A new memo being sent to House Republicans on Monday is encouraging them to tout new work requirements for Medicaid and federal food benefits, as lawmakers return to their districts for Congress’ annual August recess period.

Democrats and Republicans are locked in a messaging war over President Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill,’ a fight that’s only expected to intensify as the 2026 midterm elections creep closer.

Advancing American Freedom (AAF), a group founded by former Vice President Mike Pence, is looking to provide backup to GOP lawmakers with new guidance on how to sell the bill to constituents.

The memo positions Democratic attacks as ‘Left Wing operatives…already working to distort and malign every part of the [one big, beautiful bill].’

Democrats have been accusing Republicans of ripping federal benefits like Medicaid away from millions of people in order to give tax breaks to the wealthy.

They’re hoping to gin up enough outrage against the bill to carry them to take back the House of Representatives next year.

But the memo’s first section encourages GOP lawmakers to point out that ‘every Democrat voted against’ the bill, followed by three of what the right sees as its strongest points.

The AAF memo urges Republicans to say, for example, that the bill’s extension of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) avoided a cumulative $4 trillion tax increase for Americans, including ‘working families.’

The bill also includes ‘$165 billion to secure the border, including 3,000 new border patrol agents, $10,000 bonuses for ICE and Border Patrol agents, and $46.5 billion for the wall,’ and ‘$150 billion to rebuild our military including shipbuilding, nuclear arsenal, and the Golden Dome,’ which Democrats opposed as well in their votes against the bill.

In addition to more talking points celebrating the bill’s tax cuts, energy provisions, and spending cut measures, AAF appears to be calling on Republicans to take on Democrats’ criticism of federal benefit reforms head-on.

The memo touts ‘commonsense Medicaid reforms’ like ‘a work requirement for able-bodied adults who are not caretakers or parents of children under 15 years old in the Medicaid and SNAP programs.’

It also encourages Republicans to point out the bill ‘reduces payments for Medicaid to states that provide coverage to illegal aliens by a commensurate amount’ and ‘requires regular reviews to ensure that dead or ineligible people are not enrolled.’

AAF also believes the conservative policy wins in the bill will also be a strong talking point, urging GOP lawmakers to point out that the legislation effectively defunds Planned Parenthood for a year, establishes a new tax credit for school choice, and ‘disincentivizes gambling by letting gamblers only write off 90% of their losses.’

House Republicans working to sell the bill will have their work cut out for them over the next four weeks, however.

A recent Fox News poll conducted in mid-July found that 58% of registered voters disapproved of the ‘big, beautiful bill,’ compared to just 39% who supported it.

The gap between Republicans and Democrats is significant – 73% of registered Republican voters approved of the bill, compared to just 10% of Democrats. Independents opposed the bill by a margin of 29% to 70%.

But Democrats aren’t in the clear, either. A new poll released Monday by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that a significant number of Democratic Party voters see their party as ‘weak’ and ‘ineffective.’

President Donald Trump told reporters on Sunday that nuclear submarines he ordered to counter Russia are now ‘in the region’ ahead of U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff’s visit. 

Before boarding Air Force One in Allentown, Pa., to return to Washington, D.C., Trump was asked if the nuclear submarines had already been deployed to ‘face Russia.’ Trump said on TRUTH Social on Friday that he ordered two nuclear submarines ‘to be positioned in the appropriate regions’ in response to what he considered ‘highly provocative statements’ from former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev about potential war with the U.S. 

‘I’ve already put out a statement and the answer is they are in the region, yeah, where they have to be,’ Trump told reporters at Lehigh Valley International Airport on Sunday. 

Trump said that Witkoff is expected to travel to Russia on ‘Wednesday or Thursday.’ Russian state media reported Monday that Witkoff would arrive on Wednesday. The visit comes ahead of the Friday deadline Trump set for Russian President Vladimir Putin to reach a ceasefire agreement with Ukraine or face additional sanctions and tariffs. Trump also has warned about potential secondary tariffs for the purchasers of Russian energy. 

‘Well, there’ll be sanctions, but they seem to be pretty good at avoiding sanctions. You know, they’re wily characters, and they’re pretty good at avoiding sanctions,’ Trump told reporters in front of Marine One. ‘So we’ll see what happens.’

Asked about Witkoff’s message to Moscow and if there’s anything the Russians can do to avoid sanctions, Trump said Sunday, ‘Yeah, get a deal where people stop getting killed.’ 

