Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth quipped that the Trump administration has wiped out ‘99.9%’ of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives (DEI) from the military during a Cabinet meeting on Thursday. 

President Donald Trump questioned Hegseth about whether the military had eradicated 100% of DEI efforts under his leadership, as Cabinet members shared updates on their own agencies’ attempts to purge such policies. 

‘99.9, sir – I’m going to get that last point,’ Hegseth said. 

The Trump administration has unveiled multiple initiatives to curb DEI initiatives within the military, including signing an executive order in January barring transgender people from enlisting and serving openly in the military. 

However, two federal judges issued nationwide injunctions in March blocking the Trump administration from enforcing the ban while the lawsuit is pending. In a judgment rendered on March 19, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes of Washington, D.C., said the Trump administration’s order was ‘soaked in animus,’ and discriminated based on a person’s transgender status.

‘Indeed, the cruel irony is that thousands of transgender servicemembers have sacrificed – some risking their lives – to ensure for others the very equal protection rights the Military Ban seeks to deny them,’ Reyes wrote in the decision.

Trump signed another executive order in January banning DEI content in K–12 schools that receive federal funds. While military service academies were originally exempt since they are not classified as K–12 institutions, the Pentagon issued instructions to the Naval Academy to remove DEI-related books from its library in March. 

Included in the list of nearly 400 books purged are ‘How to be Anti-Racist’ and ‘Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America’ by Ibram X. Kendi, as well as ‘Our Time is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America,’ by former Georgia Rep. Stacey Abrams.

Kendi is the founding director emeritus of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research. He rose to national prominence following the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.

Hegseth has made clear that the Pentagon will not tolerate any DEI initiatives under his watch. 

‘The President’s guidance (lawful orders) is clear: No more DEI at @DeptofDefense,’ Hegseth said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, in January. ‘The Pentagon will comply, immediately. No exceptions, name-changes, or delays.’ 

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

A bipartisan duo of House lawmakers is moving to ensure the U.S. government is free from Chinese-made technology after President Donald Trump hiked tariffs against Beijing.

Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Texas, is leading the Securing America’s Federal Equipment (SAFE) Supply Chains Act alongside Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif.

It would impose new guardrails on the technology the U.S. government is able to purchase by forcing a federal agency or office to only purchase it from ‘original equipment manufacturers’ or ‘authorized resellers,’ according to the bill text obtained by Fox News Digital.

The bill targets U.S. government technology purchased through the ‘gray market,’ an alternative channel for purchasing and selling genuine goods without the authorization of the manufacturer.

Fallon said his bill ‘dovetails’ with Trump’s hawkish stance on China.

‘With the rising threat posed by Chinese aggression, not only in the Indo-Pacific, but here at home by means of artificial intelligence and cyberattacks, it’s critical that the Department of Defense secure its vital infrastructure,’ Fallon explained to Fox News Digital. 

‘In order to do so, we must ensure that the U.S. military only purchases electronic equipment from approved vendors that are free from adversarial, particularly [Chinese Communist Party], influence.’

He praised Trump’s ‘bold leadership’ in the U.S. ‘breaking its dependency on Communist China.’

‘The SAFE Supply Chains Act dovetails with this endeavor and is in the best interest of U.S. national security,’ he said.

The White House said Thursday it had imposed 145% in new tariffs on China, up from the 125% Trump announced the day before.

While hiking rates on China, Trump said he would reduce tariffs on other countries that did not retaliate against the U.S. to his baseline of 10%.

‘Look, for years we’ve been ripped off and taken advantage of by China — and others, in all fairness — but by China, there’s a big one. And it’s just one of those things,’ Trump said Wednesday.

Fallon’s bill has a counterpart in the Senate led by senators John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Gary Peters, D-Mich.

DOGE Chief Elon Musk says the organization is set to save the U.S. government more than $150 billion in cuts to waste and fraud in FY 2026.

Musk made the comment during a public Cabinet meeting with President Donald Trump on Thursday. 

