Republican lawmakers are backing President Donald Trump’s insistence that Ukraine hold elections, even if they don’t share his belief that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a ‘dictator.’ 

‘I think you have to give them some space… There is a negotiation going on,’ said Sen. Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D.

Trump on Tuesday night said Ukraine ‘never should have started’ the war, and doubled down by calling Zelenskyy a ‘dictator’ because Ukraine hasn’t held elections since Russia invaded the country in 2022.

‘Ukraine clearly did not start this war,’ Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., wrote on X. ‘The fact is that Russia invaded Ukraine and must be held accountable. Otherwise, aggressors will be encouraged in their bad actions.’

Still, the Nebraska senator commended Trump for trying to end the war.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., backed up the president’s push for elections.We held elections during World War Two. Britain held elections during World War Two. If they’re a democracy, they should hold elections. I don’t think that’s difficult,’ he told reporters Thursday. 

‘[Zelenskyy] is the elected leader of the country,’ said Hawley. ‘But, you know, at a certain point you’ve got to hold elections.’

Vice President JD Vance was on Capitol Hill for a lunch with Republican senators, but the president’s bold assertion about the Ukrainian leader was not a topic of discussion, according to Hawley. 

Zelenskyy was originally up for reelection in April 2024, but Ukraine’s constitution bars holding elections until the president lifts the martial law order he instituted after the 2022 invasion.

‘Well, we’ve got to have elections,’ Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said when asked about the comments.

‘When it comes to blame for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I blame Putin above all others,’ Graham added in a post on X, claiming Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden were ‘pathetically weak in handling Putin and failed to protect Ukraine from invasion.’ 

Still, Graham called Trump Ukraine’s ‘best hope’ to end the war. Trump ‘will achieve this goal in the Trump way,’ he said. 

Graham spoke with Zelenskyy on Wednesday, according to the Ukrainian leader. ‘As always, Senator Graham is constructive and doing a lot to help bring peace closer,’ he said. 

‘Make no mistake about it, that invasion was the responsibility of one human being on the face of this planet. It was Vladimir Putin,’ Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told reporters. 

Tillis said he believed Putin planned to roll through the Baltic States and ‘send the signal to China that now is the time’ they can take over Taiwan. 

‘That’s what this is about, and that’s what we have to communicate.’ 

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., signaled that he disagreed with Trump’s comments on Zelenskyy, calling Putin a ‘gangster’ and an ‘evil person.’

Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., called Zelenskyy the ‘duly elected president of Ukraine’ but said he did not believe U.S. policy was aligning with Ukraine. 

‘I think he’s factually wrong on those points,’ said Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-S.D.  ‘I also don’t know what his motive [is] behind it. As a negotiator, he’s always positioning, and he’s in a negotiating mood these days.’

Trump’s remarks came just after Secretary of State Marco Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff traveled to Saudi Arabia to meet with their Russian counterparts. 

The team came back with an agreement to increase diplomatic presence in each other’s nation and an agreed-upon need for elections in Ukraine. 

Russia has insisted it will not sign a peace agreement until Ukraine agrees to hold elections, and the U.S. is now ‘floating’ the idea of a three-stage plan: ceasefire, then Ukrainian elections, then inking of a peace deal.

General Valerii Zaluzhny, likely Zelenskyy’s most formidable opponent in a reelection campaign, said he would not entertain the idea of running against Ukraine’s president until the war is over. 

‘When such conditions come, I will be ready to give an answer to such a question. For now, our task is to endure and save our nation. And only after that will we think about other things.’

Zelenskyy, according to Trump, ‘refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden ‘like a fiddle.’’

‘A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left. In the meantime, we are successfully negotiating an end to the War with Russia, something all admit only ‘TRUMP,’ and the Trump Administration, can do,’ Trump said.  ‘Biden never tried, Europe has failed to bring Peace, and Zelenskyy probably wants to keep the ‘gravy train’ going. I love Ukraine, but Zelenskyy has done a terrible job, his Country is shattered, and MILLIONS have unnecessarily died.’ 

