Politics

A group of anonymous federal judges is criticizing the Supreme Court for overturning lower court rulings and siding with President Donald Trump’s administration with little to no explanation, NBC News reported Thursday.

NBC spoke with 12 federal judges, appointed by Democratic and Republican presidents including Trump, who pointed to a trend of lower court decisions being overturned by emergency rulings from the high court. These cases often see prominent members of Trump’s administration lashing out at lower court judges before their cases are overturned.

Ten of the 12 judges argued the Supreme Court should offer more explanation when overturning such decisions, saying emergency rulings in such cases imply poor work on the part of lower court judges.

‘It is inexcusable,’ one judge said of the Supreme Court. ‘They don’t have our backs.’

That judge also said they have received death threats for issuing rulings that counter Trump’s agenda. Trump himself and some of his top officials have spoken out against judges issuing unfavorable rulings.

When Judge James Boasberg sought to block the administration’s deportation flights to El Salvador, Trump argued he should be ‘IMPEACHED’ on social media.

When various judges issued rulings blocking Trump’s tariff agenda in March, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller argued it was a ‘judicial coup.’

The judge who described the Supreme Court’s actions as inexcusable predicted that ‘somebody is going to die’ if criticism from top Trump officials continues, according to NBC.

Another judge said lower courts are being ‘thrown under the bus.’

‘It’s almost like the Supreme Court is saying it is a ‘judicial coup,’’ a third judge told the outlet.

A fourth judge, however, appointed by President Barack Obama, conceded that several judges had been out of line with their rulings against Trump.

‘The whole ‘Trump derangement syndrome’ is a real issue. As a result, judges are mad at what Trump is doing or the manner he is going about things; they are sometimes forgetting to stay in their lane,’ that judge said.

‘Certainly, there is a strong sense in the judiciary among the judges ruling on these cases that the court is leaving them out to dry,’ the judge continued. ‘They are partially right to feel the way they feel.’

The Supreme Court’s public information office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.

Senate Republicans are grappling with President Donald Trump’s move to cancel $4.9 billion in foreign aid funding and what the ramifications could be on the looming deadline to fund the government.

Senate Democrats previously warned after the GOP’s first go-round with clawbacks that any further attempt to gut congressionally-approved funding would be a red line, and that it could lead to Democratic lawmakers withholding their support for a short-term government funding extension, known as a continuing resolution (CR).

The Trump administration’s decision last week to go forward with a pocket rescission, which skirts the 45-day window needed for a typical clawback package, rattled Senate Democrats and has alarmed some Republicans about finding a path forward to keep the government open.

‘The last thing in the world we need to do is to give our Democrat colleagues any reason not to try to move forward with the appropriations process,’ Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said.

‘That does concern me, and once again, we need to get the appropriations process back on track,’ he continued. ‘We’re going to do whatever we can to get this thing through this year. We’re committed to it. It’s better if Congress takes back its authority on this. Quit doing continuing resolutions, do the appropriations process.’

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., on the other hand, was all for the move and wasn’t worried about the impact it could have on a shutdown.

‘I’m concerned about more spending from those negotiations,’ he told Fox News Digital. ‘Again, you’re not going to get me concerned about anything that cuts spending or reduces the size and scope across government. I’m all for it, no matter how we do it.’

Still, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., will likely need Democratic support to advance any spending bills, let alone a CR by Sept. 30, through the upper chamber’s filibuster threshold, given that a handful of Republicans never vote for funding extensions.

Rounds and other members of the Senate Appropriations Committee are in favor of barreling forward with passing spending bills and have so far been successful in advancing three with bipartisan support.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who in July warned that Trump’s first $9 billion clawback package would have ‘grave implications’ on the appropriations process, has maintained that congressional Democrats were united in their desire to continue working on spending bills with Republicans.

He warned that Republicans would ‘face their greatest test under the Trump administration,’ to either work across the aisle or face a shutdown.

