Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., has spent the better part of the last decade in Indiana, running various businesses and coaching his sons’ baseball team. 

Before that, he had a front-row seat for most of the Obama administration, followed by the meteoric and unprecedented rise of now-President Donald Trump. Stutzman was a part of political history himself, having been one of the original members of the House Freedom Caucus — a group that has grown to be known as a bastion of ideological conservatism and, at times, a thorn in the side of House GOP leaders.

Now he’s back as one of several first-term House Republicans, succeeding Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind., as a member of a perilously thin House GOP majority.

But according to Stutzman, who previously served in Congress from 2010 to 2017, he sees Republicans as more aligned with each other than before.

‘I feel like it’s different. I don’t think the GOP conference is as far apart — you know, moderates to conservatives — as it was back in 2010,’ he told Fox News Digital in an interview.

‘I was looking at the membership in 2010, and there were true moderates. I think we’re actually much closer together now than what we were back then. And, of course, we had large majorities. So that creates other challenges. So having a tight majority is not a bad thing at all. It actually makes you unify.’

He credited that re-alignment in large part to Trump, pointing out that he and other Republicans were first elected in 2010 as a backlash against former President Barack Obama rather than in support of the leading party’s agenda.

‘We won the 2010 election because it was a reaction to Obama. And in 2020 — I mean, you could say every election is a reaction to the incumbent party, but I think in this case, after the Biden years, the American people elected Trump because they believed he could move the country forward,’ Stutzman said.

‘And so we have a leader that is casting a vision and is clear in his messaging, and it gives us the chance to, you know, coalesce behind his leadership. So that’s a huge help, compared to 2010.’

He also disputed the notion that the Freedom Caucus was founded to be ‘obstructionist’ to House GOP leaders, despite members of the group leading well-known coups against senior Republicans in the past.

‘There’s a lot of smart people that wanted to just be part of a group that looked at things from every angle and was really being productive. And so that’s why I wanted to join it, because I wanted to be at a place that I could learn, I could really dive deep and learn from other people and staff that were part of the caucus to really understand the policy, but also talk through the strategy,’ he said.

‘It was never designed to be an obstructionist caucus. There have been times that it’s definitely been labeled that and accused of that . . . any obstruction was to stop bad things from happening. Not to obstruct the good things from moving forward.’

Stutzman said that being a private citizen running businesses for eight years gave him perspective on the value of consensus-building, allowing him to return to Congress with an emphasis on the ‘big picture.’

‘You’re never going to get everything you want. You know, find a way to support the team and find a way to support us to a yes,’ Stutzman reflected. 

‘Now, look, there’s going to be times when you just say no, And that’s just part of negotiating. But I think the main thing is just fight hard, offer everything you have. But then at the end of the day, let’s take a win and then move on to the next fight.’

President Donald Trump derided former Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., as ‘not equipped mentally’ after he went from being the face of the GOP in the upper chamber to opposing his entire conference and voting with the Democrats on Trump’s key Cabinet nominations in just a matter of months. 

‘He wasn’t equipped ten years ago, mentally, in my opinion,’ Trump told reporters at the White House after McConnell refused to vote in favor of confirming his controversial Health and Human Services (HHS) pick, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

‘He’s a, you know, very bitter guy,’ Trump added of McConnell, with whom he has had a strained relationship with over the years, including during his previous presidency. 

While such a shift from GOP leader to defiant Republican might be optically jarring, the move was unsurprising to Jim Manley, former senior communications advisor and spokesman for former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Senate Democratic Caucus. 

‘He was living on borrowed time the last couple of years,’ he told Fox News Digital of McConnell. Manley speculated that if he hadn’t decided to step down from leadership voluntarily before the 119th Congress, he would have had significant trouble being re-elected. ‘[I]t’s evident just how exactly out of step he is with the caucus,’ he said, noting that it has become ‘much more conservative.’

In three pivotal Senate votes on Trump’s most vulnerable Cabinet nominees in the last few weeks, McConnell bucked his party. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s nomination was confirmed by a razor-thin margin, 51-50, after Vice President JD Vance was called in to break the tie. 

Moderate GOP Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, joined him in voting against the controversial defense pick.

However, McConnell was the only Republican to vote against the similarly controversial Director of National Intelligence (DNI) nominee Tulsi Gabbard and HHS pick Kennedy. Even Collins, Murkowski, and several other senators with reputations for being somewhat hesitant got behind them.

