President Donald Trump appeared to distance the U.S. from the conflict between Russia and Ukraine — just two days after speaking over the phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

Trump, who called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy Monday after speaking to Putin, told reporters Wednesday that the conflict didn’t involve the U.S., despite the fact that the U.S. has adopted the role of mediator between the two countries since Trump came into the White House in January. 

‘It’s not our people, it’s not our soldiers … it’s Ukraine and it’s Russia,’ Trump said in the Oval Office Wednesday while hosting South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. 

Trump also mentioned speaking with Zelenskyy while the Ukrainian president was traveling to South Africa. Zelenskyy visited Ramaphosa in April, but cut his trip short amid attacks from Russia against Kyiv. 

‘I called Zelensky and they said, he’s in South Africa. I said, what the hell is he doing in South Africa?’ Trump said. 

Ramaphosa responded that Zelenskyy was talking with South Africa speaking with him about securing peace. 

‘He’s trying to make peace,’ he said. 

Trump also said Wednesday he believed he ‘made a lot of progress’ with Putin in his Monday call, during which both countries ultimately agreed to a ceasefire and to advance peace talks. However, Trump also indicated that both Moscow and Kyiv would need to take the lead on future talks. 

‘The conditions for that will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be, because they know the details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of,’ Trump said in a Monday post on Truth Social. 

Trump and other members of his administration have signaled in recent weeks that the U.S. is willing to step aside from peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv. For example, Vice President JD Vance said Monday that the discussions between the two had reached a bit of an ‘impasse’ and that the U.S. was ‘more than willing’ to step aside from the talks. 

‘There is fundamental mistrust between Russia and the West. It’s one of the things the president thinks is, frankly, stupid,’ Vance told reporters Monday. ‘That we should be able to move beyond. The mistakes that have been made in the past, but … That takes two to tango.’ 

‘I know the president’s willing to do that, but if Russia’s not willing to that then we’re eventually just going to have to say… This is not our war,’ Vance said. ‘It’s Joe Biden’s war, it’s Vladimir Putin’s war. It’s not our war. We’re going to try to end it, but if we can’t end it we’re eventually going to say, you know what? That was worth a try, but we’re not doing it anymore.’

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

The conservative House Freedom Caucus is demanding House GOP leaders delay plans to vote on President Donald Trump’s ‘one big, beautiful bill’ this week.

The group of GOP rebels is joining House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., for a meeting at the White House later on Wednesday in an apparent bid to hash out differences on the massive piece of legislation, Fox News was told.

‘I don’t think it can be done today. I mean, the runway is short today,’ House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., told reporters in a press conference on Wednesday.

Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., said the group accepted an ‘offer’ from the White House on Tuesday night. He suggested the offer was not yet included in the broad-based bill that Republicans are hoping to pass via the budget reconciliation process this year.

‘We need to continue to work at that. We as members are at the table. We don’t want the deal to be ended,’ Perry said.

A House Freedom Caucus source told Fox News Digital that the speaker was still ‘digesting’ the agreement, though lawmakers at the press conference declined to say what the deal was, but a White House official pushed back in a statement to Fox News Radio.

‘There was no deal. The White House presented HFC with policy options that the Administration can live with, provided they can get the votes, but they cannot get the votes,’ the official said. ‘There was no deal. The HFC will meet with the president at 3pm to hopefully strike one.’

A House GOP leadership aide also told Fox News Digital that the White House only provided the Freedom Caucus with policy options rather than a deal.

Johnson had told reporters this week that the bill could see a chamber-wide vote as early as Wednesday. However, Harris said, ‘I’m not sure this can be done this week. I’m pretty confident it could be done in 10 days. But that’s up to leadership to decide.’

House conservatives have been pushing for the bill to include more aggressive cuts to Medicaid – specifically the expanded population who became eligible under the Affordable Care Act – and a full repeal of former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and its green energy subsidies.

Allies of Johnson and other House GOP leaders have accused the GOP rebels of ‘moving the goal posts’ from their initial demands of needing at least $1.5 trillion in spending cuts to offset the cost of new spending in the bill. 

However, Harris challenged that notion during the press conference.

‘We’re saying work within the goalposts, rearrange it within the goalposts in accordance with what the president wants – end waste, fraud and abuse in Medicaid, which is wasting dollars that should be spent on the truly vulnerable, and then end as much of the green new scam as possible,’ Harris said.

Earlier this morning, two key critics of the bill told Fox News Digital that negotiations between the House Freedom Caucus and House GOP leaders had regressed.

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said talks went ‘massively south’ but declined to go into detail. Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., similarly said in a text message to Fox News Digital, ‘THINGS ARE NOT GOING WELL!!’

