FIRST ON FOX – As U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iran give way to an historical ceasefire, opposition figures are stepping forward with renewed urgency — calling on the United States to support regime change led by the Iranian people. 

One of the most prominent voices is that of the exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the eldest son of the late Shah of Iran, who has long advocated for a secular and democratic alternative to the Islamic Republic.

Born in Tehran in 1960, Pahlavi was officially named crown prince during his father’s coronation in 1967. In 1978, at the age of 17, he left Iran for military training with the United States Air Force in Texas. Months later, his family was forced into exile following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and the monarchy was replaced by an Islamic theocratic regime that has ruled Iran ever since.

In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, the prince discussed the growing resistance inside Iran, his message to the military and why he believes now is the moment for President Donald Trump to act in support of the Iranian people. 

What’s your message to President Trump and the American people?

President Trump is looking for peace in the Middle East and an end to chaos. He wants to keep American troops safe and finally bring them home. I want the exact same thing. But the current regime in Iran does not want this. It thrives on chaos and bloodshed. So true peace can only happen when the Islamic Republic is gone. 

So my message to President Trump is this: the way to end the chaos and destruction is to help the people of Iran to end this regime and take their country back. He can leave a lasting legacy and be one of history’s great peacemakers if this happens. I am ready to be his partner in this process and this mission and lead our nation into a peaceful, democratic future once again aligned with regional stability and American interests. Working with President Trump, we can bring down the world’s most dangerous regime—and fill the void not with chaos, but with strength, order, and freedom.

You stated ‘a broad coalition of Iranians’ is already working to build a post-regime future. Who are the key players in that coalition, and how are they coordinating inside and outside the country?

This coalition spans across sectors and ideologies—former officials, dissidents, technocrats, activists, women’s rights leaders, workers, students and members of the diaspora. Inside Iran, they’re organizing resistance and preparing for a democratic transition. Outside, we’re building the institutional groundwork for the day after: from transitional justice to economic recovery. Most importantly, to ensure chaos does not ensue and we can secure a peaceful transition. What unites us is not a political party, but a single goal—freeing Iran from tyranny and rebuilding it as a sovereign, democratic nation.

You stress that the Iranian military and security forces should defect and join the people. Have you been in touch with any current or former elements of the armed forces, and do you see signs of that happening?

Yes—quietly, but clearly. I’ve had conversations with both former and current members of the armed forces. Many of them love their country but despise what the regime has turned it into. We are seeing growing cracks — hesitation to follow orders, defections, and signs of passive resistance. In recent days, I have launched a formal channel for these communications to increase. My message to them is simple: history is being written now. Stand with your nation, not the criminals. You will be remembered for your choice.

As a trained fighter pilot, what’s your opinion about the U.S. and Israeli air campaign in Iran that has shaken the foundations of Iran’s military infrastructure?

I was proud to wear my country’s uniform, and I have flown many of these fighter jets. To see the state of disrepair and disgrace the Islamic Republic has dragged our armed forces into pains me deeply. The members of the armed forces I speak to share this pain. They hate to see our once proud military used to abuse our people at home and sow chaos and terror abroad. The new Iran I seek will have a once-again proud armed forces that defends our nation and helps establish peace and stability in the Middle East.

You’ve been criticized — also by Iranian dissident leader Maryam Rajavi — for allegedly seeking to restore the monarchy and lacking broad support among Iranians. What do you say to those who claim you have no legitimate mandate and are out of touch with the people inside Iran?

Maryam Rajavi leads a radical cult that fuses Marxist and Islamist ideologies—a group that has killed American soldiers and is completely rejected by Iranians. I don’t respond to attacks from terrorists, especially those with no support on the ground.

I am focused on leading this movement and this change, I am not advocating for a particular form of government. Iranians will choose their future form of government in free and fair elections and anyone who wants to deny them this right is not part of the democratic opposition.

My mandate is the trust of my compatriots who chant my name not because I ask for it, but because I have stepped forward to serve them and not myself. When Iran is free, the people—not cults or clerics—will decide our future in a national referendum.

Senate Republicans are inching closer to a final vote on President Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill,’ but face one more obstacle before lawmakers go on record on the president’s ambitious agenda.

Lawmakers wrapped up several hours of debate on the megabill that began Sunday afternoon and petered out early Monday morning. The next hurdle is the marathon ‘vote-a-rama,’ when lawmakers on either side of the aisle can submit an unlimited number of amendments to the bill.

Senate Republicans will use the time to further change and mold the bill to sate holdouts, while Democrats will inflict as much pain, and burn as much time as possible, with amendments designed to kneecap or outright kill the legislation.

