One Senate Republican is making the case that lawmakers aren’t using all the tools at their disposal to tackle affordability in the United States.

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., wants Republicans to take another crack at budget reconciliation, the grueling, monthslong process used earlier this year to pass President Donald Trump’s crowning legislative achievement of 2025, and one that tested the unity of congressional Republicans.

Kennedy wants to see the process used to eat into the cost of living in the country, which has proven a thorny issue for the GOP after Trump’s promises on the campaign trail to hack away at skyrocketing inflation that proved politically fatal, among other issues like immigration, for Democrats in last year’s election.

But it’s a Pandora’s box that lawmakers have been hesitant to reopen after narrowly advancing the colossal tax package over the summer.

‘I have been preaching as persuasively as I can for months now that we need to do another reconciliation, and in that bill, we need to address things like rules and regulations, which add about $2 trillion to the cost of goods and services,’ Kennedy said.

He acknowledged that the process could be tricky, given that it is governed by the Byrd Rule, which nixes any provisions that don’t have a budgetary impact, but noted that lawmakers have at least two more attempts to take advantage of the process while Republicans still control both chambers of Congress.

‘And I am at a loss to understand why our leadership will not agree to another reconciliation,’ he said. ‘If you went to Senator [Chuck] Schumer right now and said, ‘Schumer, Senator Schumer, you have the chance to pass anything you want to pass today within the parameters of Byrd, without having to depend on a single Republican vote,’ what do you think Chuck would do? He’d take a dozen, and I just don’t understand why we are not doing that.’

Affordability and the cost of living have become a central focus for many on the Hill, particularly after dueling partisan proposals to tackle the impending hike to healthcare premiums and expiring Obamacare subsidies went down in flames last week.

Lawmakers are still searching for a path forward on that front, with a bipartisan group led by Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, meeting on Monday night to build a consensus between the parties.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., one of the architects of Senate Republicans’ healthcare proposal that failed last week, told reporters, ‘The calendar precludes getting something done this week,’ but was still optimistic about finding a way to deal with rising costs on the healthcare front.

‘But, still, a commitment to work together is a lot of progress,’ he said.

Still, Kennedy was ardent that lawmakers had spent little time since passing Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill,’ taking advantage of their majority in Congress.

‘Yes, we passed the ‘one big, beautiful bill,’ that was July 1, five months ago, now, almost six months ago,’ he said. ‘We need to act. And I’m hoping that after the holidays, my friend, Senator [John] Thune, and he is a friend, and I think he’s doing a great job, but I think Senator, I hope Senator Thune will relent and agree to another reconciliation bill that addresses the cost-of-living issue.’

: The FBI did not believe it had probable cause to raid President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in 2022, but moved forward amid pressure from the Biden Justice Department, with an official saying he didn’t ‘give a damn about the optics’ of the search, newly declassified documents reviewed by Fox News Digital reveal.

Fox News Digital reviewed emails between FBI and Justice Department officials in the months leading up to the August 2022 raid of Mar-a-Lago, with FBI officials expressing concerns about a lack of probable cause to execute the search warrant on the then-former president’s residence in Palm Beach, Florida. 

‘Very little has been developed related to who might be culpable for mishandling the documents,’ an FBI official serving as an assistant special agent in charge, wrote to another FBI official, Anthony Riedlinger. ‘From the interviews, WFO has gathered information suggesting that there may be additional boxes (presumably of the same type as were sent back to NARA in January) at Mar-a-Lago.’

‘WFO has been drafting a search warrant affidavit related to these potential boxes, but has some concerns that the information is single source, has not been corroborated, and may be dated,’ the official continues. ‘DOJ CES opines, however, that the SW’s meet the probable cause standard.’

‘Even as we continue down the path towards a search warrant, WFO believes that a reasonable conversation with the former president’s attorney, (stating that the FBI and DOJ are readying a search warrant, and have developed information that there are more documents at Mar a Lago), ought not to be discounted,’ the official wrote.

‘At a minimum, even if the former president’s attorney is correct and the documents were all declassified (or believed to be declassified), it can be reasonably argued that the documents remain sensitive and should be properly secured until the matter of classification is sorted out,’ the official continued. ‘This conversation could easily be accomplished at the same time that WFO presses forward with the investigation and continues building out the search warrant.’ 

Weeks later, an FBI agent writes an email stating: ‘We haven’t generated any new facts, but keep being given draft after draft after draft.’

