FBI Director Kash Patel sends memo calling CNN report ‘entirely false’
FIRST ON FOX – FBI Director Kash Patel is strongly refuting a CNN report alleging he is implementing a “major cutback” of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in a memo to ATF employees, Fox News Digital has learned.
CNN reported Saturday that Patel “has outlined plans to move as many as 1,000 ATF agents to the FBI” and “cutting ATF’s agents by more than a third,” according to three unnamed sources.
“The move represents a major cutback of the ATF, an agency that long has been in the crosshairs of gun rights groups that believe its work infringes on Second Amendment rights,” CNN said. “The ATF has about 2,600 agents and more than 5,000 employees, a number that has remained largely unchanged for years.”
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“After publication of this story and resulting pushback including from Republican allies, FBI officials began to back off aspects of their plan, according to a US official familiar with the matter,” the report stated.
Patel, who is currently also serving as acting director of the ATF, issued a memo to ATF staff denying the CNN report.
“I want to address a report from this weekend speculating about the intentions of FBI leadership with personnel decisions at the ATF,” Patel began the memo obtained by Fox News Digital. “This weekend, CNN reported news of a plan on the part of our leadership to ‘cut as many as one third’ of ATF agents and reallocate 1,000 agents over to the FBI. The report even suggested our leadership team altered course after reading a news report, and ultimately backed off certain aspects of changes. This ‘report’ is entirely false.”
“The fake news will NEVER be responsible for operational command authority over the ATF, we are,” Patel declared. “The brave men and women of the ATF who courageously dedicate themselves to protecting the American public will not have their security jeopardized by the media’s disinformation campaigns. When we make decisions, they will be final, regardless of the input of CNN or any other news organization.”
CNN declined Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
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Patel previewed his tough stance against the media in remarks he made after being sworn in as FBI director last month.
“Look, I know the media’s in here, and if you have a target, the target’s right here,” Patel said as he pointed to himself. “It is not the men and women at the FBI.”
“You have written everything you possibly can about me that’s fake, malicious, slanderous and defamatory. Keep it coming. Bring it on, but leave the men and women of the FBI out of it. They deserve better,” Patel told news outlets, sparking applause from his supporters in the room.
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President Donald Trump tasked Patel to overhaul the FBI, which has been viewed as politicized in recent years.
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Illegal migrant ‘tsunami’ coming for Canada thanks to Trump admin, professor warns
A Canadian professor warned that illegal immigration and drug smuggling could surge in Canada thanks to the Trump administration’s strict border enforcement.
Kelly Sundberg from Mount Royal University spoke on “60 Minutes Overtime” Sunday night about a “tsunami” of illegal immigrants that can be expected to cross through the United States into Canada out of fear of being arrested or deported.
“I hope I’m wrong, but it would appear that we’re going to be overwhelmed by the illegal immigrants fleeing American authorities coming into our country, and they very well might be bringing guns and drugs with them,” Sundberg said.
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Sundberg cited President Donald Trump’s move to send thousands of “criminal illegal aliens” to Guantánamo Bay as a huge factor in encouraging migration to Canada, exacerbating concerns about fentanyl trafficking.
Elsewhere during the segment, an anonymous Mexican cartel member revealed he has seen more migrants hoping to be smuggled through the U.S. rather than into the U.S. compared to before the Trump administration.
“Most of them are Venezuelans,” the cartel member said. “Those people are afraid of being deported to their countries. Normally before, we didn’t see that much, maybe out of every 30 people we crossed, three or four would come up. Now, maybe out of every 10 we cross, five go up to Canada.”
The Canadian border got more attention last month after a report uncovered Canadian traffickers allegedly advertising what looked like a human-smuggling operation to sneak illegal immigrants into the U.S. through the northern border.
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Trump has also been critical of Canada’s border, accusing the country of failing to properly secure its border to prevent an influx of fentanyl into the U.S. In response, he enacted 25% tariffs on Canada’s steel and aluminum and has threatened additional tariffs on all Canadian products on April 2.
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In February, Trump’s first full month of his second term, illegal border crossings dropped to a record-setting low number of 8,326 apprehensions of illegal immigrants by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). This marked a 96% drop from the highest numbers reported by the Biden administration in Dec. 2023 with 301,981 encounters at the southern border.
Rosie O’Donnell apologizes to prime minister after causing scene weeks into stay
Rosie O’Donnell continues to comment on President Donald Trump following her move to Ireland.
Last week, O’Donnell appeared on Ireland’s “Late Late Show,” where she discussed her recent decision to move out of the U.S., her longstanding feud with Trump and more.
