President Donald Trump announced a team of four U.S. officials will work on negotiating with Russia and Ukraine to end the war that has raged between the two nations since 2022. 

We ‘agreed to work together, very closely, including visiting each other’s Nations,’ Trump posted to Truth Social on Wednesday about Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. ‘We have also agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately.’ 

‘I have asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of the CIA John Ratcliffe, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, and Ambassador and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, to lead the negotiations which, I feel strongly, will be successful,’ Trump posted to Truth Social on Wednesday, announcing that Russia was ready to hash out negotiations over the ongoing war. 

Negotiations over ending the war reportedly kicked off ‘immediately,’ with Trump previewing on Wednesday that he believes they will reach ‘a cease fire in the not too distant future.’

Fox News Digital took a look at the team of U.S. officials Trump tapped to lead the negotiations as they get underway. 

US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff 

Witkoff was tapped as the special envoy to the Middle East and served as a key figure in striking a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel ahead of Trump taking office, according to Trump’s recent remarks to the press and sources who spoke with Fox News Digital. 

Witkoff traveled to Israel in January to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem before it was announced a ceasefire had been reached between Israel and Hamas. 

Witkoff recently also traveled to Russia to secure the release of U.S. citizen Marc Fogel, who had been in Russian custody since 2021 when he was arrested for possession of marijuana at an airport. 

Witkoff, similar to Trump, is a real estate mogul, who founded real estate firm the Witkoff Group in 1997. 

National Security Advisor Michael Waltz

As national security advisor, Trump appointed Mike Waltz, who served as a Republican U.S. congressman representing Florida from 2019 to 2025. 

Waltz said during a recent interview on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ that conversations to end the war between Ukraine and Russia have weighed heavy on leaders across the globe. 

‘We need to get all sides to the table and end this war,’ he said in the interview. ‘And it has come up in conversations with President Xi, with Prime Minister Modi, with leaders across the Middle East. Everybody is ready to help President Trump end this war. Let’s get all sides to the table and negotiate.’ 

Waltz is a longtime Trump ally and a decorated retired Green Beret who also served in the National Guard as a colonel. 

CIA Director John Ratcliffe 

Newly minted CIA Director John Ratcliffe also will lead negotiations on reaching peace in Russia and Ukraine. Ratcliffe served as director of national intelligence from 2020 to 2021, during the first Trump administration. 

Ratcliff warned during his Senate confirmation hearing to lead the CIA that the nation’s premier foreign intelligence agency was falling behind nations such as Russia and China at leveraging technology for intelligence purposes.

‘We’re not where we’re supposed to be,’ Ratcliffe told the Senate Intelligence Committee in January. 

Ratcliffe served in the U.S. House as a Republican representing Texas from 2015 to 2020. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio

Rubio, the first member of Trump’s Cabinet to be confirmed and sworn in under his second administration, serves as the nation’s 72nd secretary of state. 

Rubio headed to the Munich Security Conference on Thursday – a high-profile annual conference focused on security issues at the international level – where he and Vice President JD Vance met with Zelenskyy on Friday. 

Trump announced that he also spoke with Zelenskyy on Wednesday and that the Ukraine leader wanted to reach a peace deal. 

‘He, like President Putin, wants to make PEACE. We discussed a variety of topics having to do with the War, but mostly, the meeting that is being set up on Friday in Munich, where Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio will lead the Delegation. I am hopeful that the results of that meeting will be positive. It is time to stop this ridiculous War, where there has been massive, and totally unnecessary, DEATH and DESTRUCTION. God bless the people of Russia and Ukraine!’ Trump wrote. 

Rubio served as a Republican U.S senator representing Florida from 2011 to 2025, which included serving as a senior Senate Foreign Relations Committee member, and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Russia and Ukraine have been at war since February 2022, when Russia invaded its neighboring nation. Trump said on the 2024 campaign trail that he would end the war if re-elected, while claiming it would never have begun if he had been in the Oval Office at the time. 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the media on Wednesday when asked about the negotiations that Trump views Putin as both a ‘great competitor’ and ‘at times an adversary.’ 

