President Donald Trump issued a full-throated endorsement of Florida state Sen. Joe Gruters for the role of Republican National Committee chair after pre-endorsing him for the role last week.

‘He will be a wonderful Chairman!’ the president declared in a lengthy Truth Social post.

Gruters is currently listed as the RNC’s treasurer.

The president endorsed RNC national committeewoman from New York Jennifer Saul-Rich to take on the Treasurer post.

‘She will be a FANTASTIC Treasurer!’ he declared in the post on Friday.

Current RNC Chairman Michael Whatley announced that he is running for U.S. Senate in North Carolina. Trump has endorsed his campaign.

‘Michael Whatley has my Complete and Total Endorsement – HE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!’ the president said in a Friday post on Truth Social.

Last week, Trump pre-endorsed Whatley and noted that he would back Gruters to helm the RNC.

‘Fortunately, I have somebody who will do a wonderful job as the Chairman of the RNC. His name is, Joe Gruters, and he will have my Complete and Total Endorsement,’ Trump noted in the post last week. ‘So, should Michael Whatley run for the Senate, please let this notification represent my Complete and Total Endorsement. HE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!’

Since GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina announced earlier this year that he will not seek re-election, the Senate contest will be an open race.

Former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, is also running for the Senate seat.

China is no longer building nuclear weapons solely for deterrence — it’s using them to fuel its ambitions as a dominant power in Asia, seeking to intimidate U.S. allies and undermine American influence across the region, according to a new report. 

The Hudson Institute warns that by the mid-2030s, China is expected to become a nuclear peer of the United States in both quantity and quality, fielding a modern, survivable and diverse arsenal that includes over 1,000 warheads, a fully developed nuclear triad and tactical nuclear capabilities.

However, Beijing’s goal isn’t to win a nuclear war, the report argues. It’s to manipulate and degrade trust in America’s nuclear umbrella, particularly among U.S. allies in East and Southeast Asia. By sowing doubt that Washington would defend them in a crisis, China hopes to pressure countries like Japan, the Philippines and South Korea into strategic passivity, giving Beijing more room to act — including a potential move on Taiwan — without triggering a broader allied response.

‘The purpose of amplifying uncertainty is to manipulate notions of risk to China’s advantage,’ the report states. ‘This is primarily about exacerbating hesitancy among U.S. allies by exploiting persistent fears of abandonment and doubts regarding America’s commitment.’

China’s military strategy blends rapid nuclear modernization with psychological operations and information warfare. The country is investing in advanced technologies such as hypersonic boost-glide vehicles and fractional orbital bombardment systems — space-based platforms that can deliver nuclear strikes from low-Earth orbit with little warning. Its warheads can now be launched from silos, submarines, road-mobile launchers and aircraft.

The report urges the U.S. to ‘abandon the false hope of arms control’ with China and instead embrace a doctrine of strategic ambiguity and instability, one that deters Beijing through strength and unpredictability rather than bilateral disarmament.

President Donald Trump has expressed interest in future arms control talks with both China and Russia, but analysts say Beijing has shown little genuine interest in limiting its nuclear forces.

The Hudson report devotes case studies to three key allies — the Philippines, Japan and South Korea — and how China uses nuclear intimidation differently in each case.

Philippines 

While Manila is more concerned with gray-zone conflicts in the South China Sea, China may increasingly use implied nuclear threats to dissuade it from hosting U.S. missile systems like the Typhon launcher, which can strike deep into Chinese territory. China has already begun deploying messaging via state-linked outlets that hint at targeting Philippine-based assets.

Japan 

Heavily dependent on the U.S. nuclear umbrella but constrained by strong domestic anti-nuclear sentiment, Tokyo faces an information campaign from Beijing designed to shake confidence in U.S. commitments. China applies psychological pressure to prevent Japan from building counterstrike capabilities or assisting in a conflict over Taiwan.

South Korea 

Seoul remains narrowly focused on North Korea’s nuclear threat, not China’s. It has been reluctant to fully align with U.S. efforts to deter Beijing, and it’s unclear whether South Korea would permit U.S. forces to use its bases in the event of a Taiwan contingency. China, the report says, is working to keep Seoul compartmentalized and disengaged from the broader East Asian conflict.

The report outlines four core recommendations: 

• Abandon arms control illusions: China’s opacity and doctrine of ambiguity make traditional arms control agreements unworkable.
• Avoid allied nuclearization: U.S. allies like Japan and Australia should resist calls to build their own nuclear arsenals, which could backfire strategically.
• Double down on conventional deterrence: Strengthen and modernize allied conventional forces to raise the cost of Chinese aggression.
• Fight fire with fire in the information domain: Expose China’s nuclear coercion publicly and link allied military buildups directly to Beijing’s behavior.

