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President Donald Trump said Tuesday he will speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin “very soon” as his administration closely tracks reports of a suspected pneumonic plague death in Siberia that have prompted a U.S. health alert and heightened health precautions across several countries bordering Russia.

Trump revealed the planned call while taking questions from reporters Tuesday.

Asked whether he had spoken with Putin about the situation, Trump said he already had a call scheduled.

“I have a call scheduled, yup,” Trump said.

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Asked when the call would take place, the president responded, “Very soon.”

Trump said the administration was in “very deep discussions” when asked what U.S. intelligence agencies were saying about the reports.

The president’s comments came as the U.S. Embassy in Moscow issued a health alert Tuesday saying it was aware of press reports from Russia’s Irkutsk region of “suspected pneumonic plague resulting in the death of an individual,” along with associated quarantine measures and hospital closures.

“We continue to track the situation closely,” the embassy said.

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A State Department spokesman told Fox News Digital that the department, along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other interagency partners, is “closely monitoring the fatal case of suspected pneumonic plague” in Russia’s Irkutsk Oblast.

“The Trump Administration has no higher priority than the safety and security of Americans,” the spokesman said.

The spokesman cautioned that “many details remain unconfirmed” and called on Moscow to provide greater clarity.

“We encourage Russian authorities to share accurate information quickly and openly,” the spokesman said.

The alert advised Americans in the area to follow local health guidance, avoid affected medical facilities and seek prompt medical care if they develop fever or respiratory symptoms. Those who have traveled to an area experiencing an outbreak were advised to monitor their health for 14 days.

The State Department’s existing Level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisory for Russia remains unchanged. The embassy reiterated that Americans currently in Russia should depart and warned that the U.S. government’s ability to assist citizens there is limited, particularly outside Moscow.

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Several countries bordering Russia are also implementing new health precautions in response to the reports.

Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are moving to implement what their governments have described as “enhanced health and sanitary measures” in response to reports of pneumonic plague in Siberia.

A 28-year-old employee of the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia and the Far East died last week from what Russian authorities described as pneumonia of undetermined origin. Russia has not said the woman died of plague and said testing found no microorganisms in her body linked to her work.

Russian officials told the WHO that her contacts tested negative for dangerous infectious pathogens. The WHO has assessed the risk to the general population as low.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has also said it is closely monitoring the reports and working across the U.S. government as additional information becomes available. The agency said there is currently no indication of a broader threat to the United States.

Pneumonic plague is a serious bacterial infection caused by Yersinia pestis. It can spread between people through respiratory droplets during close contact and can progress rapidly if untreated. The disease can be successfully treated with antibiotics, particularly when identified and treated early.

For now, U.S. officials are continuing to seek additional information about what occurred in Irkutsk and whether the incident poses any wider threat.

The president suggested his administration could have more to say as soon as Wednesday.

“We’ll be able to report about it probably tomorrow,” Trump said.

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

A top official at the Department of War discussed how artificial intelligence is playing a role in war readiness strategy, and said foreign adversaries are carrying out “psyop” operations to fuel the anti-data center and anti-artificial intelligence movement across the U.S.

During an interview with Fox News Digital in the White House, Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering Emil Michael warned that the movement to decrease production for artificial intelligence infrastructure is being pushed by America’s adversaries.

“It is natural from a propaganda standpoint that your adversary, who doesn’t want you to be developing super intelligence ahead of them, is going to try to psyop your population into believing that. And to some degree, it’s worked. And I think that’s why you see the president push back and say, ‘no, this is a good thing,’” he said.

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Data center production has been at the center of debate ahead of the midterm elections, with lawmakers taking near-partisan stances as to whether developments should continue. Michael referred to data centers as the “electricity that fuels the superintelligence revolution,” and explained that continued production of facilities are a crucial part of ensuring the U.S. maintains the lead in the artificial intelligence race.

Protests have popped up across the country against data centers and artificial intelligence advancements in general, with some lawmakers raising questions about the role that foreign influence plays in the demonstrations.

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“It’s the same reason we saw Middle Eastern countries paying for anti-fracking movements,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told Fox News Digital in an interview last month. “Because if they can convince America, ‘Don’t develop your oil and gas, just buy it from us,’ well, that’s great for them and terrible for us.

“The same is true on data centers. If they can convince Americans, ‘You don’t want data centers here, you want to just rely on the Chinese for AI,’ that’s great for China, and it’s terrible for America.”

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Michael echoed some of Cruz’s concerns about foreign influence, though he did not specifically name China as the culprit.

Lawmakers have raised questions about hundreds of millions of dollars that American-born communist tech tycoon Neville Roy Singham pumped into nonprofits and organizations that are now among the leading organizations fighting data center development throughout the country. Recipients of Singham’s largesse include the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the ANSWER Coalition, both self-described pro-China communist groups.

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Last month, activists from both groups carried signs in a Chapel Hill, N.C., protest, merging anti-Trump sentiments with support for communist Cuba and opposition to data centers and AI development, including the message, “SHUT IT DOWN!”

Singham, a 72-year-old American who sold his tech company for $785 million in 2017 and now lives in Shanghai, is known to fund pro-Chinese Communist Party groups that operate in the U.S. He has funneled $278 million into the broad network of nonprofits since 2017, according to a Fox News Digital investigation.

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The Party for Socialism and Liberation Boston, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose national chapter regularly partners with and supports the Singham network, posted to social media in July openly opposing data centers, saying the control of AI and data centers is in the hands of billionaires.

“Workers are rising up across the country in a growing movement against the tech billionaires – from fights against data centers in hundreds of cities, to labor organizing at the world’s biggest tech corporations,” the post read.

As for how the Department of War utilizes artificial intelligence, Michael told Fox News Digital that usage has skyrocketed since Secretary Pete Hegseth assumed the cabinet role, growing from roughly 70,000 users out of a 3.5 million-person workforce to approximately 1.7 million today.

He explained that the Department of War is deploying artificial intelligence across three main areas: enterprise operations, warfighting and intelligence.

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“We have incredible vignettes and stories about how people took 200 hours of work and combined it down to two hours,” he added. “They can see what we have as assets. They can see what the adversary has as assets – they can time things better, they write quicker, they can consolidate orders quicker.”

FIRST ON FOX: A blue city in one of the country’s hottest battleground states is accused of being a potential hotbed of foreign worker visa fraud, according to the House lawmaker who represents the area.

Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., is writing to the Trump administration on Tuesday asking for an investigation into alleged abuse of the H-1B work visa program in his own district. He warned in the letter that his district is a “suspected hotspot of this fraud” and offered himself as “an interlocutor to help enable cooperation with state-level agencies and law enforcement.”

Georgia’s 7th Congressional District, which McCormick represents, encompasses part of the Atlanta metro area including the city’s northern suburbs. That includes part of Fulton County, whose top prosecutor, Fani Willis, has been under heavy scrutiny by Republicans in recent years.

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“Established by the Immigration Act of 1990, the purpose of the H-1B program is to allow American businesses to temporarily bring in foreign citizens to fill key, high-skill employment positions when the domestic workforce demonstrably cannot provide the necessary labor,” McCormick wrote.

“Unfortunately, the H-1B program has become the subject of rampant fraud and abuse for the nefarious purposes of obtaining labor that bad actors can exploit below-market-rate wages and abusive work conditions given H-1B holders’ dependence on retaining their employment in order to avoid removal back to their country of origin.”

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He said the alleged fraud is sowing uncertainty in the U.S. labor market by undercutting wages and unfairly increasing competition for American workers, particularly those fresh out of college.

“Bad actors have developed illicit methods for meeting the requirements for obtaining H-1B visas and the necessary work authorizations, and they employ these methods at scale to enrich themselves through fraud and exploitation via the most threadbare compliance with the letter of the law,” McCormick wrote.

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The Georgia Republican said his suspicions were raised by “stakeholder engagement, reports from my constituents, and recent federal investigation and enforcement activity targeting entities in and around GA-07.”

And while he did not name specific businesses or people he believes are associated with such fraud, McCormick argued, “Metro Atlanta’s recent economic growth and international airport unfortunately make it a logical area of concentration for these bad actors.”

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The Trump administration launched an investigation into suspected H-1B visa fraud in July.

H-1B visas have become the subject of fierce debate on the right, with prominent critics like Vice President JD Vance calling it a “broken” system while calling to eliminate it altogether.

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Supporters of H-1B visas, like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, have argued it’s critical for attracting global talent in fields like technology and engineering that are key to keeping the U.S. at the forefront of global innovation.

Republicans are quietly warning that the true consequence of losing the Senate could be one that shapes the makeup of courts and the law for years to come.

While Republican candidates and surrogates on the campaign trail are warning of a rise in socialism and a return to Biden-era policy should Democrats flip Congress this cycle, some are pushing a different message: if Democrats win the Senate, they’ll block future Supreme Court nominees.

