United States Ambassador to the United Nations Michael Waltz recently returned from a Middle East swing, touting the ‘amazing progress’ in the implementation of President Donald Trump’s Israel–Gaza peace deal, and telling Fox News Digital that the situation abroad is ‘night and day to where we were a year ago.’

Fox News Digital spoke exclusively with Waltz Thursday evening, just hours after he returned to the United States from the Middle East.

Waltz traveled from the Lebanese border to the Syrian border, the Egyptian border, Jordan to Israel and beyond.

‘The purpose of the trip was to get on the ground and see the implementation,’ Waltz said. ‘We met with the Jordanians, the king, the prime minister and president of Israel — we met with our troops.’ 

Waltz explained that there is a ‘small contingent’ of approximately 100 U.S. troops in Israel — not in Gaza — to help to pull together humanitarian aid and military coordination.

‘We have had air defense assets in Israel for quite some time to deal with attacks from Iran,’ Waltz said. ‘This is now a small headquarters element to provide a coordination — no one was talking to each other, and the U.S. military is doing what it does best.’

Waltz said the U.S. troops in Israel are working with the United Nations, non-governmental organizations, the Israelis, Egyptians and Arab countries, while having contact with Palestinians and ensuring that humanitarian aid is being delivered.

‘From an ‘America First’ standpoint, the United States shouldn’t be doing this alone,’ Waltz said. ‘Burden-sharing is a key component and dozens are helping under President Trump’s leadership.’

Waltz led the charge at the United Nations, implementing the now-adopted resolution that endorses the Board of Peace, sets parameters for Gaza’s transitional governance and launches the International Stabilization Force outlined in Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan.

Trump’s plan to end the Gaza conflict calls for Gaza to be a de-radicalized, terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbors. It also calls for Gaza to be redeveloped for the benefit of the people of Gaza and more.

Under the peace plan, Israeli forces would withdraw from the region, and a temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee, responsible for delivering the day-to-day running of public services and municipalities for the people of Gaza will be created.

That government will be under the oversight of a new international transitional body called the Board of Peace, chaired by Trump and other members and heads of state.

The resolution makes the plan international law.

‘At the end of the day, Hamas has to go,’ Walz explained. ‘What we cannot let happen is Hamas survives, and the international community pours billions of dollars into the situation — Hamas attacks Israel again, as they previously pledged to do, and Israel responds, and we are in the same situation — we cannot let that happen again. That’s why we are doing things differently this time.’

Waltz pointed to the Board of Peace led by Trump, as well as the newly formed stabilization force, with troops from countries like Indonesia and Azerbaijan — as well as the technocratic committee responsible for turning government services back on.

‘This has never been done before,’ Waltz said. ‘My job was to get the United Nations and the international community to bless that, and we did.’ 

‘The bottom line is this: this was not a big symbolic thing or deal for the president,’ Waltz continued. ‘He is serious about bringing Middle East peace once and for all.’ 

Waltz explained that the ‘next strategic step will be an extension of the Abraham Accords,’ which he described as the president’s ‘true objective.’

Waltz explained that the implementation of the peace deal ‘unlocks the next round of the Abraham Accords.’

‘There are a number of great conversations ongoing,’ he said.

‘We have to remember where we were a year ago, and see everything in perspective,’ he explained. ‘You had Iran marching towards a nuke; Hezbollah launching rockets on Israel; hostages in tunnels, and now you have hostages out; Lebanon has the best chance in a generation; and Iran had its nuclear capabilities obliterated in Operation Midnight Hammer—all in ten months.’

Waltz added: ‘It is truly incredible. It is night and day to where we were a year ago.’

MINNEAPOLIS, MN – Republican John Nagel, who is running against Dem. Rep. Ilhan Omar in her Minneapolis district, spoke to Fox News Digital about the responsibility she holds in the unfolding massive fraud scandal that has garnered national headlines.

‘Where did this actually start?’ Nagel told Fox News Digital. ‘She passed legislation. Her legislation actually started and it allowed people to get into Feeding Our Future. If you look at where the fraud is, it’s primarily her [5th Congressional District], the district that I’m running in against her. And it’s really odd to think that you know all the fraud just happened in a particular area, and it was a bill that she, you know, particularly put together.’