‘However, as near the funding deadline, Republicans are once again threatening to go at it alone, heading our country towards a shutdown,’ Schumer said.

Thune has also remained committed to seeing lawmakers pass the dozen bills needed to fund the government, but acknowledged ‘inevitably, it looks like [we] need a CR for some time for the foreseeable future.’

And he warned that Democrats may try to use the latest clawback package ‘as an excuse’ to not fund the government.

‘That’s all it’ll be is an excuse, because they know that I’m committed, Sen. [Susan] Collins is committed, our conference is committed to working constructively to try and fund the government through the normal appropriations process,’ he said.

Meanwhile, some Republicans questioned if turning toward clawbacks was the best way to tackle spending cuts and argued that such measures were already baked into the annual appropriations process.

When news of the package surfaced, Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, charged that efforts to claw back ‘appropriated funds without congressional approval is a clear violation of the law.’

Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., told Fox News Digital he wasn’t worried about the legality of the move so much as whether turning to the clawbacks was ‘the most efficient way to get at spending cuts.’

‘I think the appropriations process is a better way, and we’ve had some success, and I’d like to keep that momentum going and try to, you know, avoid a shutdown and get back to regular order,’ he said.

For decades, Democrats have clung to James Carville’s mantra: ‘It’s the economy, stupid.’ It became the default excuse for every campaign message, every strategy and every setback.  

We need to retire that phrase from our political lexicon. 

My fellow Democrats forget that Carville’s first rule on his whiteboard in Little Rock wasn’t the economy, stupid. It was ‘Change vs. more of the same.’ Voters still want change — not numbers, not excuses. And if President Donald Trump offers change while Democrats defend the system as it is, Democrats will lose. 

Today, my party is jumping onto a shiny substitute considered to be the winning message that unites all — ‘affordability’ — as if the idea that lower prices are better than higher ones is a revelation. Has a candidate ever campaigned on the reverse? 

During the Biden administration, consumer costs inflated on our watch, but now we are asking midterm voters to give us the keys back to the car anyway.  

When is my party going to learn that politics is about culture and connection, not charts and spreadsheets? It’s about being relevant to the lives of ordinary people, not proving to them that we are right. 

Voters aren’t sitting in some academic economics lecture. They don’t care about GDP growth, labor-force participation rates, or the Bureau of Labor Statistics when they feel prices are too high. They don’t want to hear that homicides, robberies and carjackings have decreased according to the latest stats, when they feel unsafe. Sending in the National Guard won’t be a solution to ending crime in our inner cities, but it does make communities feel protected.  

Are Democrats so disconnected from reality that we’ve unlearned the most basic political principle of all, that perception and politics go hand-in-glove?  

Voters are not looking to be informed by candidates, especially when they sound like human calculators, vomiting out numbers. Being informed isn’t the same as feeling informed and telling voters that how they feel isn’t real, because numbers say otherwise, isn’t a winning message. Shaming Trump voters for their choice last year or lecturing them that this isn’t what they voted for, offends them rather than persuades them. Patronizing voters is not a strategy. 

What voters in this midterm election want is some cultural common sense, and to borrow a bullet from the Democratic talking points, Democrats have not been meeting voters where they are — yet.  

Voters want to hear us acknowledge that crime is bad and say we need more cops on the street, but not necessarily troops. They want our candidates to give a straight answer and plainly state that boys shouldn’t compete in girls’ sports as a matter of fairness. It’s okay for Democrats to say they believe in merit-based hiring instead of DEI and box-checking quotas.  

Most Americans feel this way — and Democrats lose credibility when they dodge these conversations or give evasive answers.  

Democrats avoid going where the news and conversations are happening. Our leaders and candidates too often duck and cover. When issues turn culturally sensitive, they play hide and seek. We need to run straight into the culture war fires, not away from them. Those are the conversations voters are having and we need to join them.  

