British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is set to join European leaders at an emergency summit in Paris on Monday, Britain’s PA media reported, after the relationship of the continent with Washington was strained by US President Donald Trump speaking to Russian President Vladimir Putin as he pushes for a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.
“The UK will work to ensure we keep the US and Europe together. We cannot allow any divisions in the alliance to distract from the external enemies we face,” Starmer was quoted as saying in a statement released by Downing Street on Saturday.
“This is a once in a generation moment for our national security where we engage with the reality of the world today and the threat we face from Russia. It’s clear Europe must take on a greater role in NATO as we work with the United States to secure Ukraine’s future and face down the threat we face from Russia,” the prime minister also said.
This comes as Trump’s special envoy for Russia and Ukraine Keith Kellogg said Saturday that European officials will not be at the table when trying to negotiate a solution to the war in Ukraine.
Speaking at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said that French President Emmanuel Macron had called for a summit of European leaders in Paris.
He also said that he expects the European leaders to discuss the matter “in a very serious fashion.”
By the time the girl was admitted to hospital, her hair was brittle, her skin was flaking, and she was so malnourished that doctors said she was at risk of cardiac arrest and death.
She was 17 but looked much younger. Witnesses at the hospital said her parents treated her as if she were a small child. They took her to the bathroom, wiped her bottom, blew her nose and brushed her hair as she watched cartoons more suitable for toddlers.
She weighed just 60 pounds (27.3 kilograms) – about the same size as a 9-year-old.
Last month her parents, an Australian couple in their mid-40s, were sentenced to prison in Perth’s District Court of Western Australia for neglecting their only child, even as they ferried her to and from piano and ballet lessons.
Neither the parents nor their daughter can be identified, according to an Australian law that seeks to protect child victims.
In her ruling, Judge Linda Black said it was clear the girl’s parents loved her, but failed in their parental duties to help her develop, physically and emotionally.
“This is not a case about a malnourished ballerina,” Judge Linda Black said as she sentenced the father to six and a half years in prison, and the mother to five years – a reduced sentence to take into account her “personal circumstances.”
“You isolated your daughter, you prevented her from growing up, you prevented her from developing in the way she was entitled to. You did keep her as a little girl long beyond the age where she should have been,” Black said.
For the purposes of this story, we’ll call the girlKate. The following details have been sourced from court documents.
Now 20, the couple’s daughter attended court to hear proceedings. Video blurred by Nine News to conceal her identity.Pool via Nine News
A ‘beautiful ballerina princess’
Kate loved to dance. She was homeschooled by her mother, who quit work when she was born, to take care of her. Most of their time was spent at home, but ballet lessons offered Kate a chance to mix with other children.
Photos released by the court show Kate smiling in brightly colored costumes, her hair slicked back, and her feet and arms in the studied pose of a graceful ballerina.
“What a beautiful photo of my ballerina princess!” her father commented on one photo posted to Facebook, of his daughter who looked far younger than her 14 years.
Kate’s father worked full time to provide for the family, who lived in one of the wealthiest suburbs of Perth, the capital of Western Australia.
They were intelligent people, who obviously knew how to feed themselves, the judge said.
Yet, they failed to ensure their daughter ate enough food.
The couple covered their faces to avoid the media while entering and leaving court.Pool via Nine News
The couple also failed to let Kate grow up as a normal teenager.
Nothing “even remotely age-appropriate” was present in the family’s home, the judge said, pointing to the films and TV shows she watched: Teletubbies, Frozen, and Thomas the Tank Engine.
Unlike most teenagers, who were getting their first jobs and scrolling on social media, Kate was having princess birthday parties and receiving Barbie dolls as gifts. And when other girls were going through puberty, Kate ceased to grow or develop.
During the trial, her father told the court she was a “fussy eater” who had become a vegetarian at age 8 and turned vegan in her early teens. She ate three meals a day and had access to snacks, he said. He didn’t believe she was malnourished.
Vegans avoid eating food that comes from animals, including dairy products and eggs. Their diet is largely made up of fruit, vegetables, grains, nuts and seeds.
“My client didn’t starve his kid … He never withheld food from her. He loved and spoiled his daughter. She was free to eat as much as she wanted. This case was about inadequate nutrition from a vegan diet,” Paxman said.
“Every parent on this planet knows that if you don’t give a child enough food they will starve. But what if your kid chooses to be vegan?”
Judge Black refused to believe the couple didn’t realize their daughter was seriously unwell.