Dmitry Medvedev, a top Kremlin security official, remarked: ‘If you’d told me just three months ago that these were the words of the US president, I would have laughed out loud. [Trump] is 200 percent right [about Zelenskyy]. Bankrupt clown.’

Some key pro-life activists are raising ethical questions about President Donald Trump’s executive order to expand access to pricey in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures, arguing the technology ‘is not pro-life’ because some embryos ‘are destroyed’ in the process.

‘IVF doesn’t address the root causes of the infertility health crisis in America,’ Live Action founder Lila Rose wrote on X. ‘It’s a Big Pharma bandaid, with major ethical issues, like millions of frozen & destroyed embryos. If we want to Make America Healthy Again, we should invest in addressing and healing the underlying causes of infertility.’

Trump signed the executive order Tuesday, fulfilling part of a key campaign promise to mandate free IVF treatment for women. The order came shortly after Democrats criticized him for his role in appointing Supreme Court justices who reversed the landmark Roe v. Wade case, leaving abortion access up to each state,

IVF ‘offers hope to men and women experiencing fertility challenges,’ the executive order states, and ‘Americans need reliable access to IVF and more affordable treatment options’ as the cost for treatments can range anywhere from $12,000 to $25,000.  

‘Therefore, to support American families, it is the policy of my Administration to ensure reliable access to IVF treatment, including by easing unnecessary statutory or regulatory burdens to make IVF treatment drastically more affordable,’ the order states.

Patrick T. Brown, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, explained that IVF raises a unique ethical issue within the conservative pro-life movement due to the technology’s potential to create new life, which is causing some splintering among some on the right.

‘I think that there are questions about what exactly are we doing with IVF, where we’re creating something that has the potential to become a human person,’ Brown said. ‘All of us were embryos at one stage or another, so they deserve some respect, at the very least, if not legal protection of some form or another.’

‘There’s actual guardrails that need to be pursued, rather than just going full speed ahead,’ he added.

Brown predicted that the most likely outcome is that after the White House comes up with a plan in the next three months, the Trump administration may consult with experts who have long been focused on IVF who are aware of the ethical concerns.

‘The U.S. allows people to select sex or to screen for different genetic traits in a way that most other countries don’t,’ Brown said. ‘We’re kind of the ‘Wild West’ when it comes to some of this stuff. And it opens the can of worms for eugenics and some of these other things that I don’t think President Trump actually intends. But, you know, it could actually go that way if we’re not careful about it.’

Several conservative social media influencers opposed Trump’s executive order on Tuesday. 

‘IVF ends more precious lives than it creates,’ Turning Point USA influencer Alex Clark wrote on X. ‘President Trump’s executive order pushing for expanded access is just fueling the same industry that competes with Planned Parenthood. More babies will also be born without a right to know both of their biological parents, and that’s a tragedy in itself.’

Conservative commentator Liz Wheeler, who is Catholic, called IVF ‘dreadful’ in another post. 

‘Over 90% of children created by IVF die, either left frozen and abandoned, destroyed due to eugenics, experimented on, or miscarried. Only 7% are born. It’s dreadful,’ she wrote.

Allie Beth Stuckey, an evangelical Christian who hosts The Blaze podcast ‘Relatable,’ wrote that IVF ‘is anti-MAHA,’ referring to the Make America Healthy Again movement.

‘It’s the perfect example of what’s wrong with much of modern medicine in America,’ she wrote. ‘Instead of getting to the root cause of infertility, it masks the symptoms with a ‘solution’ that is a threat to women’s health. The process almost always involves the destruction or indefinite freezing of embryos. It is unbelievably unregulated in the United States, and I fear this latest EO will only make it worse.’

IVF rose to become a high-profile issue during the presidential campaign. In February 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children, leading to paused IVF services in the state. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey later codified access to IVF services in state law a few months later.

