President Donald Trump is slated to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday, according to an administration official. 

Trump is also pushing for Israel to reach a ceasefire with Gaza, and told reporters Tuesday that a ceasefire was likely in the next week.

‘We hope it’s going to happen, and we’re looking for it to happen sometime next week,’ Trump told reporters Tuesday. 

An administration official confirmed Netanyahu’s visit to Fox News Digital. 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Monday that Trump is seeking to resolve the conflict between both Israel and Gaza and secure the release of the remaining American hostages in Gaza. 

‘It’s heartbreaking to see the images that have come out from both Israel and Gaza throughout this war,’ Leavitt said. ‘And the president wants to see it end. He wants to save lives and, however, the main priority for the president also remains to bring all of the hostages home out of Gaza. As you know, his tireless effort has brought home many of the hostages, including all of the American hostages who were held there.’ 

The visit comes shortly after Trump expressed his disapproval with Israel, after Trump announced a ceasefire between Israel and Iran on June 24. 

However, both sides quickly launched accusations that the other had violated the agreement, prompting Trump to tell reporters that both had failed to uphold the terms of the deal. 

‘I’m not happy with them,’ Trump said at the White House on June 24. ‘I’m not happy with Iran either, but I’m really unhappy with Israel going out this morning.’

Netanyahu’s visit to the White House comes after Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer visited Washington Monday. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

The chairman of the House Budget Committee pushed back on Elon Musk’s claim that President Donald Trump’s $3.3 trillion ‘big, beautiful bill’ is full of ‘pork.’

It’s a claim the tech billionaire made when the House was considering the legislation the first time around, and he re-vamped those attacks again this week as the Senate wrestled with the bill.

Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, told Fox News Digital in early June that it was not possible for ‘pork barrel spending’ to be included in the legislation, called a budget reconciliation bill, because the reconciliation process was simply not the mechanism for such federal funds.

‘Reconciliation does not have anything to do with discretionary spending — earmarks, and all of that,’ Arrington said. ‘And quite frankly, the [Department of Government Efficiency] findings were, I think, almost entirely an issue for… annual appropriations.’

‘Discretionary spending’ refers to the annual dollars allocated by Congress each year through the appropriations process, also known as ‘spending bills.’ 

It’s a process that’s historically known to be rife with ‘pork barrel spending’ from both Republicans and Democrats — funding for pet projects or other specific initiatives benefiting a certain member of Congress’ district.

But reconciliation deals with the government’s ‘mandatory spending’ — largely government welfare programs that can only be amended by changing the law.

‘We’re dealing with mandatory spending programs — entitlements, health care, welfare and the tax code,’ Arrington said. 

‘We did a responsible bill. There’s no pork in it. The question, I think, for some folks and the objective of mine and my budget committee members was, whatever we’re doing on tax or security to unleash growth and to buy greater security for the American people, we wanted it to be done in a fiscally responsible way.’

Senior White House advisor Stephen Miller echoed that sentiment on X last month: ‘The reconciliation bill cuts taxes, seals the border and reforms welfare. It is not a spending bill. There is no ‘pork.’ It is the campaign agenda codified.’

Musk posted on X Monday night., ‘It is obvious with the insane spending of this bill, which increases the debt ceiling by a record FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS that we live in a one-party country – the PORKY PIG PARTY!! Time for a new political party that actually cares about the people.’

The vast majority of the trillions of dollars in the bill are aimed at Trump’s tax policies — extending his 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) while implementing new priorities like eliminating taxes on tips and overtime wages.

There’s also $5 trillion in the latest version of the bill aimed at raising the debt limit.

The legislation is also aimed at amending current laws to enable new funding for border security and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — projected to boost those priorities by billions of dollars.

To offset those costs, House GOP leaders are seeking stricter work requirements for Medicaid and food stamps, while shifting more of the cost burden for both programs to the states.

Republicans are also looking to roll back green energy tax subsidies in former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

But Musk and other fiscal hawks’ main concern has been that the legislation does not go far enough with those spending cuts.

They have also raised concerns about the overall bill adding to the national debt, which is currently nearing $37 trillion.

As part of his social media campaign against the bill, Musk in June called for both eliminating the tax cuts and removing the debt limit increase from the final legislation.

Musk reposted another X user who wrote, ‘Drop the tax cuts, cut some pork, get the bill through.’

He’s also previously shown support on X for Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and his call to strip the debt limit provision out of the bill.

