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Israeli forces raided six United Nations schools in East Jerusalem, ordering them to close within 30 days, according to UNRWA, the UN agency for the Palestinian refugees, and the Israeli Ministry of Education.
Approximately 800 students will be directly impacted by the closure orders and may not be able to finish the school year, UNRWA’s Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said on social media. Schools run by the agency serve Palestinians in areas occupied by Israel, including East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.
“UNRWA schools are protected by the privileges and immunities of the United Nations,” Lazzarini said. “Today’s unauthorized entries and issuance of closure orders are a violation of these protections.”
Israel’s Ministry of Education said in a statement that parents were directed to register their students at other schools. “The professional staff at the Ministry of Education continue to support the educational framework for each student.”
In October, Israel’s parliament passed a law banning UNRWA from activity within Israel and revoking the 1967 treaty that allowed the agency to carry out its mission.
Yulia Malinovsky, a member of the Israeli parliament who sponsored the bill to ban UNRWA, confirmed the closure orders. The schools will have until May 8, she said.
“We’re also working very hard to close the water and electricity to all of UNRWA’s facilities (in areas occupied by Israel),” Malinovsky said. “We’re doing everything we can to implement the UNRWA bills fully in all institutions and in all aspects.”
Israel has long sought to dismantle the UN agency, arguing that some of its employees are members of Hamas and that UNRWA’s education system teaches students to hate Israel.
A UN-commissioned inquiry found that examples in textbooks of anti-Israel bias were “marginal” but nonetheless constituted “a grave violation of neutrality.”
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have alleged that a handful of UNRWA’s 13,000 employees in Gaza participated in the October 7 massacre. UNRWA has repeatedly denied these accusations, saying there is “absolutely no ground for a blanket description of ‘the institution as a whole’ being ‘totally infiltrated.’”
UNRWA was founded by the United Nations a year after the 1948 creation of Israel that led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes in an event known by Palestinians as the “Nakba” (catastrophe).
The agency, which began by assisting about 750,000 Palestinian refugees in 1950, now serves some 5.9 million across the Middle East, many of whom live in refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem as well as in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria.
In the Gaza Strip, which has been ravaged by a devastating Israeli war for more than a year, UNRWA serves some 1.7 million Palestinian refugees. In the West Bank and East Jerusalem, it assists around 871,500 refugees.
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Panama promotes itself “as the bridge of the world, heart of the universe” but lately the narrow Central American Isthmus and its namesake canal that joins the Atlantic to the Pacific have become the setting for a bitter clash between the world’s two preeminent economic superpowers.
The escalating war of words between the US and China over the canal has left Panama – which does not have a military – baffled and brings to mind the old proverb of how “when elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.”
From the beginning of his second term, US President Donald Trump has claimed without proof that China secretly controls the canal where around 40% of US container traffic passes through. If China’s alleged influence over the canal wasn’t halted, Trump threatened to “take back” the iconic waterway that the US returned to Panama in 2000, employing military force if needed.
Panama’s President José Raúl Mulino rejects Trump’s claims but has also made significant efforts to placate the White House, such as dropping out of China’s Belt and Road investment initiative in February.
In March, US investment giant BlackRock announced a $22.8 billion deal to buy 43 ports, including two located on either side of the Panama Canal, from CK Hutchison, the Hong Kong logistics company that the Trump administration has accused of being under Beijing’s control – something Hutchison denies.
But those concessions seem to have only added fuel to the White House’s bellicose rhetoric, most recently this week from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth during a visit to Panama to attend the Central American Security Conference.
“I want to be very clear, China did not build this canal,” Hegseth said Tuesday. “China does not operate this canal and China will not weaponize this canal. “Together with Panama in the lead, we will keep the canal secure and available for all nations through the deterrent power of the strongest, most effective and most lethal fighting force in the world.”
Beijing angrily fired back at Hegseth’s verbal broadsides.
“Who represents the real threat to the canal? People will make their own judgment,” China’s government retorted.