READ THE REPORT BELOW. APP USERS: CLICK HERE

‘Washington and its allies must show that China’s buildup is backfiring — leading not to fear and passivity, but to renewed resolve and regional rearmament,’ the report says.

The report lands ahead of the Pentagon’s forthcoming global force posture review, expected later this year. The Department of Defense is widely expected to announce a shift in forces from Europe to the Indo-Pacific, reflecting the Biden administration’s—and potentially Trump’s — emphasis on great power competition with China.

As President Donald Trump has faced an onslaught of legal bids to block his agenda during his second term in office, Trump-nominated Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh spoke at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit judicial conference on Thursday, according to reports.

‘Executive branches of both parties over the last 20 years have been increasingly trying to issue executive orders and regulations that achieve the policy objectives of the president in power,’ Kavanaugh said, according to the New York Times.

‘And I think presidents, whether it’s President Obama – I think the phrase was ‘pen and phone’ – or President Biden or President Trump, have really done more of that, and those get challenged pretty quickly in court,’ he said, according to CNN.

Unlike regular Supreme Court rulings that fully explain the rationale behind the decision, decisions on the high court’s emergency docket may go unexplained.

‘We’ve been doing certainly more written opinions on the interim orders docket than we’ve done in the past,’ Kavanaugh said, according to CNN.

Though he noted that issuing written opinions may pose the ‘risk’ of ‘lock-in effect’ in which that opinion does not ‘reflect the final view,’ reports indicate.

Kavanaugh described the court’s ‘collegiality’ as ‘very strong,’ noting that the nine members on the bench ‘look out for each other’ and consider one another ‘patriots’ and ‘good people,’ according to reports.

Trump nominated Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court during his first term in office. 

He also nominated Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, meaning he chose one third of the current justices.

Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele’s New Ideas Party has paved the way for him to potentially retain power in the Central American nation by overhauling the country’s electoral system.

The new bill extends presidential terms to six years and allows for indefinite presidential re-election.

The country’s presidential terms were initially five years long and immediate re-election was prohibited. However, in 2021, the country’s Supreme Court — packed with justices picked by Bukele’s party — ruled that the president could seek a second term, The Associated Press reported. 

Critics said Bukele’s re-election in 2024 was unconstitutional.

Members of New Ideas and their allies in the Legislative Assembly used their supermajority to pass changes to five articles of the country’s constitution and passed the measure in a 57–3 vote on July 31. According to The Associated Press, New Ideas lawmaker Ana Figueroa’s proposal also included a provision to eliminate the second round of elections in which the top two candidates go head-to-head.

‘This is quite simple, El Salvador: only you will have the power to decide how long you wish to support the work of any public official, including your president,’ Figueroa said, according to Reuters. ‘You have the power to decide how long you support your president and all elected officials.’

Meanwhile, other lawmakers expressed their frustration with the bill, with one lamenting the death of democracy.

Nationalist Republican Alliance legislator Marcela Villatoro declared to her fellow lawmakers that ‘Democracy in El Salvador has died!’

‘You don’t realize what indefinite reelection brings: It brings an accumulation of power and weakens democracy … there’s corruption and clientelism because nepotism grows and halts democracy and political participation,’ Villatoro said, according to The Associated Press.

Bukele, who was first elected in 2019, has become somewhat of a polarizing figure as his crackdown on crime has made him popular with voters, while critics worry that he is trying to consolidate power. While Bukele’s tough-on-crime policies have caused homicides to plummet, human rights groups say that innocent people were caught up in mass arrests.

Human Rights Watch issued a report in July 2024 in which it found that approximately 3,000 children had become victims of the crackdown, which began in 2022. In the report summary, the group tells the story of a 17-year-old girl who was arrested without a warrant and eventually forced to plead guilty to collaborating with the notorious MS-13 gang, something she denied.

Last year, Bukele told Time magazine that he would not seek a third term, though he could change his tune following the constitutional reforms.

President Donald Trump targeted Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, in a Thursday night Truth Social post, urging Republicans to vote in the opposite of the way that she does.

‘Republicans, when in doubt, vote the exact opposite of Senator Susan Collins. Generally speaking, you can’t go wrong. Thank you for your attention to this matter and, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!’ the president declared in the post.

Fox News Digital reached out to Collins’ office early on Friday morning to request a comment from the senator.