Paul was one of three Republican senators to vote against the bill on Tuesday morning, alongside Sens. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and Susan Collins, R-Maine.

It’s now set to be considered in the House on Wednesday, with a goal of sending it to Trump’s desk by Fourth of July.

President Donald Trump rallied Republicans in the House to get his ‘big, beautiful bill’ to the finish line and on his desk by July 4, reminding his colleagues the American people sent them to Washington, D.C. to ‘get it done.’

Nearly every Republican in the Senate voted to pass Trump’s $3.3 trillion megabill, though Sens. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, voted against the legislation. No Senate Democrats crossed the aisle to support the bill.

Hours after the bill was passed and forwarded to the House, Trump turned to Truth Social to issue a rallying cry.

‘Almost all of our Great Republicans in the United States Senate have passed our ‘ONE, BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL,’’ he wrote. ‘It is no longer a ‘House Bill’ or a ‘Senate Bill’. It is everyone’s Bill.’

Trump continued, reminding party members there is much to be proud of with the ‘major policy win.’

But he said the biggest winners will be the people of America, who Trump said will have ‘Permanently Lower Taxes, Higher Wages and Take Home Pay, Secure Borders, and a Stronger and More Powerful Military.’

‘Additionally, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security Benefits are not being cut, but are being STRENGTHENED and PROTECTED from the Radical and Destructive Democrats by eliminating Waste, Fraud, and Abuse from those Programs,’ Trump wrote. ‘We can have all of this right now, but only if the House GOP UNITES, ignores its occasional ‘GRANDSTANDERS’ (You know who you are!), and does the right thing, which is sending this Bill to my desk.’

He reminded Republicans the bill is on schedule and urged them to keep it moving so they can go and enjoy time with their families on the Fourth of July.

‘The American People need and deserve it. They sent us here to, GET IT DONE! Our Country is going to explode with Massive Growth, even more than it already has since I was Re-Elected,’ Trump said. ‘Between the Growth, this Bill, our Tariffs, and more, ‘THE ONE, BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL’ sets the United States down a fiscal path by greatly reducing our Federal Deficit, and setting us on course for enormous Prosperity in the new and wonderful Golden Age of America.

‘To my GOP friends in the House: Stay UNITED, have fun, and Vote ‘YAY,’’ he added. ‘GOD BLESS YOU ALL!’

The bill now heads to the House, where fiscal hawks in the House Freedom Caucus are frustrated with what they say are shallow spending cuts, and moderates are concerned over cuts to Medicaid. All have warned that they may not support the bill. 

Still, Republican leaders have made clear that they intend to have the bill on Trump’s desk by Friday.

Fox News Digital’s Alex Miller contributed to this report.

A pair of Republican oversight hawks escalated a complaint on Tuesday about a district court judge who is presiding over one of the Trump administration’s cases, alleging the judge has a financial conflict of interest.

Reps. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman and member of the House Judiciary Committee, respectively, asked the judicial council for the First Circuit Court of Appeals to investigate Judge John McConnell, according to a letter obtained by Fox News Digital.

McConnell, an Obama appointee, has been presiding over a pivotal funding freeze case in Rhode Island brought by 22 states with Democratic attorneys general. The case centers on the Office of Management and Budget’s order in January that federal agencies implement a multibillion-dollar suspension of federal benefits.

The states’ lawsuit argued the funding freeze was illegal because Congress had already approved the funds for use. McConnell agreed with the states and blocked the administration from suspending the funds, and the case is now sitting before the First Circuit Court of Appeals.

McConnell wrote in an order in March that the Trump administration’s funding suspension ‘fundamentally undermines the distinct constitutional roles of each branch of our government.’ 

The judge said the freeze lacked ‘rationality’ and showed no ‘thoughtful consideration of practical consequences’ because it threatened states’ ‘ability to provide vital services, including but not limited to public safety, health care, education, childcare, and transportation infrastructure.’

Issa and Jordan said McConnell’s long-standing leadership roles with Crossroads Rhode Island, a nonprofit that has received millions of dollars in federal and state grants, raised the possibility of a judicial ethics violation.

‘Given Crossroads’s reliance on federal funds, Judge McConnell’s rulings had the effect of restoring funding to Crossroads, directly benefitting the organization and creating a conflict of interest,’ Jordan and Issa wrote.

Their letter was directed to Judge David Barron, chief judge of the First Circuit and chair of the First Circuit Judicial Council.

