President Donald Trump’s $9.4 billion spending cuts package survived a key hurdle on Wednesday afternoon, setting the measure up for a final House-wide vote later this week.

Trump’s proposal, which was introduced as legislation by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., would cut $8.3 billion from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and just over $1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting distributes federal funding to NPR and PBS.

The House of Representatives made a procedural motion known as a ‘rule vote,’ which passed mostly along party lines. 

The rule passing now allows for debate on the $9.4 billion spending cut measure, followed by a final House-wide vote.

But it’s not atypical for House leaders to include unrelated measures in rule votes, as is the case with the spending cuts package – House GOP leaders included a provision with minor changes to Trump’s ‘one big, beautiful bill’ to account for the Senate needing to amend the bill.

That latter piece of legislation, a vast tax and immigration bill, is moving through the budget reconciliation process.

By dropping the Senate’s threshold for advancement from 60 votes to 51, it allows the party in power to skirt the minority – in this case, Democrats – on vast pieces of legislation, provided they adhere to a specific set of budgetary rules.

House GOP leaders said they needed to make the recent changes to the bill to better adhere to the Senate’s ‘Byrd Bath,’ when the Senate parliamentarian reviews the bill and removes anything not adhering to reconciliation guidelines.

Whereas that deals with the government’s mandatory spending processes that are more difficult to amend, the $9.4 billion spending cuts package tackles discretionary spending that Congress controls every year.

It’s called a ‘rescissions package,’ which is a formal proposal by the White House to claw back federal funds already allocated for the current fiscal year.

Like reconciliation, the mechanism allows for a 51-vote majority in the Senate rather than 60. Congress has 45 days to consider it, or it is deemed rejected.

Republican leaders have held up this rescissions package as the first step to codifying the billions of dollars of government waste identified by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Trump allies have also made clear they view this first package as a test of what kind of cuts congressional Republicans can stomach.

And while the rule vote was expected to pass, the bill could have trouble ahead of its expected Thursday afternoon vote.

Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., pointed out in a bipartisan statement that the media funding represents less than 0.01% of the federal budget and said taking that money away would ‘dismantle a trusted source of information for millions of Americans.’

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., told reporters on Tuesday that he got assurances that USAID cuts would exclude critical medical funding.

‘I feel better than what I was hearing last week, that was gonna be a total cut,’ he said, without revealing whether he would support the bill.

Taiwan’s top envoy to the U.S. urged the Senate to ease tax burdens between the two countries and asked Congress to fast-track foreign military sales, following a closed-door lunch Wednesday with the House.  

Ambassador Alexander Tah-Ray Yui, Taipei’s top representative in Washington, told Fox News Digital that he is encouraged that U.S. leaders recognize the urgent existential threat China poses, but emphasized the need to get weapons into the hands of the Taiwanese military more quickly and to address issues impeding two-way investment. 

‘We appreciate the United States prioritizing Taiwan and helping us strengthen our defense capabilities,’ Yui said. ‘We’re cheering on more military commitments to the states and [a] joint effort to speed up the delivery of the products that we bought.’

Yui called on the Senate to advance a stalled double taxation agreement, which has already cleared the House.

‘That’s an important incentive for Taiwanese companies to come to the United States and invest – but also vice versa for U.S. companies to go to Taiwan,’ he said. ‘We are the only one of the large trading partners without this treatment, which is worrying for the whole country right now.’

By a vote of 423 to 1, the House last Congress passed the United States-Taiwan Expedited Double-Tax Relief Act, legislation that prevents double taxation on cross-border investments. 

The ambassador also offered a sobering assessment of China’s increasingly belligerent posture in the Taiwan Strait and across the Indo-Pacific.

‘We are concerned,’ Yui said. ‘The [People’s Liberation] Army and Navy are increasing their activities around Taiwan, harassing our territorial waters and airspace. These provocations are constant.’

