Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, who announced on Wednesday that he will be departing from his role in January, later replied to FBI Director Kash Patel, who gave him a glowing review.

‘Dan is the best partner I could’ve asked for in helping restore this FBI. He brought critical reforms to make the organization more efficient, led the successful Summer Heat op, served as the people’s voice for transparency, and delivered major breakthroughs in long unsolved cases like the pipe bomb investigation. And that’s only a small part of the work he went about every single day delivering for America,’ Patel said in a post on X.

‘He not only completed his mission – he far exceeded it. We will miss him but I’m thankful he accepted the call to serve. Our country is better and safer for it,’ Patel added.

Bongino replied, thanking Patel.

‘Thank you my friend, it’s been the honor of a lifetime to serve beside you,’ he wrote.

Bongino, a former Secret Service agent who stepped aside from his work hosting a popular show as a conservative commentator to join the FBI, will depart the federal law enforcement agency less than a year after his swearing-in ceremony, which occurred in March 2025.

Prior to Bongino’s announcement on Wednesday, President Donald Trump said, ‘Dan did a great job,’ noting that he thinks Bongino wants to return to his show.

Attorney General Pam Bondi shared Bongino’s announcement post, commenting, ‘Americans are safer because of @FBIDDBongino’s service. Thank you, Dan.’

The House passed a bill on Wednesday that would criminalize gender transition treatment for minors.

The measure, sponsored by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., passed by a 216-211 vote with some bipartisan support.

Reps. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, Vicente Gonzalez, D-Texas, and Don Davis, D-N.C., voted with most Republicans for the bill, while Reps. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., Gabe Evans, R-Colo., and Mike Kennedy, R-Utah, voted with most Democrats against the measure.

‘Children are NOT experiments. No more drugs. No more surgeries. No more permanent harm. We need to let kids grow up without manipulation from adults to make life-altering decisions! Congress must protect America’s children!!!’ Greene wrote on X ahead of the vote.

Greene had reached a deal with House leadership to bring her bill to the floor in exchange for her backing a rule last week to advance the National Defense Authorization Act.

The bill faces a significant hurdle to pass the Senate, as Republicans would need Democrat support to approve the legislation in the Upper Chamber.

The American Civil Liberties Union criticized the House passage, saying the measure ‘would have immediate and devastating effects on the lives and transgender youth and their families across the country.’

‘Politicians should never prohibit parents from doing what is best for their transgender children,’ Mike Zamore, National Director of Policy & Government Affairs at the ACLU, said in a statement. ‘These families often spend years considering how best to support their children, only to have ill-equipped politicians interfere by attempting to criminalize the health care that they, their children, and their doctors believe is necessary to allow their children to thrive.’

‘But this bill also creates an incredibly dangerous precedent far beyond the specific care at issue, criminalizing care based on ideology and placing Washington politicians between families and their doctors,’ he continued. ‘We strongly condemn the passage of this measure and urge members of the Senate to do everything in their power to prevent it from ever becoming law.’

Greene and Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, butted heads over the bill before its passage. The Georgia congresswoman, set to resign next month, had criticized Roy, who sits on the House Rules Committee, for introducing an amendment she argued would ‘gut the commerce clause.’

Roy’s amendment attempted to modify the bill to limit federal criminal liability under certain circumstances ‘by defining when prohibited conduct falls within federal jurisdiction,’ according to the Rules Committee.

But Greene contended that her bill ‘criminalizes ALL pediatric gender affirming care (transgender surgeries, puberty blockers, and hormones) NOT just those receiving federal funds and protects ALL children allowing them to grow up before they make permanent changes to their body that they can never undo!!!’

‘WTF is Chip Roy doing????? And this guy wants to be attorney general of Texas but refuses to protect children??!!!’ she wrote on X.

Roy responded that ‘the constitution matters & we should not bastardize it to use ‘interstate commerce’ to empower federal authorities.’

The Texas Republican, however, said in a statement on Wednesday that he would not offer the amendment ‘to avoid any confusion about how united Republicans are in protecting children from these grotesque procedures.’

Senate Republicans inched closer to history Wednesday after blowing past yet another procedural obstacle on their way to confirming nearly 100 of President Donald Trump’s nominees.

As part of their mad dash from Washington ahead of the upcoming holiday recess, Senate Republicans advanced a tranche of 97 of Trump’s picks. The 53-47 party-line vote puts the GOP one step away from confirming the batch of nominees.

The final confirmation vote is expected Thursday, barring an agreement with Senate Democrats to speed up the process.