‘I believe this nation views Putin and Russia as a great competitor in the region, at times an adversary,’ Leavitt said when asked how Trump views Russia and Putin. ‘But as the president has said, as well, he enjoys having good diplomatic relations with leaders around the world. Finding that common ground, also calling them out when they are wrong. Leading from a position of peace through strength. That’s the president’s greatest strength.’ 

Elon Musk indicated in a post on X that millions of people listed in a Social Security database are recorded as centenarians ‘with the death field set to FALSE!’

‘According to the Social Security database, these are the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE! Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security,’ Musk posted, adding a couple of rolling on the floor laughing emojis.

His post features a chart indicating there are more than 20 million listed with ages 100 and higher, including more than 3.9 million in the 130-139 age range, more than 3.5 million in the 140-149 range and more than 1.3 million in the 150-159 range.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Social Security Administration for comment on Monday.

While the U.S. population count in the 2020 census was more than 331 million, the count of people ages 100 and older was more than 80,000, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

‘The logic flow diagram for the Social Security system looks INSANE. No one person actually knows how it works. The payment files that move between Social Security and Treasury have significant inconsistencies that are not reconciled. It’s wild,’ Musk declared in a post on X.

In another post, Musk said ‘there are FAR more ‘eligible’ social security numbers than there are citizens in the USA. This might be the biggest fraud in history.’

President Donald Trump tapped Musk to spearhead the Department of Government Efficiency, an effort to uncover waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Saudi Arabian officials Monday ahead of planned talks in the country between United States diplomats and their Russian counterparts meant to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war. 

Rubio was joined by U.S. National Security Advisor Michael Waltz and Steve Witkoff, the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, in a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman at his palace in the capital city of Riyadh. Rubio also met with Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud earlier Monday after traveling to Riyadh from Israel during his first trip to the Middle East as secretary of state.

Talks are scheduled for Tuesday in Saudi Arabia between the U.S. and Russia. Ukrainian officials are notably expected to be absent from the negotiating table. 

Rubio, Waltz and Witkoff will meet the Russian delegation, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Putin’s foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov set off for the Saudi capital on Monday, according to Russian state TV.  

Addressing reporters in Moscow on Monday, Lavrov said he looked forward to putting an ‘absolutely abnormal period’ of estrangement between the U.S. and Russia behind them, according to the Washington Post. 

‘We want to listen to our partners,’ Lavrov reportedly said. 

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the talks will be primarily focused on ‘restoring the entire range of U.S.-Russian relations, as well as preparing possible talks on the Ukrainian settlement and organizing a meeting of the two presidents.’ 

Bruce said the meeting is aimed at determining how serious the Russians are about wanting peace and whether detailed negotiations can be started.

‘I think the goal, obviously, for everyone is to determine if this is something that can move forward,’ she told reporters traveling with Rubio in Riyadh, according to the Associated Press.

Bruce said that even though Ukraine would not be at the table for Tuesday’s talks, actual peace negotiations would only take place with Ukraine’s involvement. 

Tuesday’s talks are expected to lay the groundwork for the summit between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump said he spoke to Putin on the phone last week and they ‘agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately.’ The call upended years of U.S. policy, ending the isolation of Moscow over its Feb. 24, 2022, invasion of Ukraine. Trump phoned Zelenskyy afterward to inform him about their conversation.

Trump on Sunday told reporters that Zelenskyy ‘will be involved’ but did not elaborate. 

Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron is convening an emergency meeting between the main European powers in Paris on Monday to discuss the Russia-Ukraine conflict. 

Speaking on Fox News’ ‘Sunday Morning Futures,’ Witkoff said he and Waltz will be ‘having meetings at the direction of the president,’ and hope to make ‘some really good progress with regard to Russia-Ukraine.’

Witkoff didn’t directly respond to a question about whether Ukraine would have to give up a ‘significant portion’ of its territory as part of any negotiated settlement. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last week that NATO membership for Ukraine was unrealistic and suggested Kyiv should abandon hopes of winning all its territory back from Russia. 

The Ukrainian president said Monday his country had not been invited to the upcoming talks and won’t accept the outcome if Kyiv doesn’t take part. The U.S.-Russia talks would ‘yield no results,’ given the absence of any Ukrainian officials, Zelenskyy said on a conference call with journalists from the United Arab Emirates, according to the AP. Zelenskyy said he would travel to Turkey on Monday and to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, but that his trip was unrelated to the U.S.-Russia talks.