There are several outstanding issues with the bill that have not yet been resolved – blue state Republicans pushing for a raise in state and local tax (SALT) deduction caps, and conservatives demanding stricter work requirement rules for Medicaid as well as a full repeal of green energy subsidies in the IRA.

Conservatives have been wary of the New York and California GOP lawmakers’ push, however.

The House Rules Committee, the final gatekeeper before most legislation sees a House-wide vote, has been debating the bill since 1 a.m. Wednesday. The debate is expected to go through the better part of the day.

Critically, Norman and Roy are members of the rules panel – but even if they both voted against it in committee, the numbers are still on Republicans’ side to advance it.

The House of Representatives, where Republicans can lose just three votes to pass anything along party lines, is another story.

Republicans are working to pass Trump’s policies on tax, immigration, energy, defense and the national debt all in one massive bill via the budget reconciliation process.

Budget reconciliation lowers the Senate’s threshold for passage from 60 votes to 51, thereby allowing the party in power to skirt the minority — in this case, Democrats — to pass sweeping pieces of legislation, provided they deal with the federal budget, taxation or the national debt.

House Republicans are hoping to advance Trump’s bill through the House and Senate by the Fourth of July.

Vice President JD Vance’s suggestion this week that the U.S. could walk away from supporting Ukraine if peace talks with Russia stagnate could serve as catnip for the Kremlin, according to experts who say Russian President Vladimir Putin might choose to smother progress in hopes of getting America to wash ‘its hands of the war.’

WhilePresident Donald Trump has indicated that the U.S. may disengage from the negotiations as a last resort if they prove futile, Vance has taken the rhetoric a step further by saying the U.S. is definitely open to doing so. 

‘We’re more than open to walking away,’ Vance told reporters on board Air Force Two on Monday, just moments before a high-stakes phone call between Trump and Putin. ‘The United States is not going to spin its wheels here. We want to see outcomes.’

But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy cautioned that no one wins if the U.S. steps aside from the talks, except for Russia. 

‘It is crucial for all of us that the United States does not distance itself from the talks and the pursuit of peace because the only one who benefits from that is Putin,’ Zelenskyy wrote in a Monday post on X.

Vance’s remark about abandoning mediation between the two countries would only embolden Russia, even though a lack of U.S. involvement still wouldn’t give Putin everything he wants, according to John Hardie, the deputy director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Russia program, a nonprofit research institute based in Washington.

For the moment, Moscow still benefits from U.S. involvement in the talks because the Kremlin wants the U.S. to help advance a deal that benefits Russia and alleviates sanctions, Hardie said.

‘But, for the Kremlin, the United States washing its hands of the war would be the next best outcome if it means an end or reduction to U.S. support for Ukraine, especially since President Trump may well move to normalize relations with Russia anyhow,’ Hardie told Fox News Digital. ‘So the administration’s threat to walk away risks perversely incentivizing Kremlin intransigence. A better approach would be to ramp up the economic and military pressure on Russia if Putin continues to reject compromise.’

Russia still desires normalization with the U.S., which can only happen if the war ends swiftly and relatively amicably, said Peter Rough, a senior fellow and director of the Center on Europe and Eurasia at the Hudson Institute think tank. 

‘That reset in relations is a giant carrot the administration is dangling in front of the Kremlin,’ Rough told Fox News Digital. ‘If the U.S. walks away because Russia will not make peace, however, then that carrot disappears as well.’

Rough noted that other administration officials besides Vance, including Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have mentioned the possibility of walking away from a deal, so Vance’s comments don’t necessarily reflect a huge change in policy. And it’s unclear right now what exactly stepping aside would mean.

‘The purpose of those comments has been to impress on the Kremlin that U.S. patience is not limitless,’ Rough said. 

Vance hasn’t shied away from issuing bold foreign policy statements since becoming vice president. From sparring with Zelenskyy in the Oval Office in Februaryto appearing to counter Trump when Vance remarked in May that the war in Ukraine was far from over after Trump indicated a deal might emerge soon, Vance has been outspoken in a way most vice presidents haven’t been.

When asked for comment or if there were any concerns about Vance’s Monday statement, the White House referred Fox News Digital to Vance’s office. Vance’s office declined to provide comment when asked if his remarks would encourage Russia to sit the negotiations out and continue its attacks.

‘Fundamental mistrust’

Vance has adopted an outspoken approach as vice president, starting off with his fiery February statements at the Munich Security Council in which he asserted that Europe needed to ‘step up in a big way to provide for its own defense.’ 

That boldness has carried over into the Russia-Ukraine negotiations, where Vance has taken a proactive approach, at times appearing to be forging his own path.  

Vance and Rubio engaged in discussions to end the conflict in Ukraine with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Rome on Sunday, among other issues. Vance and Rubio also discussed the Trump administration’s efforts to end the war with Vatican prelate Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher on Monday. 