Nagel is referring to allegations that the free meals at the center of the massive fraud scandal were made possible by the 2020 MEALS Act, introduced by Omar and passed with bipartisan support. He told Fox News Digital the public deserves to know who helped her craft that legislation.

Members of Omar’s inner circle personally profited from the $1 billion welfare fraud scandal in her district that has placed her Somali constituency under a White House microscope, Nagel said. He also said that Omar held events at one of the restaurants, Safari Land, which was named in the fraud case, knew one of its now-convicted owners and had a staffer who was also convicted.

‘If you look at the Safari Land restaurant, if you’re gonna be in politics, you need to go through the people at the Safari Land restaurant,’ Nagel said. ‘They kind of control the politics. She had all of her fundraising things. I mean, that was sort of her hangout. That’s where she spent money, got donations.’

Guhaad Hashi Said, sometimes referred to as an ‘enforcer’ for Omar’s campaign, is one of the over 70 people who have been indicted for his role in the Feeding Our Future scandal. Nagel told Fox News Digital the public deserves answers on that relationship and what Omar knew about the fraud.

‘There’s a lot of really deep, deep ties,’ Nagel said.

‘I think time will tell with the investigation. But again, there’s just too much circumstantial evidence to look at this and say, she had to have known something, or what staff member knew something?’

The Small Business Administration is investigating a network of Somali groups in Minnesota that it says is tied to the scandal, and a House Oversight Committee has opened an investigation into Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s role.

President Donald Trump last week criticized Omar and blamed the Somali community for the scope of fraud occurring in Minnesota. 

Nagel also asserted that there was a money trail potentially funneled to Omar from her associates tied to the Feeding Our Future fraud scandal, and he said that she has returned some of the money but not all of it.

‘A whole lot of people that were convicted donated a whole lot of money. Omar says that she gave the money back,’ Nagel said. ‘Well, if you go into public records, she gave some money back, but there’s a whole lot more money there that she didn’t report. And I think if people were just to go through the everyday records that are out there, you’ll find out that her involvement in the money that she has is questionable.’

Nagel told Fox News Digital, ‘If she truly cared about the fraud, her name wouldn’t be attached all over to these other people. She came on and she made a statement about how terrible it is to basically steal food from children. Yeah, okay, that’s a really nice thing to say, but you have way too many people that you’re associated with that actually did that. Now she yells racism anytime somebody puts any pressure on her.’

Fox News Digital asked Nagel what can be done to fix the fraud issues. He said, first and foremost, Minnesota must elect a new governor.

‘The things that we can do to fix this is you get yourself a new competent, honest governor, you get yourself a new honest, competent AG,’ Nagel said. ‘We get rid of Ilhan Omar, and we put people in the state of Minnesota that actually want to do the right thing. They’re not in it for the money, they’re in it because they’re great state employees and they’re serving the public. That’s what we’re gonna have to do. You’re gonna have to entirely root the Democratic Party, and then anybody that’s been appointed to a position, we’re gonna have to root them out too, to find out if you know they’ve been letting things slide.’

Nagel described the fraud situation in Minnesota as a ‘cancer’ that will continue to ‘spread’ unless ‘you cut the entire cancer out.’

Fox News Digital reached out to Omar’s office for comment. 

‘I think what happened is that, you know, when you have these kind of new programs that are, um, designed to help people, you’re oftentimes relying on third parties to be able to facilitate. And I just think that a lot of the COVID programs that were set up — they were set up so quickly that a lot of the guardrails did not get created,’ Omar said last week.

Fox News Digital’s Louis Casiano contributed to this report.

There is still a desire to solve the looming healthcare cliff after dueling votes in the Senate on partisan Obamacare fixes crashed and burned Thursday, but both sides of the aisle are still miles from finding a middle ground.

The enhanced Obamacare subsidies are set to expire by the end of the year, and Congress is gearing up to leave Washington, D.C., at the end of next week until the new year. There are several options on the table, including numerous Senate Republican proposals or just moving ahead with a short-term extension of the subsidies.

