Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., accused Trump Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought of being responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children due to the budget cuts he has overseen under the Trump administration.

Vought faced a high-intensity grilling from both Democratic and GOP senators in the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday over a package of proposed budget cuts – called a rescissions package – the administration sent to the legislative branch earlier this month.

Democratic committee members, as well as some Republicans, appeared very frustrated with the administration over the proposed cuts. At one point during the hearing, several protesters stood and began shouting, causing the proceedings to briefly come to a halt. It was unclear what the protesters were objecting to.

While Vought claimed that the administration’s cuts to USAID and PEPFAR have not halted lifesaving treatment, Merkley asserted that the claim is a ‘huge deception.’

According to Merkley, a Boston University School of Public Health study claims that some 246,000 children have died due to the various foreign aid programs cut by DOGE.

‘We are talking a quarter million children because of your irresponsible shutdown of programs that Congress had fully authorized, and you unconstitutionally shut down in partnership with Elon Musk and the Secretary of State,’ fired Merkley. ‘How do you feel about being responsible for hundreds of thousands of children dying because of your sudden interruption in these key programs?’

Vought soundly rejected the assertion, saying that every administration ‘has the ability to do a programmatic review when they come into office’ and to make changes based on ‘new spending priorities.’

Before he could finish, Merkley cut Vought off, saying, ‘I find your response both ignorant and callous.’

‘You chose to shut down programs in the middle that have resulted in hundreds of thousands of children dying in the last few months. I find that abhorrent, and few Americans have ever had such a devastating and disastrously impact,’ Merkley exclaimed.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., also confronted Vought, accusing the administration of trying to illegally maneuver around Congress to make its cuts, which she said undermine American interests abroad.

‘Will you tell us specifically where, the Philippines, Pacific islands, Jordan, you’re planning to undermine American interests?’ she asked, to which Vought responded: ‘Of course not. We’ve been very clear in all the administration’s priorities that all of our commitments with regard to Jordan and Egypt are maintained.’

Before Vought could finish, Murray cut in again, saying, ‘I assume you’re unwilling to share which humanitarian crisis this administration plans to walk away with, which is what we would be voting on, and that is critical information.’

But it wasn’t just Democrats taking Vought to task during the hearing.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, also voiced frustration over the Trump administration’s DOGE cuts, taking particular issue with cuts to public broadcasting, which she said plays an important emergency services role in her state.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., also voiced objections to the cuts to foreign aid, which he said were opportunities to project American soft power.

‘Instead of creating efficiency, you’ve created vacuums for adversaries like China to fill responsible investments in soft power, prevent conflict, preserve American influence, and save countless of lives at the same time,’ said McConnell.

For his part, Vought said that ‘it is critical that this body and the American people writ large, understand that many foreign aid programs use benevolent-sounding titles to hide truly appalling activity that is not in line with American interests.’

Vought said the ‘entire federal government must be responsible with each taxpayer dollar that comes to Washington.’

‘The American people voted for change. President Trump stands ready to put our fiscal house back in order and put the American taxpayer first,’ he said, adding, ‘A vote for rescissions is a vote to show that the United States Senate is serious about getting our fiscal house in order. I hope that the Senate will join us in that fight.’

The White House social media team stepped up its meme game with a new spoof on a viral moment from the NATO Summit in which Secretary General Mark Rutte called President Donald Trump ‘daddy.’

A video set to the Usher hit ‘Daddy’s Home’ showed Trump arriving home aboard Air Force One being cheered on by supporters. It also showed clips from the summit, the president arriving at the Dutch palace, his meetings with world leaders and his handshake with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Like the moment when Rutte made the comment one day earlier, the White House clip set social media ablaze. 

‘Presidential meme game reaching unprecedented levels,’ internet personality Mario Nawfal wrote X. 

‘This is easily the best thing on the internet,’ added political commentator Benny Johnson. 

Others were less enthused. 

‘An official product of the WH communications office —’ ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl wrote along with the clip. 

‘This is super straight and super alpha male. Uh huh,’ wrote former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an anti-Trump Republican. 

During a bilateral meeting with Trump in The Hague, Netherlands, Rutte defended Trump’s use of an expletive to criticize Israel and Iran as they threatened the ceasefire he brokered. 

‘Daddy has to sometimes use strong language.’ 

Outside the White House Tuesday morning, a frustrated Trump told reporters Israel and Iran ‘have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f— they’re doing.’ 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio cracked up laughing when a reporter asked about the comment during a news conference at the summit Wednesday.