My old boss, President Joe Biden, learned this lesson the hard way. Biden’s presidency illustrates this danger for Democrats on the ballot everywhere in 2026. At the very moments when Americans were craving leadership — like a national debate over college campus unrest and violent antisemitism — Biden was absent. Scranton Joe, who built his career on a chip-on-the-shoulder authenticity that connected with ordinary people, became the first non-Ivy League president in decades. Yet, he was silent when he could have drawn the sharpest contrast from the elites.  

Biden told Americans the economy was the envy of the world, and then his Baghdad Bobs in the White House told us he was as sharp as ever. Polls said Americans felt otherwise, still his instinct was to retreat further.  Voters saw fewer unscripted moments, such as interviews or news conferences, smaller steps off Air Force One and a greater reliance on teleprompters. In a political age where imagery shapes public opinion, Biden looked feeble, distant and disconnected. He followed an outdated media strategy that led him into a political death spiral.  

Trump, by contrast, dives headfirst into every news cycle and runs into every cultural fire — from campus protests to celebrity dust-ups like Sydney Sweeney’s jeans or Cracker Barrel’s new logo. He doesn’t hesitate, he doesn’t duck, he doesn’t wait for the perfect poll-tested phrase. Love him or hate him, voters can’t miss that he shows up with an opinion and a position. He doesn’t keep them guessing.  

Democrats don’t need to copy Trump’s style. But they do need his guts. If voters are talking about trans athletes, immigration, DEI or crime — and they stay silent or pivot — then they’re absent from the conversations Americans outside the Beltway are having with friends, family and their neighbors. It’s these social conversations that are shaping political identity, not stats and charts. 

Voters will tune out any type of hell Democrats try to raise about prices, tariffs or cuts to Medicare if they think we don’t ‘get’ them on culture. 

The way out of the wilderness isn’t another slogan about affordability. It’s courage and common sense. Stop hiding behind statistics. Start running into the fire. Only then will Democrats earn back voters’ trust. 

More than 1,000 current and former employees of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) signed a letter calling on HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to resign on Wednesday.

The employees cited Kennedy’s recent ousting of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Susan Monarez. They also accused Kennedy of appointing ‘political ideologues’ to positions of authority.

‘We believe health policy should be based in strong, evidence-based principles rather than partisan politics. But under Secretary Kennedy’s leadership, HHS policies are placing the health of all Americans at risk, regardless of their politics,’ the letter says.

‘Should he decline to resign, we call upon the President and U.S. Congress to appoint a new Secretary of Health and Human Services, one whose qualifications and experience ensure that health policy is informed by independent and unbiased peer-reviewed science. We expect those in leadership to act when the health of Americans is at stake,’ the letter continues.

HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.

The letter comes just days after Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., also called on Kennedy to resign, citing his actions at the CDC. The Trump administration announced the removal of Monarez last week, less than a month after she was confirmed, after she refused Kennedy’s directives to adopt new limitations on the availability of some vaccines, including for approvals for COVID-19 vaccines.

Four other senior CDC officials resigned in protest after Monarez’s ouster, pointing, in part, to anti-vaccine policies pushed by Kennedy. Hundreds of workers at the agency also walked out of the CDC’s headquarters in Atlanta in support of their former colleagues.

Sanders wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times that Kennedy is ‘endangering the health of the American people now and into the future,’ and accused the secretary of firing Monarez because she refused ‘to act as a rubber stamp for his dangerous policies.’

‘Despite the overwhelming opposition of the medical community, Secretary Kennedy has continued his longstanding crusade against vaccines and his advocacy of conspiracy theories that have been rejected repeatedly by scientific experts,’ Sanders wrote.

‘It is absurd to have to say this in 2025, but vaccines are safe and effective,’ he added. ‘That, of course, is not just my view. Far more important, it is the overwhelming consensus of the medical and scientific communities.’

