President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are continuing to overhaul the National Security Council and shift its main functions to other agencies like the State and Defense departments. 

The latest efforts to slim down a federal agency come weeks after Trump announced former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz would depart his post at the White House overseeing the agency and serve as UN ambassador. Waltz himself began the streamlining process in January, when, in one of his first moves as Trump’s national security adviser, he ordered 160 NSC staffers off the job pending a comprehensive review of the agency’s alignment with Trump’s agenda.

The current plans to upend the agency would include whittling down the size of the National Security Council, which the Trump White House believes is full of long-term, bureaucratic staffers who don’t align with Trump’s agenda. 

Additionally, the restructuring will move Andy Barker, national security advisor to Vice President JD Vance, and Robert Gabriel, assistant to the president for policy, into roles serving as deputy national security advisors. 

Axios was the first to report the Trump administration’s restructuring plans. A White House official confirmed Axios’ reporting to Fox News Digital. 

A White House official involved in the planning said Trump and Rubio are driving the change in an attempt to target Washington’s so-called ‘Deep State.’ 

‘The NSC is the ultimate Deep State. It’s Marco vs. the Deep State. We’re gutting the Deep State,’ a White House official told Axios. 

The National Security Council is located within the White House and provides the president guidance on national security, military and foreign affairs matters. 

Waltz’s departure from the agency followed his involvement with other administration officials, like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in the Signal chat controversy over strike plans against the Houthis in March.

But Waltz had been focused early in his short tenure on the issue of what the Trump administration considers ‘deep state’ infiltration of the agency. The former Green Beret and Florida congressman was especially concerned about Biden administration political appointees and holdovers assigned to the NSC from other agencies. 

Since Waltz’s departure earlier this month, Rubio has taken on the role of national security advisor. That’s in addition to leading the State Department and serving as acting archivist and acting administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which the administration is aiming to dismantle this year. 

Fox News Digital was the first to report that the State Department planned to absorb the remaining operations and programs USAID runs so it would no longer function as an independent agency. The move requires cutting thousands of staff members in an attempt to bolster the efficiency of the existing, ‘life-saving’ foreign assistance programs, according to a State Department memo Fox News Digital obtained. 

Fox News’ Emma Colton contributed to this report. 

In his famed 1953 ‘Atoms for Peace’ speech, President Eisenhower proclaimed that ‘the United States knows that peaceful power from atomic energy is no dream of the future.’ That dream was soon realized, as America built more than one hundred reactors over the next twenty-five years. But today, the promise of nuclear energy and innovation does indeed seem like a dream of the future.

Through a series of executive orders signed this week, President Trump is taking action to usher in an American nuclear renaissance. For the first time in many years, America has a path forward for quickly and safely testing advanced nuclear reactor designs, constructing new nuclear reactors at scale, and building a strong domestic nuclear industrial base.

Our stagnation was not for a lack of ingenuity or desire to innovate among America’s great scientists and technologists. By the end of the 1970s, dozens of nuclear reactors were planned or under construction. In the past 30 years, however, only three commercial nuclear reactors have been built, and many more have been shuttered. We know America can accomplish great feats in nuclear energy, so what happened?

In the wake of the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, public opinion began to sour on nuclear energy, and the effects of a decade of new federal bureaucracies began to set in. Overly burdensome regulations stifled our ability to even test, let alone deploy, new nuclear technologies. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) set the gold standard for safety regulation when it was established in 1975, but it soon transformed into a lead curtain for innovation. Onerous environmental requirements and long, uncertain regulatory timelines have killed industry’s willingness to fund new technologies.

Similarly, the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Labs—which once led the world in the development and demonstration of advanced nuclear technologies—shuttered nuclear development programs, shifting focus to other priorities.  All but three of fifty-two reactors at Idaho National Laboratory have been decommissioned, and it has been almost half a century since the Army Nuclear Power Program was shut down. These decisions eroded our domestic nuclear supply chain, undermined our national security, and left us having to relearn what we once pioneered.

