The House is preparing to take up its annual defense policy bill this week, with Democrats filing hundreds of amendments — many aimed at rebuking President Donald Trump’s administration and current GOP priorities

Lawmakers submitted roughly 450 proposed amendments to the fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Among them are measures dealing with diversity, Israel funding and Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

The House Rules Committee will review the bill Monday afternoon and set parameters for debate, paving the way for a floor vote later this week.

Most of the progressive amendments are unlikely to survive, underscoring their symbolic nature. Still, Democrats are using the traditionally bipartisan defense package to spotlight opposition to the White House and Republican leadership.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, filed several amendments, including one to strike the NDAA’s prohibition on using defense funds for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts.

Similarly, Reps. Luz Rivas, D-Calif., and Jill Tokuda, D-Hawaii, offered an amendment to block a ban on DEI programs at the Pentagon.

Crockett also introduced language aimed at halting construction of migrant detention facilities on military installations, directly challenging Trump administration policy.

Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., put forward an amendment barring Defense Department funds from supporting migrant processing and detention operations.

The Pentagon announced last month it is building the country’s largest federal migrant detention center in Fort Bliss, Texas.

Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., filed two amendments targeting Trump-era immigration policies. One would prohibit funding for family separation, while another ‘prohibits funds from being used to transfer non-citizens to foreign prisons, except under treaties and extradition laws,’ according to the Rules Committee website. The latter proposal would effectively block deportations to El Salvador.

Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., introduced measures aimed at limiting U.S. support for Israel.

Tlaib’s amendment would ban U.S. arms sales to countries whose governments include officials with outstanding International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants. The ICC issued warrants in late 2024 for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior officials.

Omar’s proposal seeks to repeal Israel’s emergency access to a U.S.-managed weapons stockpile located in the country.

The NDAA is a bill passed every fiscal year that sets national security and defense policy for the U.S. government.

More than 1,000 total amendments have been introduced to this year’s bill.

President Donald Trump just took a pivotal step to make healthcare affordable again.

On Sept. 4, his administration announced that most Americans will now be eligible to buy what are known as ‘copper plans’ on the ObamaCare exchanges. Before this reform, nearly all Americans were legally barred from buying these much more affordable plans. But now working families can get the plans they need at a price they can afford – and many uninsured people will likely get covered as a result.

The president is fixing one of the fundamental problems with ObamaCare. That law forced Americans who get their insurance on the individual market to buy costly plans, and in the 11 years since the law went into effect, they’ve gotten even pricier.  

ObamaCare plans have risen by nearly 200% since 2013. What’s more, prices for all plans are expected to rise another 18% by the start of next year.

ObamaCare’s authors knew their law would make healthcare more expensive. That’s why they quietly created an actually affordable option, which they called ‘copper plans.’ These plans cover pre-existing conditions, essential health benefits and everything else that ObamaCare requires, but they come with slightly higher out-of-pocket costs in exchange for dramatically lower premiums. 

Tens of millions of people could benefit from these options, but the federal government only allowed a minuscule number of Americans to buy them. Basically, you had to be under the age of 30. While anyone else could apply for a ‘hardship exemption’ to become eligible, the federal government rarely, if ever, granted these requests, forcing people to pay much more.

No longer. The Trump administration has effectively said that most Americans are now eligible for a hardship exemption, meaning anyone can buy a copper plan. Research from my organization shows that, on average, copper plans have 22% lower premiums than the typical bronze plan – and they cost up to 60% less than ObamaCare’s gold plans. By choosing these options, families can literally save hundreds or even thousands of dollars per year.

The return of affordability is reason enough to praise the president’s move. But this reform will have the added benefit of empowering uninsured people to finally get coverage they can afford. Nearly 27 million Americans are uninsured, many – if not most – because health insurance costs too much. They’ve needed access to copper plans, but their own government has blocked them. Now they’re free to buy better coverage.

Crucially, the uninsured population has the exact groups of people who can help the ObamaCare exchanges become more sustainable. The second and third-largest groups of the uninsured are between the ages of 26 and 34 and 35 and 44, respectively. These tend to be healthier people who don’t need costly plans because they don’t need much health care. As such, they don’t mind the higher out-of-pocket costs that come with the typical copper plan.

By helping to get more of these people covered, President Trump may very well stop the doom loop that has defined ObamaCare – a doom loop of ever-higher prices driving more and more people out of the markets altogether. And with fewer uninsured Americans and more people on private coverage, hospitals will see their uncompensated care costs drop. So hospitals – especially rural hospitals – will be on stronger footing.

This single reform could help millions – if not tens of millions – get more affordable coverage. It also meshes well with another commonsense policy issued by President Trump. He has reversed the Biden administration’s restrictions on short-term plans, empowering Americans to buy even more affordable coverage options for years at a time. 

This reform will also expand coverage to more uninsured people, while enabling others to get plans that better fit their budgets. We’re talking Americans of all ages who are in between jobs and looking for work, those who’ve retired but aren’t yet eligible for Medicare, and working families desperately looking for affordable coverage.