Last month Collins voted against passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and against passage of a rescissions measure, both of which Trump ultimately signed.

Earlier this year she voted against confirming Pete Hegseth to serve as secretary of defense and against confirming Kash Patel to serve as FBI director.

In February 2021, she voted to convict Trump after the House impeached him in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot, but that Senate vote, which occurred after Trump had already departed from office, did not reach the threshold necessary for conviction.

Collins has served in the Senate since 1997.

President Donald Trump clashed with a reporter Thursday over questions about a newly signed tariff, telling him that he had spent his first term ‘fighting lunatics like you.’ The intense exchange follows a White House signing ceremony for a series of executive actions aimed at expanding reciprocal tariffs and strengthening U.S. trade policy.

While speaking with reporters at the White House after the signing, a reporter confronted Trump on why he is emphasizing tariffs more in his second term. 

‘You’re weighing your decision to do that, your authority to do that based on a 1977 law. It’s never been invoked before,’ said the reporter. ‘Why didn’t you invoke this law in your first term? You could have taken in billions upon billions of dollars in your first term, but you waited until your second term?’

Without missing a beat, the president shot back: ‘Yeah, because in my first term, I was fighting lunatics like you who were trying to do things incorrectly and inappropriately to a president that was duly elected.’ 

‘And we did do certain tariffs in the first term,’ he continued. ‘If you look at China, China, we took in hundreds of billions of dollars from China.’ 

He also said that the COVID-19 pandemic also played a factor in his decision to not emphasize tariffs as much in his first term.

‘When Covid came the last thing I was going to do is tell France and Italy and Spain and a couple of other countries that we’re going to hit you with tariffs,’ he explained. ‘We had to fight the Covid situation when that came.’ 

‘But if you look at my first term,’ he went on, ‘We took in hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of tariffs, but you people didn’t cover it very well.’ 

A statement by the White House said that Trump’s executive actions taken on Thursday ‘reflects the President’s continued efforts to protect the United States against foreign threats to the national security and economy of the United States by securing fair, balanced, and reciprocal trade relationships to benefit American workers, farmers, and manufacturers and to strengthen the United States’ defense industrial base.’ 

This comes shortly after Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a trade deal between the U.S. and E.U. on Sunday.

‘We are agreeing that the tariff straight across for automobiles and everything else will be a straight-across tariff of 15%,’ Trump said.

‘So, we have a tariff of 15%. We have the opening up of all of the European countries, which I think I could say were essentially closed. I mean, you weren’t exactly taking our orders. You weren’t exactly taking our agriculture,’ he added, addressing von der Leyen.

Von der Leyen said Europe will also purchase $150 billion worth of U.S. energy as part of the deal, in addition to making $600 billion in other investments into the U.S.

Fox News Digital’s Anders Hagstrom and Stephen Sorace contributed to this report.

A longtime ally of former President Joe Biden told House Oversight Committee investigators that he could have been paid a total of $8 million if the former president won his 2024 re-election bid, a source familiar with the conversation told Fox News Digital.

Michael Donilon served as senior advisor to the president for the entirety of Biden’s four-year term. Their relationship goes back decades, however; Donilon first worked for Biden in 1981 when he was a U.S. senator from Delaware.

He is the latest ex-Biden administration official to sit down with the committee behind closed doors as it investigates whether the former president’s inner circle covered up evidence of his alleged mental decline, and if executive actions were signed via autopen without Biden’s full awareness.

Donilon said he did not know what the autopen was used for and did not recall having any knowledge of the autopen, the source told Fox News Digital.

But Donilon, who was the top strategist for Biden’s 2020 and 2024 campaigns, would have apparently earned some $8 million total if Biden won.

Donilon told investigators he was paid $4 million to work on Biden’s 2024 campaign, the source said. That information was reported by Axios reporter Alex Thompson and CNN host Jake Tapper in their book ‘Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.’

The $4 million he would have gained in addition would have come if Biden had won in 2024.

Biden infamously dropped out of the 2024 race after his disastrous debate against Donald Trump in June of that year, after weeks of mounting pressure by fellow Democrats, both in public and in private.

Donilon told investigators he ‘believes the punditry and Democrats in Congress overreacted after Joe Biden’s disastrous debate,’ the source said. Donilon also argued Biden’s communications skills ‘got stronger’ during his time as president, the source added.

‘During his interview, Mr. Donilon admitted that Joe Biden’s presence wasn’t as commanding, and he could stumble over more words. Mr. Donilon stated he was frustrated and knew it was difficult to get past the visuals of President Biden that people were seeing,’ the source said.