But lawmakers have to land on what exactly they want to do, and what could pass the 60-vote filibuster threshold, first.

‘I think the question is, ‘Do the Democrats, after they got their messaging vote done, actually want to engage in a real conversation about this?’’ Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said. ‘Because it didn’t seem like they had a real high level of interest in reforms, but there are some who do. I don’t know if there are enough, but I think we’re going to get a sense of that here very soon.’

Thune echoed what many Republicans in the upper chamber believed: Senate Democrats’ three-year extension of the subsidies was never meant to succeed, but only served as a political messaging exercise.

Still, four Senate Republicans crossed the aisle to vote for Democrats’ plan. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, argued that she voted for both proposals not because both were exactly what she wanted, but because she wanted to get the ball rolling toward a solution.

‘Sometimes around the Senate, we have to demonstrate what we can’t do first before we can get to what we need to do,’ she said. ‘Today was the first step in that process of demonstrating what we can’t do now. Let’s get on with it and fix it.’

Conversely, the GOP’s first attempt wasn’t going to pass muster with Senate Democrats, either. Some in the upper chamber are mulling a short-term extension to the subsidies, be it six months to a year, but that idea doesn’t tackle the several reforms Senate Republicans have demanded for their support.

‘Discussions will continue,’ Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., told Fox News Digital. ‘Both parties are going to find a solution to actually lower the cost of care and put patients in charge and get rid of the waste and the fraud and the abuse and the corruption that has run rampant in Obamacare.’

Whatever happens next will likely be the product of rank-and-file negotiations, not top-level decisions between Thune and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

But there is a growing sense that President Donald Trump should get more involved and dictate exactly what he wants to be done. Trump previously signaled that he wants to move ahead with health savings accounts (HSAs) but in recent weeks has largely stayed an arms’ length away from the Obamacare turmoil in the Senate.

When asked how lawmakers get out of the healthcare jam, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told Fox News Digital, ‘We don’t.’

‘Not until Donald Trump decides we get out of it,’ Murphy said. ‘He’s the President of the United States, his party controls the House and the Senate, so the only way we save people from healthcare disasters for Donald Trump, the leader of the Republican Party, is to decide to fix this.’

Republicans still have several options on the table, including a plan from Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., that marries an extension of the subsidies with HSAs and reforms, and a plan from Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, that would extend the credits for two years, among others.

There’s also the possibility that the healthcare fight continues on into the next year and goes through the partisan budget reconciliation process, which Republicans used earlier this year to ram through Trump’s agenda.

While that’s an option, many in the upper chamber acknowledge that the best way forward is working with the other side of the aisle.

‘I would rather do it on a bipartisan basis, because that’s the way that Congress is supposed to work,’ Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., told Fox News Digital. ‘But if Democrats are intent upon sticking people with either higher premiums and/or $6,000 deductible, we got to do something. So it’s not good for the American people.’

While there are lawmakers who hope the failed votes were the springboard forward, and not a dead end, toward tackling the Obamacare issue, Schumer signaled that it was Republicans’ fault that the subsidies would likely expire.

‘This is their crisis now, and they’re going to have to answer for it,’ he said.

While the world’s attention has focused on Russia’s war in Ukraine and Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, Sudan remains the world’s largest displacement crisis, with some 12 million people driven out of their homes.

‘Sudan is under the darkest of clouds, a catastrophe that has, for far too long, been met with paralysis by the international community,’ Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., chair of the House Foreign Affairs Africa subcommittee, said during his opening statements during a December 11 hearing on crimes against humanity in Sudan.

Smith said the hearing was a global call to action and that there must be an immediate cessation of hostilities between the warring factions.

‘Crimes against humanity — particularly by the Rapid Support Forces — including mass rape, ethnic targeting and systematic looting, must be investigated, and perpetrators held accountable,’ Smith added.

The conflict in Sudan has received renewed attention after President Donald Trump vowed to secure a peace deal in the African nation following his meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in November. 

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, recently said repeated drone strikes on Dec. 4 in Sudan’s South Kordofan region struck a kindergarten and nearby hospital, killing 114 people, including 63 children.