Aboard Air Force Two on Monday, Vance said the negotiations had reached ‘a bit of [an] impasse’ between the two countries and that the conflict is not the Trump administration’s war to wage but rather belongs to former President Joe Biden and Putin. 

‘There is fundamental mistrust between Russia and the West. It’s one of the things the president thinks is, frankly, stupid, that we should be able to move beyond,’ Vance told reporters. ‘The mistakes that have been made in the past, but … that takes two to tango.’

‘I know the president’s willing to do that, but if Russia’s not willing to do that, then we’re eventually just going to have to say … this is not our war,’ Vance said. ‘It’s Joe Biden’s war, it’s Vladimir Putin’s war. It’s not our war. We’re going to try to end it, but if we can’t end it, we’re eventually going to say, ‘You know what? That was worth a try, but we’re not doing it anymore.”

Vance’s Monday statement came just before Trump was scheduled to speak with Putin, seemingly undercutting the high-leverage telephone call and also underscoring Vance’s influence over foreign policy matters in the White House. 

Specifically on Ukraine negotiations, Vance has remained outspoken, engaging in confrontation when Zelenskyy visited the White House in February. 

In that exchange, Vance accused Zelenskyy of being ‘disrespectful’ after Zelenskyy pointed out that Putin has a track record of breaking agreements and countered Vance’s statements that the path forward was through diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine. 

‘Do you think that it’s respectful to come to the Oval Office of the United States of America and attack the administration that is trying to prevent the destruction of your country?’ Vance asked at the Oval Office meeting. 

Almost immediately after the U.S. signed a minerals deal with Ukraine on May 1, Vance said the war in Ukraine wouldn’t end in the near future, despite the fact that Trump indicated the previous week that an agreement was on the horizon. 

‘It’s not going anywhere,’ Vance told Fox News on May 1. ‘It’s not going to end anytime soon.’ 

Still, he characterized the agreement as ‘good progress’ in the negotiations. 

Trump’s talk with Putin

Trump and Putin spoke over the phone Monday to advance peace negotiations to halt the conflict between Moscow and Kyiv, just days after Russia and Ukraine met in Turkey to conduct their first peace talks since 2022. 

After the call, Trump said both countries would move toward a ceasefire and advance talks to end the war. 

Meanwhile, Trump has suggested continued U.S. involvement may not be a viable option moving forward, but he has been reticent about specifics on what would actually prompt him to walk away from the talks. For example, Trump said on May 8 in an interview with NBC News that he believes peace is possible but that the U.S. wouldn’t act as a mediator forever.

‘Well, there will be a time when I will say, ‘OK, keep going, keep being stupid,’ Trump said in the interview. 

‘Maybe it’s not possible to do,’ he said. ‘There’s tremendous hatred.’

Still, Trump signaled that the U.S. would take a backseat in the negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv after his call with Putin. 

‘The conditions for that will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be, because they know the details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of,’ Trump said in a Monday post on Truth Social. 

Trump has continued to distance the U.S. from the conflict, and he later described the conflict as a ‘European situation.’ 

‘Big egos involved, but I think something’s going to happen,’ Trump told reporters on Monday. ‘And if it doesn’t, I’ll just back away and they’ll have to keep going. This was a European situation. It should have remained a European situation.’

Trump also doubled down on extracting the U.S. from the war, claiming it didn’t involve U.S. personnel. 

‘It’s not our people, it’s not our soldiers … it’s Ukraine and it’s Russia,’ Trump said in the Oval Office on Wednesday while hosting South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

According to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, sanctions against Russia could ramp up in the event Russia fails to cooperate. 

‘President Trump has made it very clear that if President Putin does not negotiate in good faith that the United States will not hesitate to up the Russia sanctions along with our European partners,’ Bessent said Sunday in an interview with NBC. 

Vance has previously said the concessions that Russia is seeking from Ukraine to end the conflict are too stringent but believes there is a viable path to peace and wants both to find common ground. 

‘The step that we would like to make right now is we would like both the Russians and the Ukrainians to actually agree on some basic guidelines for sitting down and talking to one another,’ Vance said at the Munich Leaders Meeting in Washington on May 7.

Russia’s demands include Ukraine never joining NATO and preventing foreign peacekeeper troops from deploying to Ukraine after the conflict. Russia is also seeking to adjust some of the borders that previously were Ukraine’s.

When history gazes back upon the presidency of Joseph Robinette Biden, one question will stand out: Who was really running the country? Because it certainly wasn’t the so-called commander in chief.

But perhaps, it wasn’t really a question of who. Maybe we were governed by something much closer to an invisible hand of wokeness. Maybe we were governed by a twisted worldview, not a conspiracy or solitary figure.

