President Biden’s administration is pressuring the government of Sierra Leone to adopt more permissive abortion policies in exchange for foreign assistance, according to a Monday report. 

The African nation currently bans abortion in most circumstances, but legislation before the country’s parliament would decriminalize the practice. The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a U.S. government-run funding allocator, is reportedly threatening to withhold hundreds of millions in foreign assistance funding if the abortion law does not pass, a former senior U.S. government official who has worked in the region told the Daily Signal.

The MCC CEO Alice Albright signed an agreement with Sierra Leon’s finance minister, Sheku Bangura, in late September. The agreement would see the country receive $480 million in foreign assistance so long as the country meets the MCC’s ‘rigorous standards for good governance, fighting corruption and respecting democratic rights.’ The organization evaluates Sierra Leone’s compliance with the standards on an ongoing basis.

The organization denied any effort to influence Sierra Leone’s abortion policies in a statement to Fox News Digital on Tuesday.

‘The Millennium Challenge Corporation is unaware of any Sierra Leonean abortion legislation and has never made any requests to the Government of Sierra Leone regarding abortion policies. Any such legislation would be an internal matter for Sierra Leone with no U.S. government developments fund made contingent on its passage,’ the organization said in a statement.

The office of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who chairs the MCC’s board of directors, did not respond to a request for comment.

Footage circulating on social media shows raucous pro-life protesters demonstrating inside Sierra Leone’s parliament as lawmakers debated the legislation Tuesday.

Pro-life activists in the country claim that President Julius Maada Bio fired his attorney general last week because the official refused to push for the abortion law in parliament. Bio appointed Alpha Sesay as the new AG this week. Sesay is a recent former employee of USAID and has advocated for the new abortion law on social media.

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., condemned reports of the pressure campaign in a Monday statement.

‘It is deeply disturbing, but not terribly surprising, that we are hearing reports that the Biden administration is threatening to withhold foreign assistance to Sierra Leone unless legislators there pass the deceptively named ‘Safe Motherhood Act’ legislation that would legalize abortion in Sierra Leone, a country that currently protects unborn life,’ he told the Signal.

Smith has previously accused the Biden administration of ‘hijacking’ a Bush-era program delivering AIDS relief to Africa to promote its abortion agenda.

PEPFAR, the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, was launched in 2003 under President George W. Bush and has invested over $100 billion fighting AIDS across the world while saving 25 million lives and preventing millions of infections, the State Department says. PEPFAR was up for re-authorization in Congress last year.

‘President Biden has hijacked PEPFAR, the $6 billion a year foreign aid program designed to mitigate HIV/AIDS in many targeted — mostly African — countries in order to promote abortion on demand,’ Smith told colleagues in a 2023 statement.

Smith said two groups, Population Services International (PSI) and Village Reach, have received $96.5 million and $10.1 million, respectively, over the last few years from PEPFAR under Biden, and both groups have a track record of pushing abortion.

‘PSI proudly proclaims it provides abortion and lobbies to eliminate pro-life laws,’ Smith said. ‘PSI provides comprehensive abortion and post-abortion care services in nearly 20 countries throughout the world.’

Fox News’ Andrew Mark Miller contributed to this report

A Republican congressman is disputing Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s insistence that the State Department did not block citizens from leaving Mazar-i-Sharif Airbase in Afghanistan during the frenzied withdrawal. 

Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, wrote a letter, obtained by Fox News Digital, demanding to know how many planes the State Department blocked from leaving the airbase, who made the call on whether to clear flights for takeoff, what the criteria for blocking delaying flights was and whether there had been communication with the Taliban.

Following the withdrawal, reports emerged that 1,000 people, including Americans, were stuck at Mazar-i-Sharif Airport awaiting clearance for their charter flights to leave. 

Many had made the 400-mile trek from Kabul to be able to get out more quickly at the airport in northern Afghanistan. 

One flight organizer told Reuters the State Department had failed to tell the Taliban of its approval for flight departures in Mazar-i-Sharif or validate a landing site. 

Davidson said in the letter that when he was in talks with the State Department, an official asked him ‘which tail number’ he was referring to, insinuating more than one flight had not received authorization to take off and been delayed. 

Col. Francis Hoang, who worked on Afghanistan evacuations with his group Allied Airlift 21, told the Foreign Affairs Committee, ‘We spent three weeks hiding these nearly 400 people from the Taliban, keeping them alive and fed using funds from American donors.’

During a hearing last week, Davidson asked Blinken, ‘Did the State Department block American citizens from departing from the airfield in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan?’ 

‘Absolutely not,’ said Blinken. 

‘You know they were blocked!’ said Davidson. 

‘I’d be happy to look at any information you have on that. I’m not aware of any American citizens who were blocked.’

