SpaceX workers will visit the Air Traffic Control System Command Center on Monday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy noted in a Sunday post on X, in which he also mentioned former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, with whom he recently engaged in a social media spat.

‘America deserves safe, state-of-the-art air travel, and President Trump has ordered that I deliver a new, world-class air traffic control system that will be the envy of the world,’ Duffy declared, noting that he’d welcome assistance from American developers or businesses.

‘To do that, I need advice from the brightest minds in America. I’m asking for help from any high-tech American developer or company that is willing to give back to our country.

‘Tomorrow, members of @elonmusk’s SpaceX team will be visiting the Air Traffic Control System Command Center in VA to get a firsthand look at the current system, learn what air traffic controllers like and dislike about their current tools, and envision how we can make a new, better, modern and safer system.’

He then brought up Clinton.

‘Because I know the media (and Hillary Clinton) will claim Elon’s team is getting special access, let me make clear that the @FAANews regularly gives tours of the command center to both media and companies.’

In the post on Sunday, Duffy also said that he will visit the FAA Academy this week.

‘Later in the week, I will travel to the FAA Academy in Oklahoma to meet with air traffic controller instructors and students to learn more about their education and how we can ensure that only the very best guide our aircrafts,’ he noted.

‘My door at @USDOT is open to any and all patriotic developers or companies who want to help our country in this incredible, game-changing mission. I hope to hear from any company committed to ushering in America’s golden age of travel!’

President Donald Trump tapped business magnate Elon Musk to spearhead the Department of Government Efficiency, an effort to uncover federal government waste, fraud, and abuse.

‘The safety of air travel is a non-partisan matter. SpaceX engineers will help make air travel safer,’ Musk wrote in response to Duffy’s tweet.

Earlier this month, Clinton and Duffy engaged in a back and forth on X after Duffy noted that the DOGE team would help upgrade the aviation system.

President Donald Trump spoke about his plans to end the Russo-Ukrainian War during a press gaggle on Sunday, stating that he believes the leaders of both countries ‘want to stop fighting.’

Speaking on the tarmac at Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday afternoon, Trump said that he’s currently in the process of ‘trying to get peace with Russia, Ukraine.’

‘And we’re working very hard on it,’ he said. ‘It’s a war that should have never started.’

When asked if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to be involved in the conversations, Trump replied in the affirmative.

‘He will be involved, yes,’ Trump said. When asked by a reporter, Trump also said he would allow Europeans to purchase American-made weapons sold to Ukraine.

The Republican president went on say that he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin, who began the war in February 2014 with the annexation of Crimea and escalated it in February 2022 by invading Ukraine, wants to bring the war to an end.

‘I think he wants to stop fighting,’ Trump said. ‘They have a big, powerful machine, you understand that? And they defeated Hitler and they defeated Napoleon. You know, he’s been fighting a long time…I think he would like to stop fighting.’

‘Zelenskyy wants to end it, too.’

Talks between the U.S. and Russia are expected to begin in Saudi Arabia this week, though it was previously reported that Ukraine was not expected to be directly involved. Trump’s national security advisor Michael Waltz said on ‘Fox News Sunday’ that negotiations will involve ‘key tenants,’ in order to guarantee a ‘permanent end to the war.’

‘The United States and Europe have supported [the Ukrainian] effort, but the United States unquestionably has borne the brunt of that support over the years, but now President Trump is clear it needs to come to an end,’ Waltz said Sunday. 

 Trump’s comments came shortly after a ‘Meet the Press’ interview with Zelenskyy aired on NBC, in which the Ukrainian leader discussed Putin and claimed that he ‘fears’ Trump.

‘I said that [Putin] is a liar,’ Zelenskyy said of a recent phone call to Trump. ‘And he said, ‘I think my feeling is that he’s ready for these negotiations.’ And I said to him, ‘No, he’s a liar. He doesn’t want any peace.”

‘But I think he’s really a little bit scared about the President Trump,’ Zelenskyy added. ‘And I think the president has this chance, and he’s strong. And I think that really, he can push Putin to peace negotiations. Yes, I think so. I think he can, but don’t trust him. Don’t trust Putin. Don’t trust just words about ceasefire.’

Fox News Digital’s Emma Colton, Danielle Wallace and Brooke Curto contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump and his administration are set to have another busy week as negotiations over ending the Russia-Ukraine war get underway. 