‘Disturbingly, paramedics and responders came under attack as they tried to move the injured from the kindergarten to the hospital,’ Tedros said in a statement.

Sudan Doctors Network, a medical organization, said the attacks were perpetrated by the Rapid Support Forces.

The conflict in Sudan has been raging since April 2023, when an uneasy alliance between Sudan’s two warring factions, the government-led Sudanese armed forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) collapsed following a tenuous power-sharing agreement struck in 2021. 

Sudan’s army and the RSF had collaborated for years under the previous regime of ousted dictator Omar al-Bashir.

The situation has only escalated since fighting first broke out in 2023 and has not garnered the same level of international effort or outrage that the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza have generated.

‘The war in Sudan has been one of the most gruesome humanitarian catastrophes in world history. However, there has been frequent paralysis by world leaders and international institutions to solve it, in addition to reduced, fluctuating media attention on the conflict,’ Caroline Rose, director of Military and National Security Priorities at New Lines Institute, told Fox News Digital.

‘This could be attributed to the fact that, unlike wars in Ukraine and Gaza, there is not a component of great-power competition or regional contestation,’ she added.

Rose and other observers of the conflict note that there is inhibited ground access, creating challenges not only for journalistic reporting, but also the documentation of war crimes and testimonies. 

The Sudanese armed forces have prevented access to aid workers in territories they control on the basis of sovereignty and have expelled humanitarian workers that had been in the country.

The RSF has also been accused of committing grave human rights violations and reportedly killed over 400 aid workers and patients in October at the Saudi Maternity Hospital in the North Darfur city of El Fasher. The RSF siege of El Fasher caused at least 28,000 people to flee to neighboring towns, and the U.N. Human Rights Office accused the RSF of ‘summary executions, mass killings, rapes, attacks against humanitarian workers, looting, abductions and forced displacement.’

Even as the Trump administration works for a ceasefire between the warring factions, the killings continue. 

Tom Perriello, the former U.S. special envoy for Sudan, said in a September New York Times interview that he believed up to 400,000 have been killed since the outbreak of violence in 2023. A recent article in Foreign Policy put the figure at 100,000 in what it called the ‘forgotten war.’

In addition to the deaths, it’s been estimated by various groups that more than 30 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance and around 21.2 million, or 45% of the population, are facing high levels of acute food insecurity.

The Trump administration is relying on a sharply different legal justification for seizing a Venezuelan oil tanker than striking alleged narco-traffickers, even if both moves are intended to ramp up pressure on Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.

Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday framed the U.S. seizure of a Venezuelan crude oil tanker as a straightforward sanctions enforcement action rooted in a federal court warrant. Bondi said the tanker, long sanctioned for moving illicit Venezuelan and Iranian oil in support of foreign terrorist organizations, was taken into custody by the Coast Guard with help from the War Department after investigators executed a warrant off the coast of Venezuela.

A senior administration official told Fox News the sanctions designation is the sole legal basis for seizing the ship — not the armed-conflict authority the administration has invoked to justify kinetic strikes on drug-trafficking vessels. The distinction highlights the administration’s reliance on two very different legal frameworks in the same region: traditional sanctions and forfeiture statutes for the tanker, and a contentious assertion of wartime authority against drug cartels for the maritime strikes.

The tanker, known as the Skipper, has been on a U.S. sanctions list for several years for allegedly moving crude tied to a clandestine Venezuela–Iran oil network that Washington says helped generate revenue for foreign terrorist organizations. 

According to officials, that designation rendered the vessel ‘blocked property’ under U.S. law, allowing the Justice Department to seek and obtain a federal warrant to seize it under civil forfeiture statutes. That process — rooted in domestic law and executed through a U.S. court — is the basis for Thursday’s operation, administration officials said.

While the administration argues the seizure is fully authorized under U.S. sanctions and forfeiture law, the use of domestic legal authorities to detain a foreign vessel on the high seas historically has generated debate in maritime law circles, particularly when the ship is not under the U.S. flag. The allegation that the Skipper was stateless or fraudulently flagged could prove significant in that debate.

