Though Senate Republicans were successful in their mission to pass President Donald Trump’s clawback package, not every member of the conference was on board.

Only two Republicans, Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Susan Collins, R-Maine, joined with every Senate Democrat to vote against the $9 billion package geared toward clawing back foreign aid and public broadcasting funding.

Senate Republican leaders had hoped that stripping $400 million in cuts to Bush-era international AIDS and HIV prevention funding could win over all the holdouts, both public and private. But the lawmakers who voted against the bill had deeper concerns about the level of transparency during the process and the impact successful rescissions could have on Congress’ power of the purse.  

Collins, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, said she agreed with rescissions in general and supports them during the appropriations process, but couldn’t get behind the White House’s push because of a lack of clarity from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) about exactly what would be cut and how.

She said that ‘the sparse text’ sent to lawmakers included little detail and did not give a specific accounting of programs that would be cut to hit the original $9.4 billion target.

‘For example, there are $2.5 billion in cuts to the Development Assistance account, which covers everything from basic education, to water and sanitation, to food security — but we don’t know how those programs will be affected,’ she said.

Murkowski demanded a return to legislating and appeared to warn that lawmakers were just taking marching orders from the White House rather than doing their own work. 

Both Murkowski and Collins were also concerned about the cuts to public broadcasting, particularly to rural radio stations. Both attempted to make changes to the bill during the vote-a-rama. Collins’ ultimately decided not to bring her amendment, which would have reduced the total amount of cuts in the bill to north of $6 billion, to the floor. However, Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., still brought the change for a vote. And Murkowski offered an amendment that would have drastically reduced the cuts to public broadcasting. 

The climactic vote for the bill came hours after tsunami warnings rippled through Alaska, and Murkowski argued that federal warnings were relayed through local public broadcasting. 

‘The tsunami warnings are now thankfully canceled, but the warning to the U.S. Senate remains in effect,’ she said. ‘Today of all days, we should vote down these misguided cuts to public broadcasting.’

Still, both attempts to modify the bill failed to pass muster. 

Their decision to go against the package left some scratching their heads. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., argued that the cuts amounted to less than a tenth of a percent of the federal government’s entire budget.

‘This should be a chip shot, OK? I have faith in [OMB Director] Russ Vought,’ he said. ‘I have faith in the Trump administration. They’re not going to cut things that are important spending.’

Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., who is leading the bill in the Senate, rebuked the duo’s arguments and said that lawmakers weighing in on the rescissions package was in line with their legislative duties.

‘That’s exactly what we’re doing,’ the Missouri Republican said. ‘I would hope that maybe what this will also do is highlight some of the wasteful spending, so when we get into the appropriations process in the next few months that we would be more keen to be focused on saving people money.’

Trump’s bill, which would cancel unspent congressionally approved funding, would slash just shy of $8 billion from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and over $1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the government-backed funding arm for NPR and PBS.

Some lawmakers, like Sen. Thom Tillis, who earlier this month voted against Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ over cuts to Medicaid funding, understood where the pair were coming from.

The North Carolina Republican told Fox News Digital that Collins, in particular, would be leading negotiations for an end-of-year bipartisan funding deal with Senate Democrats, and to vote in favor of canceling congressionally approved funding could hurt her ability to find a solution to keep the government funded.

‘I don’t think people really understand the value of your word and your consistency and your living up to commitments and how important that is to getting things done,’ Tillis said. ‘And this, I think, that’s what Susan’s looking at, I think Murkowski is as well, and I respect them for that.’

A new think tank analysis finds that public corruption is a significant problem in the U.S., and is most prevalent in state and local governments that have larger bureaucracies and higher regulations.

The libertarian Cato Institute said it analyzed Department of Justice data on public corruption convictions in the nation’s 94 federal judicial districts and measured the annual average number of convictions per 100,000 population over the 2004–2023 period.

‘The data show that some of the most corrupt places by this measure match their reputations,’ the authors of the Cato analysis wrote.

Washington, D.C., topped the rankings with 469 total convictions during the nearly 20-year period and an annual conviction rate of 3.49, according to Cato’s report.

‘It has a huge number of legislative and executive branch federal employees, and there are many opportunities for graft,’ the report says.

Louisiana’s eastern district, which includes New Orleans, ranks at number four on Cato’s list with 430 total convictions during this period and an annual conviction rate of 1.29.

