Emil Bove forcefully rejected criticisms that he was President Donald Trump’s ‘henchman’ or ‘enforcer’ during a Senate hearing Wednesday focused on his nomination by Trump to serve as a federal judge.

Bove, a top Department of Justice (DOJ) official vying to fill a lifetime role on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, said media reports painted a ‘wildly inaccurate caricature’ about him.

‘I am not anybody’s henchman. I’m not an enforcer,’ Bove said, referring to descriptors used in headlines about him. ‘I’m a lawyer from a small town who never expected to be in an arena like this.’

Bove served as a key attorney on Trump’s personal defense team during the president’s four criminal prosecutions. Prior to that, he led drug trafficking and terrorism cases during his decade as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York.

But Bove’s formidable demeanor and controversial decisions upon joining DOJ leadership, which included dismissing New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ corruption charges and warning of personnel action for FBI employees who worked on Jan. 6 cases, have caused his nomination to the powerful appellate court bench to attract heightened scrutiny.

Capping off a string of reports examining these controversies was a whistleblower claim leveled Tuesday, one day prior to Bove’s nomination hearing.

The whistleblower, Erez Reuveni, a 15-year veteran of the department who was fired this year for perceived insubordination, alleged that Bove warned during an internal meeting that DOJ attorneys might need to say ‘f*** you’ to judges and defy any adverse orders they issue regarding one of Trump’s most provocative maneuvers to deport alleged illegal immigrants.

Senate Democrats, who have widely objected to Bove’s nomination, grilled the nominee over the claim, noting that flouting court orders was unconstitutional and disqualifying. Bove said he has never advised anyone to defy judges’ orders.

‘Did you or did you not make those comments during that meeting?’ Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., pressed.

‘I did not suggest that there would be any need to consider ignoring court orders. At the point at that meeting there were no court orders to discuss,’ Bove said. 

Schiff repeated the profane phrase several times, asking if Bove said it in relation to the courts.

‘I don’t recall,’ Bove said.

‘You just don’t remember that,’ Schiff replied incredulously.

Other Democrats pressed Bove on the Adams saga, which had led in February to a handful of high-level DOJ employees resigning in protest of Bove’s order that they dismiss the mayor’s federal corruption charges. A judge ultimately dropped Adams’s charges at Bove’s request, but not before excoriating the DOJ for giving ‘inconsistent’ justifications for wanting to drop the case.

Bove was accused by the ousted lawyers of asking the courts to toss out Adams’s charges in exchange for the mayor’s cooperation with the Trump administration’s immigration policy. Bove denied the allegation when pressed on it.

‘The suggestion that there was some kind of quid pro quo was just plain false,’ Bove said.

Despite Democrats’ concerns, as well as concerns voiced by some defense lawyers who said they have had negative experiences with the nominee, Bove has some loyal supporters. No Republican senators have voiced opposition to him at this stage, a sign that he could eventually be confirmed, albeit narrowly.

In an interview prior to the hearing, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Bove’s longtime friend and colleague, told Fox News Digital that Bove was a ‘freaking brilliant lawyer.’

Blanche said reports that Bove was unqualified were ‘distorted’ and that installing him on the Third Circuit was a ‘no-brainer.’

The Medicaid debate among Senate Republicans continues to rage on, but a new proposal geared toward sating concerns over the survivability of rural hospitals could help to close the lingering fissures within the conference.

Senate Republicans are sprinting to finish their work on President Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill,’ which is filled with key priorities like making his first-term tax cuts permanent, funding his immigration and border security agenda, and rooting out waste, fraud and abuse across a variety of programs.

But lawmakers are still at odds over changes made in the Senate’s version of the bill to the Medicaid provider tax rate and the effects that it could have on rural hospitals, threatening to derail the legislation near the finish line.

A proposal making the rounds from the Senate Finance Committee obtained by Fox News Digital would create a separate stabilization fund that would go toward aiding and upgrading rural healthcare.

The committee’s proposal would allocate $3 billion annually to states that apply to the program over the next five fiscal years.