‘We anticipate savings in FY 26 from reduction of waste and fraud by $150 billion. And, I mean, and some of it is just absurd. Like people getting unemployment insurance who haven’t been born yet,’ Musk said.

‘People ask me how are you going to find waste and fraud in a government? I’m like, well, actually, just go in any direction. That’s how you find it. It’s very common. It’s, as a military would say, a target-rich environment,’ he continued.

‘So, I think we’re doing a lot of good, and in excellent collaboration with the Cabinet, to achieve these savings. And it will actually result in better services for the American people. And then we’re going to be spending their tax dollars in a way that is sensible and fair and good,’ he added.

Thursday’s Cabinet meeting comes less than a day after DOGE announced the cancelation of 108 ‘wasteful contracts’ on Wednesday.

DOGE said the contacts had a ceiling value of $250 million and a savings of $70 million. 

The problem contracts included a $14,000 commitment by the Department of Health and Human Services for an ‘executive transformational leadership training program.’

Another was a $5.2 million contract with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the human resources agency for the federal government, to ‘provide strategic advisory and assistance to improve and transform current processes and organizational systems.’

— The Food and Drug Administration is phasing out an animal testing requirement for antibody therapies and other drugs in favor of testing on materials that mimic human organs, the FDA announced on Thursday. 

‘For too long, drug manufacturers have performed additional animal testing of drugs that have data in broad human use internationally. This initiative marks a paradigm shift in drug evaluation and holds promise to accelerate cures and meaningful treatments for Americans while reducing animal use,’ FDA Commissioner Martin A. Makary, said in comment provided to Fox News Digital. 

 ‘By leveraging AI-based computational modeling, human organ model-based lab testing, and real-world human data, we can get safer treatments to patients faster and more reliably, while also reducing R&D costs and drug prices. It is a win-win for public health and ethics.’ 

The phase-out focuses on ending animal testing in regard to researching monoclonal antibody therapies, which are lab-made proteins meant to stimulate the immune system to fight diseases such as cancer, as well as other drugs, according to the press release. 

Instead, the FDA will encourage testing on ‘organoids,’ which are artificially grown masses of cells, according to the FDA’s press release obtained by Fox Digital. 

‘The FDA will promote the use of lab-grown human ‘organoids’ and organ-on-a-chip systems that mimic human organs – such as liver, heart, and immune organs – to test drug safety. These experiments can reveal toxic effects that could easily go undetected in animals, providing a more direct window into human responses,’ the press release says. 

The FDA will also encourage the use of AI while testing drugs, including building computer modeling that can predict a drug’s behavior, Fox Digital learned. 

The phase-out will include updating its guidelines to recognize research conducted on organoids and through AI.

‘Companies that submit strong safety data from non-animal tests may receive streamlined review, as the need for certain animal studies is eliminated, which would incentivize investment in modernized testing platforms,’ the FDA explained in its press release. 

The FDA is slated to also work with fellow federal agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health, the National Toxicology Program and the Department of Veterans Affairs, to ‘accelerate the validation’ of the new testing standards and will hold a public workshop later this year to further discuss the matter. 

‘For patients, it means a more efficient pipeline for novel treatments. It also means an added margin of safety, since human-based test systems may better predict real-world outcomes. For animal welfare, it represents a major step toward ending the use of laboratory animals in drug testing. Thousands of animals, including dogs and primates, could eventually be spared each year as these new methods take root,’ Makary said. 

A Mexican drug lord was released from custody after being convicted in the 1985 killing of Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique ‘Kiki’ Camarena. 

Ernesto ‘Don Neto’ Fonseca Carrillo, one of the co-founders of the Guadalajara Cartel, was freed last weekend after completing his 40-year sentence, a federal agent confirmed to the Associated Press. 

Fonseca, 94, had been serving the remainder of his sentence under home confinement outside Mexico City since being moved from prison in 2016. The DEA did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday from Fox News Digital. 

Rafael Caro Quintero, another Guadalajara Cartel co-founder who also was convicted in the murder, was one of 29 cartel figures Mexico sent to the United States in February. It’s unclear if the U.S. is now looking to bring Fonseca into custody. 

