Dem calls for Waltz, Hegseth to resign as Gabbard testifies on material in Signal messages

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., called for national security advisor Mike Waltz and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to resign Tuesday following an apparent national security breach. 

The demand came after Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard vowed during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing that there was “no classified material” shared in a Signal text chat that an editor from The Atlantic said he had access to. The U.S. operation against the Houthis in Yemen was reportedly discussed in the chat between senior Cabinet officials. 

“Obviously, my colleagues and I feel very strongly about the war planning meeting over unclassified phones. Obviously reckless, obviously dangerous, both the mishandling of classified information and the deliberate destruction of federal records or potential crimes that ought to be investigated immediately,” Wyden said. “And I want to make clear that I’m of the view that there ought to be resignation starting with the National Security Advisor and the Secretary of Defense.”

Earlier, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., grilled Gabbard over the nature of the texts.

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“Director Gabbard, did you participate in the group chat with Secretary of Defense and other Trump senior officials discussing the Yemen war plans?” the committee vice chairman asked her.

“I don’t want to get into the specifics,” she responded, noting that the matter is “currently under review by the National Security Council.”

“There was no classified material that was shared in that,” Gabbard also said.

“So then if there [was] no classified material, share it with the committee,” Warner shot back. “You can’t have it both ways. These are important jobs. This is our national security. Bobbing and weaving and trying to, you know, filibuster your answer. So please answer the question. Director Gabbard, if this was a rank-and-file intelligence officer who did this kind of careless behavior, what would you do with them?”

“Senator, I’ll reiterate that there was no classified material that was shared in that,” she said.

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Earlier, Warner said “If this was the case of a military officer, or an intelligence officer, and they had this kind of behavior, they would be fired.”

CIA Director John Ratcliffe and FBI Director Kash Patel appeared alongside Gabbard on Tuesday.

Ratcliffe confirmed he was the person bearing his name in the group chat.

“To be clear, the use of Signal message, and end to end encryption applications is permissible and was in this case, used permissibly, at least to my understanding, and in [a] lawful manner,” he told Wyden.

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Patel, when asked by Warner if the FBI has launched an investigation into the chat, said he was briefed on the matter “late last night” and “this morning, I don’t have an update.” 

Republicans alert AG Bondi to state’s ballot fraud saga after 150 charges lodged

Ballot fraud concerns stretching back to a judicially-overturned 2023 election in Connecticut’s largest city have led state lawmakers to spar over how to reform the system after dozens of criminal charges were lodged in the latest cases there.

On Monday, Republican leaders told Fox News Digital they have asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to probe whether “election crimes in Bridgeport” that led to the indictments are “part of a larger, coordinated effort to defraud voters statewide” – adding that Democrats’ two new election reform bills drafted in response to the latest case “miss the mark.”

“Connecticut has made embarrassing international news for absentee ballot fraud caught on viral video,” state Sen. Rob Sampson of Wolcott and Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding of Brookfield said in joint comments to Fox News Digital.

Sampson is currently the ranking Republican on the bicameral Government Administration and Elections Committee considering the bills.

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“Everyone saw it,” the Republicans said of various CCTV tapes from Bridgeport showing city Democratic Party official Wanda Geter-Pataky allegedly engaging in ballot-stuffing, inserting large numbers of ballots into a drop box outside city hall.

Reports at the time characterized the effort as one seeking to benefit Mayor Joe Ganim against challenger John Gomes, and the controversy ultimately spilled into the 2024 court-ordered “redo” between the two men.

Sampson and Harding said legislative Republicans wrote to Bondi to formally request a federal investigation into whether “election crimes in Bridgeport are part of a larger, coordinated effort to defraud voters statewide.”

They added the two bills presented in committee on Friday – SB 1515 and SB 1516 – are woefully inadequate and do not meet the moment.

SB 1515 would establish a Municipal Election Accountability Board, which would provide oversight of towns and cities’ elections and related referenda.