It is reasonable, and almost comforting, to believe that Barack Obama or some other Democrat luminary was sitting at the center of the political universe like Vishnu, myriad arms pulling levers and flicking switches. But the reality might be far more troubling.

The reality might be that progressive politics have created a self-perpetuating deep state bureaucracy that, left unchecked, couldn’t care less who sits behind the Resolute Desk.

There are a handful of behind-the-scenes power brokers, hiding from public view of late, who clearly had a lot of sway in the Biden White House: Chief of Staff Jeff Zeints, longtime ally Mike Donilon, Senior Adviser Anita Dunn, and the ever-present Susan Rice.

But in all likelihood, they were not running some textbook conspiracy theory to rule in Biden’s name. In fact, the entire Biden administration looks more like a broken play in football; It really was just trying to stay on its feet.

It is telling that the front-facing cabinet members of Biden’s, unlike his hotshot behind-the-scenes team, were feckless, awful and never fired for anything.

Watching our current Secretary of State Marco Rubio cross swords with Democrats in his Senate testimony this week couldn’t help but remind us of someone like hapless Biden Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, sitting in those same rooms, like a scolded child unable to mount a defense for his open borders.

Or how about Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who seemed to have a special Zippo lighter designed to let him fire up conflagrations from Ukraine to the Middle East? Or Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin — when he was available, of course — whose Afghanistan withdrawal made the Keystone Cops look like the A Team?

For four years this ‘aw shucks’ brigade of midwits was allowed to drive our nation off a cliff precisely because nobody was actually in charge.

When the border was a mess and Mayorkas embarrassed himself on the Hill, what would be the process for firing him? The boss is oblivious. Who would actually care enough to go after him? None of the insiders I mentioned above. It wasn’t their legacy, wasn’t their problem. So no accountability.

No. We were governed by a set of progressive assumptions, much like the invisible hand of the market that Adam Smith wrote about. In progressive politics the questions simply answer themselves. It is a system.

Why would Mayorkas let the southern border become a turnstile for foreign gang members? Because first and foremost, we must think of the innocent migrants, even if the cruel open borders policy is getting many of them trafficked.

Why couldn’t the Biden administration back off of the hill of men playing in women’s sports when everyone without pronouns on their business card knows it’s absurd? Because progressive ideology dictates that the oppressed must be right.

Why was the Biden administration unable to forcefully call out antisemitism on our college campuses? Because Jews are now white-adjacent and privileged. 

We were governed by a set of left-wing assumptions.

Think about what almost happened. Even if Democrats had somehow gotten Methusela Biden over the finish line, with his new cancer diagnosis, we now know we would have wound up with Kamala ‘I’m not taking questions at this time’ Harris as president.

Could there be a better example of the fact that, to Democrats, it doesn’t matter in the slightest who is actually in charge?

We do not have two functioning political parties today. We have the GOP and a Democrat Party that is like the Borg from Star Trek, it speaks with a single voice that is somehow always dead wrong.

There is a reason that we have a president. Leadership matters, and in the last 120 or so days, from securing the border to securing trade deals, President Donald Trump has exemplified just how crucial his job really is.

In retrospect, we look back on four years of Biden’s presidency and ask ourselves, what the hell just happened?

What happened was a reign of woke policy agendas that flooded our border, inflated our prices, wrought war across the globe and infiltrated Catholic churches looking for fantastical right-wing extremism.

We may never know exactly what happened, but one thing we do know. It can never be allowed to happen again.

It’s the first time in nearly a decade that a special counsel is not investigating something related to a sitting or former president, but the remnants and revelations of past special counsel probes continue to break through the news cycle.

Every attorney general-appointed special counsel since 2017 has now released their reports, issued their indictments, received their verdicts, shuttered their offices, disassembled their teams and returned to their government or private sector roles.

Essentially, they’ve all moved on. 

First, in 2017, there was Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who was investigating whether members of the first Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election.

Then, in 2019, there was Special Counsel John Durham, who was investigating the origins of the Mueller investigation and the original FBI probe into then-candidate Donald Trump and his campaign. 

Soon, it was 2022, and Special Counsel Jack Smith began investigating then-former President Trump for his alleged improper retention of classified records held at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida after his presidency. Smith also began investigating events surrounding the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Next up, in 2023, Special Counsel Robert Hur was appointed and began investigating now-former President Joe Biden’s alleged improper retention of classified records, which occurred during his vice presidency as part of the Obama administration.

Later in 2023, David Weiss, who had served as U.S. attorney in Delaware and had been investigating Hunter Biden since 2018, was appointed special counsel to continue his yearslong investigation into the now-former first son.