McConnell was quick to become one of Trump’s judicial nemeses when he became involved with the funding freeze case. His initial order blocking the freeze and subsequent orders to enforce his injunction and unfreeze FEMA funds fueled criticism from Trump’s allies.

The Trump-aligned group America First Legal has been highlighting McConnell’s ties to Crossroads Rhode Island for months through its own investigation and complaint to the First Circuit.

Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., filed articles of impeachment against the judge in March, though impeachment as a solution for judges with whom Republicans take issue has not garnered widespread support among the broader Republican conference.

Vocal Trump supporter Laura Loomer targeted the judge’s daughter on social media, and X CEO Elon Musk elevated her grievance on his platform.

One of McConnell’s local newspapers, the Providence Journal, described the judge as a man ‘well-known’ in Democratic political circles and a major donor to Democratic politicians and organizations before he was confirmed to the bench in 2011.

McConnell included Crossroads Rhode Island and his membership as a board member in his recent public annual financial disclosure reports. No parties in the case have actively sought his recusal at this stage.

An aide for the judge did not respond to a request for comment.

Senate Republicans coalesced to pass President Donald Trump’s colossal ‘big, beautiful bill’ early Tuesday morning. 

Senate Republican leaders and the White House have pitched the legislative behemoth as a means to turbocharge the economy, root out waste, fraud and abuse in a slew of federal programs, and to make crucial investments in defense and Trump’s border and immigration priorities. 

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats have bashed the bill as a deficit-ballooning monstrosity that would boot millions of Americans from their healthcare and rollback key Medicaid, food nutrition assistance and green energy provisions ushered in by the Obama and Biden administrations. 

So what’s in Trump’s bill? Below, Fox News Digital breaks down key proposals in Senate Republicans’ ‘big, beautiful bill.’

Tax cuts

The bill seeks to permanently extend Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which a House GOP memo from earlier this year said would avoid a 22% tax hike for American families at the end of this year.

It also includes tax cuts specifically tailored to the middle and working-class, like allowing people to deduct taxes on up to $25,000 of tipped wages. That deduction would begin to phase out for people making $150,000 per year or $300,000 as a married couple.

The Senate bill would also allow people to deduct up to $12,500 in overtime pay under the same income guidelines. Both the tipped and overtime wage deductions would be available through 2028.

Another temporary tax break through 2028 would allow people to deduct interest paid on their car loans.

For seniors aged 65 and older, the bill would give an additional $6,000 tax deduction through 2028.

SALT

The legislation increases the current cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions, a benefit primarily geared toward people living in high-cost-of-living areas like New York City, Los Angeles and their surrounding suburbs.

The current SALT deduction cap would be raised to $40,000 for five years, before reverting down to $10,000 – where it stands now – for the subsequent five years.

Blue state Republicans fought for the increase, arguing it’s an existential issue for a bloc of lawmakers whose victories were decisive for the House GOP majority. However, Republicans from redder areas have criticized SALT deductions as giveaways to high-tax states as a reward for their progressive policies.

Medicaid

Medicaid cuts have proven the biggest pain point among Republicans, though many of the changes that have been proposed are widely popular. Cuts to the widely used healthcare program account for roughly $1 trillion, according to recent analyses from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The CBO found that under the Senate GOP’s plan, nearly 12 million Americans could lose their health insurance.

Stricter work requirements have been the crown jewel for the GOP. The bill would require ​​able-bodied, childless adults between the ages of 18 and 64 to work at least 80 hours a month to maintain their benefits, or by ​​participating in community service, going to school or engaging in a work program.

However, there are more divisive changes, like tweaks to the Medicaid provider tax rate. The rate change would, year-by-year, lower the provider tax in Medicaid expansion states from 6% to 3.5%. The plan was tweaked to comport with Senate rules and now starts in fiscal year 2028.

Just ahead of the bill’s passage in the Senate, Republicans doubled a rural hospital stabilization fund pushed for by lawmakers concerned that the changes to the provider rate would shutter rural hospitals around the country. 

That fund was boosted to $50 billion, half of which will be distributed through grants, in chunks of $10 billion each year. 

Republicans also removed a ban on Medicaid benefits funding transgender healthcare, largely because it would not have complied with Senate rules.

SNAP

Senate Republicans’ bill also includes cuts to the supplemental nutrition assistance program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps.