“I think the key over the next 34 days is bringing home Republicans. And I think it’s important to remind some of these Republicans who are not energized yet that the Supreme Court’s on the ballot,” Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., told Fox News Digital.

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Daines, who chaired the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) in 2024, played a key role in flipping the Senate two years ago. That election was dominated by pocketbook issues, much like this midterm cycle, and Democrats have pounced upon that message.

But the Supreme Court and the implications of the balance of power in the Senate are a message Daines contended the GOP wasn’t pushing enough.

“I mentioned that to the White House. And it’s — that’s not a silver bullet, it’s a silver buckshot,” of several issues Republicans should be talking about, Daines said.

If Trump doesn’t have a GOP majority in the upper chamber, he said, “if we have a vacancy, Sotomayor, Clarence Thomas, who knows — we could not, President Trump could not move through a Supreme Court justice.”

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The high court is aging, with conservative stalwarts on the bench, Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas, 78, and Samuel Alito, 76, nearing octogenarian status. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, 72, and Chief Justice John Roberts, 71, aren’t that far behind.

“The Supreme Court as we know it would cease to exist under Troy Jackson, Abdul El-Sayed and James Talarico, who are hell-bent on replacing it with a bloated, lawless body designed to advance Democrats’ socialist agenda,” NRSC spokeswoman Bernadette Breslin told Fox News Digital.

Speculation has swirled over Alito after NPR earlier this year published a report declaring his retirement before swiftly retracting it.

Alito added some fuel to that fire, however, during an interview with CBS earlier this month. When asked if he was considering retirement, he admitted to considering it earlier this year, and noted that “it’s something I think that somebody at my age has to think about every term.”

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Democrats haven’t been keen to support several of Trump’s nominees for a variety of positions throughout the government over the last two years. Notably, Republicans went nuclear last year to change the Senate’s rules to move through bundles of nominees that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Democrats were blocking.

And Schumer suggested that a Supreme Court pick, should there be a vacancy, and other positions in the judiciary may suffer the same fate.

“The bottom line is one of the reasons that we want to make sure we do everything we can to take back the Senate is not let Trump put such horrible justices, MAGA justices on the Supreme Court and the lower courts,” Schumer said.

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Daines noted that sometimes voters look for a shortcut to head to the polls, and that the Supreme Court being a quiet issue on the ballot could very well be that path to energizing a Republican base to getting out and voting as the midterm cycle winds down.

“Without a Republican majority, President Trump will not be able to move his Supreme Court nominee through, and that’s a nominee that’ll be on the bench for 25 years,” Daines said. “We need Republicans to connect those dots. Disgruntled Republicans in Texas, come home and vote for Ken Paxton, because the Supreme Court’s on the ballot.”

Revelations that the Biden-era FBI tracked Trump family travel and top aide Susie Wiles’ phone records received a blistering rebuke from a former top Democratic official who compared the behavior to Nixon-era abuses of federal power that surfaced amid the Watergate scandal.

The FBI investigation codenamed “Plasmic Echo,” later taken over by special counsel Jack Smith, examined Trump’s alleged improper retention of classified and national-defense material and possible obstruction. Records show agents tracked first lady Melania Trump’s and Barron Trump’s travel while planning the 2022 Mar-a-Lago search and later logged metadata from now-Chief of Staff Susie Wiles’ calls with attorneys, journalists and others.”

Julian Epstein, the former chief counsel for the House Judiciary Committee’s Democratic bench, compared the situation to the scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon.

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“It’s hard to think of good justifications for this. To me, it feels a little Nixonian,” said Epstein, who also served as staff director to Democrats on a second powerful panel, the House Oversight Committee.

“If this report is true, then it’s pretty bad. If true, then those in charge at the time better have some darn good explanations for surveillance of family members and advisors talking privately to lawyers or exercising their free-speech rights with the news media,” he said.

Nixon, a California Republican, maintained an “Enemies List” developed by White House aides around top adviser Charles Colson and later formalized by White House counsel John Dean. Dean – now a vocal critic of Republicans like Trump – once described it in a 1971 memo as intended to “use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.”

Epstein questioned what legal justification investigators had for monitoring the contacts, particularly those involving lawyers and journalists.

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“[That] seems like a stretch,” he said.

Epstein appeared to be among the few prominent Democrats publicly criticizing the newly disclosed investigative tactics Tuesday, including the tracking of Melania and Barron Trump’s travel and the collection of Wiles’ call metadata.

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Fox News Digital reached out to Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat who just months ago similarly broke party-silence to object to prior revelations from Smith’s probe.

Blumenthal told Fox News Digital in July that Republicans were right to be upset that some of their communications were subpoenaed without their notice.

“I think we need to have more facts. Look into it. Republicans are rightly concerned about the possible breach of norms and improper access to email,” Blumenthal said at the time.

In a separate disclosure on July 14, the GOP-led Senate Judiciary Committee released records showing that Smith’s 2020-election investigation obtained and reviewed text messages exchanged between Trump White House officials and 44 current and former members of Congress, including Republicans and Democrats.

Theo Wold, a former acting assistant U.S. attorney general under Trump who later served as Idaho’s solicitor general, said the new disclosures involving Melania, Barron and Wiles vindicate Republicans who have long warned of a so-called “Deep State.”

“But now we know that DOJ, the FBI, and the wider intelligence community have targeted Catholics, homeschool families, pro-life prayer warriors, and even the then-leading Republican Presidential candidate and his family,” Wold said.

“The Deep State is real. They have abused their authority for political gain. They have wielded government power against innocent Americans to coordinate their attack on opposition political figures and dissident movements.”

The White House also condemned the newly disclosed tracking of Trump family travel and collection of Wiles’ call metadata.

“Jack Smith’s surveillance operation was a disgraceful abuse of government power. Spying on political opponents is weaponization of law enforcement, plain and simple,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis told Fox News Digital. “Those responsible must be held accountable.”

On one day in March 2023, documents showed investigators logged metadata for 39 calls made or received by Wiles.

Calls to and from multiple campaign contacts, a lawyer and an extension associated with Melania Trump were among those logged in Wiles’ phone metadata.

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Former RNC official Elizabeth Pipko highlighted Wiles as someone that critics should be emulating, not celebrating the surveillance of.

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“She managed a historic and victorious presidential campaign and became the first woman to serve as White House chief of staff. Her story should inspire young women. Instead, hatred from President Trump’s opponents teaches young people that if you work for the ‘wrong’ candidate, you and those around you can become targets,” Pipko told Fox News Digital.

The revelations come after Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, told Fox News Digital exclusively that Smith’s probe had also captured communications with dozens of journalists, including some from Fox News.

Fox News Digital reached out to counsel for Smith for comment.

The unexplained death of a researcher at a Russian anti-plague institute has one former senior U.S. arms official warning it could be ‘far worse’ than the bacteria that caused the Black Death.

Marshall Billingslea, who served as President Donald Trump’s special presidential envoy for arms control, said a top Soviet bioweapons defector told him decades ago about secret work on antibiotic-resistant plague at the same facility where the recent plague-related death occurred.

“This may not be just ‘the plague.’ It may be far worse,” Billingslea wrote on X.

He spent much of the 1990s working on proliferation and arms control issues on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — and during that time worked with Ken Alibek, the former No. 2 official in the Soviet biological weapons program who defected to the U.S.

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“He claimed that they had engineered a strain of plague that was antibiotic-resistant & that they had worked on plague chimeras (fusing 2 or more pathogens),” Billingslea wrote of Alibek.

“He specifically called out Irkutsk for being involved in the BW program,” he added.

Billingslea’s warning comes after a 28-year-old employee of the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia and the Far East died last week from what Russian authorities have described as pneumonia of undetermined origin.

Russia has not said the woman died of plague and said testing found no microorganisms in her body linked to her work.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said Tuesday that Russian officials told the agency no plague or other high-threat pathogen had been detected among her close contacts, though they are still awaiting confirmation of what caused her fatal pneumonia.

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About 60% of the woman’s identified contacts have been tested so far, according to Russian authorities, with two cases of COVID-19 and two rhinovirus infections detected — but no other infectious disease pathogens.

Still, the unexplained death at a facility that works with dangerous pathogens has drawn scrutiny from biosecurity experts — including questions about why the cause remains unknown.

Kevin Esvelt, an MIT professor who studies biological security and catastrophic pandemic risks, said Russia’s latest explanation suggests the researcher did not die from plague while leaving unanswered what killed her.

“If we take the Russian authorities at their word, it is not plague,” Esvelt wrote Tuesday.

“But untargeted research-grade sequencing reliably identifies pathogens, and people seldom die of pneumonia without pathogens, let alone 28-year-olds,” he added. “It would be surprising if they did not know the cause.”

