President-elect Trump began endorsing fellow Republicans this week to replace members of Congress who have vacated their seats to join his Cabinet. 

The endorsements come amid fears that the party’s razor-thin majority in the House – the size of which still remains undetermined – could be in jeopardy as a result of Trump’s selections from the lower chamber.

Trump threw his support behind two Floridians, former GOP state Sen. Randy Fine and the current chief financial officer for the Sunshine State, Jimmy Patronis Jr., both of whom are considering runs for Congress, according to the president-elect. 

Fine would run in Florida’s 6th Congressional District, a seat that is currently held by Trump’s pick to be his next national security adviser, Rep. Michael Waltz. Patronis would run in Florida’s deep-red 1st District, previously held by former Rep. Matt Gaetz. Gaetz resigned from Congress after Trump nominated him to be attorney general, but allegations of sexual assault and other improprieties prompted Gaetz to withdraw his name from the running. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Trump, however, has not endorsed anyone to replace Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., the GOP House conference chair, whose solidly red seat in upstate New York will also be up for grabs if she is confirmed by the Senate to be the Trump administration’s ambassador to the United Nations. 

Republicans in the House of Representatives are on track to have somewhere between a one- and three-vote majority once the few outstanding races are called. There are three races remaining that still need to be called, two in California and one in Iowa. 

The balance of power in the House currently sits at 219 seats for Republicans and 213 for the Democrats. Republicans must hold 218 to retain their majority.

While Waltz, Stefanik and Gaetz’s seats all sit in Republican strongholds, lawmakers have nonetheless signaled concern, particularly, because the ensuing special elections could likely occur within the first weeks or months of Trump’s term and potentially stymie Trump’s ambitions for his first 100 days in office.

‘I know he’s already pulled a few really talented people out of the House – hopefully no more for a little while until special elections come up, but it shows you the talent that we have and the ability we have,’ Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., said last week during a press conference. Scalise is House majority leader. 

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., similarly said he did not believe Trump would pluck any more members from the House for his administration, adding that he and Trump broached the topic in discussions. 

‘President Trump fully understands and appreciates the math here, and it’s just a numbers game. You know, we believe we’re going to have a larger majority than we had last time. It’s too early to handicap it, but we are optimistic about that,’ Johnson said. ‘But every single vote will count, because if someone gets ill or has a car accident or a late flight on their plane, then it affects the votes on the floor. So, I think he and the administration are well attuned to that. I don’t expect that we will have more members leaving, but I’ll leave that up to him.’

Trump-Vance transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told Fox News Digital that the president-elect ‘is 100% committed’ to working with House leadership, including Speaker Johnson, ‘to maintain the House GOP majority and immediately get to work in January’ to implement the policies that voters elected him on.

Fox News Digital politics reporter Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.

A top military official with NATO warned businesses on Monday to be ready for a wartime scenario, which could entail adjusting production and distribution lines to be less vulnerable to blackmail from Russia and China.

Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, the chairperson of NATO’s military committee, told attendees at an event of the European Policy Center think tank in Brussels that all available instruments could be used during a time of war, according to a report from Reuters.

‘If we can make sure that all crucial services and goods can be delivered no matter what, then that is a key part of our deterrence,’ Bauer said.

He also said NATO is seeing a growing number of sabotage acts while Europe has seen the same when it comes to its energy supply.

‘We thought we had a deal with Gazprom, but we actually had a deal with Mr. Putin. And the same goes for Chinese-owned infrastructure and goods. We actually have a deal with [Chinese President] Xi [Jinping],’ Bauer told the group.

The west, Bauer explained, depends on supplies from China, as 60% of all rare earth materials are produced, and 90% of those are processed there.

Also coming from China are chemical ingredients for sedatives, antibiotics, anti-inflammatories and low blood pressure medications, he further explained.

‘We are naive if we think the Communist Party will never use that power,’ Bauer said. ‘Business leaders in Europe and America need to realize that the commercial decisions they make have strategic consequences for the security of their nation.’

‘Businesses need to be prepared for a wartime scenario and adjust their production and distribution lines accordingly,’ he continued to stress. ‘Because while it may be the military who wins battles, it’s the economies that win wars.’

Bauer’s message comes as tensions between Ukraine and Russia continue to escalate.

Last week, Russia launched an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) capable of carrying conventional or nuclear warheads, into Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials said the missile called Oreshnik — Russian for Hazel Tree — reached speeds of Mach 11 when it struck a factory in the city of Dnipro on Thursday.

While two U.S. officials told Fox News the missile was not hypersonic, deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters on Thursday the attack was concerning and that it was the first time the missile had been used on the battlefield.

North Korea also sent at least 11,000 soldiers to fight in Ukraine alongside Russian soldiers, further escalating tensions.

Reuters contributed to this report.