Hegseth’s statements represented a shift – Panama was again a “partner” that, contrary to what Trump had said, “operates” the canal. Still, the defense secretary stopped short of saying publicly the canal belonged to Panama.
In fact, the Pentagon appeared to omit a key line to that effect from a joint statement, which in the Panamanian version reads, “Secretary Hegseth recognized the leadership and inalienable sovereignty of Panama over the Panama Canal and its adjacent areas.”
The discrepancy over the statement called into mind a similar puzzling episode in February where the State Department announced that Panama would waive tolls on US Navy ships going through the canal; Mulino the next day angrily denied his government had ever agreed to that.
But on Wednesday Panama’s Canal Affairs Minister José Ramón Icaza told reporters that the Panama Canal Authority agreed to find a “mechanism” that allows US Naval ships to pass through the canal at a “neutral cost” in exchange for security provided by those ships and the US recognizing Panamanian sovereignty over the canal.
Even though, according to Panama’s government, US Navy ships only spend on average a few million dollars each year crossing through the canal, the Trump administration had pushed hard for the concession from the Canal Authority which according to Panamanian law is supposed to charge all countries the same rates for crossings.
Mulino has proven to be a key ally on immigration to Washington. During the Biden administration, Mulino had already begun closing the Darien Gap, where hundreds of thousands had crossed on their way to the US and by accepting deportation flights from the US.
But there are clearly limits on which US demands he can accommodate, as his countrymen and much of the region grow exasperated by increasing saber rattling from Trump and demands for further concessions.
On Wednesday, at a news conference, Hegseth alluded to the possibility of reestablishing US military bases to guard the canal.
Minutes later, with Hegseth looking on, Panama’s Security Minister Frank Ábrego flatly denied that Mulino was considering the possibility of allowing US bases in the country.
It’s not clear if Trump will take “no” for an answer and as the US-China tug of war over the canal heats up, Panama is clearly feeling the strain.
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What was supposed to be a historic, era-defining trade war launched by US President Donald Trump against a range of countries has, for now, narrowed in on a singular target: China.
On Wednesday, Trump announced a three-month pause on all the “reciprocal” tariffs that had gone into effect hours earlier – with one exception, deepening a confrontation set to dismantle trade between the world’s two largest economies.
The pace of that escalation has been stunning. Over the course of a week, Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports have jumped from 54% to 104% and now 125% – figures that add to existing levies imposed prior to the president’s second term. And China has retaliated in kind, raising additional, retaliatory duties on all US imports to 84%.
The showdown sets up an historic rupture that will not only cause pain for both of these deeply intertwined economies – but add tremendous friction to their geopolitical rivalry.
“This is probably the strongest indication we’ve seen pushing towards a hard decoupling,” said Nick Marro, principal economist for Asia at the Economist Intelligence Unit, referring to an outcome where the two economies have virtually no trade or mutual investment.
“It’s really hard to overstate the expected shocks this is going to have, not just to the Chinese economy itself, but also to the entire global trading landscape,” as well as on the US, he said.
Trump appeared to link his decision not to grant China the same reprieve as other nations to Beijing’s swift retaliation, telling reporters Wednesday that “China wants to make a deal, they just don’t know how quite to go about it.”
But the view from Beijing looks dramatically different.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping, China’s most powerful leader in decades, sees no option for his country to simply capitulate to what it calls America’s “unilateral bullying.” And he’s playing to his crowd. Publicly, Beijing has drummed up fervent nationalism around its retaliation – part of a strategy it’s been quietly preparing for more than four years since Trump was last in office.
While China has long said it wants to talk, Trump’s rapid escalation instead appears to have confirmed for Beijing that the US doesn’t. And in Xi’s calculation, observers say, China is prepared not just to fight back, but to use Trump’s trade turmoil to strengthen its own position.
“Xi has been very clear for a very long time that he expects China will enter a period of protracted struggle with the United States and its allies, that China needed to prepare for that, and they have quite extensively,” said Jacob Gunter, lead economy analyst at Berlin-based think tank MERICS.
“Xi Jinping has accepted that the gauntlet is thrown down, and they are ready to put up a fight.”