But that amount is too low for some senators and far too much for others.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, has been working on a similar proposal but would prefer a much higher fund of $100 billion. That number is unlikely to pass muster with her colleagues and still isn’t high enough for her.

‘I don’t think that solves the entire problem,’ she said. ‘The Senate cuts in Medicaid are far deeper than the House cuts and I think that’s problematic as well.’

Collins would prefer a return to the House GOP’s proposed changes to the provider tax rate, rather than the Senate’s harsher crackdown.

The Senate changes to the provider tax rate hit close to home for Collins, whose state’s rural hospitals are already in jeopardy because the state of Maine failed to advance its budget in time, leaving roughly $400 million in Medicaid funding that would have gone to rural hospitals in limbo.

‘Obviously any money is helpful. But no, it is not adequate,’ she said.

Indeed, the changes to the Medicaid provider tax rate, which were a stark departure from the House GOP’s version of the bill, angered the Republicans who have warned not to make revisions to the health care program that could shut down rural hospitals and boot working Americans from their benefits.

The Senate Finance Committee went further than the House’s freeze of the provider tax rate, or the amount that state Medicaid programs pay to healthcare providers on behalf of Medicaid beneficiaries, for non-Affordable Care Act expansion states and included a provision that lowers the rate in expansion states annually until it hits 3.5%.

However, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz and some Senate Republicans have argued that the provider tax rate is a scam rife with fraud that actually harms rural hospitals more than it helps.

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., was in the same camp, and has argued that the rate should be nixed completely. He has similarly pushed for a separate fund but wasn’t keen on the cost of the current proposal.

‘I don’t know that we need $15 billion,’ he said. ‘But this needs to be run by CMS.’

And others wanted to see more money injected into a stabilization fund.

‘I think $5 billion a year would more than make them whole,’ Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., said.

He contended that, as the only lawmaker who has run a rural hospital, there are only roughly 12 million people on Medicaid in rural America, and that lawmakers should ‘tighten things up’ when it comes to funding the health care program.

He said that being on Medicaid was ‘not the same as having healthcare,’ and added that ‘at best, two thirds of doctors accept Medicaid, and even many of the specialists, when they say they do, they won’t give you an appointment for six months or a year.’

‘Medicaid is not the solution,’ he said. ‘It’s the most broken federal system up here.’ 

The country is, once again, divided along partisan lines, this time over the U.S. joining Israel in military strikes against Iran’s nuclear sites, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday. 

Such was the case on Capitol Hill this week as congressional Democrats railed against the ‘unconstitutionality’ of President Donald Trump ordering attacks on three nuclear sites in Iran, while most Republican lawmakers celebrated his bold move to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear capability. 

Forty-two percent of voters support the U.S. strikes against Iran, while 51% oppose them, according to the Quinnipiac University poll, conducted between June 22-24 in the days after the U.S. strikes on Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan in Iran. 

The results were split along party lines, with 81% of Republicans supporting the strikes compared to 75% of Democrats opposing them. Sixty percent of independents opposed the strikes, while 35% supported them. 

‘No ambivalence from Republicans on the U.S. bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites. By a large margin, GOP voters give full-throated support to the mission,’ Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy said in a statement. 

Half of voters, at 50%, think the strikes would make Americans less safe, while 42% said they would make Americans safer. 

Results were once again split along party lines. Seventy-six percent of Democrats said striking Iran’s nuclear program would make Americans less safe, while 80% of Republicans said it would make Americans safer. 

According to the poll, nearly 8 in 10 voters are either very concerned, 44%, or somewhat concerned, 34%, about the U.S. getting dragged into war with Iran. Only 22% of voters are not concerned. 

‘American voters, most of whom are not supportive of the country joining in the Israel-Iran conflict, are extremely troubled by the possibility that involvement could metastasize and draw the U.S. into a direct war with Iran,’ pollster Malloy said. 

Forty-two percent of voters think the U.S. is too supportive of Israel, while 45% say support for Israel is about right. Only 5% say the U.S. is not supportive enough. 