Trump is sending a handful of U.S. officials to Saudi Arabia this week to begin negotiating a potential peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine. Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, told Fox News on Sunday morning that he and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz will travel to Saudi Arabia on Sunday evening, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio is also set to travel to Saudi Arabia after his attendance of the international Munich Security Conference last week and meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Sunday. 

The meeting in Saudi Arabia comes after Trump announced last Wednesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to ‘immediately’ begin peace talks.

‘Next week, there’s a meeting in Saudi Arabia,’ Trump told the media during a press conference on Thursday. ‘Not with myself nor President Putin, but with top officials. And Ukraine will be a part of it, too. And we’re going to see if we can end that war. That was a horrible war. It’s a vicious, bloody war. We want to end it.’

Russia and Ukraine have been at war since February 2022, when Russia first invaded its neighboring nation. Trump had said while on the 2024 campaign trail that he would end the war if re-elected, while claiming it would never have begun if he had been in the Oval Office at the time. 

Trump charged his team of U.S. officials to hold the peace meetings at his direction in Saudi Arabia, Witkoff said on Sunday to Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo. 

‘I am going tonight. I’ll be traveling there with the national security advisor, and we’ll be having meetings at the direction of the president. And hopefully we’ll make some really good progress with regard to Russia, Ukraine,’ Witkoff said. 

Stateside, Trump spent his weekend in Mar-a-Lago in Florida before heading to the Daytona 500, where fans erupted into cheers when Air Force One flew over Daytona International Speedway. Trump is the first sitting president to attend two Daytona 500 races at Daytona International Speedway, previously attending the 2020 race.

Trump’s schedule this week could also include meeting with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who requested a visit with the president at the White House. 

Trump told the media on Friday that he did speak with the U.K. prime minister and that he accepted a request to meet at the White House. 

We’re going to have a friendly meeting, very good. We have a lot of good things going on. But he asked to come and see me, and I just accepted his asking,’ Trump said. 

Trump said the meeting would be held ‘very soon,’ suggesting it would happen either this coming week or the following week. No details have been revealed as to what the upcoming meeting will focus on, though it comes on the heels of Trump announcing a ‘reciprocal tariff’ plan on Thursday that will impose ‘fair and reciprocal’ tariffs on all major U.S. trading partners. 

‘On trade, I have decided for purposes of fairness that I will charge a reciprocal tariff, meaning whatever countries charge the United States of America, we will charge them, no more, no less. In other words, they charge us a tax or tariff, and we charge them the exact same tax or tariff, very simple,’ Trump said at the White House of the tariff plan. 

On the energy policy front, Trump created the National Energy Dominance Council on Friday, which is expected to ‘unleash’ energy independence. 

‘We have more energy than any other country, and now we are unleashing it,’ Trump said Friday from the Oval Office when he signed an executive order establishing the energy council. ‘I call it liquid gold under our feet, and we’re going to utilize it.’

Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council under the second Trump administration, previewed that the council will quickly work to make the U.S. energy dominant, even with actions as early as this coming week. 

‘What I expect you to see, sir, is action as early as next week that is going to shock people about how good it is for Americans,’ Hassett told Trump from the Oval Office on Friday. 

Trump’s fourth week in office follows him already signing 65 executive orders, including 26 on his first day in office alone.

As the Trump administration moves to negotiate the end of the Ukraine-Russia war, national security advisor Michael Waltz rejected the notion that European allies are not being consulted on the matter. 

Talks between the U.S. and Russia are reportedly to begin in Saudi Arabia this week, while French President Emmanuel Macron is reportedly to host what is being billed as an emergency summit on Ukraine between European leaders in Paris starting Monday. Trump said he spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin last week, reportedly doing so without consulting NATO members. 

In an appearance on ‘Fox News Sunday,’ Waltz said that in back-to-back calls, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Putin separately agreed that ‘only President Trump could get them to the table, only President Trump could drive peace.’ 

Waltz noted that Trump spoke to Macron last week and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has an upcoming trip to the United States. 

‘We had no less than our vice president, our secretary of state, our secretary of defense, our secretary of treasury, who was in Kyiv personally, and our special envoy {Keith} Kellogg all in Europe this week, all engaging our allies,’ Waltz said. ‘Now, they may not like some of the sequencing that is going on in these negotiations, but I have to push back on any notion that they aren’t being consulted. They absolutely are.’ 

‘At the end of the day though, this is going to be under President Trump’s leadership that we get this war to an end,’ he added. 