“It seems that everyone in the world who had the opportunity to interact with (Kate) understood she was severely malnourished, except the two people who professed to love her. I simply cannot accept that you didn’t see it. I simply cannot accept that you didn’t notice,” Judge Black said.
In fact, Black found they did notice – so much so that Kate’s father forged her birth certificate to make her seem two years younger, partly to hide what was becoming increasingly apparent to other people – their daughter was chronically malnourished.
Parents at the ballet school were starting to whisper, and her dance teachers implored her parents to see a nutritionist. They refused, and eventually the teachers notified authorities.
By the time Kate was hospitalized at 17, she was 147.5 centimeters (4 feet 10 inches) tall with a body mass index of 12.5 – significantly below the healthy range of 18 to 25.
“She was wasted, according to the doctor, with limited body fat. She was pale. She was exhibiting no signs of puberty. Her hair was brittle and thin. Her skin was dry and flaking. Her heart rate was elevated. The doctor said they needed to do an ECG. And the two of you said no,” Judge Black wrote in her ruling.
As doctors tried to treat her, Kate’s parents openly discussed their suspicions that a conspiracy was forming around them – and that medical staff couldn’t be trusted.
Their daughter was in the Eating Disorder Ward, yet they praised the figure of another patient who was dangerously thin.
They told their daughter her stomach was looking full, and made comments that suggested she might get fat if she followed her doctors’ advice.
“This, in a context of the dire condition your daughter was in, was … outrageous,” Black wrote.
When the couple refused to allow doctors to insert a nasal tube to allow Kate to be fed, and frustrated other attempts to treat her, authorities stepped in and put her into state custody.
Without her parents’ intervention, Kate gained weight, and they were arrested and charged.
When parents can’t let go
Dr Danielle Einstein, a clinical psychologist and author, said cases like Kate’s are “extremely rare.”
She said it’s very common for parents to struggle with the idea that their children will one day leave, but ultimately most want them to grow into responsible adults.
Einstein said one of the problems she has encountered through her work is when parents try to shield their children from problems, or do too much for them.
“Sheltering is a problem; we don’t want to shelter our children. We want them to continue to grow and develop and be capable without us,” she said.
“We’re seeing more anxiety in young adults and in teens because they’re not prepared to face the challenges and overcome the challenges without help.”
Kate’s parents didn’t just prevent her from growing up, the court found – they told “a cascading series of lies” from 2016 about their daughter’s age, to cover up their neglect.
The first came as her mother signed Kate up for a dance class, giving a date of birth that made her daughter seem six months younger than she really was.
Months later, she gave a different birthdate again, to the same dance school, taking off another year, so she appeared 18 months younger.
Then in another application, she knocked a full two years off her age.
“You deliberately lied because you knew that your daughter did not look or behave like a child of her true age,” Black said.
In her sentencing remarks, Black said it was clear that Kate’s parents loved her, but didn’t show it in their actions.
“There is nothing unusual in a parent wanting to cling onto their child and be reluctant to let them go and mature and become an adult. Nothing unusual at all,” she said.
“But what is wrong is when a parent, in fact, prevents the child from embarking upon and completing that natural process.”
“One of your greatest failures was a belief that you could give her what she wanted and failing to give her what she needed,” she continued.
“Every parent knows it’s harder to say no to your child than to say yes. You chose to make the easy decisions rather than the hard ones.”
Kate’s own words provided more evidence to Judge Black that her parents had failed to give her the skills to function without them.
In a letter sent to the judge, appealing to her to drop the prosecution, Kate blamed herself for her parents’ predicament – saying they made her breakfast, lunch and dinner, but she chose how much she ate.
“I’m fully dependent on my parents,” she wrote. “All my living expenses are paid by my parents, including clothes, food, money as I need it. My university fees are being paid by my parents.”
“I love my parents very much. They are the most important people in my life. If my parents go to prison, I don’t think I’ll be able to cope.”
Kate’s father admitted forging her birth certificate, but both parents denied all other charges, while their lawyers pointed to an anxiety disorder to partly explain their behavior.
Judge Black said the couple had taken no responsibility for their actions, and she saw no reason not to jail them.
“You have shown no remorse. You have shown no acceptance of responsibility. You have shown no insight,” she said. Both will be eligible for parole.
Iryna Danilovich disappeared while returning from work in April 2022. It would be two weeks before Russian authorities admitted she was in their custody. The human rights activist and nurse was detained in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, accused of illegal possession of explosives and sentenced to seven years in prison. In her trial, Danilovich testified that she was tortured during her detention.