At one point, she touched on Trump’s comment about her to Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin during his visit to the White House earlier this month, admitting she wrote Martin an apology.
She was shown a clip from Trump’s meeting with Martin, and when asked how it felt to watch it, she said it was “very, very surreal.”
“He’s been doing it for two decades, and I’m still not used to it every time he does,” she added, referencing their feud, which began after she made comments about him on “The View” in 2006.
O’Donnell continued, “I felt very troubled that they put the taoiseach (Irish prime minister) in that position and didn’t treat him with the respect that a leader of that kind deserves when he’s visiting the White House. I wrote the taoiseach with a little note apology to his email and got a note back that they had received it and thanked me. But I just wanted him to know the history and what happened and why he seems to be out to get me in ways that are startling to most.”
During Martin’s visit with Trump on March 12, a reporter asked him, “Why in the world would you let Rosie O’Donnell move to Ireland? I think she is going to lower your happiness.”
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Before Martin could answer, Trump chimed in and replied, “That’s true. I like that question. Do you know you have Rosie O’Donnell? Do you know who she is? You’re better off not knowing.”
In her new interview, O’Donnell spoke about Trump and her decision to leave the U.S. to move to Ireland at length, saying that she never imagined she’d leave the country and that it’s “overwhelmingly sad to me personally and way too much for me to take as well emotionally” that he won the presidential election in 2024.
When asked about her decision to move to Ireland, she also said, “The President of the United States has it out for me and has for 20 years,” later adding that “he sort of uses me as a punchline whenever he feels the need.”
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When Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment, they responded with “Good riddance.”
O’Donnell and Trump have been involved in a feud since 2006 after she criticized him on “The View” about his leniency toward a Miss USA winner who had been accused of drug use and other bad behavior.
Trump responded to the criticism by calling O’Donnell a “real loser.”
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At the time, in reference to Miss USA Tara Conner, Trump said he was a “believer in second chances. Tara is a good person. Tara has tried hard. Tara is going to be given a second chance.”
In 2014, O’Donnell claimed her feud with Trump resulted in the “most bullying I ever experienced in my life.”
Since Trump’s first presidential run and win, O’Donnell joked to “Late Night” host Seth Meyers about how she spends “about 90% of my working hours tweeting hatred toward this administration.”
In 2015, Trump harshly replied to a question regarding O’Donnell during the Republican primary debate.
When Trump was asked about having called women disparaging names like “fat pigs” and “slob,” he laughed and answered, “Only Rosie O’Donnell.”
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During last year’s election, Trump brought up O’Donnell’s name again when he told a crowd at the October Al Smith dinner that “The View” had gotten “so bad” that showrunners “really need to bring Rosie O’Donnell back.”
Hunter Biden’s former business partner hopeful for pardon he never thought he’d need
Hunter Biden’s former business partner Devon Archer is reportedly set to receive a pardon from President Donald Trump, something he says he never thought he would need.
Archer met with Trump over the weekend at the NCAA wrestling championships in Philadelphia, where he said he received some “very encouraging words.”
“I had gotten word from my attorney earlier that the president was discussing this, and he had acknowledged that he was going to do it,” Archer said of the possible pardon Monday in an interview on “Jesse Watters Primetime.”
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Trump told the New York Post Sunday that he would give Archer a “full pardon” because he was “screwed by the Bidens.”
“They destroyed him like they tried to destroy a lot of people,” Trump said, according to the outlet.
Archer, who served on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma with Hunter, told the House Oversight Committee in a closed-door hearing in 2023 about the influence of the Biden family “brand.”
He told investigators Hunter put his father — then Vice President Joe Biden — on speakerphone at business meetings between 10 and 20 times, although he noted “nothing of material was discussed.”
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“Joe [Biden] would end a meeting and say, ‘You do a favor for me, you’re my friend. You do a favor for my son, you’re a friend for life,’” Archer told Fox News host Jesse Watters.
House Republicans investigated allegations of influence-peddling on behalf of the Biden family throughout much of the 46th president’s time in office, including launching an impeachment inquiry.
The House Oversight Committee said the Bidens and their associates received over $20 million in payments from foreign entities between 2015 and 2017.
An impeachment inquiry report released last year said President Biden committed “impeachable offenses,” but it stopped short of naming any criminal wrongdoing.
Archer was convicted alongside others by a federal jury in 2018 of defrauding a Native American tribe in a scheme that involved the issuance and sale of fraudulent tribal bonds.