A judge has dropped the charges against President-elect Donald Trump in the D.C. case against him, following a request that Special Counsel Jack Smith made on Monday.

The decision concerns the investigation into the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol breach. Fox News Digital previously learned of Smith’s request earlier on Monday.

‘The Government has moved to dismiss the Superseding Indictment without prejudice,’ U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan wrote in a decision. ‘Defendant does not oppose the Motion…and the court will grant it.’

Smith also filed a motion to drop his appeal in his classified records case against Trump – a case that was tossed in July by federal Judge Aileen Cannon. Cannon ruled Smith was unlawfully appointed as special counsel. 

The moves come after Smith, earlier this month after Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election, signaled he would begin winding down his case against Trump. The filing went live on the Department of Justice docket on Monday afternoon.

Smith had already filed a motion to vacate all deadlines in the 2020 election interference case against Trump in Washington, D.C. – a widely expected move, but one that stopped short of dropping the case against Trump completely. Smith had said his team planned to give an updated report on the official status of the case against Trump on Dec. 2.

Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges in the case and took the fight to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing on the basis of presidential immunity. 

The high court ruled that Trump was immune from prosecution for official presidential acts, forcing Smith to file a new indictment. Trump pleaded not guilty to those new charges, too. Trump’s attorneys have been seeking to have the election interference charges dropped in Washington, D.C., alleging that Smith was appointed unlawfully. 

‘The American People re-elected President Trump with an overwhelming mandate to Make America Great Again. Today’s decision by the DOJ ends the unconstitutional federal cases against President Trump, and is a major victory for the rule of law,’ Trump spokesman and incoming White House communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement. ‘The American People and President Trump want an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and we look forward to uniting our country.’

Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges stemming from both of Smith’s investigations. 

Smith is expected to resign as special counsel before Trump takes office. 

Trump posted to his Truth Social Monday afternoon that the cases against him ‘are empty and lawless and should never have been brought.’

‘These cases, like all of the other cases I have been forced to go through, are empty and lawless, and should never have been brought. Over $100 Million Dollars of Taxpayer Dollars has been wasted in the Democrat Party’s fight against their Political Opponent, ME,’ Trump posted. ‘Nothing like this has ever happened in our Country before.’ 

Trump said ‘state Prosecutors and District Attorneys, such as Fani Willis and her lover, Nathan Wade (who had absolutely zero experience in cases such as this, but was paid MILLIONS, enough for them to take numerous trips and cruises around the globe!), Letitia James, who inappropriately, unethically, and probably illegally, campaigned on ‘GETTING TRUMP’ in order to win Political Office, and Alvin Bragg, who himself never wanted to bring this case against me, but was forced to do so by the Justice Department and the Democrat Party.’ 

Trump added: ‘It was a political hijacking, and a low point in the History of our Country that such a thing could have happened, and yet, I persevered, against all odds, and WON. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!’

President-elect Trump announced three key appointments to White House offices on Monday, including two who served during his first term.

The announcement included the appointment of James Braid, who will return to the White House as the deputy assistant to the president and director of the Office of Legislative Affairs.

Braid worked in legislative affairs at the Office of Management and Budget during Trump’s first term, and since then he has served as the lead policy staffer for Vice President-elect JD Vance in the U.S. Senate.

Braid has also served as chief of staff for multiple members of Congress, and has taken on several other senior policy roles on Capitol Hill since 2015.

Trump also announced Alex Latcham will return to the White House as the deputy assistant to the president and director of the Office of Public Liaison.

Latcham previously served as special assistant to the president and deputy political director during Trump’s first term.

For the past eight years, Latcham served Trump as a senior deputy political director for his campaign and for the Republican National Committee.

The third person to be appointed is Matt Brasseaux, who will serve as deputy assistant to the president and director of the Office of Public Affairs.

Brasseaux worked as a deputy political director for the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee in 2024.

He also served as a regional political director for the Republican National Committee and campaign manager for now-Gov. Joe Lombardo in Nevada.

Donald Trump was in the room with JD Vance, Stephen Miller and other top advisers after calling senators to try to salvage the sinking nomination of Matt Gaetz.

He wasn’t having any luck.

‘I’m using a lot of my political capital,’ the president-elect told his inner circle. He could only spend so much of it, he explained.

Trump had picked up the phrase from a lawmaker who bluntly told him there was a cost to any continued effort to push the ex-congressman for attorney general, amid allegations of sexual assault and misconduct. 

‘Sir, we’re going to vote for you’ on Gaetz, ‘but you’re using a lot of political capital.’ 

Once Trump told Gaetz that he didn’t have the votes, prompting him to withdraw, he quickly settled on Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general and career prosecutor who had precisely the experience that the embattled Gaetz lacked – and without the personal baggage. Gaetz, who is accused of sleeping with a 17-year-old girl, continues to deny any wrongdoing.