Like tweaks to Medicaid, Republicans pushed for work requirements for SNAP for able-bodied, working-age adults between the ages of 18 and 64 years old, and for parents with children over the age of 7.  

The bill would also shift some of the cost burden of the program from the federal government to the states.

Currently, the federal government covers the costs of SNAP, but states with a higher payment error rate would cover a greater share of benefit costs.

If the error rate is 6% or higher, states would be subject to a sliding scale that could see their share of allotments rise to a range of between 5% and 15%.

However, in last-minute deal-making, Senate Republicans delayed SNAP work requirements for states that have a payment error rate of 13%, like Alaska, or higher for one whole year. 

Debt limit

The bill raises the borrowing limit on the U.S. government’s $36.2 trillion national debt by $5 trillion.

A failure to raise that limit – also called the debt ceiling – before the U.S. government runs out of cash to pay its obligations could result in a downgrade in the country’s credit rating and potential turmoil in financial markets.

Trump has made it a priority for congressional Republicans to deal with the debt ceiling and avoid a national credit default. A bipartisan agreement struck in 2023 suspended the debt ceiling until January 2025.

Multiple projections show the U.S. is poised to run out of cash to pay its debts by sometime this summer.

Defense and border spending 

While the bill cuts spending on Medicaid and other domestic programs, it includes billions of dollars in new funding for defense programs and federal immigration enforcement.

The bill provides $25 billion to build a Golden Dome missile defense system, similar to Israel’s Iron Dome. It would also include $45.6 billion to complete Trump’s border wall, and $4.1 billion to hire new border agents.

The bill would also surge an additional $45 billion to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement for the detention of illegal immigrants.

An additional $15 billion would be directed toward modernizing the U.S. nuclear triad and $29 billion for shipbuilding and the Maritime Industrial Base.

Immigration fees

Several new provisions were included in the bill that hike, or create, fees for migrants who are seeking asylum, a work permit or are apprehended, among others.

Among the list of new fees is a new, $100 fee for those seeking asylum. That becomes an annual fee for every year that the asylum application remains pending. There is also a new, $1,000 minimum fee for immigrants granted temporary entry into the U.S. on the grounds of ‘humanitarian or significant public interest.’

For migrants caught trying to illegally enter the country through a port of entry, a new minimum $5,000 fee would come into play. There is another new $5,000 fee for migrants that are arrested after being ordered to be removed.

There are also new fees of between $500 and $1,500 for migrants whose immigration status is changed by a judge, or who appeal for a status change.

Then there is a new, $30 Electronic Visa Update System fee for certain Chinese nationals. They also have to maintain biographic and travel information in the country online. 

The House of Representatives is beginning the final legislative sprint of President Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ before the commander in chief signs it into law.

The powerful House panel is the final gatekeeper before most pieces of legislation get a chamber-wide vote.

It comes after the Senate spent more than 24 hours straight considering the bill, eventually passing it along the narrowest of margins around midday Wednesday. Vice President JD Vance was on Capitol Hill to cast the tie-breaking vote.

It’s not clear how long the House Rules Committee meeting will go; when the panel considered the House’s own version of the bill in May, Democrats introduced dozens of amendments to symbolically object to the bill and delay the process.

Meanwhile, two conservatives on the House Rules Committee, Reps. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., and Chip Roy, R-Texas, are among those in the lower chamber raising concerns about the bill.

Their opposition in committee would not be enough to stop it, but the legislation could face serious threats House-wide, where just four GOP ‘no’ votes would be enough to sink the bill.

The House first passed the bill – a mammoth piece of legislation advancing Trump’s agenda on taxes, the border, energy, defense and the national debt – in late May by just one vote.

Modifications made by the Senate in order to pass that chamber’s own razor-thin, three-vote majority must now be approved in the House before getting to Trump’s desk.

Republican leaders have a self-imposed deadline of getting the bill to Trump’s desk by the Fourth of July.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., told Fox News Digital early evening on Monday that he expected his chamber would begin considering the bill as early as 9 a.m. Wednesday.

But two members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, Norman and Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., told Fox News Digital earlier that same day that they believed the bill would not survive a House-wide procedural vote Wednesday if the Senate’s text did not materially change.

The bill would permanently extend the income tax brackets lowered by Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), while temporarily adding new tax deductions to eliminate duties on tipped and overtime wages up to certain caps.

It also includes a new tax deduction for people aged 65 and over.

The legislation also rolls back green energy tax credits implemented under former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which Trump and his allies have attacked as ‘the Green New Scam.’