The debate was largely a predictably partisan affair filled with floor charts, impassioned gesticulating fists and pleas to either pass or nuke the bill.

Senate Democrats railed against the bill for its slew of changes to Medicaid, green energy tax subsidies and how the bill, particularly its design to make Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Job act permanent, would balloon the federal deficit.

Republicans lauded the ‘big, beautiful bill’ for the growth it could supercharge in the country, and in particular, how important it was to prevent the president’s first-term tax cuts from lapsing.

‘I say to everybody in America who’s been hearing all of the politics of fear, about what we’re doing here and running up the deficit, [they] need to remember that only in Washington, D.C., is the refusal to raise your taxes an increase in the deficit,’ Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, said. ‘And we’re not going to let that happen.’

Lawmakers kicked off the debate with a back and forth on whether Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., or the Senate parliamentarian had the authority to dictate if Republicans could use the current policy baseline, the budget gimmick the GOP argues would negate their tax bill from ballooning the deficit, or current law, which would show the real cost of Trump’s tax package over the next decade.

‘Republicans can use whatever budgetary gimmicks they want to try and make the math work on paper, but you can’t paper over the real-life consequences of adding tens of trillions to the debt,’ said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.  

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released two sets of scores Saturday and Sunday that reflected both current policy and current law. Under current policy, the bill would tack on just over $507 billion over the next decade. But under current law, the package would add roughly $3.3 trillion.

Graham countered that as budget chair, he has the right to set the numbers.

‘The resolution we’re operating under to get us here, we voted to make that the case so we’re not doing anything sneaky,’ he said. ‘We actually voted to give me the authority to do this, and it passed.’

Graham also went to bat for the GOP’s planned cuts to Medicaid, which they have presented as efforts to root out waste, fraud and abuse in the program by instilling work requirements, booting illegal migrants off the benefit rolls, and making changes to just how much the federal government would pay states.

He argued that since former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act became law, Medicaid has grown exponentially, largely because Obama ‘incentivized’ states to opt in to the Medicaid expansion program and allowed for able-bodied working-age adults to get onto the benefit rolls, something he noted that Medicaid was ‘never intended’ to do.  

‘It’s a good thing for the individual involved to be working,’ he said. ‘It’s a good thing for the taxpayer, for them to be working. But that seems to be a crime on the other side, to ask somebody to work that can work.’

Not all Republicans were aligned in their passion to pass Trump’s bill.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., torched the legislative behemoth in a fiery floor speech that railed against the deficit-adding effect the bill would have. He and Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., both voted against advancing the bill through a key procedural hurdle late Saturday night.

Tillis, who largely agrees with many of the tweaks to Medicaid, railed against the changes to the provider tax rate and accused the president of being duped by his healthcare advisors in the White House. 

He said he would remain against the bill until lawmakers took the time to actually unpack what their Medicaid proposals would do to the states, adding, ‘What’s wrong with actually understanding what this bill does?’ 

‘Republicans are about to make a mistake on healthcare and betraying a promise,’ he warned. ‘What do I tell 663,000 people in two or three years, when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding isn’t there anymore?’

Paul, who has taken issue with the addition of a $5 trillion hike to the debt ceiling baked into the bill, reaffirmed that he would be voting against the megabill during final passage.

‘In deciding whether to vote for the ‘big, not-so-beautiful bill,’ I’ve asked a very specific question: Will the deficit be more or less next year? The answer, without question, is this bill will grow the deficit,’ he said. 

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., denounced President Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill,’ just hours after making the surprise announcement that he would not run for a third term in 2026. 

Tillis voted against a motion to proceed with the spending package on Saturday and then announced his retirement on Sunday, citing political polarization and a desire to spend more time with family.

He then took to the Senate floor later Sunday to warn that ‘Republicans are about to make a mistake on healthcare and betraying a promise’ on Medicaid should the package clear the upper chamber. 

‘It is inescapable that this bill in its current form will betray the very promise that Donald J. Trump made in the Oval Office or in the Cabinet room when I was there with finance. He said, ‘We can go after waste, fraud and abuse’ on any programs,’ Tillis said. ‘Now, those amateurs that are advising him, not Dr. Oz, I’m talking about White House healthcare experts, refuse to tell him that those instructions that were to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse, all of a sudden eliminates a government program that’s called the provider tax. We have morphed a legal construct that admittedly has been abused and should be eliminated into waste, fraud and abuse, money laundering. Read the code. Look how long it’s been there.’

‘I’m telling the president that you have been misinformed,’ Tillis said. ‘You supporting the Senate mark will hurt people who are eligible and qualified for Medicaid.’