She has since been deported to a notoriously cruel women’s penal colony in Zelenokumsk, southern Russia. She suffers from constant headaches and her health continues to deteriorate – yet she is not allowed to sit or lie down during the day, according to human rights monitoring group Zmina.
Ukraine has always called its areas under Russian control “temporarily occupied territories,” insisting it will eventually regain control over them. But that hope is being crushed now. This week, US President Donald Trump suggested it was “unlikely” Ukraine would get back much of its occupied land in the peace negotiations he intends to hold with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Danilovich’s case – and she is just one of thousands Kyiv says are detained in Russia – shows what is at stake for Ukraine.
Trump’s comment came after he held a 90-minute phone call with Putin on Wednesday, and it sparked panic across the country, where few believe Putin would negotiate in good faith.
Yuliya Kazdobina, a foreign policy expert at Ukrainian Prism, a think tank, said she doesn’t believe the Russian leader wants peace.
“We already had so many years of negotiations with the Russian side,” she said. Russia has a history of striking and violating agreements with Ukraine going back decades. In 1994, Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for guarantees from the United States, United Kingdom and Russia that they would respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. In 2015, after illegally annexing Crimea and sparking the conflict in eastern Ukraine, Moscow signed a ceasefire agreement only to then repeatedly violate it and then launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine seven years later.
The view from Kyiv
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky responded to the Trump-Putin call by saying his country would not accept a peace deal struck between the US and Russia without Kyiv’s involvement.
“As an independent country we simply cannot accept any agreements without us. And I articulate this very clearly to our partners. We will not accept any bilateral negotiations on Ukraine without us,” Zelensky said, adding that the fact that Trump spoke to Putin first was “not pleasant.”
“We may be left without the currently temporarily occupied territories, without parts of the Kherson region, Zaporizhzhia region and the long-suffering Crimea,” he said. “We must take back what is rightfully ours.”
Russian forces currently occupy nearly 20% of Ukraine’s territory, up from the roughly 7% it controlled before launching its unprovoked full-scale invasion nearly three years ago.
According to Ukrainian officials, some 6 million people, including 1 million children, live under Russian occupation, in what the United Nations has described as a “bleak human rights situation.”
Fears of history repeating itself
Crimea has been under Russian control since Moscow illegally annexed it in 2014. Since then, Russia has imposed a brutal and repressive regime, stomping out any sign of opposition.
Maksym Vishchyk, a lawyer at Global Rights Compliance, a non-profit that advises the Ukrainian authorities on investigating and prosecuting international crimes, said Moscow has repeated the same pattern across other occupied territories.
“And Crimea has been kind of their playbook. Policies and patterns and tactics (Russia) applied in Crimea were then applied as well in other occupied territories. So, we see essentially the same patterns in all occupied territories, both since 2014 and since 2022.”
The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has repeatedly reported the myriad human rights violations committed by Russia in occupied Ukraine – from unlawful detentions to sexual abuse to forcing people to accept Russian citizenship and sending their children to Russian schools and training programs.
Russia has repeatedly denied accusations of human rights abuses.
A dangerous precedent
“Given how many victims this war has already had, and to end it on someone else’s conditions… then why did these (Ukrainian soldiers) die and why did they defend these territories?” he said.
Soldiers fighting on the frontlines were likewise skeptical that negotiations between Trump and Putin could yield a result that would be palatable to many Ukrainians.
Volodymyr Sablyn, a battalion commander in the 66th mechanized brigade, who is fighting near Lyman in the east of the country, said that having Russia take over some of Ukraine’s territory could have dangerous consequences.
“It will set a precedent and show Russia that they can attack any country, take its territory and make it theirs with impunity in the future,” he said, adding that Russia could soon turn their focus on other smaller countries in its vicinity.
Putin has repeatedly made his goals clear: He wants to gain control over the entirety of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions. But many in Ukraine are worried that even if he initially agrees to a ceasefire, he will ultimately instigate further fighting to achieve his endgame.
“No one and nothing will stop Putin from attacking us again and occupying another region or several more. If Europe and America don’t help us, then making peace now will most likely lead to war in a few years,” Sablyn said.
Dariya Tarasova-Markina contributed to this report.
Friedrich Merz, the 69-year-old veteran German politician with a hardline stance on migration and a love of aviation, is the favorite to become the country’s next chancellor in the federal election on February 23.