‘When frozen embryos are thawed and prepared for transfer, there is a very small possibility that they may be damaged or destroyed and therefore unable to be successfully transferred,’ Joanne Rosen, a practice professor in Health Policy and Management at Johns Hopkins University, wrote in a blog post after the state’s high court ruling. ‘Even fresh embryos may be damaged and not able to be transferred. So there was real concern about the legal consequences given that these embryos, these in vitro embryos, have been declared persons under the law in Alabama.’

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the head of the Health and Human Services (HHS) department, wrote in a September post that while he and Trump are not opposed to IVF, ‘we are going to investigate the alarming decline in fertility.’

‘We will evaluate research implicating chemicals like glyphosate, BPA, heavy metals, xenoestrogens, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and so on,’ he wrote. ‘We will look into nutritional factors too. Why are sperm counts declining year after year? Why are girls reaching puberty so early? Why are so many couples infertile? The American people deserve answers, and we will provide them. So yes, IVF – but this issue is so much bigger than IVF.’

Fox News Digital has reached out to the White House for comment. 

: Senate Republican conference Chairman Tom Cotton, R-Ark., is set to meet with an embattled Trump nominee for a key position in the Department of Defense (DOD) after Cotton faced backlash from some MAGA-aligned figures over the weekend.

Cotton will meet with President Donald Trump’s nominee for Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Elbridge ‘Bridge’ Colby, in the coming days, a source familiar shared with Fox News Digital. 

According to the source, senators on the Senate Committee on Armed Services (SASC) had come to Cotton with concerns regarding some of Colby’s stances, particularly past comments on Iran potentially obtaining a nuclear weapon. 

Turning Point USA founder and CEO Charlie Kirk told Fox News Digital in an exclusive statement, ‘I’m very happy to hear that Sen. Cotton is willing to meet with Bridge,’ touting the nominee’s accomplishments and ‘thoughtful’ approach.

Whether his own public pressure on the senator via X played a part in the meeting, he said, ‘Both public and private pressure are important. Ideally, these debates don’t play out in public, but sometimes it’s necessary.’

‘What has become very clear to me in recent days is that the base is paying close attention to this confirmation, and there will be political consequences for any senator who stands in the way of the personnel President Trump wants,’ Kirk continued, adding that he hopes Cotton will ultimately back Colby. 

The source told Fox News Digital that issues with Colby’s positions on the war between Russia and Ukraine had surfaced from some members. But what was ultimately fostering hesitance was his previously stated stance on Iran’s nuclear capabilities and whether the U.S. should contain a nuclear Iran.

As for Cotton, a source familiar explained that the GOP Conference and Intel Committee chairman is ‘comfortable’ with nominees who say they support Trump’s position in preventing Iran from accessing nuclear weapons. 

The anticipated meeting between the top Republican and Colby comes after Cotton was the target of ‘MAGA’ ire over the weekend for his hesitance to get behind the nominee. 

Figures such as billionaire White House advisor Elon Musk and Kirk, a fierce MAGA ally, took to X to discuss Colby’s nomination and Cotton’s purported hesitance. 

‘The effort to undermine President Trump continues in the US Senate,’ Kirk wrote. 

He further claimed Cotton ‘is working behind the scenes to stop Trump’s pick, Elbridge Colby, from getting confirmed at DOD.’

‘Colby is one of the most important pieces to stop the Bush/Cheney cabal at DOD. Why is Tom Cotton doing this? Comment below your theories,’ he added. 

X owner Musk replied, ‘Why the opposition to Bridge? What does he think Bridge will do?’

‘Senator Cotton is focused on ensuring all defense nominees commit to supporting President Trump’s position that Iran must not have a nuclear weapon, and Cotton will be addressing this in meetings and hearings with the nominees,’ a source familiar with the matter told Fox News Digital earlier this week as they awaited Colby’s paperwork to proceed with the nomination process.

