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Year: 2025

Inside Jill Biden’s political rise amid her husband’s cognitive decline: Book

Inside Jill Biden’s political rise amid her husband’s cognitive decline: Book

Former President Joe Biden‘s inner circle considers first lady Jill Biden one of the most powerful first ladies in history, CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios political correspondent Alex Thompson reveal in their new book, “Original Sin.” Jill Biden, a PhD whom White House staffers called “Dr. B” for short, was a reluctant political spouse in the early days of her husband’s political career. During his presidential campaigns and into his presidency, the first lady became his staunchest defender and a “political partner in addition to a spouse,” Thompson and Tapper wrote.  “Dr. B was a strong, protective force in the White House. She was also, without question, one of the chief supporters of the president’s decision to run for reelection, and one of the chief deniers of his deterioration,” the authors wrote.  President Donald Trump‘s White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Thursday that Jill Biden should have to answer for her complicity in the “cover-up” of Biden’s cognitive decline.  JILL BIDEN SHOULD HAVE TO ANSWER FOR ‘COVER-UP’ OF FORMER PRESIDENT’S DECLINE, WHITE HOUSE SAYS Leavitt pointed to how Jill Biden jumped in to defend her husband during their joint interview on “The View” this month as evidence the former first lady is still covering for her husband.  ‘INTENSELY LOYAL’ JILL BIDEN AIDE DESPISED BY WHITE HOUSE STAFFERS, NEW BOOK CLAIMS As Biden’s sister, Valerie “Val” Biden Owens, and his adult children, Hunter Biden and Ashley Biden, stayed away from Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, Jill Biden took on a more prominent role, the book revealed.  “She weighed in on potential hires and reviewed many of the campaign ads before they were aired. She campaigned hard and peppered aides with questions about how many reporters would be at her events,” Tapper and Thompson said.  Jill Biden sat for job interviews for White House aide candidates, and she “kept score” of which staffers were most loyal, with the help of her most trusted aide, Anthony Bernal, the book revealed.  The White House began referring to Jill Biden’s “spousal programming” events on foreign trips, and her team would request talking points, which Tapper and Thompson said some national security officials found strange.  “[Bernal] had already begun planning the first lady’s 2025 international travel schedule,” Tapper and Thompson said. The first lady made an off-hand comment to French President Emmanuel Macron at a state dinner in 2022 about the difficult nature of campaigns and how she needed to stay in shape. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s daughter, Alexandra, overheard and found it odd, according to “Original Sin.” “Alexandra then turned to the president and asked if they should toast to another campaign. He looked back at her like he didn’t understand. Alexandra thought her mom looked shocked. Everyone quickly gathered themselves. With Macron, they toasted to four more years,” the authors said.  Dr. B was particularly sensitive when asked about Biden’s age and ability, according to the authors.  After Biden’s consequential debate performance in the summer of 2024, The Associated Press reported that Jill and Hunter Biden were urging the president to continue his re-election campaign. Sources told AP the family “questioned how he was prepared for the debate by staff and wondered if they could have done something better.” “Hunter privately talked about it as being the family against the world. People sensed a more manic quality in him post-debate. He was determined to save his dad,” according to Tapper and Thompson.  Soon after the debate, Jill Biden joined Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., on the campaign trail. After defending the president’s re-election campaign to reporters, Stabenow brought up some of her colleagues’ concerns about Biden continuing in the race.  JILL BIDEN ACCUSED OF ‘ELDER ABUSE’ BY WASHINGTON POST COLUMNIST FOR PUSHING HUSBAND TO SEEK RE-ELECTION “The First Lady didn’t answer the senator’s implied question, but she later fumed about it to White House staffers,” the book alleged.  A week later, Gov. Josh Shapiro, from the pivotal battleground state of Pennsylvania, told the president, “I have some concerns.” However, before Biden could fully respond, the first lady was ushering him away.  “Jill fumed with resentment about all the Democrats who she considered friends now pushing Biden out. She knew she had blundered in the aftermath of the debate with her belittling praise. She was only trying to help her husband in his moment of need. In the end, she told Biden: ‘This is your decision. This is for you to decide,’” according to the book.  CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Fox News Digital has written extensively dating back to the 2020 presidential campaign about Biden’s cognitive decline and his inner circle’s alleged role in covering it up. A Biden spokesperson did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment. 