‘War of attrition’
Whether Trump would have suspended his so-called retaliatory tariffs on China alongside other nations had Beijing not moved so swiftly to retaliate remains an open question. Canada had retaliated but was included in the reprieve, which does not remove a 10% universal tariff imposed last week.
Regardless, Trump, who the White House described earlier this week as having a “spine of steel,” and Xi now appear locked in a war of attrition with the potential to upset a lopsided but highly integrated trade relationship worth roughly half a trillion dollars.
For decades, China has been the world’s factory floor, where increasingly automated and high-tech production chains churn out everything from household goods and shoes to electronics, raw materials for construction, appliances and solar panels.
Those factories satisfied the demand of American and global consumers for affordable goods but fueled an enormous trade deficit – and a feeling among some Americans, including Trump, that globalization has stolen US manufacturing and jobs.
Trump’s ratcheting up of tariffs to well over 125% could now cut China’s exports to the US by more than half in the coming years, by some estimates.
Many goods from China won’t be able to be quickly replaced – driving up US consumer prices, potentially for years, before new factories come online. That could ring up a tax hike for Americans of roughly $860 billion before substitutions, JP Morgan analysts said Wednesday.
In China, a wide swath of suppliers are likely to see their already narrow margins completely erased, with a new wave of efforts to establish factories in other countries set to begin.
The scale of the tariffs could lead to “millions of people becoming unemployed” and a “wave of bankruptcy” across China, according to Victor Shih, director of the University of California San Diego’s 21st Century China Center. Meanwhile, US exports to China could “go close to zero,” he added.
“But China can sustain that (situation) much more so than American politicians can,” he said.
That’s, in part, because China’s ruling Communist Party leaders do not face swift feedback from voters and opinions polls.
“During Covid they shut down the economy (causing) untold employment, suffering – no problem.”
Beijing too believes it can weather the storm.
“In response to US tariffs, we are prepared and have strategies. We have engaged in a trade war with the US for eight years, accumulating rich experience in these struggles,” a commentary on the front page of Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily said Monday.
It noted Beijing could take “extraordinary efforts” to boost domestic consumption, which has been persistently weak, and introduce other policy measures to support its economy. “The plans to respond are well-prepared and ample,” the commentary said.
And in the face of unknowns about how much further measures could escalate, voices from Beijing appear calm.
“The ultimate outcome hinges on who can withstand a longer ‘economic war of attrition,’” economist Cai Tongjuan of China’s Renmin University wrote in a state media op-ed earlier this week. “And China clearly holds a greater advantage in terms of strategic endurance.”
‘Preparing for this day’
Beijing in recent weeks has also been talking to countries from Europe to Southeast Asia in a bid to expand trade cooperation – and one up the US by winning over American allies and partners exasperated by the on-again-off-again trade war.
But it’s been bracing for US trade frictions since Trump’s first trade war and his campaign against Chinese tech champion Huawei, which were a wake-up call to Beijing that its economic rise could be derailed if it wasn’t prepared.
“The Chinese government have been preparing for this day for six years – they knew this was a possibility,” said Shih in California, who added that Beijing had supported countries to diversify supply chains and looked to manage some of its domestic economic challenges in preparation, among other efforts.
Today, China is much better placed to weather a broader trade conflict, experts say. Compared with 2018, it’s expanded its trade relations with the rest of the world, reducing the share of US exports from roughly one-fifth of its total to less than 15%.
Its manufacturers have also set up extensive operations in third countries like Vietnam and Cambodia, in part to take advantage of potentially lower US duties.
China has also built out its supply chains for rare earths and other critical minerals, upgraded its manufacturing technology with AI and humanoid robots and ramped up its advanced technology capabilities, including semiconductors. Since last year, the government has also worked, with varying success, to address issues like weak consumption and high local government debt.
“(China’s) weaknesses are significant, but in the context of an all-out brawl, these are manageable. The US is not going to be able to, on its own, bring China’s economy to the edge of destruction,” said Scott Kennedy, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in the US.
“As much as Washington doesn’t want to admit it, when China says you can’t contain China economically, they have a point.”