The White House did not provide comment when asked by Fox News Digital whether Colby’s stance on a nuclear Iran had changed. 

Colby had written in an op-ed in 2010 that ‘[c]ontaining a nuclear Iran is an eminently plausible and practical objective.’

He did, however, cede that ‘preventing an Iranian nuclear capability should be the objective of Washington and the international community.’

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday requesting the Domestic Policy Council examine ways to make in vitro fertilization, known as IVF, more affordable and accessible for Americans – despite the fact Democrats cautioned that Trump would seek to ban the procedure. 

‘Americans need reliable access to IVF and more affordable treatment options, as the cost per cycle can range from $12,000 to $25,000,’ the executive order said. ‘Providing support, awareness, and access to affordable fertility treatments can help these families navigate their path to parenthood with hope and confidence.’

Specifically, the order requires the assistant to the president for domestic policy to provide a list of policy recommendations aimed at ‘protecting IVF access and aggressively reducing out-of-pocket and health plan costs for IVF treatment’ within 90 days, according to the order. 

The directive comes months after former Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate in the 2024 election against Trump, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, accused the Trump administration of being ‘anti-IVF.’ 

Specifically, Walz singled out Trump’s running mate, then-Sen. JD Vance, a practicing Catholic who voted in June against the Right to IVF Act. The Catholic Church opposes IVF, saying unused embryos pose a moral dilemma. 

But Vance said in August 2024 he doesn’t believe all his religious views should translate to public policy since the U.S. is a ‘democratic society,’ he told the New York Post. 

‘Catholic social teaching is obviously very robust,’ he told the Post. ‘I think that no person who, or at least no one I know who’s Catholic, doesn’t accept that just because the Catholic Church teaches something, doesn’t mean you necessarily as a legislator need to affect that to public policy.’ 

The Right to IVF measure would establish a nationwide right to IVF and other assisted reproductive technology, but it failed to pass in the Senate. 

‘JD Vance opposing the miracle of IVF is a direct attack on my family and so many others,’ Walz said in a social media post on X in July 2024. 

Walz previously claimed that he and his wife, Gwen, struggled to conceive and shared details during the 2024 campaign about the couple’s experience using IVF to become pregnant with their two children. 

But Gwen Walz later clarified in August 2024 in an interview with Glamour magazinethat the couple actually used intrauterine insemination, known as IUI, to conceive. The process involves using a catheter to place the sperm directly into the uterus to increase odds of conception. 

In contrast, IVF requires the removal of a woman’s eggs and injecting them with sperm to create embryos, which then are placed back into the woman’s uterus. 

More than 85,000 babies born in 2021 were from IVF, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. 

Costly IVF treatments are rarely fully covered by health insurance, and only 25% of employers report providing coverage to their employees, according to the White House.

Trump unveiled plans in August 2024 that he’d seek to require insurance companies to cover the cost of IVF, stating he was pushing the policy ‘because we want more babies, to put it nicely.’

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Fox News’ Julia Johnson contributed to this report.

On my first day as secretary of Transportation, we witnessed the midair collision in Washington, D.C., that took 67 lives. 

While the investigation is ongoing, the tragedy highlighted the urgent need to modernize our air traffic systems — and to move past the broken promises and political inertia of the past. 

The Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) unsustainable software systems that we’ve inherited are symptomatic of the endemic problems that plagued the Biden administration: a bloated bureaucracy that pushed overregulation instead of innovation, and radical DEI instead of merit. As a result, innovation stagnated and safety was sacrificed. 

Unlike my predecessors, I won’t run from difficult problems; I will fix them. 

This week, I’ve invited software engineers from SpaceX to visit the FAA as part of a fact-finding mission to better understand the issues afflicting our air traffic systems. SpaceX is America’s leading space launch company tracking thousands of satellites, and we thank these patriotic engineers for volunteering their time and expertise. 