President Trump wisely recognizes that the time is ripe for an American nuclear renaissance and is acting to deliver on the promise of nuclear energy for the American people. Across the country, American entrepreneurs and engineers are launching a new generation of nuclear companies featuring innovative reactor designs and scalable manufacturing techniques that can make nuclear safe, efficient, and economic. The Trump Administration will clear their path by dismantling outdated barriers that previous administrations had put up in their way.

Today, nuclear power plants provide approximately 19% of the electricity generated in the United States, more than solar and wind combined. That is reliable and affordable electricity for the American people, and it could and should be even more.

Today, nuclear power plants provide approximately 19% of the electricity generated in the United States, more than solar and wind combined. That is reliable and affordable electricity for the American people, and it could and should be even more. The Trump Administration is setting the goal of expanding American nuclear energy capacity from 100 GW today to 400 GW by 2050. This week’s executive actions will help us reach that goal in four ways.

First, we are going to fully leverage our DOE national laboratories to increase the speed with which we test new nuclear reactor designs. There is a big difference between a paper reactor and a practical reactor. The only way to bridge that gap—understanding the challenges that must be surmounted to bring reactors to the market, and building public trust in their deployment—is to test and evaluate demonstration reactors. 

Second, for our national and economic security, we are going to leverage the Departments of Defense and Energy to build nuclear reactors on federally owned land. This will support critical national security needs which require reliable, high-density power sources that are invulnerable to external threats or grid failures.

Third, to lower regulatory burdens and shorten licensing timelines, we are asking the NRC to undergo broad cultural change and regulatory reform, requiring a decision on a reactor license to be issued within 18 months. This will reduce regulatory uncertainty while maintaining nuclear safety. We will also reconsider the use of radiation limits that are not science based, impossible to achieve, and do not increase the safety of the American people. 

Fourth, we will be supporting our domestic nuclear industrial base across the nuclear fuel cycle.  The President has called for industry to start mining and enriching uranium in America again, as well as an expansion of domestic uranium conversion capacity as well as enrichment capabilities to meet projected civilian and defense reactor needs.

When President Eisenhower spoke about nuclear potential over 70 years ago, he expressed no doubt that the world’s best scientists and engineers, if empowered to ‘test and develop their ideas,’ could turn nuclear energy into a ‘universal, efficient, and economic’ source of power. In 2025, we have only to believe in American technologists, and give them the chance to build, to turn nuclear power into energy dominance and national security for all.

As the GOP’s ‘big beautiful bill’ heads to the Senate next month, one provision legislators from both parties should keep their sights squarely set on is no tax on overtime, because in my travels talking to working Americans, no policy comes up more often.

It is not hyperbole to suggest that, if successfully implemented, vastly reducing overtime tax on America’s workers would be the most politically significant measure in the bill, and could easily help Republicans sweep the midterms.

It is very rare, when I’m out talking to people on the road, for person after person to keep mentioning something I never even brought up. A clear example in the last election was Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now Secretary of Health and Human Services, who I couldn’t get people to shut up about, even when the media wasn’t focused on him.

In the end, RFK Jr. played a vital role in putting President Donald Trump over the top.

For the past couple of months, the thing I have heard over and over again from workers and employers is how much they desperately want no tax on overtime.

Regular readers of this column will recall the coal miner in Columbiana, Ohio who told me, ‘taxes are killing the working man,’ or Doug and Danny in Jeffersonville, Indiana, a steel cleaning plant owner and his foreman who also weighed in.

Doug told me it will ‘encourage [younger workers] to give up their time, away from loved ones and produce for customers that we have, that need steel, that they want that we did not produce Monday through Friday and get it done.’

From Ohio, to Texas, to West Virginia, no tax on overtime has created excitement for the people the news media never seem to get around to talking to.

A major reason that no tax on overtime has been largely ignored compared to its more popular cousin, no tax on tips, is that almost nobody who produces news has ever held a job that includes traditional overtime, while many likely had tipping jobs in college.