Americans urgently need this healthcare relief. While Democrats and the media are demanding that Republicans merely expand ObamaCare subsidies to prevent people from losing coverage, that’s not a real or sustainable solution. 

More government subsidies only make health insurance more expensive, not less. President Trump has taken the better road by giving Americans greater access to more affordable plans.

When it comes to helping families out, the president’s short-term reform will make a long-term difference, and his copper plans reform gets a gold star.

In comments to Fox News Digital, the State Department’s position on Sudan’s warring parties has hardened, as a 500-day siege of the Darfur city of El Fasher has trapped hundreds of thousands of civilians. 

Sudan suffers from the world’s largest displacement: Between 13 million and 15 million people have been ripped from their homes, and an estimated 150,000 people have been killed since the rebel Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese government’s Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) started fighting in April 2023. The civil war’s roots lie in tensions following the 2019 ousting of President Omar al-Bashir.

‘The RSF, during the siege of El Fasher and surrounding areas, committed myriad crimes against humanity, including murder, torture, enslavement, rape, sexual slavery, sexual violence, forced displacement and persecution on ethnic, gender and political grounds,’ an Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan reported to the U.N.’s Human Rights Council last Friday. 

The report agreed with other accounts that the RSF is trying to starve El Fasher’s residents to death, stating, ‘The RSF and its allies used starvation as a method of warfare.’

Aid is being blocked from going into El Fasher, the U.N. Secretary-General’s spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, stated Aug. 29  ‘Supplies are pre-positioned nearby but efforts by the United Nations and its partners to move them into El Fasher continue to be hampered.

‘The situation in El Fasher remains dire,’ Mariam Wahba, research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital.  ‘The RSF has effectively encircled the city, cutting off key supply routes and subjecting civilians to indiscriminate shelling. Satellite images indicate a wall is being built to trap civilians inside, consistent with RSF tactics used elsewhere. These ‘kill zones’ leave residents with no means of escape. El-Fasher is the last major SAF-held city in Darfur. If it falls, the RSF would control nearly all of Darfur, consolidating both territory and economic assets, particularly lucrative gold mines.’

President Donald Trump’s Special Advisor for Africa, Massad Boulos, met Sudan’s army chief, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan in Switzerland last month. From the tone of the State Department’s responses to Fox News Digital’s questions on Sudan this week, there appears to be little progress on the path to peace. 

A spokesperson stated, ‘since the April 2023 outbreak of conflict in Sudan, we have witnessed significant backsliding in Sudan’s overall respect for fundamental freedoms, including religious freedom.

‘In order to safeguard U.S. interests, to include the protection of religious freedom in Sudan, U.S. efforts seek to limit negative Islamist influence in Sudan’s government and curtail Iran’s regional activities that have contributed to regional destabilization, conflict, and civilian suffering.’

Wahba is also concerned about the activities of foreign ‘bad actors’ in Sudan. ‘Iran has provided the SAF with drones and technical support. Emerging reports point to Iranian interest in helicopter facilities. Iran sees its involvement in Sudan as a gateway for extending its footprint in Africa.’

Wahba continued, ‘Russia has played both sides of the conflict. It has pursued a naval base on Sudan’s Red Sea coast, which would give Moscow direct access to critical shipping lanes, while also profiting from gold smuggling through RSF-linked networks.’

‘Regional powers are also advancing their own interests. Egypt has publicly backed the SAF, aligning with Sudan’s ruler, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. Saudi Arabia is aligned with Egypt in backing al-Burhan. The United Arab Emirates, on the other hand, has provided significant support to the RSF, viewing its commander, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo – widely known as Hemedti – as the custodian of Sudan’s gold exports and the path to its plans for port development along the Red Sea coast.’

Wahba concluded, ‘Burhan’s willingness to engage with Washington is a potential opening. This does not mean the U.S. should unconditionally back the SAF, but it could form the basis for a more defined U.S. strategy, one that makes U.S. engagement contingent on the SAF reining in, or removing, its Islamist militias and leadership.

A Senate Republican charged that former President Joe Biden and top administration officials ‘demolished’ the constitutional guardrails for pardons by using an autopen.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, wrote in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, which was first obtained by Fox News Digital, that there are a list of ‘core constitutional requirements’ that must be met for pardons and granting clemency, and that the administration’s usage of an autopen likely ran afoul of those guardrails.

In the waning months of his presidency, the Biden administration commuted the sentences of roughly 1,500 inmates and pardoned 39 others in December. A little over a month later, the administration issued roughly 2,500 more commutations — the most ever by a president in a single day.

Cruz, who is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and chair of the Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights, offered to provide Bondi assistance in ongoing investigations into the administration’s alleged abuse of the autopen.

He said that the clemencies were issued ‘based on broad criteria rather than case-by-case evaluations, and at least some were signed using an autopen of then-President Biden’s signature.’

‘These core Constitutional requirements, considerations, and expectations were demolished in the final months of the Biden administration for partisan and personal motives by President Biden, his family, and his top officials,’ Cruz said.

Cruz noted that the presidential pardon authority granted under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution requires a chain of custody of sorts: there has to be an unbroken line from the president to a pardon being granted, he said.