Esvelt cautioned that more alarming explanations remain hypothetical.

“The concerning possibility is still only a possibility,” he wrote.

The questions surrounding the death come against the backdrop of the Soviet Union’s documented history of secretly developing biological weapons, including weaponized plague, and U.S. assessments that elements of that program continued after the Soviet collapse.

In its 2025 arms control compliance report, the State Department assessed that Russia maintains an offensive biological warfare program in violation of the Biological Weapons Convention and that the Soviet program was “absorbed, not dismantled” after the Soviet collapse.

The department said the program “has continued and evolved” under the Russian Federation and that Moscow continues activities prohibited under the convention. Russia has repeatedly denied maintaining an offensive biological weapons program.

The U.S. assessment does not establish any connection between Russia’s biological weapons program and the researcher’s death in Irkutsk, and no such connection has been confirmed.

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The Soviet program Billingslea referenced was one of the world’s largest clandestine biological weapons efforts. Alibek, born Kanatjan Alibekov, rose to become the first deputy chief of Biopreparat, the ostensibly civilian network that formed a major part of the Soviet biological weapons apparatus, before defecting to the United States in 1992.

After his defection, Alibek provided U.S. officials with extensive information about the scale and capabilities of the Soviet program. He described Soviet scientists working to weaponize pathogens including plague and developing strains designed to withstand antibiotics.

His claims about some aspects of the Soviet program have faced scrutiny over the years, making independent documentation particularly important. But the existence and enormous scale of the Soviet biological weapons effort — conducted despite Moscow’s 1975 ratification of the Biological Weapons Convention — is well established.

The Irkutsk institute says it was founded in 1934 as a scientific and operational center for combating plague. Its mission later expanded to other highly dangerous diseases, including cholera and anthrax, and it describes itself today as a research and anti-epidemic facility responsible for helping protect the region from infectious disease.

The Trump administration has said it is closely monitoring the situation and pressed Moscow for greater transparency about what happened.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that while travel between the U.S. and Russia remains limited, an infectious disease could quickly spread beyond Russia’s borders.

“If something like that gets out, it could quickly spread,” Rubio said.

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President Donald Trump said the U.S. would offer assistance to Russia if needed.

“I hate to see them having it,” Trump told reporters Monday. “It’s a rough disease.”

Former President Joe Biden has been largely absent from the campaign trail as Democrats fight to win back House and Senate majorities in November, even as former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Kamala Harris step up efforts to boost the party’s candidates.

Biden, 83, has kept a limited public schedule while battling advanced, metastatic prostate cancer. He has endorsed candidates and is helping Democrats raise money, according to a source in Biden’s political circle. But the former president has made few political appearances this year.

The contrast is increasingly visible with four weeks to go until Election Day.

Obama is cutting ads for Senate and gubernatorial candidates, helping the party fundraise and preparing to hit the trail during the closing stretch of the midterm campaign. Harris, the Democrats’ 2024 presidential nominee, is also campaigning across key battleground states, including a recent stop in Michigan with Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed.

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Biden has appeared at just a handful of political events this year. He spoke in February at a reception honoring his 2020 South Carolina primary victory, which propelled him toward the Democratic nomination and eventually the presidency. In June, he addressed a Maryland Democratic Party event.

Longtime Democratic strategist Michael Ceraso told Fox News Digital that some in the party’s elite and fundraising class are concerned that “if Biden were to be pushed out there in any sort of way for virtual or in-person opportunities, he could be a liability.”

Veteran Democratic strategist Maria Cardona had a different take, telling Fox News Digital, “there are still a ton of Americans who love Joe Biden.”

Biden did weigh in on a handful of Democratic primary showdowns this cycle. The former president endorsed former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms for governor. Bottoms, who later served as a senior advisor in the Biden administration, won the Georgia Democratic gubernatorial nomination.

The former president also backed Dan Koh, another Biden administration veteran, who captured the Democratic nomination in Massachusetts’ 6th Congressional District.

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Biden is also advocating on behalf of efforts to secure democracy.

“American democracy begins and ends at the ballot box. There is no more important civic duty nor fundamental right to be defended,” the former president wrote on social media last month, as he cast his ballot in his home state of Delaware’s primary. “Voting defines our freedom and makes everything possible.”

But mostly, Biden has served as a foil for President Donald Trump, who Biden ousted from the White House in the 2020 election. Four years later, Biden ended his re-election bid after a disastrous debate performance against Trump in their 2024 rematch.

Trump and fellow Republicans are repeatedly blaming Biden for high prices at the gas and diesel pumps, even though public opinion polls indicate most Americans now point fingers at Trump and his administration.

Biden left the presidency with poor approval ratings, as he faced high inflation, foreign policy divides, and lingering questions about his ability to serve in office. He stood at 42% approval and 57% disapproval in January 2025, in the final Fox News poll during his White House tenure.

Post-presidency, Biden held a 71% favorable rating among Democrats in a CNN poll conducted in May. But Biden’s favorable rating among Democrats was 25 points lower than that of Obama.

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Meanwhile, some Democrats still blame him for Trump’s 2024 re-election, arguing that Biden did not get out of the race in time to allow Harris to mount a successful campaign.

Ceraso, a veteran of two presidential campaigns, pointed back to the 2024 election and told Fox News Digital that Biden left a “bad taste with some Democrats, especially within the in the party’s elite and fundraising class.”

He added, “I do not think Biden has the same level of charisma as Vice President Harris and former President Obama, and if I’m organizing an event to get thousands of people to come out, I would not do that around Biden.”

Cardona, a Democratic National Committee member, said that Biden’s health is stifling requests for campaign trail appearances.

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“I guarantee you no one would try to bother him to come campaign for them while, at 83-years-old, he is battling cancer and in the toughest fight of his life,” Cardona emphasized.

Fox News Digital reached out to a Biden spokesman for comment, but did not receive a response at the time this story was published.

The Trump administration is turning to a defense technology giant in a $6.6 billion effort to speed production of submarines as the U.S. struggles to keep pace with China’s vast shipbuilding capacity.

The ramp-up in production brings a Silicon Valley-style manufacturer into one of the Pentagon’s most troubled industrial bases as they fall behind expected pace of two Virginia-class attack submarines per year.

Anduril will build a more than 2-million-square-foot shipyard at Sparrows Point shipyard just outside of Baltimore to manufacture critical submarine components, eventually scaling up to large sections of the vessels. A senior administration official said the facility could add roughly 9 million labor hours a year, equivalent to about a 15% increase in submarine production capacity.

President Donald Trump will visit the shipyard on Tuesday afternoon to formally announce the new initiative in Baltimore alongside Anduril leadership.

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The investment takes aim at a problem the Navy has struggled for years to solve: shipyards are delivering roughly 1.3 Virginia-class submarines a year, well short of the Navy’s goal of two, even as demand for the nuclear-powered attack boats grows. The Navy currently projects reaching the two-per-year rate around 2032. It currently has 26 Virginia-class submarines and expects to add two more in the spring, according to a senior administration official.and

For the submarine project, Anduril plans to invest $3.7 billion of its own capital to build the facility, workforce and manufacturing capacity. The Navy could spend up to another $2.9 billion purchasing the resulting production.

The deal represents an unusual bet on a commercial model for fixing one of the Pentagon’s most stubborn industrial problems: Anduril will risk billions of dollars of its own capital building new submarine production capacity, while the Navy pays for what the company can successfully produce.

“I wouldn’t say that the government’s paying us back. We feel the government [is] buying the results of what we’re able to produce,” an industry official told reporters of the deal.

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The deal also deepens Anduril’s growing relationship with the Pentagon just days after War Secretary Pete Hegseth tapped company founder Palmer Luckey, along with Elon Musk and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, to launch Project Meridian — a 120-day study of how future wars will be fought and what weapons and technologies the U.S. military will need.

The arrangement puts Luckey in a position to help shape recommendations about the Pentagon’s future technology needs as the company he founded expands its own business selling weapons and other systems to the department. Project Meridian does not have procurement authority, and the Pentagon has said “appropriate” safeguards will be used to address potential conflicts of interest.

Anduril will work under General Dynamics Electric Boat and alongside HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding, initially producing components that have become bottlenecks in the construction of new Virginia-class boats.

Among the first will be torpedo tubes , which a senior administration official described as a current “gating component” holding up production. The official said getting those tubes earlier could allow the Navy to move.

Anduril has already begun work on torpedo tubes at a facility in California and plans to shift that production to Baltimore as the new shipyard, dubbed Arsenal-2, comes online. The company eventually hopes to move from individual components to complex modules and large sections of submarines.

“We just need new production capacity,” an industry official said. “We need to grow the maritime industrial base, the submarine industrial base, so that we can produce more submarines.”