At the time of his murder, the DEA and Camarena had been utilizing a series of wiretaps to make sizeable drug busts inside Mexico. 

In February 1985, as Camarena left to meet his wife for lunch outside the U.S. consulate in Guadalajara, he was surrounded by officers from the DFS, a Mexican intelligence agency that no longer exists. 

‘Back in the middle 1980s, the DFS, their main role was to protect the drug lords,’ former DEA agent Hector Berrellez, who led the investigation into Camarena’s murder, told Fox News in 2013. 

The DFS agents then took Camarena, blindfolded and held at gunpoint, to one of Caro Quintero’s haciendas nearby. 

For more than 30 hours, Caro-Quintero and others interrogated Camarena and crushed his skull, jaw, nose and cheekbones with a tire iron. They broke his ribs, drilled a hole in his head and tortured him with a cattle prod. As Camarena lay dying, Caro-Quintero ordered a cartel doctor to keep the U.S. agent alive. 

The 37-year-old’s body was found dumped on a nearby ranch about a month later. 

In 2013, Caro Quintero walked free after serving 28 years in prison.  He was released after a court overturned his 40-year sentence for the kidnapping and killing of Camarena. 

Caro Quintero was arrested again by Mexican forces in July 2022 after he allegedly returned to drug trafficking. 

Fox News’ Greg Wehner, William La Jeunesse, Lee Ross and the Associated Press contributed to this report. 

A 2022 Defense Department report long withheld by the Biden administration has recently surfaced and reveals that seven U.S. service members showed COVID-19-like symptoms after having competed in the World Military Games in Wuhan, China, months before the deadly virus first broke out in the U.S.

The explosive disclosure suggests that the virus was circulating in Wuhan months before China disclosed it to the world in December 2019. The games took place in October 2019, two months earlier. 

It also challenges the Biden administration’s public claims in 2021 that there was no evidence that any American participants contracted the virus at those games. The CIA, FBI and Energy Department have all now suggested that the COVID-19 virus pandemic may have originated via a lab leak from the city’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The 2022 report was legally required to be released publicly online more than two years ago ‘in a searchable format,’ but it only became available some time in late March, when the Trump administration uploaded it to a Defense Department website, The Washington Free Beacon reported. 

The outlet reported that the Biden administration did send copies of the report to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees in December 2022, but the report was never made available online by the administration. 

The report found that of the 263 U.S. delegation that traveled to the event, seven U.S. members showed COVID-19-like symptoms between Oct. 18, 2019 and Jan. 21, 2020. All symptoms were resolved within six days and could be attributed to other respiratory illnesses​.

The report also found that there were no significant outbreaks of COVID-19-like symptoms at Defense Department facilities after the athletes returned, although service members were not tested for COVID-19 or antibodies as testing was not available at that early stage of the pandemic.

However, Washington was one of the earliest states to show a spike in COVID-19, and the U.S. team used chartered flights to and from the games via Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Prospect reported.

Then-Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby told the Washington Post in June 2021 that the military had ‘no knowledge’ of any COVID-19 infections among the troops that participated in those games.

The Pentagon, during Trump’s first term, said in June 2020 that there was no reason to test members as the event was held ‘prior to the reported outbreak,’ Prospect reported. 

Other international athletes reported having come down with COVID-19-like symptoms, the Daily Mail reported in June 2021. 

The games have long been suspected as being a ‘super spreader’ event which took place close to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The U.S.-based EcoHealth Alliance, partially funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health was conducting gain of function research there. 

‘Many of the athletes said ​Wuhan looked like a ‘ghost town’ in October‚ two months before China reported the first case of coronavirus there,’ the New York Post reported.

Former Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., in 2021 said that those months were critical and could have helped the United States understand the disease and ‘shut down travel earlier in order to stop the spread and ultimately save potentially millions of lives.’

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In a massive victory for President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., the House of Representatives passed a bill Thursday that will set the stage for a massive conservative policy overhaul.