‘Absent a witness coming forward with recent information about classified on site, at what point is it fair to table this?’ the agent writes. ‘It is time consuming for the team, and not productive if there are no new facts supporting PC (probable cause)?’

Another email revealed that the FBI’s Washington Field Office did ‘not believe (and has articulated to DOJ CES), that we have established probable cause for the search warrant for classified records at Mar a Lago.’

‘DOJ has opined that they do have probable cause, requesting a wide scope including residence, office, storage space,’ an agent wrote.

The FBI believed that a raid would be ‘counterproductive,’ and suggested ‘alternative, less intrusive and likelier quicker options for resolution’ to reclaim any potential classified records.

The process moved forward, regardless of concerns.

Another email on Aug. 4, 2022, revealed the plan for the execution of the warrant.

‘The FBI intends for the execution of the warrant to be handled in a professional, low key manner, and to be mindful of the optics of the search,’ an agent writes.

The agent quotes then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General George Toscas in a meeting.

‘Since we heard Mr. Toscas say yesterday in the call that he ‘frankly doesn’t give a damn about the optics’ and Mr. Bratt has already built an antagonistic relationship with (Trump) attorneys…I think it is more than fair to say that the DOJ contact with (Trump attorney) just prior to the execution of the warrant will not go well. DOJ said as much yesterday,’ the agent writes. ‘I also think that it is fair to say that if FBI calls, having in mind officer safety, to the optics of the search, and the desire to conduct this search in a professional and low key manner, there is a far better chance that the execution will go more smoothly and we may actually gain some measure of cooperation, which could go some way to resolving the mishandling of classified records investigation that is being conducted.’

The agent added: ‘I understand that this request may not go well at DOJ, however, it is the FBI serving and executing the search and it will be our personnel who will have to deal with the reaction to that first contact.’

The FBI, in August 2022, raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, executing the search warrant as part of an investigation into his alleged improper retention of classified records after leaving the White House.

Fox News Digital reported in 2024 that the Biden administration authorized the use of deadly force during the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago. That language was also used during the search of then-President Joe Biden’s residence for potential classified documents in 2023. 

An ‘Operations Order’ produced in discovery as part of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s alleged improper retention of classified records revealed that the ‘FBI believed its objective for the Mar-a-Lago raid was to seize ‘classified information, NDI, and US Government records,’’ as described in the search warrant.

The order, according to a court filing, contained a ‘Policy Statement’ regarding ‘Use of Deadly Force,’ which stated, for example, ‘Law Enforcement officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force when necessary.’

According to the filing, the DOJ and FBI agents ‘planned to bring ‘Standard Issue Weapons,’ ‘Ammo,’ ‘Handcuffs,’ and ‘medium and large sized bolt cutters,’ but they were instructed to wear ‘unmarked polo or collared shirts’ and to keep ‘law enforcement equipment concealed.” 

Fox News Digital first reported that during the raid, FBI agents seized boxes of documents containing records and materials potentially protected by attorney-client and executive privilege, leading to legal disputes over the handling of those documents by a taint team.

Trump attorneys, at the time, told Fox News Digital they were not permitted into the rooms as FBI agents conducted the search, raising major concerns about the procedures surrounding the raid. Attorneys said that the FBI agents executing the search were in no position to decide unilaterally where to search and what were Trump’s personal records and what were not.

Trump was charged out of former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into his retention of classified materials. Trump pleaded not guilty to all 37 felony charges from Smith’s probe, including willful retention of national defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and false statements.

Trump also was charged with an additional three counts as part of a superseding indictment out of the investigation: an additional count of willful retention of national defense information and two additional obstruction counts.

Trump pleaded not guilty. The charges were dropped by Smith after Trump won the 2024 presidential election.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates. 

A moderate House Republican is raging against his own party after negotiations over a vote on extending COVID-19-era Obamacare subsidies fell apart.

Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., told reporters Tuesday morning that it was ‘idiotic’ and ‘political malpractice’ to not hold an ‘up-or-down vote’ on the subsidies, which are set to expire at the end of this year.

He also turned his ire on House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., who he accused of rejecting moderate Republicans’ compromise solutions in order to keep the issue alive as a political cudgel.

‘You have two leaders that are not serious about solving this,’ Lawler said in reference to Jeffries and Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. ‘I am pissed for the American people. This is absolute bulls—.’

House Republicans have introduced their own healthcare bill aimed at lowering prices via cost-sharing reductions, drug cost transparency measures, and association healthcare plans, which allow small employers and self-employed Americans to work in small groups to purchase coverage.