This is just the start. Over the coming weeks and months, I will arrange similar meetings with America’s leading high-tech companies to identify our most urgent needs in air safety. Put simply, if you can help, my door is open.  

These candid conversations with the private sector are crucial because the old methods have failed. In 2012, President Barack Obama signed the ‘FAA Modernization and Reform Act’ into law, which provided $63.4 billion in FAA funding over four years, $11 billion of which was directed toward air traffic management. 

Flash forward to December 2024, when an alarming report from the Government Accountability Office stated that among the FAA’s 138 systems, 51 are unsustainable and the agency doesn’t plan to complete modernization projects for some of these systems for at least 10 years. Additionally, the FAA doesn’t yet have plans to modernize other systems in need — three of which are at least 30 years old. 

This status quo is unacceptable. It’s dangerous. And it must change immediately. 

The Biden administration was asleep at the switch and handed us a mess. An investigation by the New York Times in August 2023 revealed a pattern of near-collisions between commercial airlines — with near-misses happening multiple times a week, and occurring at all major airports in the U.S. This included 503 air traffic control lapses that the F.A.A. preliminarily categorized as ‘significant’ — 65% more than in the prior year. 

The FAA is also facing critical disruptions with its Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) system, which is vital for sharing safety-critical flight information between air traffic controllers and pilots. In 2023, a complete failure of the NOTAM system caused a nationwide ground stop, causing significant flight delays. 

The systemic problems are not limited to software. Aging networks at thousands of FAA sites must be upgraded in order to avoid severe service disruptions. In the meantime, the FAA is spending millions of taxpayer dollars per month just to maintain the legacy copper wire and connections. 

That level of dysfunction might be expected in a developing nation, but in the United States, it’s intolerable. President Donald Trump has already started implementing his bold vision to rebuild our nation, and modernizing our air traffic systems will be a crucial part of that legacy.  

Despite the obvious need for reform, partisans are certain to criticize this upcoming SpaceX visit, manufacturing illusory controversy rather than welcoming progress. That cynical approach exemplifies why the situation has deteriorated year after year; assigning blame is easy, but solutions take hard work. Americans will understand the facts: upgrading our nation’s air traffic systems will mean safer skies, fewer delays and less wasted time sitting in airports or stuck on tarmacs.  

We also won’t be derailed by misleading media coverage. As part of a larger government-wide restructuring that affected every federal agency, 0.8% of the FAA’s 45,000 employees were recently laid off — and we worked to ensure that all air traffic controllers and those in the most safety-critical positions were retained. 

Nevertheless, CNN blared its clickbait headline: ‘Hundreds of FAA probationary workers fired by Trump administration, union says.’ Only in paragraph 8 did CNN admit the truth: ‘The firings did not include air traffic controllers.’ 

In fact, we’ve begun boosting our recruitment of air traffic controllers. And thanks to Trump’s strong leadership, we are hiring on the basis of competence instead of ideology. As a result, we will see an immediate increase in talent, morale and retention, which will enable the most important result: safety. 

When I took the oath of office, I swore a commitment to defend our nation, and that means ensuring that our country’s skies are the safest in the world. Since the tragic events of January 30, I’ve met with grieving families and sincerely believe the best way to honor their loved ones is to urgently overhaul and upgrade our air traffic systems immediately. 

We can no longer rely on outdated code that hasn’t changed since the Clinton Administration. We must move past the bureaucratic delays and stale excuses that defined the last administration. Thankfully, Americans elected the world’s greatest problem solver, President Trump. 

This visit with SpaceX marks the beginning of a new era. Our nation needs an urgent upgrade to first-class. And it’s coming. 

Sean Duffy is the 20th U.S. Secretary of Transportation.

A top European Union official is warning President Donald Trump against letting Russian President Vladimir Putin succeed in dividing a decades-old alliance between the U.S. and Europe as Trump seeks to bring an end to the war in Ukraine. 