The legislation passed mostly along party lines on Thursday morning after a long night of negotiations between House GOP leaders and fiscal hawks who were critical of its spending cut levels.

Just two Republicans voted against the legislation – Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Victoria Spartz, R-Ind. – which passed 216 to 214. No Democrats supported it, as expected. Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., held a press conference on Thursday morning in a bid to allay conservatives’ concerns.

‘I’m happy to tell you that this morning, I believe we have the votes to finally adopt the budget resolution so we can move forward on President Trump’s very important agenda for the American people,’ Johnson said. ‘Our first big, beautiful reconciliation package here, involves a number of commitments. And one of those is that we are committed to finding at least $1.5 trillion in savings for the American people, while also preserving our essential programs.’

Thune added, ‘We are aligned with the House in terms of what their budget resolution outlined in terms of savings. The speaker has talked about $1.5 trillion. We have a lot of United States senators who believe in that as a minimum.’

It comes after the House’s initial plan to vote on the legislation on Wednesday was quickly scuttled at the last minute in the face of more than a dozen Republican holdouts.

Several of those holdouts said Thune’s public commitment helped sway them in comments to reporters after the vote.

‘As a chief ally of the president and advocate for his agenda, my colleagues and I worked diligently with the Speaker and Senate Leadership to achieve a historic $1.5 trillion agreement to cut spending,’ Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., told Fox News Digital. ‘There is much work ahead, but we are committed to working together and restoring fiscal accountability to Washington DC.’

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, told reporters, ‘We have now three strong statements from the speaker, the president and the Senate Majority Leader. We did not have those 48 hours ago. We do now.’

Congressional Republicans are working on a massive conservative policy overhaul via the budget reconciliation process. By lowering the Senate’s threshold for passage from 60 votes to 51, it allows the party in power to pass significant fiscal and budgetary policy changes.

In this case, Republicans are looking for some added funds for border security, defense, and to raise the debt ceiling – while paring back spending on the former Biden administration’s green energy policies and in other sections of the federal government, likely including entitlement programs.

GOP lawmakers are also looking to extend Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the provisions of which expire at the end of this year. They will also need new funding for Trump’s efforts to eliminate taxes on tipped and overtime wages.

The House passed its own version of the plan earlier this year, calling for at least $1.5 trillion in spending cuts to offset the new spending and attempt to bring down the national debt – which is over $36 trillion. The Senate’s plan closely aligns with the House version, but mandates a minimum of $4 billion in cuts, a significant gap to bridge.

An unrelated vote was held open for over an hour on Wednesday night, with lawmakers growing impatient on the House floor, while Johnson huddled in a back room with holdouts. 

One House Republican told Fox News Digital there was some frustration with how Johnson handled the matter.

‘He kept the entire conference out on the floor for 80 minutes while you play graba– with these people,’ the GOP lawmaker fumed. ‘And all day it was like, ‘Oh, we’re going to get this done.”

That House Republican said, ‘All the chatter we were hearing was [holdouts were] down to single digits. But 17 … 20 people were in that room. So clearly there was a much bigger problem than they were letting on all day.’

Traditionally, the House and Senate must pass identical reconciliation frameworks to begin the work of crafting policy to fit into that framework. 

Republicans are also working up against the clock – the debt ceiling is expected to be reached sometime this summer, after which the U.S. government risks a national default if it does not raise that limit to pay its debts.

Trump’s 2017 tax cuts are also projected to expire at the end of this year if they are not extended. 

Greenpeace’s United Kingdom leader and five other activists reportedly were arrested Thursday after tossing hundreds of liters of ‘blood-red dye’ into a pond at the U.S. embassy in London in a protest against the war in Gaza. 

The environmental group said the action was to ‘highlight the death and devastation caused in Gaza as a direct result of the US’ continued sale of weapons to Israel.’ 

‘Twelve activists tipped the non-toxic, biodegradable dye from containers emblazoned with the words ‘Stop Arming Israel’ into the large pond located in front of the embassy building in Nine Elms, south-west London,’ Greenpeace said in a statement. ‘The containers were delivered to the Embassy on bicycles with trailers disguised as delivery bikes.’ 