‘If Senator McConnell was looking to accelerate the deterioration of his legacy as the former Republican Senate leader, he’s succeeded,’ a Senate GOP source remarked. They described the Kentucky Republican’s actions as ‘an attempt to embarrass the president and the Republican Party’ and evidence ‘of why he was no longer fit to lead our conference.’ 

McConnell released lengthy statements following each vote, explaining his reasoning. He also wished each of them well and committed to working with them.

A defense hawk and chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, McConnell was unconvinced that Hegseth or Gabbard were the best national security selections. 

As for Kennedy, McConnell recalled his childhood experience with polio and touted the effectiveness of vaccines, of which the now-HHS secretary has been consistently critical. 

McConnell did vote in favor of Trump’s other, less-controversial and lesser-known Cabinet nominees. 

Republican strategist Matt Dole called the former leader ‘an enigma.’ 

‘[H]e sought to rule the Republican Caucus with an iron fist when he was leader,’ he pointed out. 

‘That makes his own, lonely, votes stand out as all the more egregious.’

McConnell’s successor, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., reacted to the ‘no’ votes in an interview with Fox News Digital. ‘I think he knows better than anybody how hard it is to lead a place like the United States Senate, where it takes 60 votes to get most things done, and that you got to have everybody, sort of functioning as a team,’ he said. 

According to Thune, McConnell ‘is still active up here and still a strong voice on issues he’s passionate about, including national security, and so when it comes to those issues, he has outsized influence and a voice that we all pay attention to.’

He explained that while the conference doesn’t necessarily agree with him, ‘we respect his positions on these, some of these [nominations], and I know that a lot of big stuff ahead of us, he’s going to be with us. He’s a team player.’

One former top Senate Republican strategist explained the former leader has ‘nothing to lose’ at this point. In fact, they said, the feelings he is expressing about Trump’s most controversial selections actually reflects those of a number of other senators. But they can’t oppose the picks themselves ‘for fear of retribution by Trump or primary voters that will make a difference on whether or not they remain in power.’

‘Not being in leadership can be quite liberating,’ GOP strategist John Feehery added. 

According to Grant Reeher, a political science professor at Syracuse University, ‘I think he wants to make a symbolic statement in favor of an older Reagan-era type of conservatism and a more traditional Republican Party—this is the way he wants to be remembered.’

McConnell’s office declined to comment to Fox News Digital.

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.

‘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.

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.

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.

President Donald Trump and his administration forged ahead with its foreign policy priorities in meetings and calls with heads of state and advanced discussions surrounding the end of the Russia-Ukraine war this week. 

Trump spoke with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, where leaders agreed to launch negotiations to end the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. 

‘We agreed to work together, very closely, including visiting each other’s Nations,’ Trump posted to Truth Social Wednesday after speaking with Putin. ‘We have also agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately, and we will begin by calling President Zelenskyy, of Ukraine, to inform him of the conversation, something which I will be doing right now.’

‘I have asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of the CIA John Ratcliffe, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, and Ambassador and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, to lead the negotiations which, I feel strongly, will be successful,’ Trump said. 

Additionally, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent traveled to Kyiv on Wednesday, and Vice President JD Vance also met with Zelenskyy Friday at the Munich Security Conference.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has come under scrutiny for the negotiations, fielding criticism that Ukraine is being pressured to give in to concessions after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said Wednesday that it wasn’t realistic for Ukraine to regain its pre-war borders with Russia. 

‘Putin is gonna pocket this and ask for more,’ Brett Bruen, director of global engagement under former President Barack Obama, told Fox News Digital.

But Hegseth shut down comments like these, and told NATO members in Brussels on Thursday: ‘Any suggestion that President Trump is doing anything other than negotiating from a position of strength is, on its face, ahistorical and false.’ 

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and Trump vowed on the campaign trail in 2024 that he would work to end the conflict if elected again.

Here’s what also happened this week at the White House: 

Meeting Jordan’s king 

Trump welcomed Jordan’s King Abdullah II at the White House Tuesday, a visit that comes amid contentious discussions between the U.S. and Arab nations about relocating Palestinian refugees to Jordan and other neighboring Arab countries to rebuild Gaza. 

Trump unveiled plans on Feb. 4 that the U.S. would seek to ‘take over’ the Gaza Strip in a ‘long-term ownership position’ to deliver stability to the region during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

However, Trump’s proposal prompted swift backlash from Arab countries, including Jordan, and Egypt announced plans on Sunday for an emergency Arab Summit to discuss ‘new and dangerous developments’ regarding the resettling of Palestinians on Feb. 27.