The company plans to build Arsenal-2 around software, automation and digital manufacturing to break historically complex shipbuilding work into simpler tasks that can be done without years of shipyard experience.

The push comes as the Navy faces growing pressure to expand the attack-submarine fleet while also preparing to transfer Virginia-class submarines to Australia under the AUKUS security pact. Meeting those commitments will require the industrial base not only to reach the Navy’s longstanding two-per-year goal, but eventually move beyond it.

Arsenal-2 is expected to create 3,100 direct jobs and another 11,000 indirect jobs nationwide. Anduril expects the Baltimore facility to begin operations around 2030, though the company said production of some submarine components is beginning now in California.

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The approach will still have to clear the certification and safety requirements that govern nuclear submarine construction. Anduril acknowledged that it will have to prove it can meet those standards before graduating from individual components to increasingly complex sections of the boats.

FIRST ON FOX: The Treasury Department blocked $175 million in federal payments tied to deceased recipients in fiscal year 2026, up sharply from the $99 million identified just months earlier as the Trump administration expanded government-wide screening for improper payments.

“I applaud Secretary [Scott] Bessent for slamming the door on these fraudsters before they can pick taxpayers’ pockets,” Republican Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy told Fox News Digital.

“Unless you were playing Frisbee in the quad during Econ 101, you know the federal government shouldn’t be sending taxpayer money to dead people,” Kennedy went on. “I fought for years to pass my common-sense bill to stop fraudsters from gaming the system, and now it’s the law.”

Kennedy has for years pushed to give Treasury greater access to Social Security death records, helping pass a 2020 law that temporarily authorized the Social Security Administration to share its full Death Master File with the department. That three-year data-sharing program began in December 2023. Trump then signed Kennedy’s Ending Improper Payments to Deceased People Act into law in February 2026, making access permanent.

TRUMP’S WAR ON FRAUD EXPANDS AS TREASURY LAUNCHES NEW SITE WITH WHISTLEBLOWER INCENTIVES

Trump has tasked his administration with rooting out fraud, waste and abuse across the federal government and tightening safeguards around taxpayer dollars — the latest effort to stop federal benefit payments to dead people is just another initiative within that broader effort.

“President Trump continues to deliver for Americans where previous administrations have fallen short. This Administration is setting new standards in record time to prevent fraud and improper payments before hard-earned taxpayer dollars leave the Treasury. Under President Trump’s leadership, there is no tolerance for waste, fraud, and abuse,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers told Fox News Digital.

Treasury screened more than 1.1 billion federal payments totaling roughly $3.7 trillion in FY2026, identifying and returning about 13,500 payments worth $175 million that otherwise would have been distributed to individuals no longer eligible for payments due to death.

“Treasury continues to transform how the federal government protects taxpayer dollars by using better data, stronger controls, and advanced technology to stop fraud and improper payments before money goes out the door,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a press release shared with Fox News Digital.

“In the past year alone, Treasury built and deployed new safeguards that verified more than $3.7 trillion in federal payments and increased Do Not Pay access from 4 percent of programs to 99 percent, ensuring agencies have access to the data they need,” Bessent added. “We are moving beyond ‘pay and chase’ and making prevention the federal government’s first line of defense.”

WHITE HOUSE PUSHES ‘WATERSHED’ FRAUD-FIGHTING REFORM IN CONGRESS AS VANCE CONVENES TASK FORCE

More than 99% of federal programs now have access to the “Do Not Pay” tool, up from roughly 4% at the end of FY2025.

The expansion fulfills key requirements of a March 2025 executive order from Trump directing his administration to strengthen safeguards against fraud, waste and abuse involving federal payments.

Treasury also screened more than 2.3 billion records against Do Not Pay data sources in FY2026, nearly four times the 641 million records screened the previous fiscal year.

The jump comes as the program has expanded across the federal government, alongside new payment verification efforts and additional screenings for states.

VANCE TO HOST CONGRESS AT WHITE HOUSE TO DISCUSS LEGISLATIVE ACTION ON FRAUD

Treasury also tested new safeguards aimed at verifying that bank accounts belong to the intended recipients and checking Taxpayer Identification Numbers tied to federal payments.

The checks became fully operational Sept. 30 and allow Treasury to flag and return payments that fail verification before the money is sent.

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The latest figures build on Treasury’s July announcement that it had screened more than 885 million payments worth roughly $2.77 trillion and flagged more than 4,900 payments worth about $99 million tied to deceased recipients.

Amid a global health scare sparked by the death of a 28-year-old woman who worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East, President Donald Trump indicated that the U.S. would be willing to provide assistance to Russia.

Russian public health entity Rospotrebnadzor said Sunday that the deceased individual had been diagnosed with “pneumonia of unknown etiology,” or origin, but that testing revealed “no microorganisms associated with the patient’s professional activities.”

Rospotrebnadzor indicated it didn’t discover any incidents at the facility “involving pathogenic microorganisms.”

MYSTERY DEATH AT RUSSIAN PLAGUE LAB TRIGGERS SWEEPING PRECAUTIONS AS US WATCHES CLOSELY

During remarks on Monday, Trump said, “The germs have really become relatively stronger than they were, and things that used to work on pneumonia don’t work as well anymore.

“Anybody that has that kind of a problem, we’re always willing to help,” he said.

RUSSIAN BIO-LEAK SECRECY FOLLOWS CHERNOBYL PLAYBOOK, EX-CIA OFFICER WARNS

“While the circumstances of this reported case remain unconfirmed, plague is a serious bacterial disease that is treatable with antibiotics, particularly when recognized and treated early,” a Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson noted in a statement, according to NBC News. 

“At this time, there is no indication from available reporting of a broader threat to the United States,” the statement said. 

US MONITORING SUSPECTED FATAL PNEUMONIC PLAGUE CASE IN RUSSIA, STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL SAYS

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Fox News Digital reached out to HHS on Tuesday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

The New York Times is under fire after one of its columnists suggested that President Donald Trump is responsible for creating the culture that led to an alleged sexual assault against a woman at Cornell University by seven men.

“What this is, is it’s a fundamental disrespect for women,” columnist Michelle Cottle said on ABC News on Sunday. “You can’t send those messages no matter how drunk you are as a frat boy without having some kind of misunderstanding about what women are there for and whether this is a real person you’re dealing with.”

“And that, I think, starts, you know — we can go to the president for this one,” Cottle went on. “I mean, we are in a moment in this culture where the glorification of being thuggish and swaggering and mistreating women is kind of making you a cool kid.”

CORNELL PRESIDENT SAYS UNIVERSITY ‘MUST DO BETTER’ ON HANDLING OF SEXUAL ASSAULT ALLEGATIONS

A woman identified as Jane Doe in court records has filed a civil lawsuit against seven men she alleges gang-raped her during a ketamine- and alcohol-induced incident at Cornell University in 2024. Former President Joe Biden occupied the White House at that time.

The men have denied wrongdoing, with some saying the sex was consensual, and others saying they didn’t participate. No charges have been filed.

AOC’S DRAMATIC RETELLING OF CORNELL RAPE ALLEGATIONS COLLIDES WITH COMPLAINT DETAILS

The backlash to Cottle’s comments was fierce, especially among those pointing out that the incident happened when Biden was president, including Fox News contributor Joe Concha.

“This happened in 2024 when Biden was President. Did she not know that?” another X user asked.

“Latest edition of ‘Trump turned me into a newt!’ brought to you by a very very smart person,” said CNN contributor Scott Jennings.

“Media and pundits fall all over themselves trying to make everything and anything about Donald Trump. It’s embarrassing and so incredibly lazy,” said Tricia McLaughlin, former assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security.

“This take is SO far beyond delusional that you can’t even see sanity from here…” said conservative commentator John Ziegler.

“Of course, it’s Trump’s fault,” said the Media Research Center, which first posted the clip.

ATTORNEY FOR ACCUSED CORNELL STUDENT CALLS ON LETITIA JAMES TO STEP ASIDE OVER PRIOR COMMENTS

Trump has commented on the case, which is now being investigated by longtime foe New York Attorney General Letitia James, who in 2022 filed a civil fraud lawsuit against him. Trump in 2024 was found liable for fraud and ordered to pay more than $350 million, but the penalty was overturned on appeal.

Asked about James being appointed to investigate the alleged gang rape, Trump launched into an attack on the state attorney general.

“Well, Letitia James is a corrupt person,” Trump said. “She’s totally corrupt, and I can’t imagine it — I feel badly for whoever she’s looking at because they won’t get a fair shake. Letitia James is a corrupt person.”

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Fox News Digital reached out to The New York Times and the White House for comment.

FIRST ON FOX: Democrats’ largest campaign fundraising platform says it has strengthened its donor verification standards days after House GOP investigators accused it of potentially taking in foreign donations for U.S. campaigns, according to a new letter obtained by Fox News Digital.