But who is the old-school conservative who wants to rid his party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), of former leader Angela Merkel’s centrist legacy?
His long-time rival’s decision to leave the top job in 2021 prompted Merz to come out of political hibernation and run for the party leadership. After two failed bids, he was eventually selected to lead the CDU in 2022.
Now, he appears to have the chancellery within his grasp after the November collapse of Germany’s governing coalition – made up of the Social Democrats (SPD), Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the Greens – which paved the way for the snap election.
If his party comes out on top, Merz stands to take the helm of a country mired in crises – although it may take weeks to form a governing coalition. He has pledged to reboot Germany’s large economy after years of uncharacteristic stagnation, crack down on migration, and lower taxes, all while attempting to wrestle back votes from the far right.
Despite his party comfortably topping polls, his campaign has not been all smooth sailing. A dalliance with the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) three weeks before the election drew criticism – and accusations he had breached the mainstream parties’ “firewall” against the AfD.
Beer-coaster economics
Merz was born in 1955 into a conservative, Catholic family in the North Rhine-Westphalia town of Brilon, in central Germany, and joined the CDU’s youth wing while still in school. He entered politics full-time in 1989, when he was elected to the European Parliament at the age of 33.
After serving one term as an MEP, Merz, a married father-of-three, was elected to the Bundestag – Germany’s parliament – and established himself as a leader in financial policy. In 2003, he famously argued that German tax rules should be simple enough to calculate on the back of a beer coaster.
A growing feud with Merkel eventually pushed him to leave politics, however.
Merz, who appealed to the CDU’s more traditionalist, right-wing faction, lost out to Merkel in a party leadership contest in 2000.
Merkel’s leadership signaled a break from the CDU’s norm; she was its first female leader, with a Protestant – rather than Catholic – background and centrist leanings.
The pair’s rivalry became more apparent in 2002, when Merz was pushed aside as leader of the opposition in the Bundestag in favor of Merkel.
By late 2009, Merz had fully joined the private sector.
He worked as a lawyer and senior counsel at the international law firm Mayer Brown, among other positions. These ventures made him a multi-millionaire, according to German business newspaper Handelsblatt.
This background may have persuaded voters that Merz is a man who can do business; a desirable skill for anyone hoping to fix Europe’s largest economy, which contracted for a second year running in 2024.
Merkel’s ‘carpet of fog’
Nine years after he left politics, the announcement of Merkel’s resignation from Germany’s top job paved the way for Merz to re-enter. After two failed bids for CDU party leadership, in 2018 and 2021, he was selected to lead in 2022, cementing his political comeback.
Merz’s desire to distance himself from Merkel’s legacy is clear. He has sought to bring the CDU further to the right than it was under Merkel, partly to try to stop voters turning to the far right, while advocating for a more pro-market economy.
In an interview with German broadcaster ZDF in 2019, he described his predecessor’s “idle” leadership as like a “carpet of fog” over the country, and has said he sees her “open door” refugee policy during the 2015 migrant crisis as a grave error.
Merkel, for her part, criticized Merz in a rare political intervention in January, after he pushed through an immigration bill with help from the AfD – now the CDU’s main rival. The bill was ultimately defeated by the German parliament.
His campaign for the chancellery has largely focused on bread-and-butter issues like tax cuts, deregulation and incentives to work.
Merz drives a hard line on immigration and sees curbing irregular migration to Germany as the most pressing task if he is elected, according to German news magazine Der Spiegel. He has called for asylum seekers arriving from other European Union member states to be rejected at Germany’s land borders.
Merz has criticized liberal welfare benefits and accused Ukrainian refugees of “social tourism” – a phrase he later apologized for using. Overall, he promises to slash welfare spending, telling The Economist in a rare sit-down interview in the lead-up to the election that he wants to avoid “paying people who are not willing to work.”
Merz and the CDU support Germany’s continued military aid to Israel amid its war in Gaza, while also advocating for a two-state solution as the long-term goal. In a televised debate with Chancellor Olaf Scholz earlier this month, Merz expressed unease over US President Donald Trump’s proposal to “take over” Gaza, while also suggesting it remains to be seen “what is really meant seriously.”
On the topic of sending aid to Ukraine, Merz has advocated a more hands-on approach than the outgoing SPD-led coalition. He supports the delivery of long-range Taurus cruise missiles to Kyiv – something Scholz’s government has refused for fear of drawing Germany into the conflict.