This also explains exactly why the overtime provision is a much bigger deal. There are a handful of tipped jobs that one can raise a family on, but most are stepping stones. There are millions of jobs you can raise a family on that involve overtime.

For the men and women who work these jobs in plants, mines and forges, a reduction in overtime tax is far more meaningful than any stimulus check could be. A stimulus check is like a winning scratch-off lottery ticket. No tax on tips is a raise. You can plan on it, build around it.

This brings us around to the midterms. If by the fall of 2026, American workers have been keeping more of their money, not receiving largesse from the state, but keeping more money they worked for, then every GOP candidate will point at every Democrat incumbent in Congress and say, ‘they voted against it.’

One of Donald Trump’s political superpowers is to find the issues American voters deeply care about that the media largely ignores. He did it by fighting wokeness, he did it opposing foreign interventionism, he did it by focusing on our kids’ health.

I don’t know how he does it. I know how I do it. I spend hours and hours traveling and talking to people. Maybe Trump talks to the working-class people he employs, maybe he just judges based on crowd reactions at rallies, but however he does it, finger meets pulse.

With no tax on overtime, Trump has done it again. Every Republican who is running for Congress outside of Silicon Valley and the Upper East Side would be wise to lead their campaign with, ‘President Trump and I promised no tax on overtime and we delivered.’

There seems to be some surprise that Trump’s poll numbers are recovering after a brief dip occasioned by universal freakouts over his tariff policy. But there is a very good reason for it: On almost every policy the president is doing exactly what he told voters he would do.

Once workers start seeing that bump in their weekly check they can start saving for a better vacation, put more money away for their kids, or even buy their girl an engagement ring. These are the riches of the working class.

Senate Democrats should tread cautiously as the big beautiful bill lands in the upper chamber. They should decide if they really want to look their constituents in the eye and say, ‘You know that raise my opponent’s party and President Trump gave you? I want to take it away.’

No tax on overtime may be Donald Trump’s baby, but come the midterms, it could be a big bundle of joy for the Republican Party.

A group of House Republicans are requesting Fiscal Year 2026 spending bills to include language prohibiting federal funding for transgender experiments on animals. 

Republican Reps. Paul Gosar, Elijah Crane, Abraham J. Hamadeh of Arizona, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Brandon Gill of Texas, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Pete Stauber of Minnesota and Troy E. Nehls of Texas are urging the chairman and ranking member of the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies to prohibit transgender experiments on animals in its FY2026 appropriations bill. 

House Republicans have requested the committee include the following language: ‘None of the funds made available by this or any other Act thereafter may be used for research on vertebrate animals for the purpose of studying the effects of drugs, surgery, or other interventions to alter the human body (including by disrupting the body’s development, inhibiting its natural functions, or modifying its appearance) to no longer correspond to its biological sex.’

The letter, addressed to Chairman Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., and Ranking Member Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., points to the dozens of National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants issued during former President Joe Biden’s administration that are funding ‘wasteful and disturbing experiments to create ‘transfeminine’ and ‘transmasculine’ lab animals using invasive surgeries and hormone therapies.’

‘The transgender animals are then wounded, shocked, injected with street drugs and vaccines, and subjected to other disturbing procedures,’ the House Republicans said in the letter, as Fox News Digital reported earlier this year. 

‘President Trump has personally criticized these experiments on several occasions, and the Department of Government Efficiency has canceled millions in NIH grants funding transgender animal testing. However, many of these NIH grants funding gender transitions for lab animals are still active,’ House GOP members said. 

President Donald Trump condemned transgender animal experiments during his joint address to Congress in March. The White Coat Waste Project, a government watchdog group that testified about transgender animal experiments on Capitol Hill earlier this year, told Fox News Digital there are still ’29 active taxpayer-funded grants that have been used to fund transgender animal tests.’

‘We urge you to include the language above in the FY26 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies bill to ensure no more taxpayer dollars are wasted to fund transgender animal tests,’ the Republicans said in the letter. 