‘I have the emails. I have the photographs of American, blue passport-holding American citizens who were on the airfield awaiting departure that got clearance for safe third countries to depart to, and the order came down from the United States government. Was it the State Department?’ Davidson asked. 

Blinken’s testimony came three months after the committee voted along party lines to recommend he be held in contempt of Congress, when he refused to appear to testify again about the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal. 

Republicans released a lengthy report in September highlighting how State Department officials had no plan for getting Americans and allies out while there were still troops there to protect them. 

The report claimed that Ross Wilson, U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan at the time, grew the embassy’s footprint instead of sending personnel home despite warnings from military officials that a Taliban takeover was imminent. 

‘You ignored warnings of collapse from your own personnel,’ Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul told Blinken. 

Blinken defended the Biden administration’s handling of the withdrawal, saying every American who wanted to leave had been given the opportunity to do so and thousands of Afghans have been resettled internationally. 

President-elect Donald Trump has promised to ask for the resignation of every senior official ‘who touched the Afghanistan calamity.’

Democrats, meanwhile, insist the blame for the 20-year war’s acrimonious end lies with a deal Trump negotiated with the Taliban for U.S. withdrawal.

A Republican lawmaker is declaring that she will forgo many of the traditional day-to-day obligations of the House GOP Conference, suggesting she will dedicate more of her time to aiding the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., said she plans to reject any House committee assignments she is given and will refuse to attend the House GOP’s weekly conference meetings. 

‘I will stay as a registered Republican but will not sit on committees or participate in the caucus until I see that Republican leadership in Congress is governing,’ Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., wrote on X on Monday evening.

‘I do not need to be involved in circuses. I would rather spend more of my time helping [DOGE]… to save our Republic, as was mandated by the American people.’

Spartz did not elaborate on how she would focus her efforts on DOGE.

She has bucked House GOP leadership several times during the 118th Congress, chiefly on issues of government spending and the national debt. She is currently a member of the House Judiciary Committee.

DOGE is a nonbinding advisory panel commissioned by President-elect Donald Trump to recommend areas for cutting spending and improving the efficiency of the federal government.

He tapped Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead it, and the push has been met with enthusiasm among House Republicans. 

Spartz’s comments came the day before the Congressional DOGE Caucus readies to have its first lawmaker meeting on Tuesday.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Indiana Republican to ask whether she would consider joining the caucus.

Several Senate Democrats are pushing a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College and replace it with a presidential election system where the winner of the popular vote wins the White House contest.

Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, and Peter Welch, D-Vt., introduced the proposed amendment, according to a press release.

‘In 2000, before the general election, I introduced a bipartisan resolution to amend the Constitution and abolish the Electoral College. I still believe today that it is time to retire this 18th century invention that disenfranchises millions of Americans,’ Durbin said, according to the release. ‘The American people deserve to choose all their leaders, and I am proud to support this effort with Senators Schatz and Welch to empower voters.’

‘In an election, the person who gets the most votes should win. It’s that simple,’ Schatz stated. ‘No one’s vote should count for more based on where they live. The Electoral College is outdated and it’s undemocratic. It’s time to end it.’

Welch claimed that ‘right now our elections aren’t as representative as they should be because of the outdated and flawed electoral college.’

GOP Sen. Mike Lee of Utah slammed the proposal, calling it ‘a phenomenally bad idea,’ in a post on X. ‘So naturally, Democrats are pushing it,’ he added.

Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., responded to the proposal by accusing the Senate Democrats of wanting ‘to trample the Constitution.’

President-elect Donald Trump trounced Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, winning both the Electoral College and the popular vote.

But there have been elections in U.S. history in which the winner of the Electoral College did not win the popular vote.

The most recent example was Trump’s 2016 victory where former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won the national popular vote but lost the Electoral College.

With former president and now President-elect Donald Trump unable to run again for the White House in 2028, Vice President-elect JD Vance appears to be the heir apparent to the America First movement and the Republican Party’s powerful MAGA base.

But even though the 40-year-old Vance will be considered the front-runner in the next GOP presidential nomination race, the chair of the Republican National Committee says the party will hold to its traditional role of staying neutral in an open and contested presidential primary.

‘We will,’ RNC chair Michael Whatley said in a Fox News Digital interview.

Vance, with Trump’s support in a party firmly in the president-elect’s grip, will be very hard to knock off in the 2028 Republican presidential primaries.

‘We are getting four more years of Trump and then eight years of JD Vance,’ Donald Trump Jr. said in October on the campaign trail. 

The younger Trump, who’s a powerful ally of the vice president-elect, is extremely popular with the MAGA base.

‘The vice president will be in the catbird seat. No question about it,’ longtime Republican consultant Dave Carney recently told Fox News Digital. 

Carney, a veteran of numerous Republican presidential campaigns over the past four decades, said that Vance ‘is the guy to beat.’

