A newly formed outside group aligned with President Donald Trump says it’s taking aim at Republican senators who remain undecided on Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as it pushes to confirm Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary.

Patient First Coalition (PFC), a nonprofit advocacy group launched last week, says it’s now beginning what it describes as a ‘massive grassroots effort’ to encourage Republican senators to support Kennedy, the vaccine skeptic and environmental crusader who ran for the White House in 2024 before ending his bid and endorsing Trump.

Kennedy survived back-to-back combustible Senate confirmation hearings last week, where Trump’s nominee to lead 18 powerful federal agencies that oversee the nation’s food and health faced plenty of verbal fireworks over past controversial comments, including his repeated claims in recent years linking vaccines to autism, which have been debunked by scientific research.

The move by PFC, which says it’s a collective group of organizations committed to advancing Kennedy’s so-called ‘Make America Healthy Again’ agenda, comes ahead of Tuesday’s key confirmation vote by the Senate Finance Committee.

‘All uncommitted Republican Senators will be targeted in this grassroots effort,’ PFC highlighted.

Shannon Burns, the group’s senior advisor, shared that ‘our grassroots phase will include television, radio and podcast interviews with our advisory board members, as well as guest columns in newspapers across the country.’

‘We will enable thousands of calls and emails into Senate offices from millions of Americans who support this agenda. We want to organize them, mobilize them, and make sure their voices are heard before the Senate votes,’ Burns added.

PFC pointed out that it will initially give ‘special focus’ to GOP senators in Louisiana, Maine, Alaska, Kentucky and North Carolina.

Those states are home to Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana physician and chair of the Senate Health Committee, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who are often at odds with Trump, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former longtime Senate Republican leader, and Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina.

‘Your past of undermining confidence in vaccines with unfounded or misleading arguments concerns me,’ Cassidy told Kennedy at the end of Thursday’s confirmation hearing.

PFC is one of a handful of outside groups targeting GOP senators in the fight to confirm Trump’s nominees.

A source in Trump’s political orbit tells Fox News that those groups could ‘exact consequences’ on Republican senators who don’t support the president’s Cabinet nominees.

And Trump on Sunday took to social media to demand that Senate Republicans ‘GET TOUGH VERY FAST’ in confirming the rest of his Cabinet.

The Senate Republican campaign committee is touting that it is off to a strong fundraising start as it aims to defend and expand its majority in the chamber in the 2026 midterm elections.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) announced on Monday that it raked in a record $8.5 million in January, which the committee says is its best ever off-year January haul.

‘To deliver on the promises President Trump made to the American people, we must protect and grow our Republican Senate Majority,’ South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, the new NRSC chair, said in a statement.

Scott teased that ‘the NRSC’s record-breaking January is just the beginning. We will work tirelessly to ensure Republicans have the resources and operations needed to win in battleground states across the Senate map.’

However, in a memo sent to Senate Republican chiefs of staff, NRSC Executive Director Jennifer DeCasper noted that the committee will ‘enter this cycle with nearly $24 million in debt and unpaid bills from last cycle and limited cash on hand.’

The NRSC ended 2024 with $2.7 million in its coffers.

The rival Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has yet to announce its January fundraising.

Republicans won control of the Senate in November’s elections by flipping an open seat in West Virginia, and ousting Democratic incumbents in Montana, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The GOP currently holds a 53-47 majority in the Senate.

Senate Republicans enjoyed a very favorable map in the 2024 cycle as they won back control of the majority. An early read of the 2026 map shows they will continue to play offense in some states, but will be forced to play defense in others.

The GOP will target an open Democrat-held seat in battleground Michigan, where Sen. Gary Peters announced last week that he would not seek re-election in 2026. They will also target first-term Sen. Jon Ossoff in battleground Georgia and longtime Sen. Jeanne Shaheen in swing state New Hampshire.

However, Democrats plan to go on offense in blue-leaning Maine, where GOP Sen. Susan Collins is up for re-election, as well as in battleground North Carolina, where Republican Sen. Thom Tillis is also up in 2026.