SB 1516 would “expand certain post-election procedures” relating to the correction of ballot returns, and better regulate “curbside voting” – including prohibiting a worker from sitting in a voter’s vehicle while they fill out their ballot – and how soon certain criminal convicts could circulate nominating petitions. It also would install an election monitor for larger cities effective for the 2025 off-year elections and prohibit commercial use of certain voter registration information.

“We have Democrats from Bridgeport traveling to the capitol to push for the state and individual campaigns to be removed from the absentee ballot process. Empowering the state government in this area is not the solution,” the GOP leaders said.

“Connecticut Democrats have shown no appetite for adopting our commonsense reforms.”

WATTERS: VOTER FRAUD NEEDS TO BE INVESTIGATED

A representative for House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, directed Fox News Digital to the Senate, where Senate President Pro-Tem Martin Looney of New Haven did not respond.

Much of SB 1516’s recommendations mirror those of Secretary of State Stephanie Thomas, according to a Senate representative. In the lower chamber, House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora called election fraud a “serious problem” in the state, in comments to Fox News Digital.

“Residents know it and so does this nation,” said Candelora, R-East Haven.

Candelora said bad actors must be told they will face jail time if they commit electoral hijinks.

“Until the legislature sends that message, those intent on cheating will always find a way,” he said.

Earlier this month, five Democratic officials – including Geter-Pataky – were charged with about 150 election-related offenses all-told, according to the Connecticut Post.

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Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, previously dismissed claims the “potential corruption” was tied to early voting and absentee balloting.

“I think it’s people who do the corrupting,” Lamont said.

According to the conservative Heritage Foundation’s “Voter Fraud Report,” Geter-Pataky made “10 drops either directly or indirectly” and another woman made five separate ballot drops during Bridgeport’s 2023 mayoral primary.

Meanwhile, the judge who overturned the election ruled the “volume of ballots so mishandled is such that it calls the result of the primary election into serious doubt and leaves the court unable to determine the legitimate result of the primary,” and called videos of the situation “shocking.”

A Connecticut Post report on the slew of charges from earlier this month said the “vast majority” are lodged against Geter-Pataky, while other defendants include council members Alfredo Castillo and Maria Pereira.

Gomes appeared to disagree with Republicans’ aversion to the bills, telling the Hartford Courant the municipal accountability board outlined in SB 1515 is needed. He pointed to the criminal complaint, which reportedly outlined an allegation Geter-Pataky was permitted by town clerks to insert a ballot into a tote being used to empty a drop box.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Justice Department for comment on the request for Bondi’s help.

US warns American travelers of greater threat of ‘terrorism, kidnapping’ on Caribbean island

The U.S. State Department has upped its travel advisory for Trinidad and Tobago, a Caribbean island off the northeast coast of Venezuela, due to a state of emergency.

The State Department issued a Level 3 travel advisory to the island, meaning Americans should reconsider travel, amid “heightened risks of terrorism and kidnapping.”

“On December 30, 2024, the Government of Trinidad and Tobago (GOTT) declared a nationwide State of Emergency (SOE),” the State Department website reads. “This is due to ongoing criminal activity that could threaten public safety. On January 13, 2025, Parliament extended the SOE until April 2025.”

During the ongoing SOE, Trinidadian officials have the authority to arrest people upon suspicion of illegal activity and search public and private properties. Bail has also been suspended for those accused of committing a crime.

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The country’s capital, Port of Spain, sees “regular” violence and shootings, and gang activity is common, according to the State Department. 

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“Foreigners and a U.S. legal permanent resident have been recent victims of kidnapping,” the State Department travel advisory page for Trinidad and Tobago reads. 

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U.S. government employees working in Trinidad and Tobago are barred from traveling to certain areas, including downtown and all beaches after dark.

Among the State Department’s list of travel tips for Americans going to Trinidad and Tobago is advice to buy insurance before traveling, do not “display signs of wealth” like jewelry and beware of online dating scams, among various other recommendations.