‘It is clear that any deal on Ukraine that doesn’t involve Europe will fail,’ EU policy chief Kaja Kallas told Fox News Digital from South Africa. ‘Europe and the U.S. are stronger together, this is exactly why Putin is trying to divide us. 

‘Let’s not do him the favor,’ she added. 

Kallas’ comments came after she held a call with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the foreign ministers of France, the U.K., Italy and Germany on Tuesday night to discuss the U.S. talks with Russian in Saudi Arabia, in which Washington agreed to re-establish diplomatic ties with Moscow through reopening embassies and re-engaging geopolitically and economically.  

Concern in Europe has been mounting over the Trump administration’s push to find a solution to end the war in Ukraine, as neither Kyiv nor any European official has yet been present for the discussions. 

‘When they say ‘these are our plans for the end of the war,’ it raises questions for us,’ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters from Turkey on Wednesday following a meeting with Turkish President Recep Erdoğan. ‘Where are we at this negotiating table? This war is taking place inside Ukraine. Putin is killing Ukrainians, not Americans.’

‘We want a just peace, a lasting peace, a sustainable peace,’ he added.

While Rubio looked to set the record straight following the talks on Tuesday by agreeing that Ukraine, Europe and Russia will need to be involved in any ceasefire terms, some comments by Trump have prompted frustration in Kyiv and concern across Europe.

‘We need American strength not concessions to end this war on Ukraine’s terms,’ Kallas told Fox News Digital. ‘Handing Ukrainian territory to Putin on a plate is a losing strategy.’

Kallas, along with other European leaders, took issue this week when Trump said Ukraine needs to hold presidential elections – something that Ukraine constitutionally cannot do during a state of war.

‘Elections in Ukraine are impossible amid Russia’s daily attacks, which have displaced millions of Ukrainians,’ Kallas said. ‘Let’s not forget Russia hasn’t held a free election in 25 years.’

Kallas, who told Fox News Digital that she has submitted a proposal that would see EU nations ramp up military aid to Ukraine this year, argued, ‘Kyiv must be able to negotiate from a place of strength.’

Reports indicated that European leaders were set to hold a second emergency summit on Ukraine in Paris on Wednesday after a smaller group of leaders from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, Denmark and the U.K. reportedly convened on Monday following the Munich Security Conference.

Despite concerns that Putin could be dividing the West, one former DIA intelligence officer and author of ‘Putin’s Playbook,’ Rebekah Koffler, argued the Trump administration’s strategy on ending the war is not an indication the U.S. is abandoning its allies.

‘The U.S. is not turning against Europe,’ she said. ‘NATO had 10 years, a decade to prepare for and deter this war.’

‘In the course of several years, my colleagues and I briefed senior military and intelligence officials of top European nations on the Russian threat. In vain,’ Koffler said, noting that she and her American intelligence colleagues warned European nations in 2013 ahead of Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014. ‘NATO ignored the threat for a decade and did not bother to develop a counter-strategy to Putin’s Playbook.

‘Trump is handing over the responsibility for Europe’s protection to the Europeans,’ she added, noting the West was already divided given some NATO nations’ failures to meet defense spending agreements. 

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) said it has uncovered that the U.S. government currently has more than 4 million active credit cards on its books.

‘The US government currently has ~4.6M active credit cards/accounts, which processed ~90M unique transactions for  ~$40B of spend[ing] in FY24,’ DOGE said in a post on X on Tuesday. 

Attached to the post was a breakdown of multiple federal agencies and their credit card use, with the Department of Defense leading the way in both the number of transactions (about 27.2 million), and number of individual accounts (roughly 2.4 million).

DOGE’s activities have come under increasing scrutiny over the last few weeks, with opponents arguing that President Donald Trump has given billionaire Elon Musk, who was tapped to head the department, too much power to shrink the size of the federal government.

The new department has also been at the center of numerous lawsuits, with opponents attempting to block Musk and the Trump administration from carrying out many of DOGE’s recommendations for cuts.