‘I love the work requirement. I love the other reforms in this bill. They are necessary, and I appreciate the leadership of the House for putting it in there,’ Tillis said. ‘But what we’re doing, because we have a view of an artificial deadline on July 4, that means nothing but another date in time. We could take the time to get this right if we lay down the House mark of the Medicaid bill and fix it.’ 

The two-term senator said he consulted with Republican experts in the state legislature, Democrats loyal to Gov. Josh Stein and an independent body from the hospitals’ association to gain insight on how the provider tax cuts would impact North Carolinians. In the best-case scenario, he said, the findings showed a $26 billion cut in federal support for Medicaid. Tillis said he presented the report to the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Dr. Mehmet Oz. 

‘After three different attempts for them to discredit our estimates, the day before yesterday they admitted that we were right,’ Tillis said. ‘They can’t find a hole in my estimate.’

‘So what do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding is not there anymore, guys?’ Tillis said. ‘I think the people in the White House, those advising the president are not telling him that the effect of this bill is to break a promise, and do you know the last time I saw a promise broken around healthcare? With respect to my friends on the other side of the aisle, it’s when somebody said, ‘If you like your healthcare, you could keep it, if you like your doctor, you could keep it.’ We found out that wasn’t true.’ 

In promoting the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, from 2009 to 2010, former President Barack Obama repeatedly claimed, ‘If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.’ Tillis argued that it was the failures of that package that led to him becoming the second Republican Speaker of the North Carolina House since the Civil War and later to his election to the U.S. Senate. 

Trump celebrated Tillis’ retirement announcement and issued a warning to other ‘cost-cutting Republicans.’ 

‘For all cost-cutting Republicans, of which I am one, REMEMBER, you still have to get reelected. Don’t go too crazy!’ Trump wrote Sunday night. ‘We will make it all up, times 10, with GROWTH, more than ever before.’ 

After his Senate speech, Tillis told reporters that he had told Trump that he ‘probably needed to start looking for a replacement.’

‘I told him I want to help him,’ Tillis said, according to Politico. ‘I hope that we get a good candidate that I can help and we can have a successful 2026.’

The senator told reporters Trump is ‘getting a lot of advice from people who have never governed and all they’ve done is written white papers.’ He condemned ‘people from an ivory tower driving him into a box canyon.’

In his retirement announcement, Tillis said that ‘it’s become increasingly evident that leaders who are willing to embrace bipartisanship, compromise, and demonstrate independent thinking are becoming an endangered species.’ 

A multi-year grant to a Washington-area nonprofit focused on promoting fishing, boating and outdoor activities was canceled by the Interior Department after Senate DOGE leadership flagged the original Fox News Digital report to the Cabinet agency.

More than $26 million has already been paid out – on top of $164 million since 2012 – to the Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation (RBFF), based in Alexandria, Virginia.

From the government website USA Spending, the grant’s purpose highlights RBFF’s ‘Take Me Fishing’ consumer campaign that includes a social and digital media component, as well as ads on Walt Disney Company-branded streaming services and ‘mobile fishing units’ that cater to urban communities and ‘underserved audiences.’

At least $40.5 million will be saved in the near-term, the Senate DOGE Caucus told Fox News Digital, citing Interior’s response.

‘Today’s catch of the day is Washington waste,’ said Senate DOGE Caucus Chairwoman Joni Ernst, R-Iowa.

‘I am proud to have exposed bloated overhead costs and worked with Secretary Burgum to ensure tax dollars collected to boost fishing are not siphoned into the pockets of slick D.C.-based consultants.’

‘There’s more pork in the sea, and I am going to keep fishing for it!’

Burgum’s office struck a similar tone, saying the agency is committed to fiscal responsibility, efficiency and accountability – while still fully supporting the recreational boating, fishing and outdoors industries.

A spokeswoman for the agency, which oversees the National Park Service that provides outlets for all of the above, said that ‘under President Donald J. Trump’s leadership, we are ensuring that every taxpayer dollar serves a clear purpose and aligns with our core mission.’

‘Following a review of discretionary spending, the Department determined that the use of this particular [RBFF] grant had not demonstrated sufficient alignment with program goals or responsible stewardship of taxpayer resources,’ Charlotte Taylor said.

The grant, largely funded by excise taxes on fishing poles, came under DOGE scrutiny when Ernst discovered an RBFF contract with Disney worth $1.99 million plus hundreds of thousands in ‘SEO consulting,’ and $5 million to a Minnesota creative media development agency. Several RBFF executives are paid from the mid-$100,000s on up.

In part of a lengthy response to the grant’s cancellation, RBFF officials told Fox News Digital the organization has ‘devised a plan we believe would meet the goals and priorities of the administration, which includes adjusted employee compensation, reduced headcount and updated investment priorities.’