And if that vote is successful, which it is expected to be, Senate Republicans will have confirmed more of Trump’s picks than any other president in one year.

The current nominees package would place Trump at 415 total confirmed during the first year of his second term, which leapfrogs his total of 323 during his first term. It also blows past former President Joe Biden, who, at the same period at the end of his first year in office, had 365.

Senate Republicans have rapidly confirmed hundreds of Trump’s picks since changing the Senate’s rules for the confirmation process in September in a bid to smash through Senate Democrats’ blockade against advancing even the most low-level positions throughout the Trump administration.

The GOP went nuclear — the fourth time in the Senate’s history — to lower the threshold for certain picks to just a simple majority, rather than the typical, 60-vote filibuster.

That change has allowed Republicans to quickly move through sub-cabinet level positions at a brisk pace and to tee up Trump’s expected historic moment.

Among the list of nominees are former Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, R-N.Y., to serve as inspector general at the Department of Labor and two picks for the National Labor Relations Board, James Murphy and Scott Mayer, along with several others in nearly every federal agency.

Lawmakers also separately confirmed Trump’s choice to run NASA, billionaire Jared Isaacman, and his pick for a spot on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Douglas Weaver.

Isaacman’s confirmation sailed through on a bipartisan 67-30 vote but served as the second go-round for the upper chamber to ruminate on his ascension atop NASA.

Trump had nominated him to run the nation’s space agency in December 2024, but he was pulled earlier this year after a ‘thorough review of prior associations.’

But Isaacman was later nominated again in November for the same post, and Trump lauded his ‘passion for space, astronaut experience, and dedication to pushing the boundaries of exploration, unlocking the mysteries of the universe, and advancing the new space economy.’

More than 200 House Democrats voted against a bill aimed at criminalizing transgender medical treatment for minors Wednesday evening.

The bill passed in a 216-211 vote that had some bipartisan crossover.

Three Democrats — Vicente Gonzalez, D-Texas; Don Davis, D-N.C.; and Henry Cuellar, D-Texas — voted with Republicans for the bill. 

Four Republicans — Mike Kennedy, R-Utah; Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa.; Gabe Evans, R-Colo.; and Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., voted against it.

It was widely opposed by most Democrats, however. Forty-five House Republicans signed on to formally back the legislation before the vote.

And while the majority of Republicans supported it on the House floor, it’s unclear if it will be taken up in the GOP-led Senate.

Transgender issues, particularly related to minors, have been one of the topics driving a wedge between moderate and progressive Democrats. But the severity of the bill’s language appears to have turned off a significant number of Democrats in the House.

The bill creates new federal crimes that carry up to 10 years in prison for doctors performing transgender-affirming surgeries on minors, while also making it a crime to prescribe puberty blockers.

Parents or guardians of children under 18 could also be held criminally liable if they consent to or otherwise facilitate transgender treatment for them.

‘This extreme bill puts the threat of prosecution between hundreds of thousands of families and their doctors and would put doctors behind bars for exercising their best medical judgment,’ said Mike Zamore, national director of policy & government affairs at the American Civil Liberties Union 

‘Passing this bill would be a grave escalation of an already severe effort to not only push transgender people out of public life but also allow the state to control our bodies and our lives further.’

Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., who argued in favor of the bill on the House floor, said Wednesday, ‘It is obscene. It is disgusting. You’re seeing, in real time, Democrats wanting and defending grooming of children. And it is abhorrent.

‘There is a lie at the heart of the debate we’re having today that I have to correct. No child is born in the wrong body. There are only two sexes, male and female. There are no others.’

The Senate confirmed billionaire private astronaut Jared Isaacman Wednesday in a 67-30 vote to serve as NASA administrator, months after President Donald Trump withdrew the same nomination during his public feud with Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

The confirmation places Isaacman, an investor in SpaceX and leader of two private spaceflight missions, at the helm of the nation’s space agency. Reuters reported that Isaacman becomes NASA’s 15th administrator and is known as an advocate of Mars missions.

Trump previously pulled Isaacman’s nomination in May, citing what he described at the time as ‘a thorough review of prior associations.’ 

Fox News Digital reported at the time that the decision was made amid escalating tensions between Trump and Musk, who had recently departed his role leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and publicly criticized Trump’s ‘One Big, Beautiful Bill.’

Isaacman later suggested the timing of the withdrawal was no coincidence. 

Speaking on the ‘All-In Podcast,’ he said, ‘I don’t need to play dumb on this. I don’t think that the timing was much of a coincidence.’ He added that ‘there were some people that had some axes to grind, I guess, and I was a good, visible target,’ Fox News Digital previously reported.