And while a majority of GOP lawmakers are against any sort of extension of the subsidies, Democrats and a group of moderate House Republicans have warned that a failure to act will result in millions of Americans seeing significant price hikes for their premiums.

House GOP leadership aides told reporters late last week that they expected some sort of amendment vote on the expiring subsidies, but a source familiar told Fox News Digital on Tuesday that those talks fell apart due to disagreements over how to cover the cost of an extension.

The growing pressure has spawned three separate efforts to force a vote on extending the subsidies via discharge petitions, mechanisms to override the will of House GOP leadership on a piece of legislation, provided it has support from the majority of chamber lawmakers.

Two petitions are bipartisan and include limited extensions with reforms to the healthcare system, while a third led by Jeffries includes a straightforward extension for three years.

But moderate Republicans have shown a mixed reaction so far to Jeffries’ proposal, while Jeffries has dismissed the GOP’s.

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., told NBC News he would not sign Jeffries’ petition, and a source close to Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-Va., told Fox News Digital the same.

Lawler, however, said, ‘Everything is on the table,’ when asked by reporters about his own plans.

He blasted Jeffries for the decision and urged all his colleagues to sign onto one of the GOP’s petitions during an impassioned speech on the House floor.

‘If everybody who says they care about extending this signs the discharge, it could be solved today. And we could say to the leadership on both sides, ‘A pox on both your houses, both of you are failing this country, both of you are failing this institution,’ and move the bill forward,’ Lawler said. ‘So the challenge I have for every one of my colleagues is, put the party crap aside and sign the damn discharge today.’

He directed a comment at Jeffries specifically, ‘Come down to this floor, sign the discharge, and show real leadership. Because sadly, my conference has failed to do that.’

Johnson called Lawler ‘a very dear friend’ and pointed out he campaigned in Lawler’s district recently when asked about the criticism during his weekly press conference.

‘Mike Lawler fights hard for New York, as every Republican in this conference does for their districts. The districts are different. They have different priorities and ideas,’ Johnson said. ‘And many of them didn’t want to vote on this Obamacare or, you know, COVID-era, something that the Democrats created. We looked for a way to try to allow for that … and it just was not to be.’

The GOP majority on the House Oversight Committee is at war with their Democratic counterparts over what they say is a false narrative being crafted about President Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.

Republican committee staff authored a new talking points memo sent to GOP lawmakers on Tuesday morning that is aimed at discounting Democrats’ recent leaks of information on Epstein, accusing them of releasing information on a selective basis to paint a picture that is not there.

‘Throughout the Oversight Committee’s review of the federal government’s handling of the Epstein and Maxwell criminal investigations, Democrats have demonstrated a sustained pattern of misconduct — misrepresenting witness testimony, selectively leaking cherry-picked documents, and manipulating emails and images — to fabricate yet another politically motivated hoax targeting President Trump,’ the memo, obtained by Fox News Digital, said.

‘As a result, nothing Democrats post or leak on this matter can be taken at face value.’

The memo also encourages Oversight Republicans to take aim at ‘Legacy Media,’ which it says ‘uncritically amplified these falsehoods, acting as a willing conduit rather than performing basic due diligence.’

‘This reckless combination of partisan distortion and media malpractice undermines the Committee’s work, misleads the public, and distracts from the serious responsibility of ensuring accountability, transparency, and justice for the American people,’ the memo said.

What had initially begun as a bipartisan investigation quickly devolved into partisan infighting.

Democrats have argued that Republicans are using the probe to give Trump cover, while the GOP said the left is distorting facts to create a false narrative that Trump participated in Epstein’s crimes.

The pair were known to have a close friendship decades ago but had a falling out in the early 2000s before accusations of sexual contact with minors first surfaced. To date, the president has denied involvement — and not been implicated — in any of Epstein’s crimes.

Among the memo’s highlights are Oversight Democrats releasing three emails sent to the committee by Epstein’s estate which appear to suggest that Trump ‘knew about’ various illicit activities of Epstein’s, including one which refers to him as ‘that dog that hasn’t barked.’

Republicans said they selectively released three emails out of a tranche of 20,000 pages of documents at the time.

‘When CNN questioned the redactions, Democrat Committee members falsely claimed Republicans were responsible. After Republicans released more than 20,000 pages, Democrats then claimed this transparency was intended to ‘disorient’ and ‘distract’ from their fabricated narrative,’ the memo said.