The percentage of voters calling the U.S. too supportive of Israel is at an all-time high since Quinnipiac University first posed the question to registered voters in January 2017. The percentage of voters calling the U.S. not supportive enough is an all-time low since then, the poll reveals. 

Half of voters, 50%, support Israel’s military strikes against nuclear and military sites inside Iran, while 40% oppose them. Eighty percent of Republicans support them, while 60% of Democrats do not. 

The Quinnipiac University Poll included 979 self-identified registered voters nationwide who were surveyed from June 22-24, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. 

Trump announced the U.S. successfully struck Iran’s nuclear sites Saturday night. Israel had launched a series of coordinated attacks on Iran the previous week, which Iran had retaliated against, prompting the countries to exchange strikes. After the U.S. struck Iran, the Islamist country launched retaliatory attacks on a U.S. air base in Qatar. 

The president indicated a ceasefire between Israel and Iran earlier this week, touting a successful mission to hinder Iran’s nuclear sites without engaging the U.S. in an escalatory Middle East conflict. 

President Donald Trump took part in a flurry of greetings with world leaders eager to get face time with the U.S. president during his brief stint at the NATO Summit.

Upon arriving, the president was welcomed by Dutch royals — King Willem-Alexander, Queen Maxima, and their daughter Crown Princess Amalia. He became the first president to stay at the king’s palace, Huis ten Bosch Palace.

‘I had breakfast with the king and queen this morning — beautiful people,’ Trump said. ‘I slept beautifully.’

The president said he left The Hague with fonder feelings toward the NATO alliance than when he’d arrived. 

‘I came here because it was something I’m supposed to be doing, but I left here a little bit differently,’ Trump said. ‘I left here saying that these people really love their countries. It’s not a ripoff. And we’re here to help them protect their country.’

He participated in photo ops with world leaders from across the political spectrum — friend and foe alike — and received fawning praise from NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, who likened him to the father of the alliance.

‘Daddy has to sometimes use strong language,’ Rutte said in defense of Trump’s expletive-laden criticism of Israel and Iran for threatening the ceasefire he negotiated.

The president was riding high amid warming relations with the alliance he previously threatened to pull out of. After months of combativeness with Europe over defense spending and liberal policies, Trump praised the alliance for agreeing to his demand to raise its defense spending target to 5% of GDP. 

‘Believe it or not, allies have increased spending by $700 billion,’ Trump said in a news conference. ‘his week, the NATO allies committed to dramatically increase their defense spending to that 5% of GDP, something that no one really thought possible.’

Even Spain — the only nation not to agree to commit 5% to defense — got a relatively mild drubbing from the president. 

I like Spain. I have so many people from Spain. It’s a great place, and they’re great people. But Spain is … the only country out of all of the countries that refuses to pay. And, you know, so they want a little bit of a free ride,’ he said.

It was certainly a different tone from Vice President JD Vance’s address at the Munich Security Conference.

‘The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia. It’s not China. It’s not any other external actor,’ Vance said at the time. ‘What I worry about is the threat from within the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.’

Secretary of State Marco Rubio cracked up laughing when President Donald Trump gave his reaction to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte calling the commander in chief ‘daddy’ earlier Wednesday. 

During their bilateral meeting in The Hague, Netherlands, Trump discussed the U.S.’ role in brokering a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Iran, saying both countries were like ‘two kids in a school yard’ who ‘fight like hell’ for a short time before ‘it’s easier to stop them.’ 

Rutte interjected, ‘Then daddy has to sometimes use strong language.’ 

Trump had used profanity in front of reporters outside the White House before boarding Marine One on Tuesday, saying about Israel and Iran that they ‘have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f— they’re doing. ‘ 

At a subsequent press conference Wednesday, Rubio broke into hysterics when a reporter from Sky News asked Trump about the remark. 

The reporter reminded Trump that Rutte, ‘who is your friend.… He called you daddy.’ 