Merz was vague when questioned by The Economist on the issue of Germany’s defense spending, although he acknowledged that it would have to increase in the long run. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth this week reiterated his administration’s demand for NATO members to spend 5% of GDP on defense at a meeting with US allies in Brussels.
Germany’s government last month said it had met NATO’s target to spend 2% of its GDP on defense after establishing a special fund in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine – yet this falls significantly short of the Trump administration’s demand.
In his spare time, Merz is an amateur pilot, sometimes flying his own private plane – an expensive hobby for a man who once described himself to German tabloid Bild as “upper middle class.”
Planned Parenthood caught the internet’s attention on Thursday after all of its Instagram posts were deleted within hours of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary RFK Jr.’s swearing in.
The organization, in an apparent nod to this move, posted a pair of eyes on a black background on its Instagram story with no explanation.
On Friday, Planned Parenthood posted another story, an animated gif with the words ‘I bet you thought you’d seen the last of me,’ and later there were just three posts on its Instagram page, all about condom use.
As speculation swirled about the mysterious disappearance of the posts, many pro-life advocates started to call for the defunding of Planned Parenthood. This also comes just days after a conservative watchdog nonprofit founded by former President Mike Pence, urged the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to cut federal spending on Planned Parenthood.
‘For the sake of the American people and generations yet unborn, the time has come for the United States to finally defund the largest abortion provider in America,’ Tim Chapman, president of Advancing American Freedom, wrote in a letter to Elon Musk.
Planned Parenthood health centers received nearly $22 billion in HHS grants and $53 billion from public health programs from 2019 to 2021, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office.
During his confirmation hearing, Kennedy said that he believes ‘every abortion is a tragedy,’ and expressed support for President Donald Trump’s assertion that states should handle the issue.
‘I agree with President Trump that every abortion is a tragedy,’ Kennedy said. ‘I agree with him that we cannot be a moral nation if we have 1.2 million abortions a year. I agree with him that the states should control abortion. President Trump has told me that he wants to end late-term abortions, and he wants to protect conscience exemptions.’
Kennedy, who has expressed support for abortion in the past, vowed to implement Trump’s policies.
With Kennedy at the helm of HHS and Elon Musk at DOGE, pro-choice advocates fear that Planned Parenthood will be on the chopping block.
On Feb. 3, Planned Parenthood Federation of America put out a statement warning that ‘defunding’ the organization could put patients at risk of losing access to ‘sexual and reproductive care.’
Planned Parenthood Federation of America said that in 2022 the organization treated 2.05 million patients. The services mentioned in the organization’s included more than 4.6 million STI tests, nearly 213,000 breast exams and more. However, no data on the number of abortions performed in that time was listed.
Planned Parenthood did not respond to a Fox News request for comment.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s efforts at President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have revealed a number of examples of government waste that have dominated headlines in recent weeks, as his team continues to audit the federal government despite Democrat opposition.
Here are some of the top-lines from DOGE’s findings:
Musk reveals ‘Iron Mountain’ mine nightmare
Musk revealed this week that DOGE is investigating a limestone mine in Pennsylvania where federal employee retirements are processed manually.
‘Federal employee retirements are processed using paper, by hand, in an old limestone mine in Pennsylvania. 700+ mine workers operate 230 feet underground to process ~10,000 applications per month, which are stored in manila envelopes and cardboard boxes. The retirement process takes multiple months,’ Musk announced on X.
Musk said only 10,000 federal employees can retire a month because it takes so long to process the paperwork and sort through the millions of manila envelopes. He described the ‘Iron Mountain’ mine as a ‘time warp’ slowing down a completely manual federal retirement process.
‘The limiting factor is the speed at which the mine shaft elevator can move, determines how many people can retire from the federal government. The elevator breaks down sometimes, and then nobody can retire. Doesn’t that sound crazy?’ Musk told reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday.
DOGE-inspired EPA locates $20 billion in waste
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), inspired by DOGE’s crackdown on federal spending, said it had located $20 billion in tax dollars within the agency that the Biden administration reportedly ‘knew they were wasting.’
‘An extremely disturbing video circulated two months ago, featuring a Biden EPA political appointee talking about how they were ‘tossing gold bars off the Titanic,’ rushing to get billions of your tax dollars out the door before Inauguration Day,’ EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said in a video posted to X on Wednesday, citing another video from December.
The EPA found that just eight agencies were controlling the distribution of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to different entities ‘at their discretion,’ such as the Climate United Fund, which reportedly received just under $7 billion.