The Trump administration has defended Monarez’s ouster, with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying Thursday that the president has the ‘authority to fire those who are not aligned with his mission.’

‘The president and Secretary Kennedy are committed to restoring trust and transparency and credibility to the CDC by ensuring their leadership and their decisions are more public-facing, more accountable, strengthening our public health system and restoring it to its core mission of protecting Americans from communicable diseases, investing in innovation to prevent, detect and respond to future threats,’ Leavitt told reporters.

Fox News’ Landon Mion contributed to this report

. – Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont says if Robert F. Kennedy Jr. doesn’t step down as Health and Human Services secretary in President Donald Trump’s administration, Americans will need to speak out.

‘We’ve got to rally the American people. This is a huge issue,’ Sanders told Fox News Digital on Monday.

Sanders, the ranking member of the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said ‘I’m not a scientist, I’m not a doctor, but I do talk to scientists, and I do talk to doctors, and the evidence is overwhelming. It’s not contestable. Vaccines work. They save millions and millions of lives.’

And the progressive champion and 2016 and 2020 Democratic presidential nomination runner-up warned that ‘if Kennedy and his friends are able to make people think that vaccines are not safe, it will be a real public health crisis for America.’

Sanders is among a growing list of politicians and officials who warn that Kennedy, the longtime environmental activist and vaccine skeptic who Trump picked late last year as his health secretary in his second administration, is jeopardizing the health of Americans with his controversial moves.

‘Mr Kennedy and the rest of the Trump administration tell us, over and over, that they want to Make America Healthy Again. That’s a great slogan. I agree with it. The problem is that since coming into office, President Trump and Mr Kennedy have done exactly the opposite,’ Sanders wrote this past weekend in an opinion piece in the New York Times.

And Sanders said that ‘despite the overwhelming opposition of the medical community, Secretary Kennedy has continued his longstanding crusade against vaccines and his advocacy of conspiracy theories that have been rejected repeatedly by scientific experts.’

Sanders’ call for Kennedy to resign came after last week’s firing of Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director Susan Monarez, less than a month after she was confirmed. The firing of Monarez came after she refused Kennedy’s directives to adopt new limitations on the availability of some vaccines, including approvals for COVID-19 vaccines.

Four other top CDC officials resigned in protest hours later, accusing the Trump administration and Kennedy of weaponizing public health.

Sanders, who was interviewed Monday after headlining the New Hampshire AFL-CIO’s annual Labor Day breakfast, charged in his statement over the weekend that Kennedy ‘has absurdly claimed that ‘there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective’.’

‘Who supports Secretary Kennedy’s views?’ Sanders asked. ‘Not credible scientists and doctors. One of his leading ‘experts’ that he cites to back up his bogus claims on autism and vaccines had his medical license revoked and his study retracted from the medical journal that published it.’

The incident received rare bipartisan pushback by some members of Congress.

But the White House defended the firing of Monarez, with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt telling reporters on Thursday that the president has the ‘authority to fire those who are not aligned with his mission.’ 

‘The president and Secretary Kennedy are committed to restoring trust and transparency and credibility to the CDC by ensuring their leadership and their decisions are more public-facing, more accountable, strengthening our public health system and restoring it to its core mission of protecting Americans from communicable diseases, investing in innovation to prevent, detect and respond to future threats,’ Leavitt argued.

Fox News Bonny Chu and Landon Mion contributed to this story

Former FBI Director Robert Mueller was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, his family revealed to the New York Times.

Mueller is the former special counsel who led the Russia investigation into President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Mueller, 81, was diagnosed in 2021 and retired from public life the following year after briefly teaching law, according to a family statement provided to The Times.

‘Bob was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in the summer of 2021. He retired from the practice of law at the end of that year. He taught at his law school alma mater during the fall of both 2021 and 2022, and he retired at the end of 2022,’ the statement said.

President Donald Trump says he plans to sign an executive order aimed at requiring voter ID in elections across the country.