The nomination was revisited in the fall as relations between Trump and Musk appeared to thaw. In October, NASA officials confirmed Isaacman was again under consideration after meetings with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who was tasked with vetting candidates for the permanent NASA role at Trump’s direction.

Trump formally renominated Isaacman in November, praising him in a social media post.

‘Jared’s passion for Space, and his commitment to American Leadership in Space, make him ideally suited to lead NASA into a bold new Era,’ Trump wrote.

Fox News Digital has extensively reported on the broader Trump-Musk feud that surrounded the nomination’s earlier withdrawal. In May and June, the two men publicly exchanged harsh words over Trump’s ‘One Big, Beautiful Bill.’ 

Musk accused Trump of pushing a ‘disgusting abomination,’ while Trump said Musk had gone ‘CRAZY’ and was ‘wearing thin.’ 

Signs of reconciliation followed when Trump and Musk shook hands and spoke briefly at Charlie Kirk’s memorial, with Trump later saying, ‘We had a little conversation. We had a very good relationship, but it was nice that he came over.’ 

Musk also attended a White House dinner hosted by Trump and appeared at other administration events.

Trump later teased Musk publicly, telling an audience, ‘You’re so lucky I’m with you, Elon. I’ll tell you. Has he ever thanked me properly?’ 

Musk responded on X by saying, ‘I would like to thank President Trump for all he has done for America and the world.’

Axios reported Tuesday that Musk has begun financially backing Republican House and Senate candidates ahead of the 2026 midterms, showing warming relations after what the outlet described as a ‘messy breakup’ earlier this year. 

Politico similarly reported that Musk has said his relationship with Trump ‘went up in flames’ in June but has since been rebuilt.

Isaacman’s confirmation brings that arc to a close, cementing his leadership role at NASA. 

Isaacman previously commanded Inspiration4, the first all-civilian mission to orbit Earth, and later led the Polaris Dawn mission, both in partnership with SpaceX. 

The White House and representatives for Musk and Isaacman did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.

House Republicans passed a bill they say will lower healthcare costs for a broad swath of Americans by roughly 11%.

It’s a victory for Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who has been managing deep divisions within the House GOP on the topic of healthcare as insurance premiums are set to spike across the country in a matter of weeks.

One glaring issue that remains unresolved is Obamacare subsidies, which were enhanced during the COVID-19 pandemic but are set to expire at the end of this year.

The legislation passed 216 to 211. Just one Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., voted against it along with all House Democrats.

The bill’s passage comes hours after a group of moderate Republicans joined a Democrat-led discharge petition to force a vote on extending the subsidies for another three years.

A discharge petition is a mechanism for overriding the will of House leaders to get a chamberwide vote on specific legislation, provided it has support from a majority of lawmakers. It sets up the legislation for a vote sometime in the new year.

Each of the four House Republicans made clear that backing Democrats’ bill was not their first choice, but they felt they were left with few options after Johnson made clear this week that there would not be a separate vote on extending the subsidies before the end of this year.

But the majority of House Republicans are against extending the subsidies, at least without significant reforms. Conservatives have argued the subsidies amount to throwing more money at a long-broken system that does little to tackle the actual cost of healthcare.

‘Obamacare has been an unmitigated disaster for 15 years, crushing families with high premiums and rampant fraud while enriching insurance companies. It’s time for conservatives to get serious about advancing policies that can become law and therefore actually reduce costs,’ Republican Study Committee Chairman August Pfluger, R-Texas, who called the House bill a ‘solid first step,’ told Fox News Digital.

Republicans who are for extending them have also conceded that reforms are needed, but have positioned a short-term extension as the best course of action to buy more time to work on an off-ramp.

The House GOP bill, the Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act, includes provisions to codify association health plans, which allow small businesses and people who are self-employed to band together to purchase healthcare coverage plans, giving them access to greater bargaining power.

Republicans also plan to appropriate funding for cost-sharing reductions beginning in 2027, which are designed to lower out-of-pocket medical costs in the individual healthcare market. House GOP leadership aides said it would bring down the cost of premiums by 12%.

New transparency requirements for pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) are also in the legislation, aimed at forcing PBMs to be more upfront about costs to employers.

PBMs are third parties that act as intermediaries between pharmaceutical companies and those responsible for insurance coverage, often responsible for administrative tasks and negotiating drug prices.