‘The ‘gold bars’ were tax dollars, and ‘tossing them off the Titanic’ meant the Biden administration knew they were wasting it,’ Zeldin said, vowing to recover the ‘gold bars’ that were found ‘parked at an outside financial institution.’
Zeldin said that the ‘scheme was the first of its kind in EPA history, and it was purposely designed to obligate all the money in a rush job with reduced oversight.’
In a Fox News interview, the EPA administrator praised DOGE’s work at the agency and said that the cost-cutting department is ‘making us better.’
‘They come up with great recommendations, and we can make a decision to act on it,’ Zeldin said.
DHS clawing back
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the government’s leading disaster-relief arm, gave over $59 million to house illegal immigrants in luxury New York City hotels just last week, DOGE uncovered.
The spending was exposed by Musk on Monday, who wrote in a post on X that ‘sending this money violated the law and is in gross insubordination to the President’s executive order,’ which put FEMA under review to improve the agency’s ‘efficacy, priorities and competence.’
Of the $59.3 million, $19 million was for direct hotel costs, while the balance funded other services such as food and security, a New York City Hall spokesperson confirmed to Fox.
One day after the spending was uncovered by DOGE, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed that ‘Secretary [Krisit] Noem has clawed back the full payment that FEMA deep state activists unilaterally gave to NYC migrant hotels,’ a DHS spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
Shortly afterward, Trump, in a Truth Social post on Tuesday, suggested that FEMA should be abolished.
‘FEMA spent tens of millions of dollars in Democrat areas, disobeying orders, but left the people of North Carolina high and dry. It is now under review and investigation,’ the president declared.
‘THE BIDEN RUN FEMA HAS BEEN A DISASTER. FEMA SHOULD BE TERMINATED! IT HAS BEEN SLOW AND TOTALLY INEFFECTIVE. INDIVIDUAL STATES SHOULD HANDLE STORMS, ETC., AS THEY COME. BIG SAVINGS, FAR MORE EFFICIENT!!!’ the president added.
Pentagon wasted thousands on coffee cups and soap dispensers
The Pentagon’s $850 billion budget could be next up on the bureaucratic chopping block. Fox News Digital reported this week accusations of waste and inefficiency within the U.S.’s largest discretionary budget.
The Defense Business Board found in 2015 that the Department of Defense could save $125 billion over five years by renegotiating service contracts and consolidating bureaucratic processes.
A congressional inquiry in 2018 found the Air Force was spending $1,300 for each reheatable coffee cup aboard one of its aircraft. The Air Force spent $32,000 replacing 25 cups, according to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.
A two-year audit by the Defense Department Inspector General last year found that Boeing overcharged the Air Force by 8,000% for soap dispensers. They overpaid by $149,072.
Trump’s new defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said he welcomes DOGE at the Department of Defense.
‘We will partner with them. It’s long overdue. The Defense Department’s got a huge budget, but it needs to be responsible,’ Hegseth told Fox News.
Questionable spending in USAID’s $40 billion budget, including ‘Sesame Street’ in Iraq
Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, the Senate DOGE Caucus Chairwoman, who says she speaks to Musk about spending cuts every few days, recently published a list of projects and programs she says the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has helped fund across the years.
Ernst described ‘wasteful and dangerous’ spending that had gripped taxpayers until DOGE stepped in.
Ernst highlighted that the agency ‘authorized a whopping $20 million to create a ‘Sesame Street’ in Iraq.’
Under the Biden administration, USAID awarded $20 million to a nonprofit called Sesame Workshopto produce a show called ‘Ahlan Simsim Iraq’ in an effort to ‘promote inclusion, mutual respect and understanding across ethnic, religious and sectarian groups.’
Several more examples of questionable spending have been uncovered at USAID, including more than $900,000 to a ‘Gaza-based terror charity’ called Bayader Association for Environment and Development and a $1.5 million program slated to ‘advance diversity, equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities.’
Fox News Digital’s Morgan Phillips and Emma Colton contributed to this report.
Fox News Digital’s Morgan Phillips contributed to this report.
As Democrats lob claims that President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are a potential national security threat, Republicans are calling them out for what they perceive as hypocrisy after years of weak immigration and foreign policies.
‘Being lectured by the Democrats on national security is pretty rich after they spent the last four years sending billions of taxpayer dollars to terrorists, letting suspected terrorists walk through our wide-open southern border and disgracefully retreating from Afghanistan, empowering Iran and kicking off the most destabilizing foreign policy paradigm in a generation,’ Sen. Tim Sheehy, R-Mont., told Fox News Digital.