If true, ‘the U.S. could treat this vessel as ‘stateless’ and subject to seizure since it is otherwise acting in violation of U.S. law,’ law professor Julian Ku told Fox News Digital. ‘That would be the strongest legal basis.’

Under the sanctions framework, the government is not claiming battlefield authority or self-defense powers. Instead, officials are relying on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and related OFAC regulations, which allow the U.S. to target property linked to sanctioned entities, even when that property is located abroad. 

A senior administration official emphasized that this is the only legal theory the government is using for the Skipper seizure and said it carries none of the Article II wartime arguments the administration has invoked to justify its strikes on cartel boats in international waters.

The result is a civilian enforcement action carried out with help from the military, alongside a separate military campaign premised on the assertion that the United States is ‘at war’ with foreign drug cartels. But both efforts are rooted in what onlookers believe to be the president’s intended goal: pressuring Maduro to step down from power.

In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, Liz Truss pulls back the curtain on what really happened during her 49-day reign as prime minister of the United Kingdom in 2022.

The free speech advocate served just 49 days as British prime minister in 2022 before resigning amid market turmoil over her administration’s dramatic attempt to implement a pro-growth economic agenda. Now that the dust has settled, Truss has launched a private club for ‘pro-growth leaders,’ the Leconfield, and a YouTube show, ‘The Liz Truss Show.’

‘My new show will tell the truth about what happened in 2022,’ Truss told Fox News Digital. ‘The fact that I was sabotaged by the Bank of England, who announced the sale of gilts the day before my mini-budget and then failed to properly regulate the pension market. That was actually the cause of the crisis in 2022.’

While Truss is now recasting the narrative on the Bank of England, the financial institution has blamed Truss for the British market crash of 2022, concluding that her mini-budget triggered a sudden plunge in gilt prices, driving up the government’s borrowing costs. The spike rippled across financial markets, pushing pension funds to offload gilts and forcing the Bank of England to intervene to stabilize the market.

The Bank of England declined to comment when reached by Fox News Digital. 

‘I will be talking about that. I’ll also be talking about the conservatives in name only who undermined me while I was in power,’ Truss said of her show, eliciting President Donald Trump’s ‘RINO’ nickname for Republicans in name only who thwart his agenda. 

It’s not Truss’ only commonality with Trump.

‘I’m very frustrated by the mainstream media,’ Truss said. ‘I share President Trump’s annoyance with the BBC. He is currently suing them for propagating fake news about him, but they do fake news the whole time.’

Trump has announced plans to file a $5 billion lawsuit against the British Broadcasting Corporation over an edit of his Jan. 6, 2021, remarks that appeared in a BBC investigative series. The BBC did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Truss said she wants her YouTube show to ‘help change the economic and political debate in Britain.’

‘I know the truth wasn’t told about my time as prime minister,’ Truss said. ‘That’s very frustrating, but I know about other issues, whether it’s free speech or migration, people are not hearing about what’s actually happening in Britain, so I want my show to tell the truth and to hear from the people that are the victims of these problems.’

Truss’ early guests included Trump-ally Steve Bannon and British political commentator Matt Goodwin. The former prime minister spoke to Fox News Digital in Washington, D.C., ahead of its inaugural episode.

‘I want America, first of all, to understand what happens when you lose things like free speech, and you lose the battle on mass migration, and you lose the battle on the economy,’ Truss said. ‘It’s a warning for America, but I also want to get inspiration from what’s happened here at fighting back against these forces, and that’s what the show is about. I want to encourage people. It’s not just doom and gloom. It is about what do we actually do? How do we get a Trump-style revolution in Britain and Europe to make our countries great again?’

At the core of the cultural battles dominating popular culture, Truss said, ‘All of these people hate Western civilization.’

‘They hate the nation state,’ Truss continued. ‘They want to undermine the family, and that is why I’m so passionate about fighting back against them, because I believe in our country. I believe in the Christian values that formed Britain and America. I believe in free speech, and I think we’re just in real danger of losing them to these forces.’

Truss has applauded Trump’s leadership on the world stage, calling him ‘very forward-leaning’ in negotiating peace in the Middle East.