PBMs have also been the subject of bipartisan ire in Congress, with both Republicans and Democrats accusing them of being part of a broken system to inflate health costs.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that enacting the bill would reduce the federal deficit by $35.6 billion for a 10-year period through 2035.

If the bill became law, it would also decrease the number of people with health insurance by an average of 100,000 per year between 2027-2035 and lower gross benchmark premium costs by an average 11% through 2035, CBO said.

However, it’s not immediately clear whether it will be taken up by the Senate.

Republicans in the upper chamber failed to advance their own healthcare plan last week after also rejecting Democrats’ plan to extend the Obamacare subsidies.

FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino is leaving the bureau in January after speculation rose this week concerning his departure.

‘I will be leaving my position with the FBI in January,’ Bongino wrote in an X post Wednesday. ‘I want to thank President [Donald] Trump, AG [Pam] Bondi, and Director [Kash] Patel for the opportunity to serve with purpose. Most importantly, I want to thank you, my fellow Americans, for the privilege to serve you. God bless America, and all those who defend Her.’

President Donald Trump hinted at the news on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews earlier in the afternoon, saying, ‘Dan did a great job. I think he wants to go back to his show.’

Bongino, a former Secret Service agent, had no FBI experience before Trump tapped him to serve in the No. 2 position there. Prior to Bongino, the role had for more than a century been filled by someone who worked at the bureau, according to the FBI Agents Association. The position does not require Senate confirmation.

Fox News confirmed Andrew Bailey, co-deputy director, has been on the job since September and will stay on for now in the deputy role reporting to Patel.

The White House and the FBI did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.

This is a breaking story. Check back later for updates.

Fox News Digital spoke to Minnesota state Rep. Kristin Robbins shortly after she unveiled millions in alleged fraud in the state’s assisted living program and identified an individual already indicted for fraud who is still receiving payments from the state, adding to the already exploding fraud scandal in the state. 

The Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Policy, chaired by Robbins, held a hearing that focused on a new sector of fraud, the state’s assisted living programs, that comes amid a massive unfolding fraud scandal in the state that has affected a variety of other sectors and resulted in calls for the state’s chief executive, Gov. Tim Walz, to resign. 

The committee alleges that a number of individuals tied to other fraud schemes are receiving millions in taxpayer dollars for an assisted living program and that one of those individuals, referred to as ‘FOF Defendant,’ is already facing indictment charges as part of the Feeding the Future fraud scheme yet still receiving payments from Minnesota’s Department of Human Services. 

In a presentation, Robbins outlined properties owned by FOF Defendant connected to the assistant living facility fraud and what she called an ‘unbelievable’ network of fraud that slipped past any oversight procedures. 

‘I bring this to your attention because despite months of hearings, we continue to miss the most basic internal controls and the most basic checks and balances when we are enrolling providers,’ Robbins said during the hearing. ‘This is just one network. Our researchers has multiple networks that we could have discussed today.’

Robbins, who is a Republican candidate for governor to replace Walz next year, says she will be turning her findings over to the U.S. Attorney today for further investigation.

‘I just find it unconscionable that they, the department didn’t run a basic check of all these Feeding Our Future people who’ve been indicted or convicted, and make sure that they weren’t getting state money in other programs,’ Robbins told Fox News Digital.

While investigations into fraud have focus mainly on nonprofits who abused COVID-19 and food aid programs, the committee’s assertion that adult daycare services and assisted living facilities also engaged in fraud suggests that the scandal is more wideranging than previously reported.

‘I expect there will be more fraud uncovered in those sectors. And I’m assuming it’s happening in other states. as we’ve seen, there is a similar fraud going on in Maine, and I’m sure many other states. And so I think all agencies around the country need to be attuned to this and need to look at the programs,’ Robbins said.

She add, ‘And it’s not high finance. It’s basic internal controls that they should be doing.’

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

The fraud scandal in Minnesota, that dates back to at least 2020 but has exploded into the national spotlight in recent weeks, has prompted several swift actions from the Trump administration and Congress.

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 Walz’s role.

The Department of Health and Human Services has launched a review into how Minnesota used billions of dollars in federal social service funding, requesting detailed records from Walz’s administration and other state entities after reports raised questions about whether portions of the money were misused.

On Tuesday, Fox News Digital first reported that Education Secretary Linda McMahon called on Walz to resign over the scandal. 

‘You have been Minnesota’s Governor since 2019,’ McMahon wrote. ‘During that time, your careless lack of oversight and abuse of the welfare system has attracted fraudsters from around the world, especially from Somalia, to establish a beachhead of criminality in our country. As President Trump put it, you have turned Minnesota into a ‘fraudulent hub of money laundering activity.’’