Trump admin pulls legal maneuver on courts in heated battle over deportation flights

The Justice Department said this week that it has invoked the state secrets privilege in its ongoing court battle over the deportation of Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador, a national security tool that allows the government to withhold certain information from the courts for national security purposes. 

In the 10-page court filing submitted to U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, Attorney General Pam Bondi and other senior Trump administration officials said they chose to invoke the privilege because disclosure would pose what they described as a “reasonable danger” to national security and foreign affairs. 

“The Court has all of the facts it needs to address the compliance issues before it,” the Justice Department officials said, adding: “Further intrusions on the Executive Branch would present dangerous and wholly unwarranted separation-of-powers harms with respect to diplomatic and national security concerns that the Court lacks competence to address.”

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The news comes as Boasbeg has repeatedly pressed government lawyers for more information about its deportation flights last weekend, which sent around 261 migrants, including Venezuelan nationals and members of the gang Tren de Aragua, from the U.S. to El Salvador.

The flights left U.S. soil around the time Boasberg agreed to temporarily block the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act, or the little-used wartime immigration law passed by Congress in 1798, to immediately deport Venezuelan nationals.

Hours later, however, planes carrying hundreds of migrants, including Venezuelan nationals removed on the basis of the law in question, arrived in El Salvador. 

In the days that followed, Boasberg ordered both parties back to court to testify over the removals, and whether the Trump administration knowingly defied his court order.

The Justice Department had largely refused to comply with his requests for information – which included questions on how many individuals it deported “solely on the basis” of the Alien Enemies Act proclamation, where the planes landed, what time each plane took off from the U.S., and from where – citing national security protections.

Boasberg previously warned the Trump administration of consequences last week if it were to continue to violate his order, noting that their options were to either file information under seal or invoke the state secrets privilege.

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Should the Trump administration invoke the state secrets privilege, Boasberg noted at the time, the court “is obligated to ‘determine whether the circumstances are appropriate for the claim of privilege.’”

This was disputed in the filing by Bondi and other senior Justice Department personnel, however, who said in the filing Monday night, “No more information is needed to resolve any legal issue in this case.”

The legal back and forth comes as the Trump administration has repeatedly stressed that a federal judge, in their view, does not have the ability to rule on national security matters or immigration issues – putting Boasberg, and his ruling, directly in the crosshairs of the Trump administration.

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The Justice Department also appealed the matter to the U.S. Court of Appeals in D.C., which heard the case yesterday. The three-judge panel declined to immediately rule on the matter, though a decision is expected sometime this week. 

Attorney General Pam Bondi vowed Sunday to appeal the case to the Supreme Court if necessary. 

Social Security takes action on records that list recipients over the age of 120

Social Security has spent weeks clearing out bad data from its records, sifting out millions of cases where Social Security number holders were over the age of 120.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced the ongoing records cleanup on social media, saying the process has taken weeks.

“For the past 3 weeks, Social Security has been executing a major cleanup of their records. Approximately 7 million numberholders, all listed age 120+, have now been marked as deceased. Another ~5 million to go,” DOGE announced on social media.

The effort comes after billionaire Elon Musk, the face of DOGE, highlighted the huge number of Social Security numbers assigned to Americans with unlikely or impossible ages.

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“The logic flow diagram for the Social Security system looks INSANE. No one person actually knows how it works. The payment files that move between Social Security and Treasury have significant inconsistencies that are not reconciled. It’s wild,” Musk declared in February.

“There are FAR more ‘eligible’ social security numbers than there are citizens in the USA. This might be the biggest fraud in history,” he added.

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Musk and DOGE have not stated that Social Security payments were going out to every “eligible” numberholder, but Musk has argued that the inaccurate data may have caused more indirect government waste.