Senate Republicans eye changes to Trump’s megabill after House win

Senate Republicans eye changes to Trump’s megabill after House win

House Republicans eked out a win in May with their advancement of President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” filled with negotiations and compromises on thorny policy issues that barely passed muster in the lower chamber. Next week, Senate Republicans will get their turn to parse through the colossal package and are eying changes that could be a hard sell for House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who can only afford to lose three votes. INSIDE THE LATE-NIGHT DRAMA THAT LED TO TRUMP’S TAX BILL PASSING BY 1 VOTE Congressional Republicans are in a dead sprint to get the megabill — filled with Trump’s policy desires on taxes, immigration, energy, defense and the national debt — onto the president’s desk by early July. Trump has thrown his support behind the current product, but said during a press conference in the Oval Office on Friday that he expected the package to be “jiggered around a little bit.” “It’s going to be negotiated with the Senate, with the House, but the end result is it extends the Trump tax cuts,” he said. “If it doesn’t get approved, you’ll have a 68% tax increase,” the president continued. “You’re going to go up 68%. That’s a number that nobody has ever heard of before. You’ll have a massive tax increase.” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has an identical margin to Johnson, and will need to cultivate support from a Senate GOP that wants to put its own fingerprints on the bill. Senators have signaled they’d like to make changes to a litany of House proposals, including reforms to Medicaid and the timeline for phasing out green energy tax credits, among others, and have grumbled about the hike to the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap pushed for by moderate House Republicans. SCOOP: HOUSE GOP MEMO HIGHLIGHTS REPUBLICAN WINS IN TRUMP’S ‘BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL’ Thune said many Republicans are largely in favor of the tax portion of the bill, which seeks to make Trump’s first-term tax policy permanent, and particularly the tax policies that are “stimulative, that are pro-growth, that will create greater growth in the economy.” Much of the debate, and prospective tweaks, from the upper chamber would likely focus on whether the House’s offering has deep enough spending cuts, he said. “When it comes to the spending side of the equation, this is a unique moment in time and in history where we have the House and the Senate and the White House and an opportunity to do something meaningful about controlled government spending,” Thune said. The House package set a benchmark of $1.5 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade. Some in the Senate GOP would like to see that number cranked up marginally to at least $2 trillion, largely because the tax portion of the package is expected to add nearly $4 trillion to the deficit, according to recent findings from the Joint Committee on Taxation. “There’s just so many great things in this bill,” Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., told Fox News Digital. “The only thing I would like to do is try to cut the spending, and I would love to take a little bit from a lot of places, rather than a lot from just one place.” SPEAKER JOHNSON CLASHES WITH RAND PAUL OVER ‘WIMPY’ SPENDING CUTS IN TRUMP’S BILL  Others, like Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., want to see the cuts in the package return to pre-pandemic spending levels, which would amount to roughly a $6 trillion slash in spending. Johnson has remained unflinching in his opposition to the current bill, and warned that “no amount of pressure” from Trump could change his mind. “President Trump made a bunch of promises,” Johnson said at an event in Wisconsin on Wednesday. “My promise has been, consistently, we have to stop mortgaging our children’s future. OK, so I think there are enough [Republicans] to slow this process down until the president, our leadership, gets serious about returning to a pre-pandemic level.” Others are concerned over the proposed slashes to Medicaid spending, which congressional Republicans have largely pitched as reform efforts designed to root out waste, fraud and abuse in the program used by millions of Americans. The House package would see a roughly $700 billion cut from the program, according to a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), and some Senate Republicans have signaled that they wouldn’t support the changes if benefits were cut for their constituents. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., warned in an op-ed for The New York Times last month that cutting benefits was “both morally wrong and politically suicidal.” Meanwhile, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, raised concerns about what proposed cuts to the program would do to rural hospitals in her state.  “I cannot support proposals that would create more duress for our hospitals and providers that are already teetering on the edge of insolvency,” she said. 