Rutte and Trump have found common cause in pushing NATO allies to increase defense spending. During the summit, the alliance agreed to Trump’s longtime demand that each member state boost defense spending to 5%. 

Following the uncovering of a massive bribery scandal at USAID, the Small Business Administration (SBA) is ordering a full audit of all government contracting officers who have exercised grant-awarding authority under the agency’s business development program over the last 15 years.

In a letter obtained by Fox News Digital, SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler said the scale of the USAID fraud is a ‘damning reflection of systemic failures in oversight and accountability.’ She further said that the fraud ‘was not an isolated incident.’

In response, Loeffler instructed Associate Administrator Tre Pennie, who oversees government contracts awarded by SBA, to ‘act decisively’ to crack down on any potential similar abuses in the agency.

Loeffler instructed Pennie to immediately initiate a full-scale audit of the agency’s awarding officers back to 2010.

‘The role of federal government contracting officers is not ceremonial or self-dealing; rather, it is a position of immense authority and fiduciary responsibility,’ said Loeffler. ‘The contracting process must be transparent and built on merit, not personal gain.’

This comes after USAID, an agency tasked with administering civilian foreign aid, was essentially dismantled by the DOGE waste, fraud and abuse cuts made under Elon Musk and President Donald Trump. The move was met with massive protests from Democrats who claimed that cutting USAID would impoverish and harm recipients across the globe.

Despite claims of how much good the agency was doing, it was recently discovered that an influential contracting officer at USAID named Roderick Watson was able to carry out a massive, long-term bribery scheme dating all the way back to 2013.

Watson, 57, pleaded guilty to ‘bribery of a public official,’ according to a DOJ press release.

According to the DOJ, Watson sold his influence starting in 2013, with contractors Walter Barnes, owner of Vistant, and Darryl Britt, owner of Apprio, funneling payoffs through subcontractor Paul Young to hide their tracks. 

A DOJ press release said that Britt and Barnes ‘regularly funneled bribes to Watson, including cash, laptops, thousands of dollars in tickets to a suite at an NBA game, a country club wedding, downpayments on two residential mortgages, cellular phones, and jobs for relatives. The bribes were also often concealed through electronic bank transfers falsely listing Watson on payroll, incorporated shell companies, and false invoices.’

The statement said that Watson is alleged to have received bribes ‘valued at more than approximately $1 million as part of the scheme.’

Vistant was awarded in November 2023, as part of a joint venture, a contract worth up to $800 million with one of the focuses of that contract being to address ‘a variety of issues affecting the root causes of irregular migration from Central America to the United States,’ an issue that President Joe Biden tasked then-Vice President Kamala Harris with during his presidency.

Several days later, that contract was canceled after USAID published a notice that said Vistant was excluded from government contracting due to ‘evidence of conduct of a lack of business honesty or integrity.’

The joint venture then successfully sued the government over being put on that exclusion list and was re-awarded the contract and given a $10,000 payment in August 2024. 

In her letter, Loeffler said the USAID scandal ‘represents a collapse in the very safeguards that are supposed to protect American taxpayer dollars and ensure fair access for legitimate small businesses.’

She slammed the Biden administration for awarding the $800 million contract to Vistant despite the business being labeled by USAID as lacking ‘honesty and integrity.’

‘The fact that a federal official was able to act as the linchpin of a persistent, large-scale fraud operation speaks to a failure in internal controls and a breakdown in the contracting environment that demands immediate correction,’ said Loeffler.

She said that SBA plays a ‘critical role’ in federal contracting and ‘will no longer stand by while abuses are perpetrated at the expense of taxpayers and deserving small businesses.’

Loeffler said the agency’s audit will begin with high-dollar and limited competition contracts within SBA’s 8(a) business development program. The findings will be referred to the U.S. Office of Inspector General (OIG) and the DOJ.

Any officials or businesses found in violation of the SBA’s ethical standards or who have committed criminal misconduct will be referred to the appropriate authorities and SBA will assist the DOJ in recovering misappropriated funds, Loeffler said.

‘We will not allow public trust to be quietly eroded by backdoor deals and unchecked discretion,’ said Loeffler.

‘We owe it to America’s small businesses to get this right,’ she went on. ‘Your office has the authority, and now the mandate, to act decisively.’ 

Those who leaked a preliminary assessment — rejected by the White House — on the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities will face justice for sharing the document, according to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. 