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Acting Social Security Commissioner Lee Dudek responded to scrutiny from Musk last month by saying, “The reported data are people in our records with a Social Security number who do not have a date of death associated with their record. These individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits.”

Critics of Musk’s effort have pointed to instances where the Social Security Administration incorrectly classified someone as deceased, cutting off their payments while a person was still alive.

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The SSA addressed such cases in its own statement last week, explaining that while the agency receives millions of death reports each year, “less than one-third of 1 percent are erroneously reported deaths that need to be corrected.”

Special election will determine which party controls House in key battleground state

It’s Election Day in a western Pennsylvania legislative district in a race that will determine whether the Democrats regain control of the battleground state’s lower chamber or if Republicans win back the State House majority.

The Pennsylvania State House is currently deadlocked, with Democrats and Republicans each controlling 101 seats.

Democrats lost their razor-thin majority in January after the death of state Rep. Matt Gergerly. 

Voters in District 35, located southeast of Pittsburgh, on Tuesday are choosing between Democratic candidate Dan Goughnour, a police officer, Republican Chuck Davis, a fire chief, and libertarian Adam Kitta.

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If Democrats end up winning the election – the district leans blue – it will be the fifth time this year they’ve come out on top in a special legislative election with a state majority up for grabs.

It comes as the Democratic Party tries to emerge from the political wilderness after November’s stinging election setbacks, when the party lost control of the White House and U.S. Senate and fell short in its attempt to win back the U.S. House majority from the GOP.

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And recent polling indicates the Democratic Party brand is in need of repair. 

The party’s favorable rating sank to all-time lows in separate national polls conducted this month by CNN and NBC News. Those numbers followed a record low for Democrats in a Quinnipiac University survey in the field in February. 

Additionally, the latest Fox News National poll, which was released last week, indicated congressional Democrats’ approval rating at 30%, near an all-time low. And Democrat activists are irate over their party’s inability to blunt President Donald Trump’s agenda.

“State Democrats have been overperforming in specials this year because voters trust them to put working families’ needs above the chaos and dysfunction fueled by Trump and Republicans in Washington,” said Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee President Heather Williams in a statement.

In a sign of the local election’s importance, Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin stopped by the district last month.

“Sending Dan to Harrisburg isn’t just about what it means for this community,” Martin said in a statement to Fox News. “It sends a signal to Pennsylvanians. It sends a signal to Democrats around the country that we’re willing to fight for our values at every single level.”

While Democrats are favored in the special election, Republicans have also put resources into the race.

“No matter who looks good on paper, you’ve got to have the election,” Pennsylvania House Rep. Jamie Barton, who leads the state House GOP’s campaign arm, told the AP. “We’re not taking anything for granted.”

On the side of Pennsylvania, voters will be heading to the polls to fill a vacant state Senate seat.

GOP state Sen. Ryan Aument stepped down in December to work as state director for newly elected U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick, a fellow Republican.

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Republican Josh Parsons, a Lancaster County commissioner, Democrat James Andrew Malone, the mayor of East Petersburg, and libertarian Zachary Moore are running to succeed Aument in state Senate District 36, a red-leaning seat in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

Regardless of the election results, the GOP will continue to control the state Senate, where they currently hold a 27-22 majority.

Former NFL star demands NCAA drop ‘charade’ around student-athletes

Former NFL star J.J. Watt called out the NCAA on Monday for referring to collegiate athletes as students first.

Watt, in a post on X, pointed to the money the organization makes, the advent of name, image and likeness (NIL), the transfer portal and the cross-country travel teams have to make.

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“At some point the NCAA needs to drop the ‘student first, athlete second’ charade,” the former Wisconsin Badgers star wrote. “Billions of dollars, NIL, transfer portal (free agency), traveling cross-country for midweek games…

“Education is not the main focus. Admit it and call it what it is. A business. Run it as such.”

When one X user noticed that Watt’s point seemed to only refer to the best players in the best programs, Watt agreed.