Trump shares post saying Biden was executed, replaced with clones

Trump shares post saying Biden was executed, replaced with clones

President Donald Trump shared a post on social media this weekend claiming that President Joe Biden died in 2020 and was replaced with clones. Trump shared a link to the post from his personal account on Truth Social on Saturday. The post originated from a small account on the platform responding to discussions about Biden’s health. “There is no Joe Biden – executed in 2020,” the post says. “Biden clones, doubles and robotic engineered soulless, mindless entities are what you see.” “Democrats don’t know the difference,” it adds, before listing a litany of hashtags. POLITICAL WORLD REACTS TO FORMER PRESIDENT BIDEN’S ‘AGGRESSIVE’ CANCER DIAGNOSIS: ‘INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT’ Trump added no words of his own to the post, merely sharing the link on his personal account. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital. Trump shared several links to Truth Social posts without offering his own commentary Saturday night. Most of the posts detailed Trump’s efforts to return steel manufacturing to the U.S. JOE BIDEN DIAGNOSED WITH ‘AGGRESSIVE FORM’ OF PROSTATE CANCER WITH METASTASIS TO THE BONE The Saturday post comes amid new controversy over Biden’s health while in office. Speculation has exploded in the days since Biden announced he has stage 4 metastatic prostate cancer, a diagnosis that typically takes years to develop. The nature of the diagnosis has led to speculation that members of the previous administration were aware of the cancer but withheld information about it from the public, even as they attempted to run Biden for a second term. Trump said he and first lady Melania Trump were “saddened” to learn of Biden’s diagnosis and wished him a “fast and successful recovery” in a post on social media this weekend. “Melania and I are saddened to hear about Joe Biden’s recent medical diagnosis,” Trump wrote. “We extend our warmest and best wishes to Jill and the family, and we wish Joe a fast and successful recovery.”

House Dems’ campaign chair says her party’s ‘on offense’ in 2026 battle to win back majority from GOP

House Dems’ campaign chair says her party’s ‘on offense’ in 2026 battle to win back majority from GOP

With the early moves heating up in the 2026 battle for the House majority, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s (DCCC) chair argues President Donald Trump and the Republican majorities in the House and Senate are “doing incredible damage to working families and to our country.” And with the GOP defending a razor-thin majority in the House in next year’s midterm elections, Rep. Suzan DelBene, the DCCC chair, noted, “We only need three more seats.” “We have 35 districts in play across the country where we have opportunities,” DelBene said in a Fox News Digital interview last week in the nation’s capital, pointing to the Republican-held seats the DCCC is targeting. “We are on offense. We are fighting for the American people and for the important issues they care about, and Democrats are united in doing that.” HOUSE DEMOCRATS PREDICT REPUBLICANS WILL PAY PRICE FOR PASSING TRUMP’S ‘BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL’ While the party in power after a presidential election — currently the GOP — typically faces political headwinds and loses House seats in the following midterms, the 2026 map appears to favor Republicans. “The battlefield is really laying out to our advantage. There are 14 Democrats who won seats also carried by Donald Trump. There are only three Republicans in seats that were carried by [former Vice President] Kamala Harris. So, that tells me we’re going to be on offense,” Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) chair, told Fox News Digital at the start of the 2026 cycle. WHAT THE HOUSE GOP CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE CHAIR TOLD FOX NEWS ABOUT TRUMP’S ROLE IN THE MIDTERMS DelBene countered that “the reason we have opportunities is because people are outraged, because they do want to see someone come into office who is going to fight for their communities and not just be blindly loyal to a president.” And pointing to the small bite House Democrats took out of the GOP’s majority in the 2024 elections, she added that “those are the types of candidates that won in our districts last cycle. It’s a reason we actually gained seats in 2024 and is absolutely the reason why we’re going to take back the majority in 2026.” But Hudson noted he has a powerful ally as he works to keep control of the House. “The president understands that he’s got to keep the House majority in the midterm so that he has a four-year runway instead of a two-year runway to get his agenda enacted,” Hudson said. “He’s been extremely helpful to us, and we appreciate it.” And the Democrats are facing a polling dilemma because the party’s ratings have been sinking to historic lows in a number of national surveys so far this year. The Democrats’ ratings in a Fox News poll stood at 41% favorable and 56% unfavorable in a survey conducted April 18-21. HEAD HERE TO CHECK OUT THE LATEST FOX NEWS POLLS That’s an all-time low for the Democrats in Fox News polling. And for the first time in a decade, the party’s standing was lower than that of the GOP, which stood at 44% favorable and 54% unfavorable. The figures were reversed last summer, when Fox News last asked the party favorability question in one of its surveys. But there is a silver lining for the Democrats. The Fox News poll indicated that if the 2026 midterm elections were held today, 49% of voters would back a generic Democrat in their congressional district, with 42% supporting the generic Republican candidate. The Democrats also have another problem — the possibility of primary challenges against longtime and older House lawmakers in safe blue districts. Recently elected Democratic National Committee (DNC) Vice Chair David Hogg last month pledged to spend millions of dollars through his outside political group to support primary challenges against what he termed “asleep at the wheel” House Democrats who he argued have not been effective in pushing back against Trump. The move by the 25-year-old Hogg, a survivor of the shooting seven years ago at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in South Florida, to spend money against fellow Democrats ignited a firestorm within the party. In response, DelBene said, “Democrats across the country are united in taking back the House.” Asked by Fox News if the move by Hogg would force the DCCC and allied super PACs to divert money and resources from competitive districts in order to defend incumbents in safe blue districts from primary challenges, DelBene responded, “I think everyone knows how important it is that we take back the House, and folks are focused in helping make sure that we do that in districts all across the country.” But the dispute is giving the GOP ammunition. In response to the intra-Democratic Party feud, NRCC spokesman Mike Marinella argued, “No Democrat is safe. A political earthquake is underway, and the old guard is scrambling.”