President Donald Trump and multiple leaders are saying that the strikes destroyed three Iranian nuclear sites.  

A leaked report from the Defense Intelligence Agency, published by CNN and the New York Times, cast doubt on that though, saying that the strikes only set back Iran’s nuclear program by several months. CNN first reported the assessment’s findings, citing seven people who were briefed on the report. The outlet reported the findings were based on a battle damage assessment from U.S. Central Command. 

Leavitt pushed back on the early assessment’s credibility, claiming the report was ‘flat-out wrong.’ 

‘Everyone knows what happens when you drop 14 30,000-pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration,’ Leavitt said in a Tuesday statement. 

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said Wednesday that the FBI is conducting an investigation to get to the bottom of the matter and who shared the document with the media. 

Additionally, Leavitt told reporters that leaking classified information is a criminal offense and that those who fail to follow the law ‘need to be held accountable for that crime.’ 

‘This administration wants to ensure that classified intelligence is not ending up in irresponsible hands, and that people who have the privilege of viewing this top secret classified information are being responsible with it,’ Leavitt told reporters Thursday. 

‘Clearly, someone who had their hands on this and it was a very few people, very few number of people in our government who saw this report,’ Leavitt said. ‘That person was irresponsible with it. And we need to get to the bottom of it. And we need to strengthen that process to protect our national security and protect the American public.’ 

Meanwhile, the U.S., Israel and Iran’s Foreign Ministry have all said that the three nuclear sites U.S. forces struck have encountered massive damage. 

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Ismail Baghaei told Al Jazeera Wednesday that the country’s nuclear facilities were ‘badly damaged,’ and Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission said the U.S. strikes were ‘devastating.’

On Sunday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine said that initial battle damage assessments suggest ‘all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction.’

Trump issued a word of caution to Iran Wednesday, should it attempt to repair its nuclear program once more, and said the U.S. wouldn’t hesitate to launch another strike against Iran. 

Trump personally called for the firing of one of the reporters who authored the story about the initial assessment, claiming in a Wednesday Truth Social post that the reporter should be ‘IMMEDIATELY reprimanded, and then thrown out ‘like a dog.’’

Even so, CNN came to the defense of the reporter, Natasha Bertrand. 

‘We stand 100% behind Natasha Bertrand’s journalism and specifically her and her colleagues’ reporting of the early intelligence assessment of the U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities,’ CNN said in a Wednesday statement. ‘CNN’s reporting made clear that this was an initial finding that could change with additional intelligence. We have extensively covered President Trump’s own deep skepticism about it.’

Fox News’ Brooke Singman contributed to this report. 

President Donald Trump recognized a third-generation autoworker from Michigan Thursday while speaking at the ‘big, beautiful event,’ noting he was a lifelong Democrat who now supports the president because of vehicle loan interest tax benefits.

The president spoke about the ‘big, beautiful bill’ from the East Room of the White House with a group of people standing behind him who represented various trades, including food delivery, farmers and automotive workers.

One of the workers standing behind Trump was James Benson, a third-generation autoworker from Belleville, Michigan, who has been with Ford Motor Company for 26 years.

Trump introduced Benson, noting that Ford has ‘a lot of plants’ in the U.S.

‘If you have plants in this country, you’re going to make a lot of money,’ the president said, adding that he loves autoworkers.

Trump also said Benson was a lifelong Democrat until 2017, when he saw the benefits of the tax laws.

Trump then spoke about his latest plan to benefit car owners by making interest on car payments fully tax-deductible.

But the deduction would only be for cars made in the U.S., Trump said, adding if it was made someplace else, ‘we don’t care.’

Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ would create a new deduction of up to $10,000 for qualified passenger vehicle loan interest in a given taxable year. The deduction would phase out when a taxpayer’s modified adjusted gross income exceeds $100,000.

Applicable passenger vehicles include cars, trucks, vans, SUVs and motorcycles that have been manufactured for use on public streets, roads and freeways and for which the final assembly occurs in the U.S.

The bill defines the final assembly as the process by which the manufacturer produces a vehicle and delivers it to a dealer with all the parts necessary for operation.

As is the case with the overtime and tips deductions, the auto loan provision would be in effect for tax years 2025 through 2028.

Trump reiterated to those in attendance that the tax benefit is only for vehicles made in the U.S.

‘Remember that, James. We’re going to keep those Michigan auto factories roaring,’ the president said.

FOX Business’ Eric Revell contributed to this report.