But the group claimed it has not been able to connect directly with DOGE or Interior during the grant review process ‘despite repeated outreach attempts during the past three months.’ 

A source familiar with the situation indicated the group had met with Ernst’s office, and Taylor said Burgum’s office did meet with RBFF in Washington earlier this month and has been in contact ‘multiple’ times: ‘Anything to say otherwise is inaccurate.’

‘Since 1998, [RBFF] has helped build what has become a $230.5 billion industry that supports 1.1 million American jobs, generates $263 million in tax revenue, and contributes $2 billion annually to fisheries and conservation efforts in all 50 states,’ RBFF’s statement continued.

‘Alarmingly, in just the past two months since RBFF’s funding has been paused, fishing license sales are down 8.6% across 16 states, representing the loss of over $590 million in angler spending and 5,600 jobs.’

Several other groups came to RBFF’s defense.

Matt Gruhn, president of the Marine Retailers Association of the Americas, told Fox News Digital he was disappointed in Interior’s decision to terminate the grant.

‘[RBFF’s] work was pivotal to enhancing the recreational boating and fishing industry’s recruitment, retention and reactivation efforts. Their training and resources vastly improved state agency processes and marketing and has made boating and fishing licensing and registration far easier for Americans,’ Gruhn said.

‘RBFF has been a responsible steward of these taxpayer dollars from the very beginning, with oversight from the very stakeholders that paid into the fund that RBFF’s grant originates from, as well as passing every audit with flying colors.’

Additionally, the head of the American Sportfishing Association warned of the ‘severe impact’ the loss of grant money will have on the outdoors industry.

CEO Glenn Hughes said his organization’s members agreed in 1950 to self-impose a tax on fishing rods to reinvest back into the industry and bolster license sales, habitat conservation and more.

The RBFF’s ‘Take Me Fishing’ campaign began in 1998 with congressional funding from the tackle tax. Hughes claimed the effort has generated a total of $230.5 billion in economic impact since.

‘Without consultation and coordination with the recreational fishing industry, the Department of the Interior decided to withhold critical funding from RBFF, ultimately ending a 27-year history of increasing fishing participation and efforts to bolster the economic impact of the fishing industry.’

House lawmakers could kick off consideration of President Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ as soon as Wednesday morning.

A notice sent to congressional offices on Sunday night indicated House GOP leaders think they may begin the process at 9 a.m. Wednesday with an initial House-wide vote.

Nothing is set in stone, however, and the Senate is still working its way through the massive piece of legislation as of Monday morning. 

‘The president has been very clear that it’s time to get this bill out of Congress and over to his desk,’ House GOP Policy Chair Kevin Hern, R-Okla., told Fox News Digital. ‘We’re going to celebrate Independence Day with a big, beautiful signing ceremony and finally deliver this tax relief to American families.’

The initial House-wide vote would be a ‘rule’ vote, a procedural hurdle to allow lawmakers to begin debating the bill. That could set up a final vote by Wednesday evening or Thursday morning, depending on last-minute maneuvering to rally support. The House Rules Committee, the final gatekeeper before most legislation is considered chamber-wide, is likely to consider the bill on Tuesday.

The initial version of the bill passed the House of Representatives by just one vote in late May.

House GOP leaders are facing similarly slim odds now, with just four Republican defections being enough to sink the bill, assuming all Democrats vote against it as expected.

Some House Republicans have already voiced concerns about some of the Senate’s key modifications to the bill. Moderates are wary of additional cost-sharing burdens for states that expanded their Medicaid populations under the Affordable Care Act, while conservatives argue other measures in the bill will mean it adds more to the $36 trillion national debt than the House version.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., urged Republicans to take their concerns to leadership or their Senate counterparts rather than airing those grievances on social media.

Meanwhile, leadership allies have been hitting the media sphere in support of the bill.

‘The One, Big, Beautiful Bill delivers President Trump’s pro-worker promises by eliminating tax on tips, overtime, and auto interest, while also delivering tax relief for seniors,’ House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., posted on X amid a litany of other statements promoting the bill.

Republican Study Committee Chair August Pfluger, R-Texas, wrote, ‘The average taxpayer in my district would face a 26% tax increase if we don’t pass the One Big Beautiful Bill. Failure is not an option. We must pass this bill to prevent the largest tax hike in history!’

The 940-page legislation is aimed at advancing Trump’s priorities on taxes, the border, energy, defense and the national debt.

The president has said he wants the bill on his desk on or around the Fourth of July.

Additionally, the legislation could still change before it gets to Trump – the Senate is kicking off a marathon ‘vote-a-rama’ on the bill with various senators on both sides offering an unlimited number of amendments.