Truss said she wants a solution in Ukraine, but not one that makes President Vladimir Putin appear to walk away from the conflict on his own terms. She urged Europe to ‘step up’ and ‘spend more of our own money on defense’ — reflecting many congressional Republicans’ message as the war in Ukraine has waged on. 

Congress has voted to send more than $175 billion to Ukraine since the war began, according to The Council on Foreign Relations. And while the U.S. has committed more aid to Ukraine than any other country, European countries have collectively committed more than the U.S.

‘We need to grow our economies to be in a position to be able to stand up to Putin ourselves,’ Truss said.

While Trump continues to pursue peace negotiations in the Middle East and between Russia and Ukraine, Truss applauded the president for taking action against suspected drug traffickers from Venezuela.

‘There’s definitely very, very serious issues with Venezuela, and it’s sadly a country that used to be successful and rich and has now been ruined essentially by a communist regime,’ Truss said. ‘I understand the United States needs to take action because the cartels that come out of countries like Venezuela are a direct security threat to the United States.’

The Trump administration deployed two fighter jets over the Gulf of Venezuela on Tuesday and has faced scrutiny in recent days for allegedly authorizing a second strike on suspected drug trafficking boats in Venezuela.

The White House told Fox News Digital last week that as commander in chief, Trump has ‘full authority to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our country.’

‘As President Trump has said, all options are on the table as he works to combat the scourge of narcoterrorism that has resulted in the needless deaths of thousands of innocent Americans,’ White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement to Fox News Digital. ‘All of these decisive strikes have been in international waters against designated narcoterrorists bringing deadly poison to our shores.’

Fox News Digital’s Diana Stacy contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump clapped back at a report that was just released about the global artificial intelligence arms race, which claimed China has more than double the electrical power-generation capacity of the United States.

Trump, in a pointed social media post on his platform Truth Social, called the report’s findings ‘WRONG,’ adding that every big artifical intelligence plant being built in the United States will have its own private power plants that will also send excess energy back to the country’s broader energy grid. 

‘The Wall Street Journal has another ridiculous story today that China is dominating us, and the World, on the production of Electricity having to do with AI,’ Trump said in his Truth Social post responding to the news report. ‘AI has far more Electricity than they will ever need because they are building the facilities that produce it, themselves.’

‘We are leading the World in AI, BY FAR, because of a gentleman named DONALD J. TRUMP!’ the president contended. 

The Wall Street Journal report Trump was targeting indicated that China now has 3.75 terawatts of power-generation capacity, which the outlet said is more than double what the United States holds. The Journal called China’s electrical generation capacity the country’s ‘Ace to play’ in the global artificial intelligence arms race, since the United States is still home to the most powerful artificial intelligence models and controls access to the most advanced computer chips. 

In Trump’s Truth Social post responding to the Journal’s claims, the president said that the approvals for new artificial intelligence plants and their accompanying ‘Electric Generating Facilities’ are being approved ‘quickly’ and ‘carefully,’ indicating the process has generally been taking ‘a matter of weeks.’

Trump also highlighted that any ‘excess’ electrical energy produced by these electric generation facilities would be ‘going to our Electric Grid,’ which the president said was being ‘strengthened, and expanded … like never before.’

On Thursday, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright was quoted in TIME Magazine piece saying that artificial intelligence is the Trump administration’s ‘No. 1 scientific priority.’ Wright was quoted in a wide-ranging piece titled ‘The Architects of AI Are TIME’s 2025 Person of the Year.’

In its reporting on Wright, the magazine noted that the Energy Department is working ‘in tandem with other agencies like the EPA to slash regulations around the construction of data centers and power plants.’

Fox News Digital’s Alexander Hall contributed to this report.

Britain is preparing to take on the ‘heavy lifting’ in Europe if President Donald Trump secures a Ukrainian ceasefire, U.K. Defense Secretary John Healey said, outlining a deployment-ready coalition that London has been quietly organizing for months.

The defense chief insisted that Trump is leading the negotiations for peace, even as leaders from Germany, Britain and France huddled with Volodymyr Zelenskyy this week to try to craft an alternative to a U.S.-brokered proposal the Ukrainian president viewed as too deferential to Russia.