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El Salvador says it shares intelligence with the United States about gang members wanted by the Central American nation and provides “complete records” on them before formally requesting their deportation.
Villatoro’s comments come after the Trump administration deported more than 270 men to El Salvador, accusing them of being members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang or Salvadorans tied to the MS-13 gang.
US officials later admitted that one of those deported – Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Maryland-based sheet metal worker and father of three – was removed from the US in an “administrative error.” He is now in El Salvador’s notorious high security prison Cecot, despite a 2019 ruling by an immigration judge that was meant to protect him from deportation due to death threats from a gang targeting his family’s pupusa business.
The case has sparked a broad debate over due process in the deportations. While the Trump administration has alleged Garcia Abrego was a member of MS-13, his attorneys and family have rejected those claims and insist his detention is unjust.
The Salvadoran government has not commented on individual cases, including Abrego Garcia’s. But Villatoro said that Salvadorans deported from the US who are placed directly into the country’s prison system are those with pending criminal records in El Salvador.
“We checked all of them. And if we found someone who we are very sure that he is a member of any gang in El Salvador, we capture them and put them in jail,” he said.
He also addressed cases where individuals claim innocence, saying: “It’s very common that some people say, ‘Oh, he’s innocent.’ But the problem is: your background talks for you, right? You can say, ‘I’m not a member’ — OK, but what happened with your criminal record?”
‘Vague accusations’
Abrego Garcia’s legal team has flatly rejected that claim.
“The government of El Salvador has not provided any convictions or substantiated evidence to support its claims, and it is deeply concerning that these unverified allegations are being used to retroactively justify a deportation that violated court orders,” the statement continued.
The Supreme Court on Monday temporarily paused a court-imposed midnight deadline to return Abrego Garcia to the US, agreeing to a request from President Donald Trump that will give the justices more time to consider the case.
It’s unclear what is influencing the US decision to block his return.
Villatoro insisted that El Salvador actively shares its information with US law enforcement and that deportations are based on detailed records.
He said the country has kept extensive files on suspected gang members for years, including those believed to be living in the US and elsewhere.
“We know their background — how many times they were captured for homicide, for drugs, for weapons,” he said. “This is not about random deportations — this is based on the full record.”
Villatoro, who has served in President Nayib Bukele’s cabinet since the beginning of his term, is considered one of the architects of his country’s anti-gang strategy.
The Cecot jail where Abrego Garcia is being held houses both convicted criminals and those still going through El Salvador’s court system.
With constitutional rights suspended under El Salvador’s yearslong state of emergency, some innocent people have been detained by mistake, Salvadoran president Bukele previously admitted. Several thousand of them have already been released.
Last year, the prison director estimated the inmate population was between 10,000 and 20,000. He now says it’s approaching the prison’s 40,000-inmate maximum — but declined to provide a specific figure, citing security concerns.
Villatoro said the government is prepared to expand the facility, or even construct a second Cecot-like maximum-security prison, if needed.
“We have enough land to build even another (Cecot),” he said.
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Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday that Ukrainian intelligence had identified 155 Chinese citizens fighting alongside Russian forces, a day after Ukraine said two Chinese nationals were captured in the country.
The Chinese nationals had been recruited through advertisements, including on social media, Zelensky said in a briefing Wednesday.
China has consistently denied any involvement in the war.
A spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said earlier Wednesday that any claims that Chinese citizens are fighting in Ukraine were “groundless.”
“It is important to emphasize that the Chinese government has always instructed its citizens to stay away from areas of armed conflict and avoid getting involved in the conflict in any form, especially avoiding participation in any party’s military operations,” spokesperson Lin Jian said in a press conference.
Most of the contracts in the document are dated “2024” and straddle different military units.
“We are collecting information and we believe that there are more, many more,” Zelensky said Wednesday, before claiming that Beijing was aware of Russians placing recruitment videos on Chinese social networks.
“These people arrive to the Russian Federation, to Moscow. Medical examinations last three to four days. Training centers are for one to two months. They fight on the territory of Ukraine,” he added.