‘New Orleans has long been infamous for state and local corruption,’ the report says.

The Cato analysis found that New Hampshire had the lowest public corruption by this metric, with 13 convictions over the period and an annual conviction rate of .05. Cato called it ‘the freest state in the nation with one of the smallest governments.’

Cato said it appeared that ‘larger governments with more spending and regulations create more opportunities for bribery and embezzlement.’ 

The think tank, however, noted that some academic studies have suggested other reasons for corruption differences between states and cities, including varying cultures, education levels, and poverty rates.

This week, Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee will once again be asked to draw the line between what is permissible and impermissible for a Trump nominee, when they decide whether Emil Bove’s nomination to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals should receive a full Senate vote.

Confirming Bove would mean redrawing that line to ignore serious concerns about his truthfulness under oath. I was in the room when he made statements that my colleagues and I understood as threats—meant to pressure us into signing a motion to dismiss the federal criminal case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Mr. Bove has since denied making any such statements in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, but those denials do not reflect what actually took place.

In February of this year, then-Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove ordered prosecutors in my former office, the Public Integrity Section, to dismiss the bribery case against Mayor Adams. Bove openly admitted in a memorandum that the dismissal was unrelated to the facts and the law. This led to the resignation of five Public Integrity Section prosecutors, including me, to go along with prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York, who also refused the order and resigned. 

The Public Integrity Section has since been reduced to less than five prosecutors, meaning the only component of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division dedicated to prosecuting domestic public corruption exists almost entirely in name only today. 

In his written responses to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Bove flatly denied that he ever so much as suggested a threat to me and my colleagues, explaining that during the meeting with our section, ‘[i]t was never my intention to coerce, pressure, or induce an DOJ attorney – through adverse employment actions, threats, rewards, or otherwise – to sign the motion to dismiss the charges against Mayor Adams.’ But by the time of that meeting, it’s undisputed that he had already accepted the forced resignation of the U.S. Attorney in New York, put line prosecutors from that office on administrative leave for not signing the motion, and forced the entirety of the Public Integrity Section’s management to resign when it refused to carry out his order. And how does his denial square with his admission that he generally recalls ‘[telling us] he didn’t want to get anyone in trouble … so he didn’t want to know who was opposed to signing the motion’? 

Bove’s nomination would mark a troubling precedent: confirming a nominee who, in my view, gave testimony that was so obviously misleading to the committee and the American public. That’s what makes this so profoundly disturbing. Previous contested judicial confirmation hearings have involved accusations where one nomination’s credibility was pitted against that of an accuser, or judicial credentials were questioned. But never before has a nominee testified in such a demonstrably brazen manner with a wink and nod to the Republican committee members. 

There is only one realistic hope to prevent Bove’s nomination from moving forwardto a full floor vote, and it rests on the shoulders of Sen. Thom Tillis. The North Carolina Republican, a staunch conservative, has previously demonstrated political courage by speaking for his principles, not his party, on many issues. He believes in ‘calling the balls and strikes.’ 

Sen. Tillis prevented the confirmation of Edward Martin, the woefully unqualified nominee for U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia, who used his office to pen threatening, typo-ridden letters to Democratic members of Congress, defense attorneys, and Georgetown University. Bove poses a far graver threat, in that his would be a lifetime tenure to a judicial branch he believes should not be a check on the president’s power.

Moreover, Trump’s latest tussle with Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society further reveals that he is no longer looking for jurists who are conservatives, but rather, loyalists. So, who would be better to elevate from a federal circuit court to the Supreme Court if Justices Thomas or Alito decided to retire before 2028 than Bove? 

On the Sunday night before I sent my resignation letter to Attorney General Bondi (Bove was cc-ed) on Monday, I was clearing out my belongings from my office when I noticed that someone had prominently placed a plaque on our reception desk. It quoted Abraham Lincoln: ‘If you want to test a man’s character, give him power.’ 

Bove served as line prosecutor earlier in his career – he knows the prosecutor’s code. But, in my experience, it appears that once he had a whiff of power, Bove was willing to abuse it. With his smug testimony, Bove has essentially called the Republicans’ bluff, believing that Sen. Tillis and the others won’t have the courage to vote against him.

Citizens of all political persuasions should hope that Sen. Tillis shows the courage and character that Bove lacks by voting no on his confirmation.