Attorneys for ActBlue sent a letter to the House of Representatives on Monday announcing it is launching a new “passport verification program” as part of its “ongoing investment in the security of contributions processed from donors located abroad.”

House Republicans have for years accused ActBlue of having insufficient verification standards for weeding out illegitimate campaign donations.

The platform has long been used by a myriad of Democrats to raise money for their political campaigns, including Democratic leaders in the House and Senate. ActBlue said it paused donations from Americans abroad in 2025, however.

REPUBLICANS ZERO IN ON KEY PLAYER ACCUSED OF HELPING DEMOCRAT FUNDRAISING GIANT HIDE FOREIGN CASH

ActBlue has consistently denied wrongdoing in responses to Fox News Digital and communications to House investigators. Ten top figures within the company, including executives and founders, have pleaded the Fifth Amendment to avoid answering questions in both public and private sitdowns with GOP-led committees.

ANOTHER ACTBLUE LEADER PLEADS FIFTH AS HOUSE INVESTIGATES ALLEGED FOREIGN DONATIONS

But a new report released earlier this month, first reported by Fox News Digital, appears to show employees green-lighting donations despite some questions about where they came from.

Chief among the GOP’s concerns is ActBlue’s passport number verification. According to the report, the field only required the correct number of characters for a U.S. passport number rather than a valid code for a donation to be accepted.

GOP LAWMAKER WARNS ACTBLUE ‘GOT CAUGHT’ AS FOREIGN CASH PROBE TRIGGERS FIFTH AMENDMENT PLEAS

But the Monday letter said ActBlue’s new program “adds passport-based identity verification as a further enhancement to ActBlue’s multi-layered approach to fraud and foreign-contribution prevention.”

“In doing so, it also enables U.S. citizens located abroad—who have been unable to contribute on the ActBlue platform since 2025—to resume participating in the political process by supporting the candidates and causes of their choice,” the letter said. “The new program uses the best available technology to allow eligible donors located abroad to verify their identity using a valid U.S. passport. It reflects substantial engineering investments by ActBlue to ensure that, as it resumes processing contributions from foreign addresses, its compliance systems can withstand scrutiny.”

Committee on House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis., said it amounted to a confession.

“This decision to implement a NEW passport verification program only confirms what we’ve been saying: ActBlue failed to verify the citizenship of individuals who made donations from abroad. That’s unacceptable,” Steil told Fox News Digital. “This new policy should have been in place on day one. Right now, far too many questions remain unanswered, including what percentage of the billions of dollars that have flowed through ActBlue came from illegal foreign sources. Chairman Jordan, Chairman Comer, and I will continue to seek answers for the American people.”

ACTBLUE SCRUTINY FUELS NEW GOP BILLS TO TIGHTEN ELECTION DONATION RULES

The probe is being co-led by his panel as well as House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky.

A spokesperson for Jordan told Fox News Digital, “This action confirms that the platform’s fraud prevention measures were not as robust as [ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones] told Congress. We will continue to demand answers.”

The GOP’s earlier report cited a letter by Wallace-Jones to Steil, which maintained that donations on the platform made by people with addresses outside the U.S. required a passport number for verification.

But the Republicans’ report alleged that the verification “only ensures that the entered passport number contains a certain number of characters, not that it is a valid U.S. passport number,” rendering it an essentially meaningless step.

ActBlue told Fox News Digital in response to the report at the time, “There’s nothing to see here. After we released findings of a third-party forensic analysis that completely undermined a central claim that they have made against ActBlue, Republicans are refusing to move on.”

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“Instead, they are orchestrating another political stunt before rushing out of town weeks early to go campaign. This coordinated campaign against ActBlue isn’t about the facts, or legislating, it’s about Republicans’ efforts to silence organizations they believe threaten their agenda,” the platform said.

A spokesperson for ActBlue pointed Fox News Digital to a blog post announcing the update when reached for comment.

“In 2025, amid unprecedented attacks from President Trump and his allies, our organization took the proactive step of temporarily suspending all contributions from outside the United States,” the statement said. “ActBlue has now further enhanced its verification process to allow eligible Americans with a U.S. Passport who are located abroad to participate through the platform while maintaining the robust security and compliance standards that donors, campaign, and the public expect.”

It also said ActBlue “accurately described” its vetting process to Congress.

President Donald Trump endorsed Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray, the Republican candidate for the state’s at-large U.S. House seat.

“Chuck Gray has been a tremendous Secretary of State for the Great State of Wyoming, a place I love and WON BIG in 2016, 2020, and 2024!” the president declared in part of a Monday Truth Social post.

“Chuck Gray has my Complete and Total Endorsement to be the next U.S. Representative from Wyoming — HE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!” Trump asserted.

TRUMP-ALIGNED CONSERVATIVE EMERGES FROM CROWDED PRIMARY TO DECIDE WHO FILLS WYOMING’S LONE HOUSE SEAT

Gray, who won the Wyoming GOP U.S. House primary in August, thanked the president on Monday for backing him.

“Thank you President Trump for your endorsement!” he declared in a post on X.

‘AMERICA FIRST’: WYOMING SECRETARY OF STATE CHUCK GRAY LAUNCHES HOUSE BID

“As President Trump said, I have a real track record of advancing the key priorities of the people of Wyoming, and I will continue that track record in Congress. Together, we will defend our Wyoming way of life!” Gray added.

GOP Rep. Harriet Hageman, the current occupant of the state’s only U.S. House seat, is running for U.S. Senate.

WYOMING MAN KICKS MOUNTAIN LION IN THE FACE TO SAVE HIS DOG, THEN FIGHTS IT OFF BARE-HANDED

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Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., is not running for a second six-year Senate term.

The battle over Americans’ clocks reemerged in an unlikely way over the weekend, with President Donald Trump picking a fight with one of his top allies over the issue.

There have been many fights in Congress over the nearly two years that Trump has been in office for his second term that either ended in partisan victory or gloriously fizzled out, but one has quietly gone onto the shelf despite his pressure on Republicans to do something about it.

And that fight is over allowing states to voluntarily observe Daylight Saving Time year-round to effectively do away with the twice-a-year ritual of changing clocks. It’s a popular issue with voters and the president, and there’s a bill that passed the House this summer to enact the change. But it’s a policy issue that has divided both sides of the aisle and ground to a halt in the upper chamber.

TRUMP URGES SENATE TO PASS BILL MAKING DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME PERMANENT AFTER OVERWHELMING HOUSE VOTE

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., has been one of the more vocal opponents of the bill, vowing to block any attempts to fast-track it on the floor. That resistance earned him a Truth Social post from Trump, who over the weekend shared his personal phone number in a bid to pressure the lawmaker to change his stance on Daylight Saving Time.

“Almost everybody wants “The Sunshine Protection Act” to pass, except for Tom Cotton,” Trump said. “To the Great People of Arkansas, please let your Senator know it would be a GREAT Bipartisan WIN for the United States Senate, and for America, itself.”

Cotton responded, and noted that Congress has tackled Daylight Saving Time before, only to roll back the change shortly after.

“No one likes changing the clock, me included, but Congress has enacted permanent Daylight Saving Time multiple times before and repealed it each time once Americans experienced absurdly late sunrises in the winter,” Cotton said on X. “Arkansans don’t want their kids going to school in the pitch dark, and I’ll always put Arkansas first.”

TRUMP FACES REPUBLICAN REBELLION OVER DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME AS SENATE BILL NEARS DEAD END

In the 1970s, lawmakers did enact year-round Daylight Saving Time. But Americans rapidly soured on the change, especially parents whose children had to wait in the dark for the school bus. It was repealed about a year later.

And Cotton recently answered an off-the-cuff question from a fellow Republican during their weekly closed-door policy lunches, a source told Fox News Digital, where he made a similar case as his response to Trump. No one pushed back during the meeting.

The issue of Daylight Saving Time, and supporting a permanent fix or sticking to the status quo is more geographical than political.

It’s, in part, mountainous and Western states versus coastal states. On one side of the spectrum are lawmakers like Sens. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., who introduced a Senate version of the bill last year.

“Every year, more Americans grow more frustrated setting their clocks back and forth, and every winter folks in Washington state despair at the prospect of losing an hour of precious sunlight when we are forced off Daylight Saving Time,” Murray said in a statement at the time.

HOUSE PASSES DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME REFORM AS TRUMP SIGNALS SUPPORT FOR ENDING CLOCK CHANGE

While lawmakers in landlocked states out West, like Sens. Steve Daines, R-Mont., and Mike Rounds, R-S.D., warn that it would cause kids in their states to go to school in the dark.

“I can see where Florida likes it for tee times at certain times of the year, but it doesn’t work so well for moms and dads putting kids on buses when the sunrise in Western Montana wouldn’t be till 9:30 in the morning. It’s not going to work for us,” Daines told CNN in July.

