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. 

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 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.

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.

State-level lawmakers are introducing a wave of bills aimed at advancing priorities championed by new Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his ‘Make America Healthy Again’ platform, in some cases citing the new administration’s support for these causes as the catalyst for their efforts. 

Arizona, Kansas and Utah are examples of states doing this. The move is aimed at prohibiting junk food like candy and soda from school lunches and other federally funded food assistance programs, something Kennedy has expressed support for in the past. Others have included efforts to rid these programs of ultra-processed foods, certain additives and dyes.

‘It took Bobby to get into the position that he is in now for something to happen,’ Arizona state Rep. Leo Biasiucci said during a press conference this month during which he introduced HB 2164. The bill seeks to ban several food dyes and other additives from school lunch programs in the state. ‘I can’t thank him enough for being the microphone … at the high level, to finally put a spotlight on this.’

Rep. Jordan Redman, R-Idaho, similarly touted the new administration as a reason why he thought his new bill to remove candy and soda from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, would be successful. The bill, HB 109, would require the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare to seek a federal waiver to remove these items from SNAP. When asked by a fellow state lawmaker why he thought such a waiver to get rid of these foods would be successful, Redman cited a Trump administration that would be friendly to him.

‘I think that the chances are higher now with the new administration,’ Redman said. 

Wyoming, Kansas, Tennessee, Utah and Wyoming have introduced similar bills aimed at reforming SNAP and school lunches.

In addition to dietary-related legislation, several states have also taken steps to amend their vaccine rules. During Kennedy’s confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill, he was routinely grilled about his past skepticism towards vaccines. The new HHS secretary iterated to lawmakers at the time that he was not anti-vaccine, but rather ‘pro-safety.’

Roughly a dozen states, including Arkansas, Connecticut, Indiana, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and Texas have introduced a variety of changes.

Some of the new bills targeting state vaccine rules include protections for immunization exemptions, efforts to bolster vaccine transparency, revised requirements related to the administration of vaccines and efforts to hold vaccine manufacturers accountable for harmful side effects. Others prohibit any future COVID-19 vaccine mandates related to education, work or travel, with some providing an exception if state legislatures are able to pass a new bill requiring vaccinations for certain public health emergencies. 

Meanwhile, bills expelling fluoride from public water systems are also being introduced at the state level, another change Kennedy has promoted in the past. 

While states like Arkansas, Hawaii, New Hampshire, North Dakota and others have taken steps to introduce legislation preventing fluoride from being added to public water systems, other states, like Kentucky and Nebraska, are considering bills that would make fluoride optional.

At the federal level, the Senate’s Make America Healthy Again Caucus, which was formed to back the policies of Kennedy’s agenda, is reportedly readying a ‘package of bills’ aimed at improving nutrition and the nation’s agriculture sector, according to Politico.

‘The MAHA Caucus is ready to get to work with Robert F. Kennedy Jr,’ the group’s official X account stated on Friday after Kennedy’s confirmation by the Senate.