North Korea is criticizing Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s description of the country as a ‘rogue state,’ calling it ‘nonsense’ while vowing to take ‘tough counteraction’ to any provocations from the Trump administration. 

Rubio made the remark last week during an appearance on ‘The Megyn Kelly Show,’ where he was speaking about the goals of U.S. foreign policy. 

‘It’s not normal for the world to simply have a unipolar power. That was not – that was an anomaly. It was a product of the end of the Cold War, but eventually you were going to reach back to a point where you had a multipolar world, multi-great powers in different parts of the planet. We face that now with China and to some extent Russia, and then you have rogue states like Iran and North Korea you have to deal with,’ Rubio said, according to the State Department. 

North Korea’s foreign ministry said in response that Rubio ‘talked nonsense by terming the DPRK a ‘rogue state’ while enumerating the foreign policy of the new U.S. administration.’ 

‘The Foreign Ministry of the DPRK deems the U.S. State Secretary’s hostile remarks to thoughtlessly tarnish the image of a sovereign state as a grave political provocation totally contrary to the principle of international law which regards respect for sovereignty and non-interference in other’s internal affairs as its core and strongly denounces and rejects it,’ read a statement published by North Korean state media. 

‘Rubio’s coarse and nonsensical remarks only show directly the incorrect view of the new U.S. administration on the DPRK and will never help promote the U.S. interests as he wishes,’ the statement added, taking a swipe at the Trump administration. 

‘We will never tolerate any provocation of the U.S., which has been always hostile to the DPRK and will be hostile to it in the future, too, but will take tough counteraction corresponding to it as usual,’ it concluded. 

Rubio said during the interview that ‘now more than ever, we need to remember that foreign policy should always be about furthering the national interest of the United States and doing so, to the extent possible, avoiding war and armed conflict, which we have seen two times in the last century be very costly.   

‘They’re celebrating the 80th anniversary this year of the end of the Second World War. That – I think if you look at the scale and scope of destruction and loss of life that occurred, it would be far worse if we had a global conflict now. It may end life on the planet,’ he also said. ‘And it sounds like hyperbole, but that’s – you have multiple countries now who have the capability to end life on Earth. And so we need to really work hard to avoid armed conflict as much as possible, but never at the expense of our national interest. So that’s the tricky balance.’ 

President Donald Trump’s administration is facing scrutiny this week after working with billionaire Elon Musk to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), an organization Musk called a ‘viper’s nest’ of mismanaged funding.

Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) worked with the Trump administration to shut down USAID on Monday. While the agency’s long-term future remains unclear, lawmakers and activists have repeatedly accused USAID of using funding to leverage policy changes across the globe. Under President Joe Biden’s administration, the organization was frequently used to push abortion in Africa, critics say.

Biden cleared path for international abortion push

Biden cleared the path for U.S. funding to flow toward pro-abortion groups across the globe just days after entering office. He signed an executive order rescinding the Reagan-era ‘Mexico City Rule’ on Jan. 28, 2021.

The rule, first rescinded by President Barack Obama and then reinstated during Trump’s first term, prevented foreign aid from going to nongovernmental organizations that promote abortion or provide abortion services.

‘These excessive conditions on foreign and development assistance undermine the United States’ efforts to advance gender equality globally by restricting our ability to support women’s health,’ Biden said at the time.

Biden’s rule change cleared USAID to send millions in funding to aggressive abortion organizations like Marie Stopes International (MSI). MSI said it relied on USAID for 17% of its total donor income under the Obama administration, adding that the lack of U.S. support created an $80-million ‘funding gap’ over the final three years of Trump’s term.

The group said the countries most heavily impacted by the lack of funding were Madagascar, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

Biden accused of ‘hijacking’ AIDS program to push abortion in Africa

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., accused Biden in 2023 of ‘hijacking’ a successful AIDS relief program to push an international abortion agenda.

Smith’s accusations centered on PREPFAR, a funding program within USAID that, at the time, had already allocated some $100 billion toward fighting AIDS across the world, saving 25 million lives and preventing millions of infections.