“That’s exactly my point,” Watt added. “We’ve got kids who aren’t ‘making money’ and will never go pro, yet they are traveling across the country midweek for ‘conference games,’ transferring schools, sacrificing studies for sport, etc. None of this is about what’s doing best for the student.”

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Many college coaches in the NCAA ranks have echoed Watt’s point.

Former Alabama Crimson Tide football coach Nick Saban ripped the treatment of NIL in college sports in February 2024.

“What we have now is not college football — not college football as we know it. You hear somebody use the word ‘student-athlete.’ That doesn’t exist,” Saban said in an interview with ESPN.

He added that collectives in college sports had “nothing to do with name, image and likeness.”

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“Just like an NFL player has a contract or a coach has a contract, something in place, so you don’t have all this raiding of rosters and mass movement,” he said. “I wonder what fans are going to say when they don’t even know the team from year to year because there’s no development of teams, just bringing in new players every year.”

‘The View’ co-host delivers reality check to AOC, Bernie Sanders

Sara Haines, one of the more moderate co-hosts on “The View,” warned that the Democratic Party needs to shift away from performative yelling and toward pragmatic action.

“The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg noted that progressive leaders like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., are speaking at rallies across the country, however, “at a moment when leadership roles on the left are wide open.”

Goldberg also recalled that Sanders showed in his recent interview he is “not ready to talk about future party planning yet.” Sanders had made headlines for getting up during a pre-taped ABC “This Week” interview that aired Sunday, where he had accused Jonathan Karl of asking a “nonsense” question about whether Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., should run for the Senate. This comes amid speculation about Ocasio-Cortez challenging Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in a primary after Schumer joined Republicans in support of a government funding bill to avoid a partial shutdown.

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“So Bernie, AOC are out there, people are really kind of annoyed a lot about what’s going on, maybe not everything, but much more than we were seeing perhaps in the media and on different shows,” Goldberg said.

Co-host Ana Navarro suggested, “People are thirsty, desperate, to hear somebody that gives them fire, that leads them into this fight, that channels their anger and their frustration. They want to hear from those people. That’s why Bernie Sanders and AOC are getting 34,000 people to show up to a rally in Denver. Fifteen thousand people to show up to a rally in Phoenix. I mean, think about this. They are not running. This is not an election year. This is two months into the Trump Administration, and they are getting tens of thousands of people because people want to fight, and they want somebody that will lead them in that fight.”

Co-host Sunny Hostin said that while many voters indeed want a “fighting opposition party,” the actual policies of Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders would be unpopular.

“They want a fighting opposition party and that’s the majority of the country. I think that’s why AOC and Bernie are sort of packing these things,” she said. “What I will say is, I don’t know that the message is correct. I think that their messaging is a little bit off. If you look at what people want and are looking for, because costs and economy is still No. 1 and taxing the rich may not do that for the majority of people. They want to see much more of an action plan. How do you address my pain?”

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However, Haines argued that rhetoric is not enough to drag the Democratic Party out of its current slump.

“I can see why people like the AOCs, the Bernie Sanders, I can feel myself clapping along, but the problem here is whereas they’re tapping into the anger, I don’t think just screaming and kind of performative, ‘We’re gonna fight’ is the way to go,” she said. “I want absolutely solutions and that’s why I like Sen. Slotkin, who I keep repeating here over and over. She said, ‘I’m a pragmatist,’ and I’m a pragmatist. She is from a purple state. You can’t come at it just like – an AOC comes from a completely blue area, Bernie Sanders, completely blue area. Elissa Slotkin, Trump won her state.” 

“So when you are dealing with that electorate and a country that’s divided,” she said, it requires a different school of thought. “I love to hear you shout, but I’m much more the person that says, ‘Show me what that got you.’ If screaming got you some budget plan or a resolution or compromise, then bravo I will be the loudest one behind you. It didn’t. So I’m a more, ‘Put your heads down, unite under something and get your messaging going.’”

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