He was sentenced to a year and a day in prison and had his conviction overturned and then reinstated in 2020. The Supreme Court rejected his appeal last year.
New York Post columnist Miranda Devine reported that the 2022 sentence was overturned on a technicality, and he will be resentenced later this year.
“You didn’t think you’d ever need this [pardon] because Joe Biden said he’d take care of you. Isn’t that what he said?” Watters asked.
“Absolutely. Well, and so did Hunter. I mean, once a Biden, always a Biden.” Archer responded.
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“I didn’t think — first of all, I didn’t think I’d need this because I never did anything. I was a victim of financial fraud in which I invested a lot of money and was taken down [by] a whistleblower [who] was blowing the whistle on Hunter.”
Trump admin ends windfall for ‘queer’ and ‘transgender’ farmers in blue haven
President Donald Trump’s Cabinet outlined billions of dollars in contracts it says it has canceled since he took office, including a “$300,000 contract educating on food justice for queer and transgender farmers in San Francisco” and $830 million on surveys described as looking like “anyone’s child in junior high could have put together.”
The contracts, which Trump said represented “fraud,” are being canceled as Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are trying to eliminate wasteful spending by the federal government.
“Even at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, we canceled a $300,000 contract educating on food justice for queer and transgender farmers in San Francisco. A similar contract we canceled in New York, again educating transgender and queer farmers on food justice and food equality. I’m not even sure what that means, but apparently the last administration wanted to put out taxpayer dollars towards that,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told Trump.
“We canceled a $600,000 contract out of Louisiana that was studying the menstrual cycles of transgender men. We canceled another contract out of a university in the middle of the country that focused on getting more diversity, equity and inclusion into our pest management industry,” she continued. “Again, these are nonsensical, it makes zero sense to use taxpayer dollars to fund these. I know these are just a few examples of the hundreds and hundreds we have found.”
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Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told Trump that “There is a federal consulting group which was a group inside of Interior, but it was managing contracts for many different agencies that flowed through here” and “one of those contracts was to do surveys of individuals, $830 million for surveys.”
“And so part of the question was ‘hey could we actually see the surveys?’ and then the surveys came back and it was, the survey was like 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper with ten questions that anyone’s child in junior high could have put together, or AI could have done for free,” Burgum said during the Cabinet meeting. “$830 million, so that is one that we stopped and that contract was going out after you were inaugurated, sir.”
“It’s fraud,” Trump responded. “But we’ve had many fraudulent contracts that were caught by the work that Elon and his people are doing and working with our people. It’s been brought to light. The fraud, not just waste and abuse. The fraud has been incredible.”
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An X account linked to the White House said Burgum announced $830 million in savings by “cutting contracts for useless surveys.”
“The EPA has now canceled over $22 billion worth of contracts – $2 billion going to this NGO that Stacey Abrams was tied to. They received only $100 in 2023 and then the Biden administration gave them $2 billion,” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin also said. “The director of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund saw his former employer get $5 billion dollars. So $20 billion went to just eight NGOs.”
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“The partnership with DOGE and Elon Musk has been incredible at EPA. Their team is very talented, we wouldn’t have been able to do it without them and of course this mandate from President Trump to make sure that we identify every last penny, whether we are saving $50,000, five million dollars or $22 billion dollars we will not rest until every last penny is saved. Thank you, Mr. President for the opportunity to do this for the American public,” Zeldin added.
Details emerge in new report on tragic death of ex-Yankees star’s son
Miller Gardner, the 14-year-old son of former Yankee outfielder Brett, died of asphyxiation “after a possible intoxication after apparently ingesting some food,” a Costa Rica Judicial Investigative Agency official told NBC.
Reports circulated earlier in the day that the family was vacationing in the Central American country last week when Miller fell ill and died.
The State Department said in a statement to Fox News Digital that local officials were investigating a death that occurred on March 21 in Costa Rica — the same day Miller Gardner passed away.
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Fox News Digital reached out to the aforementioned agency for additional comment but has not yet heard back.
Gardner and his family announced Miller’s death in a statement on Sunday.
“With heavy hearts we are saddened to announce the passing of our youngest son, Miller. He was 14 years old and has left us far too soon after falling ill along with several other family members while on vacation,” their statement read. “We have so many questions and so few answers at this point, but we do know that he passed away peacefully in his sleep on the morning of Friday, March 21st.
“Miller was a beloved son and brother and we cannot yet comprehend our life without his infectious smile. He loved football, baseball, golf, hunting, fishing, his family and his friends. He lived life to the fullest every single day.”
The Yankees also released a statement on the death of Miller.