Greenpeace later said Will McCallum, the co-executive director of Greenpeace UK, was one of six people taken into custody.  

He was charged with suspicion of conspiracy to cause criminal damage, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, according to the organization. The others reportedly received similar charges. 

‘At 07:30hrs on Thursday, 10 April, officers on duty at the US Embassy in Nine Elms became aware of a group of Greenpeace protesters putting red dye into the pond at the side of the building. The group made off, but officers responded quickly and carried out a search of the area,’ a Metropolitan Police spokesperson told Fox News Digital. ‘Six people have so far been arrested nearby on suspicion of criminal damage and conspiracy to cause criminal damage.

‘The pond is accessible via a public footpath. There was no breach or attempted breach of the secure perimeter of the site,’ the spokesperson added.

The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond Thursday to a request for comment from Fox News Digital. 

Footage released by Greenpeace UK purportedly showed the activists dumping the dye into the pond at the American embassy Thursday. 

‘We’ve turned the embassy pond blood-red because U.S. weapons continue to fuel an indiscriminate war that’s seen bombs dropped on schools and hospitals, entire neighborhoods blasted to rubble, and tens of thousands of Palestinian lives obliterated,’ Areeba Hamid, co-executive director at Greenpeace UK, said in a statement. 

‘The ceasefire Trump claimed credit for has collapsed and full-scale war is back. If Trump has any real interest in stopping the war, he should listen to the majority of Americans and stop arming Israel now,’ she added. ‘And the UK government should do the same.’ 

Big media and big finance insisted the financial sky was falling this week, but with President Donald Trump, you never know exactly where you are in any deal-making process. Weighing in too soon can make you look stupid.

On Wednesday, the deal-maker in chief announced a 90-day pause on sky-high tariffs directed at 75 nations which did not retaliate against his measures and have asked the administration for a reprieve and time to negotiate.

Democrats, and a fair number of free-marketeer conservatives to boot, celebrated Trump ‘caving’ to the pressure of the financial markets. But when the smoke settled, it was clear that, far from folding, Trump had instituted a historic tariff regime, and somehow got a stock market rally out of it.

By Thursday morning, Trump had slammed communist China with a whopping 125% tariff, maintained a 25% penalty on certain goods from Canada and Mexico, placed a blanket tariff of 10% on most of the rest of world, and had nations lined up outside the White House to negotiate like it was the Olympic opening ceremonies.

Make no mistake, as little as two months ago, those accusing Trump of folding would have called the tariffs he landed at on Wednesday unconscionable, but after the past week’s turmoil, the largest tariff increase in decades looked like a moderate, market-soothing compromise.

And the good news for working-class Americans, now the solid core of Trump’s support and that of the Republican Party, is that the effort to restore American manufacturing is only getting started.

You see, while the Ebenezer Scrooges at libertarian think tanks have long since written off small industrial towns as gone for good, Donald Trump has not. 

And it isn’t just a matter of sympathy or fairness for these far-flung factory towns, it is also a matter of national security, of being capable of making our own weapons, pharmaceuticals and computer chips.

The point of Trump’s tariff turmoil was never tariffs for their own sake; it was and is to reshape American trade and make our nation less dependent on geopolitical and ideological foes such as China.

Those who support the president’s effort to reshore manufacturing and reinvigorate forgotten America don’t care if it happens through tariffs or trade deals. They only care that the jobs come home, even if it means paying more for Chinese widgets.

Of course, this infuriates the free-marketeers for whom cheapness is next to godliness, but what did they think populism was? Mitt Romney in cowboy boots?

Of course, this infuriates the free-marketeers for whom cheapness is next to godliness, but what did they think populism was? Mitt Romney in cowboy boots?

I would say that the free traders and libertarians have no answers for small-town America, but actually they do. It appears to be flooding them with tens of thousands of Haitian migrants. Seriously.

