A majority of Americans say they are optimistic about the polices President-elect Trump will pursue in his incoming administration, according to a new poll from Monmouth University.

The poll found that 53% of Americans are either very or somewhat optimistic about Trump’s second term. That is a slight rise from the weeks prior to his first term, when just 50% of Americans said they were optimistic. The only segment of Americans who are less optimistic about Trump’s second term than they were about his first are Democrats, with just 10% saying they look forward to the next four years.

‘It should come as no surprise there is a stark partisan divide on the Trump agenda. The real question is how these policies will affect American families, especially among those who voted for Trump in 2024,’ Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute, said in a statement.

The poll also found that Trump’s least popular policy is his tariff agenda, with 47% of respondents saying they expect tariffs will hurt their family and just 23% saying they expected it to help. One of Trump’s most popular polices is his plan to eliminate income tax for certain wages, with 48% of respondents saying the plan would help their family, compared to just 15% who say it would hurt.

Monmouth conducted the poll from Dec. 5-10, surveying 1,006 U.S. adults via phone interviews and online surveys. The poll advertises a margin of error of 3.9%.

The poll comes as Trump is cruising toward his second inauguration and has begun targeting perceived enemies in the media. Trump on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the Des Moines register and pollster Ann Selzer. The lawsuit claims the plaintiffs committed ‘brazen election interference’ and fraud by publishing a final 2024 presidential poll showing Vice President Kamala Harris leading him in Iowa. Trump ultimately won the state by 13 points.

The lawsuit was filed Monday night in Polk County, Iowa under the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act and related provisions. It says it seeks ‘accountability for brazen election interference committed by’ the Des Moines Register (DMR) and Selzer ‘in favor of now-defeated former Democrat candidate Kamala Harris through use of a leaked and manipulated Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll conducted by Selzer and S&C and published by DMR and Gannett in the Des Moines Register on Nov. 2, 2024.’ The lawsuit is also against the parent company of the Des Moines Register, Gannett, which also owns other publications, including USA Today.

Trump attorneys said Selzer had ‘prided herself on a mainstream reputation for accuracy despite several far less publicized egregious polling misses in favor of Democrats’ and said she ‘would have the public believe it was merely a coincidence that one of the worst polling misses of her career came just days before the most consequential election in memory, was leaked and happened to go against the Republican candidate.’

‘The Harris Poll was no ‘miss’ but rather an attempt to influence the outcome of the 2024 Presidential Election,’ the lawsuit states, adding that ‘defendants and their cohorts in the Democrat Party hoped that the Harris Poll would create a false narrative of inevitability for Harris in the final week of the 2024 Presidential Election.’ 

‘Instead, the November 5 election was a monumental victory for President Trump in both the Electoral College and the Popular Vote, an overwhelming mandate for his America First principles, and the consignment of the radical socialist agenda to the dustbin of history.’ 

The lawsuit notes that Selzer, after more than 35 years in the industry, ‘retired in disgrace from polling less than two weeks after this embarrassing rout.’

Fox News’ Brooke Singman contributed to this report.

House GOP hardliners are furious with how congressional leaders are handling the ongoing government funding talks, with some even suggesting they could withhold support from House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to head their conference again over his handling of the matter.

Negotiators are working on a short-term extension of current government funding levels known as a continuing resolution (CR). A bill must pass the House and Senate by the end of Friday, Dec. 20 to avoid a partial government shutdown just before the holidays.

‘The speaker definitely has some ‘no’ votes and some people considering their options,’ one GOP lawmaker granted anonymity to speak candidly told Fox News Digital on Tuesday.

That lawmaker also accused Johnson of using President-elect Donald Trump’s own support for the Louisiana Republican as cover.

Johnson won unanimous support to be speaker again in House Republicans’ closed-door elections earlier this year, hours after Trump told lawmakers he supported him.

He needs almost the same level of support in early January, when the entire House votes to elect a new speaker. With just a slim majority, Johnson can only afford to lose a few members of the House GOP to still win the gavel.

Former House Freedom Caucus Chairman Scott Perry, R-Pa., was asked by Fox News on Monday night if, depending on Johnson’s handling of the CR, some Republicans could initially vote against him on Jan. 3.

