FLASHBACK: Biden also changed White House press pool, cutting off more than 440 reporters’ credentials
The White House will now oversee which news outlets will be part of the White House press pool, rather than the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA), the White House press secretary said Tuesday. While the WHCA customarily has had the authority to choose the rotation of news outlets that have access to the president in the Oval Office and other areas with limited access, the Trump administration is upending that policy. “Legacy outlets who have participated in the press pool for decades will still be allowed to join, fear not,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters during a briefing Tuesday. “But we will also be offering the privilege to well-deserving outlets who have never been allowed to share in this awesome responsibility.” MORE THAN 440 REPORTERS LOSE PRESS PASSES AFTER WHITE HOUSE CHANGES REQUIREMENTS But President Donald Trump’s White House isn’t the only one to roll out controversial policies regarding press access. In 2023, more than 440 reporters lost press credentials after President Joe Biden’s White House modified its rules for eligibility for permanent passes. Credentialed White House press members dropped from 1,417 members to 975 members after the White House unveiled new standards requiring an annual renewal of hard passes, Politico reported in 2023. Journalists without hard passes were still authorized to apply for day passes to the White House. The Biden White House policy was launched in May 2023 and required reporters to prove employment with “an organization whose principal business is news dissemination” and show that they have “accessed the White House campus at least once during the prior six months for work, or have proof of employment within the last three months to cover the White House.” The Biden White House defended its decision to cut off routine access to these reporters, claiming many of the journalists whose passes expired hadn’t accessed the White House in the previous three months. “At the time we initiated this process in early May, roughly 40% of hard pass holders had not accessed the White House complex in the prior 90 days,” the White House said in a 2023 statement to Politico. “We think this demonstrates we’ve led a thoughtful and thorough process that preserves robust media access to campus for everyone who needs it — whether that be with a hard pass or a day pass.” TRUMP ADMIN GUTS WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT’S ASSOCIATION IN BID TO END ‘MONOPOLY’ OF ‘DC JOURNALISTS’ Leavitt announced in January that the Trump White House would work to “restore the press passes of the 440 journalists whose passes were wrongly revoked by the previous administration.” On Tuesday, Leavitt said the White House’s decision aimed to “give the power back to the people” in an attempt to ensure that “all journalists, outlets and voices deserve a seat at this highly coveted table.” CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP In response, WHCA President Eugene Daniels said the WHCA did not receive any notice in advance of the White House’s decision and said the move “tears at the independence of a free press in the United States.” “It suggests the government will choose the journalists who cover the president,” Daniels said. “In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps.” Fox News’ Gabriel Hays contributed to this report.
Dem senator’s ‘dark money corruption’ hypocrisy revealed in ethics complaint, expert says
Legal experts are pointing out what they say is hypocrisy as Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., faces an ethics complaint over a potential conflict of interest that resulted in millions of dollars in federal grants for a nonprofit associated with his wife. “Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, who has made his political career accusing others of dark money corruption, appears to be throwing stones in his glass house,” said Mike Davis, the former chief counsel for nominations to former Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. “This is the height of hypocrisy,” Brett Tolman, former U.S. attorney and executive director of Right On Crime, told Fox News Digital. “Sen Whitehouse is a former US attorney and the self-proclaimed watchdog of dark money.” EXCLUSIVE: INSIDE REPUBLICANS’ LONG GAME TO CONFIRM TRUMP FBI DIRECTOR KASH PATEL Whitehouse spokesperson Stephen DeLeo told Fox News Digital in a statement, “The ‘legal experts’ at Fox News should review the bipartisan dismissal issued by the Senate Ethics Committee the last time a dark-money group attempted these same kinds of smears.” Whitehouse voted for legislation that ultimately provided millions of dollars in funding for grants to environmental nonprofit group Ocean Conservancy, which works with his wife, Sandra Whitehouse, and pays her through a consulting firm. The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT), an ethics watchdog, wrote to Senate Select Committee on Ethics Chair James Lankford, R-Okla., and Vice Chair Chris Coons, D-Del., this week, asking them to investigate Whitehouse “to determine whether he violated the Senate ethics rules on conflicts of interest.” The group works primarily to draw attention to potential Democrat lawmaker ethics violations. “This is not just a careless ethical lapse in judgment,” Tolman added. “This is corruption, Washington, D.C., style. This is literally what many public officials have been prosecuted for by DOJ (Department of Justice). I’m aware of multiple cases DOJ is pursuing right now with less egregious facts.” Thomas Jipping, senior legal fellow with the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital the Ethics Committee should investigate the