President-elect Trump won’t be on the ballot in the 2026 midterms, but Republican National Committee chair Michael Whatley says that Trump will play a ‘significant’ role in supporting GOP candidates.

Republicans enjoyed major victories in last month’s elections, with Trump defeating Vice President Kamala Harris to win the White House, the GOP flipping control of the Senate from the Democrats, and holding on to their razor-thin majority in the House.

Whatley argued that ‘as we go forward into this next election cycle, the fundamentals are going to remain the same’ during an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital.

‘We need to make sure that we are building our state parties, that we’re building our ground game, we’re building our election integrity apparatus to be in place to make sure that when we get those candidates through those primaries in ‘26, that we’re going to be in a position to take them all the way to the finish line,’ he emphasized.

But the party in power traditionally suffers setbacks in the following midterm elections. And Trump, who was a magnate for voter turnout, won’t be on the ballot in 2026.

Whatley said that even though he won’t be a candidate, ‘President Trump is going to be a very significant part of this because at the end of the day, what we need to do is hold on to the House, hold on to the Senate so that we can finish his term and his agenda.’

And Whatley predicted that ‘Donald Trump will be very active on the campaign trail for Republicans. And his agenda is the agenda that we’re going to be running on.’

The Harris campaign and the Democratic National Committee outraised the Trump campaign and the RNC this past cycle, but Whatley is confident that with the party soon to control the White House, Republicans will be even more competitive in the campaign cash race in the midterms.

‘We’re pretty excited about where we are in terms of the fundraising that we did throughout the course of this cycle and what we’re going to do going forward,’ he said.

Whatley said that his message to donors will be ‘we were successful in putting Donald Trump into the White House, and we need to carry forward with his agenda by keeping these House majorities and Senate majorities.’

He also pushed back on the persistent questioning of the RNC and Trump campaign’s ground game efforts during the general election.

‘We focused very hard on low propensity voters. This was an entirely new system that we put in place over the course of this election cycle. It worked very, very well,’ he touted. 

And looking ahead, he said ‘in a midterm election cycle, low propensity voters are going to, again, be very, very important for us. So, we’re going to continue to focus on building that type of a program.’

Whatley spotlighted that ‘we also focused on outreach to communities that the Republican Party has traditionally not reached out to – Black voters, Hispanic voters, Asian American voters. That’s why we were able to see such seismic shifts towards Donald Trump versus where those blocks had been in 2016 and 2020. We also saw seismic shifts among young voters and women voters because we were talking to every single American voter. Our ground game was very significant.’

Whatley was interviewed a week after Trump asked him to continue as RNC chair moving forward.

In March, as he clinched the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, Trump named Whatley to succeed Ronna McDaniel as RNC chair. Whatley, a longtime ally of the former president and a major supporter of Trump’s election integrity efforts, had served as RNC general counsel and chair of the North Carolina Republican Party. 

Trump is term-limited and won’t be able to seek election again in 2028. Vice President-elect Sen. JD Vance will likely be considered the front-runner for the 2028 GOP nomination.

But asked if the RNC will hold to its traditional role of staying neutral in an open and contested presidential primary, Whatley said ‘we will.’

And he added that ‘I’m very excited about the bench that we have in the Republican Party right now. You think about all the Republican governors, you think about all the Republican senators, the members of the House that we have, the leaders across the country that have been engaged in this campaign are going to be part of the president’s cabinet.’

Whatley argued that the president-elect’s ‘America First movement is bigger than Donald Trump. He is the tip of the spear. He is the vanguard of this movement. But. It is a very big movement right now.’

The chairman also emphasized that ‘Donald Trump has completely remade the Republican Party. We’re now the working-class party. We’re now a party that is communicating and working with every single voter, speaking to every single voter about the issues that they care about. So, as we go into 2028, we are in a great position to be able to continue the momentum of this agenda and this movement.’

Unlike the DNC, which in the 2024 cycle upended the traditional presidential nominating calendar, the RNC made no major changes to their primary lineup, and kept the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary as their first two contests.