‘Do you regard your NATO allies as kind of children?’ the reporter asked. 

Trump responded lightheartedly, and Rubio could be seen standing next to him starting to smile and laugh. ‘No, he likes me. I think he likes me. If he doesn’t, I’ll let you know. I’ll come back, and I’ll hit him hard. Okay?’ Trump said jokingly. 

‘He did. He did it. Very affectionate,’ Trump added of Rutte. ”Daddy, You’re my daddy.” 

The reporter pressed on with a more serious tone, as Rubio continued to laugh. 

‘Do you regard your NATO allies, though, as kind of like children?’ she said. 

NATO leaders on Wednesday committed that the member states would contribute 5% of GDP annually to defense and security obligations by 2035. 

‘You’re obviously appreciative of that,’ the reporter said. ‘But do you hope that actually they’re going to be able to defend themselves, defend Europe on their own?’ 

‘I think they’ll need help a little bit at the beginning, and I think they’ll be able to,’ Trump said. ‘I think they’re going to remember this day and this is a big day for NATO. You know, this was a very big day.’ 

‘It’s been sort of an amazing day for a lot of reasons, but also for that,’ Trump added, referencing how the greater contributions were decades in the making. Trump claimed it was not possible until he came along. 

The reporter pressed, ‘Do you think they can do it without you, though in the future? Can they do more states?’ 

‘I mean, you have to ask Mark,’ Trump said, concluding the press conference. The president had noted earlier that the only NATO member that did not agree to hike its defense contribution was Spain. 

A Democratic lawmaker hurled profanity at White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller on Wednesday, going on to imply that Miller is a Nazi.

Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wisc., made the statement on social media in response to some of Miller’s commentary on New York City. Miller was discussing democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the Democratic primary for New York City’s mayoral election, saying unchecked immigration was a major contributor to the city’s leftward slide in recent years.

‘NYC is the clearest warning yet of what happens to a society when it fails to control migration,’ Miller wrote.

Pocan chimed in: ‘Racist ****. Go back to 1930’s Germany.’

Pocan weighed in on Mamdani’s win multiple times, lashing out at another user who claimed the democratic nominee, who is Muslim, supports ‘Sharia Law.’

‘I love watching MAGA nut jobs spinning total bull**** to overcome blatant racism and xenophobia,’ Pocan responded to the post. ‘People want progressive populism that focuses on making their lives better, not redistribution of wealth from working people to the wealthiest. Trumpism is on the decline.’

Republicans have capitalized on Mamdani’s victory as evidence of the extremism of the current Democratic Party. The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) was among the first to make the connection.

‘The new face of the Democrat Party just dropped, and it’s straight out of a socialist nightmare,’ they wrote in an email.

Aiming to tie House Democrats to Mamdani, NRCC spokesman Mike Marinella argued that ‘every vulnerable House Democrat will own him, and every Democrat running in a primary will fear him.’

Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, a top ally of President Donald Trump who is seriously considering a run for Empire State governor next year, also pounced. Stefanik claimed that ‘a radical, Defund-the-Police, Communist, raging Antisemite will most likely win the New York City Democrat Mayoral primary.’

Vice President JD Vance also weighed in, writing, ‘Congratulations to the new leader of the Democratic Party’ in a post on Blue Sky, a social media platform frequented by progressives.

Fox News’ Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.

JERUSALEM – After 12 days of fighting, President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared victory against Iran’s nuclear program. 

Trump declared three nuclear sites had been obliterated, as Netanyahu announced that Israel had ‘removed an immediate dual existential threat: both in the nuclear domain and in the area of ballistic missiles’ – achievements the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) failed to reach throughout some 20 years of monitoring Iran’s nuclear activities. 

Dr. Or Rabinowitz, a nuclear proliferation scholar from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a visiting associate professor at Stanford University, told Fox News Digital that the IAEA ‘cannot, by itself, stop a country that wants to divert nuclear material and technology from its civilian program to its military program.’ 