In an appearance on ‘Fox News Sunday,’ Waltz rejected the notion that European allies are not being consulted on negotiating an end to the Russia-Ukraine war, noting how Rubio, Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent spent last week in Europe meeting with allies. Bessent, in particular, traveled to Kyiv, while Vance met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. 

Waltz said one of the key tenants in negotiating a peace deal would be ensuring ‘a permanent end to the war,’ describing how the conflict has devolved ‘into a World War I-style meat grinder of human beings.’ He said long-term military security guarantees have to be European-led, criticizing how a third of NATO countries are not contributing what they agreed upon a decade ago. 

As for the billions in U.S. aid sent to Ukraine during the Biden administration, Waltz said the American people ‘deserve to be recouped, deserve to have some type of payback for the billions they have invested in this war.’ 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, will soon have access to an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) system that contains sensitive taxpayer information, Fox News has learned.

DOGE has requested access to the IRS Integrated Data Retrieval System, which allows IRS workers to view taxpayer accounts.

Harrison Fields, the White House principal deputy press secretary, told Fox News in a statement that access to this system is necessary to identify fraud and fix the system.

‘Waste, fraud, and abuse have been deeply entrenched in our broken system for far too long,’ Fields said. ‘It takes direct access to the system to identify and fix it. DOGE will continue to shine a light on the fraud they uncover as the American people deserve to know what their government has been spending their hard-earned tax dollars on.’

The IRS website states that the system allows workers ‘to have instantaneous visual access to certain taxpayer accounts.’ Other functions of the system include ‘researching account information and requesting returns,’ entering transactions and collection information, and ‘automatically generating notices, collection documents and other outputs.’

Musk is leading DOGE to aggressively slash government waste when it comes to federal spending under President Donald Trump. It was created via executive order and is a temporary organization within the White House that will spend 18 months carrying out its mission.

The group has faced criticism over its access to federal systems, including the Treasury Department’s payment system, as well as moves to cancel federal contracts and make cuts at various agencies. Attorneys general from 14 states are suing to block DOGE from accessing federal data, arguing Musk and Trump’s administration have engaged in illegal executive overreach.

The newly formed cost-cutting agency scored a win on Friday when a federal judge in Washington declined a request to temporarily block it from accessing sensitive data from the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Fox News Digital’s Michael Dorgan and Eric Revell contributed to this report.

A federal judge expressed skepticism of efforts seeking to bar President Donald Trump’s administration from accessing federal data and firing federal workers when hearing remarks from the bench on Monday. 

Judge Tanya Chutkan has yet to issue a ruling in the case, which relates to billionaire Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and their efforts to curb government spending. Chutkan says she will rule on the case within 24 hours.

At issue in the case are DOGE’s actions within seven federal agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Education, Department of Labor, The Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Energy, Department of Transportation and the Department of Commerce.

Attorneys general from 14 states argue Musk and Trump’s administration have engaged in illegal executive overreach, but Chutkan says she wasn’t convinced so far.

‘There is no greater threat to democracy than the accumulation of state power in the hands of a single, unelected individual,’ the lawsuit brought against DOGE states.

Chutkan says lawyers for the states have yet to establish that there is imminent harm that could be avoided by restraining DOGE.

‘The things that I’m hearing are serious and troubling indeed… But you’re saying these are things that we’re hearing,’ she said. ‘I’m not seeing it so far.’

New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez filed the lawsuit, joined by officials from Arizona, Michigan, Maryland, Minnesota, California, Nevada, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii.

The group of states is seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent more federal firings at the recommendation of Musk and DOGE.

Chutkan was not exclusively hostile to the states’ argument, however, as she was also seen critiquing representatives for Trump’s administration.

‘Nowhere have my friends offered a shred of anything, nor could they, to show that Elon Musk has any formal or actual authority to make any government decisions himself,’ DOJ lawyer Harry Graver said.

Chutkan countered, ‘I think you stretch too far. I disagree with you there.’

