Democratic lawmakers are fueling concerns of a partial government shutdown, warning they may withhold support for any plan in protest of President Donald Trump’s shakeup of the federal government. 

Left-wing leaders who have warned of the catastrophic consequences of government shutdowns in the past are now publicly signaling it could be a possibility – and they are already positioning to blame Republicans.

‘What leverage do we have? Republicans have repeatedly lectured America, they control the House, the Senate and the presidency. It’s their government,’ House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., told reporters when asked about what concessions he would seek in exchange for Democratic help to avert a partial shutdown. ‘We are in the governing season, and so we’re ready to work together on any issue. But I’m also confused about the leverage that we allegedly have in the face of such an overwhelming mandate that was given to Republicans by the American people, according to them.’

Meanwhile, Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., suggested a partial shutdown could even aid in stopping the work of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which Democrats have repeatedly raised alarms over. ‘This is on them. This is about whether or not they can get the votes. They are the majority. And if they cannot govern, then that’s for the American people to see,’ Kim told NBC News’ ‘Meet The Press,’ referring to Republicans.

‘I’ve worked through multiple government shutdowns. I will be the last person to want to get to that stage. But we are at a point where we are basically on the cusp of a constitutional crisis, seeing this administration taking steps that are so clearly illegal. And until we see a change in that behavior, we should not allow and condone that, nor should we assist in that.’

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., signaled one point of opposition was Trump and his allies’ support of allowing Trump to direct less federal spending than what was authorized by Congress, which Democrats argue runs afoul of the Constitution’s separation of powers.

‘We will meet with folks, and we will try to find common ground where it is possible. But what we will not do is engage in an effort that gives Donald Trump money to direct our federal government that he has no plan to utilize or implement,’ Aguilar said at a press conference last week. ‘If we’re going to pass law, we need to know that the law is followed. And it doesn’t appear that House Republicans are in a position to push back against Donald Trump to protect vital funding that supports our communities.’

Progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., told CNN that Democrats should seek a ‘very high’ price in exchange for their votes.

In past fiscal standoffs, Democrats had used the specter of a government shutdown to force Republicans back to the negotiating table.

Jeffries said during the previous round of government funding talks in late December, ‘If the government shuts down, holiday travel will be impacted…Border security and border patrol agents will not be paid. TSA agents will not be paid. Small businesses will be hurt in every single community in this country.’

‘This reckless Republican-driven shutdown can be avoided if House Republicans will simply do what is right for the American people and stick with the bipartisan agreement that they themselves negotiated,’ Jeffries said at the time.

Government funding has long been a thorny issue within the House Republican conference. 

GOP leaders have relied on Democratic support to pass every federal funding bill that has been signed into law since taking the House majority in January 2023.

Despite now having the Senate majority as well, Republican leaders’ razor-thin margins mean House GOP lawmakers would need to vote nearly in lock-step to pass any one bill without Democrats.

The House has about 15 days left in session before the government funding deadline on March 14.

Democratic lawmakers have also previously painted shutdowns as ‘catastrophic’ for the economy and federal workforce.

Aguilar said during a January 2024 press conference, ‘House Democrats are in lock step that we need to avoid a government shutdown, which would be a disaster for our economy and a disaster for hardworking American families.’

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced it would be cutting billions in overhead costs associated with federally funded research grants that go to various institutions, as part of a wider move by the Trump administration to slash wasteful spending.

The agency’s announcement unveiling the directive indicated that in fiscal year 2023, the NIH spent around $35 billion across roughly 50,000 grants that go to research institutions, such as universities and hospitals. Of that $35 billion, according to the announcement, $9 billion was allocated for ‘indirect costs’ that cover expenses related to depreciation on buildings, equipment, capital improvements, interest on debt associated with certain buildings, and operations and maintenance expenses.

When a grant is awarded, an additional percentage, on top of the allocated research funding, goes to the facility housing their work to cover these ‘indirect costs.’ According to the announcement, that percentage has historically been around 27 to 28% for each grant; however, the new directive is now imposing a 15% threshold, unless otherwise negotiated. 

‘Most private foundations that fund research provide substantially lower indirect costs than the federal government, and universities readily accept grants from these foundations. For example, a recent study found that the most common rate of indirect rate reimbursement by foundations was 0%, meaning many foundations do not fund indirect costs whatsoever,’ NIH’s announcement, released Friday evening, stated. ‘In addition, many of the nation’s largest funders of research—such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—have a maximum indirect rate of 15%. And in the case of the Gates Foundation, the maximum indirect costs rate is 10% for institutions of higher education.’