He formally withdrew 45 minutes after CNN told him it would report that he’d had a threesome – specifically, that there had been another alleged incident with Jane Doe, the woman who says she had sex with Gaetz at 17, and an adult woman.

Bondi has a history of partisan loyalty to Trump, such as defending him at his first impeachment trial, and this year, headed the legal arm of a pro-Trump firm and became a registered lobbyist. 

But here’s the difference, according to insiders: She won’t go in and blow up the Justice Department, as Gaetz wanted to do. She respects the rule of law, say Florida colleagues. She even hired the Democrat who ran against her for AG, who is praising her. Yes, Bondi has talked about prosecuting ‘bad’ prosecutors, but who can object to that?

With Gaetz out, more scrutiny has shifted to Pete Hegseth’s nomination to run the Pentagon’s global bureaucracy.

The view from Trump World is that Hegseth, as a decorated Army combat veteran, probably gets confirmed, though there is annoyance that he didn’t come clean with the transition team about having paid off a woman who accused him of sexual assault, and had her sign an NDA, in what he calls a consensual encounter in California in 2017.

The transition team’s view is that Hegseth did nothing illegal, that he made a deal with the accuser who lied to save her marriage – and didn’t go to the hospital for four days – and he didn’t want this public because he feared losing his job at Fox. 

I agree he’ll probably be confirmed, and the transition gang is more worried about Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr. As a practical matter, I think the GOP-controlled Senate can reject only one other nominee.

The concern about Gabbard for director of national intelligence is that she has no experience in that sensitive area, that the former Democratic congressional representative met with Syrian strongman Bashar Assad despite his murder of hundreds of thousands of people, and often seems to echo the Putin line. The question is whether she is even qualified.

There is even more concern about Kennedy’s bid to become HHS secretary. He has some good ideas, but even putting aside his history of infidelity, he embraces one conspiracy theory after another: Vaccines cause autism, WiFi causes cancer, water systems should stop using fluoride.

The worst, by far, is what he said in 2020, embracing the idea that the federal government deliberately created the pandemic – what he called the ‘plandemic’ – that killed 1.2 million Americans. This is the equivalent of 9/11 truthers.

The key here is that the criticism is coming from the left. Liberals in the media and on the Hill don’t like RFK because he’s pro-choice and is seen as a rogue Democrat who has said a lot of crazy things over the years, and that could be enough to sink his nomination.

Trump World doesn’t care about the other nominations on the theory that the average voter has never heard of most of Trump’s picks for Energy or HUD. 

There’s some Republican resentment at his selection of pro-union Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer for Labor, but that’s among the insiders.

What’s striking is that this is the most ideologically diverse Cabinet of the modern era.

As Axios was the first to point out, the lineup ranges from Marco Rubio as secretary of State to a slew of current and former members of Congress to such controversial picks as Hegseth, Gabbard and RFK, to Dr. Oz, to run the Medicare and Medicaid programs, to frequent Fox medical commentators Marty Makary to manage the FDA and Janette Nesheiwat as surgeon general; both are medical doctors. And he chose former congressman Dave Weldon to take over the CDC.

In a CBS poll, 59% approve of the way Trump is handling the transition.

The internal jockeying also led to leaks like this, to the Washington Post:

‘Donald Trump’s attorney and adviser Boris Epshteyn arrived recently for a meeting about Cabinet picks in the Tea Room at Mar-a-Lago only to find his way blocked.

Transition co-chair Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, told Epshteyn in front of others that this was not a meeting for him. ‘We’re not talking legal nominees today,’ Lutnick said, according to one person familiar with the exchange.

‘Epshteyn refused to budge. Using his forearm, he pushed Lutnick out of the way, according to two people familiar with the incident, which Lutnick later recounted to others. ‘I’m coming in,’ Epshteyn retorted, according to one of the people.

‘A third person described the incident more as Epshteyn simply brushing past Lutnick on his way into the meeting.’

This flood-the-zone approach diverted attention from the Gaetz fiasco and raised questions about incoming White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and how much input she has. And unlike the traditional one-nominee-per-day approach, it blurs the focus on nominees who otherwise might draw media criticism, such as Dr. Oz, who was often accused of peddling ineffective remedies on his TV show, because you’d need a scorecard to keep track of the blizzard of Trump picks.    

So why did Trump pick Matt Gaetz in the first place?

It may have been an impulsive move while Trump was on the plane with him, along with Wiles. But the president-elect is savvy enough to know it would trigger a media firestorm, and insiders call it a screw-you decision to the establishment.

Or Trump may have figured that Gaetz was unlikely to make it, but it would be difficult to reject the backup nomination, especially one as qualified as Pam Bondi.

Whatever your view, there’s no question that Trump has managed the transition quite well and, with some exceptions, is off to a good start.