Among the critics of the Trump administration’s handling of the negotiations was Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who said the president’s inability to ‘even identify Ukraine as an equal bargaining power, after the blood Ukraine has shed, [is] just a shocking surrender of American values and interests.’ Noting how Zelenskyy said he would not be bound by any deal negotiated between Russia and the U.S., ‘Fox News Sunday’ host Shannon Bream asked Waltz if Kyiv would have a seat at the table. 

In response, Waltz said Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Vice President JD Vance stressed in talks with Zelenskyy ‘entering into a partnership with the United States,’ and being ‘co-invested with President Trump, with the American people going forward.’ 

‘The American people deserve to be recouped, deserve to have some type of payback for the billions they have invested in this war,’ Waltz said. ‘I can’t think of anything that would make the American people more comfortable with future investments than if we were able to be in a partnership and have the American people made whole. And I’ll point out that much of the European aid is actually in the form of a loan. That is repaid. It’s repaid with interest on Russian assets. So President Trump is rethinking the entire dynamic here. That has some people uncomfortable, but I think Zelenskyy would be very wise to enter into this agreement with the United States. There’s no better way to secure them going forward, and further, there was a question of whether Putin would come to the table. He has now done so under President Trump’s leadership, and we’re going to continue those talks in the coming weeks at President Trump’s direction.’

Asked why Ukraine won’t be directly part of the Saudi Arabia talks, Waltz said, ‘The Ukrainian people have fought valiantly. They have seen entire cities destroyed. The United States and Europe have supported this effort, but the United States unquestionably has borne the brunt of that support over the years, but now President Trump is clear it needs to come to an end.’ 

Waltz added that the negotiations will be driven by ‘key tenants,’ including ensuring that there’s a ‘permanent end to the war’ and that the conflict ‘can’t be ended on the battlefield.’ 

‘This has turned into a World War I-style meat grinder of human beings,’ he said, adding that economic integration going forward would be the ‘best arbiter of peace’ and long-term military security guarantees have to be European-led. 

‘When a third of NATO members still are not contributing – a third – are still not contributing the minimum they all committed to a decade ago, I think that leaves a lot of Americans questioning the level of their commitment to back the rhetoric we’re seeing,’ Waltz said. 

President Donald Trump’s prowess as a negotiator will help determine if Russian President Vladimir Putin is serious about negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday.

Rubio appeared on CBS’ ‘Face the Nation,’ where host Margaret Brennan asked if he could trust that potential negotiations with Russia would be forthright considering how Putin ‘likes to use diplomacy as a cover to distract while he continues to wage war.’

‘I don’t think in geopolitics anyone should trust anyone,’ Rubio responded. ‘I think these things have to be verified through actions. I said yesterday that peace is not a noun, it’s a verb. It’s an action. You have to take concrete steps towards it.’

Rubio added that there is ‘no better negotiator in American politics’ than Trump, saying that the president ‘will know very quickly whether this is a real thing or whether this is an effort to buy time.’

‘But I don’t want to prejudge that,’ Rubio said. ‘I don’t want to foreclose the opportunity to end the conflict that’s already cost the lives of hundreds of thousands and continues every single day to be increasingly a war of attrition on both sides.’

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago. The fighting has produced heavy casualties on both sides, becoming Europe’s largest military conflict since World War II. 

Trump had repeatedly said while on the campaign trail that if he was president in 2022, the war would not have broken out — vowing to end it if re-elected.

Trump spoke to Putin in a phone call on Wednesday, telling reporters that he and Putin would likely meet soon to negotiate a peace deal over Ukraine. Trump later assured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy he also would have a seat at the table. 

While some officials have indicated that European nations wouldn’t be involved in talks, Rubio on Sunday said that should the leaders reach the point of ‘real negotiations,’ both Ukraine and Europe would be involved.

‘Ultimately, it will reach a point when you are – if it’s real negotiations, and we’re not there yet – but if that were to happen, Ukraine will have to be involved, because they’re the one that were invaded, and the Europeans will have to be involved because they have sanctions on Putin and Russia as well, and they’ve contributed to this effort.’

Rubio emphasized that the phone call between Trump and Putin was only a small step in the process towards opening a negotiation to end the war, and that ‘we have a long way to go.’

‘We’re just not there yet,’ he said. ‘We really aren’t, but hopefully we will be, because we’d all like to see this war end.’

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is a ‘little bit scared’ of President Donald Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview that aired Sunday.  

Zelenskyy joined NBC’s ‘Meet the Press,’ recounting that when he spoke to Trump by phone about a potential peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, he told the president that he believes Putin fears the American leader. 