The outgoing chairman of the Munich Security Conference delivered an emotional farewell speech that ended in tears, after he expressed ‘fear’ over Vice President JD Vance’s blistering speech to the annual conference on international security policy.

‘This conference started as a trans-Atlantic conference,’ German diplomat and chair of the conference Christoph Heusgen said Sunday. ‘After the speech of Vice President Vance on Friday, we have to fear that our common value base is not that common anymore. I’m very grateful to all those European politicians that spoke out and reaffirmed the values and principles that they are defending. No one did this better than President Zelenskyy, who has been fighting for these values – democracy, freedom, rule of law for the past three years.’ 

Heusgen’s speech marked the close to his leadership of the Munich Security Conference, as former Secretary-General of NATO Jens Stoltenberg takes the reins of the international security forum. Heusgen had served as leader of the forum since 2022. 

Social media critics began posting snippets of Heusgen’s speech to X Sunday, claiming the German diplomat and longtime advisor to former German Chancellor Angela Merkel broke down in tears over his frustrations with Vance’s blistering speech to the international body. The conference clarified on X that the diplomat reportedly broke down due to his speech being his last as chairman of the forum. 

‘Our former Chair Christoph Heusgen did not shed a few tears out of ‘frustration.’ It was his farewell speech as he was leaving the MSC after this year’s conference. He was saying goodbye to the team at this very moment. The video snippet here is edited together,’ the conference posted to X Monday morning. 

The full video of Heusgen’s speech shows him breaking down into tears after warning that ‘our rules-based international order is under pressure.’ 

‘It is clear that our rules-based international order is under pressure,’ he said. ‘It is my strong belief… that this multipolar world needs to be based on a single set of norms and principles, on the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This order is easy to disrupt, it’s easy to destroy, but it’s much harder to rebuild, so let us stick to these values. Let us not reinvent them, but focus on strengthening their consistent application.’ 

President Donald Trump has frequently taken shots at the United Nations since his first administration, and said earlier in February that the U.N. was ‘not being well run’ and needs to get its ‘act together.’ 

‘Let me conclude. And this becomes difficult,’ Heusgen said, choking up, before leaving the podium on the stage and hugging various members of the audience. 

A spokesperson for the conference reiterated to Fox News Digital Monday that Heusgen teared up solely due to the fact that he was ending his three-year term leading the forum and that ‘many long-time participants and friends were in the Conference Hall to say goodbye’ to the diplomat. 

‘I was truly touched by the warm farewell I received from the entire MSC team and so many friends after my last MSC as chairman,’ Heusgen added in comment to Fox News Digital. ‘It was a very emotional moment on stage at the end of my term. A video is circulating on the internet that takes this scene of my departure out of context. Unfortunately, this once again shows how the mechanisms of disinformation work.’

His speech to the assembly followed Vance’s on Friday, where the U.S. vice president lambasted ‘Soviet’-style European censorship, joked about left-wing environmentalist Greta Thunberg, and slammed ongoing immigration woes that have throttled European nations and the U.S. under the Biden administration. 

‘Trust me, I say this with all humor,’ Vance said at one point of his speech. ‘If American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk.’ 

Vance also took issue with current immigration practices across the world, calling them ‘out-of-control migration’ policies that include allowing unvetted migrants into foreign nations. Vance’s comments followed a suspect identified as an Afghan migrant ramming a car into pedestrians at a trade union demonstration in Munich Thursday, killing a mother and child and injuring at least 37 others. 

‘But why did this happen in the first place?’ Vance said in his speech of the Munich car attack. ‘It’s a terrible story, but it’s one we’ve heard way too many times in Europe, and unfortunately, too many times in the United States, as well. An asylum seeker, often a young man in his mid-20s, already known to police, rams a car into a crowd and shatters a community. How many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilization in a new direction?’ 

Other world leaders seemingly took issue with Vance’s speech during the forum, including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz saying the day after Vance’s speech that Germany rejects ‘outsiders intervening in our democracy.’

Stateside, conservatives have celebrated Vance’s speech as ‘almost Reaganesque,’ ‘pro-American’ and pro-free speech on social media and during Fox News interviews.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Munich Security Conference on Monday for additional comment regarding Heusgen’s speech and did not immediately receive a reply. 