In recent weeks, some public commentary has accused the Department of Justice of defying court orders and insinuated that Emil Bove’s confirmation will undermine the rule of law. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Department of Justice follows court orders—even when those orders are legally unsound or deeply flawed. And Emil is the most capable and principled lawyer I have ever known. His legal acumen is extraordinary, and his moral clarity is above reproach. The Senate should swiftly confirm him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

This administration has repeatedly been targeted with sweeping, overreaching injunctions, often issued by ideologically aligned judges in defiance of settled law—including orders of the Supreme Court. Time and again, these rulings have been reversed on appeal, and easily so.  The pattern is familiar by now: aggressive district court orders grab headlines, only to be walked back when subjected to the slightest judicial scrutiny. 

Despite this consistent trend, the persistent narrative in the media and in the legal community is that it is the Department of Justice that ignores courts. That is plainly wrong. Disagreements over interpretation do not constitute defiance, any more than does filing an appeal. And, histrionics aside, good-faith disputes over timing and implementation of court orders do not represent insubordination—especially given the very difficult and novel problems presented by implementing the unprecedentedly overbroad and vague court orders imposed on this administration. The Department of Justice invariably complies with court orders no matter how much it disagrees with the underlying reasoning or the egregiousness of the judicial error. The appellate process has always been the means of securing relief from an erroneous order, and it still is.

You will search in vain for any critique of district judges who abuse their power and issue baseless injunctions in the editorial pages of The New York Times, CNN, or even the WSJ—even where those injunctions are reversed or stayed on appeal. 

The same commentators who foment anger over the Department of Justice’s good-faith efforts to comply with legally unsound court orders are silent when Article III judges overreach and issue rulings that interfere with the President’s authority and undermine the rule of law.

That brings me to my friend and colleague, Emil. The dedicated lawyers of the Department of Justice work tirelessly to comply with court orders and to promote the rule of law. There is no finer example of that dedication than Emil. 

In a thankless job, Emil expects excellence and courage from every lawyer in the Department, no matter the opposition faced. He pushes our dedicated lawyers to meet the moment and the mission of defending this administration against those who seek to block President Donald Trump from fulfilling his promises to the American people. And he consistently requires the highest level of integrity from all Department employees. 

Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, the media has recently amplified slanderous attacks on Emil’s character based on a foundation of selective leaks, misleading reporting, and falsehoods. I am taking this opportunity to clear up a few of those misconceptions.

First, as to the termination of the leaker, it was Attorney General Pam Bondi and I who decided to terminate his employment. It was not Emil’s decision. And contrary to media spin, the employee was terminated for failing to defend his client—the United States of America—in open court; he was not dismissed for admitting an error in court. 

In his courtroom statements, the leaker distanced himself from the Department’s position and attempted to undermine the credibility of his own client. That is not zealous representation. That is an unethical dereliction of duty, which no client should be required to countenance.  

Moreover, Emil has never encouraged lawyers or anyone else to act in defiance of a court order. There was no order to violate at the time of the alleged statements. No injunctive relief had been granted—oral or written. No directive was issued to reverse any executive action. These facts are not in dispute, not even by the leaker. And most critically, after Judge Boasberg did issue an order in the relevant case, the Department fastidiously complied. That is not speculation. That is the explicit position taken by the leaker himself, who signed the government’s brief affirming the United States’ compliance on March 25, 2025. 

The same kind of distortions are being used to attack the Department’s lawful dismissal of the irreparably flawed case against New York Mayor Eric Adams. That decision was reviewed and approved by Department leadership and grounded in sound legal judgment. The judge agreed, granting the government’s motion to dismiss. 

That should end the conversation. But for those who insist on rehashing internal dissent and resignations, it should be obvious that disagreements within the Department do not render a decision unlawful or unethical. To the contrary, Emil’s integrity was displayed when he himself argued the case in favor of dismissal, even as his former colleagues in SDNY retreated. 

Before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Emil attested what those lucky enough to work with him already know to be true: he believes deeply in the rule of law, and in the importance of court orders. And what he has done time and again over the course of his career is bring rigor, integrity, and decency to his work. 

Emil has the backbone for hard cases, the restraint to wield judicial authority judiciously, and the intellect to master complexity. He will decide cases fairly. He will apply the law as written. He will not bend to political pressure. And that is exactly the kind of judge our country needs.