‘We are ready to step in behind the president in his push for peace,’ he said during a briefing with reporters after meeting with War Secretary Pete Hegseth on AUKUS, the Australia-UK-US nuclear submarine-building deal. ‘We are ready to step in as he forces the pace of the negotiations in the way that only President Trump can. Because if he can get a ceasefire agreement, we are ready to do the heavy lifting in Europe.’

Trump has said Ukraine ‘has to be realistic’ about a peace plan that would include ceding territory to Russia — a prospect Zelenskyy has insisted is unacceptable. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Thursday that he, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron had proposed to Trump that they finalize the peace proposal with U.S. officials over the weekend.

Healey said the UK is prepared to send troops and equipment to enforce the peace deal once it is signed. ‘For the last six months we’ve got 200 military planners, over 30 nations working together. We’ve laid reconnaissance visits to Ukraine,’ he said. ‘We have the troops ready, we have the planes available. We have the ships on standby to be able to deploy.’

Healey offered one of the clearest signals yet that Britain expects to play a central role in enforcing any post-war security arrangement — even as Europe remains divided over how a deal should be structured.

While territorial claims appear to be the main sticking point in negotiations, questions remain over what sort of security guarantees the West would offer Ukraine. The initial proposal the U.S. brokered with Russia stipulated that Western troops and jets would remain outside Ukraine in NATO territory.

Western officials have been debating whether any agreement would require a multinational force to monitor front lines or secure key infrastructure inside Ukraine once a ceasefire takes hold. Healey suggested Britain is preparing for that possibility, saying the UK and a coalition of more than 30 nations have already positioned troops, aircraft and ships that could deploy if the terms of a deal allow for an international presence on the ground.

Healey’s meetings in Washington came just after the White House released a national security strategy that took an unusually severe tone toward Europe, warning of political decline and calling for the U.S. to ‘cultivate resistance’ within European nations. The strategy warns that Europe’s economic and social problems are ‘eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure.’

The document also calls for Europe to ‘take primary responsibility for its own defense,’ a point Healey said the UK is already prepared to meet, brushing off questions about whether the strategy had sown division inside the transatlantic alliance.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas grilled prominent left-leaning lawyer Marc Elias this week about a campaign finance law, joining several other conservative justices in voicing skepticism about the law’s restrictions on certain types of political donations.

Thomas’ questions centered on a Federal Election Campaign Act provision that limits how much money state and national political parties can spend when coordinating with specific candidates.

Republicans who brought the lawsuit argued that the coordinated political spending is protected speech and should not be limited by Congress, while Elias, a prolific election lawyer, argued to the high court that Congress has a right to cap those expenses.

Thomas and Elias appeared at odds during oral arguments, as Thomas questioned why coordinated political spending between parties and candidates should face limits — particularly when it covers routine campaign expenses like hotels or food.

‘Just so I’m clear, is there any First Amendment interest in coordinated expenditures?’ Thomas asked.

Elias replied ‘yes,’ but said a party paying an individual campaign’s bills was ‘symbolic speech’ that is not fully protected and should be subject to standard contribution limits.

‘I still don’t understand what you’re saying,’ Thomas told Elias. ‘If the party coordinates with the candidate and pays the bill, does that have a First Amendment protection or is it simply, as you say, a bill-paying exercise?’

‘It is speech,’ Elias said, but he said court precedent says the bill payment ‘is treated as a contribution, and, therefore, though it is speech, it is subject to limit by Congress in how much can be spent on engaging in that speech.’

Congress currently limits individual donations that can be made to a political candidate, and the Supreme Court has in past cases balanced allowing First Amendment-protected political donations while also allowing caps as a safeguard against outsize influence and corruption in elections.

But the high court is now being asked to potentially allow millionaires and billionaires to make unlimited individual contributions to a state or national political party, with the expectation that the money would be redirected and spent in coordination with a particular candidate. The decision could upend the current political spending landscape ahead of the 2026 midterm elections by allowing rich donors to flood state or national political parties with more money.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, another skeptic of Elias’ argument, pointed out that outside groups can accept limitless funds and influence elections and that state and national parties appear disadvantaged because of it.