Musk’s departure marks new chapter for government efficiency in border security

Musk’s departure marks new chapter for government efficiency in border security

As the Department of Government Efficiency enters a new era with the departure of Elon Musk on Friday, it has caused numerous changes in recent months on matters of immigration and border security. “DOGE has helped to transform the Federal government by eliminating waste and bloat that has been ignored for years. DOGE is playing a key role in eliminating millions of taxpayer money being misspent, including contracts for illegal alien facilities that sat empty during the Biden Border invasion and funding for hotel rooms to house illegal gang members. DOGE’s mission to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse continues!” Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, told Fox News Digital in a statement on Friday. In February, the Department of Homeland Security announced that they had gutted an $83 million contract for “an empty illegal alien facility during an invasion at the southern border” and the $80 million in FEMA funding to provide lodging for illegal immigrants in New York City, like the Roosevelt Hotel.   DOGE STAFFING SHAKEUP AS ELON MUSK HANGS UP HIS HAT, WHITE HOUSE CONFIRMS In March, a contract to resume wall construction along seven miles of the border was cleared by DOGE. “Secretary Noem announced that we officially awarded the first [DOGE] approved contract to restart construction on President Trump’s border wall,” DHS posted on March 17. DOGE also posted to X in April that it had found that many illegal immigrants who were on the FBI’s terror watchlist and those who have a criminal history were taking out public benefits. Four on the terror watchlist and 901 other “paroled aliens” were “collecting Medicaid,” 41 received unemployment benefits, 22 got student loans from the federal government and 409 got a “net” tax refund in 2024, according to the department. The cost of the tax refunds was $751,000, Medicaid cost $276,000, and the student loans totaled out to $280,000, the department said.  TOP 5 MOST OUTRAGEOUS WAYS THE GOVERNMENT HAS WASTED YOUR TAXES, AS UNCOVERED BY ELON MUSK’S DOGE “Under the Biden administration, it was routine for Border Patrol to admit aliens into the United States with no legal status and minimal screening,” the post stated. “So far, CBP identified a subset of 6.3k individuals paroled into the United States since 2023 on the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center watchlist or with criminal records. These paroles have since been terminated with immediate effect. Despite having no other legal status, paroled aliens are able to file for work authorization and receive social security numbers.” Outside of immigration and border security, DHS said the Coast Guard is expected to save $32.7 million by scrapping an information technology system that was deemed “ineffective.” In a video posted in May about the partnership between DOGE and DHS, it said the funds are going to “frontline operations.” “Another win for government efficiency at DHS!” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement to Fox News Digital in April. TRUMP, MUSK GET SUPPORT FROM FORMER NFL STAR AMID CRITICISM OVER DOGE CUTS, OTHER ISSUES “Continuing the crucial work of DOGE, the Coast Guard eliminated an ineffective IT program, saving over $32 million and focusing its resources where they’re most needed to protect the homeland. The USCG continues to deliver on the President’s priorities, maximizing its efficiency while securing our borders and maritime approaches,” Noem added. DHS and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) also recently announced a planned crackdown on illegal immigrants’ use of public housing benefits.  And last month, DHS announced that, in the spirit of cracking down on “waste, fraud and abuse,” it was ending FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program. DOGE DISCOVERS THE BIDEN-MAYORKAS ILLEGAL MIGRATION FUNDING MACHINE “The BRIC program was yet another example of a wasteful and ineffective FEMA program. It was more concerned with political agendas than helping Americans affected by natural disasters,” a FEMA spokesperson said in a statement at the time. “Under Secretary Noem’s leadership, we are committed to ensuring that Americans in crisis can get the help and resources they need.”  Fox News reached out to DHS for additional comment. The changes come as President Donald Trump made major policy changes during the early days of his second term, which has led to a sharp decrease in encounters at the border and a continued crackdown on illegal immigrants with a criminal background in the U.S. interior.  In total, DOGE has estimated it has saved $175 billion for taxpayers so far. Fox News’ Greg Wehner and Preston Mizell contributed to this report.