‘Everyone involved in the process — government officials purporting to issue a pardon, the person to whom it is being granted, judicial and law enforcement officials, and most of all the American people — should have absolute confidence a pardon was granted at the president’s explicit direction,’ Cruz said.

But recent reports, and ongoing congressional investigations, have raised doubts over whether Biden explicitly directed the avalanche of pardons toward the end of his presidency.  

Cruz’s letter comes on the heels of a report from Axios that unearthed emails that showed Biden officials raised concerns with how the president’s team decided to make certain pardons and the frequent usage of the autopen.

Cruz said that the emails showed that the Biden White House ‘implemented a process that separated the President from officials responsible for signing pardons on his behalf.’

‘They could not know if they were doing so at the President’s direction, either on a case-by-case basis or as a matter of criteria,’ he said.

He argued that the doubts raised by recent reports, and the ongoing investigations by the Justice Department, risked a ‘constitutional crisis in which the other branches and the American people cannot have faith that the President’s Article 2 pardon power was legitimately deployed.’

‘If the integrity of the clemency process was broken by Biden officials, such that the relevant actions were not taken at the President’s direction, the status of the pardons and commutations would at a minimum be cast into doubt, and the officials involved in approving and using the autopens should be held accountable,’ Cruz said. 

Among the files made public by the House Oversight Committee is a document that stands out for its tone: a glossy 238-page scrapbook that offers a rare and unusually intimate glimpse of Jeffrey Epstein’s self-curated network. 

The infamous ‘birthday book,’ compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell in 2003, for Epstein’s 50th includes what appears to be notes from former President Bill Clinton, Alan Dershowitz, as well as photographs that juxtapose girlfriends, animals, children’s drawings with financiers and politicians — a tableau that feels all the more unsettling today.

Maxwell wrote to Epstein at the beginning of the book that she wanted to ‘gather stories and old photographs to jog your memory about places, people and different events.’ She hoped he would ‘derive as much pleasure from looking through it’ as she did assembling it for him.

Later in the book, a photo of the two canoodling appears with a caption that reads ‘the first date,’ marked with the year 1991.

Maxwell was found guilty in 2021 of sex trafficking and other offenses, and is serving a 20-year prison term. Prosecutors said she played a central role in Epstein’s scheme, luring underage girls into what began as massages and escalated into sexual abuse.

Now 63 and incarcerated since her 2020 arrest, Maxwell told Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in late August that she had no role in the sexual exploitation of minors. When asked about the ‘birthday book,’ she told Blanche that she could only remember some parts of it, adding that it had been years since she compiled it. 

Among the book’s entries is an apparent note from Bill Clinton, where the former Democratic president praises Epstein’s ‘childlike curiosity’ and his ‘drive to make a difference’ as well as the ‘[illegible] of friends.’

Dershowitz, a former Harvard University law professor who once represented Epstein during criminal investigations, used his birthday note to make a joke about influencing media coverage.

‘Dear Jeffrey, as a birthday gift to you, I managed to obtain an early version of the Vanity Unfair article. I talked them into changing the focus from you to Bill Clinton, as you will see from the enclosed excerpt. Happy birthday and best regards,’ the entry said.

Dershowitz has repeatedly denied wrongdoing as it relates to Epstein.

The birthday book also contained sentimental messages from family and friends. In one note, Epstein’s mother, Pauline Stolofsky Epstein, wrote that she’s been ‘very busy reminiscing since Ghislaine asked me to write about you.’ 

‘Jeff[,] you have been a good son since day one and we have been proud of you ever since,’ Epstein’s mother said.

‘I recall you refused to sleep [as a child] unless I read a story from Grandma’s Golden Book that she bought for 25c,’ she added. ‘At PTA meetings I begged your teachers to improve your handwriting.’

She also referenced Epstein’s life as a bachelor, as well as his prominent media shout-outs.

‘At age 21 Cosmopolitan magazine featured you as ‘Bachelor of the Month,’ Pauline Epstein wrote. ‘Today you still hold that title.’

‘Jeff, I’m so sorry that Dad can’t share the nachus [pride] we have regarding your achievements,’ she added. ‘He would have been overjoyed reading the article about you in the New York magazine.’ 

The book features hundreds of photos from throughout Epstein’s life until age 50, including pictures of him as a child and a teenager.

Some of the earlier images included family pictures, formal school photos and pictures of him hanging out with friends as a teenager.

The book also had revealing images of Epstein shirtless, Epstein embracing women and what appears to be a censored photo of him and Maxwell laughing and embracing in a pool. Pictures of mating lions and zebras were also included in the book.

A picture of a woman in a bikini was also included with the caption, ‘Visiting you down in Palm Beach. Can’t get a second of privacy with you and a camera around ha ha!’

Upon the files’ release, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chair of the House Oversight Committee, accused Democrats of previously ‘cherry-picking’ the documents.

‘Oversight Committee Republicans are focused on running a thorough investigation to bring transparency and accountability for survivors of Epstein’s heinous crimes and the American people,’ Comer said.