‘I think that’s potentially a possibility,’ Perry said. 

Another Republican said they would consider opposing Johnson’s speakership bid in January if it were not for Trump’s backing.

‘Everything’s got consequences,’ Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., said when asked if Johnson’s handling of the CR would impact the January vote.

Several Republicans who spoke with Fox News Digital said they felt blindsided by what they viewed as last-minute additions to the CR, which they anticipated would be relatively free of unrelated policy riders.

Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., was furious about health care provisions included in discussions in recent days that would lessen the power of Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs). He said Johnson indicated that the CR would be a ‘clean’ funding extension without added policies.

‘We talked with the speaker up until this weekend, the only discussion was ‘How long is this clean CR going to be?’ And suddenly we find out – I heard rumors over the weekend – they’re negotiating with a health care package that included PBM stuff,’ Burlison said. 

‘I think it’s absolutely disgusting to bring forward a several-thousand-page bill that nobody’s read, even today, nobody’s even seen it, and then they expect us to vote on it without any debate.’

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, told reporters, ‘Swamp is going to swamp, right?’

‘Fourteen hundred pages. Still haven’t seen the text. Multiple subject matters. Important health care legislation in the context of extenders piled on the back of a three-month CR with about $110 billion unpaid for,’ Roy said. ‘This is not the way to do business.’

Roy has also spoken out against a rumored provision expanding ethanol sales.

‘E15 should not be in this disastrous CR/Supplemental, among most of the things being discussed – including a PBM bill that Pharma is dancing in the streets over… Call me crazy, but we should reduce the deficit and not pass stupid policies,’ Roy wrote on X.

The legislative text for the CR was originally expected to come out on Sunday, but as of late Tuesday morning, negotiations were close to an end but still ongoing. It is putting lawmakers perilously close to their Friday shutdown deadline.

Johnson dismissed any concerns about his job during his weekly press conference Tuesday.

‘I’m not worried about the speaker vote,’ he said. ‘We’re governing. Everybody knows we have difficult circumstances. We’re doing the very best we can under those circumstances.’

Johnson also maintained he wanted to give lawmakers 72 hours to read the bill before a vote – meaning it would come Friday earliest if released today.

However, even rank-and-file lawmakers who are not threatening Johnson’s job said there are frustrations about the situation.

Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, R-Wis., whose district has a significant agricultural sector, said some lawmakers were concerned that farm policy provisions in the CR would hinder Congress’ negotiation for a new Farm Bill, comprehensive legislation setting food and agricultural policy that is set to expire this year.

The CR is expected to include a one-year extension of the current Farm Bill, plus added subsidies. 

‘I think there are members that just wish we were being a bit more comprehensive and deliberate in passing a Farm Bill,’ Fitzgerald said. ‘There’s been very little back-and-forth with members on specific issues.’

Fox News’ Tyler Olson contributed to this report.

Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s Defense secretary nominee ensnared in sexual assault allegations, plans to release his accuser from the confidentiality agreement he had her sign, according to Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Graham, R-S.C., told NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ that Hegseth ‘told me he would release her from that agreement,’ adding, ‘I’d want to know if anybody nominated for a high-level job in Washington legitimately assaulted somebody.’

Graham has said he will not take allegations from an anonymous source into consideration for Hegseth’s confirmation. 

Allowing Hegseth’s accuser to come forward publicly might lead to a spectacle similar to the confirmation process for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, during which his accuser, Christine Ford, was called to testify in the Senate about her accusations.  

‘The Pete Hegseth I know, this is not a problem I’ve been aware of,’ Graham said.

‘However, if people have an allegation to make, come forward and make it like they did in Kavanaugh,’ he added, referring to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. ‘We’ll decide whether or not it’s credible.’

A woman alleges that in 2017, she was sexually assaulted by Hegseth in a hotel room in Monterey, California.

Hegseth was not charged in the incident and insists the interaction was consensual, and the charge stemmed from a woman who regretted cheating on her husband.

Police recommended the case report be forwarded to the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office for review, but no charges were filed. 

At the time of the alleged assault, Hegseth, 44, was going through a divorce from his second wife, with whom he shares three children. She filed for divorce after he had a child with another woman, according to court records and social media posts.