In his opening statement, obtained by Fox News Digital, Donilon emphasized his 40-year relationship with Biden and touted the Democratic administration’s accomplishments through the COVID-19 pandemic, the rebound in job growth in its wake and the Inflation Reduction Act and other legislative wins.

‘I was with President Joe Biden from his first day in office to the last day. What I saw, day in and day out, was a leader who was deeply engaged and in command on critical issues, both at home and abroad,’ Donilon said in his statement. 

‘Every President ages over the four years of a presidency and President Biden did as well, but he also continued to grow stronger and wiser as a leader as a result of being tested by some of the most difficult challenges any President has ever faced.

‘I thought that experience was enormously valuable for the nation. I believed that President Biden was the best person to lead the country on the day he took the oath of office and I continued to believe that was true every day he served as President.’

Donilon is the eighth ex-Biden White House official to appear for the probe led by House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky.

A source familiar with the Biden team’s thinking previously called Republicans’ probe ‘dangerous’ and ‘an attempt to smear and embarrass.’

‘And their hope is for just one tiny inconsistency between witnesses to appear so that Trump’s DOJ prosecute his political opponents and continue his campaign of revenge,’ that source said.

Fox News Digital reached out to Donilon’s lawyer and a representative for Biden for comment.

Fox News Digital’s Deirdre Heavey contributed to this report

The Secret Service must move to ‘course correct’ after reports a Secret Service agent attempted to smuggle his wife onto a Secret Service cargo plane accompanying President Donald Trump on his trip to Scotland, according to a former agent. 

Tim Miller, who served as a Secret Service agent during the administrations of presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, said the alleged incident was unusual and that the agency must ‘step up’ to address growing threats against Trump. 

‘The threats to the President are serious and growing,’ Miller said in an email Thursday to Fox News Digital. ‘This agency must step up to address these threats. … Imagine a world where our elected leaders are not safe to lead the critical issues facing our world? 

‘The mission that they have been given requires the absolute best people available who have the highest level of commitment, experience, professionalism and skill.’

While Miller predicted conduct like this would have previously resulted in a suspension or firing of the agent, Miller said that is unlikely given that the Secret Service did not fire those on duty during the assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024. 

The agency did, however, announce that it suspended six of its agents due to their response to the attempt.

Likewise, Miller said he anticipates an investigation into the Scotland incident will be handled meticulously. 

‘I am confident that they will thoroughly investigate this matter,’ Miller said. ‘To that end, the Secret Service must course correct and hold agents accountable for these types of errors in judgment. The current threats are too high. It’s time for high levels of accountability and a return to mission focus. The lives of our elected leaders depend on it! This truly is a ‘no fail’ mission!’ 

Even so, Miller said the agency did the right thing in identifying the threat and fixing the problem. 

‘The bottom line is there is more to this story and, with the exception of one agent’s extremely poor judgment, the Secret Service did a good job identifying and correcting this issue,’ Miller said. 

RealClearPolitics first reported that a Secret Service agent attempted to smuggle his wife aboard a Secret Service cargo aircraft during Trump’s travels for his Scotland trip.

Trump told reporters Tuesday he had just heard about the alleged incident, describing it as a ‘weird deal.’ He also told reporters the agency is handling the matter. 

‘I don’t know, that’s a strange one. I just heard that two minutes ago. I think Sean’s taking care of it. … Is that a serious story?’ Trump told reporters on Air Force One Tuesday, appearing to reference Sean Curran, Secret Service director.

The White House confirmed to Fox News Digital Wednesday that Trump had been briefed on the matter and that an investigation was ongoing. 

‘The U.S. Secret Service is conducting a personnel investigation after an employee attempted to invite his spouse, a member of the United States Air Force, aboard a mission support flight,’ a Secret Service spokesperson told Fox News Digital Tuesday.

‘The aircraft, operated by the U.S. Air Force, was being used by the Secret Service to transport personnel and equipment,’ the spokesperson added. ‘Prior to the overseas departure, the employee was advised by supervisors that such action was prohibited, and the spouse was subsequently prevented from taking the flight. No Secret Service protectees were aboard, and there was no impact to our overseas protective operations.’

Three Senate Republicans are backing up Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s possible effort to reform the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, saying that the group has recently been ideologically motivated.

The ‘independent’ task force is used to determine recommendations of what services health insurance companies in the United States have to cover for free, such as checking for cancer.