Trump made the statement on social media late Saturday night, saying he is also seeking other reforms to how U.S. elections take place.  

‘Voter I.D. Must Be Part of Every Single Vote. NO EXCEPTIONS! I Will Be Doing An Executive Order To That End!!! Also, No Mail-In Voting, Except For Those That Are Very Ill, And The Far Away Military. USE PAPER BALLOTS ONLY!’ Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Trump previously attempted to impose voter ID via an executive order earlier this year in a wider election integrity action.

In April, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia struck down the portions of that order that related to voter identification requirements.

Kollar-Kotelly maintained that Trump did not have the authority to issue such an order, as the Constitution delegates control of election regulations to Congress and states.

‘Consistent with that allocation of power, Congress is currently debating legislation that would affect many of the changes the President purports to order,’ Kollar-Kotelly, a Clinton appointee, wrote in her order. ‘No statutory delegation of authority to the Executive Branch permits the President to short-circuit Congress’s deliberative process by executive order.’

Nevertheless, requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship remains widely popular among Americans, according to a poll from Gallup taken just before the 2024 elections.

The poll found that 84% of U.S. adults were in favor of requiring voters to show identification and 83% supported requiring proof of citizenship when registering for the first time. 

When broken down by party, 67% of Democrats, 84% of Independents and 98% of Republicans were in favor of mandating voter ID. The party breakdown over proof of citizenship was similar, with 66% of Democrats, 84% of Independents and 96% of Republicans supporting the idea.

Fox News’ Rachel Wolf contributed to this report

President Donald Trump has attacked the Senate for blocking his preferred nominees from being confirmed to key positions, but lawmakers and people familiar with the process say the Senate is not necessarily to blame.

Trump has faulted the Senate’s ‘blue slip’ tradition, an unwritten rule requiring nominees for judge, U.S. attorney and U.S. marshal to obtain home state senators’ approval prior to being confirmed.

He said blue state senators will only greenlight ‘Democrats or maybe weak Republicans.’ The president called on Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to abolish the practice, and he threatened to sue over it.

But Grassley and other Republicans are unbudging in their position that blue slips are an indispensable part of the confirmation process. Blue slips have been used for more than a century. Past presidents have gotten many nominees confirmed under the system, suggesting other factors are contributing to Trump’s struggle to secure blue slips from Democrats.

Trump threatens to sue over ‘gentlemen’s agreement’

Trump and his allies escalated attacks on the blue slip process this week, accusing Grassley of blocking nominees by maintaining it.

‘This is because of an old and outdated ‘custom’ known as a BLUE SLIP, that Senator Chuck Grassley, of the Great State of Iowa, refuses to overturn,’ Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The president threatened to sue over what he said was a ‘gentlemen’s agreement,’ though it is unclear whom the government would sue and on what grounds.

‘It’s not based on law, and I think it’s unconstitutional, and I’ll probably be filing a suit on that pretty soon,’ Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

Asked about the possible lawsuit and why Trump’s nominees in blue states are struggling with confirmation, the White House told Fox News Digital in a statement the holdup must be addressed.

‘Senate Democrats have led a campaign of historic obstruction against President Trump and his nominees,’ White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said. ‘The left’s partisan, obstructionist agenda is only hurting the American people and it must end.’

‘Troubling’ pattern of circumventing Senate

Trump appointed his former personal defense lawyer Alina Habba as ‘interim’ U.S. attorney, which carries a 120-day term limit that federal judges have the ability to extend under federal vacancy laws if no one has been confirmed by the Senate to the position by then.

Judges have opted to extend Trump’s nominees, like in Jay Clayton’s case in the Southern District of New York. But in an unusual move, the federal judges of New Jersey rejected Habba.

