Elmo has a friend, indeed.

Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries,D-N.Y., brought along a stuffed friend to help make a point on the House floor Thursday.

Jeffries held up a stuffed Elmo doll while accusing Republicans of targeting beloved children’s shows like ‘Sesame Street’ in their push to slash federal spending.

‘Today, we are on the floor of the House of Representatives debating legislation that targets Elmo. And Big Bird. And Daniel Tiger and ‘Sesame Street,” Jeffries said, waving the puppet as he railed against the GOP-led rescissions package.

The moment, widely circulated online, came during debate over the Republican-backed Proposed Rescissions of Budgetary Resources from President Trump, which would eliminate over $9 billion in unspent or low-priority federal funds.

Among the targeted programs: $3 million in taxpayer support for an international version of Sesame Street in Iraq.

Democrats objected to what they characterized as cultural and humanitarian vandalism disguised as fiscal responsibility. Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, D-Calif., delivered one of the sharpest lines of the day: ‘While you all have killed off Elmo, I urge my colleagues to vote no on this trash and I yield back,’ Garcia said.

Republicans dismissed the theatrics and defended the package as a commonsense rollback of bloated, ideological spending. The bill also includes broader cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports PBS and NPR, long-time targets of fiscal conservatives who argue the taxpayer shouldn’t subsidize public media.

Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., rebutted, ‘I never realized Elmo was more important to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle than the American people.’

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., pushed back forcefully: ‘The Minority Leader held up a Sesame Street character here on the floor as if Sesame Street’s somehow going to go away,’ Scalise said. 

‘I was watching a commercial on TV yesterday where the Cookie Monster was actually doing an advertisement for Netflix because a private company is paying money to run Sesame Street. It’s not going away. It’s doing just fine. Very lucrative.’

Scalise argued the bill doesn’t threaten Sesame Street’s survival, only its taxpayer subsidy, and called out what he described as ‘far-left, radical views’ being promoted through outlets like NPR and PBS.

‘There is still going to be a plethora of options for the American people,’ he said. ‘But if they are paying their hard-earned dollars to get content, why should your tax dollars go to only one thing that the other side wants to promote?’

He concluded bluntly: ‘They can still watch Sesame Street in Iraq. But let the Iraqi people pay for it — not the taxpayers of the United States of America’s children.’

Even more eyebrow‑raising was the inclusion of taxpayer‑funded global health spending for procedures like circumcisions.

Among the line items flagged by GOP lawmakers: $3 million to subsidize circumcisions, vasectomies and condoms in Zambia, alongside similar grants for transgender surgeries in Nepal. Republicans contended that pulling back these types of low-impact or ideological slush funds was a logical first step toward returning more than $9 billion to the U.S. Treasury.

The bill passed the House Appropriations Committee earlier this week and Senate Democrats have signaled strong opposition.

The bill passed the House in a 214–212 vote. Four Republicans, Reps. Mark Amodei, R-Nev.; Mike Turner, R-Ohio; Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa.; and Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., broke ranks to vote against the bill. All Democrats voted no.

President Donald Trump promised that Israel’s next round of attacks on Iran would be ‘even more brutal’ in a Truth Social post pressuring Iran to cut a deal on its nuclear activity. 

‘There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end,’ Trump said. 

‘Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire. No more death, no more destruction, JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.’

Trump said he warned Iran that ‘the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, BY FAR, and that Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come – And they know how to use it.’

‘Certain Iranian hardliner’s spoke bravely, but they didn’t know what was about to happen. They are all DEAD now, and it will only get worse!’

The U.S. and Iran have another round of nuclear talks scheduled for this weekend in Muscat, Oman, while the two sides remain on opposite ends over whether Iran should have the capacity to enrich uranium at all, even for civil energy purposes. 

It is not clear whether those negotiations will carry on in light of the attack. Trump had urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to let talks play out before launching any strikes. 

 ‘I think it would blow it,’ Trump said earlier yesterday of the prospect of a premature Israeli attack. But then, he mused, it ‘might help it actually, but it also could blow it.’ 