Asked about the 2028 calendar, Whatley said ‘I’ve not had any conversations with anybody who wants to change the calendar on our side. I know the Democrats did during the course of this election cycle, not sure that it really helped them all that much.’

‘We’re very comfortable with the calendar as it is. But as we move towards 2028, we’ll have those conversations,’ he added.

Christian, Jewish and Muslim faith leaders are cautiously optimistic heading into the new year with a second Trump administration.

This week, Fox News Digital spoke to leaders from various faith communities, many of whom expressed hope the incoming administration would lead in the right direction but wary that President-elect Trump would still prove himself.

‘There are some [Jewish] communities that feel positive and optimistic, and there are some communities that feel extremely concerned,’ said New York City Rabbi Jo David, who has a private rabbinic practice.

‘I think there’s a mixed reaction, but there’s a skeptical optimism,’ said Haris Tarin, vice president of policy and programming at the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

Lorenzo Sewell, senior pastor at 180 Church in Detroit, said Trump has the opportunity to go down as ‘the greatest president in history’ if he plays his cards right. ‘Only thing he needs to do is righteously regulate [the appropriate] resources.’

Samuel Rodriguez is lead pastor at New Season, a prominent U.S. megachurch, and president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. He echoed the sense of hope that some faith leaders are feeling looking toward Inauguration Day. 

‘I believe we’ll see a stronger emphasis on protecting religious freedom and ensuring that faith communities are empowered to thrive,’ Rodriguez said. ‘Policies that respect the role of faith-based organizations in society — whether they’re feeding the hungry, educating children or advocating for life — will likely take center stage. I also anticipate an administration that values the contributions of people of faith, not as something to tolerate but as an essential cornerstone of our nation.’

With respect to the Jewish community, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the former chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and director of Global Social Action at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said antisemitism, particularly on social media and on college campuses, and the ’embrace of the Hamas narrative,’ are a top priority. 

‘We expect and hope for a completely different approach on the part of the incoming administration,’ Cooper said. ‘We expect that the billions and billions of sanction relief that President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken have given to the terrorist-sponsoring regime in Iran, that’s going to come to an end.’

Cooper also said building on and advancing the Abraham Accords, a series of bilateral agreements on Arab–Israeli normalization between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, will be important.

For Tarin, the biggest hope among the Muslim community, he says, is that there is not a repeat of the 2020 order by Trump that prevented people from certain Muslim countries from coming to the U.S.

‘No. 2, the hope is that all Americans, including American Muslims, their civil rights and civil liberties and the issues that they’ve been advocating for are protected. No. 3, the hope is for a cease-fire and the end to the conflict in the Middle East and specifically in Gaza,’ Tarin said. 

He added that it would be beneficial if Trump embraced parts of the Biden administration’s national strategy on Islamophobia. 

Fox News Digital reached out to the Trump-Vance transition team for comment but did not receive a response.

President-elect Trump on Friday posted a message on his Truth Social account that contrasted his 2023 mugshot with his Time magazine cover.

Trump was named Time’s Person of the Year this week, which included a cover and an in-depth interview as he prepares to take office for the second time. 

‘How it started, how it’s going,’ Trump wrote with his mugshot on the left side and his Time cover on the right. 

Trump’s mugshot was taken in May 2023 when he was processed at the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta after being indicted on election racketeering charges.  

The magazine announced Trump, who faced an assassination attempt last summer and won the first nonconsecutive U.S. presidential term since Grover Cleveland in the 19th century, had been named its Person of the Year Thursday. 

Trump, in a ceremony after the announcement, called it an ‘honor.’ 

‘Thank you very much for doing it,’ he said. ‘Thank the whole group at Time. Really professional people.’ 

He was first named the magazine’s Person of the Year after his first presidential win in 2016. 

Two Chinese spies and a Chinese national who was charged for disseminating child pornography were part of a White House prisoner swap as Biden’s presidency nears the end.

On Nov. 22, Biden granted clemency to Yanjun Xu, Ji Chaoqun and Shanlin Jin. 