Democrats, led by Mark Warner, D-Va., vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, recently pressed White House chief of staff Susie Wiles over their ‘grave concern’ that Musk and DOGE were illegally risking ‘exposure of classified and other sensitive information that jeopardizes national security and violates Americans’ privacy.’
One GOP Senate leadership aide remarked to Fox News Digital that it was ‘absurd’ to suggest cutting wasteful spending through DOGE amounts to a security threat.
‘This is the Russia hoax all over again, with an attempt to scare Americans by making preposterous claims that Elon Musk is going to steal their identity,’ the aide said.
Sheehy added in his response, ‘America is lucky to have President Trump, Elon and DOGE working to restore accountability and fix our government. Perhaps the Dems should just say ‘thank you’ for cleaning up their mess.’
Warner wrote to Wiles that ‘unauthorized access to classified information risks exposure of our operations and potentially compromises not only our own sources and methods, but also those of our allies and partners. If our sources, allies, and partners stop sharing intelligence because they cannot trust us to protect it, we will all be less safe.’
The Democratic letter was sent amid uproar over Musk and DOGE’s shake-up of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), followed by other agencies and departments in the executive branch.
As DOGE has pressed on with the effort, Musk has revealed expenditures considered wasteful and the amount of contracts he is instructing agencies to cancel.
Intel Chairman Tom Cotton, R-Ark., pushed back on those claims by his Democratic counterparts, writing on X, ‘The reaction from the Dem and media to DOGE conducting audits and cutting waste has been downright hysterical. It’s reminiscent of the Russia collusion hoax — a sad and dishonest attempt to scare Americans.’
The Senate GOP leadership aide said, ‘Senate Republicans are going to keep supporting this crucial work’ through DOGE.
While DOGE continues to scrutinize spending, courts across the country have begun to issue rulings and injunctions limiting the agency’s ability.
Trump and Musk have hit several judicial roadblocks, from a temporary halt to DOGE access to Treasury systems and a restraining order on attempts to shut down USAID.
‘Saturday Night Live’ and I have something in common. We are both, somehow, now 50 years old. On Sunday night, the Not Ready For Prime Time Players are throwing a birthday party (for the show, sadly not for me), live from New York.
With five decades of circling the sun comes the desire to reflect upon the past, what worked and what didn’t. For SNL, and late night comedy TV writ large, what absolutely has not worked is their relatively recent, hackneyed obsequience to wokeness.
The problem began around the turn of the century when the flexible social strictures of political correctness were metastasizing into the cold hard rules of wokeness. Put another way, the age of ‘That’s not funny,’ was ushered in.
What this meant for SNL, as well as ‘The Tonight Show’ and others was a kind of self-censorship that is completely anathema to comedy as well as the bizarre notion that the primary goal of a joke is not to provoke laughter, but to make society better, or something.
In the case of SNL, not only has the show censored itself in the 21st Century, it has censored its own past. The best example of this is that NBC Universal has banned video of a classic skit from 1977 featuring original black cast member Garret Morris and the lighter-skinned black activist and guest host Julian Bond.
In the bit, Bond plays himself on a talk show talking about how IQ tests are racially biased. Asked for an example of a biased question, Bond says, ‘Question one: You have been invited over for cocktails by the officer of your trust fund. Cocktails begin at 4:30, but you must make an appearance at a 6 o’clock formal dinner at the Yacht Club. What do you do about dress?’
The whole thing is hilarious, but the reason it has been scrubbed from existence is the final punchline, in which Morris asks where the idea of black intellectual inferiority comes from, and Bond, deadpan, says it is because light-skinned blacks are smarter than dark-skinned blacks.
Decades later, Bond would say the sketch made him feel uneasy, adding, ‘I believed it treaded dangerously on the fine line between comedy and poor taste,’ but honestly, so what? The obvious point of the punchline is that it is ludicrous to judge a person’s intelligence based on skin color.
This is a perfect example of the woke attitude that has choked most of the laughs out of late night TV comedy. Instead of searing and sometimes abrasive comedic insight, they just rehash progressive shibboleths about Orange Man bad and vaccines good.
When we look at the funniest and most successful comedians of the past 25 years, they tend to be the very people willing to transgress on supposed good taste. Guys like Dave Chappelle, Norm MacDonald, Ricky Gervais, and more recently, Shane Gillis, have all been in hot water over so-called offensive material.