Asked whether he thought the presence of Chinese nationals in Ukraine was a result of official Beijing policy, Zelensky said: “I don’t have an answer to this question yet. The Security Service of Ukraine will work on it … We are not saying that someone gave any command, we do not have such information.”
The allegations of Chinese nationals fighting alongside Russian forces follow claims by Ukraine that two Chinese nationals fighting in the Russian army have been taken prisoner in eastern Ukraine.
Zelensky said Tuesday that Ukrainian forces fighting in the Donetsk region obtained the Chinese nationals’ documents, bank cards and personal data.
The Ukrainian president on Wednesday added that Ukraine was “ready to exchange” the two individuals for Ukrainian prisoners of war.
The Kremlin spokesperson on Wednesday declined to comment on the claim that Chinese nationals were allegedly captured in Ukraine. Beijing said on Wednesday that it was “currently verifying” the situation with Ukraine.
Ukrainian military says Chinese national paid to join Russian army
One of the Chinese nationals captured fighting in eastern Ukraine had paid to join the Russian military through an intermediary in China, with the goal of becoming a Russian citizen, according to the Ukrainian military.
The Chinese detainee, who Ukrainian authorities said Tuesday was taken as a prisoner of war alongside a second Chinese national, was likely speaking under duress.
“According to the prisoner, he joined the Russian military through an intermediary in China, paying RUB 300,000 ($3,500) for the opportunity to enlist in the Russian Armed Forces,” the communications department of the Luhansk Operational Tactical Group said in a statement to Ukrainian media.
“He stated that his primary motivation was the desire to become a serviceman and obtain Russian Federation citizenship. He also mentioned that some group members had legal issues in China,” the statement to news outlet Ukrainska Pravda said.
“He reported that he had received training in the temporarily occupied territory of Luhansk Oblast as part of a group of Chinese nationals. The training covered basic military skills and was conducted without an interpreter, relying on gestures and a mobile translator for communication.”
The Ukrainian military tactical group said the man was taken prisoner when a Russian assault group chose to surrender under fire from Ukrainian soldiers.
“The individual is currently cooperating with Ukrainian investigative agencies, and his identity and citizenship have been confirmed. He noted that his family was aware of his intentions to go to Russia, although he officially travelled as a tourist,” the statement to Ukrainska Pravda said.
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Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on Wednesday agreed to temporarily halt the reinstatement of two fired federal board members, delivering another near-term win to President Donald Trump as his administration continues to spar in federal courts over the extent of his executive branch powers.
The brief stay issued by Roberts is not a final ruling on the reinstatement of the two board members, National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) member Gwynne Wilcox and Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) member Cathy Harris, two Democrat appointees who were abruptly terminated by the Trump administration this year.
Both had challenged their terminations as ‘unlawful’ in separate suits filed in D.C. federal court.
But the order from Roberts temporarily halts their reinstatement from taking force two days after a federal appeals court voted to reinstate them.
Judges for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit voted 7-4 on Monday to restore Wilcox and Harris to their respective boards, citing Supreme Court precedent in Humphrey’s Executor and Wiener v. United States to back their decision.
They noted that the Supreme Court had never overturned or reversed the decades-old precedent regarding removal restrictions for government officials of ‘multimember adjudicatory boards,’ including the NLRB and MSPB.
‘The Supreme Court has repeatedly told the courts of appeals to follow extant Supreme Court precedent unless and until that Court itself changes it or overturns it,’ judges noted in their opinion.
Monday’s ruling from the full panel was expected to spark intense backlash from the Trump administration, which has lobbed accusations at ‘activist judges’ who have slowed or halted some of Trump’s executive orders and actions.
The Trump administration appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court almost immediately.
The lower court’s decision was the latest in a dizzying flurry of court developments that had upheld, then blocked and upheld again the firings of the two employees, and it came after D.C.-based federal judges issued orders blocking their terminations.
‘A President who touts an image of himself as a ‘king’ or a ‘dictator,’ perhaps as his vision of effective leadership, fundamentally misapprehends the role under Article II of the U.S. Constitution,’ U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, who oversaw Wilcox’s case, wrote in her opinion.