Their releases were part of a prisoner swap that returned three wrongfully detained Americans from Chinese custody: Mark Swidan, Kai Li, and John Leung. 

The three Americans returned to the U.S. before Thanksgiving.

Xu and Chaoqun were both Chinese nationals who were convicted of espionage in the U.S. 

Xu, according to a release from the Department of Justice, was the first Chinese government intelligence officer ever to be extradited to the United States to stand trial and was sentenced to 20 years.

According to court documents, Xu targeted American aviation companies, recruited employees to travel to China, and solicited their proprietary information, all on behalf of the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

In one example, noted in court documents, Xu attempted to steal technology related to GE Aviation’s exclusive composite aircraft engine fan module – which no other company in the world has been able to duplicate – to benefit the Chinese state.

The Department of Justice said that Xu openly discussed his effort to steal U.S. military information in addition to commercial aviation trade secrets.

Chaoqun was arrested and convicted after working with Xu on behalf of the CCP.

The federal agency said that Xu recruited and ‘handled’ Chaoqun, who was stationed in Chicago during the duration of the scheme.

The DOJ said that Xu directed Chaoqun to collect ‘biographical information on people to potentially recruit to work with them.’

‘Xu’s handling and placement of a spy within the United States to obtain information regarding aviation technology and employees is yet another facet of Xu’s egregious crimes towards the United States and further justifies the significant sentence of imprisonment he received today,’ said U.S. Attorney Parker at the time of the pair’s conviction.

Jin was serving his sentence after being convicted of possessing more than 47,000 images of child pornography while a doctoral student at Southern Methodist University in Dallas in 2021.

Biden commuted on Thursday the sentences of 1,499 people. He is also pardoning 39 individuals who were convicted of non-violent crimes.

President-elect Trump is set to take office in a little over a month, on January 20. He has said that he will immediately pardon people convicted of participating in the January 6, 2021, riot in the U.S. Capitol.

Left-wing nonprofit ProPublica is facing renewed scrutiny after an email exchange related to its recent unpublished story on Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth was released on Thursday.

A media firestorm began earlier this week when Hegseth revealed on X that ProPublica, which he called a ‘Left Wing hack group’ was planning to publish a ‘knowingly false report’ that he was not accepted by West Point in 1999. Attached to the post was a photo of Hegseth’s acceptance letter signed by West Point Superintendent Lieutenant General Daniel Christman, U.S. Army.

ProPublica editor Jesse Eisinger responded to the post, explaining that West Point public affairs had told the outlet twice that Hegseth hadn’t applied.

‘We reached out,’ Eisinger wrote. ‘Hegseth’s spox gave us his acceptance letter. We didn’t publish a story. That’s journalism.’

After intense criticism from conservatives online, with some questioning why ProPublica did not press West Point on the inaccurate information and publish a story on that aspect, Eisinger posted a lengthy X thread outlining the steps ProPublica had taken researching the story claiming and touting how they ‘care about accuracy’ and being ‘intellectually honest’ and had given Hegseth a ‘fair chance to respond to all of the salient facts in the story.’

Questions about ProPublica’s journalistic standards intensified shortly afterward when Daily Caller published an email from reporter Justin Elliot reaching out to Hegseth’s lawyer, giving him an hour to respond to the allegation that he never went to West Point and asking, ‘Why did Mr. Hegseth say he got into West Point when that is not true?’ 

‘How can Mr. Hegseth be Secretary of Defense given that he has made false statements about getting into the military’s most prestigious academy?’ Elliot asked.

That email drew the ire of many on social media, who took issue with the accusatory tone of the email and the small window to respond to such a serious allegation, which suggested the story had already been completed without hearing Hegseth’s side.

‘ProPublica did not contact Pete Hegseth to get the full story,’ Red State writer Bonchie posted on X. ‘They contacted him to claim he was a liar while demanding a response within one hour not to offer his side, but to ask why he ‘lied’ and what else he ‘lied’ about.’

‘This isn’t ‘journalism.’ It’s unethical garbage.’