Smith says two groups, Population Services International (PSI) and Village Reach, had received $96.5 million and $10.1 million, respectively, from PEPFAR under Biden, and both groups have a track record of pushing abortion.

‘PSI proudly proclaims it provides abortion and lobbies to eliminate pro-life laws,’ Smith said at the time. ‘PSI provides comprehensive abortion and post-abortion care services in nearly 20 countries throughout the world.’

Smith alleged Village Reach used PEPFAR funds ‘to promote abortion in Malawi and lobby for changes in pro-life laws’ and also ‘helped Malawi establish a government-funded hotline (that included providing information and referrals for ‘sexual and reproductive health,’ i.e., abortion).’

A third group, Pathfinder International, received $5 million in PEPFAR funding from 2021 to 2023. Smith said the group ‘lobbies to weaken or eliminate pro-life laws in nations around the world’ and is ‘explicit in its promotion of abortion in other countries, stating it is ‘committed to expanding access to … safe abortion.’

Biden admin accused of pushing lax abortion laws in Sierra Leone

Biden’s administration was accused in December of pressuring the government of Sierra Leone to adopt more permissive abortion policies in exchange for foreign assistance.

A report from the Daily Signal stated that The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a U.S. government-run funding allocator, was threatening to withhold hundreds of millions in foreign assistance funding if the nation didn’t relax its policies, a former senior U.S. government official told the outlet.

The MCC CEO Alice Albright signed an agreement with Sierra Leone’s finance minister, Sheku Bangura, in late September. The agreement called for the country to receive $480 million in foreign assistance so long as it met the MCC’s ‘rigorous standards for good governance, fighting corruption and respecting democratic rights.’

The organization denied any effort to influence Sierra Leone’s abortion policies in a statement to Fox News Digital in December.

‘The Millennium Challenge Corporation is unaware of any Sierra Leonean abortion legislation and has never made any requests to the Government of Sierra Leone regarding abortion policies. Any such legislation would be an internal matter for Sierra Leone with no U.S. government developments fund made contingent on its passage,’ the organization said in a statement.

Footage circulating on social media showed raucous pro-life protesters demonstrating inside Sierra Leone’s parliament at the time as lawmakers debated legislation detailing more permissive abortion rules.

Fox News’ Andrew Mark Miller contributed to this report.

The Senate will hold a vote Monday evening on whether to confirm President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Energy, Chris Wright.

Wright, the CEO and founder of Liberty Energy Inc., an energy industry service provider based in Colorado, was tapped by the 47th president to head the Department of Energy under his administration.

The Trump nominee has received bipartisan support for his nomination, being introduced by a Democrat, Sen. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, during his confirmation hearing with the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee this month. 

Wright will face the final hurdle of his confirmation process on Monday evening during a full Senate vote on his confirmation.

If confirmed, Wright will be sworn in this week as the next secretary of energy.

Wright, during his confirmation hearing, said he had identified three ‘immediate tasks’ where he would focus his attention: unleashing American energy, leading the world in innovation and technology breakthroughs and increasing production in America.

Elon Musk, who is spearheading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) effort, said during an X spaces conversation that President Donald Trump agreed that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) should be shut down.

Musk indicated that unlike an apple contaminated by a worm, the agency is ‘a bowl of worms.’

‘There is no apple,’ he said. ‘It’s beyond repair.’

Musk noted that the more he’s gotten to know Trump, the more he likes the president.

‘Frankly, I love the guy. He’s great,’ the business tycoon said of the president.

Amid a wave of early shakeups in the new administration, President Donald Trump has twice this month proposed ‘denuclearization’ talks with U.S. adversaries.

‘Tremendous amounts of money are being spent on nuclear, and the destructive capacity is something we don’t even want to talk about today, because you don’t want to hear it,’ Trump mused in remarks to the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, last week. 

‘I want to see if we can denuclearize, and I think it’s very possible,’ suggesting talks on the issue between the U.S., Russia and China. 

Such an idea could represent a major thawing in U.S. relations with two global adversaries – but beg the question of whether the U.S. could trust the nations to hold up their end of the deal. 