allegation against Whitehouse. GOP SENATOR SUFFERS SEIZURE, BRAIN BLEED AFTER FALLING ON ICE “Of course, that’s what they exist to do,” he said. “I was struck by the fact that they are arguing” and that the complaint from FACT has “specific facts that back up a claim that there’s an ethical violation,” Jipping said. As he referenced, FACT provided information to support a potential conflict of interest. Ocean Conservancy has notably received more than $14.2 million in federal grants since 2008, per USASpending.gov. In 2024 alone, it was given two sizable grants, one for $5.2 million from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for marine debris cleanup in September, and another for $1.7 million from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), also to assist with marine debris cleanup. The grants were funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the EPA’s annual appropriations bill. Whitehouse voted for both. Per her LinkedIn page, Whitehouse’s wife, Sandra, is employed as president of consulting firm Ocean Wonks LLC and has been since 2017. She was previously a direct employee of Ocean Conservancy as its senior policy advisor starting in 2008. DEMS DEMAND TRUMP RESUME CASH FLOW AS THEY FINALLY GET LEVERAGE IN RACE TO PREVENT SHUTDOWN Jipping said the senator never provided sufficient evidence for his various ethical claims against conservative Supreme Court justices. Whitehouse has long crusaded against conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, accusing them of ethical wrongdoing. The Democrat has even spearheaded an effort to put a Supreme Court ethics code into law, which has drawn serious criticism as some warn it would effectively allow the legislature to govern the court. “The irony here absolutely takes my breath away,” Jipping remarked. “He now appears to be embroiled in such an obvious conflict of interest.” However, not everyone agreed. Attorney Bradley P. Moss told Fox News Digital that “from what is described in the media report, this seems like a considerable stretch to find even the appearance of a conflict of interest.” EXCLUSIVE: TRUMP WARNS MAJOR DEM AGAINST MOVE THAT COULD COST VOTERS TRILLIONS He said he was more concerned about engineers from billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX assisting the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to modernize air traffic control. According to the Department of Transportation, the engineers are part of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team at the FAA and are special government employees. Their work in this capacity is being kept separate from the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, they said. Jipping said Whitehouse’s situation is an “opportunity for the ethics committee to show that they are in fact nonpartisan.” Lankford and Coons did not provide comment to Fox News Digital in time for publication.
New Texas Supreme Court chief justice calls for judicial raises, changes to bail laws
Chief Justice Jimmy Blacklock embraced constitutional originalism, a judicial philosophy tied to conservatism, in addressing the Legislature.
CNN pundit Scott Jennings encouraged to run for McConnell’s open Senate seat
FIRST ON FOX: Conservative CNN pundit Scott Jennings is being privately and publicly encouraged to run for Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell’s open Senate seat in 2026, sources, including a Republican operative familiar with the race, told Fox News Digital Wednesday. Some conservative personalities floated the possibility publicly on X. The pundit is known for his advocacy of the Trump administration on the airwaves, and he regularly goes viral for debating liberal pundits on the cable television network. He served as a longtime advisor to the outgoing Kentucky senator and previously worked in the George W. Bush administration. “Could I nominate [Scott Jennings] for the United States Senate from the Commonwealth of Kentucky? He’d be a hell of a McConnell replacement,” pundit Erick Erickson tweeted. SCOTT JENNINGS SNAPS BACK AT CNN PANEL, SAYS REPORT SHOWS TRUMP’S ACTIONS ARE ‘HARDLY DICTATORIAL BEHAVIOR’ “I would absolutely support my friend [Scott Jennings] for U.S. Senate. But he’d also make a fine governor for the great state of Kentucky as well,” Republican strategist Dustin Grage tweeted. As for McConnell, the former Senate majority leader said last week he would not seek another term, leaving the door wide open for contenders in 2026. SCOTT JENNINGS SPARKS CNN MELTDOWN BY SAYING FEDERAL BUREAUCRACY ONLY RESISTS TRUMP, GOP ADMINISTRATIONS “Seven times, my fellow Kentuckians have sent me to the Senate,” McConnell, who first took office in 1985, said on the Senate floor while announcing his retirement. “Every day in between, I’ve been humbled by the trust they’ve placed in me to do their business here. Representing our commonwealth has been the honor of a lifetime. I will not seek this honor an eighth time. My current term in the Senate will be my last,” he added. Former Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron has already entered the race, and Rep. Andy Barr is also mulling a bid. Cameron ran for governor in 2023, but he narrowly lost to Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear. FORMER KENTUCKY AG WHO HANDLED BREONNA TAYLOR PROBE PROMPTLY ANNOUNCES SENATE BID TO REPLACE MITCH MCCONNELL In a recent campaign video, Cameron mentioned McConnell by name for voting against the nominations of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “You should expect a senator from Kentucky to vote for those nominees to advance the ‘America first’ agenda,” Cameron said. Neither Trump nor McConnell have announced an endorsement in the race. Fox News Digital reached out to Jennings but did not receive comment.