The White Coat Waste Project, in a statement to Fox News Digital, touted their role in halting taxpayer-funded ‘transgender animal tests,’ and celebrated the House Republicans’ bill, led by Gosar, to stop more federally funded experiments. 

‘Thanks to White Coat Waste’s viral investigations and collaboration with Rep. Paul Gosar and others in Congress, the Trump Administration has slashed spending on wasteful experiments that subject lab animals to invasive surgeries and hormone therapies to crudely mimic gender transitions in kids and adults and then wound, shock and inject the animals with vaccines and overdoses of sex party drugs,’ Justin Goodman, Senior Vice President of White Coat Waste Project, said. 

‘These Trump cuts have already saved thousands of lab animals and millions of tax dollars, but dozens more NIH grants that funnel tax dollars to disturbing transgender animal tests are still active. Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to foot the bill for wasteful and cruel transgender animal tests, and Rep. Gosar’s commonsense effort to permanently defund them will ensure they won’t have to.’

Earlier this year, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) uncovered $4.7 trillion in untraceable Treasury Department payments. 

Prior to the discovery, Treasury Account Symbol (TAS) identification codes were optional for $4.7 trillion in Treasury Department payments, so they were often left blank and were untraceable. The field is now required to increase ‘insight into where the money is actually going,’ the Treasury Department and DOGE announced in February. 

‘Of the 1.5 billion payments that we send out every year, they are required to have a TAS, a Treasury Account Symbol. We discovered that more than one third of those payments did not have a TAS number,’ Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government earlier this month. 

Fox News Digital asked Republican senators on Capitol Hill to respond to the approximately 500,000 in untraceable payments made by the Treasury Department each year. 

‘I’m not surprised at all, unfortunately,’ Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, said before adding, ‘They were leaving complete fields undone when they were filling out their financials, so this is a common theme. I’m not surprised.’

Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Missouri, called for an investigation into where those payments actually went. 

‘There’s so much waste. There’s so much fraud, There’s so much abuse in our government,’ Schmitt told Fox News Digital. ‘I’m glad there was a laser-like focus on it. We ought to make many of those reforms permanent, but there probably ought to be some investigations here about where this money actually went. I mean this is taxpayer money. People work hard.’

After DOGE and the Treasury Department uncovered $4.7 trillion in untraceable funds, Marshall and Sen. Rick Scott of Florida introduced a bill in March requiring the Treasury Department to track all payments. 

The Locating Every Disbursement in Government Expenditure Records (LEDGER) Act seeks to increase transparency in how the Treasury Department spends taxpayer money. 

‘When you hear about this story that they didn’t know where the money was going, it makes you mad because this is somebody’s money, this is taxpayers’ money when we have almost $37 trillion in debt, so this makes no sense at all,’ Scott said. 

The Congressional Budget projects that interest payments on America’s national debt will total $952 billion in fiscal year 2025. That’s $102 billion more than the United States’ defense budget at $850 billion. 

‘We paid out more last year on our debt, $36 trillion in debt, with $950 billion in interest going to bondholders all over the world, including in China. That $950 billion didn’t go to build a bridge or an F-35. We paid more on the interest on debt than we did to fund our military,’ said Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska. 

‘That is an inflection point that when most countries hit, you look at history, that’s when great powers start to decline. So we have to get those savings.’

President Donald Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin about ending the war in Ukraine, hosted the president of South Africa at the White House and threatened more stringent tariffs against the European Union this week. 

During South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Oval Office visit on Wednesday, Trump got into a testy exchange with the South African leader about the treatment of White farmers there. Specifically, Trump aired a video that showed white crosses that Trump said were approximately 1,000 burial sites of White Afrikaner South African farmers. 

Trump has repeatedly asserted these farmers are being killed and pushed off of their land.

Trump told Ramaphosa at the White House that the burial sites by the side of the road are visited by those who want to ‘pay respects to their family member who was killed.’ 