‘A tremendous number of Russian soldiers have been killed. And likewise Ukraine, a lower number, but still thousands and thousands of people. And now we’re adding towns where they’re being hit by missiles. So it’s a lot of people being killed in that ridiculous war,’ Trump said. ‘We stopped a lot of countries from war, India and Pakistan, we stopped a lot of countries. And we’re going to get that one stopped too. Somehow. We’re going to get that one stopped. That’s a really horrible war.’ 

‘This should be the easiest to stop, and it’s not,’ Trump added. 

Before ordering the deployment of nuclear submarines last week, Trump had warned Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, to ‘watch his words.’ Medvedev had complained that Trump had shortened the Russia-Ukraine ceasefire deadline from 50 days to just 10 to 12 days, saying that the ‘ultimatum’ was threat toward war ‘not between Russia and Ukraine, but with his own country.’ 

Despite Trump cautioning that Medvedev was entering ‘dangerous territory,’ the Russian official doubled down and referenced Russia’s ‘Dead Hand’ – the Cold War-era automated nuclear retaliation system developed by the Soviet Union. 

The U.S. and Russia hold the largest nuclear arsenals in the world.

Top Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reportedly downplayed the U.S. deployment of nuclear submarines Monday. He told reporters that ‘American submarines are already on combat duty – that’s a constant process’ and the Russians ‘don’t believe this is a case of any sort of escalation,’ according to the Russian-language news website Meduza.

Asked about Medvedev’s remarks, Peskov said members of the leadership in any country have different views but stressed Putin definitively decides Russian foreign policy.

‘We approach any statements related to nuclear issues with great caution,’ Peskov added at the press conference, according to The Moscow Times. ‘Russia is firmly committed to nuclear non-proliferation, and we believe that all parties should exercise the utmost restraint when it comes to nuclear rhetoric.’

Meanwhile, Beijing and Moscow have deepened their ties in recent years, with China providing an economic lifeline to Russia in the face of Western sanctions over the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Russia and China have started mock combat drills and other war games in the Sea of Japan, The Telegraph reported. Citing a statement from the Chinese Defense Ministry, the newspaper said the three-day exercise involves four Chinese vessels, including the guided-missile destroyers Shaoxing and Urumqi, and entails ‘submarine rescue, joint anti-submarine, air defense and anti-missile operations, and maritime combat,’ as well as naval patrols in ‘relevant waters of the Pacific.’ 

At a press conference announcing details of the annual drills last week, Chinese Defense Ministry spokesperson Zhang Xiaogang said the Joint Sea 2025 exercise would be held in the air and seas near the Russian port city of Vladivostok, positioned across the sea from Japan’s west coast. Last year, the drill was held off southern China in the South China Sea.

‘This is an arrangement within the annual cooperation plan between the Chinese and Russian militaries. It is not targeted at any third party, nor is it related to the current international and regional situation,’ Zhang said. 

China and Russia also signed a ‘no-limits’ economic partnership shortly after the war in Ukraine began. 

Zhang criticized ongoing drills that the U.S. Air Force is conducting with Japan and other partners in the western Pacific. Resolute Force Pacific is the largest contingency-response exercise ever conducted by the Air Force in the region, according to the U.S. military. The U.S. Air Force has said their exercise will train its forces to maintain readiness and execute missions under stress to demonstrate their ability to defend the United States and partner nations in the Pacific.

‘The U.S. has been blindly flexing muscles in the Asia-Pacific region and attempting to use military drills as a pretext to gang up, intimidate and pressure other countries, and undermine peace and stability in the region,’ Zhang told reporters. 

Japan’s Defense Ministry said in an annual report earlier this month that China’s growing military cooperation with Russia poses serious security concerns.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump alleged that Senate Democrats are possibly delaying his nominees in exchange for money in a heated post on Truth Social Sunday night.

In the post, Trump accused Senate Democrats, led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., of slowing down the confirmations of more than 150 executive nominees.

‘Democrats, lead[sic] by Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, are slow walking my Nominees, more than 150 of them. They wanted us to pay, originally, two billion dollars for approvals. The Dems are CRAZED LUNATICS!!!’ the post read.

He implied that Democrats were leveraging the process to extract funding agreements — a tactic his associates have described as ‘political extortion.’

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., met with Schumer recently to discuss an offer during ongoing negotiations, but they have not readdressed it directly since choosing to communicate through intermediaries, according to Thune.

While Trump has urged the Senate to make quick moves, Democrats continue to block more nominees than normal.

‘I think they’re desperately in need of change,’ Thune said of Senate rules Saturday after negotiations with Schumer and Trump broke down. ‘I think that the last six months have demonstrated that this process, nominations is broken. And so I expect there will be some good robust conversations about that.’