Republicans barrel toward showdown over Trump tax cuts after dramatic House budget vote
House and Senate Republicans are heading for a messy showdown over how long to extend President Donald Trump’s tax cuts. The two chambers are at odds over how to advance Trump’s agenda via the budget reconciliation process, a maneuver that will allow Republicans to advance their agenda without Democratic support. As part of that, GOP lawmakers are aiming to extend the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) before its provisions expire at the end of 2025, as well as implement more recent Trump tax priorities. House Republicans adopted a resolution on Tuesday evening that would provide roughly $4.5 trillion for Trump’s tax priorities over the next 10 years, with a goal of working to eventually make them permanent. The Senate adopted a narrower competing resolution earlier this month that would leave taxes for a second bill to come later. KEY CONSERVATIVE CAUCUS DRAWS RED LINE ON HOUSE BUDGET PLAN But Senate GOP leaders are pushing to make the tax cuts permanent while Republicans are working through the reconciliation process. Senate Republicans are signaling they would rewrite the House’s product significantly, a push that’s irked Republicans in that chamber. “The Senate resolution punted on accomplishing the majority of President Trump’s agenda, and now they are further delaying and endangering it by announcing they will rewrite what narrowly passed the House,” a senior House GOP aide told Fox News Digital. Nevertheless, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., congratulated House Republicans on passing their resolution but added, “A key part of that agenda is making the pro-growth Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent, which is why we’ll work closely with our House colleagues to ensure the final package includes all of the president’s key tax priorities, including permanency, which will create long-term certainty for working families in America.” Trump himself even weighed in on the matter. He wrote on his Truth Social app on Wednesday morning, “I hope the House and Senate are able to agree on making the Tax Cuts PERMANENT!” But Republicans are also dealing with razor-thin margins in both chambers of Congress. In the House, they can currently only lose one Republican vote with full attendance, while Senate Republicans can afford three defectors. Getting the House resolution across the line proved dramatic on Monday night, with Republican leaders working up until the final moments to convince conservative fiscal hawks who were wary of how much the legislation would add to the federal deficit. It could prove more difficult if they did the exercise again, but with even more funding allocated toward Trump’s tax priorities. “The Senate can push all they want to. This is being driven by the House,” Ways & Means Committee member Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., told Fox News Digital. “I don’t see how it can be permanent,” another House Republican on Ways & Means told Fox News Digital. Murphy denied that Trump’s earlier Truth Social post made the situation more difficult for their side, however, explaining the ultimate “goal is” to make those provisions permanent. The Senate advanced its own narrower version of the plan that would split Trump’s priorities into two parts earlier this month. The resolution that passed would repeal some progressive Biden administration policies and provide new funding for defense and border security, while leaving taxes for a second bill. A significant number of House Republicans balked at that plan, worried that tax cuts could expire for millions of Americans if two reconciliation bills prove too heavy a lift. But Senate Republicans want to spend more time cobbling together a tax plan they believe is closer to what Trump wants, and that this reconciliation opportunity is the best lane to do it. GOP LAWMAKER CALLS FOR CONGRESSIONAL HEARING OVER DC PLANE CRASH “A short-term extension of President Trump’s signature tax cuts would potentially leave future extensions vulnerable to Democrat presidents and Democrats in Congress, where we risk losing them forever and undoing President Trump’s legacy,” a senior Senate GOP aide told Fox News Digital. “We have to give greater certainty for working families. With President Trump in the White House, we have a unique opportunity to make the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent. The Senate will have to rewrite House Republicans’ budget resolution in order to do so.” The senior House GOP aide who spoke with Fox News Digital said, however, “Republicans in both chambers want to deliver on President Trump’s promise and the American people’s mandate for a lengthy extension of the Trump tax cuts.” “Congress can do this quickly by passing the only resolution that has already passed through one chamber of Congress – the House resolution – that has the capacity to implement the full Trump agenda,” they said.