At this point, those investigations have all come to their resolutions: Mueller, in 2019, found there was no collusion; Durham, in 2022, found that the FBI ignored ‘clear warning signs’ of a Hillary Clinton-led plan to inaccurately tie her opponent to Russia using politically funded and uncorroborated opposition research; Smith, in 2022, charged Trump but had those charges tossed; Hur, in 2023, opted against charging Biden; Weiss, in 2023, charged Hunter Biden, who was convicted and later pardoned by his father.

But the curiosity surrounding those investigations that dominated headlines for the better part of a decade remains, largely because of so many loose ends and the prevalence of unanswered questions.

A trickle, sometimes more like a flood, of information and news related to those probes continues to seep into the news cycle.

On Friday night, audio of Biden’s interview with Hur was made public. Hur closed his investigation in 2024 without charging the then-president and infamously described him as a ‘sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.’

Some congressional lawmakers had demanded the release of the audio of Biden’s interview amid questions about the former president’s memory lapses and mental acuity.

The audio – as expected, based on the transcript of the interview released in 2024 – showed Biden struggling with key memories, including when his son, Beau, died; when he left the vice presidency; and why he had classified documents he shouldn’t have had.

In a throwback to another special counsel investigation, the United States Secret Service last week paid a visit to former FBI Director James Comey after he posted a now-deleted image on social media that many interpreted as a veiled call for an assassination of Trump.

Comey on Thursday posted to Instagram an image of seashells on the beach arranged to show ’86 47′ with the caption, ‘Cool shell formation on my beach walk.’

Some interpreted it as a coded message, with ’86’ being slang for ‘get rid of’ and ’47’ referring to Trump, who is the 47th president.

Comey later deleted the post and wrote a message that said, ‘I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.’

Comey was the FBI director who, in 2016, allowed the opening of the bureau’s original Trump-Russia investigation, known inside the FBI as ‘Crossfire Hurricane.’ Trump fired Comey in May 2017. Days later, Mueller was appointed as special counsel to take over that investigation, thus beginning the string of special counsels.

Durham investigated the origins of the FBI probe and found that the FBI did not have any actual evidence to support the start of that investigation. Durham also found that the CIA, in 2016, received intelligence to show that Hillary Clinton had approved a plan to tie then-candidate Trump to Russia; intelligence that the FBI, led by Comey, ignored.

On July 28, 2016, then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed then-President Barack Obama on a plan from one of Clinton’s campaign foreign policy advisers ‘to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.’ 

Biden, Comey, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper were in the Brennan-Obama briefing, according to the Durham report.

After that briefing, the CIA properly forwarded that information through a counterintelligence operational lead (CIOL) to Comey and then-Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok with the subject line ‘Crossfire Hurricane.’

Fox News first obtained and reported on the CIOL in October 2020, which stated, ‘The following information is provided for the exclusive use of your bureau for background investigative action or lead purposes as appropriate.’

‘Per FBI verbal request, CIA provides the below examples of information the CROSSFIRE HURRICANE fusion cell has gleaned to date,’ the memo continued. ‘An exchange (REDACTED) discussing US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning US presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering US elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.’

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

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

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

Durham, in his report, said the FBI, led by Comey, ‘failed to act on what should have been – when combined with other incontrovertible facts – a clear warning sign that the FBI might then be the target of an effort to manipulate or influence the law enforcement process for political purposes during the 2016 presidential election.’

But that intelligence referral document is just one of many that tells the real story behind the investigation that clouded the first Trump administration. 

And Trump has taken steps to ensure the American public has full access to all the documents. 

Trump, in late March, signed an executive order directing the FBI to immediately declassify files concerning the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. 

The FBI is expected to release those documents in the coming weeks. 

As for the other special counsels, Smith recently had his own moment in the news cycle.

FBI Director Kash Patel on Thursday disbanded a public corruption squad in the bureau’s Washington field office. That was the same office that aided Smith’s investigation into Trump.

As for Weiss, after the release of the Biden audio tapes calling further into question the former president’s mental acuity, some, including Trump, are now calling for a review of the pardon of Hunter Biden.

Hunter Biden was found guilty of three felony firearm offenses stemming from Weiss’ investigation. The first son was also charged with federal tax crimes regarding the failure to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes. Before his trial, Hunter Biden entered a surprise guilty plea. The charges carried up to 17 years behind bars. His sentencing was scheduled for Dec. 16, 2024, but his father, then-President Biden, pardoned him on all charges in December 2024.

Trump alleged in a Truth Social post in March that former President Biden’s pardons were ‘void’ due to the ‘fact that they were done by Autopen.’ 

‘The ‘Pardons’ that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen,’ Trump wrote.

‘In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them! The necessary Pardoning Documents were not explained to, or approved by, Biden. He knew nothing about them, and the people that did may have committed a crime,’ Trump added.