Likewise, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras, who was presiding over Harris’ case, wrote that if the president were to ‘displace independent agency heads from their positions for the length of litigation such as this, those officials’ independence would shatter.’
Both opinions cited a 1935 Supreme Court precedent, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which notably narrowed the president’s constitutional power to remove agents of the executive branch, to support Wilcox’s and Harris’ reinstatements.
In February, Trump’s Justice Department penned a letter to Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., stating that it was seeking to overturn the landmark case.
‘To the extent that Humphrey’s Executor requires otherwise, the Department intends to urge the Supreme Court to overrule that decision, which prevents the President from adequately supervising principal officers in the Executive Branch who execute the laws on the President’s behalf, and which has already been severely eroded by recent Supreme Court decisions,’ acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote in the letter.
The Trump administration appealed the orders to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, where a three-judge panel ruled 2-1 in favor of the Trump administration, allowing the firings to proceed.
Wilcox and Harris, who had their cases consolidated, filed a motion for an en banc hearing, requesting the appeals court hear the case again with the entire bench present.
In a ruling issued April 7, the D.C. Circuit voted to block the terminations, reversing the previous appellate holding.
The judges voted 7-4 to restore Wilcox and Harris to their posts.
Harris and Wilcox’s cases are among several legal challenges attempting to clearly define the executive’s power.
Hampton Dellinger, a Biden appointee previously tapped to head the Office of Special Counsel, sued the Trump administration over his termination. Dellinger filed suit in D.C. district court after his Feb. 7 firing.
He had maintained the argument that, by law, he could only be dismissed from his position for job performance problems, which were not cited in an email dismissing him from his post.
Dellinger dropped his suit against the administration after the D.C. appellate court issued an unsigned order siding with the Trump administration.
Fox News Digital’s Breanne Deppisch contributed to this report.
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Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is delaying a key vote on legislation aimed at advancing President Donald Trump’s agenda in the face of a likely rebellion on Wednesday evening.
It comes as fiscal hawks in the lower chamber have raised alarms at the Senate’s version of the plan, which guarantees far fewer spending cuts than the House’s initial offering.
Johnson told reporters he would aim to hold the vote Thursday, the last scheduled day in session for House lawmakers before a two-week recess. He added, however, that lawmakers could be kept in session next week if needed to pass the legislation.
‘I don’t think we’ll have a vote on this tonight, but probably in the morning,’ the speaker said. ‘We want everybody to have a high degree of comfort about what is happening here, and we have a small subset of members who weren’t totally satisfied with the product as it stands. So we’re going to we’re going to talk about maybe going to conference with the Senate or add an amendment, but we’re going to make that decision.’
He also said there were multiple ways the House could move forward and Republicans would look at each one. Johnson said, ‘Everything is moving along just fine. We have a little bit of room here to work, and we’re going to use that.’
The House floor was paralyzed for over an hour during an earlier unrelated vote as Johnson met with Republican holdouts behind closed doors.
Two sources in the room said the holdouts did not speak with Trump, though it’s not clear if he called people individually.
Outside that room, in the cavernous House chamber, lawmakers began filtering out or impatiently pacing as time went by with little information.
Democrats, meanwhile, began calling for Republican leaders to close the lingering vote.
Tensions were high for those GOP lawmakers who remained on the House floor, Fox News Digital was told – and much of that frustration is aimed at Johnson.
‘I think he’s quickly losing faith from the rest of us. I mean, he kept the entire conference out on the floor for 80 minutes while you play grab-a– with these people,’ one House Republican fumed. ‘And all day it was like, ‘Oh, we’re going to get this done.”
That House Republican said, ‘All the chatter we were hearing was [holdouts were] down to single digits. But 17, 20 people were in that room. So clearly there was a much bigger problem than they were letting on all day.’
The gap between the House and Senate versions is significant; the House version that passed in late February calls for at least $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, while the Senate’s plan mandates at least $4 billion.