Trump pushes to recover ‘billions of dollars’ of military equipment left behind in Afghanistan withdrawal
President Donald Trump wants to recover billions of dollars’ worth of equipment U.S. troops left in Afghanistan following their 2021 withdrawal from the country. “We left billions, tens of billions of dollars worth of equipment behind, brand new trucks,” Trump said during his first Cabinet meeting Wednesday. “You see them display it every year, or their little roadway, someplace where they have a road and they drive the, you know, waving the flag and talking about America … that’s all the top of the line stuff. I think we should get a lot of that equipment back.” The Taliban seized most of the more than $7 billion worth of equipment U.S. troops left in Afghanistan at the time of the withdrawal in August 2021, according to a Department of Defense report released in 2022. TRUMP: ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY EYING CUT TO 65% OF ITS STAFFERS Although U.S. troops removed or destroyed much of the major equipment that forces used during the drawdown, military equipment including aircraft, ground vehicles and other weapons were left in Afghanistan. The condition of these items remains unknown, but the Pentagon said in the report it would likely fail operationally without maintenance from U.S. contractors. More details about how the U.S. would retrieve the equipment left in Afghanistan were not immediately available, and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital. President Joe Biden moved to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan in 2021, building upon plans from the first Trump administration in 2020 with Taliban leaders to end the war in the region. Thirteen U.S. service members were killed during the withdrawal process due to a suicide bombing at Abbey Gate, outside of Hamid Karzai International Airport, and the Taliban quickly seized control of Kabul. Trump’s comments Wednesday came in response to questions about whether he was considering firing military leaders who oversaw the withdrawal. While Trump said he wouldn’t instruct Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on what actions the Pentagon should take ousting those leaders, Trump said he would “fire every single one of them.” Even so, several key leaders involved in the withdrawal are no longer serving in the military. The commander of U.S. Central Command at the time of the withdrawal, Marine Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., has since retired, and in 2024 took full ownership for the loss of U.S. troops. HOUSE GOP RELEASES SCATHING REPORT ON BIDEN’S WITHDRAWAL FROM AFGHANISTAN “I was the overall commander, and I and I alone bear full military responsibility for what happened at Abbey Gate,” McKenzie told the House Foreign Affairs Committee in March 2024. Additionally, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired Army Gen. Mark Milley, told lawmakers at the same hearing that he believed the evacuation should have occurred sooner and that multiple factors contributed to failures in the withdrawal. Both McKenzie and Milley told lawmakers they advised Biden to keep some U.S. troops in Afghanistan after pulling most U.S. forces. “The outcome in Afghanistan was the result of many decisions from many years of war,” Milley told lawmakers. “Like any complex phenomena, there was no single causal factor that determined the outcome.” U.S. Central Command oversees military operations in the Middle East.
Trump’s ‘gold card’ visa plan a boon for American economy, expert says: ‘Mutually beneficial’
President Donald Trump’s plan to offer a “gold card” visa to wealthy immigrants is similar to policies in use in more than three dozen countries, although the U.S. proposal would come with the highest price tag, an expert tells Fox News Digital. “What you’re doing is you’re bringing in wealthier individuals, clearly job creators, consumers,” Anthony Esposito, the Founder & CEO of Island Capital Investments, told Fox News Digital. Esposito’s comments come after Trump said Tuesday that he planned to offer a “gold card” visa that gives recipients a path to U.S. citizenship for $5 million, telling reporters such a program would be “extremely successful.” “They’ll be wealthy and they’ll be successful, and they’ll be spending a lot of money and paying a lot of taxes and employing a lot of people, and we think it’s going to be extremely successful,” Trump said Tuesday from the Oval Office, according to a report from the Associated Press. TRUMP TO INTRODUCE ‘GOLD CARD’ VISA FOR WEALTHY INVESTORS WITH $5 MILLION PRICE TAG: ‘ROUTE TO CITIZENSHIP’ Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that the new gold card would replace the current EB-5 Immigrant Investor visa program within two weeks, a program that was created by Congress in 1990 and offers residency to people who spent about $1 million on a business while employing at least 10 people, the report notes. Trump has also touted the program as a way of trimming the national debt. “Companies can go and buy a gold card, and they can use it as a matter of recruitment,” Trump told reporters Wednesday. “At the same time, the company is using that money to pay down debt. We’re going to pay down a lot of debt with that.” Esposito shares Trump’s view for how the money can be used, noting that 1 million gold card recipients would result in $5 trillion for the U.S. Treasury. “A million individuals coming in would be $5 trillion in payment to the government, off the bat, that doesn’t include the derivative growth of those individuals being here,” Esposito said. TRUMP STATE DEPARTMENT DECLARES TREN DE ARAGUA, MS-13, MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS AS FOREIGN TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS Nearly 40 other countries have similar so-called “citizenship by investment” programs, according to Henley & Partners, a law firm who represents clients looking to use such arrangements. However, the U.S. investment of $5 million proposed by Trump would make the United States the most expensive of the group. Esposito believes allowing such investments would benefit the U.S. economy. “The job growth, the job creation, the taxes paid, the consumer spending, 10 million cards would be $50 trillion. The numbers are real walking in, and the numbers are real as of derivative benefits of these individuals being here,” Esposito said. While some critics have expressed fears that the program could be abused or lead to threats to national security, Esposito argued that the Trump administration should be trusted to put the right vetting procedures in place. “It’s the exact opposite of the Biden administration’s policy. On one side of the curve, we had the mass migrations of unvetted, undocumented immigrants coming in the southern border that were essentially living on the taxpayer dime,” Esposito said, adding that Trump’s policy would call for “a program where we have fully vetted the individuals on a personal basis and on an economic basis.” Ultimately, Esposito says, Trump’s program will cause a “mutually beneficial” partnership between the U.S. and gold card holders. “It is the greatest nation in the world. It is the greatest economy in the world,” Esposito said. “This is just simply a way of vetting people and having people come in that will create a mutually beneficial relationship between the United States, and the United States economy, and those gold card holders.” The White House did not immediately respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment.
Mayor of America’s biggest city thanks Trump for crackdown on criminal immigrants
New York Mayor Eric Adams thanked the Trump administration for cracking down on criminal illegal immigrants, which he said has helped to reduce the stream of immigrants seeking shelter in the city by over 1,000% from the peak of the migrant crisis under former President Joe Biden. Adams, a Democrat, has differed significantly from members of the rest of his party on immigration issues and in recent months has been willing to work with the Trump administration and border czar Tom Homan on immigration enforcement actions on criminal illegal aliens. Speaking at a press conference Monday, Adams called the migrant crisis “probably the largest humanitarian crisis the city has ever experienced,” adding, “I am in alignment with whatever we have to do legally to keep our city safe.” He credited the decline in migrants entering the city to a “combination” of shifting city policies and federal immigration actions before and after President Donald Trump took office. TOM HOMAN TELLS MIGRANT TERROR GROUPS TRUMP WILL ‘WIPE YOU OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH’ In response to criticism from his party and the media for cooperating with Trump, Adams said, “They are helping me with the agenda that I stated the previous administration should have been helping me with, and I thank them for helping me with it.” As of Monday, he said, the number of migrants arriving in the city has dramatically dropped from 4,000 to just 350 a month. VP JD VANCE SPEAKS ON ‘FUNDAMENTAL GOAL’ OF TRUMP ADMINISTRATION AT CPAC ADDRESS “This is what we called for and advocated for, and the American people have communicated, ‘We need to secure our border,’” he said. “There’s nothing humane about having individuals into the country with no place to go, no sponsors here, no ability to take care of themselves. And pushing the cost of it onto cities is just wrong.” This decline has allowed the city to finally close another of its major migrant shelters at the historic Roosevelt Hotel. The hotel, which previously was an upscale tourist attraction, became known for crime and violence by migrant gangs, including the Venezuelan criminal group Tren de Aragua, which was just designated a foreign terrorist organization by the Trump administration. Adams said the Roosevelt Hotel shelter would be closing sometime in the “coming months.” “The Roosevelt Hotel opened May 2023, during the height of the crisis, when we received 4,000 people a week,” he said. “You just got to just really think about that. Four thousand people a week. And, thanks to our policies, we were down to an average of just 350 new arrivals.” CLICK HERE FOR MORE IMMIGRATION COVERAGE New York is a “right to shelter” state, which means that the government is obligated to provide shelter to anyone who has no other means. But Adams said changes to the shelter program limiting the amount of time certain groups, like single adults, could stay to 30- and 60-day periods “allowed us to get over 180,000 people out of our care and off taxpayers’ payroll.” He said the more than 223,000 migrants who entered “went through a well-organized process of getting them through the system and processing almost 75% of the individuals that came into our care.” ACTIVISTS IN MEXICO REPORT FLOW OF MIGRANTS HAS ‘ENORMOUSLY DECREASED’ ONE MONTH INTO TRUMP ADMIN New York City also recently closed several other of its largest migrant shelters, including a tent city shelter at Randall’s Island and another at Floyd Bennett Field. Including the Roosevelt Hotel, Adams said the city would be closing a total of 53 shelter sites within one year. “We are helping asylum seekers take the next steps in their journeys, and we are saving taxpaying New Yorkers millions of dollars,” said Adams.