Weiss, in his final report, blasted then-President Biden’s characterizations of the probe into Hunter Biden, which Weiss said were ‘wrong’ and ‘unfairly’ maligned Justice Department officials. He also said the presidential pardon made it ‘inappropriate’ for him to discuss whether any additional charges against the first son were warranted.

President Donald Trump evoked Elon Musk during his Oval Office meeting with South Africa’s president on Wednesday, during talks about the ongoing attacks white farmers in the country are facing.

Trump went back and forth with President Cyril Ramaphosa over whether what is occurring in South Africa is indeed a ‘genocide’ against white farmers. At one point, during the conversation, a reporter asked Trump how the United States and South Africa might be able to improve their relations. 

The president said that relations with South Africa are an important matter to him, noting he has several personal friends who are from there, including professional golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, who were present at Tuesday’s meeting, and Elon Musk.

Unprompted, Trump added that while Musk may be a South African native, he doesn’t want to ‘get [him] involved’ in the ongoing foreign diplomacy matters that played out during Tuesday’s meeting. 

‘I don’t want to get Elon involved. That’s all I have to do, get him into another thing,’ Trump said to light laughter. ‘But Elon happens to be from South Africa. This is what Elon wanted. He actually came here on a different subject — sending rockets to Mars — OK? He likes that better. He likes that subject better. But Elon’s from South Africa, and I don’t want to talk to him about that. I don’t think it’s fair to him.’

Musk, who was present at the Oval Office meeting Tuesday, has been an open critic of his native-born country’s government and has described the ongoing conflict there as a ‘genocide.’

Ahead of the meeting with Ramaphosa earlier this month, Musk-owned X garnered backlash over its AI chatbot, Grok, providing unsolicited responses about attacks against white farmers in South Africa. 

Musk’s artificial intelligence company, which makes the technology for Grok, said following complaints that an ‘unauthorized modification’ to Grok’s algorithm is the reason why it kept talking about race and politics in South Africa, according to the Associated Press.

Republicans outperformed Democrats on voter registration in four key battleground states between the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections, according to research by the American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC). 

The bipartisan political consultant non-profit teamed up with analysts from Data Trust, a conservative organization, and Target Smart, which has aligned with Democrats in past election cycles. Compiling data from the 2020 and 2024 elections in Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada and Pennsylvania, the research suggests a national shift in voter registration toward the Republican Party.

‘We wanted a bipartisan analysis because there are so many conventional wisdoms this election challenged,’ Larry Huynh of Trilogy Interactive andDemocrat AAPC Board President said. ‘The data was pretty clear that the Democrats were caught off guard with voter registration and turnout efforts and failed to mount a sufficiently compelling counter-effort to compete. We should all learn from this and take a deeper dive into our voter registration and turnout operations.’

AAPC unveiled the research this week during the 2025 Pollie Awards, a political communications awards program, in Colorado Springs, Colo. 

‘The Trump campaign and the Republican Party deserve considerable recognition for their voter registration success and turnout efforts and the party should try to build on these successes,’ Kyle Roberts of AdImpact and the incoming Republican AAPC Board President told Fox News Digital. 

From 2020 to 2024, the bipartisan political analysis found the share of registered Democrat voters dropped in all four battleground states. Meanwhile, the share of registered unaffiliated and Republican voters increased in Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada and Pennsylvania, according to the data compiled by Data Trust and Target Smart. 

In three out of four of the states analyzed, unaffiliated voters accounted for the largest electoral increase. Democrats saw the largest electoral drop between 2020 and 2024 across the four battleground states, following the same trend as voter registration. 

Voter turnout across party lines dropped in three out of the four battleground states analyzed, the data revealed. And while Democrat turnout dropped more than Republican turnout in those three states, the difference was less than a percentage point in every state but Arizona. 

Data Trust and Target Smart also analyzed trends across demographic groups, including Black, Hispanic and rural voters. The overall increase in Republican registration, turnout and electoral growth was consistent across the demographic groups analyzed. 

President Donald Trump won all seven battleground states in 2024 – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Republicans maintained control of the House of Representatives and won back the Senate. 

70% of voters believed the country was on the wrong track and wanted change in the 2024 presidential election, according to Fox News Voter Analysis. The economy and immigration were top issues as Trump tied inflation to President Joe Biden’s administration and vowed to secure the border on his first day in office. 

As AAPC seeks to analyze Republicans’ inroads with swing state voters in 2024, Democrats are facing their own reckoning this week as a new book reveals the alleged ‘cover-up’ of Biden’s cognitive decline. 

CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios political correspondent Alex Thompson’s book, ‘Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,’ released on Tuesday, paints an unflattering picture of Democrats’ losses in 2024. 