David Kochel, another longtime GOP strategist with plenty of presidential campaign experience, said that Vance is the front-runner due to ‘the size and the scope’ of Trump’s Electoral College and popular vote victories last month, ‘and the implied passing of the torch from Donald Trump.’

‘There will be no shortage of people looking at it. But most people looking at it are seeing the relative strength of the Trump victory and the movement,’ Kochel said.

However, Kochel noted that ‘nobody will completely defer to JD Vance. There will be a contest. There always is.’

Whatley, who was interviewed a week after Trump asked him to continue as RNC chair moving forward, said he’s ‘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,’ he added.

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 on Thursday 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 rival Democratic National Committee, 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.

A co-chair of the House of Representatives’ Congressional DOGE Caucus said there is ‘real motivation’ behind accomplishing its mission of cutting the federal deficit.

Rep. Blake Moore, R-Utah, is House GOP Conference vice chair and the No. 6 House Republican, and recently joined Reps. Aaron Bean, R-Fla., and Pete Sessions, R-Texas, in leading the caucus.

The group’s name is an acronym for Delivering Outstanding Government Efficiency, coinciding with the Department of Government Efficiency – also DOGE for short – a new advisory panel commissioned by President-elect Trump and led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.

The caucus’ first meeting is slated for Tuesday. Moore said he hopes they can ‘create some structure on what we want to accomplish and set some initial first easy wins.’

He did not elaborate on what those wins would be, but suggested one of the caucus’ main goals would be delivering recommendations to Musk and Ramaswamy on how to make the federal government more efficient.

‘We’ve got people that have great ideas from their various committees on things, areas that we can find efficiencies, and just get that all on paper and eventually, you know, provide some recommendations,’ Moore said.

The Utah Republican is hopeful that his unique position as a member of House leadership will allow him to be a conduit between the caucus and fellow congressional leaders.

‘I was looking for another opportunity to help serve the conference,’ Moore said of his decision to become a co-chair. ‘There is a ton of bipartisan work that’s already been done on this type of stuff for years leading up to it. We needed this moment as a catalyst to do it. So I am just thrilled to be a part of the leadership team.’

He also suggested that the enthusiasm for DOGE was unlike anything he’d seen for prior government initiatives.

‘There’s real motivation behind this, and the American people are galvanized by this. For example, I’m the chair, co-chair of the Ski and Snowboard caucus. Utah has… got the best ski – greatest snow on earth and all that. That doesn’t draw the attention,’ Moore said.

‘But I became a co-chair also of the DOGE Caucus, and you could tell a widespread interest in this from both media back home [and] constituents. We have to honor that.’

Moore also dismissed concerns that DOGE’s internet meme-inspired branding might make people take it less seriously, arguing instead that it will help make Americans enthusiastic about the mission.

‘Doge’ is also the name of an internet meme popular in the 2010s, depicting a Shiba Inu and frequently accompanied by phrases in broken English representing the dog’s supposed internal monologue.

Musk has made no secret of his affinity for the meme, and even coined the name ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ while posting references to it on X, formerly Twitter, before Trump made it a reality. He’s also promoted a cryptocurrency of the same name.

‘I’ve never seen so much excitement and engagement from my constituents,’ Moore said. ‘The fact that it’s the Doge, I think this is how people connect now. Like, you know, that’s a good thing because it makes it relatable. And so I think it’s definitely something that kind of makes people laugh a little bit and just find the irony in it.’

‘Whatever can get people’s attention, you have to use that for good. Then you’ve got potential for impact.’

A top aide on Vice President Harris’ failed presidential campaign recently called for more cultural voices like the vocal anti-America and anti-Israel Twitch star, Hasan Piker, who previously faced backlash for saying that ‘America deserved 9/11.’

Harris’ former deputy campaign manager, Rob Flaherty, said during a recent interview that Democrats are ‘losing hold of culture’ and laid out a strategy for them to develop a ‘whole thriving system’ ahead of future elections.

‘We need a whole thriving ecosystem,’ Flaherty told Semafor. ‘It’s not just Pod Save America, though I think we should have more of them. It’s not just Hasan Piker. We should have more Hasan Pikers. It’s also the cultural creators, the folks who are one rung out who influence the nonpartisan audience. Those things all need to happen together.’

‘The reality is it’s not going to be big media organizations. It’s going to be a network and a constellation of individual personalities, because that’s how people get their information now,’ he added.

Flaherty, who previously served as the director of digital strategy for the Biden White House, is likely to face backlash for calling for ‘more Hasan Pikers’ due to Piker’s past controversial comments. Piker, who previously raised more than $1 million for Palestinian aid, has used his platform with millions of followers to downplay and justify terrorist attacks such as Oct. 7 and 9/11 as acts of resistance in recent years.