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“Our hearts are heavy, and the Yankees family is filled with grief after learning of the passing of Miller Gardner,” the team said. “Words feel insignificant and insufficient in trying to describe such an unimaginable loss. It wasn’t just Brett who literally grew up in this organization for more than 17 years – so did his wife, Jessica, and their two boys, Hunter and Miller.”
“We grieve with Brett, Jessica, Hunter, and their community of family and friends in mourning the loss of Miller, who had a spark in his eyes, an outgoing and feisty personality, and a warm and loving nature. “Our love for the Gardner family is unconditional and absolute, and we will offer our enduring support while understanding their desire for privacy at this time.”
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Gardner was an outfielder for the Yankees for 14 seasons and was on the team when they won their last World Series title in 2009; he spent his entire career in the Bronx, last playing in 2021.
Tom Brady admits what led to him ending decades-long career with the Patriots
It may not surprise anybody, but Tom Brady has finally admitted that he and Bill Belichick weren’t the best of buds ahead of his move to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Brady, of course, spent the first 20 years of his illustrious 23-year career with the New England Patriots and Belichick was his coach.
The duo found massive amounts of success, winning six of their nine Super Bowls played in; but it’s long been reported, and even said by owner Robert Kraft, that the two had some tension which eventually led to their divorce.
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In his most recent edition of his newsletter, Brady confirmed that to be the case, even admitting that his impending free agency was on his mind.
“It was a creeping decision that lived passively in the back of mind for [two to three] years. Until March of 2020 when a whirlwind of a few days made me realize that a decision was coming sooner rather than later,” Brady wrote.
“After 20 years together, a natural tension had developed between where Coach Belichick and I were headed in our careers, and where the Patriots were moving as a franchise. It was the kind of tension that could only be resolved by some kind of split or one of us reassessing our priorities.”
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And that’s exactly what happened. Brady went to Tampa, where he won his seventh and final Super Bowl.
The two appear to have made amends; Belichick was invited to Brady’s roast and Patriots Hall of Fame induction. The two reportedly spoke about the open Las Vegas Raiders job (Brady owns a stake in the team) before they hired Pete Carroll, and Belichick eventually moved on to the University of North Carolina.
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They are undoubtedly the greatest quarterback-coach duo of all time, but even their success couldn’t get them through the most difficult times; just a quick separation and time.
CDC warns tropical disease spreading in spring break locations among Americans
As spring breakers this season continue to head south into warmer territory, mosquitoes are posing a health risk that calls for extra attention.
Global cases of dengue fever are on the rise, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — and it’s warning of an uptick in U.S. travelers.
The agency released a Health Alert Network advisory on March 18 noting that dengue activity and transmission “remain high” in some parts of the U.S. and globally, including the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
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“Spring and summer travel coincide with the peak season for dengue in many countries, increasing the risk of both travel-associated and locally acquired cases in the United States,” the CDC wrote.
The CDC has marked dengue fever as a level 1 health alert, urging the public to “practice usual precautions.”
This includes avoiding mosquito bites by using an EPA-registered insect repellent, wearing long-sleeved shirts and long pants when outdoors, and sleeping in a room that has air conditioning or screened windows.
Many countries have reported a “higher-than-usual” number of dengue cases in 2024 and 2025, the CDC noted.
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The following countries have also reported higher-than-expected numbers of dengue cases among American travelers returning to U.S. soil: Brazil, Burkina Faso, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Fiji, French Polynesia, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Iran, Mexico, Pakistan, Panama, Philippines, Saint Lucia and Sudan.
What is dengue fever?
Dengue fever is a virus spread through bites from an infected mosquito.
It is common in the Americas, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific Islands, among other countries, according to the CDC.
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In 2024, more than 13 million cases were reported in North, Central and South America, as well as in the Caribbean.
Local transmission of these outbreaks was reported in California, Texas and Florida last year.
Typical symptoms include aches and pains (in the eyes, muscles, joints, or bones), nausea, vomiting and rash — usually experienced within two weeks of being bitten.
Most people experience symptoms for two to seven days before recovering.
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“It’s typically a more mild illness, but can be severe, causing headaches, joint pain, fever, abdominal pain and even death,” Dr. Mark Fischer, regional medical director of International SOS, a leading medical and security services company, previously told Fox News Digital.
There is not currently any medication to treat dengue, according to the CDC.
Infected people are advised to rest, take acetaminophen for pain and fever, stay hydrated and see a doctor.
There is a vaccine available for U.S. children between 9 and 16 years of age who have previously tested positive for dengue and are living in areas where the infection is common.
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