While political commentators focus on what Democrats did wrong in 2024, AAPC’s new data reveals what Republicans did right on voter registration and turnout. 

The Republican National Committee (RNC) opened ‘Black Americans for Trump’ and ‘Latino Americans for Trump’ offices across the battleground states in 2024, seeking to expand their reach among traditionally Democrat voting blocs. 

Over 160,000 volunteers joined the RNC’s ‘Protect the Vote’ efforts on election integrity in 2024, which included more than 100 lawsuits and recruiting poll watchers across the country. Seizing on Republicans’ election distrust following Trump’s loss in 2020, the RNC built a coalition of supporters across the country that propelled voters to the polls and landed Trump a win in 2024. 

House Republicans believe they are close to passing Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill.

After the meeting at the White House, with the president and members of the Freedom Caucus, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) suggested that the House could vote in the overnight on the Big, Beautiful Bill. 

But it quickly became apparent that was a physical – and parliamentary – impossibility. 

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) later introduced a ‘manager’s amendment’ to make final changes to the bill. Those alterations were designed to coax holdouts to vote yes. 

It’s now likely that the House debates the bill in the early hours of Thursday with a vote in perhaps the late morning. 

But Democratic dilatory tactics could further delay passage of the bill. 

It’s possible Democrats could engineer protest votes to ‘adjourn’ the House. Calls to ‘adjourn’ hold special privileges in the House and require immediate consideration.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) could also take advantage of a special debate time on the floor to ‘filibuster’ the measure. Top House leaders from both parties are afforded what’s called the ‘Magic Minute.’ That’s where they are allotted a ‘minute’ to speak on an issue. But the House really allows them to speak as long as they wish out of deference to their position. Then-House Minority Leader and future Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) set the record for the longest speech in November, 2021, delaying considering of former President Biden’s ‘Build Back Better’ Act. McCarthy spoke for eight hours and 32 minutes.

The House Freedom Caucus seems much more satisfied with the upcoming changes to the bill. Especially after the meeting with the president.

But here is the main reason the House wants to move this as quickly as possible:

Republicans don’t want the bill to fester. Problems develop the longer this sits out there. So when you think you have the votes, you put it on the floor and force the issue. There could also be attendance problems later on Thursday or beyond.

This subject has been jawboned to death for weeks. Johnson said weeks ago he wanted this passed by Memorial Day. So Johnson – and President Trump – want GOPers who are skeptical or holdouts to put up or shut up. You do that by putting the bill on the floor and requiring a vote.

That said, it’s possible the GOP leadership might not have the votes ahead of the actual roll call vote. So calling a vote applies pressure on those holdouts. Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) used to ‘grow’ the vote on the House floor. In other words, they would start the vote – not having all the ducks in order – and then ‘grow’ the vote during the actual roll call and cajoling or twisting arms. The same may happen today.

Also, if the vote is a little shy of passage, Republican leaders could hold the vote open and then single out those Republicans who have either voted no or have not cast ballots. Then the leadership can really turn up the heat and accuse them of not supporting the president’s agenda. If push comes to shove, they can then have the President weigh in and use his powers to coax those holdouts to vote yes.

Here’s the long-term outlook: If the House passes the bill, this goes to the Senate. This will be a project which will consume most of June. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) wants this done by July 4. But the question is what the Senate actually produces. The House and Senate must be on the same page. If the Senate crafts a different legislative product, then this must return to the House to sync up. Either the House eats what the Senate put together. Or the House and Senate must blend their differing versions together into a single, unified bill. That could take most of July. Remember that this bill includes an increase in the debt ceiling. The Treasury says Congress must lift the debt ceiling by early August.

President Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ could be headed for a House-wide vote as soon as Wednesday night after its approval by a key committee in an 8-4 vote.

The House Rules Committee, the gatekeeper for most legislation before it gets to the full chamber, first met at 1 a.m. Wednesday to advance the massive bill in time for Speaker Mike Johnson’s Memorial Day deadline for sending it to the Senate.

The panel adjourned shortly before 11 p.m. Wednesday after all four Democrats voted against the measure and all present Republicans voted for it. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, was the lone lawmaker to miss the vote.

Proceedings crept on for hours as Democrats on the committee repeatedly accursed Republicans of trying to move the bill ‘in the dead of night’ and of trying to raise costs for working class families at the expense of the wealthy.

Democratic lawmakers also dragged out the process with dozens of amendments that stretched from early Tuesday well into Wednesday.

Republicans, meanwhile, contended the bill is aimed at boosting small businesses, farmers, and low- and middle-income families, while reducing waste, fraud, and abuse in the government safety net.