‘***Nothing*** in Jesse’s 11-tweet thread even hinted that ***this*** is how ProPublica actually approached the story— taking the falsehood from West Point, repeatedly asserting to Hegseth that he was a liar & implying he is unfit for SecDef, & giving him just one hour to respond,’ journalist Jerry Dunleavy posted on X. 

‘ProPublica’s Editor-in-Chief claimed that they gave @PeteHegseth a fair chance to respond to the West Point story because they ‘care about accuracy,’’ Trump 2024 Rapid Response Director Greg Price posted on X. ‘According to this unhinged email obtained by @reaganreese, they straight up accused him of being a liar and gave him a one hour deadline to respond.’

In a statement to Fox News Digital, a ProPublica spokesperson said, ‘Reporters do their job by asking tough questions to people in power, which is exactly what happened here. Responsible news organizations only publish what they can verify, which is why we didn’t publish a story once Mr. Hegseth provided documentation that corrected the statements from West Point.’

Fox News Digital reached out to West Point asking whether any disciplinary actions had been taken against the staffers for providing false information and why procedures had not been in place to prevent that kind of error. 

West Point directed Fox News Digital to its previously issued statement. 

‘A review of our records indicates Peter Hegseth was offered admission to West Point in 1999 but did not attend. An incorrect statement involving Hegseth’s admission to the U.S. Military Academy was released by an employee on Dec. 10, 2024.  Upon further review of an archived database, employees realized this statement was in error. Hegseth was offered acceptance to West Point as a prospective member of the Class of 2003. The academy takes this situation seriously and apologizes for this administrative error.’

In a letter to West Point this week, Republican Congressman Jim Banks wrote, ‘It is outrageous that West Point officials would so grossly interfere in a political process and make false claims regarding a presidential nominee.’

‘Even in the unlikely scenario of OPA mistakenly making false claims not once but twice, it is an unforgivable act of incompetence that OPA did not make absolutely sure their information was accurate before sharing it with a reporter.’

This week’s ProPublica controversy comes after the nonprofit, which has received millions of dollars from liberal foundations, faced strong criticism for its reporting on conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, which critics referred to as ‘hit pieces.’

‘Journalistic inquiry into the private dealings of public officials is essential for our democracy. But honest inquiry applies the same standard to all people rather than single out those with whom one disagrees,’ Gretchen Reiter, senior vice president of communications at Stand Together, told Fox News Digital last year regarding ProPublica’s reporting on Thomas.

ProPublica’s reporting on Alito prompted the justice to write a Wall Street Journal op-ed where he wrote, ‘ProPublica has leveled two charges against me: first, that I should have recused in matters in which an entity connected with Paul Singer was a party and, second, that I was obligated to list certain items as gifts on my 2008 Financial Disclose Report. Neither charge is valid.’

ProPublica stood by its reporting on Alito but acknowledged there are ‘lessons for ProPublica in this experience.’

Washington, D.C.-area restaurants once again will not be free from politics as the Trump team prepares to settle into the nation’s capital for a second term. 

Food workers inside the Beltway are prepared to refuse service and cause other inconveniences for members of the incoming Trump administration, but this is not the first time the administration and allies will have to deal with harassment while sitting down to dinner.

In September 2018, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and his wife were harassed at Fiola, an upscale Italian restaurant in Washington, D.C. Protesters confronted them over Cruz’s support for then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh during his contentious confirmation hearings. Videos circulated online showing demonstrators shouting at the couple, chanting, ‘We believe survivors.’ Cruz and his wife eventually left the restaurant due to the altercation.

This incident was part of a broader wave of confrontations involving Trump administration officials and allies over the summer that year.

As such, in June 2018, then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen was confronted by protesters at MXDC Cocina Mexicana, a Mexican restaurant in Washington, D.C., over the Trump administration’s family separation policy at the U.S.-Mexico border. Protesters chanted, ‘Shame!’ and called her a ‘villain,’ forcing her to leave.

Senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller, known for his role in shaping immigration policy, recounted an incident when he went to pick up an $80 sushi order from a restaurant near his apartment that same month. As he left, the bartender followed him outside, called out his name and, when Miller turned around, gave him a double middle finger. He threw away the sushi out of fear someone in the restaurant had tampered with the food, the New York Post reported at the time.