The judges selected someone else, whom Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi promptly fired. Trump and Bondi then used a series of legal maneuvers to reinstall Habba to another temporary term, but a federal judge ruled the moves unconstitutional. The Trump administration is appealing that decision in a case that could now make its way to the Supreme Court and force the justices to weigh in on what has become a pattern of Trump end-running around the Senate.

John Sarcone in the Northern District of New York faced a situation similar to Habba’s, and he is now serving as ‘acting’ U.S. attorney. Bill Essayli in the Central District of California, who has taken on a vocal pro-Trump stance amid high-profile deportation cases in his district, has also transitioned from ‘interim’ to ‘acting’ U.S. attorney. Acting U.S. attorneys also carry a temporary term of 210 days. It is unclear how Trump will proceed once those terms expire.

Carl Tobias, University of Richmond law professor, said the workarounds defy the spirit of the Constitution, which says nominees must be confirmed ‘with the advice and consent’ of the Senate.

‘It’s good to have that scrutiny from the Judiciary Committee and then on the floor, and so hopefully they could return to something like that, but I’m not sure that’s going to happen, and so I think it is troubling,’ Tobias told Fox News Digital.

How to get a blue slip from the other party

The administration must engage with the Senate during the nomination process, including by consulting early on with home state senators about possible nominees.

Former President Joe Biden secured blue slips from opposing parties for 49 nominees, including 27 U.S. attorneys, while Trump’s first administration was able to secure confirmations for nearly all the U.S. attorneys the president nominated.

The blue slip, to senators, is a crucial negotiating tool, one that Article III Project founder Mike Davis said is not going away, despite Trump’s intensifying objections to it. Davis, a staunch Trump supporter, served as counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee and oversaw nominations under Grassley in the prior Trump administration.

‘It’s not going away. Why would it? Why would senators give up their power? They’re not going to do it,’ Davis told Fox News Digital, adding that blue slips to the Senate are ‘the sacred china that’s never going to get broken.’

The vetting process

Nominees must also provide the Senate Judiciary Committee with a questionnaire, an FBI background check and financial disclosures. A source familiar with the process told Fox News Digital the committee did not receive Habba’s paperwork to begin vetting her. 

Habba has said she could not begin the process because Democratic Sens. Cory Booker and Andy Kim of New Jersey, would not give blue slip approval. It is unclear if and when the Trump administration approached the pair of senators about Habba. 

Habba, like Trump, blamed Grassley.

‘The blue slip TRADITION prevents a nominee from getting to the point of making that case to the committee and Senate floor. You know who can get rid of it? YOU @ChuckGrassley,’ Habba wrote on X.

She told Grassley ‘this is a time for leadership, not deflection’ and that the chairman should not be ‘doing the dirty work of Thom Tillis, Corey Booker and Andy Kim.’

Booker’s and Kim’s offices did not respond to a request for comment.

Grassley defends bipartisanship

Grassley went on a tear on social media this week, defending his decision to maintain blue slips, which the committee chair has discretion over.

‘U.S. Atty/district judge nominee without a blue slip does not hv the votes to get confirmed on the Senate floor & they don’t hv the votes to get out of cmte,’ the 91-year-old senator wrote. ‘As chairman I set Pres Trump noms up for SUCCESS NOT FAILURE.’

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who is among several Republicans who will not vote for a nominee who has not been approved by home state senators, pointed to a statement on social media when asked for comment by Fox News Digital.

‘Chairman Grassley is a principled conservative who wants to keep radical liberals off the bench. Getting rid of the blue slip is a terrible, short-sighted ploy that paves the path for Democrats to ram through extremist liberal judges in red states over the long-term,’ Tillis wrote on X.

Are Democrats to blame?

Trump has thus far secured opposing party blue slips for four nominees. Davis said Trump is facing a unique level of obstruction from Democrats.