Some conservatives are also wary of congressional leaders looking to use the current policy baseline to factor the total amount of dollars the bill will add to the federal deficit. The current policy baseline allows lawmakers to essentially zero out the cost of extending Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) because they are already in effect.
‘We’ve got to have something more substantive out of the Senate. If you were going to sell your house, and I offered you a third of the price, you would laugh,’ Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., one of the earliest holdouts, told reporters on Wednesday.
Trump has directed Republicans to work on ‘one big, beautiful bill’ to advance his agenda on border security, defense, energy and taxes.
Such a measure is largely only possible via the budget reconciliation process. Traditionally used when one party controls all three branches of government, reconciliation lowers the Senate’s threshold for passage of certain fiscal measures from 60 votes to 51. As a result, it has been used to pass broad policy changes in one or two massive pieces of legislation.
The first step traditionally involves both chambers of Congress passing an identical ‘framework’ with instructions for relevant committees to hash out policy priorities in line with the spending levels in the initial legislation.
The House passed its own version of the reconciliation framework earlier this year, while the Senate passed an amended version last week. House GOP leaders now believe that voting on the Senate’s plan will allow Republicans to enter the next step of crafting policy.
‘Why does President Trump call it one big, beautiful bill? Because it does a lot of critically important things, all in one bill, that help get this country back on a strong footing. And what else it does is it produces incredibly needed savings,’ House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said during debate on the bill.
The legislation as laid out would add more money for border security, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as well as some new funding for defense.
Republicans are also looking to repeal significant portions of former President Joe Biden’s green energy policies, and institute new Trump policies like eliminating taxes on tipped and overtime wages.
But House conservatives had demanded added assurances from the Senate to show they are serious about cutting spending.
The House and Senate must pass identical versions of the final bill before it can get to Trump’s desk to be signed into law.
They must do so before the end of this year, when Trump’s TCJA tax cuts expire – potentially raising taxes on millions of Americans.
Trump himself worked to persuade holdouts both in a smaller-scale White House meeting on Tuesday and in public remarks at the National Republican Congressional Committee.
He also fired off multiple Truth Social posts pushing House Republicans to support the measure, even as conservatives argued it would not go far enough in fulfilling his own agenda.
‘Republicans, it is more important now, than ever, that we pass THE ONE, BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL. The USA will Soar like never before!!!’ one of the posts read.
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Fox News Digital has learned that the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) will post an updated Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) at the close of business Wednesday that paves the way for artificial intelligence to improve government efficiency and enhance the federal record-keeping process.
This will be the first time the United States government has applied the use of artificial intelligence for federal employee record-keeping after President Donald Trump issued an executive order in January to ‘solidify [America’s] position as the global leader in AI and secure a brighter future for all Americans.’
A senior White House official spoke with Fox News Digital, outlining the implementation process, detailing that the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP)-approved AI system will be used to drastically speed up the retirement process for the roughly 2.3 million federal employees and improve the accuracy of what is now mostly paper-based record keeping.
While the AI system will not be immediately operational, updating the PIA is the first step in opening the door to a full-scale roll-out. The senior White House official explained that the artificial intelligence program has already been tested to 100% accuracy in a simulated environment, but that no testing on actual data can be completed without the updated PIA.
Part of the inspiration for using AI to improve federal record keeping comes from Elon Musk’s DOGE keying in on a decommissioned, underground mine in Boyers, Pennsylvania. The mine, which is home to more than 400,000,000 personal records for federal employees, is heavily reliant on an ineffective paper-based system.
Though federal employee records are now filed through OPM’s electronic Official Personnel Folder (eOPF), there is also a duplicate paper record printed as a PDF that is stored at the Pennsylvania mine.
Operating under the current system, processing the retirement of a federal employee can take weeks or months, per file, and there is still room for human error.
With the implementation of artificial intelligence, the senior White House official told Fox it could take less than one second to finalize a federal employee’s retirement.
While there is no intention to digitize or remove the hundreds of millions of files that exist in the mine, the AI system would ensure that no new paper files would be added to the already overwhelming number of physical copies that exist.