A payment was made to the woman, according to Hegseth’s attorney, as part of a confidentiality agreement because Hegseth feared the woman was preparing to file a lawsuit that could have cost him his job as a co-host on ‘Fox & Friends.’ 

Earlier this month, Hegseth’s attorney, Tim Parlatore, told CNN they had considered suing the woman for civil extortion before settling with a confidentiality agreement. 

It is not yet clear whether the allegations may stand in the way of Hegseth’s confirmation. Republicans will have a 53-47 majority in the next Senate, and there is only room for Trump nominees to lose a few GOP votes, assuming no Democrats choose to back them. 

Hegseth does not appear to have lost any Republicans in the upper chamber at this point, including more moderate lawmakers such as Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. 

Hegseth met with both of them last week on Capitol Hill. According to Collins, ‘I had a good, substantive discussion that lasted more than an hour.’

‘We covered a wide range of topics ranging from defense procurement reforms to the role of women in the military, sexual assault in the military. Ukraine, NATO, a wide range of issues. I obviously always wait until we have an FBI background check and one is underway in the case of Mr. Hegseth, and I wait to see the committee hearing before reaching a final decision.’

Trump’s Defense secretary choice has also met twice with Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa. After their first meeting earlier this month, Ernst admitted on Fox News that she was not sold on Hegseth yet. However, after their second meeting this week, she released a statement, saying, ‘As I support Pete through this process, I look forward to a fair hearing based on truth, not anonymous sources.’

Fox News’ Julia Johnson and Tyler Olson contributed to this report. 

A Republican lawmaker is declaring that she will forgo many of the traditional day-to-day obligations of the House GOP Conference, suggesting she will dedicate more of her time to aiding the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., said she plans to reject any House committee assignments she is given and will refuse to attend the House GOP’s weekly conference meetings. 

‘I will stay as a registered Republican but will not sit on committees or participate in the caucus until I see that Republican leadership in Congress is governing,’ Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., wrote on X on Monday evening.

‘I do not need to be involved in circuses. I would rather spend more of my time helping [DOGE]… to save our Republic, as was mandated by the American people.’

Spartz did not elaborate on how she would focus her efforts on DOGE.

She has bucked House GOP leadership several times during the 118th Congress, chiefly on issues of government spending and the national debt. She is currently a member of the House Judiciary Committee.

DOGE is a nonbinding advisory panel commissioned by President-elect Donald Trump to recommend areas for cutting spending and improving the efficiency of the federal government.

He tapped Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead it, and the push has been met with enthusiasm among House Republicans. 

Spartz’s comments came the day before the Congressional DOGE Caucus readies to have its first lawmaker meeting on Tuesday.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Indiana Republican to ask whether she would consider joining the caucus.

A Republican congressman is disputing Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s insistence that the State Department did not block citizens from leaving Mazar-i-Sharif Airbase in Afghanistan during the frenzied withdrawal. 

Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, wrote a letter, obtained by Fox News Digital, demanding to know how many planes the State Department blocked from leaving the airbase, who made the call on whether to clear flights for takeoff, what the criteria for blocking delaying flights was and whether there had been communication with the Taliban.

Following the withdrawal, reports emerged that 1,000 people, including Americans, were stuck at Mazar-i-Sharif Airport awaiting clearance for their charter flights to leave. 

Many had made the 400-mile trek from Kabul to be able to get out more quickly at the airport in northern Afghanistan. 

One flight organizer told Reuters the State Department had failed to tell the Taliban of its approval for flight departures in Mazar-i-Sharif or validate a landing site. 

Davidson said in the letter that when he was in talks with the State Department, an official asked him ‘which tail number’ he was referring to, insinuating more than one flight had not received authorization to take off and been delayed. 

Col. Francis Hoang, who worked on Afghanistan evacuations with his group Allied Airlift 21, told the Foreign Affairs Committee, ‘We spent three weeks hiding these nearly 400 people from the Taliban, keeping them alive and fed using funds from American donors.’

During a hearing last week, Davidson asked Blinken, ‘Did the State Department block American citizens from departing from the airfield in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan?’ 

‘Absolutely not,’ said Blinken. 

‘You know they were blocked!’ said Davidson. 