Some universities responded to the new, indirect cost cap with confusion and backlash.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison put out a statement arguing the new indirect cost cap will ‘significantly disrupt vital research activity and daily life-saving discoveries.’ It added that the move will also ‘have an inevitable impact on student opportunities to engage in research activities.’ 

At the University of Michigan, which currently has a negotiated indirect cost rate with the federal government of 56%, the school put out a statement emphasizing the ‘great deal of uncertainty’ over how the policy will be implemented. The school said it has begun investigating the implications of this new rule on its current grants.  

‘It seems like it is of a piece with the sort of slash-and-burn philosophy of the current administration,’ Dr. Francis P. Wilson, a Yale associate professor of medicine and public health, told the Yale Daily News. ‘It feels indiscriminate and abrupt, executed with little regard for the potential downstream consequences.’

The Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk, applauded the move in a post on social media. ‘Amazing job by the NIH team,’ the group said in a post on social media. ‘Saved > $4B annually in excessive grant administrative costs.’

‘Can you believe that universities with tens of billions in endowments were siphoning off 60% of research award money for ‘overhead’?’ Musk also posted on social media. ‘What a ripoff!’

‘Contrary to the hysteria, redirecting billions of allocated NIH spending away from administrative bloat means there will be more money and resources available for legitimate scientific research, not less,’ added White House spokesperson Kush Desai in a statement to Fox News Digital.

The NIH declined to comment for this story. 

Iran’s assassination threats against Donald Trump have loomed over the president in recent days and are more serious than publicly reported, an upcoming book claims. 

Axios reporter Isaac Isenstadt’s upcoming book, ‘Revenge: The Inside Story of Trump’s Return to Power,’ claims that law enforcement officials warned Trump in 2024 that Iran had placed operatives in the U.S. with access to surface-to-air missiles and that Trump’s orbit worried Iran would try to take out ‘Trump Force One’ as it was taking off or landing while on the campaign trail. Isenstadt previewed his book in an Axios article published Sunday. 

The reported threats and concern of Iran’s threats against Trump hit a fever pitch in September 2024, when a second assassination attempt was thwarted at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, the book claims. Isenstadt reported that his book is based on his conversations with Trump’s ‘inner circle during his campaign.’ 

Fast-forward to Trump’s second presidency in 2025, the 47th president already has issued stern warnings against Iran. Trump said while signing an executive order imposing maximum pressure on Tehran earlier in February that he left special instructions if something were to happen to him. 

During his first term in the Oval Office, Trump withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran nuclear deal, and reapplied crippling economic sanctions on Iran, escalating tensions between Trump and the nation. 

‘That would be a terrible thing for them to do,’ Trump said on Feb. 4 of Iran potentially attempting to assassinate him. ‘If they did that, they would be obliterated. That would be the end.… There won’t be anything left.’

Trump survived two assassination attempts while on the campaign trail in 2024, including the Pennsylvania attempt that left him with an injury to his ear as suspect Thomas Crooks opened fire on the crowd of Trump supporters in July. The Pennsylvania attempt has not been connected to Iran. 

The suspect behind the Florida attempt, Ryan Wesley Routh, wrote a book in 2023 urging Iran to assassinate Trump, the Associated Press reported in September 2024. 

Following the second attempt in Florida, Isenstadt’s book, which will be released March 18, claims Trump’s team was on high alert, including his security detail putting Trump on a ‘Trump Force One’ decoy plane owned by Steve Witkoff to travel to an event shortly after the attempt. The co-chairs of the campaign at the time, current chief of staff Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, split up, with Wiles traveling with Trump on the decoy plane and LaCivita on Trump Force One. 

‘The boss ain’t riding with us today,’ LaCivita reportedly told staffers on the flight. ‘We had to put him into another plane. This is nothing but a sort of test for how things may happen in the future.’

Staffers on Trump Force One reportedly worried they would be ‘collateral damage’ if the plane had been taken down, the book alleges. 

Three aides told Isenstadt that the flight was packed with ‘gallows humor galore’ as staffers reportedly realized the severity of an alleged threat, dubbing the trip as the ‘Ghost Flight’ and remarking the alleged threat was ‘some serious s—.’

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment on the excerpts from Isenstadt’s book, but did not immediately receive a reply. 

Trump’s campaign continued to face reported threats and scares following the second assassination attempt, including the Secret Service warning that a person might attempt to shoot at Trump’s motorcade after a Long Island rally on Sept. 18, 2024. In a separate incident, Secret Service agents shot a drone with an electromagnetic gun from a sunroof in one of the cars in Trump’s motorcade during a Pennsylvania campaign trip in September 2024, the book claimed. 