Historically, nominees have been confirmed unanimously or by voice vote quickly, but Senate Dems have been reportedly forcing roll-call votes on many of the current nominees.

Thune told Fox News Digital that not much headway was being made as ‘the Dems are dug in on a position that’s just not working.’

Senate Republicans want to strike a deal that would send nominees with bipartisan support through committee to lightning-fast votes on the floor, but Schumer has not relented.

Trump’s claims come after the Senate left Saturday for a month-long August recess without coming to a deal on advancing dozens of nominees, which prompted him to post on Truth Social that Schumer could ‘GO TO HELL.’

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

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz says the Trump administration plans to invest more than $200 billion ‘more dollars’ into Medicaid following the passage of the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill.’ 

‘I’m trying to save this beautiful program, this noble effort, to help folks, giving them a hand up,’ Oz told CBS’ ‘Face the Nation’ on Sunday.

‘And as you probably gather, if Medicaid isn’t able to take care of the people for whom it was designed, the young children, the dawn of their life, those who are twilight of their lives, the seniors, and those who were disabled living in the shadows, as Hubert Humphrey said, then we’re not satisfying the fundamental obligation of a moral government,’ he continued. 

Oz, the 17th administrator for CMS, said the government wants ‘an appropriate return’ on the Medicaid investment. He addressed the difference in drug costs between the U.S. and Europe, adding that work is being done by the administration in an attempt to bring drug prices down.  

Last week, the Trump administration announced it is launching a new program that will allow Americans to share personal health data and medical records across health systems and apps run by private tech companies, promising that this will make it easier to access health records and monitor wellness.

CMS will be in charge of maintaining the system, and officials have said patients will need to opt in for the sharing of their medical records and data, which will be kept secure.

Those officials said patients will benefit from a system that lets them quickly call up their own records without the hallmark difficulties, such as requiring the use of fax machines to share documents, that have prevented them from doing so in the past.

‘We’re going to have remarkable advances in how consumers can use their own records,’ Oz said during the White House event.

CMS already has troves of information on more than 140 million Americans who enroll in Medicare and Medicaid. Earlier this month, the federal agency agreed to hand over its massive database, including home addresses, to deportation officials.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Hours of tense negotiations to strike a deal on President Donald Trump’s nominees blew up Saturday night, and now lawmakers are headed home.

Senate Republicans and Democrats were quick to point the finger at one another for the deal’s demise, but it was ultimately Trump who nuked the talks.

In a lengthy post on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump accused Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., of ‘demanding over One Billion Dollars in order to approve a small number of our highly qualified nominees.’

‘This demand is egregious and unprecedented, and would be embarrassing to the Republican Party if it were accepted. It is political extortion, by any other name,’ Trump said. ‘Tell Schumer, who is under tremendous political pressure from within his own party, the Radical Left Lunatics, to GO TO HELL!’

‘Do not accept the offer,’ he continued. ‘Go home and explain to your constituents what bad people the Democrats are, and what a great job the Republicans are doing, and have done, for our Country. Have a great RECESS and, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!’

Instead of finding a pathway to vote on as many as 60 of the president’s nominees, all of which moved through committee with bipartisan support, lawmakers rapid-fire voted on seven before leaving Washington until September.

But Schumer treated Trump’s move as a victory for Senate Democrats. He countered that it was the president who gave up on negotiations while he and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., worked to find a bipartisan solution, ‘provided the White House and Senate Republicans met our demands.’

‘He took his ball, he went home, leaving Democrats and Republicans alike wondering what the hell happened,’ Schumer said, standing next to a poster-sized version of the president’s post. 

‘Trump’s all-caps Tweet said it all,’ he continued. ‘In a fit of rage, Trump threw in the towel, sent Republicans home, and was unable to do the basic work of negotiating.’

But prior to the president’s edict, both sides of the aisle believed they were on the verge of a breakthrough to both meet Trump’s desire to see his nominees confirmed and leave Washington.

said that there were ‘lots of offers’ made between him and Schumer over the course of negotiations.

‘There were several different times where I think either or both sides maybe thought there was a deal in the end,’ he said.

Senate Democrats wanted the White House to unfreeze billions in National Institute of Health and foreign aid funding, in addition to a future agreement that no more clawback packages would come from the White House.

In exchange, they would greenlight several of Trump’s non-controversial nominees.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., accused Schumer of going ‘too far’ by upping the price tag on his demands.

‘We’ve had three different deals since last night,’ he said. ‘And every time it’s been, every time it’s ‘I want more,’’ Mullin said of Schumer’s demands.

He said that Republicans weren’t caught off guard by Trump’s call to halt talks, and noted that the White House had been heavily involved in negotiations.