‘I’d be happy to look at any information you have on that. I’m not aware of any American citizens who were blocked.’

‘I have the emails. I have the photographs of American, blue passport-holding American citizens who were on the airfield awaiting departure that got clearance for safe third countries to depart to, and the order came down from the United States government. Was it the State Department?’ Davidson asked. 

Blinken’s testimony came three months after the committee voted along party lines to recommend he be held in contempt of Congress, when he refused to appear to testify again about the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal. 

Republicans released a lengthy report in September highlighting how State Department officials had no plan for getting Americans and allies out while there were still troops there to protect them. 

The report claimed that Ross Wilson, U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan at the time, grew the embassy’s footprint instead of sending personnel home despite warnings from military officials that a Taliban takeover was imminent. 

‘You ignored warnings of collapse from your own personnel,’ Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul told Blinken. 

Blinken defended the Biden administration’s handling of the withdrawal, saying every American who wanted to leave had been given the opportunity to do so and thousands of Afghans have been resettled internationally. 

President-elect Donald Trump has promised to ask for the resignation of every senior official ‘who touched the Afghanistan calamity.’

Democrats, meanwhile, insist the blame for the 20-year war’s acrimonious end lies with a deal Trump negotiated with the Taliban for U.S. withdrawal.

Several Senate Democrats are pushing a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College and replace it with a presidential election system where the winner of the popular vote wins the White House contest.

Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, and Peter Welch, D-Vt., introduced the proposed amendment, according to a press release.

‘In 2000, before the general election, I introduced a bipartisan resolution to amend the Constitution and abolish the Electoral College. I still believe today that it is time to retire this 18th century invention that disenfranchises millions of Americans,’ Durbin said, according to the release. ‘The American people deserve to choose all their leaders, and I am proud to support this effort with Senators Schatz and Welch to empower voters.’

‘In an election, the person who gets the most votes should win. It’s that simple,’ Schatz stated. ‘No one’s vote should count for more based on where they live. The Electoral College is outdated and it’s undemocratic. It’s time to end it.’

Welch claimed that ‘right now our elections aren’t as representative as they should be because of the outdated and flawed electoral college.’

GOP Sen. Mike Lee of Utah slammed the proposal, calling it ‘a phenomenally bad idea,’ in a post on X. ‘So naturally, Democrats are pushing it,’ he added.

Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., responded to the proposal by accusing the Senate Democrats of wanting ‘to trample the Constitution.’

President-elect Donald Trump trounced Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, winning both the Electoral College and the popular vote.

But there have been elections in U.S. history in which the winner of the Electoral College did not win the popular vote.

The most recent example was Trump’s 2016 victory where former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won the national popular vote but lost the Electoral College.

A co-chair of the House of Representatives’ Congressional DOGE Caucus said there is ‘real motivation’ behind accomplishing its mission of cutting the federal deficit.

Rep. Blake Moore, R-Utah, is House GOP Conference vice chair and the No. 6 House Republican, and recently joined Reps. Aaron Bean, R-Fla., and Pete Sessions, R-Texas, in leading the caucus.

The group’s name is an acronym for Delivering Outstanding Government Efficiency, coinciding with the Department of Government Efficiency – also DOGE for short – a new advisory panel commissioned by President-elect Trump and led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.

The caucus’ first meeting is slated for Tuesday. Moore said he hopes they can ‘create some structure on what we want to accomplish and set some initial first easy wins.’

He did not elaborate on what those wins would be, but suggested one of the caucus’ main goals would be delivering recommendations to Musk and Ramaswamy on how to make the federal government more efficient.

‘We’ve got people that have great ideas from their various committees on things, areas that we can find efficiencies, and just get that all on paper and eventually, you know, provide some recommendations,’ Moore said.

The Utah Republican is hopeful that his unique position as a member of House leadership will allow him to be a conduit between the caucus and fellow congressional leaders.

‘I was looking for another opportunity to help serve the conference,’ Moore said of his decision to become a co-chair. ‘There is a ton of bipartisan work that’s already been done on this type of stuff for years leading up to it. We needed this moment as a catalyst to do it. So I am just thrilled to be a part of the leadership team.’

He also suggested that the enthusiasm for DOGE was unlike anything he’d seen for prior government initiatives.