‘It can warn, and that’s what it has been doing,’ she said. ‘Sometimes these warnings led to United Nations Security Council resolutions, and sometimes they didn’t, but the IAEA by itself, can’t do more than that – it is only as strong as the board members and the countries that participate in it.’

Days before Israel launched its military assault on Iran with the aim of removing the nuclear – and conventional – weapons threat, the global nuclear watchdog reported that Iran had an estimated 408.6 kilograms (nearly 901 pounds) of uranium enriched to 60%, enough to make some nine nuclear bombs. 

The report, which also criticized Iran’s lack of cooperation with the IAEA, prompted the agency’s board of governors, for the first time in 20 years, to declare that the Islamic Republic was in breach of its non-proliferation obligations.

‘We shouldn’t be surprised by this failure, and we should add to this failure, the failure of the United Nations,’ said Dr. Yoel Guzansky, a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. 

Guzansky highlighted the fact that just a week ago, in the midst of launching hundreds of ballistic missiles into Israeli towns and cities, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi addressed the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva. 

‘Iran was welcomed there, and Israel was bashed,’ he noted.  

‘It just shows that the U.N. system has long failed, and is long in need of remodeling, remaking, rebuilding,’ Guzansky continued, adding that compared to other U.N. bodies, ‘the IAEA is fairly okay.’

‘It’s not black and white, it has had some achievements, but it depends on what your expectations are,’ he continued. ‘I don’t think anyone expected that the IAEA would entirely prevent Iran.’

Guzansky said that two decades of inspections and such reports had actually allowed Israel, and the U.S., to ‘gather intelligence and an understanding of Iran’s nuclear program’ – a fact that was tested over the past week and a half. 

Iran has consistently maintained that all its nuclear activities were entirely peaceful and that it would never seek to develop or acquire nuclear weapons. 

‘The real problem here isn’t necessarily the IAEA, it’s that Iran has been cheating for 20 years and has not been playing a straight bat,’ said Alan Mendoza, Executive Director of the Henry Jackson Society.

‘Iran has been confusing and tricking and secretly developing programs, which the IAEA has not been able to access,’ he said, adding, ‘so, in many ways, it’s not the IAEA fault, per se, it doesn’t have any enforcement capabilities — its job is just to monitor.’ 

Mendoza also said that Iran’s ability to advance its nuclear ambitions and enrich uranium to weapons grade level was ‘really the fault of the international community, rather than an agency.’ 

‘This could have been cracked down upon years ago, as we have now seen, whether by military or other means, to actually force Iran into compliance,’ he said. 

‘What this ultimately shows you is that when you have an international malefactor who continues to want to game the system, the only way to deal with them is to blow up the system and say, ‘Okay, you want to play it that way,’ well, here’s our response.’

Despite the U.S. and Israel’s successful use of force, the IAEA has held back from commending their actions. 

At an emergency session of the agency’s board members on Monday, Rafael Grossi, the IAEA’s Director General, was still urging diplomacy and warning that fighting risked ‘collapsing the global nuclear Non Proliferation regime.’ 

‘There is still a path for diplomacy, we must take it, otherwise violence and destruction could reach unimaginable levels, and the global Non-Proliferation regime that has underpinned international security for more than half a century could crumble and fall,’ he said, without a word about Iran’s lack of transparency and its clear violation of international agreements over more than two decades. 

But on Tuesday, two days after the U.S. military carried out massive precision strikes on three key nuclear sites in Iran, Grossi told Fox News’ Martha MacCallum that his agency did not know where nearly 900 pounds of potentially enriched uranium is now located, after Iranian officials said it had been removed for protective measures ahead of the US strikes on nuclear facilities in Iran.

‘Like all the international bodies who have been condemning US and Israeli action, these organizations exist for the purpose solely of diplomacy,’ Mendoza said, adding, ‘The agency doesn’t have any military function. It has no recourse to it. It can’t call for it, so, if you think about it, all they’re doing is merely protecting their position within the international system.’

Requests for a response from the IAEA were not immediately answered on Wednesday.