Outdated filing systems have placed a burden on the efficiency of federal record keeping, as many of the files are old, illegible PDFs that can take several employees days or weeks to review, and the results have a higher chance of being inaccurate.
‘Antiquated, inefficient, and slow are words synonymous with government, all of which ended the day President Trump took office,’ Harrison Fields, Principal White House Deputy Press Secretary, told Fox News Digital, ‘Today’s action follows the president’s historic AI Executive Order and will usher in historic efficiency at the Office of Personnel Management, streamlining the organization tasked with serving as the human resources agency and personnel policy manager for the Federal Government.’
The White House also issued an AI-focused concentrated fact sheet Tuesday, establishing federal ‘Agency Chief AI Officer roles’ who ‘are tasked with promoting agency-wide AI innovation and the adoption of lower-risk AI, mitigating risks for higher-impact AI, and advising on agency AI investments and spending.’
The senior White House official clarified to Fox News Digital that despite the AI implementation, federal employees will still be able to self-review and assess personal records at their discretion.
Preston Mizell is a writer with Fox News Digital covering breaking news. Story tips can be sent to Preston.Mizell@fox.com and on X @MizellPreston
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The House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday to limit federal district judges’ ability to affect Trump administration policies on a national scale.
The No Rogue Rulings Act, led by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., passed the House and limits district courts’ power to issue U.S.-wide injunctions, instead forcing them to focus their scope on the parties directly affected in most cases.
All but one Republican lawmaker voted for the bill, which passed 219 to 213. No Democrats voted in favor.
The Trump administration has faced more than 15 nationwide injunctions since the Republican commander-in-chief took office, targeting a wide range of President Donald Trump’s policies, from birthright citizenship reform to anti-diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts.
Issa himself was confident the bill would pass, telling Fox News Digital on Tuesday morning, ‘We’ve got the votes.’
He was less certain of the bill getting Democratic support, though he noted former Biden administration solicitor general Elizabeth Prelogar made her own complaints about district judges’ powers during the previous White House term.
‘We’re hoping some people look at it on its merits rather than its politics,’ Issa said.
Rep. Derek Schmidt, R-Kan., who has an amendment on the bill aimed at limiting plaintiffs’ ability to ‘judge shop’ cases to favorable districts, told Fox News Digital before the vote, ‘A lot of things get called commonsense around here, but this one genuinely is.’
‘The basic policy of trying to rein in the overuse of nationwide injunctions was supported by Democrats before. It’s supported by Republicans now, and I’m hoping [this vote will] be supported by both,’ he said.
Rep. Lance Gooden, R-Texas, who, like Schmidt and Issa, is a House Judiciary Committee member, told Fox News Digital after the bill’s passage, ‘Many Democrat-appointed lower court judges have conducted themselves like activist liberal lawyers in robes while attempting to stop President Trump’s nationwide reforms. The No Rogue Rulings Act limits this unchecked power.’
Another GOP lawmaker, Rep. Randy Feenstra, R-Iowa, told Fox News Digital, ‘More than 77 million Americans voted for [Trump’s] pro-American policies and want to see them implemented quickly. There is no reason that activist judges whose authority does not extend nationally should be allowed to completely stop [his] agenda.’
Republicans’ unity on the issue comes despite some early divisions over how to hit back at what they have called ‘rogue’ and ‘activist’ judges.
Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., who supported impeachment and Issa’s bill, told Fox News Digital, ‘The judicial vendetta against President Trump’s agenda needs to be checked. Nationwide injunctions by activists judges have stood in the way of the American people’s will and in come cases their safety, since the President was sworn into office.’
Stutzman said Issa’s bill ‘will stop individual judge’s political beliefs from preventing the wants and needs of our citizens from being implemented.’
A group of conservatives had pushed to impeach specific judges who have blocked Trump’s agenda, but House GOP leaders quickly quashed the effort in favor of what they see as a more effective route to take on the issue.
Despite its success in the House, however, the legislation does face uncertain odds in the Senate, where it needs at least several Democrats to hit the chamber’s 60-vote threshold.
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