The bill would also surge money toward the national defense, and to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the name of Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants in the U.S.

The bill would also raise the debt limit by $5 trillion in order to avoid a potentially economically devastating credit default sometime this summer, if the U.S. runs out of cash to pay its obligations.

Much has been written in recent days about the war of words between Supreme Court justices Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown-Jackson in the opinions handed down in Trump v. Casa, Inc., the case involving an injunction issued in a case challenging birthright citizenship.

But as I pointed out in a Post on X Friday morning, Barrett’s decision was written on behalf of herself and the five other justices in the majority. The fact that Barrett was assigned this opinion by the chief judge (the chief judge decides who writes the opinion when he votes with the majority) is a signal that the other five justices turned her loose on Jackson. Such an unsparing smackdown of the most junior justice with a vastly different view of the judicial function would have been received much differently had it come from one of the other five justices in the conservative wing of the Court.

But coming from another female justice, one with only two more terms on the Court than Jackson, it was the least harsh way to deliver the rebuke that the majority opinion represented. But the language was anything but gentle, and the point was anything but subtle. 

If Jackson seems out of her element, there’s a reason. There have been many career paths followed by justices who have been appointed to the Supreme Court. But it is quite uncommon for someone to be appointed to the Supreme Court without meaningful experience at the level of an appellate court, as is the case with Jackson.

Justice Elena Kagan charted a very different course to the Supreme Court, largely through academia. However, before joining the court she did serve in various DOJ positions in the Clinton administration, and as the solicitor general of the United States under President Obama. The solicitor general argues cases on behalf of the United States before the Supreme Court.  Kagan also wrote extensively on legal issues during the nine years she served as both a professor and dean at Harvard Law School.

Another outlier was Justice Lewis Powell, who joined the Court in 1972 directly out of a large law firm where he had practiced corporate law for 35 years, never having been a judge in any court at any level. 

Jackson did not join the Court with no experience as a judge as was the case with Justices Kagan and Powell. But the judicial experience she had is not necessarily conducive to the largely cerebral approach of judging that happens on the Supreme Court.

Jackson hashad  a distinguished academic career, having graduated from both Harvard College and Harvard Law School with honors. In the 17 years between Harvard Law School and her first judicial appointment, she had several noteworthy positions in various legal enterprises, including five years as a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Jackson also served as an assistant federal defender in the District of Columbia for three years, during which she enjoyed success as a trial lawyer.

Her first judicial appointment was to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in 2014, where she served as a district judge for seven years. In June of 2021, following President Biden’s nomination, Jackson was confirmed to replace Merrick Garland on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

But only eight months later, Biden named her to replace the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court. In her eight months on the Court of Appeals, Justice Jackson authored only two opinions. 

The practical reality was that Biden nominated a district court judge to a seat on the Supreme Court consisting of nine justices who decide cases by majority vote. 

District court is where federal cases begin – where ‘cases’ and ‘controversies’ are first decided. The district judges are the ‘referees’ between the litigants, and sometimes they serve as the decision-makers on the outcome of the cases. There is a significant amount of trial work where the district judge presides alone over the proceedings. Many quick decisions and judgments are made during a trial, often with little time for research or considered analysis.   

Even where time and research are available, the district judge is still working ‘solo’ with the assistance of one or more law clerks. The final decision on such motions belongs to the judge alone. 

District judges largely operate independent of their peers in the same courthouse. Their decisions are not binding on each other. They preside over their own dockets and make decisions in the cases assigned to them as they see fit.

Under this system, legal mistakes and errors are inevitable. The only requirement for proceedings at the district court level – including trials – is that they be fair. It is not required that they be ‘error-free.’ Only when errors result in unfairness that prejudices one side or the other is the outcome of the case called into doubt.       

Appellate courts sit in review of the outcomes in trial courts. They focus on the errors in the case presented. While broader legal questions are sometimes an issue on appellate review, the focus is primarily on the presence or absence of errors in the case in the district court, and whether any identified errors justify altering the outcome in that court. 

The Supreme Court plays a very different role. While it does make a judgment about the correctness of the outcome of cases, the focus of the Supreme Court is normally on the broader legal implications for hundreds/thousands of other cases in the future from affirming or reversing the case being reviewed.   