After the attack, Secretary of State Marco Rubio put out a statement insisting the U.S. had no part in the strikes and urged Iran not to attack U.S. positions. Earlier, non-essential embassy staff in Iraq had been evacuated in light of the prospect of an attack. 

Tehran fired over 100 drones toward Israel on Friday morning in a counter-move, which Israel intercepted. 

Netanyahu revealed the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) struck a key nuclear site, Natanz, during the attack on the regime.

Among those killed were top nuclear scientists and top military leaders: General Hossein Salami, the commander-in-chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and Major General Mohammad Bagheri, Iran’s highest-ranking military official and chief of staff of the IRGC, along with most of the IRGC air force high command, who were convened in an underground bunker at the time. 

The first wave of strikes hit over 100 targets with 200 Israeli fighter jets dropping ‘330 different munitions,’ the IDF said, adding the strikes will carry on for days. 

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., expressed staunch support for Israel’s assault against Iran, calling for the U.S. to back Israel’s efforts by providing the ally with anything it needs.

‘Our commitment to Israel must be absolute and I fully support this attack. Keep wiping out Iranian leadership and the nuclear personnel. We must provide whatever is necessary—military, intelligence, weaponry—to fully back Israel in striking Iran,’ Fetterman asserted Thursday night in a post on X.

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs reposted the senator’s post. 

It also shared a post in which U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson expressed support for the U.S. ally. 

‘Israel IS right—and has a right—to defend itself!’ Johnson declared.

Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested that if Iran targets U.S. interests, America should execute ‘an overwhelming response’ that annihilates the foreign country’s oil infrastructure.

‘People are wondering if Iran will attack American military personnel or interests throughout the region because of Israel’s attack on Iran’s leadership and nuclear facilities,’ Graham noted Thursday night in a post on X. 

‘My answer is if they do, America should have an overwhelming response, destroying all of Iran’s oil refineries and oil infrastructure putting the ayatollah and his henchmen out of the oil business.’

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement on Thursday night that the U.S. was ‘not involved in strikes against Iran’ and declared that ‘Iran should not target U.S. interests or personnel.’

President Donald Trump issued a Truth Social post on Friday morning in which he urged Iran to agree to a deal, apparently referring to a nuclear deal.

‘I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal. I told them, in the strongest of words, to ‘just do it,’ but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn’t get it done. I told them it would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated, or were told, that the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, BY FAR, and that Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come – And they know how to use it. Certain Iranian hardliner’s spoke bravely, but they didn’t know what was about to happen. They are all DEAD now, and it will only get worse!’ Trump warned in his post.

‘There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end. Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire. No more death, no more destruction, JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. God Bless You All!’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed that one of Iran’s top nuclear facilities had been hit in Thursday night’s strike against the regime.

‘Iran has produced enough highly enriched uranium for nine atom bombs, nine,’ Netanyahu said. ‘In recent months, Iran is taking steps that it has never taken before, steps to weaponize this enriched uranium. And if not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time.’

The Natanz Nuclear Facility – one of Tehran’s key nuclear sites and which has been flagged by security experts that in coordination with the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, could produce enough weapons-grade uranium to produce 11 nuclear weapons within a month – has been hit in the strikes, though the extent of the damage remains unknown. 

‘We struck at the heart of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. We struck at the heart Iran’s nuclear weaponization program,’ Netanyahu said in live remarks. ‘We targeted Iran’s main enrichment facility in Natanz. 

‘We targeted Iran’s leading nuclear scientists working on the Iranian bomb,’ he added. 

The Nantaz Nuclear Facility was at least partially destroyed in 2020 following an explosion, and satellite imagery has suggested Iran began constructing deep underground tunnels to further secure and obscure their nuclear program, reported the Institute for Science and International Security earlier this year. 

It is unclear at this time if any of the underground structures were hit in the Thursday night strikes. 

‘We will not let the world’s most dangerous regime get the world’s most dangerous weapons, and Iran plans to give those weapons, nuclear weapons, to its terrorist proxies,’ Netanyahu said. ‘That would make the nightmare of nuclear terrorism all too real. 