In a later release of photos from Epstein’s estate, Republicans accused Democrats of having ‘censored adult women’s faces to smear President Trump.’

For example, one of the photos censored, they said, ‘shows President Trump standing next to adult Hawaiian Tropic women models.’

Democrats have not always mentioned Trump directly in their releases, but he has been a regular feature of the emails and photos they have made public.

‘It is time to end this White House cover-up and bring justice to the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and his powerful friends,’ Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the committee, said in a statement on one of the releases.

‘These disturbing photos raise even more questions about Epstein and his relationships with some of the most powerful men in the world. We will not rest until the American people get the truth. The Department of Justice must release all the files, NOW.’

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is facing a Dec. 19 deadline to release its files related to Epstein, pursuant to a near-unanimous vote in the House and a unanimous vote in the Senate.

Fox News Digital reached out to Oversight Committee Democrats for a response to the memo.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., is delaying Bill and Hillary Clinton’s depositions before Congress until January.

In a letter sent to their attorney on Monday evening, Comer warned that a failure to appear for their new dates would result in immediate contempt of Congress proceedings.

‘They’re saying now that he’s going to a funeral on that day, so we’ve been going back and forth with the lawyer,’ Comer told Fox News Digital the same evening. ‘We’re going to hold him in contempt if he doesn’t show up for his deposition.’

The letter said, however, that they failed to provide ‘alternative dates’ for their testimonies.

‘Therefore, the Committee has chosen the date of January 13, 2026, for the deposition of President Clinton and January 14, 2026, for the deposition of Secretary Clinton. If your clients do not comply with these new dates, the Committee will move immediately to contempt proceedings,’ the letter said.

The Clintons were originally subpoenaed over the summer to testify in the House Oversight Committee’s probe into Jeffrey Epstein.

They were part of a long list of former presidential administration officials called in for closed-door meetings with the panel’s lawyers.

To date, just two people have shown up in person — former Trump administration Attorney General Bill Barr and former Trump administration Labor Secretary Alex Acosta.

Others have deferred their subpoena dates or opted to send in written statements due to various personal matters, but it appears Comer is not allowing the Clintons to sidestep an in-person grilling.

In his letter, the Republican leader even went so far as to criticize the Clintons’ lawyer for asking for the same treatment.

‘Your correspondence with the Committee continues to ignore the Committee’s arguments, misstates relevant facts, and seeks information about the Committee’s investigation to which neither you nor your clients are entitled,’ the letter said.

‘As the Committee stated clearly in its November 21, 2025, letter to you, the Committee’s decision to forego in-person depositions for certain other individuals was because those individuals ‘lacked any relevant information to the Committee’s investigation or otherwise had serious health issues that prevented their testimony.’’

Comer said the former president and former secretary of state ‘are not similarly situated and therefore your argument that they are receiving unfair treatment — which you continue to repeat — is baseless.’

‘For example, unlike these other individuals, President Clinton and Secretary Clinton had a personal relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell,’ he wrote.

Photos and other documents released by the committee so far have shown Bill Clinton and other powerful figures, including President Donald Trump, socializing with Epstein to varying degrees.

Both Bill Clinton and Trump were shown to have handwritten entries in a book compiled for Epstein’s 50th birthday, though until then much of the media scrutiny had been focused on Trump’s entry alone.

Neither of the Clintons have been implicated in any wrongdoing related to Epstein, however, and their social engagements with him appear to have ended long before his 2019 federal indictment on sex trafficking charges and subsequent suicide.

Mexican lawmakers were filmed shoving each other and pulling hair on the floor of Congress in Mexico City on Monday.

The viral video shows women lawmakers of rival parties jostling for position at a podium in the front of the chamber. The women’s argument escalates from shouts to pushing and ultimately to pulling each other’s hair as other lawmakers try to intervene.

The scene took place during debate over reforms to Mexico City’s transparency oversight agency. Members of the right-leaning National Action Party (PAN) were protesting conduct by the left-leaning Moreno Party, which is the controlling power.

PAN representatives were holding their position at the podium as members of the Moreno Party tried to remove them, leading to the scuffle. Both parties condemned the violence after the incident, but blamed their opponents for starting it.

‘We took the podium peacefully, without touching anyone, and the decision made by the majority legislative group and its allies was to try and regain control of the board through violence,’ PAN aide Andres Atayde said at a press conference following the incident, according to a translation from the Economic Times.

‘Not only is it vulgar, not only is it aggressive, but it is lamentable that this is the majority governing party for this city,’ PAN lawmaker Daniela Alvarez added.