Venezuela tore into President Donald Trump’s Tuesday order to blockade the waters near Venezuela and prevent sanctioned oil tankers from passing through as ‘warmongering threats.’ 

In a statement, the government said Trump’s ‘irrational blockade’ was a ‘grotesque threat’ and an effort to ‘steal’ the nation’s oil wealth. 

Caracas formally filed a complaint with the United Nations Security Council Tuesday as the U.S. took aim at a key lifeline: oil shipments to China.

Venezuelan exports fell sharply this week as U.S. actions disrupted shipping lanes. On Tuesday, Trump demanded Venezuela return ‘stolen’ oil assets to the U.S.

‘Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America. It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before — Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us,’ he wrote on Truth Social. ‘I am ordering A TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE OF ALL SANCTIONED OIL TANKERS going into, and out of, Venezuela.’

Trump’s reference to ‘stolen’ U.S. assets stems from a long-running dispute over Venezuela’s seizure of American-owned oil projects more than a decade ago. Beginning in 2007, the Chávez government forced U.S. firms like ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips to surrender multibillion-dollar investments in some of the country’s largest oil fields, triggering arbitration cases that remain unresolved. 

Those expropriations targeted corporate property, not U.S. government land, but Trump has cast the episode as a broader theft from the American people as he presses for tougher measures against the Maduro regime.

With most Western buyers off the table, China has become Venezuela’s dominant customer for crude, often taking the vast majority of the country’s exportable barrels. Cutting or constraining those shipments threatens the government’s most reliable source of hard currency at a time when Maduro lives in fear of a potential U.S.-led effort to oust him from the presidency.

Oil accounts for around 88% of Venezuela’s $24 billion in export revenues, according to a recent New York Times report.

Amid dozens of strikes on alleged narco-traffickers in the waters near Venezuela, the U.S. has built up its largest military presence in the Latin America region in decades: 15% of all naval assets are now positioned in the Southern Command theater.

On Dec. 10, the U.S. seized a major oil tanker known as the Skipper, and plans to seek a warrant to seize the oil, worth tens of millions.

Analysts say the regime has few practical ways to hit back without doing even more damage to itself.

Maduro could target U.S. oil interests in Venezuela — Chevron still has a license to operate there — but doing so would almost certainly inflict more pain on his own cash-starved regime than on the United States.

President Donald Trump took some not-so-subtle swipes at his predecessors with new plaques below their portraits in the new White House Presidential Walk of Fame.

Former President Joe Biden had already been mocked in the installation, which was unveiled in September, when Trump used a photo of an autopen to represent the 46th president. Now, there are two plaques that include Trump’s nicknames for Biden.

‘Sleepy Joe Biden was, by far, the worst President in American History,’ the top plaque states. ‘Biden oversaw a series of unprecedented disasters that brought our Nation to the brink of destruction. His policies caused the highest Inflation ever recorded, leading the U.S. Dollar to lose more than 20% of its value in 4 years.’

‘Nicknamed both ‘Sleepy’ and ‘Crooked,’ Joe Biden was dominated by his Radical Left handlers. They and their allies in the Fake News Media attempted to cover up his severe mental decline, and his unprecedented use of the Autopen,’ the second plaque reads. ‘Following his humiliating debate loss to President Trump in the big June 2024 debate, he was forced to withdraw from his campaign for re-election in disgrace.’

Trump also took jabs at former President Barack Obama, calling him ‘one of the most divisive political figures in American History.’

‘As President, he passed the highly ineffective ‘Unaffordable’ Care Act, resulting in his party losing control of both Houses of Congress, and the Election of the largest House Republican majority since 1946,’ the first of two plaques says.

‘Obama also spied on the 2016 Presidential Campaign of Donald J. Trump, and presided over the creation of the Russia, Russia Hoax, the worst political scandal in American History,’ the second plaque reads. ‘His handpicked successor, Hillary Rodham Clinton, would then lose the Presidency to Donald J. Trump.’

Despite not ever being president, and therefore not being pictured in the walk of fame, Hillary Clinton is referenced more than once.

Beneath the picture of former President Bill Clinton, a plaque says, ‘In 2016, President Clinton’s wife, Hillary Clinton, lost the Presidency to President Donald J. Trump!’

In November, Trump gave Fox News Channel’s Laura Ingraham a tour of the walk of fame and told her that ‘beautiful bronze plaques’ were going to be installed. He said the plaques would describe the presidents but did not tease the political jabs written on them.