‘Americans deserve to know health guidelines are based on real science, not radical wokeness. The Task Force needs to get back to its mission of giving clear, evidence-based recommendations people can trust,’ Sen. Jim Banks, R-Indiana, said in a statement.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Kennedy is considering removing members of the board, and the senators are saying they back any change to veer away from certain DEI tactics employed by the group currently, including the 2023 Report to Congress on High-Priority Evidence Gaps for Clinical Preventive Services and ‘social justice activism’ by people in the group.

‘In particular, the USPSTF departed from its proper activities in its December 2023 Health Equity Framework. The framework criticizes ‘equal access to quality health care for all’ as an inadequate goal of public health and announces that the Task Force will instead use equity as ‘a criterion of the ‘public health importance’ of a topic’ for consideration,’ the letter added.

‘Far from simply recognizing health disparities between certain populations, ‘health equity’ as described by the USPSTF includes ‘information on risk factors that intersect with race and/or ethnicity or other disadvantaged populations (e.g., sexual and gender minorities) and that affect prevalence and burden of disease’ and ‘any inequities in how preventive services are provided, accessed, or received.’ These criteria would allow the Task Force to issue recommendations outside its proper purview and impose leftwing ideology,’ it continues.

Specifically, they said that changes could be needed to fulfill President Donald Trump’s Executive Order to scrap DEI efforts within the federal government, along with an EO on ‘restoring merit-based opportunity’ and ‘ending illegal discrimination.’

‘Allowing the Task Force to pursue the Health Equity Framework means allowing it to exceed its statutory mission and target social groups that comport with a progressive agenda. It means discounting universally beneficial recommendations as inadequate. It means disregarding statutory limits and instead undertaking a social justice crusade through the lens of critical race theory and gender ideology. This would be a mistake. The result is ineffectiveness, discrimination, and division. The USPSTF should be working for all Americans equally,’ the letter added.

‘No final decision has been made on how the USPSTF can better support HHS’ mandate to Make America Healthy Again,’ an HHS spokesperson told Fox News Digital in a statement when asked about the WSJ report. 

There has already been some opposition to the possibility of removing the members, including from the American Medical Association.

‘USPSTF plays a critical, non-partisan role in guiding physicians’ efforts to prevent disease and improve the health of patients by helping to ensure access to evidence-based clinical preventive services,’ the AMA wrote in a letter to Kennedy. ‘As such, we urge you to retain the previously appointed members of the USPSTF and commit to the long-standing process of regular meetings to ensure their important work can continue without interruption.’

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff are slated to visit Gaza Friday, after both met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Thursday in Israel to discuss ways to provide food and aid to Gaza. 

‘Special envoy Witkoff and Ambassador Huckabee will be traveling into Gaza to inspect the current distribution sites and secure a plan to deliver more food and meet with local Gazans to hear firsthand about this dire situation on the ground,’ Leavitt told reporters Thursday. ‘The special envoy and the ambassador will brief the president immediately after their visit to approve a final plan for food and aid distribution into the region.’ 

‘President Trump is a humanitarian with a big heart, and that’s why he sent special envoy Witkoff to the region in an effort to save lives and end this crisis,’ Leavitt said.  

Leavitt’s comments come as President Donald Trump has pushed back against Netanyahu’s repeated statements denying a starvation crisis in Gaza. 

For example, Netanyahu flat out rejected claims there is any starvation crisis in Gaza in a social media post Monday. 

‘There is no starvation in Gaza, no policy of starvation in Gaza, and I assure you that we have a commitment to achieve our war goals,’ Netanyahu said in a Monday X post. ‘We will continue to fight till we achieve the release of our hostages and the destruction of Hamas’ military and governing capabilities. They shall be there no more.’

When asked if he agreed with the Israeli prime minister, Trump appeared to cast doubt on Netanyahu’s assessment of the situation. 

‘Based on television … those children look very hungry,’ Trump said Monday in Scotland. ‘But we’re giving a lot of money and a lot of food, and other nations are now stepping up. …Some of those kids are — that’s real starvation stuff.’ 

Trump also pledged to work with European allies and establish ‘food centers’ in Gaza to address the issue. 

Meanwhile, ceasefire talks in Qatar recently crumbled, and the U.S. and Israel claimed afterward that Hamas wasn’t interested in finding an agreement. 

Trump addressed the ongoing conflict Thursday, pushing for Hamas to surrender and release hostages immediately in order to end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. 

‘The fastest way to end the humanitarian crises in Gaza is for Hamas to SURRENDER AND RELEASE THE HOSTAGES!!!’ the president said in a post on Truth Social Thursday.