Also in June 2018, the owner of The Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, asked then-White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave, citing opposition to the Trump administration’s tough immigration policies. 

Industry veterans, bartenders and servers in the nation’s capital told the Washingtonian this week that resistance to the Republican figures in the progressive city was inevitable and a matter of conscience. 

‘You expect the masses to just ignore RFK eating at Le Diplomate on a Sunday morning after a few mimosas and not to throw a drink in his face?,’ said Zac Hoffman, a Washington, D.C., restaurant veteran who is now a manager at the National Democratic Club.

Not every liberal hospitality sector worker in the report planned to protest the incoming administration while doing their job, however. 

A bartender named Joseph said while he was disappointed by the election results, he was looking forward to higher tips with more Republicans in Washington.

Fox News Digital’s Kristine Parks contributed to this report.

President-elect Donald Trump is gearing up for his second White House term just weeks after the abrupt toppling of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria— a pivotal moment that could test Trump’s long-held promises to end U.S. involvement in so-called ‘forever wars’ in the Middle East or putting more American boots on the ground in these countries.

With roughly six weeks to go before he takes office, Trump does not appear to be backing down on his promises of pursuing a foreign policy agenda directed toward prioritizing issues at home and avoiding entanglements overseas.

However, Trump’s promises about ending U.S. military commitments abroad could be tested in Syria, where conditions in the country are now vastly different from Trump’s first term — creating a government seen as ripe for exploitation by other foreign powers, including governments or terrorist groups.

‘This is not our fight. Let it play out. Do not get involved,’ Trump said on Truth Social over the weekend, as rebel-backed fighters advanced into Damascus, forcing Assad to flee to Moscow for safe haven. 

Trump, for his part, has acknowledged the foreign policy situation he stands to inherit in 2025 could be more complex than he saw in his first term, especially in the Middle East. 

It ‘certainly seems like the world is going a little crazy right now,’ Trump told leaders earlier this week in Paris, where he attended a grand reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral. 

Here is a rundown of what Trump did in Syria in 2019 and how his actions could be insufficient today.

Current status 

In Syria, the speed at which rebel forces successfully wrested back control of major cities and forced Assad to flee to Moscow for safe haven took many by surprise, including analysts and diplomats with years of experience in the region. 

It is currently an ‘open question’ who is currently in charge in Syria, White House National Security communications advisor John Kirby told reporters earlier this week. 

However, the rebel-led group that ousted Assad is currently designated as a terrorist organization in the U.S., raising fresh uncertainty over whether Trump might see their rise to power as a threat to U.S. national security and whether he might move to position U.S. troops in response.

The conditions are also ripe for exploration by other governments and adversaries, which could seize on the many power vacuums created by the collapse of Assad’s regime. 

In the days following Assad’s flight to Moscow, senior Biden administration officials stressed that the U.S. will act only in a supporting capacity, telling reporters, ‘We are not coming up with a blueprint from Washington for the future of Syria.’

‘This is written by Syrians. The fall of Assad was delivered by Syrians,’ the administration official said. 

Still, this person added, ‘I think it’s very clear that the United States can provide a helping hand, and we are very much prepared to do so.’ It’s unclear whether Trump will see the situation the same.

Trump’s first term

In October 2019, Trump announced the decision to withdraw U.S. troops from northeastern Syria, news that came under sharp criticism by some diplomats and foreign policy analysts, who cited fears that the decision risked destabilizing one of the only remaining stable parts of Syria and injecting further volatility and uncertainty into the war-torn nation. 

However, at the time, that part of the country was stable. U.S. troops were stationed there alongside British and French troops, who worked alongside the Syrian Defense Force to protect against a resurgence of Islamic State activity. However, the situation is different now, something that Trump’s team does not appear to be disputing, for its part.

Additionally, while seeking the presidency in 2024, Trump continued his ‘America first’ posture that many believe helped him win the election in 2016 — vowing to crack down on border security, job creation, and U.S. oil and gas production, among other things — incoming Trump administration officials have stressed the degree to which they’ve worked alongside the Biden administration to ensure a smooth handover when it comes to geopolitical issues.