‘Every White House does what it can to engage the opposition party, but Democrats have made it clear they’re not interested in working with President Trump, so it’s understandable that his focus has been elsewhere for now,’ Davis said.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., for instance, has refused to give a blue slip to Clayton, the former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman. But Clayton’s ability to win the vote of the federal judges in the Southern District of New York has allowed him to serve as U.S. attorney without confirmation.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member, has further complicated the confirmation process by putting a hold on U.S. attorney nominees, which drastically slows, but does not fully block, the process.

Vice President JD Vance, then a senator, did the same for Biden’s nominees toward the end of the last administration.

Trump’s fight with the upper chamber is likely to evolve, especially as higher courts weigh in on Habba’s nomination, which is currently invalid, according to the district court judge’s decision this month. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has set a briefing schedule in the case that stretches through October, but eventually the Supreme Court could also chime in on whether Trump’s manner of sidestepping the Senate is constitutional. 

Dr. Sohan Dasgupta, appointed earlier this year as the political head of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), told Fox News Digital he is stepping down after a four-month sprint, declaring his mission to preserve and reposition the U.S. agency as a strategic foreign policy tool as ‘accomplished.’

Created by Congress in 2004, MCC delivers five-year infrastructure and energy compacts to developing nations that meet strict governance standards. Unlike traditional aid, its investments are structured to drive long-term economic growth and open markets for U.S. companies.

Since its creation under President George W. Bush, MCC has often been grouped with other U.S. aid programs. 

Career staff have long emphasized development goals like poverty reduction, education, and infrastructure, but unlike USAID, MCC was established as a corporate body with a fiduciary duty to ensure effectiveness.

A White House official, speaking on background to Fox News Digital, argued the agency too often presented itself as aid rather than investment before President Donald Trump took office.

Dasgupta pushed staff to adopt a different lens, pressing them to evaluate projects based on the return on investment for the United States, the degree of strategic alignment with partner countries, and whether MCC compacts could be used to strengthen U.S. leverage in negotiations.

A Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) report this spring argued that MCC is not a traditional aid agency but an ‘investment’ tool uniquely suited for an ‘America First’ agenda. 

The authors warned shuttering it would hand China ‘diplomatic and economic wins’ while leaving half-built projects abroad, and noted Trump-era partner selections, from Nepal to Côte d’Ivoire to the Pacific Islands, were strategically chosen to counter Chinese influence. 

‘The United States and the world are safer, stronger, and more prosperous with the MCC model than without it,’ the report concluded.

MCC’s current portfolio under Trump includes some of its largest-ever compacts: a $500 million deal in Nepal funding nearly 200 miles of transmission lines, a $480 million compact in Sierra Leone expanding electricity access and a $202 million program in Kosovo focused on grid-scale battery storage. Other investments include $536 million in Côte d’Ivoire, $537 million in Mozambique and a water compact in Mongolia.

Dasgupta told Fox News Digital that his role was to press MCC staff to think in terms of U.S. national security and economic benefits. ‘Reforming MCC into a vital national security and foreign policy asset’ was how he described his ‘mission accomplished’ moment.

A May 9 email from the White House Liaison to MCC staff, obtained by Fox News Digital, shows Dasgupta was appointed as a Schedule C Senior Advisor ‘assuming political leadership for the agency.’

MCC’s Fiscal Year 2026 Candidate Country Report, released this month, lists Kosovo, Nepal, Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire, Mozambique, Mongolia, Solomon Islands, Fiji and Tonga among its eligible partner nations.

‘Service has many forms. My goal was to carry out particular projects and missions, then make way for others,’ Dasgupta said.

On China, he added: ‘Critical minerals and rare earth elements are a vital part of American strength … MCC has really understood that.’

Kosovo’s ambassador to the U.S., Ilir Dugolli, praised Dasgupta’s responsiveness. ‘We worked closely soon after he arrived at MCC … I respect him enormously for the way he handled his portfolio and how professional he was,’ Dugolli told Fox News Digital.