President Vladimir Putin announced Russia would suspend its participation in the New START treaty in 2023 over U.S. support for Ukraine. Russia had frequently been caught violating the terms of the deal. But China has never engaged in negotiations with the U.S. over arms reduction. 

Trump reiterated to Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Wednesday that he’d been close to a ‘denuclearization’ deal with Russia during his first term. 

‘I was dealing with Putin about the denuclearization of Russia and the United States. And then we were going to bring China along on that one. I was very close to having a deal. I would have made a deal with Putin on that denuclearization. It’s very dangerous and very expensive, and that would have been great, but we had a bad election that interrupted us.’

The Defense Department now expects that China will have more than 1,000 nuclear warheads, a near-doubling of the estimated 600 they possess right now. 

In a speech on Jan. 17, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that ‘amid a ‘hybrid war’ waged by Washington against Russia, we aren’t seeing any basis, not only for any additional joint measures in the sphere of arms control and reduction of strategic risks, but for any discussion of strategic stability issues with the United States.’

But Putin, in an address on Monday, struck a more diplomatic tone: ‘We see the statements by the newly elected president… about the desire to restore direct contacts with Russia. We also hear his statement about the need to do everything possible to prevent World War III. We, of course, welcome this attitude.’ 

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said of Trump’s comments at a news conference on Wednesday: ‘China’s development of nuclear weapons is a historic choice forced to be made. As a responsible major country, China is committed to the path of peaceful development and friendly cooperation with all countries in the world.’

Experts argue Russia is using its leverage over nuclear arms control as a means for the U.S. agreeing to favorable terms to end the war with Ukraine.

‘Russians are ‘me first’ painstaking negotiators, and what they’re doing in this case, is they’re clearly laying a bit of a trap,’ said John Erath of the Center for Arms Control and Non-proliferation.

‘It makes sense dangling arms control, which they perceive as something that we want, in front of us and saying, ‘Oh, by the way, we’ll talk about reducing nuclear weapons,’ as an incentive to get us to throw the Ukrainians under the bus.’

But whether Trump was revealing a policy priority or speaking on a whim with the Davos comments is anyone’s guess.  

The president took heat during his first term for meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un to discuss nuclear reduction. That effort fell apart, and Trump resorted to threatening to rain ‘fire and fury’ on North Korea. 

‘I think he’s very sensitive to the dangers of nuclear war, and realizes that in many ways, we’re closer to that today than we have been in many, many decades,’ said George Beebe, a director at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. 

One thing most experts agree on is that the U.S. nuclear program is expensive and outdated. With some 3,700 warheads in its arsenal, the U.S. is expected to spend $756 billion to store and maintain its nuclear weapons between 2023 and 2032. 

‘Regardless of reductions, however, the administration and Congress must continue modernizing and ensuring the reliability of the U.S. nuclear arsenal while eliminating excessive spending where possible,’ said Andrea Stricker, deputy director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy’s nonproliferation program. 

Arms experts admit that Russia has cheated on arms treaties, but U.S. intelligence capabilities have grown to ensure compliance.

‘We’ve done it throughout the Cold War to varying degrees, and I think we’ve gotten better and more capable in our intelligence community of monitoring compliance with these sorts of things. So that is certainly a feasible approach to take,’ said Beebe.

But China and Russia aren’t the only U.S. adversaries with nuclear weapons. North Korea is estimated to have an arsenal of 50 nuclear warheads, Iran is on the precipice of enriching uranium to potent enough levels for a bomb. 

‘Before engaging in arms control talks, Washington needs a strategy for how it will simultaneously deter two peer nuclear competitors, Russia and China, which could combine forces with states like North Korea and Iran to attack or coerce the United States,’ said Stricker.

In the four decades between the U.S. atomic bombings of Japan in 1945 and the first arms control treaty between the U.S. and Russia, the world was on edge as the two superpowers raced to claim the world’s largest arsenal. In 1987, Washington and Moscow signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), which led to the dismantling of thousands of bombs.

But over the years, the U.S. and Russia lost their monopoly on civilization-ending weapons: now nine countries are nuclear-armed, rendering bilateral treaties less and less effective.