‘I said that [Putin] is a liar,’ Zelenskyy recounted of his phone call to Trump. ‘And he said, ‘I think my feeling is that he’s ready for these negotiations.’ And I said to him, ‘No, he’s a liar. He doesn’t want any peace.’ 

‘But I think he’s really a little bit scared about the President Trump. And I think the president has this chance, and he’s strong. And I think that really he can push Putin to peace negotiations. Yes, I think so. I think he can, but don’t trust him. Don’t trust Putin. Don’t trust just words about ceasefire,’ Zelenskyy told NBC’s Kristen Welker on ‘Meet the Press.’ 

Zelenskyy’s interview follows Trump announcing last Wednesday that Putin had agreed to ‘immediately’ begin peace negotiations to end the war. Trump tapped Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz and special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff to lead negotiations with Russia and Ukraine. 

Zelenskyy said during his interview that he trusts Trump’s leadership amid negotiations to end the war that has raged between Russia and Ukraine since 2022, but that he won’t accept a deal that did not include talks with Ukraine. 

‘I believe and trust only in real steps. And I trust President Trump because he’s the president of the United States, because your people, your people voted for him, and I respect their choice, and I will work with President Trump with trust, which I have to the United States,’ Zelenskyy told Welker when asked if he feels Trump values Ukraine at the same level as Russia. 

‘But of course, I want to have [a] real meeting, productive, without just words, with concrete steps, and to hear us, to hear President Trump, to make a common plan, and to share it with allies, then with Russians, and stop this war. I think we need it urgently. We have to do it without basic things, where there are concrete steps.’

Zelenskyy added in his interview that he will not accept any negotiation hashed out by just the U.S. and Russia.

‘I will never accept any decisions between the United States and Russia about Ukraine. Never.… The war in Ukraine is against us, and it is our human losses. And we are thankful for all the support, unity between USA – in USA around Ukraine support, bipartisan unity, bipartisan support, we’re thankful for all of this. But there is no… leader in the world who can really make a deal with Putin without us about us,’ he said. 

Witkoff joined Fox News earlier on Sunday and reported that he and Waltz are heading to Saudi Arabia on Sunday evening to begin negotiations on ending the war between Russia and Ukraine. 

Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., has spent the better part of the last decade in Indiana, running various businesses and coaching his sons’ baseball team. 

Before that, he had a front-row seat for most of the Obama administration, followed by the meteoric and unprecedented rise of now-President Donald Trump. Stutzman was a part of political history himself, having been one of the original members of the House Freedom Caucus — a group that has grown to be known as a bastion of ideological conservatism and, at times, a thorn in the side of House GOP leaders.

Now he’s back as one of several first-term House Republicans, succeeding Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind., as a member of a perilously thin House GOP majority.

But according to Stutzman, who previously served in Congress from 2010 to 2017, he sees Republicans as more aligned with each other than before.

‘I feel like it’s different. I don’t think the GOP conference is as far apart — you know, moderates to conservatives — as it was back in 2010,’ he told Fox News Digital in an interview.

‘I was looking at the membership in 2010, and there were true moderates. I think we’re actually much closer together now than what we were back then. And, of course, we had large majorities. So that creates other challenges. So having a tight majority is not a bad thing at all. It actually makes you unify.’

He credited that re-alignment in large part to Trump, pointing out that he and other Republicans were first elected in 2010 as a backlash against former President Barack Obama rather than in support of the leading party’s agenda.

‘We won the 2010 election because it was a reaction to Obama. And in 2020 — I mean, you could say every election is a reaction to the incumbent party, but I think in this case, after the Biden years, the American people elected Trump because they believed he could move the country forward,’ Stutzman said.

‘And so we have a leader that is casting a vision and is clear in his messaging, and it gives us the chance to, you know, coalesce behind his leadership. So that’s a huge help, compared to 2010.’

He also disputed the notion that the Freedom Caucus was founded to be ‘obstructionist’ to House GOP leaders, despite members of the group leading well-known coups against senior Republicans in the past.

‘There’s a lot of smart people that wanted to just be part of a group that looked at things from every angle and was really being productive. And so that’s why I wanted to join it, because I wanted to be at a place that I could learn, I could really dive deep and learn from other people and staff that were part of the caucus to really understand the policy, but also talk through the strategy,’ he said.

‘It was never designed to be an obstructionist caucus. There have been times that it’s definitely been labeled that and accused of that . . . any obstruction was to stop bad things from happening. Not to obstruct the good things from moving forward.’