‘Don’t f—ing hang out the window and take photos, because you’re a f—ing target,’ LaCivita reportedly told longtime Trump advisor Dan Scavino during one trip on Trump Force One. 

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said in January that his country ‘never’ plotted to assassinate Trump, adding ‘we never will.’ 

The Justice Department announced in November 2024 that it thwarted an Iranian attempt to assassinate Trump, charging an alleged Iranian government asset in the murder-for-hire plot. 

As for the two assassination attempts during the campaign cycle, Trump instructed the Secret Service to hand over ‘every bit of information’ related to the Florida and Pennsylvania incidents, he told the New York Post recently, arguing the Biden administration held back details. 

‘I want to find out about the two assassins,’ the president told the New York Post Friday. ‘Why did the one guy have six cellphones, and why did the other guy have [foreign] apps?’

‘I’m entitled to know. And they held it back long enough,’ he continued, referring to the Biden administration’s handling of information on the attempts. ‘No more excuses.’

Fox News Digital’s Alexandra Koch, Diana Stancy and Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report. 

President Donald Trump’s first term revolutionized the online relationship between the president and the public, but self-proclaimed ‘White House Tech Support’ Elon Musk is ushering a chronically online generation into Trump’s second term. 

Trump has been using Truth Social in his second term like he used Twitter during his first, blasting off posts at all hours of the day to roll out policy announcements and comment on his favorite – or least favorite – news shows. Truth Social reads like Trump’s own stream of consciousness, and most Truth users are loyal Trump supporters who use the social media platform to rally around his policies.

Musk’s X account reads more like a political debate. Buried in the steady stream of memes and AI edits, ‘special government employee’ Musk uses X as a way to meet Americans where they are – confirming and denying information about his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in real time. 

It is easy to get lost in Musk’s 69,000 posts, but the richest man in the world does not miss a beat. This week, as an unrelenting news cycle focused on DOGE’s United States Agency for International Development (USAID) investigation, Musk used X to confirm reporting as misinformation circulated. 

‘All @DOGE did was check to see which federal organizations were violating the @POTUS executive orders the most. Turned out to be USAID, so that became our focus,’ Musk explained in a post on Monday. 

On Wednesday, Musk confirmed reporting by the Wall Street Journal that DOGE is investigating the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, posting: ‘Yeah, this is where the big money fraud is happening.’

Musk invites his followers to engage in the Democratic process right through the app, asking,’Bring back @DOGE staffer who made inappropriate statements via a now deleted pseudonym?’ Musk asked his X followers in an X poll on Friday morning.

Musk polled his followers on Tuesday as well, asking if DOGE should audit the IRS. 

Between the polls and DOGE confirmations, Musk floods his account with political commentary and quick reactions to trending posts. Musk simply responded with a bullseye emoji when an X user posted, ‘If you’re more angry that a handful of 22 year old software engineers are writing code to uncover fraudulent government spending than at the people who are fraudulently spending your hard earned taxes, it’s time to do some soul searching.’ 

Musk also embraces his platform as a vehicle to spark political debate with Democratic leaders.

In recent days, Democrats in Congress have unleashed attacks on Musk, including Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., who said, ‘Elon Musk is a Nazi nepo baby, a godless lawless billionaire, who no one elected’ at a rally outside the Treasury Department, where protesters were speaking out against DOGE.

‘Elon, this is the American people. This is not your trashy Cybertruck that you can just dismantle, pick apart, and sell the pieces of,’ she continued.

‘We are gonna be in your face, we are gonna be on your a–es, and we are going to make sure you understand what democracy looks like, and this ain’t it,’ Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, said at the same rally. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., was also in attendance and told the crowd that Musk’s DOGE efforts are ‘taking away everything we have.’

The official DOGE account has a more formal tone and often doubles down on Musk’s posts to verify new information. DOGE has over 3 million followers on X. 

As the owner of X, Musk is the most followed person on the app with a staggering 216.4 million followers. Musk has more followers on X than Trump has on Truth Social (8.83 million) and X (100.4 million) combined. 

These days, Trump follows a Truth Social first media strategy. During his presidential transition, Trump announced his cabinet nominations on Truth Social before the transition team hit send on the press release. The press release that arrived several minutes later simply directed reporters back to the Truth Social post. 

Musk’s constant posts landed him at odds with Trump last week when Musk said OpenAI does not have the money for The Stargate Project’s $500 billion investment in AI over the next four years. Musk said he had it on ‘good authority’ that ‘SoftBank has well under $10B secured’ for the investment, soon after Trump finished a press conference announcing the project. 