However, Trump has not wavered in his support from the efforts, publicly supporting DOGE’s work while also releasing a memo on Tuesday ordering government agencies to be ‘radically transparent’ with the American people about its spending.

The memo argues that the federal government ‘spends too much money on programs, contracts, and grants that do not promote the interests of the American people.’

‘For too long, taxpayers have subsidized ideological projects overseas and domestic organizations engaged in actions that undermine the national interest,’ the note continues. ‘The American people have seen their tax dollars used to fund the passion projects of unelected bureaucrats rather than to advance the national interest.’

‘The American people have a right to see how the Federal Government has wasted their hard-earned wages.’

Meanwhile, DOGE promised to update its efforts to streamline the government’s credit card usage within a week.

‘DOGE is working w/ the agencies to simplify the program and reduce admin costs – we will report back in 1 week,’ DOGE said on X.

President Donald Trump’s second term in office presents a historic chance to reverse the Biden administration’s failed Iran policies and prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons, a new report from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) argues.

The report, titled ‘Detecting and Halting an Iranian Weaponization Effort,’ argues that the president should immediately muster the full weight of the U.S. national security establishment to confront this urgent threat.

‘The president made the right call in re-imposing maximum pressure. Now, he needs to ensure Iran can’t dash to nuclear weapons, drawing on the short timeline and technical know-how it possesses,’ Andrea Stricker, author of the FDD report, told Fox News Digital.

‘A nuclear-armed Iran would fundamentally upend security in the region and hinder the ability of the United States, Israel, and their partners to counter Tehran’s aggression out of fear of nuclear escalation,’ she said.

Srickler believes President Trump absolutely cannot tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran and must use all instruments of American power to stop this.

The FDD report recommends that the administration and allies should re-establish the threat of credible military force to deter Iran from breaking the nuclear threshold and, along with Israel, be prepared to target Iranian nuclear sites.

‘The United States or Israel should demonstrate their ability to eliminate any detected Iranian weaponization facilities and activities.’

U.S. intelligence learned recently that a secret team of Iranian scientists are working on a short-cut to the country’s path to develop a nuclear weapon. The revelations come as Iran’s position in the region has significantly weakened as Tehran became embroiled in conflict with Israel after Oct. 7. 

Then-President Joe Biden allowed Tehran’s nuclear program to progress largely unimpeded, the report said, and Iran now likely has the capability and know-how to produce nuclear weapons. Although Iran may lack confidence in the functionality of certain components, it may be able to detonate a crude nuclear device within six months from starting. 

‘An advancing Iranian weaponization capability, matched with Tehran’s enrichment of uranium to near-weapons-grade, limits the window of time in which the United States and its allies could intervene to stop an Iranian dash to nuclear weapons, known as a breakout,’ the report notes.

In a sign of the administration’s toughening position on Iran, Trump signed a memorandum reimposing the ‘maximum pressure’ policy, a hallmark of his first term administration’s crippling sanctions on Tehran.

It is ‘in the national interest to impose maximum pressure on the Iranian regime to end its nuclear threat, curtail its ballistic missile program, and stop its support for terrorist groups,’ the president’s executive order read.

Trump withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran nuclear deal, during his first term in 2018 and reapplied harsh economic sanctions. The Biden administration had initially looked at re-engaging with Iran on the nuclear issue upon taking office, but on-again-off-again talks went nowhere, complicated by Iran’s domestic politics and Iran’s role in supporting its terror groups in the region. 

Stricker says the clerical regime has an additional incentive to seek nuclear weapons to secure its hold on power with a more confrontational administration in Washington. It could also sprint for the bomb to bolster its offensive and defensive capabilities to deter further Israeli strikes against the regime itself, she warned.

In addition to the military threat, the report recommends the U.S. and Israel should cooperate on intelligence-related operations to detect and disrupt Iranian weaponization. It also suggests that the U.S. and Israel should work toward identifying key Iranian officials and nuclear scientists and to cultivate them as human intelligence sources. 