The federal district judge often plays the role of interrogator of the attorneys representing each side. Anyone who has been a trial attorney for any substantial period of time in federal district courts understands this. The questioning by that district judge can be hostile, aggressive, condescending, dismissive, humiliating, etc.  But that questioning is focused on the facts and specific legal issues presented in that case, and not the broader implications of how the outcome of that case might impact other cases. Part of the reason is because that district judge’s decisions are not binding on other district judges.

Jackson just completed her third term on the court. This chart, which is from the 2024-2025 term, is highly revealing in terms of one of the issues that stands between her and her colleagues – her conduct as a justice is still influenced by her eight years as a district judge, i.e., she spends much more time examining the attorneys before the court than do her colleagues.

The same source has a similar chart for the 2023-2024 Term of the Court, and the numbers are no different.

Setting aside this quantitative measure, in listening to many oral arguments of the Court this past term, one gets the very familiar vibe from Jackson of a district judge interrogating one counsel or the other to wring out admissions or concessions about the specifics of the case. The focus is on the outcome of the case, and not the broader implications that the outcome might foretell.       

Justice Samuel Alito can often present in the same manner, but he spoke less than half the number of words as Jackson. She separates herself from her colleagues both in terms of how much time she is involved in the dialogue and her sharply partisan tenor that gives away what her likely vote will be in pretty much every case with any political implications.

Her rhetoric in dissenting from the Trump v. Casa – ‘With deep disillusionment, I dissent’ – seems an almost unintended peek behind the curtain of her thinking.  What the majority did was take away one of the most powerful weapons possessed by a district court judge to shape how a case goes forward from the outset. 

The progressive activist inner district judge in her – who seeks only to ‘do right’ – is protesting that loss.

The Trump administration released data on Tuesday morning showing that it had slashed the federal government workforce, while promising that there is more to come as Trump continues his push to rid the government of waste. 

Data released by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) shows that the United States employs 2,289,472 federal workers as of March 31, which is down from 2,313,216 on September 30, 2024. 

The reduction of more than 23,000 positions ‘reflects the administration’s early efforts to streamline government and eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy,’ OPM said in a press release. 

‘The American people deserve a government that is lean, efficient, and focused on core priorities,’ Acting OPM Director Charles Ezell said in a statement.

‘This data marks the first measurable step toward President Trump’s vision of a disciplined, accountable federal workforce, and it’s only the beginning.’

Trump signed an executive order in February instructing the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to coordinate with federal agencies and execute massive cuts in federal government staffing numbers.  

That order is reflected in the new data, OPM said, showing that agencies averaged 23,000 new monthly hires from April 2024 to January 2025 but dropped by nearly 70% to just 7,385 per month once the freeze was fully implemented. 

The agency said the cuts saved the taxpayers ‘billions.’

OPM added that ‘hundreds of thousands more workers’ will drop from the rolls in October 2025, when more workers depart via the Deferred Resignation Program that was offered to employees in an effort to trim the workforce. 

Tens of thousands of employees who are in the process of being terminated remain on the government payroll due to court orders that are currently being challenged by the administration, OPM says. 

Trump’s effort to shrink the federal workforce has faced stiff resistance from Democrats and various courts, with critics saying that the administration is cutting critical jobs.

‘It’s a judge that’s putting himself in the position of the President of the United States, who was elected by close to 80 million votes,’ Trump said aboard Air Force One on a flight back to Washington in March, after a federal judge blocked one of his efforts to fire federal workers.

‘That’s a very dangerous thing for our country. And I would suspect that we’re going to have to get a decision from the Supreme Court.’

Last month, OPM unveiled a new rule it said will make it easier to terminate federal employees for serious misconduct by cutting through the red tape that currently impedes that process. 

Fox News Digital reported in 2023 that under current law, the vast majority of the federal workforce is not at-will and may only be terminated for misconduct, poor performance, medical inability or reduction in force. Federal employees are also entitled to sweeping due process rights when fired, which can create a cumbersome process for agencies to remove a worker.

The House of Representatives is expected to take up the Senate’s modified version of President Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ this week.

The Senate passed the bill after a marathon weekend session, which included Democrats forcing a read-through of the entire 940-page text. Vice President JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote.

The bill first passed the House in late May by just one vote – and Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., will have a margin of just three Republicans to advance it again.

Both moderate and conservative House Republicans still had various concerns about the bill as of the weekend, but it’s not immediately clear if it will be enough to force GOP leaders to pause their ambitious timeline of getting the bill to the president’s desk by Fourth of July.