What the free-market fanboys fail to realize is that tariffs and trade deals are not just economic issues, they are very much cultural issues as well. The question isn’t just how big a number we can ring up on the national cash register, it’s also quality of life.

Let’s take the COVID lockdowns as an example. 

Five years ago last month, the stock market crashed as the Chinese virus was unleashed. For the rest of the year, many, if not most, Americans stayed home all day and night, streamed video, and ordered from Amazon and DoorDash.

By December, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was higher than it was before COVID hit. 

Now, would any of us say that 2020 was a great time? Does anyone other than a hypochondriac New Yorker magazine essayist look back fondly on being locked in our homes and out of our houses of worship?

Of course not.

The American novelist Jack Kerouac once famously quipped, ‘I don’t want a living, I want a life.’ To be sure, those of us who are not committed to life on the road as beat poets need both, but thankfully President Trump understands that global trade is about much, much more than money.

Importantly, Trump is not doing this alone. Had his supporters panicked as so many conservative commentators did last week, he would not have achieved the tariffs we’ve arrived at or the upcoming negotiations.

The reason that Canada is buying billboards in Florida blaring the message ‘Tariffs Are Taxes’ is that they want Americans to be as freaked out over the tariffs as the Canadians I met last month in Calgary are.

But that isn’t happening. Those who believe in Trump’s vision to transform American manufacturing are heeding the president’s soothing advice to ‘be cool,’ and support his America first agenda.

JERUSALEM — A leading U.S. research institute devoted to monitoring Iran’s illicit nuclear weapons program published an alarming report ahead of this weekend’s U.S.-Iran talks, declaring Tehran’s atomic weapons system has reached an extremely dangerous stage.

The Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Science and International Security titled its shocking new report, ‘The Iran Threat Geiger Counter: Extreme Danger Grows.’ 

According to the study, ‘Since February 2024, the date of its last report, the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program has worsened significantly. Major negative factors include Iran’s greater nuclear weapon capabilities, its shorter time frames to build nuclear weapons, and the growing normalization of internal Iranian discussions favoring building nuclear weapons.

‘The possibility of Iran deciding to build nuclear weapons has been increased by the ongoing military conflicts in the Middle East, pitting Iran and its proxy forces against Israel and its allies, a conflict Iran is losing. The volatile security situation is now combined with the perception, if not the reality, that Iran is preparing to build nuclear weapons.’

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump said, ‘We have a little time, but we don’t have much time, because we’re not going to let them have a nuclear weapon. We can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.’  He added ‘I’m not asking for much. I just — I don’t — they can’t have a nuclear weapon.’

When asked about the potential for military action if Iran does not make a deal on their nuclear weapons, Trump said, ‘Absolutely.’

‘If it requires military, we’re going to have military,’ the president told reporters at the White House. ‘Israel will obviously be very much involved in that. They’ll be the leader of that. But nobody leads us. We do what we want to do.’

Trump withdrew from the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal—the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—in 2018 because, he argued, that the accord did not stop Tehran’s drive to build a nuclear weapons device.

A state-controlled Iranian news outlet claimed on Monday that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s alleged fatwa against nuclear weapons does not outlaw their production but bans their use. Fox News Digital sought to obtain a copy of the alleged religious fatwa from Iran, but the regime has so far refused to provide the document. Iran experts have claimed that the fatwa is non-existent. 

The Institute for Science and International Security report also warned that ‘Iran still possesses military capabilities that threaten the region. It has large stockpiles of drones, ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles that it can employ against Israel and its allies. Iran also continues to be a major player in the Ukraine war, backing Russia with vast arms transfers, including drones and missiles.’

The mouthpiece of Iran’s Khamenei—the anti-American paper Kayhan—just urged the assassination of Trump.

A State Department spokesperson told Fox News Digital that ‘Threatening language from the Iranian regime or its mouthpiece against the President, or any American, is unwise.’

Iran’s regime has sought to assassinate Iranian American dissidents on American soil.

Fox News Digital reporter Alec Schemmel contributed to this report.