Emil is a dedicated public servant, an exemplary lawyer, and a person of quiet strength and deep character. 

The Senate should reject the smear campaign and vote to confirm him to the Third Circuit. Justice demands nothing less. 

The State Department on Sunday blasted Yemen’s Iran-sponsored Houthi terrorist movement for lethal attacks on cargo ships in the Red Sea and on Israel as new calls emerged for President Donald Trump to support Yemen’s legitimate government to topple the Houthi regime.

Walid Phares, a leading American expert on the Middle East, told Fox News Digital that regarding ‘negotiations with Hamas and the regime in Tehran, in my view, Iran is simply buying time to rearm and resume its regional expansion.’ 

Phares said if the talks fail, there is a need ‘to reassemble a ground force comprised of units loyal to the legitimate Yemeni government (now in exile in Aden), and—crucially—the Southern Transitional Council (STC), whose forces are based in the Aden region and maintain frontlines adjacent to Houthi-controlled territory. Notably, STC forces have achieved the most significant victories against the Khomeinist militias in past years.’ 

Phares, who advised Trump when he was a candidate for president in 2016, continued, saying that ‘The United States should back, fund, and train these southern forces for renewed ground operations along the Red Sea coast, particularly to retake the vital port city of Hodeidah. Simultaneously, northern units loyal to the Yemeni government could advance toward the capital, Sanaa. Allied airpower would provide the necessary cover to enable a southern-northern pincer movement that could collapse the Houthi hold on Yemen and eliminate the threat entirely.’

He argued that ‘This would pave the way for future negotiations—not with Tehran’s proxies—but with a federated, pro-Western Yemeni government independent of Iranian influence. ‘

In May, Trump announced that after a military air campaign against the Houthi movement, saying the Houthis ‘just don’t want to fight…and we will honor that. We will stop the bombings.’

The Houthi terrorists, however, appear to have violated their pledge to Trump to stop attacks in the Red Sea.

Department of Defense spokesman Sean Parnell told Fox News Digital, ‘The DOD remains prepared to respond to any state or non-state actor seeking to broaden or escalate conflict in the region. Secretary Hegseth continues to make clear that, should Iran or its proxies threaten American personnel in the region, the United States will take decisive action to defend our people. We will not discuss future operations.’

Fox News Digital reported on July 7 that Israel exchanged missile fire with Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen on Monday, targeting the group’s ports and other facilities.

Israel’s initial strikes came in reaction to a suspected Houthi attack on a Liberian-flagged ship in the Red Sea. The vessel was targeted with explosives and small arms fire, causing it to take on water and forcing the crew to abandon ship. The Houthis have not yet claimed responsibility for the attack. Israel’s military issued a warning prior to its attack, which targeted ports at Hodeida, Ras Isa and Salif.

‘These ports are used by the Houthi terrorist regime to transfer weapons from the Iranian regime, which are employed to carry out terrorist operations against the state of Israel and its allies,’ the Israeli military said.

The Houthi attacks last week resulted in the sinking of the bulk carrier Magic Seas, resulting in the presumed killings of four people and 11 others who are missing, according to an AP report.

The announcement came as satellite photos show long, trailing oil slicks from where the bulk carrier Eternity C went down, and another when the Houthis sank the bulk carrier Magic Seas.

The Times of Israel reported that both ships were attacked over a week ago by the rebels as part of their campaign targeting vessels over the war in Gaza. The Houthi campaign has upended shipping in the Red Sea, through which $1 trillion of goods usually passes a year.

A spokesperson for the State Department told Fox News Digital, ‘The United States condemns these attacks. These recent attacks have led to the loss of life, injury to sailors, and the sinking of cargo ships.Houthi attacks continue to endanger the lives of seafarers, harm economies across the region, and risk environmental disaster.’

The spokesperson added, ‘Global freedom of navigation and Israel have been under attack by the Houthi rebels for too long. The U.S. supports Israel’s ability to exercise its right to self-defense.’

After the Biden administration de-listed the Houthi movement as a foreign terrorist organization, the Trump administration swiftly restored the terrorist designation in March. 

The official slogan of the Houthi movement (Ansar Allah) reads, ‘Allah is Greater. Death to America. Death to Israel. Curse on the Jews. Victory to Islam.’ 

Fox News Digital’s Anders Hagstrom and AP contributed to this report.