‘The House will work quickly to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill that enacts President Trump’s full America First agenda by the Fourth of July. The American people gave us a clear mandate, and after four years of Democrat failure, we intend to deliver without delay,’ House GOP leaders said in a joint statement.

‘This bill is President Trump’s agenda, and we are making it law. House Republicans are ready to finish the job and put the One Big Beautiful Bill on President Trump’s desk in time for Independence Day.’

Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., told Fox News Digital on Monday that the House could start voting as early as Wednesday at 9 a.m. on the first procedural hurdle, with final passage possible later that day or Thursday.

House GOP leadership held a brief call with lawmakers on Saturday to discuss their expectations on the timing of the bill, while also urging them to air concerns with their Senate counterparts directly – rather than on social media.

Meanwhile, Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., and his team began taking temperatures in the House GOP conference remotely on Sunday, even as the Senate still considered the bill.

‘We want to get on this as soon as possible, so be prepared,’ Emmer told lawmakers, Fox News Digital was told.

But a source familiar with whip team operations told Fox News Digital on Sunday that conservative fiscal hawks had concerns about the Senate’s version of the bill, particularly after the parliamentarian said key provisions must be stripped out.

Republicans are using the budget reconciliation process to fast-track a massive bill advancing Trump’s agenda on taxes, the border, defense, energy and the national debt. 

Budget reconciliation allows the party in power to sideline opposition – in this case, Democrats – by lowering the Senate’s threshold for passage from 60 votes to 51. But the legislation must adhere to certain guidelines, including only adding measures that deal with the federal budget or national debt.

The parliamentarian is a nonpartisan, unelected Senate staffer who helps guide the chamber through its complex procedures. The parliamentarian is chosen by the Senate majority leader, without term limits, and is typically selected from someone already working in the parliamentarian’s office due to their deep knowledge of its mechanisms.

Measures deemed non-germane to the final bill included a provision banning Medicaid funding from covering transgender medical services and a measure aimed at slashing funding to states that allow illegal immigrants to use Medicaid services.

But the Senate made its own changes to the House bill even without the parliamentarian’s input; the Senate added a $50 billion rural hospital fund to offset concerns from Senate Republicans about Medicaid cuts still in the bill.

A provision was also added late Saturday morning that raised tax deductions for whale hunters, an apparent bid to court Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who had various concerns about the bill.

The Senate bill would also increase the debt limit by $5 trillion, compared to the House bill’s $4 trillion. The U.S. debt is currently over $36 trillion.

House Freedom Caucus Policy Chair Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, wrote a lengthy post on X listing his issues with the bill.

‘The Senate BBB has a deficit problem. 1) CBO shows the Senate bill misses the House framework by $651 billion EXCLUDING interest. Even adjusted for dynamic growth revenues – interest in light of front-loaded cost vs. backloaded savings lifts cost to $1.3 Trillion,’ he began.

Among his other issues were the debt limit increase and the added benefit aimed at Alaska.

‘There remain numerous substantive problems – from illegals on benefits to funding sex change operations, no REINS Act regulatory relied,’ he posted.

Roy told reporters on Tuesday that he was not confident in the final vote happening by July 4, ‘I think the odds are hell of a lot lower than they were even 48 hours ago, or 72 hours ago.’

Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., said on ‘Fox Report’ on Sunday, ‘If it does pass the Senate and comes over with those significant changes, it changes the framework that we agreed upon in the House from a spending perspective.’

‘When you do that, there are a lot of us that are going to have pause because we’re not cutting as much spending as we wanted to cut previously because of decisions that the parliamentarian has made. So it’s going be challenging,’ Steube said.

Meanwhile, multiple House GOP moderates are threatening to vote ‘no’ over Medicaid cuts – specifically, changes that would shift a greater cost burden onto states that expanded their Medicaid populations under ObamaCare.

A source close to Rep. Young Kim, R-Calif., told Fox News Digital that she would vote against the bill if the Senate did not adhere to the House’s Medicaid language on Saturday.

Rep. David Valadao, R-Calif., said in a public written statement, ‘I’ve been clear from the start that I will not support a final reconciliation bill that makes harmful cuts to Medicaid, puts critical funding at risk, or threatens the stability of healthcare providers across [California’s 22nd Congressional District].’

‘I urge my Senate colleagues to stick to the Medicaid provisions in H.R.1 – otherwise, I will vote no,’ Valadao wrote.

On the lawmaker-only call Saturday, both Johnson and Scalise urged Republicans to keep their negotiations and concerns about the bill private.