When asked how he felt about Trump’s plans for the future of Gaza, Abdullah remained tight-lipped and said he would wait for the Egyptians to take the lead on a proposal moving forward as they negotiate with the U.S. 

‘I think let’s wait until the Egyptians can come and present it to the president and not get ahead of us,’ Abdullah said. 

Abdullah did reveal plans to accept 2,000 sick Palestinian children to Jordan. 

‘I think one of the things that we can do right away is take 2,000 children that are either cancer children or in a very ill state, to Jordan as quickly as possible,’ Abdullah said. ‘And then wait for … the Egyptians to present their plan on how we can work with the president to work on the cause of challenges.’

Denuclearization talks with China, Russia 

Trump floated a joint meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Putin, claiming he wants all countries to move toward denuclearization. 

Trump on Thursday told reporters he plans to advance these denuclearization talks once ‘we straighten it all out’ in the Middle East and Ukraine, comments that come as the U.S., Russia and Ukraine are actively pursuing negotiations to end the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. 

‘There’s no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons, we already have so many,’ Trump said Thursday at the White House. ‘You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons.’

‘We’re all spending a lot of money that we could be spending on other things that are actually, hopefully, much more productive,’ he said.

The U.S. is projected to spend approximately $756 billion on nuclear weapons between 2023 and 2032, according to a Congressional Budget Office report released in 2023.

Cuts to federal workforce

Trump signed an executive order Tuesday instructing the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to coordinate with federal agencies and execute massive cuts in federal government staffing numbers.  

The order will instruct DOGE and federal agencies to work together to ‘significantly’ shrink the size of the federal government and limit hiring new employees, according to a White House fact sheet on the order. Specifically, agencies must not hire more than one employee for every four that leave their federal post. 

Agencies will also be instructed to ‘undertake plans for large-scale reductions in force’ and evaluate ways to eliminate or combine agency functions that aren’t legally required.

The order builds on another directive Trump signed after his inauguration implementing a federal hiring freeze, as well as an initiative from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management offering more than two million federal civilian employees buyouts if they leave their jobs or return to work in person. The White House told Fox News Digital Thursday that more than 75,000 employees have accepted the buyout. 

Eliminate the penny? 

Trump unveiled plans Sunday to halt production of the penny — but getting that initiative underway requires a few additional steps and possibly congressional approval. 

Additionally, while Trump said he instructed the Treasury Department to stop minting them due to their high costs, supporters of the penny claim it’s wiser to evaluate changes to the nickel instead. 

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

In fact, producing pennies is even more expensive than Trump’s numbers. It costs nearly 3.69 cents to mint a single penny, according to a 2024 U.S. Mint report. The coins are primarily made of zinc and then covered in copper.

While the waters are a little murky on the next steps, experts say Congress likely would need to become involved and pass legislation to fulfill Trump’s wishes.

‘The process of discontinuing the penny in the U.S. is a little unclear. It would likely require an act of Congress, but the Secretary of the Treasury might be able to simply stop the minting of new pennies,’ Robert Triest, an economics professor at Northeastern University, told the Northeastern Global News.

Fox News’ Emma Colton and Morgan Phillips contributed to this report. 

A federal judge on Friday extended a temporary order that blocks Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team from accessing payment systems within the Treasury Department. 

The extension comes after 19 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over DOGE’s access to the payment system, which has information about Americans’ Social Security, Medicare and veterans’ benefits, tax refund information, and much more. 

The lawsuit claims the Musk-run agency illegally accessed the Treasury Department’s central payment system at the Trump administration’s behest. 

The lawsuit was filed in New York by New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office and includes attorneys general from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin. 

U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas in Manhattan on Friday said that she wasn’t going to issue a ruling yet on the attorneys general request for a longer preliminary injunction, leaving the temporary order issued last Saturday in place.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told FOX Business last week that the concerns about DOGE’s access to the Treasury Department are not valid. 

‘DOGE is not going to fail,’ he said. ‘They are moving a lot of people’s cheese here in the capital, and when you hear this squawking, then some status quo interest is not happy.’

He continued, ‘At the Treasury, our payment system is not being touched. We process 1.3 billion payments a year. There is a study being done — can we have more accountability, more accuracy, more traceability that the money is going where it is? But, in terms of payments being stopped, that is happening upstream at the department level.’

The newly-created DOGE aims to cut government waste and has been given access to more than a dozen government agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Department of Education and the Department of Labor.