The acting head of the Social Security Administration (SSA) quit her job over the weekend after butting heads with the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), over efforts to access certain sensitive government records, according to reports.

The Washington Post reported that three people familiar with Michelle King’s departure said on Monday that she stepped down from her position after the disagreement.

In response to King’s departure, President Donald Trump reportedly appointed Leland Dudek to lead the agency as the president’s nominee to serve as commissioner of the SSA, Frank Bisignano, is vetted by federal lawmakers.

Principal Deputy Press Secretary at the White House, Harrison Fields, said they expect Bisignano to be ‘swiftly confirmed in the coming weeks.’

‘In the meantime, the agency will be led by a career Social Security anti-fraud expert as the acting commissioner,’ Fields said without naming the replacement. ‘President Trump is committed to appointing the best and most qualified individuals who are dedicated to working on behalf of the American people, not to appease the bureaucracy that has failed them for far too long.’

The three individuals who spoke to the Washington Post on the condition of anonymity, reportedly told the publication that Dudek posted positive remarks about DOGE’s efforts to seek out fraud and cut costs across federal agencies.

The SSA did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on the matter.

Musk is leading DOGE to aggressively slash government waste when it comes to federal spending under President Trump. The department was created via executive order and is a temporary organization within the White House that will spend 18 months carrying out its mission.

One of the department’s most recent targets is the SSA, which was created by the Social Security Act under President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935 and tasked with establishing a federal benefits system for older Americans.

As DOGE continues to find fraud and wasteful spending at SSA, Musk turned to X on Monday to say millions of people listed in a Social Security database are recorded as centenarians ‘with the death field set to FALSE!’

‘According to the Social Security database, these are the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE! Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security,’ Musk posted, adding a couple of rolling on the floor laughing emojis.

His post features a chart indicating there are more than 20 million listed with ages 100 and higher, including more than 3.9 million in the 130-139 age range, more than 3.5 million in the 140-149 range and more than 1.3 million in the 150-159 range.

While the U.S. population count in the 2020 census was more than 331 million, the count of people ages 100 and older was more than 80,000, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

Fox News Digital’s Alex Nitzberg contributed to this report.

The Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) discovered an identification code linking U.S. Treasury payments to a budget line item, which accounts for nearly $4.7 trillion in payments which was oftentimes left blank.

‘The Treasury Access Symbol (TAS) is an identification code linking a Treasury payment to a budget line item (standard financial process),’ DOGE wrote in a post on X. ‘In the Federal Government, the TAS field was optional for ~$4.7 Trillion in payments and was often left blank, making traceability almost impossible. As of Saturday, this is now a required field, increasing insight into where money is actually going.’

The agency thanked the U.S. Treasury for their work in identifying the optional field.

According to the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, which is under the Treasury, TAS codes are used to describe any one of the account identification codes assigned by the Treasury and is also referred to as the ‘account.’

All financial transactions made by the federal government are classified by TAS when reporting to the Treasury and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

The discovery was announced on the same day DOGE appeared to have populated the DOGE.gov Savings page, which, as of Monday evening, said the total estimated savings since the establishment of the department total about $55 billion.

The savings are a combination of ‘fraud detection/deletion, contract/lease cancellations, contract/lease renegotiations, asset sales, grant cancellations, workforce reductions, programmatic changes, and regulatory savings.’

‘We are working to upload all of this data in a digestible and fully transparent manner with clear assumptions, consistent with applicable rules and regulations,’ DOGE wrote on the site, adding that the data will be updated twice per week until eventually becoming real-time.

Musk is leading DOGE to aggressively slash government waste when it comes to federal spending under President Donald Trump.

The department was created via executive order and is a temporary organization within the White House that will spend 18 months carrying out its mission.

The group has faced criticism over its access to federal systems, including the Treasury Department’s payment system, as well as moves to cancel federal contracts and make cuts at various agencies.

Attorneys general from 14 states are suing to block DOGE from accessing federal data, arguing Musk and Trump’s administration have engaged in illegal executive overreach.

The newly formed cost-cutting agency scored a win on Friday when a federal judge in Washington declined a request to temporarily block it from accessing sensitive data from the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Fox News Digital’s Hillary Vaugh and Stephen Sorace contributed to this report.