘So, here we’ve got a story in The Washington Post, which is known to hate Trump and Republicans, by a reporter who is citing an anonymous source that supposedly is saying that Hegseth said it before the strike even happened, but they don’t know exactly what he said,’ Kennedy said. ‘That is a waste of your time and mine.’

When pressed about Leavitt’s confirmation of the authorization, Kennedy said, ‘I don’t care what the White House press secretary said.’

Still, some Republicans want answers to what exactly happened.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., reiterated that he believed that the Senate and House Armed Services committees’ impending probes into the matter was a ‘natural place’ to look at what happened with the strikes, but he stopped short of weighing in on whether a second strike was right or wrong. 

‘Well, I don’t know the particulars yet, and that’s why we’re gonna have the — we’ll look,’ Thune said. 

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said that since the report came out, ‘We want to get to the facts.’

‘Obviously, if there was a direction to take a second shot and kill people, that’s a violation of an ethical, moral or legal code,’ Tillis said. ‘We need to get to the bottom of it. But right now, it could be, I think, was it Oxford that the word of the year is ‘rage bait’? Could be rage bait too. So we want to get to the facts.’

Senate Democrats are demanding a fulsome dive into the incident, and toeing the line of whether what transpired was a war crime.

Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he expected to have a briefing with Bradley this week.

When asked what questions he wanted to be answered, Reed said the top priority was to find out whether the strikes comported with ‘the law of war and [Uniform Code of Military Justice] and international law.’

‘I think one of the easiest ways to begin to dispel the question is to make public the video of the strikes,’ Reed said.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., has, time and again this Congress, remained a staunch critic of action taken in Iran and in the Caribbean and moved to curtail the administration’s actions through resolutions that would stymie President Donald Trump’s war powers.

He said lawmakers needed to get to the bottom of ‘whether a war crime has been committed.’

Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., was cautious not to fully paint the incident as a war crime before getting more facts, adding that he hoped the reports of the strikes were ‘not accurate.’

‘I will say, though you know as somebody who has sunk two ships myself, that folks in the military need to understand, you know, the law of the sea, the Geneva Conventions, what the law says,’ Kelly said. ‘And I’m concerned that if there were, in fact, as reported, you know, survivors clinging to a damaged vessel, that could be, you know, over a line. I hope it’s not the case.’

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is seeking to reform the funding structure for presidential libraries in an effort to reduce reliance on taxpayer funding for operational costs and allow NARA to focus more on preserving and providing access to records. 

Fourteen presidential libraries fall under the National Archives system, and that number is expected to jump to 16 for presidential libraries dedicated to Trump and former President Joe Biden. 

While NARA and the presidential foundations have their own individual agreements outlining cost-sharing burdens for these presidential libraries, taxpayer funding is going toward maintenance costs, including mowing lawns, painting walls and cleaning toilets at nearly all these buildings, according to NARA. 

Additionally, the government contracting process for quick repairs like broken door hinges filters through an approval process in Washington and can take weeks or months to be addressed, the agency said. 

As a result, NARA is in the process of negotiating with each presidential foundation on an individual basis so they can take greater ownership of the operational responsibilities for their specific library, Jim Byron, senior advisor to the archivist, told Fox News Digital.

‘Despite decades of well-intentioned oversight and stewardship of America’s presidential libraries by the National Archives, reality now dictates that operational changes can and should be made to ensure the long-term health of these American treasures,’ Byron said in a statement to Fox News Digital Monday. 

‘Presidential libraries have grown in scope and purpose, and with that growth — and with anticipated future additions to the system — comes increased expenditures to be borne by the American taxpayers.’ 

NARA spends $91 million annually on presidential libraries from appropriations, and the deferred maintenance costs across the entire library system total roughly $123 million. 

Under current negotiations that launched in the spring between NARA and the presidential foundations, shifting some of the costs to the presidential foundations is expected to save NARA $27 million. These funds will then be shifted toward NARA’s primary mission of preserving and sharing records, including digitizing and releasing more files, Byron said.

In the event that changes aren’t made to shift more operational costs to presidential foundations, NARA’s ability to focus on its mission will be jeopardized, according to Byron. 

‘The alternative is to do nothing and allow NARA’s appropriations to go to lawn care and toilet cleaning at the expense of FOIA processing, to close all presidential libraries when the government shuts down, to allow a deferred maintenance backlog to grow and to regret that presidential library structures were not addressed,’ Byron said. ‘The National Archives is committed to making sure that doesn’t happen while delivering for the American people.’