In a sign of the meeting’s high stakes, Johnson, R-La., himself visited with committee Republicans shortly before 1 a.m. and then again just after sunrise.

But the committee kicked off its meeting to advance the bill with several key outstanding issues – blue state Republicans pushing for a raise in state and local tax (SALT) deduction caps, and conservatives demanding stricter work requirement rules for Medicaid as well as a full repeal of green energy subsidies granted in former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

A long-awaited amendment to the legislation aimed at fixing those issues debuted around 9 p.m. on Wednesday evening.

The amendment would speed up the implementation of Medicaid work requirements for certain able-bodied recipients from 2029 to December 2026, and award states that did not follow Obamacare-era expansion plans with more federal dollars.

It would also end a host of green energy tax subsidies by 2028 if they did not demonstrate relatively quick return on investment.

Democrats, meanwhile, accused Republicans of hastily trying to change the legislation without proper notice.

Johnson told Fox News Digital during his Wednesday 1 a.m. that he was ‘very close’ to a deal with divided House GOP factions.

Returning from that meeting, Johnson signaled the House would press ahead with its vote either late Wednesday or early Thursday.

But the legislation’s passage through the House Rules Committee does not necessarily mean it will fare well in a House-wide vote.

A pair of House Rules Committee members, Roy and Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., and were two of the conservative House Freedom Caucus members who had called for the House-wide vote to be delayed on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the White House bore down hard on those rebels, demanding a vote ‘immediately’ in an official statement of policy that backed the House GOP bill.

Several of those fiscal hawks were more optimistic after a meeting at the White House with Trump and Johnson, however.

Republicans are working to pass Trump’s policies on tax, immigration, energy, defense and the national debt all in one massive bill via the budget reconciliation process.

Budget reconciliation lowers the Senate’s threshold for passage from 60 votes to 51, thereby allowing the party in power to skirt the minority — in this case, Democrats — to pass sweeping pieces of legislation, provided they deal with the federal budget, taxation or the national debt.

House Republicans are hoping to advance Trump’s bill through the House and Senate by the Fourth of July.

Marco Rubio told Fox News that far-left Democrats espousing regret over voting to confirm him as secretary of state is likely just ‘confirmation’ that he is doing a good job.

Democrat Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen told Rubio during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing yesterday that he ‘regret[ted] voting’ to confirm him as secretary of state after indicating as much on ‘Fox News Sunday’ in March. Rubio shot back at the hearing that Van Hollen’s regret just proves he is doing a good job, and he subsequently told Fox News that the same goes for other Democrats who are expressing regret over their nod of approval to him earlier this year when he was confirmed by the Senate 99-0.

‘In some cases, depending on … whoever you’re talking about and what they stand for, the fact that they don’t like what I’m doing is a confirmation I’m doing a good job,’ Rubio said. ‘That’s how I feel about it.’

A growing number of Democrats are coming out against Rubio despite voting to confirm him, with the bulk of the criticism describing him as a sell-out to the Trump administration.

‘I don’t recognize Secretary Rubio,’ Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., added during the Tuesday Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing with Van Hollen, noting that in the past she had viewed him as ‘a bipartisan’ and ‘pragmatic’ person. 

‘I’m not even mad anymore about your complicity in this administration’s destruction of U.S. global leadership. I’m simply disappointed,’ Rosen said.

Last week, Democrat Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz lamented that Rubio has aligned himself ‘so closely’ with President Donald Trump.

‘President Trump’s narrow and transactional view of the world is not news to anybody. But what is genuinely surprising to me is that Secretary Rubio is aligning himself so closely with it,’ Schatz said during a live event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations last week.

‘This is someone who, up until four months ago, was an internationalist. Someone who believed in America flexing its powers in all manners, but especially through foreign assistance,’ Schatz continued. ‘And yet, he is now responsible for the evisceration of the whole enterprise. He’s a colleague. I voted for him. We talk all the time. But what I’m trying to understand is: What happened?’

Schatz noted that he hopes to see Rubio ‘reemerge, reassert himself and save the enterprise.’

Rubio’s supportive stance on Trump’s foreign aid cuts, his defense of the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and his alleged lack of action to help get him back to the U.S., his approach to the Russia-Ukraine war, and Rubio’s decision to pull visas from foreign college students in the U.S. for stoking anti-Israel sentiment on university campuses are all issues Democrats have pointed to for why they regret voting to confirm Rubio.

The secretary’s alleged role in bringing white South African refugees to the U.S. was also something for which Rubio was chastised by Democrats during his Tuesday testimony on Capitol Hill.

‘I think a lot of us thought that Marco Rubio was going to stand up to Donald Trump,’ Democrat Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy said in March during an interview on CNN. ‘Marco Rubio has not, and that’s been a great disappointment to many of his former colleagues in the Senate.’