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The most vital currency in the Senate is floor time. And lawmakers won’t have much floor time to spare when they return after the midterm elections in November. Though it’s popular, more pressing issues like the National Defense Authorization Act, supplemental funding for the war and a looming government funding battle will likely take precedence.

And Republican leaders acknowledge that it’s not as easy a simple yes-or-no vote for lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

“Depends where you’re living in the country and the impact — what it would be, in your own home state,” Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said in July. “So it’s not as simple as what one state might like.”

Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer is sounding increasingly bullish about his party’s chances of riding a potential blue wave into November, declaring Democrats have “the wind in our sails” as national and battleground polling points to a favorable political environment in the midterm elections.

But beneath that confidence are three variables that could determine whether the Democratic advantage becomes a wave — or breaks before Election Day: a potential polling undercount of Republicans, persistent voter skepticism of the Democratic brand, and the GOP’s financial firepower advantage.

Schumer, speaking to reporters last week as the Senate adjourned until after Election Day, predicted that Democrats are “on the edge of taking back the Senate.”

After nearly two years of President Donald Trump back in the White House and Republican control of the Senate and the House, Schumer emphasized, “Americans are frustrated with higher costs and a government they don’t believe is working for them.”

AI IS SUPERCHARGING THE CAMPAIGN AD WARS, BUT VIRAL DOESN’T MEAN VICTORIOUS

The GOP is fighting political history, which has traditionally seen the party in power in Washington lose congressional seats during midterm election years. Add to that a challenging political climate fueled by persistent inflation Americans see at the grocery store, high gas prices tied to what polls show is an unpopular war with Iran, and Trump’s negative approval ratings.

The latest polls indicate Democrats holding an advantage over Republicans in the battle for Congress and that they are more enthusiastic to vote in the midterms.

But Trump predicts that Republicans will perform much better in the midterms than critics and pollsters expect.

“I think we’re going to have a big surprise, because they don’t know what’s happening,” the president told supporters at a rally Saturday night in Ohio, as he referred to Democrats.

Here’s a closer look at the three variables.

Polling problems?

Republicans control the Senate 53-47, which means Democrats need a net gain of four seats to win back the majority. But with one month to go until Election Day, Democrats are treading deeper and deeper into red territory as Republicans stay mostly on defense.

The latest Fox News polls indicate margin of error races in Michigan, a must hold for the Democrats, and in Texas, Maine and Iowa, three seats the party is working to flip to win the majority. An average of the latest surveys also points to very close contests in Alaska, Ohio, and Kansas, where the Democrats are playing offense, and Minnesota, a leading flip opportunity for the GOP.

WHO’S UP AND WHO’S DOWN IN THE LATEST FOX NEWS MIDTERM POWER RANKINGS

But what if the polls are off?

“Polls considerably underestimated Donald Trump and other Republicans on the ticket with him in 2016, 2020, and, to a slightly lesser extent, in 2024,” polling guru, political analyst and statistician Nate Silver noted this past weekend.

But Silver added that polls in the previous two Trump-era midterms, 2018 and 2022, were essentially unbiased.

Fast-forward to this cycle, and polls in some high-profile Democratic primaries were off the mark. Among the miscues this summer, overestimating Abdul El-Sayed’s narrow victory in Michigan’s Senate showdown, and underestimating victories by Lt. Gov Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota’s Senate primary, state Rep. Angie Nixon’s win in Florida’s Senate contest, and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley’s upset victory to capture the Wisconsin gubernatorial nomination.

Coverage of the miscues grabbed widespread media attention and sparked fresh criticism of public opinion polling.

DEMOCRACY ’26: STAY UP TO DATE WITH THE FOX NEWS ELECTION HUB

If the surveys are overestimating Democratic turnout and underestimating Republican enthusiasm, even a modest polling miss could reshape several of the close Senate contests.

“I don’t think any Democrat is over optimistic after…2024. We all understand that anything can happen in the closing days, and we’re preparing for that,” longtime New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley told Fox News Digital.

Bad brand?

Trump’s approval ratings remain well underwater, as do favorable ratings for the GOP.

But surveys indicate the Democrats’ brand is nothing to brag about.

The Democrats’ favorable rating hovered in negative territory in the most recent Fox News national poll, at 44%-55%. And it was even lower in the latest Wall Street Journal national survey, at 38% favorable and 58% unfavorable.

“I think just because Americans are outraged because of how Republicans have failed them and made their life more expensive doesn’t automatically mean that they’re going to embrace and trust Democrats,” former Biden administration Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told Fox News Digital on Saturday.

Buttigieg, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate who is considering another White House run in 2028, said it’s crucial Democrats “make sure that our candidates get out there, make it very clear who they are, what they’re about, and what we would do differently.”

Making life even tougher for the Democrats: the victories by left-wing and socialist-aligned candidates over more moderate contenders in the party’s primaries, which gave the GOP more messaging ammunition to portray all Democrats on the ballot this year as radicals.

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That’s the case in Michigan, Minnesota and Florida, where El-Sayed, Flanagan and Nixon all defeated establishment-backed rivals.

Meanwhile, in Texas, a trail of controversial past comments by Talarico is handing the GOP more firepower.

But Democrats in all four of these Senate showdowns are returning fire by anchoring the Republicans on the ballot to Trump.

In the latest Fox News poll in Texas, 53% of those questioned said they were extremely or very concerned that Talarico is too liberal. But a near equal amount, 51%, said they were extremely or very concerned that Paxton is too close to Trump.

Money matters

Republicans are winning the ad wars, thanks to a major money advantage. Boosted by massive cash infusions from the Trump-aligned MAGA Inc. and other leading Republican groups and donors, the GOP is outspending the Democrats in all of the crucial Senate showdowns.

That includes a roughly $70 million advantage in Ohio and nearly $30 million in Maine and Texas, three top targets for the Democrats, according to figures from AdImpact, a top ad-tracking firm. The GOP’s outspending the Democrats by approximately $25 million in Michigan, which Republicans are aiming to flip.

Republicans are also outspending Democrats in swing state New Hampshire, in the battle to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen.

“The amount of money being spent is enormous,” Buckley told Fox News Digital, as he pointed to all the Republican-aligned ads flooding the small state.

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But Buckley said Democrats have organizing and enthusiasm advantages.

“We might not be as competitive as we’d like on television, but we’re certainly competitive knocking on the doors. We’ve got the energy out there. The voters are excited. You saw that with the turnout in the primaries throughout the country,” he said.

Deceased Virginians with felony convictions are reportedly among those receiving voting-rights restoration letters under Gov. Abigail Spanberger, who announced in July that she had restored voting rights to 66,000 people with felony convictions.

The notices come as Virginia separately implements a federal court ruling that sharply narrowed which felony convictions can trigger disenfranchisement, while voters this fall will decide whether to amend the state constitution to automatically restore voting rights upon release from incarceration.

“I’ve been a lawyer for 27 years and in every minute of my career, when you were convicted of a felony, you lose your voting rights. The way you get those back is you have to petition the governor and then the governor can review your case and determine whether the civil rights of a convicted felon should be restored,” Virginia Beach attorney Tim Anderson told Fox News Digital on Monday.

Anderson, who shared posts showing letters from Spanberger and her administration sent to families of deceased recipients, said the situation is “one or the other” — either Richmond is not vetting who receives the restoration notifications or its vetting is not thorough enough to catch deceased recipients.

SPANBERGER SPARKS OUTRAGE AFTER SNEAKILY ENDING YOUNGKIN-ERA WOMEN’S SPORTS PROTECTIONS

“The order specifically says that they’ve reviewed [each] case individually, right?”

He noted that Virginia has online voter registration and questioned whether an unscrupulous relative who received one of the notifications might try to register their dead relative to vote.

“These dead people clearly aren’t petitioning the governor to get their civil liberties back… they’re restoring every single felon’s civil disabilities without anybody even asking. And that’s concerning, especially when they’re dead.”

Virginia resident Howard “Skip” Lambert posted a July 1 restoration notice signed by Spanberger and an Aug. 31 notification from her administration addressed to a redacted relative, informing the recipient that their voting rights had been restored.

The July letter said that after the relative had been convicted and sentenced, Spanberger’s office “completed review of the particulars of the individual’s case.”

Anderson pointed to that line as evidence of vetting.

Lambert’s letter went on to say the relative would have their civil rights — except for the ability to transport or possess firearms — restored effective July 1.

VIRGINIA GOVERNOR ABIGAIL SPANBERGER QUIETLY ROLLS BACK YOUNGKIN’S PLANS TO PROTECT GIRLS’ SPORTS

In the ensuing letter from Secretary of the Commonwealth Candi Mundon-King, the relative was notified that Spanberger had restored their right to vote and serve on a jury and was encouraged to re-register to vote at the online “Citizen’s Portal” via a QR code.