‘You get to a realization that there was, it was never about making a deal,’ he continued. ‘They want to go out and say the President’s being unrealistic, and because he can’t answer to his base to make a deal like we have in every other president in history.’

Now, Republicans won’t pursue recess appointments, but Mullin noted that moving ahead with a rule change to the confirmation process when lawmakers return in September was going to happen in response.

‘The asks evolved on both sides quite a bit over time,’ Thune said. ‘But in the end, we never got to a place where we had both sides agree to lock it in.’

Senate Democrats, on the other hand, countered that their offer never changed, and that Republicans kept increasing the number of nominees they wanted across the line, and attempted to include more controversial, partisan picks.

Schumer wouldn’t reveal the details of his demands, but charged that any changes to Senate rules would be a ‘huge mistake,’ and urged Trump to work with Senate Democrats moving forward, particularly as Congress hurtles toward yet another deadline to fund the government in September. 

‘They should stop listening to him,’ Schumer said. ‘If they want to do what’s good for the American people, they shouldn’t be in blind obeisance to Donald Trump.’
 

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) is investigating former special counsel Jack Smith, the OSC has confirmed to Fox News.

Smith was tapped in 2022 by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland to serve as special counsel regarding two probes pertaining to then-former President Donald Trump.

The OSC is investigating Smith for allegedly violating the Hatch Act, which bars government employees from partaking in political activities. It is not a criminal investigation. 

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment on Saturday, but did not receive a response.

The OSC is not the same as a special counsel appointed by an attorney general, as Smith was, but ‘is an independent federal investigative and prosecutorial agency,’ according to its website. 

‘OSC’s statutory authority comes from four federal laws: the Civil Service Reform Act, the Whistleblower Protection Act, the Hatch Act, and the Uniformed Services Employment & Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA),’ the website explains.

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas recently asked the OSC to look into whether Smith illegally engaged in political activity to influence the 2024 election against Trump.

‘I write requesting the Office of Special Counsel to investigate whether Jack Smith, Special Counsel for Attorney General Merrick Garland, unlawfully took political actions to influence the 2024 election to harm then-candidate President Donald Trump,’ Cotton wrote in a July 30 letter to Acting Special Counsel Jamieson Greer.

‘President Trump of course vanquished Joe Biden, Jack Smith, every Democrat who weaponized the law against him, but President Trump’s astounding victory doesn’t excuse Smith of responsibility for his unlawful election interference. I therefore ask the Office of Special Counsel to investigate whether Jack Smith or any members of his team unlawfully acted for political purposes,’ Cotton wrote.

Fox News’ David Spunt contributed to this report.

The Senate on Saturday confirmed Jeanine Pirro, President Donald Trump’s pick to serve as Washington D.C.’s top prosecutor, as lawmakers failed to reach a deal to ram through dozens of the president’s nominees.

The onetime New York judge and prosecutor and former Fox News host was one of the over 150 still outstanding nominees on the Senate’s calendar as Senate Republicans work to find a path forward to ram through Senate Democrats’ blockade of Trump’s nominees, and part of a slew of picks to get a vote over the weekend. But just ahead of her confirmation vote, the path to a deal was derailed, and lawmakers opted to ram through just seven of Trump’s nominees before heading home until September.

Pirro, who was confirmed by a 50-45 vote, will serve as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, a post she has held since May on an interim basis.

Pirro previously served as the District Attorney in Westchester County, New York, for over a decade. Prior to that, she was on the bench as a judge in Westchester County in the early 1990s.

‘Jeanine is incredibly well-qualified for this position, and is considered one of the Top District Attorneys in the History of the State of New York,’ Trump said when he nominated Pirro. ‘She is in a class by herself.’

She was not Trump’s first pick for the job, however. His first choice, Ed Martin, failed to gain enough support among Republicans earlier this year. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., effectively tanked Martin’s nomination over concerns about his views on the Jan. 6, 2021 riot on Capitol Hill.

And Pirro’s road to confirmation was not without its own hiccups and drama.

Senate Democrats have accused her of amplifying Trump’s 2020 election fraud claims and defending him after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot during her time as a Fox News host, and warned that she would do the president’s bidding in her role as Washington D.C.’s top prosecutor.

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last month, Democrats staged a walkout in protest of both her and U.S. District Judge Emil Bove, who was confirmed earlier this week in a tight, 50 to 49 vote. She later advanced out of committee on a party-line vote.

‘She’s an election denialist, recklessly peddling President Trump’s Big Lie despite even her own Fox News producers and executives warning her to reel it in,’ Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill. and the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee said of Pirro.