Trump shrugged off Musk’s comments later that week, telling the press Musk ‘hates one of the people in the deal.’ OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Musk have a long-standing legal feud. 

While Trump is using X again, he is more likely to post a screenshot of his Truth Social post than break any news on Musk’s platform. Trump was banned from Twitter after Jan. 6 and launched Truth Social in 2022. His account was reinstated after Musk bought Twitter and renamed it X. 

Musk said he bought Twitter to ‘help humanity’ and committed to protecting free speech. While liberal ideology dominated Twitter, X is more likely to lean conservative. A Pew Research Center survey in 2023 found Republicans are more likely to view the site positively since Musk arrived on the scene, while Democrats are more likely to say X has a ne gativeimpact on American democracy.

Fox News’ Andrew Mark Miller contributed to this report

U.S. President Donald Trump said Sunday that he remains committed to the U.S. purchasing and owning Gaza, but that he may allow Middle Eastern countries to rebuild sections of the area ravaged by the Israel-Hamas war.

Trump made the comment when speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on his way to New Orleans for the Super Bowl.

‘I’m committed to buying and owning Gaza,’ Trump said. ‘As far as us rebuilding it, we may give it to other states in the Middle East to build sections of it, other people may do it, through our auspices. But we’re committed to owning it, taking it, and making sure that Hamas doesn’t move back.’

‘There’s nothing to move back into. The place is a demolition site. The remainder will be demolished. Everything’s demolished,’ he said.

The president also said he was open to the possibility of allowing some Palestinian refugees into the U.S. but that those requests would be handled on a case-by-case basis.

Trump said last week at a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he wants the U.S. to take over Gaza after Palestinians are resettled in other countries.

‘The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it, too,’ Trump said at the time. ‘We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous, unexplored bombs and other weapons on the site.’

‘Level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area,’ he added. ‘Do a real job. Do something different. Just can’t go back. If you go back, it’s going to end up the same way it has for 100 years.’

Several countries have criticized Trump’s comments about taking over Gaza, which was bombarded by Israeli forces in the conflict sparked by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack against the Jewish State.

Trump also said on Jan. 25 that he wanted Jordan, Egypt and other Arab nations to accept more Palestinian refugees from Gaza, potentially moving out enough people to ‘just clean out’ the area.

‘You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing and say, ‘You know, it’s over,” he said at the time.

Palestinians feared during the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, which is now under a ceasefire, that they would suffer from another ‘Nakba,’ meaning catastrophe in Arabic, which refers to the displacement and dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the 1948 war at the birth of the State of Israel.

Earlier on Sunday, Israeli President Isaac Herzog told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo when asked about Trump’s plan to take over Gaza that the U.S. president was slated to meet with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and possibly Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

‘President Trump is due to meet with major, major Arab leaders, first and foremost the king of Jordan and the president of Egypt and I think also the crown prince of Saudi Arabia as well,’ Herzog said.

‘These are partners that must be listened to, they must be discussed with. We have to honor their feelings as well and see how we build a plan that is sustainable for the future,’ he added.

Saudi Arabia is among the many countries that have rejected Trump’s plan to take over Gaza. Jordan’s King Abdullah II reportedly plans to tell Trump during their scheduled meeting on Tuesday that the proposal is a recipe for radicalism that will spread chaos throughout the Middle East and put at risk the kingdom’s peace with Israel.

Reuters contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump announced plans to put a stop to producing pennies, which cost more than their value to make.

‘For far too long, the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents,’ Trump wrote on Truth Social. ‘This is so wasteful! I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies.’

He added, ‘Let’s rip the waste out of our great nation’s budget, even if it’s a penny at a time.’

This is the president’s latest move to reduce spending in the U.S. after taking office on Jan. 20.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is led by billionaire Elon Musk, posted on X last month that producing the penny is costing American taxpayers tens of millions of dollars, suggesting that it may be one of the items it may consider eliminating. 

Musk’s initiative, aimed at cutting $2 trillion in federal spending, didn’t directly state that the penny would be eliminated, but highlighted that it costs three times more to make than it’s actually worth.

According to the U.S. Mint, each penny costs 3.69 cents to produce in fiscal year 2024, costing taxpayers $119 million. This marked the 19th consecutive year in which production exceeded its face value. 

In the U.S., the penny was one of the first coins made by the U.S. Mint after its establishment in 1792. When it was first produced, the coin was larger and made of pure copper. Today’s smaller coin is made mostly of zinc, according to the U.S. Mint.

Fox News Digital’s Daniella Genovese contributed to this report.