In ‘Saturday Night Live’s’ case, there have been some signs that things are changing, notwithstanding producer Lorne Michaels’ boneheaded decision to go back on his word and give Kamala Harris an appearance just days before the election, a Hail Mary that didn’t even make it across the line of scrimmage.
A recent sketch in which President Donald Trump is depicted mocking Hamilton superstar Lin Manuel Miranda is a good example of a playful touch that would have been all but impossible four years ago, maybe even four months ago.
Sadly, the same cannot be said of the Jimmy Kimmels and Seth Meyers of the world whose nocturnal obsession with abusing Trump has become all they do. As Johnny Carson once said while roasting Don Rickles, ‘Don is a great comedian. I love his joke.’
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will reportedly hold a meeting at 12:00 p.m. eastern on Saturday, President Donald Trump’s deadline for Hamas, to discuss the rest of the ceasefire agreement, his spokesperson confirmed to Fox News.
In a statement, Prime Minister Netanyahu warned that Israel is ‘preparing with full intensity for what comes next, in every sense,’ TPS-IL reported.
Earlier on Saturday, Hamas released three more hostages, including American citizen Sagui Dekel-Chen. Their release was almost delayed ‘indefinitely’ by the terror group due to alleged ceasefire violations by Israel.
Trump then said on Monday that if Hamas did not return all of the remaining hostages by noon, Israel should cancel the ceasefire and ‘let all hell break out.’
‘If all the Gaza hostages aren’t returned by Saturday at 12 p.m., I would say cancel the ceasefire,’ Trump said in the Oval Office. ‘Let all hell break out; Israel can override it.’
When Trump made the statement, it was unclear if he meant 12 p.m. eastern or Israeli time. The time of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s meeting indicates that Israel understood Trump’s deadline as 12 p.m. eastern, making it 7 p.m. local time.
On Thursday, Hamas announced it would release hostages on Saturday as planned. The group eventually named the hostages set to be released. Iair Horn and Sasha Troufanov were released alongside Dekel-Chen. All three men were taken from Kibbutz Nir Oz during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks.
While Trump was the one who originally suggested the deadline, he said on Saturday in a post on Truth Social that the United States would ‘back’ any decision that Israel made regarding further actions.
‘Hamas has just released three Hostages from GAZA, including an American Citizen. They seem to be in good shape! This differs from their statement last week that they would not release any Hostages,’ Trump wrote. ‘Israel will now have to decide what they will do about the 12:00 O’CLOCK, TODAY, DEADLINE imposed on the release of ALL HOSTAGES. The United States will back the decision they make!’
Last week, Trump expressed outrage over the condition of the hostages released by Hamas, all of whom looked frail and gaunt. Trump said that the three men ‘looked like Holocaust survivors’ and ‘like they haven’t had a meal in a month.’
Israel and Hamas are engaged in a ceasefire deal that went into effect on Jan. 19. Throughout the six-week deal, Hamas is expected to release 33 hostages in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners.
French President Emmanuel Macron has scheduled an ’emergency meeting’ for European leaders to discuss President Donald Trump, according to another European official.
According to Politico, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski alluded to the meeting at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday. Two EU officials told the outlet that the meeting would take place on Monday.
‘I’m very glad that President Macron has called our leaders to Paris,’ Sikorski was quoted as saying, noting that the event would involve talking about the implications of Trump’s actions ‘in a very serious fashion.’
‘President Trump has a method of operating which the Russians call razvedka boyem – reconnaissance through battle. You push and you see what happens, and then you change your position…And we need to respond,’ the Polish official added.
Sikorski has not shied away from discussing American politics in the past. He previously compared President Biden’s poor debate performance to the decline of ancient Rome, and once told MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell that Trump was ‘right’ to say that NATO countries need to spend more on their own defense.
Macron has been cordial to Trump since the Republican was elected in November. In an X post, the French leader expressed a willingness to work with the president-elect.
‘Congratulations, President @realDonaldTrump,’ Macron’s post read. ‘Ready to work together as we did for four years. With your convictions and mine. With respect and ambition. For more peace and prosperity.’
In December, when Trump visited Paris to witness the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral, Macron said it was ‘an honor’ to host him.
‘It’s a great honor for French people to welcome you five years later,’ Macron said of Trump. ‘And you were, at that time, president for the first time. And I remember the solidarity and your immediate action. So, welcome back again. We are very happy to have you here.’
Fox News Digital reached out to Macron for more information.