‘Now this is very bad. These are burial sites right here. Burial sites — over a thousand — of White farmers. And those cars are lined up to pay love on a Sunday morning. Each one of those white things you see is a cross. And there is approximately a thousand of them,’ Trump said. ‘They’re all White farmers. The family of White farmers. And those cars aren’t driving, they are stopped there to pay respects to their family member who was killed. And it’s a terrible sight. I’ve never seen anything like it. On both sides of the road, you have crosses. Those people are all killed.’

‘Have they told you where that is, Mr. President?’ Ramaphosa said. ‘I’d like to know where that is. Because this I’ve never seen.’ 

‘I mean, it’s in South Africa, that’s where,’ Trump said. 

‘We need to find out,’ Ramaphosa said.

The White House defended showing the clip and said that the video was ‘substantiated,’ following reports that emerged after the encounter that said the crosses were from a memorial demonstration following the murder of a White farming couple, not actual burial sites.

Here’s what also happened this week:

Call with Putin 

Trump and Putin spoke over the phone on Monday to advance peace negotiations ending the war between Moscow and Kyiv. The call occurred 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 push discussions to end the war. But, Trump indicated that the U.S. would let Moscow and Kyiv take the lead on negotiations 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. 

Additionally, Trump has continued to distance the U.S. from the conflict this week, describing 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 expressed similar sentiments on Wednesday when Ramaphosa visited and stated: ‘It’s not our people, it’s not our soldiers… it’s Ukraine and it’s Russia.’ 

‘Evils of antisemitism’

The White House condemned the fatal attack against two Israeli Embassy employees in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, labeling that incident an act of antisemitism. 

A gunman opened fire and killed Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim as they were leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum. The two were planning to get engaged next week in Jerusalem, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a press briefing.

Authorities arrested a pro-Palestinian man identified as 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez of Chicago in connection with the attack, according to officials.

In response, Trump and other leaders of his administration said attacks like these must stop and said that those responsible will face justice. 

‘These horrible D.C. killings, based obviously on antisemitism, must end, NOW!’ Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. ‘Hatred and Radicalism have no place in the USA. Condolences to the families of the victims. So sad that such things as this can happen! God Bless You ALL!’

Leavitt later told reporters she’d spoken with Attorney General Pam Bondi and that those who conducted the attack would face prosecution. 

‘The evil of antisemitism must be eradicated from our society,’ Leavitt told reporters on Thursday. ‘I spoke to the attorney general this morning. The Department of Justice will be prosecuting the perpetrator responsible for this to the fullest extent of the law. Hatred has no place in the United States of America under President Donald Trump.’

EU tariff threats

Trump threatened to slap a 50% tariff on imports from the European Union on Friday amid ongoing trade negotiations and after locking down a trade deal with the U.K. 

The deal with the U.K. is the first historic trade negotiation signed following Liberation Day, when Trump announced widespread tariffs for multiple countries on April 2 at a range of rates. 

The administration later adjusted its initial proposal and announced on April 9 it would immediately impose a 145% tariff on Chinese goods, while reducing reciprocal tariffs on other countries and the EU to a baseline of 10% for 90 days. 

‘Their powerful Trade Barriers, Vat Taxes, ridiculous Corporate Penalties, Non-Monetary Trade Barriers, Monetary Manipulations, unfair and unjustified lawsuits against Americans Companies, and more, have led to a Trade Deficit with the U.S. of more than $250,000,000 a year, a number which is totally unacceptable,’ Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Friday about the EU. 

‘Therefore, I am recommending a straight 50% Tariff on the European Union, starting on June 1, 2025,’ he said. 

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent later said in an interview with Fox News he hoped the warning would ‘light a fire under the EU’ and signaled Trump’s threats stemmed from frustration negotiating with European countries on trade deals. 

‘EU proposals have not been of the same quality that we’ve seen from our other important trading partners,’ Bessent said. 

Fox News Digital’s Greg Norman contributed to this report.