‘I am concerned that a combination of campaign finance laws and this court’s decisions over the years have together reduced the power of political parties, as compared with outside groups, with negative effects on our constitutional democracy,’ Kavanaugh said.

‘That’s the real source of the disadvantage. You can give huge money to the outside group, but you can’t give huge money to the party, so the parties are very much weakened,’ he said.

The case was brought to the high court by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, and two former Ohio Republican candidates: now–Vice President JD Vance and former Rep. Steve Chabot.

The liberal justices leaned toward wanting to avoid further undoing campaign spending limits, which have eroded over time under Chief Justice John Roberts.

‘Every time we interfere with the congressional design, we make matters worse… our tinkering causes more harm than good,’ said Justice Sonia Sotomayor. ‘Once we take off these coordinated expenditure limits, then what’s left? What’s left is nothing. No control whatsoever.’

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the U.S. plans to take control of the oil currently on a tanker off the coast of Venezuela that was seized by U.S. forces Wednesday. 

Trump ‘talks a lot about how he thinks the way to bring down prices for everything would be to bring down the cost of energy,’ Fox News Senior White House Correspondent Peter Doocy said Thursday. ‘Would he use this seized Venezuelan oil to try to help Americans with affordability here in the United States?’

Leavitt responded, ‘The vessel will go to a U.S. port, and the United States does intend to seize the oil. However, there is a legal process for the seizure of that oil and that legal process will be followed.’ 

President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that the U.S. had seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, sharply escalating U.S. tensions with the nation. The tanker was seized for allegedly being used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran, according to Attorney General Pam Bondi. 

‘The vessel is currently undergoing a forfeiture process. Right now, the United States currently has a full investigative team on the ground, on the vessel, and individuals on board the vessel are being interviewed, and any relevant evidence is being seized,’ Leavitt continued, adding that the oil on the tanker will go through a legal process before the U.S. claims the energy source. 

The tanker, called the Skipper, loaded an estimated 1.8 million barrels of oil earlier in December, before transferring an estimated 200,000 barrels just before its seizure, Reuters reported.

The oil on the tanker is likely worth $60 million to more than $100 million, based on current average oil prices. Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for any additional comment on the estimated price tag of the oil but did not immediately receive a reply. 

The U.S. military has carried out strikes on suspected drug trafficking boats near Venezuela since September as part of Trump’s mission to end the flow of drugs into the nation. There have been at least 22 strikes on suspected narcotraffickers near Venezuela, killing 87, since September. 

Doocy pressed Leavitt during the press conference on whether the U.S.’ strikes and heightened tensions with Venezuela, dubbed Operation Southern Spear, are ‘about drugs or is it about oil?’

‘The Trump administration is focused on doing many things in the Western Hemisphere,’ Leavitt responded. ‘The president has taken a new approach that has not been taken by any administration for quite some time to actually focus on what’s going on in our own backyard. And there are two things that are very important to this administration.’

The boat strikes are viewed as part of a U.S. pressure campaign on Venezuela likely aimed to not only curb the flow of drugs, but also to oust dictatorial President Nicolás Maduro as leader of the oil-rich nation. 

‘Number one, stopping the flow of illegal drugs into the United States of America, which we know has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans,’ she continued, before adding that Trump is ‘fully committed to effectuating this administration’s sanction policy. And that’s what you saw, and the world saw take place yesterday.’

‘With respect to the oil and what happened yesterday, the Department of Justice requested and was approved for a warrant to seize a vessel because it’s a sanctioned shadow vessel known for carrying black market sanctioned oil to the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), which, you know, is a sanctioned entity,’ she continued. Venezuela is already subject to extensive U.S. sanctions, but was historically a major crude-oil supplier for the U.S.

Leavitt added that the administration will remain committed to the ‘president’s sanction policies and the sanction policies of the United States.’

‘We’re not going to stand by and watch sanctioned vessels sail the seas with black market oil. The proceeds of which will fuel narco-terrorism of rogue and illegitimate regimes around the world,’ she said. 

Fox News Digital’s Morgan Phillips contributed to this report.