It additionally encourages the U.S. and other nations to urgently mobilize the International Atomic Energy Agency to strengthen inspections of weaponization activities in Iran.

A November 2024 report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said that Iran has enough fissile material to produce over a dozen nuclear weapons if it continues to enrich uranium. 

President Donald Trump blasted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a ‘dictator without elections’ on Wednesday, after the U.S. left Ukraine out of initial peace talks with Russia this week. 

‘A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left,’ Trump wrote on TRUTH Social. ‘In the meantime, we are successfully negotiating an end to the War with Russia, something all admit only ‘TRUMP,’ and the Trump Administration, can do. Biden never tried, Europe has failed to bring Peace, and Zelenskyy probably wants to keep the ‘gravy train’ going.’  

Trump added, ‘I love Ukraine, but Zelenskyy has done a terrible job, his Country is shattered, and MILLIONS have unnecessarily died – And so it continues…..’

Describing Zelenskyy as a ‘modestly successful comedian,’ Trump said the Ukrainian leader ‘managed to talk the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start, but a War that he, without the U.S. and ‘TRUMP,’ will never be able to settle.’ Trump decried how the United States ‘has spent $200 Billion Dollars more than Europe, and Europe’s money is guaranteed, while the United States will get nothing back.’ 

‘Why didn’t Sleepy Joe Biden demand Equalization, in that this War is far more important to Europe than it is to us — We have a big, beautiful Ocean as separation,’ Trump posed of former President Joe Biden. ‘On top of this, Zelenskyy admits that half of the money we sent him is ‘MISSING.’ He refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden ‘like a fiddle.’’ 

Zelenskyy criticized Trump earlier Wednesday in comments to reporters in Kyiv after canceling a trip to Saudi Arabia, where Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and Special Envoy Ambassador Steve Witkoff held talks with Russian counterparts earlier this week centered on negotiating an end to the three-year conflict with Ukraine. 

‘Unfortunately, President Trump – I have great respect for him as a leader of a nation that we have great respect for, the American people who always support us – unfortunately lives in this disinformation space,’ Zelensky said.

Nearly one year past the expiration of Zelenskyy’s first five-year term, the U.S. and Russia are in agreement that Ukrainians must go to the polls and decide whether to keep their head of state. 

Russia has insisted it will not sign a peace agreement until Ukraine agrees to hold elections, and the U.S. is now ‘floating’ the idea of a three-stage plan: ceasefire, then Ukrainian elections, then inking of a peace deal.

Zelenskyy’s term in office was supposed to end last May, with elections originally slated for April 2024. But the president’s aides have said elections will not be held until six months after the end of martial law. The Ukrainian constitution prohibits holding elections under martial law. With his popularity having plummeted nearly 40% since the war’s outbreak, Zelenskyy’s future could be in jeopardy if peace is reached and elections are triggered. 

Ukraine advocates say post-war elections would be a far better option, but elections offer Russia an opportunity to sow chaos. ‘The only person that benefits from elections before there’s a durable peace deal is Putin,’ Andrew D’Anieri, a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, previously told Fox News Digital. ‘The Kremlin loves elections, not in their own country, but elsewhere, because it provides an opportunity to destabilize things.’

Trump envoy Keith Kellog, a retired 3-star general, arrived in Kyiv to hold talks with Zelenskyy on Wednesday. Ukrainian officials have emphasized that any peace deal will require U.S. security guarantees in order to ensure Russia does not invade again.

‘We understand the need for security guarantees,’ Kellog told Ukrainian media. ‘It’s very clear to us the importance of the sovereignty of this nation and the independence of this nation as well… Part of my mission is to sit and listen.’ 

State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce released a statement after Rubio met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Ridyah on Tuesday. 

Fox News’ Morgan Phillips and Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report. This is a developing news story. Check back for updates.