‘There’s real motivation behind this, and the American people are galvanized by this. For example, I’m the chair, co-chair of the Ski and Snowboard caucus. Utah has… got the best ski – greatest snow on earth and all that. That doesn’t draw the attention,’ Moore said.

‘But I became a co-chair also of the DOGE Caucus, and you could tell a widespread interest in this from both media back home [and] constituents. We have to honor that.’

Moore also dismissed concerns that DOGE’s internet meme-inspired branding might make people take it less seriously, arguing instead that it will help make Americans enthusiastic about the mission.

‘Doge’ is also the name of an internet meme popular in the 2010s, depicting a Shiba Inu and frequently accompanied by phrases in broken English representing the dog’s supposed internal monologue.

Musk has made no secret of his affinity for the meme, and even coined the name ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ while posting references to it on X, formerly Twitter, before Trump made it a reality. He’s also promoted a cryptocurrency of the same name.

‘I’ve never seen so much excitement and engagement from my constituents,’ Moore said. ‘The fact that it’s the Doge, I think this is how people connect now. Like, you know, that’s a good thing because it makes it relatable. And so I think it’s definitely something that kind of makes people laugh a little bit and just find the irony in it.’

‘Whatever can get people’s attention, you have to use that for good. Then you’ve got potential for impact.’

With former president and now President-elect Donald Trump unable to run again for the White House in 2028, Vice President-elect JD Vance appears to be the heir apparent to the America First movement and the Republican Party’s powerful MAGA base.

But even though the 40-year-old Vance will be considered the front-runner in the next GOP presidential nomination race, the chair of the Republican National Committee says the party will hold to its traditional role of staying neutral in an open and contested presidential primary.

‘We will,’ RNC chair Michael Whatley said in a Fox News Digital interview.

Vance, with Trump’s support in a party firmly in the president-elect’s grip, will be very hard to knock off in the 2028 Republican presidential primaries.

‘We are getting four more years of Trump and then eight years of JD Vance,’ Donald Trump Jr. said in October on the campaign trail. 

The younger Trump, who’s a powerful ally of the vice president-elect, is extremely popular with the MAGA base.

‘The vice president will be in the catbird seat. No question about it,’ longtime Republican consultant Dave Carney recently told Fox News Digital. 

Carney, a veteran of numerous Republican presidential campaigns over the past four decades, said that Vance ‘is the guy to beat.’

David Kochel, another longtime GOP strategist with plenty of presidential campaign experience, said that Vance is the front-runner due to ‘the size and the scope’ of Trump’s Electoral College and popular vote victories last month, ‘and the implied passing of the torch from Donald Trump.’

‘There will be no shortage of people looking at it. But most people looking at it are seeing the relative strength of the Trump victory and the movement,’ Kochel said.

However, Kochel noted that ‘nobody will completely defer to JD Vance. There will be a contest. There always is.’

Whatley, who was interviewed a week after Trump asked him to continue as RNC chair moving forward, said he’s ‘very excited about the bench that we have in the Republican Party right now.’

‘You think about all the Republican governors, you think about all the Republican senators, the members of the House that we have, the leaders across the country that have been engaged in this campaign are going to be part of the president’s cabinet,’ he added.

Whatley argued that the president-elect’s ‘America First movement is bigger than Donald Trump. He is the tip of the spear. He is the vanguard of this movement. But. It is a very big movement right now.’

The chairman on Thursday also emphasized that ‘Donald Trump has completely remade the Republican Party. We’re now the working-class party. We’re now a party that is communicating and working with every single voter, speaking to every single voter about the issues that they care about. So, as we go into 2028, we are in a great position to be able to continue the momentum of this agenda and this movement.’

Unlike the rival Democratic National Committee, which in the 2024 cycle upended the traditional presidential nominating calendar, the RNC made no major changes to their primary lineup, and kept the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary as their first two contests.

Asked about the 2028 calendar, Whatley said ‘I’ve not had any conversations with anybody who wants to change the calendar on our side. I know the Democrats did during the course of this election cycle, not sure that it really helped them all that much.’

‘We’re very comfortable with the calendar as it is. But as we move towards 2028, we’ll have those conversations,’ he added.