Lambert wrote that he was upset by the mailings, saying the recipient was his daughter, who died in 2024. He also confirmed that she had a felony conviction.

“Interesting this letter arrives as early-voting begins… yet the provided official order is dated July 1,” he said on Sept. 24. “Just because cash doesn’t change hands doesn’t mean the governor isn’t trying to buy votes.

Reached by phone Monday, the Fredericksburg-area resident confirmed to Fox News Digital that the documents were authentic and that the recipient was his daughter.

“I do have a question of timing in the letter I believe my daughter voted in the previous election where it was Hillary and Donald Trump — because she had had her rights restored then,” he said.

Around the time of that election, former Democratic Gov. Terence McAuliffe attempted a mass restoration but was rebuked by the Virginia Supreme Court, which ruled that he did not have the authority to take such an action affecting an estimated 206,000 Virginians, according to NPR.

Another woman, Peggie Young, posted a similar set of documents addressed to her “dear BFF, Peter Breton.”

“I have his ashes. Is this perhaps how voter fraud begins. I’m so confused,” she said, adding that she also received the letter only on Sept. 29.

Young could not immediately be reached.

Virginia House Minority Leader Terry Kilgore, R-Gate City, told Fox News Digital that Spanberger’s purported vetting process appears to be inadequate:

“If the process is so thorough that they can’t even tell who’s alive and who’s dead, how thorough is it?” Kilgore told Fox News Digital.

The federal case began in 2023 as King v. Youngkin, when disenfranchised Virginians sued then-Gov. Glenn Youngkin and other state officials, arguing that Virginia’s blanket felony ban conflicted with the federal Virginia Readmission Act of 1870.

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U.S. District Judge John Gibney Jr. ruled in January that Virginia could disenfranchise people only for 11 common-law felonies recognized in 1870. After rejecting the state’s effort to map those offenses onto a broader list of modern crimes, Virginia ultimately narrowed automatic disenfranchisement to murder, voluntary manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter.

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The Department of Elections is separately notifying roughly 235,000 Virginians whose convictions no longer disqualify them from voting. Those court-driven notices are distinct from the Spanberger restoration orders received by Lambert and Young, which state that the governor’s office reviewed each recipient’s case before restoring multiple civil rights.

Fox News Digital reached out to Spanberger’s office and ELECT for comment.

FIRST ON FOX: Whistleblowers who pulled back the curtain on Medicaid fraud that allegedly cost taxpayers millions of dollars in states like Minnesota could gain new protections under a House GOP bill after alleging they faced retaliation from state leaders.

Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, unveiled the Medicaid Whistleblower Protection Act, which would establish federal protections nationwide for state and local Medicaid workers who report early warning signs of fraud, including contracting irregularities and unusual financial transactions.

“No public servant should have to choose between their conscience and their livelihood,” Miller-Meeks said in a press release exclusively obtained by Fox News Digital. “Whistleblowers who report fraud, waste and abuse in Medicaid are protecting taxpayer dollars and the vulnerable people this program is meant to serve, and they deserve real protection, not retaliation.”

The bill would prevent employers from firing, demoting, threatening, harassing or discriminating against Medicaid workers who report fraud, violations of law, gross mismanagement, abuse of authority or dangers to public health or safety.

MINNESOTA ‘TRIED TO COVER UP FRAUD ALLEGATIONS,’ FORMER STATE TROOPER ALLEGES

Workers who face retaliation could also receive reinstatement, twice their back pay plus interest, attorneys’ fees and punitive damages.

The legislation follows a January letter from more than 30 current and former Minnesota Department of Human Services employees highlighting a “pattern of retaliation” for flagging fraud as early as 2019, with some alleging they faced surveillance, investigations, reassignment and termination.

“I will fight to make sure the people willing to tell the truth are protected, not silenced.” Miller-Meeks said.

Several Republican lawmakers grilled Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison in March over the letter and rampant fraud in the state, questioning when they first learned about the schemes and allegations of retaliation.

When pressed on the retaliation claims, Walz said he was “not specifically” aware of them and repeatedly declined to address the allegations. The fraud involved more than $90 million in alleged fraudulent claims tied to multiple state-funded assistance programs.

WALZ REMOVES TOP MINNESOTA OFFICIAL ON EVE OF ‘GAUNTLET’ HEARING OVER FRAUD SCANDAL

Minnesota state Rep. Kristin Robbins, chair of the House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee, backed the bill, saying politicians and agency leaders target whistleblowers to protect “their political base.”

“The federal, state and county workers who run these programs are often the first to see red flags, but, as we have seen time and again in Minnesota, if they dare to point it out, they are called racist, accused of creating a hostile work environment, demoted, reassigned or otherwise harmed personally and professionally,” Robbins said.

The bill is one of 14 measures in House Energy and Commerce Republicans’ “Continuing the Fight Against Fraud” package, led by Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky. The package aims to detect fraud more easily, recover improper payments and increase accountability.

Another measure in the package led by Miller-Meeks, the WALZ Act, would require the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General to open investigations into any program that sees a 10% or greater increase in total payments over any six-month period within a fiscal year.

WHITE HOUSE PUSHES ‘WATERSHED’ FRAUD-FIGHTING REFORM IN CONGRESS AS VANCE CONVENES TASK FORCE

Guthrie blamed oversight failures under the Biden administration for allowing fraud to “go unchecked in government health programs.”

“Every dollar stolen by fraudsters or wasted on improper payments is a dollar taken away from supporting families in need who rely on these programs,” he said.

The legislation would take effect Jan. 1, 2028, amid the Trump administration’s continued crackdown on fraud through an anti-fraud task force led by Vice President JD Vance.

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Fox News Digital reached out to Walz’s and Ellison’s offices for comment.

The late House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) was an accidental speaker.

And it was a sheer accident that the world learned a dark secret about Hastert, years after he left Capitol Hill.

It was twenty years ago, almost to the date. House Republicans were on the verge of losing their majority in the 2006 midterms. And their Speaker, Dennis Hastert, was in meltdown.

HIGHEST-RANKING US OFFICIAL TO EVER SERVE JAIL TIME, FORMER HOUSE SPEAKER DENNIS HASTERT DEAD AT 84

Word had just broken that then-Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) had sent inappropriate messages to high school-age male teens, serving as House pages. The Republican-led House was meeting on September 29, 2006, trying to escape town so the GOP could defend their majority. But nothing was going right for Republicans. The public was growing weary of President George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. Democrats were poised to retake the House in November.

Yours truly and Deirdre Walsh — then of CNN — spotted the portly Hastert lumbering across Statuary Hall toward the Speaker’s office.

“Did he call you?” Walsh asked Hastert about Foley.

“What are you going to do about it?” I inquired.

“We’ll talk about that shortly,” mumbled Hastert under his breath, his wide glasses nearly tumbling over the bridge of his nose as he huffed into the Speaker’s suite.

An hour later, Hastert, outgoing Senate Majority Leader

Bill Frist (R-TN) and other top Republicans convened a brief press conference to tout a national security bill they just passed. The legislation was designed as the GOP sendoff as lawmakers went home to campaign.

“Ok, we’ll take questions. Only on the bill,” instructed Frist. “Only on the bill.”

No one even squeaked.

Finally, I piped up.

“We have questions about other subjects,” I announced, determined to ask about Foley.

“Alright,” said Frist, shoving back from the table.

The Tennessee Republican knew what was coming. Frist was happy he wouldn’t have to address Foley. That was something for Hastert. Especially since Frist planned to run for President in 2008.

I inquired about Foley. Hastert muttered a non-answer which was barely usable for broadcast. He mumbled something about him not being “very happy” about Foley. But it was a soundbite from the Speaker of the House on the scandal, right as a bloodied GOP hit the exits for the midterm campaign.

Someone then quickly adjourned the press conference. And that was it.

FORMER REPUBLICAN HOUSE SPEAKER DENNIS HASTERT DEAD AT 84

A few days later, local reporters in Illinois pressed Hastert about how he handled the Foley matter. Back in Washington, asked one of the Speaker’s aides why Hastert – as a former teacher and coach – wasn’t more aggressive protecting the teen pages.

We may have found out why years later.

Eighty-four year-old Dennis Hastert died of natural causes over the weekend. The late Speaker is one of the most ignominious figures in American politics.

He was the longest-serving Republican Speaker in history, wielding the gavel from 1999 to 2007. Hastert stumbled into the Speakership, rising thanks to the missteps of others. Yet despite his years in Congress, what we learned about Hastert nearly a decade after he left office revealed him to be one of the most grotesque persons to ever serve in Congress. In fact, Hastert is the highest-serving U.S. official to ever serve jail time.