On energy security, Dugolli said: ‘Kosovo fully aligns with U.S. foreign policy … Batteries are extremely important, especially after last year’s terrorist attack on the Iber-Lepenc canal. The compact is the single most critical investment for our country’s energy security and economic resilience.’

Dasgupta’s departure also comes as the Trump administration pursues cuts to traditional U.S. foreign aid programs and seeks to reframe America’s global engagement under its ‘America First’ policy. 

While agencies such as USAID have faced reductions and restructuring, Dasgupta argues the MCC has been preserved as a leaner, investment-driven tool aligned with the administration’s emphasis on strategic deals and competition with China.

Analysts estimate China controls about 70% of global rare earth mining and nearly 90% of processing capacity, according to the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. 

Between 2023 and 2025, China imposed export restrictions on strategic minerals, according to CSIS. Dasgupta argues MCC’s work in allied nations can help diversify supply chains and strengthen resilience, though MCC has not publicly described critical minerals as a formal focus of its work.

‘Quick wins’ like Kosovo’s battery project and Nepal’s power lines, Dasgupta said, show how American aid can advance prosperity abroad while reinforcing security at home.

With his departure, MCC continues compacts in dozens of countries worldwide. 

The MCC did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Demetre Daskalakis, an official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), resigned this week, claiming the Trump administration’s policies ignore science. However, his own leadership during the Biden-era monkeypox response was criticized for putting optics over public health.

Amid the Trump administration’s efforts to push out CDC Director Susan Monarez, a handful of other top CDC officials, including Daskalakis, resigned in protest of the Trump administration’s policies. Daskalakis wrote in his resignation letter that was posted to social media that the health policies put forward by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy do not ‘reflect scientific reality.’ He also accused the Trump administration of attempting to ‘erase transgender populations,’ while also using the term ‘pregnant people’ to describe women who are about to give birth.

But flashback to 2022 and 2023, after the monkeypox virus had spread across several countries and made its way into the U.S., during which Daskalakis was among the Biden administration’s top advisers who spearheaded the national response to the disease outbreak. 

Government communications from that time period, uncovered by watchdog group the Oversight Project, show that officials were aware that the disease was spreading among the gay community. However, those communications, and other records, show the administration appeared to be more concerned with protecting the stigma targeting the gay community, than they were with implementing measures that would provide the best mitigation response.

‘A common theme was public health officials identifying locations where outbreaks occurred, to include bathhouses and saunas,’ according to the Oversight Project. ‘Officials never broached consideration of shutting down these locations. This draws a stark contrast to the public health guidance and shutdowns of gathering places during COVID, to include gyms and skate parks.’

In 2023, after the monkeypox outbreak had taken hold in the U.S., Daskalakis went on national television to let the country know that his team was ‘making sure [they] got the word out in a way that supports people’s joy, as opposed to calling them risky.’

‘You know, one person’s idea of risk, is another person’s idea of a great festival or Friday night, for that matter. So, we have to sort of embrace that with joy and make sure that folks know how to keep themselves safe,’ the Biden monkeypox coordinator added.

 

Meanwhile, during the outbreak, Daskalkis posted a tweet from gay sex app Grindr that stated ‘Dr. Daskalakis could jab me any day,’ with a sticker of a flattered cat.

In other social media posts from around the same time, Daskalkis can be seen using male models wearing leather bondage straps to make an entrance at an HIV prevention summit. 

While in his role at the White House leading the monkeypox response, Daskalkis also reportedly ran an STD screening operation from an after-hours sex club in New York City. When asked about the operation in an interview, Daskalakis described it as ‘exciting’ and added there was ‘not much sleep time.’ Later in the interview, he added: ‘I’d already kind of been the bathhouse HIV testing doctor.’

Fox News Digital reached out to Daskalakis about the juxtaposition between his criticism of Kennedy’s policies not reflecting ‘scientific reality,’ and his role in the Biden administration’s approach to monkeypox, but did not receive an immediate response.