During a 2019 livestream, Piker praised the ‘brave f—ing soldier’ who wounded conservative U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, while he was deployed to Afghanistan as a Navy SEAL, asking, ‘Didn’t he go to war and, like, literally lose his eye because some mujahideen, a brave f—ing soldier, f—ed his eyehole with their d—?’

He went on to say that ‘America deserved 9/11, I’m saying it,’ before later walking it back and saying it was ‘inappropriate.’ However, in another stream this year, Piker joked about 9/11 again, saying, ‘Oh my god, 9/11 2 is going to be so sick’ and ‘give Saudi Arabia a nuke so they can do 9/11 2.’

In another stream, Piker broadcast propaganda from the Houthis, an Iranian-backed group in Yemen that has been designated by the U.S. as a terrorist group. Instead of explicitly addressing the materials as questionable propaganda, the streamer instead expressed sympathy and admiration for the group.

‘They do musicals about, like, their f—ing actions all the time,’ Piker said of the terrorist propaganda. ‘They love walking over like the American flag and the Israeli flag, side by side.’

‘They do not care about the heavy missiles … they will literally take the war to them no matter what. … For them, it’s an act of resistance. You know what I mean?’ he added.

‘It doesn’t matter if f—ing rapes happened on Oct. 7,‘ Piker said in a May 22 stream. ‘It doesn’t change the dynamic [of Palestinians and Israelis] for me.’

During an April 18 stream, Piker also expressed that Hamas was the ‘lesser evil’ next to the Israeli military.

While Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and others have been on Piker’s platform, Dem Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York wrote a letter this year to top executives at Twitch and Amazon expressing ‘alarm about the amplification of antisemitism on Twitch at the hands of Hasan Piker’ and said Piker has ’emerged as the poster child for the post-October 7th outbreak of antisemitism in America.’

‘Outside the context of October 7th, Mr. Piker has even joked and mused about men date-raping women on a college campus and has posted an image of a handgun on top of a United States Senator in what appears to be open invitation to gun violence against a sitting elected official,’ Torres said. ‘Inviting one’s followers to shoot an elected official, whether it be done in earnest or in jest, is the kind of threat that warrants serious attention from federal law enforcement.’

Piker’s Twitch streams regularly hit more than a million views and often have as many as 30,000 viewers at a given time.  

Fox News Digital reached out to Flaherty for comment but did not receive a response.

Fox News’ Andrea Margolis contributed reporting.

President-elect Trump announced his nominations for U.S. ambassadors to five countries on Monday, including Austria and Japan.

In a series of Truth Social posts on Monday night, the incoming president detailed his picks for the U.S. ambassadors to Japan, the Dominican Republic, Austria, Luxembourg and Uruguay. Each nominee will need to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Trump named George Edward Glass, a former U.S. ambassador to Portugal, to serve as the incoming U.S. ambassador to Japan.

‘As a former President of an Investment Bank, George will bring his business acumen to the Ambassador’s position,’ Trump said of Glass. ‘George graduated from the University of Oregon, served as Alumni President, and on its Board of Trustees. He will always PUT AMERICA FIRST. Congratulations George!’

Leah Francis Campos, the sister of ‘Fox & Friends Weekend’ co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy and sister-in-law to incoming Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, was also picked to be an ambassador. Trump nominated her to serve as U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic.

‘Leah served our Country as a CIA Case Officer before becoming Senior Advisor for the Western Hemisphere on the House Foreign Affairs Committee,’ the Republican wrote. ‘Leah will take her love of Country, and commitment to our National Security and Prosperity, to her post as U.S. Ambassador to the Dominican Republic. Congratulations Leah!’

Trump also announced Arthur Graham Fisher, the president of Fisher Realty, as his pick for U.S. ambassador to Austria.

‘He has been consistently ranked as a top broker in the area, and the State of North Carolina, representing many of the most astute clients in America,’ the incoming president wrote. ‘Art has been a staunch supporter of America First Policies, and will make us proud in Austria!’

Trump added that Stacey Feinberg and Lou Rinaldi will serve as U.S. ambassadors to Luxembourg and Uruguay, respectively.

‘As a Producer of Broadway musicals, a motivational speaker, and a Board Member of the Women Founders Network, Stacey is committed to supporting women in launching their careers, and scaling their businesses to unprecedented success,’ Trump wrote of Feinberg. ‘Stacy will be GREAT, and make America proud!’

Of Rinaldi, Trump called his nominee a ‘successful businessman, entrepreneur, and longtime friend,’ who grew up in Uruguay.

‘Lou is a great golfer, and will be in a Country with some terrific courses. Having grown up in Uruguay, he possesses an intimate understanding of the Country’s culture and history,’ Trump’s statement read. ‘His expertise and background make him exceptionally qualified to advance U.S. interests, and strengthen the longstanding partnership between the United States and Uruguay.’

Fox News’ Deirdre Heavy contributed to this report.