Thin majority of Texas House signs on to support voucher bill
The 75 co-sponsors plus the bill’s author would provide enough votes to pass Gov. Abbott’s top priority measure in the 150-seat House.
GOP rep reveals after F-16 ride why Trump’s leadership is already paying off for military
EXCLUSIVE: Fox News Digital spoke to GOP Rep. Abe Hamadeh about the state of the U.S. military after four years of the Biden administration, following the freshman congressman’s visit to an Arizona Air Force base to meet with service members and fly in an F-16 fighter jet. “Under President Trump’s leadership, there’s a renewed sense of purpose in our military. He has made it clear from day one that his mission is to reenergize and refocus our armed forces,” Hamadeh said after his visit to Luke Air Force Base in Maricopa County, Arizona, where 70% of the world’s F-35 pilots train. Hamadeh, who flew in an F-16 at the base, met with airmen of the 56th Fighter Wing and posted the video on X, spoke about how the military is returning to its “core mission” under Trump. “Eliminating the failed woke DEI agenda pushed by the Democrats has already boosted morale,” Hamadeh said. FRESHMAN GOP LAWMAKER TARGETS ‘PROPAGANDA’ FROM TOP ADVERSARY IN FIRST BILL OF CONGRESSIONAL CAREER “When I served overseas as a captain and intelligence officer in the U.S. Army Reserve, I saw firsthand how Biden and Secretary Lloyd Austin’s first order of business was a military-wide stand-down to lecture service members about so-called ‘right-wing extremism.’ That kind of political nonsense has no place in our armed forces. Now, with President Trump and Secretary Hegseth at the helm, the military is returning to its core mission, being the most lethal fighting force on earth and defending America’s national security interests.” Fox News Digital extensively reported on sagging military recruitment during the Biden administration, which Hamadeh said was due in part to “lost focus” during those years. “Americans watched in horror as our heroes were disrespected by their own government. One of Biden’s worst decisions was forcing service members to take the COVID vaccine, disregarding their personal and religious freedoms,” Hamadeh explained. TRUMP PENTAGON LEADERSHIP SHAKEUP AIMS TO RECAPTURE ‘WARRIOR ETHOS,’ EXPERT SAYS “This culture of disrespect was only magnified by the catastrophic Afghanistan withdrawal, which resulted in unnecessary tragedy and humiliation. President Trump has already taken action to correct these wrongs – by executive order, he reinstated thousands of service members who were wrongfully discharged for refusing an experimental vaccine. Under his leadership, respect for our troops is being restored, and recruitment will rise again because service members know they’ll be treated with the dignity they deserve.” Hamadeh, whose flight on the F-16 was one of the last on the base before the aircraft training is moved to New Mexico and the base focuses on F-35s, emphasized to Fox News Digital that DEI was a “disaster” for the military. “Warfighters should be focused on strength, discipline, and mission success – not political indoctrination,” Hamadeh said. “The left’s obsession with identity politics has weakened recruitment, lowered standards, and distracted from what actually matters: making sure our military is the most dominant force in the world. If anything should be merit-based, it’s the entity tasked with protecting us and keeping us safe.” Trump signed an executive order in January banning DEI in the military in a move Hamadeh, who serves on both the House Armed Services Committee and House Veterans Affairs Committee, said will improve the military’s effectiveness. “President Trump understands that victory, not virtue signaling, is the priority,” Hamadeh said. “By removing DEI and refocusing on warfighting, we are ensuring that our troops are prepared, our adversaries are deterred, and America remains strong.” Fox News Digital previously reported that military recruitment appeared to be trending higher since Trump’s November victory, highlighted by the U.S. Army announcing that December 2024 was its most productive recruiting month in 15 years.