‘They’re not going to be reading your social media, so putting it there doesn’t help. You need to reach out to them directly, they’re in the thick of it,’ Johnson said, Fox News Digital was told.

Senate Republicans rallied to send President Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ back to the House, notching a major victory in their record-shattering march toward getting the legislation signed into law.

Nearly every Republican in the upper chamber coalesced to advance Trump’s $3.3 trillion megabill, save for Sens.Thom Tillis, R-N.C., Rand Paul, R-Ky, and Susan Collins, R-Maine. No Senate Democrat crossed the aisle to support the bill.

Vice President JD Vance’s tie-breaking vote was needed to push the bill across the finish line – unlike on Saturday, when the Ohio Republican descended on Capitol Hill in anticipation of a tight vote to proceed with debate on the bill.

That comes after Republican leadership tried to win over the votes of Collins and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, with sweeteners in the final, amended version of the bill. 

The bill now heads to the House, where fiscal hawks in the House Freedom Caucus are frustrated with what they say are shallow spending cuts, and moderates are concerned over cuts to Medicaid. All have warned that they may not support the bill. 

Still, Republican leaders have made clear that they intend to have the bill on Trump’s desk by Friday.

Many House Republicans, including Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., called on the Senate to change as little as possible. A product that could pass the House was front of mind for some Senate Republicans as the day dragged on. 

‘We’re talking to the House,’ Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., said. ‘We know they’re going to have some issues over there, just like we had some issues when it came over here, too. But we think we’re going to pass a bill that they can pass.’

House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith, the chief tax writer in the House, said he was ‘optimistic’ about the bill on his way to the Senate floor Tuesday morning. 

‘We’re moving to the point that we’re getting more balance, and what I’ve said all along is let’s have balance in the bill,’ the Missouri Republican said. ‘We’re going to get this done, we’re going to get this to the president by July 4.’ 

Republicans pushed the chamber from the end of June to the beginning of July after a marathon weekend that saw a high drama unfold on the Senate floor, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., bleed time, hours of mostly one-sided debate, the occasional protest in the Senate gallery, a grueling blast of amendments and the penultimate vote to move the ball forward for the president’s ambitious agenda.

The blur from Monday to Tuesday, like the weekend slog before it, was not without its own dramatics.  

Senate Democrats tried numerous times to shelve the legislation during the ‘vote-a-rama,’ while Republicans sought to revive certain measures that were scrapped – like provisions that would have booted illegal immigrants from Medicaid – or amendments to sate key Republican holdouts. 

And before the bill was put on the floor for a final vote, last-minute deals were struck and changes made in a ‘wraparound’ amendment to attract holdouts. 

Included was the doubling of the rural hospital fund to $50 billion, which was pushed by Collins, and a rollback of the start date of supplemental nutrition assistance program (SNAP) work requirements for states with higher payment error rates, like Alaska. 

Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ is crammed with his and congressional Republicans’ legislative priorities, including billions for the Pentagon and to bolster the White House’s border and immigration agenda, the permanent extension of his 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, deep spending cuts and an effort to reform Medicaid.

Senate Republicans have pitched the bill as a way to both turbocharge the economy and as a means to prevent Trump’s first-term tax cuts from expiring. They have simultaneously used it as a vehicle to achieve deep spending cuts in the neighborhood of $1.5 trillion.

But Senate Democrats have railed against the package for the millions it could boot off of Medicaid and the trillions it could add to the federal deficit.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released two sets of scores Saturday and Sunday that reflected both current policy and current law. Under current policy, the bill would tack on just over $507 billion over the next decade. But under current law, the package would add roughly $3.3 trillion.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., countered that when it came to spending, Senate Democrats were being hypocritical. 

‘I’ve been here a long time,’ Thune said. ‘And I’ve not been involved in a single spending debate and fight in which Republicans were trying to spend less, and Democrats were trying to spend more, with one exception. 

‘And that’s national security,’ he continued. ‘Democrats are always willing to cut defense but never want to cut anywhere else.’

But Schumer accused Trump of ‘lying’ about the bill, particularly over the nature of proposed cuts to Medicaid and the economic growth potential tied to the tax package. 

And in one final act of defiance ahead of the bill’s final passage, Schumer had the official title of the legislation ‘The One Big, Beautiful Bill Act’ nixed. 

‘The American people will not forget what Republicans do in this chamber today,’ Schumer said.