Unlike his first White House transition, Trump’s preparations for a second presidential term have been remarkably detailed, efficient and policy oriented. That includes announcing nominations for most Cabinet positions and diplomats, and releasing policy blueprints for how the administration plans to govern over the next four years.  

‘For our adversaries out there that think this is a time of opportunity that they can play one administration off the other, they’re wrong, and we… we are hand in glove,’ Trump’s pick for national security adviser, Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., told Fox News in an interview following Trump’s election in November. ‘We are one team with the United States in this transition.’

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suffered an injury and has been admitted to a hospital in Luxembourg, Fox News has confirmed.

The 84-year-old California representative was traveling to Luxembourg for Battle of the Bulge remembrances.

The extent of the former speaker’s injury is unknown at the time of this reporting.

‘While traveling with a bipartisan Congressional delegation in Luxembourg to mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi sustained an injury during an official engagement and was admitted to the hospital for evaluation,’ Ian Krager, her spokesperson, said in a statement.

‘Speaker Emerita Pelosi is currently receiving excellent treatment from doctors and medical professionals. She continues to work and regrets that she is unable to attend the remainder of the CODEL engagements to honor the courage of our servicemembers during one of the greatest acts of American heroism in our nation’s history,’ Krager continued. ‘Speaker Emerita Pelosi conveys her thanks and praise to our veterans and gratitude to people of Luxembourg and Bastogne for their service in World War II and their role in bringing peace to Europe.

‘Speaker Emerita Pelosi was personally and officially honored to travel with the distinguished delegation, many of whom had family members who fought in World War II — including her uncle, Johnny,’ he added. ‘She looks forward to returning home to the U.S. soon.’ 

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates. 

The Israeli air force is apparently readying itself for a potential strike against Iran’s nuclear program as the incoming Trump administration is also reportedly mulling a ‘maximum pressure 2.0’ campaign against Tehran as the situation in the Middle East rapidly evolves.

The fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime – a former ally of Iran – due in large part to the dismantling of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and in extension Syria, has not only once again changed the political landscape in the Middle East, it has left Tehran increasingly isolated. 

Israeli reports on Thursday said the evolving reality in the region has prompted Israel to once again consider targeting Iran’s nuclear program, which Jerusalem and its international allies have deemed one of the greatest emerging threats at a time when tensions between the West and nations like Russia and Iran continue to deteriorate. 

Fox News Digital could not immediately reach the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for comment on alleged plans to hit Iran’s nuclear program, though it is a step long viewed as taboo and one that Jerusalem already pursued earlier this year. 

The U.S., under the Biden administration, along with its international partners including the International Atomic Energy Agency, have urged Israel not to strike Iran’s nuclear installations. 

However, last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed the IDF had hit and degraded part of Iran’s nuclear program during a retaliatory strike in late October, but he warned it was not enough to thwart Tehran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon.

In a similar sentiment, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in November that Iran was ‘more exposed than ever [for] strikes on its nuclear facilities.’

‘We have the opportunity to achieve our most important goal – to thwart and eliminate the existential threat to the State of Israel,’ he added.

It remains unclear to what extent Iran’s nuclear program has been impacted by the Israeli strikes, and the IAEA continues to assess that Iran is rapidly bolstering its stockpiles of near-weapons grade enriched uranium.

President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to once again take a hard-line approach when it comes to Tehran’s attempts to develop a nuclear weapon, and a report by the Wall Street Journal on Friday said his transition team was evaluating a ‘maximum pressure 2.0’ campaign.

Trump has reportedly called on his team to devise options on how the U.S. could clamp down on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, including through the possible use of preventive airstrikes, though without pulling the U.S. military into a war with Tehran.

Fox News Digital could not immediately reach the Trump transition team for comment, though in an interview with the president-elect released on Thursday, Time magazine questioned the possibility of the U.S. going to war with Iran, to which Trump responded ‘anything can happen.’