Virtually no one knew it, but Hastert was an unbridled sexual predator. Known as “Coach” rather than “Mr. Speaker” to his Capitol colleagues, Hastert preyed on teenage boys when he taught high school in the 1960s and 1970s.

Hastert was never implicated in the page scandal. The House nixed the program soon afterwards, even though it was nearly as old as the republic. But in retrospect, how Hastert fumbled what was going on with the House pages shockingly added up later.

Democrats won the House handily in the 2006 midterms. Hastert didn’t run – and probably wouldn’t have won – a leadership race in the new Congress. He stuck around as rank-and-file member for a few months and resigned in late 2007.

Few heard much from Hastert after he departed Congress. Such was his style. He shunned interviews as Speaker and was rarely even spotted in the Capitol corridors. To defend his reticence with the press corps, the Speaker proclaimed that he was more of a “listener.”

And then Hastert’s otherwise bland, nearly forgotten Speakership took a dark turn in 2015.

Federal banking regulators flagged Hastert’s curious withdrawals of staggering amounts of cash. They suspected the transactions signaled that someone could be blackmailing the former Speaker. So they investigated. But that’s how it came to light that Hastert was actually paying hush money to conceal his sexual transgressions with minors.

The feds indicted Hastert on charges of lying to investigators and evading banking laws. He later pleaded guilty to the bank crimes. Prosecutors dropped the charge of making false statements. Federal Judge Thomas Durkin declared that the former Speaker was “a serial child molester.” In court, Hastert admitted that he “mistreated athletes” and “took advantage” of those he was supposed to mentor.

Prosecutors never charged Hastert in connection with sex crimes. He served 13 months of a 15-month sentence at a federal facility in Rochester, MN.

It’s remarkable that someone who operated at this level of American government obscured such a hideous secret for so long.

And as instructive as the day nearly 20 years ago when the Foley scandal broke and Republicans were on the verge of losing the House, unceremoniously terminating Hastert’s Speakership — the day that propelled him into the leadership is even more illuminating.

Republicans nearly lost the House in the 1998 midterms. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) was toxic and Republicans showed him the door. In late 1998, Republicans tapped then-Rep. Bob Livingston (R-LA), chairmanof the Appropriations Committee, to become Speaker in 1999. But then came December 19, 1998. The Saturday before Christmas.

I was on the job on 9/11. I was on the job on January 6. I’ve covered Congress for a litany of big hearings, the removal of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). Even the day they banished Pete Rose from Major League Baseball as a kid reporter back in Cincinnati. You name it, I’ve seen it.

But from a sheer news perspective, December 19, 1998 rivals many of those.

The House met on that Saturday before Christmas to approve articles of impeachment against President Clinton for the Monica Lewinsky scandal. This would mark only the second time in American history that the House impeached an American President.

President Clinton also ordered airstrikes against Iraq for violating no-fly zones following the first Gulf War that day. So that story was in full force. But the night before, there was news that Livingston – the GOP’s Speaker in waiting – had an affair with a lobbyist.

Juxtapose that with what the House was trying to do with Clinton because of his sexual exploits.

On the morning of December 19, 1998, Livingston took to the House floor to demand that the president resign for his transgressions.

“No! You resign! You resign!” came a cacophony of catcalls from Democrats in unison in the House chamber.

Livingston paused and held up his hand to quiet the din.

The Louisiana Republican then announced he would not stand as the GOP’s nominee for Speaker when the new Congress convened in January 1999. He promised to resign from the House a few months later.

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Bedlam tore through the Capitol.

House Republicans scrambled. They needed a new Speaker-designee.

By nightfall, they conscripted J. Dennis Hastert for the job. The Chief Deputy Whip in the Republican Conference. Hastert was a part of the GOP leadership team. But he was a backbencher. His obscure leadership slot was to help count votes on the floor.

Many reporters who covered Congress didn’t even know who Hastert was.

Hastert was barely vetted by the press corps.

But there was other big news. Airstrikes against Iraq. The Livingston scandal. That’s to say nothing of only the second impeachment trial of a President in American history.

GOT A TIP?

Hastert seized the Speaker’s gavel in January 1999. He remained on the job for another eight years. Longer than any other Republican. His odious past obscured.

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But ultimately, Dennis Hastert did not take to the grave the loathsome secrets he hid for so long.

President Donald Trump has cleared the way for the Fort Hood terrorist to face an Army firing squad, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell announced Monday, nearly 17 years after the deadly rampage.

Nidal Malik Hasan killed 13 people and wounded 32 others in the 2009 attack at Fort Hood, shouting “Allahu Akbar” as he opened fire.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth recommended the execution. The Army secretary will set the execution’s time and place, Parnell said.

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT ANNOUNCES IT’S READOPTING THE FIRING SQUAD AS A MEANS OF EXECUTION

“Judgment day for Hasan has finally come,” Parnell wrote.

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This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Amid a rapid rise in technological developments, the U.S. Army’s new leadership is looking to pull back on using artificial intelligence and other tools it feels forced the branch to transform too much all at once.

Gen. Christopher LaNeve, the Army vice chief serving as acting chief of staff, outlined on Monday how he hopes to narrow the service’s sweeping modernization push after years of experimentation with drones, artificial intelligence and other emerging technology.

“There was a lot, a lot of motion,” LaNeve told a small group of reporters. “It was almost like everything was being transformed at once.”

“You can’t AI yourself to be the best maneuver brigade commander out there,” LaNeve said.

The Army Transformation Initiative pushed new technology rapidly into formations and encouraged experimentation across the board. Army leaders credited that effort with accelerating change but acknowledged Monday that its breadth created enormous activity across the force.

INSIDE AMERICA’S LASER REVOLUTION AS THE MILITARY NEARS BIG BATTLEFIELD BREAKTHROUGH

The branch is now preparing to unveil “How the Army Fights,” a new framework intended to turn years of experimentation into a more focused set of decisions about what technology the service will prioritize, where it belongs in Army formations and how the force will organize and spend for future wars.

“The Army cannot and should not modernize everything at once,” the new blueprint states. “The answer is focused modernization.”

Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Weimer said experimentation through the technology push produced necessary learning, but insisted that the service had reached a point where it needed to “drop the chalk line and actually start making some decisions.”

Those decisions include which technologies warrant investment, where they belong in Army formations and which theaters take priority — with the service acknowledging it cannot afford to transform everything simultaneously.

Army leaders aren’t yet saying what will fall by the wayside.

Asked what was being left “on the cutting room floor” as the service narrows its focus, LaNeve said, “I’m not sure we’re prepared to say what we’re cutting out now.”

But one investment is moving unmistakably to the front of the line.

“If you ask me what my number one modernization priority would be, I would say command and control,” LaNeve said.

The shift is unfolding amid a broader leadership shake-up at the Army.

Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle took over after his predecessor, Dan Driscoll, resigned last month following months of reported friction with War Secretary Pete Hegseth, who had earlier ousted Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, a close Driscoll ally who helped lead the service’s transformation push.

Telle, a former Trump White House aide, was tapped days later to lead the Army in an acting capacity and was publicly praised by Hegseth as “strong and whip smart.”

In his first press interview since taking the job, Telle described “How the Army Fights” as a way to impose greater coherence on the service’s modernization efforts as technology rapidly changes the battlefield.

TRUMP NAMES ADAM TELLE ACTING SECRETARY OF THE ARMY FOLLOWING DAN DRISCOLL’S RESIGNATION

That battlefield is envisioned as one in which troops operate alongside autonomous systems and under persistent drone surveillance, while AI helps commanders sift through massive amounts of sensor data and identify targets in “seconds and minutes rather than hours.”

The Army also wants autonomous systems taking on some of the most dangerous jobs that are currently performed by soldiers — this includes reconnaissance, resupply and breaching enemy obstacles.

But Army leaders are resisting the idea that advances in drones and AI have diminished the importance of traditional ground forces.

“Autonomous systems enable Soldiers to destroy and disrupt, but they can never replace the human judgment, leadership, and physical presence of Soldiers required to control the land and consolidate gains,” the blueprint states.

The Army is drawing heavily from recent conflicts, including Ukraine, Gaza and the India-Pakistan conflict, while building the new framework around its most demanding potential adversary: China.

HTAF identifies China’s People’s Liberation Army as the “pacing threat” and says the Army must organize, train and equip against it with the same institutional focus Cold War-era leaders brought to the Soviet Union.

The blueprint also assumes a future major war could reach much closer to home. It warns the U.S. homeland can no longer be treated as a sanctuary, with adversaries potentially using cyberattacks, sabotage and drones to disrupt the ports, airfields and other infrastructure needed to deploy American forces.

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For Telle, the challenge is fitting rapidly evolving technology into a coherent Army rather than chasing every new system that emerges.

He compared individual weapons and technologies to ornaments on a Christmas tree.

“How the Army Fights is really the tree to hang those ornaments on,” Telle said.