Stutzman said that being a private citizen running businesses for eight years gave him perspective on the value of consensus-building, allowing him to return to Congress with an emphasis on the ‘big picture.’

‘You’re never going to get everything you want. You know, find a way to support the team and find a way to support us to a yes,’ Stutzman reflected. 

‘Now, look, there’s going to be times when you just say no, And that’s just part of negotiating. But I think the main thing is just fight hard, offer everything you have. But then at the end of the day, let’s take a win and then move on to the next fight.’

President Donald Trump derided former Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., as ‘not equipped mentally’ after he went from being the face of the GOP in the upper chamber to opposing his entire conference and voting with the Democrats on Trump’s key Cabinet nominations in just a matter of months. 

‘He wasn’t equipped ten years ago, mentally, in my opinion,’ Trump told reporters at the White House after McConnell refused to vote in favor of confirming his controversial Health and Human Services (HHS) pick, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

‘He’s a, you know, very bitter guy,’ Trump added of McConnell, with whom he has had a strained relationship with over the years, including during his previous presidency. 

While such a shift from GOP leader to defiant Republican might be optically jarring, the move was unsurprising to Jim Manley, former senior communications advisor and spokesman for former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Senate Democratic Caucus. 

‘He was living on borrowed time the last couple of years,’ he told Fox News Digital of McConnell. Manley speculated that if he hadn’t decided to step down from leadership voluntarily before the 119th Congress, he would have had significant trouble being re-elected. ‘[I]t’s evident just how exactly out of step he is with the caucus,’ he said, noting that it has become ‘much more conservative.’

In three pivotal Senate votes on Trump’s most vulnerable Cabinet nominees in the last few weeks, McConnell bucked his party. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s nomination was confirmed by a razor-thin margin, 51-50, after Vice President JD Vance was called in to break the tie. 

Moderate GOP Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, joined him in voting against the controversial defense pick.

However, McConnell was the only Republican to vote against the similarly controversial Director of National Intelligence (DNI) nominee Tulsi Gabbard and HHS pick Kennedy. Even Collins, Murkowski, and several other senators with reputations for being somewhat hesitant got behind them.

‘If Senator McConnell was looking to accelerate the deterioration of his legacy as the former Republican Senate leader, he’s succeeded,’ a Senate GOP source remarked. They described the Kentucky Republican’s actions as ‘an attempt to embarrass the president and the Republican Party’ and evidence ‘of why he was no longer fit to lead our conference.’ 

McConnell released lengthy statements following each vote, explaining his reasoning. He also wished each of them well and committed to working with them.

A defense hawk and chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, McConnell was unconvinced that Hegseth or Gabbard were the best national security selections. 

As for Kennedy, McConnell recalled his childhood experience with polio and touted the effectiveness of vaccines, of which the now-HHS secretary has been consistently critical. 

McConnell did vote in favor of Trump’s other, less-controversial and lesser-known Cabinet nominees. 

Republican strategist Matt Dole called the former leader ‘an enigma.’ 

‘[H]e sought to rule the Republican Caucus with an iron fist when he was leader,’ he pointed out. 

‘That makes his own, lonely, votes stand out as all the more egregious.’

McConnell’s successor, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., reacted to the ‘no’ votes in an interview with Fox News Digital. ‘I think he knows better than anybody how hard it is to lead a place like the United States Senate, where it takes 60 votes to get most things done, and that you got to have everybody, sort of functioning as a team,’ he said. 

According to Thune, McConnell ‘is still active up here and still a strong voice on issues he’s passionate about, including national security, and so when it comes to those issues, he has outsized influence and a voice that we all pay attention to.’

He explained that while the conference doesn’t necessarily agree with him, ‘we respect his positions on these, some of these [nominations], and I know that a lot of big stuff ahead of us, he’s going to be with us. He’s a team player.’

One former top Senate Republican strategist explained the former leader has ‘nothing to lose’ at this point. In fact, they said, the feelings he is expressing about Trump’s most controversial selections actually reflects those of a number of other senators. But they can’t oppose the picks themselves ‘for fear of retribution by Trump or primary voters that will make a difference on whether or not they remain in power.’

‘Not being in leadership can be quite liberating,’ GOP strategist John Feehery added. 

According to Grant Reeher, a political science professor at Syracuse University, ‘I think he wants to make a symbolic statement in favor of an older Reagan-era type of conservatism and a more traditional Republican Party—this is the way he wants to be remembered.’

McConnell’s office declined to comment to Fox News Digital.