‘The increasing range of Iran’s ballistic missiles would bring that nuclear nightmare to the cities of Europe, and eventually to America,’ he added. 

Reporting by The New York Times also said the Parchin military complex had been hit in the overnight strikes, though Fox News Digital could not independently confirm the hit.

The extent of the damage also remains unknown as it was reported in November that the Parchin military complex had been significantly damaged in Israel’s October strikes which housed a nuclear weapons research facility. 

Another five military bases surrounding Tehran were also reportedly hit. 

When it comes to the nation’s federal government, GOP Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin is ‘not a fan.’ 

He believes that it ’causes or exacerbates more problems than it actually solves,’ telling Fox News Digital during an interview on Wednesday that the bulk of his oversight is ‘to expose how awful government is’ in order to obtain ‘public support for reducing it, limiting its size, limiting its cost, limiting its influence over our lives.’

‘As our federal government grows, our freedoms recede,’ he said. ‘You see what the federal government does, how it wastes money.’

The national debt has ballooned to the eye-watering sum of more than $36 trillion, with lawmakers and presidents from both parties presiding over the deficit spending that has led the nation to this point. 

Johnson said he’s ‘trying to force reality’ upon everyone in the nation’s capital, regardless of whether they want to face that reality.

He said for decades the nation has been suffering a ‘chronic debt crisis,’ illustrating the dramatic decline in the value of the U.S. dollar by noting that ‘the dollar you held back in 1998 is now only worth $0.51 cents,’ while ‘a dollar you held in … 2019 is only worth $0.80 cents.’

The senator referred to inflation as ‘the silent tax.’

But he’s certainly not staying silent.

Johnson indicated that the elected leaders are mortgaging the future of American children, but ‘don’t talk about it.’

‘I’m forcing everybody to look at it,’ he said, noting that his ‘primary role’ is to force ‘acknowledgment of our problem.’

But as keenly as Johnson advocates the idea of slashing the sprawling tentacles of the massive federal bureaucracy, right now he’s just pushing to pare spending down to pre-pandemic levels.

The conservative fiscal hawk has been making headlines for taking a stand against the Trump-backed One Big Beautiful Bill Act that cleared the GOP-controlled House of Representatives last month. 

But Johnson told Fox News Digital that he actually likes a lot of the measure.

‘I’m really not critical of the bill as far as it goes,’ Johnson explained, noting that he’s a ‘big supporter’ of much of what’s in it, though he noted that has not read all of it — the measure is more than 1,000 pages long. 

‘My main beef is it just doesn’t go far enough,’ he said, noting that after the COVID-19 pandemic Democrats failed to return to pre-COVID spending and deficit levels.

The Congressional Budget Office’s estimated budgetary impact for the measure indicates that the net effect on the deficit would be a more than $2.4 trillion increase over the fiscal years 2025-2034.

But White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought has said the measure would decrease deficits.

‘The bill REDUCES deficits by $1.4 trillion over ten years when you adjust for CBO’s one big gimmick–not using a realistic current policy baseline. It includes $1.7 trillion in mandatory savings, the most in history. If you care about deficits and debt, this bill dramatically improves the fiscal picture,’ Vought said in a post on X.

Johnson also noted during the interview that there has not been a ‘reckoning’ regarding the ‘abuse’ at all levels of government during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He noted that he does not refer to the COVID-19 jab as a vaccine. Instead, he referred to it as an ‘injection,’ asserting that it is ‘not a vaccine,’ and that it caused injuries and death.

The senator said that he thinks the shots should have ‘black box warnings.’ 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website states that the ‘CDC recommends a 2024-2025 COVID-19 vaccine for most adults ages 18 and older’ and claims that the ‘vaccine helps protect you from severe illness, hospitalization, and death.’

Johnson, who has served in the Senate since 2011 and won election to a third term in 2022, said he’d prefer not to seek another term in office.

‘I don’t covet this job,’ he said, noting that he wants to leverage his post to help save America and aid those who are ‘ignored by the system.’

While he’s not ruling out another run, Johnson, who turned 70-years-old earlier this year, said he’d ‘be happy’ to return to Oshkosh and ‘live a nice, peaceful life.’