Morena spokesman Paulo Garcia made similar claims about conduct by PAN lawmakers.

‘What worries us a lot is how the opposition is systematically resorting to violence instead of arguments, in the absence of being able to debate,’ Garcia later said in an interview with Mexican media.

Senior Israeli intelligence officials say warnings delivered to Australia ahead of a deadly attack at a Hanukkah celebration on Sydney’s Bondi Beach were part of a much broader alert: an accelerating global rise in attempts to execute terror attacks across Western countries, increasingly aimed not only at Jewish targets, but also at Christians and large gatherings especially during religious holidays.

According to a senior Israeli intelligence official, Israel’s foreign intelligence service has been tracking a sharp increase in attempted attacks worldwide, many of them low-tech, quickly mobilized and designed to exploit open societies and crowded public events.

‘We stopped a few ticking bombs, the target was on people’s heads,’ the senior official told Fox News Digital.

Israeli intelligence officials say Australia is not an outlier. From their perspective, recent months have revealed a pattern of attempted and disrupted plots across Europe, North America and beyond, pointing to a sustained global threat rather than sporadic violence.

‘If you knew how many terror attacks we exposed and prevented,’ the senior official said, ‘your jaw would drop.’

Israeli intelligence officials say the rise in attempted attacks is driven in part by how extremist and state-linked networks build terror infrastructure globally while deliberately masking their origins.

Officials say the networks frequently rely on non-Iranian nationals to carry out different roles along the operational chain, including logistics, intelligence gathering, financing and execution, in order to blur any connection to Tehran. In some cases, operatives are recruited from migrant or refugee backgrounds, while in others criminal elements or hired proxies are used to carry out acts of violence.

To avoid detection, officials say the networks rely on encrypted communications and clandestine in-person meetings, sometimes conducted outside the country where an attack is planned. In other cases, instructions are delivered remotely through secure channels that bypass standard telecommunications monitoring.

According to Israeli assessments, extremist networks are increasingly overlapping: jihadist ideology, lone-actor violence and state-linked activity now exist in the same ecosystem, fueled by online radicalization and geopolitical instability. Many plots, officials say, are unsophisticated, making them harder to detect early while still capable of causing mass casualties.

Israeli intelligence officials and foreign diplomatic sources warn that the threat is not limited to Jewish targets and is global. ‘We exposed terror cells in Germany, Greece, Austria — but not only Europe — also in South America, India and Thailand.’ The senior official said he cannot elaborate further.

A senior foreign diplomatic source said the current environment is being shaped by what they described as a global contagion effect, in which attacks are amplified online, celebrated across extremist networks and rapidly imitated elsewhere.

According to the source, attacks are increasingly attractive to extremists because they are relatively easy to carry out while producing outsized psychological and political impact.

The source cautioned that Christian communities and broader civilian gatherings are also vulnerable, particularly during religious holidays and symbolic events that attract large crowds.

This concern has been reflected across Europe in recent weeks, when authorities sharply increased security at Christmas markets and holiday celebrations amid warnings that seasonal events present prime targets for extremist violence. Armed patrols, barriers and surveillance were expanded in multiple cities as officials assessed elevated risks tied to jihadist-inspired attacks and lone actors.

On Monday, federal authorities announced they foiled a New Year’s Eve terror plot, arresting suspects accused of planning coordinated attacks involving improvised explosive devices, according to the Department of Justice. Prosecutors said the plot was disrupted before explosives were fully assembled, underscoring both the scale of the threat and the importance of early intelligence intervention.

A second senior Israeli intelligence source said the broader threat environment has deteriorated after two years of war in the Middle East, which they said has energized radical Islamist movements globally.

According to the source, instability in Syria is of particular concern, creating conditions that could allow ISIS to regroup and once again project influence beyond the region.

‘I’m worried about Syria and that ISIS will return,’ the source said, warning that renewed activity there could inspire further attacks in Europe, Australia and North America.

The source said the growing prevalence of lone actors and sleeper cells poses a significant challenge to Western security services, as individuals with minimal resources can still carry out deadly attacks and trigger copycat violence.

While Australian authorities have not linked the Bondi Beach attack to foreign intelligence direction, Israeli officials say the case fits into a wider global picture: a sustained rise in attempted terror attacks, many of which never become public because they are disrupted early.

‘We see it everywhere,’ the senior intelligence official said. ‘And most of what we stop, the public never hears about.’