Luke Nichter, a history professor at Chapman University who said he averages 100 days annually for research and interviews with former government officials, told Fox News Digital that, given the constraints of the federal budget, it’s necessary for presidential foundations to shoulder more of the cost for upkeep of these presidential libraries.

‘It now takes about as much money to build a presidential library as it does to run for president — about a billion dollars,’ Nichter said in an email to Fox News Digital Tuesday. ‘The American taxpayer should not bear that. The administration deserves credit for starting an important conversation about the future of these cherished institutions.

‘In the future, the National Archives will have to focus more closely on what it does well — the preservation of federal and presidential records — and leave other functions to the presidential foundations.’ 

This most recent effort aligns with other initiatives underway at the National Archives aimed at redirecting efforts to the agency’s mission, including working with other agencies to release the John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Amelia Earhart files. 

The presidential library structure varies, and NARA and each presidential foundation have their own separate public-private agreements. Typically, though, private funds are used to create a presidential library, which NARA then oversees using federal funding.

But this isn’t always the case. For example, the Obama Foundation is an entirely private entity and did not choose to construct a library for NARA to store documents, instead opting to build a private presidential center and private museum. As a result, NARA digitized and stored Obama presidential records at an existing NARA site and still oversees preserving and providing access to those records. 

Previous efforts to revamp the funding partnership between government and private entities successfully occurred in 2018, when NARA coordinated with each presidential foundation to discuss which operations it could take on amid increased budget constraints. Ultimately, those negotiations led to NARA and the George W. Bush Foundation securing a new deal splitting operational costs. 

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth chastised the press following media reports that he signed off on a second strike against an alleged drug boat after the first one left survivors. 

The Trump administration has come under renewed scrutiny for its strikes in the Caribbean targeting alleged drug smugglers, after the Washington Post reported on Friday that Hegseth verbally ordered everyone onboard the alleged drug boat to be killed in a Sept. 2 operation. The Post reported that a second strike was conducted to take out the remaining survivors on the boat. 

On Monday, the White House confirmed that a second strike had occurred, but disputed that Hegseth ever gave an initial order to ensure that everyone on board was killed, when asked specifically about Hegseth’s instructions.

Hegseth said that he watched the first strike live, but did not see any survivors at that time amid the fire and the smoke — and blasted the press for their reporting.

‘This is called the fog of war. This is what you in the press don’t understand,’ Hegseth told reporters at a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday. ‘You sit in your air-conditioned offices or up on Capitol Hill and you nit pick, and you plant fake stories in the Washington Post about ‘kill everybody’ phrases on anonymous sources not based in anything, not based in any truth at all. And then you want to throw out really irresponsible terms about American heroes, about the judgment that they made.’ 

Hegseth said that after watching the first strike, he left for a meeting and later learned of the second strike. The White House said Monday that Hegseth had authorized Adm. Frank ‘Mitch’ Bradley to conduct the strikes, and that Bradley was the one who ordered and directed the second one. 

At the time of the Sept. 2 strike, Bradley was serving as the commander of Joint Special Operations Command, which falls under U.S. Special Operations Command. He is now the head of U.S. Special Operations Command.

According to Hegseth, carrying out a subsequent strike on the alleged drug boat was the right call. 

‘Admiral Bradley made the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat,’ Hegseth said Tuesday. 

Meanwhile, reports of the second strike have attracted even more scrutiny from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill and calls for greater oversight, amid questions about the strikes’ legality. 

‘This committee is committed to providing rigorous oversight of the Department of Defense’s military operations in the Caribbean,’ Reps. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., and Adam Smith, D-Wash., who lead the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement on Saturday. ‘We take seriously the reports of follow-on strikes on boats alleged to be ferrying narcotics in the SOUTHCOM region and are taking bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of the operation in question.’

Hegseth said Tuesday that although there has been a pause in strikes in the Caribbean because alleged drug boats are becoming harder to find, the Trump administration’s campaign against the influx of drugs will continue. 

‘We’ve only just begun striking narco-boats and putting narco-terrorists at the bottom of the ocean because they’ve been poisoning the American people,’ Hegseth said. 

The Trump administration has carried out more than 20 strikes against alleged drug boats in Latin American waters, and has bolstered its military presence in the Caribbean to align with Trump’s goal to crack down on the influx of drugs into the U.S.