While emphasizing that ‘we don’t want war,’ he noted that the U.S. and regional partners have begun ramping up their own defenses, recognizing the threat.

Rep. August Pfluger, who chairs the influential RSC, told Fox News Digital that the meeting was a show of solidarity with Taiwan’s democratic government and a rebuke of China’s authoritarian policies.

‘China is an existential threat to Taiwan,’ said Pfluger, a Texas Republican. ‘The difference between mainland China and Taiwan is how they treat human life. Taiwan values openness. China suppresses free speech, targets groups like the Uyghur Muslims – it’s deeply concerning.’

The lunch meeting, attended by dozens of House Republicans, comes amid rising tensions in the region – but just as President Donald Trump announced a deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping to ease the trade war. 

While Pfluger did not commit to further supplemental aid, he said he supports efforts by both nations to strengthen military readiness, including Taiwan’s move to increase defense spending to 3% of GDP.

‘It stands to reason that Taiwan increasing their own internal spending on defense, as well as the U.S. recapitalizing our Navy and Air and Space Forces, is vitally important,’ he said.

Asked what message Congress wants to send to the Taiwanese people, Pfluger was unequivocal:

‘We stand by them – as an ally, as a trading partner, as a democracy facing tyranny just next door.’

The conversation came at a time when U.S. military officials are warning China is readying for battle in the Indo-Pacific in an effort to ‘dominate’ the region. 

‘Beijing is preparing for war in the Indo-Pacific as part of its broader strategy to dominate that region and then the world,’ Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Congress this week. He added that such an outcome could put the U.S. economy and its supply chains in a choke hold. 

‘China is undertaking a historic military buildup and actively rehearsing for an invasion of Taiwan,’ he said.

‘These aggressive maneuvers are not routine exercises, they are rehearsals for a forced unification,’ Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, added in his own testimony. 

Taiwan has recently renewed an effort to purge its ranks of Chinese sympathizers, indicting four people on Tuesday suspected of spying for China that had infiltrated the presidential office. 

Two Chinese aircraft carriers spotted conducting operations in the Pacific demonstrated the country’s ‘expansionist’ aims, Taiwan Defense Minister Wellington Koo said Wednesday.

‘Crossing from the first island chain into the second island chain sends a definite political message and their expansionist nature can be seen,’ he told reporters in Taipei.

The first island chain refers to the region from Japan to Taiwan and the Philippines to Borneo and the second island chain spreads farther into the Pacific, toward the U.S. territory of Guam. 

The American Bar Association asked the Department of Justice on Tuesday to reconsider its historic decision to shut the organization out of the judicial nomination process and insisted it rates potential judges fairly.

ABA President William Bay wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi that he was ‘surprised and disappointed’ by her decision, which Bondi revealed in a letter two weeks ago.

‘It is deeply disturbing that the Justice Department has decided to restrict access to judicial nominees without justification or basis,’ Bay wrote.

Bondi accused the ABA, which comprises hundreds of thousands of lawyers and other legal professionals, of favoring Democratic administrations’ nominees and refusing to ‘fix the bias in its ratings.’

The ABA has for seven decades been involved in rating presidents’ nominees to serve as judges in the district and appellate courts and the Supreme Court.

An ABA committee rates potential judges as ‘well qualified,’ ‘qualified’ or ‘not qualified’ based on their experience level, legal writings, and dozens of interviews with the candidates’ colleagues and peers.

Bay noted the ABA rated all three of President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominees as ‘well qualified’ and that it has given ‘well qualified’ or ‘qualified’ ratings to at least 97% of rated nominees for the last two decades.

The ABA has also received nonpublic information about nominees, including their bar records, through DOJ waivers. Bondi said the department will no longer provide those.

Bay’s remarks were the latest development in a protracted legal fight that Trump and Republicans have waged against the ABA and big law over allegations they are plagued by bias. The ABA has on occasion promoted liberal initiatives, including abortion access, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and the LGBTQ agenda. Bay said the rating committee is walled off from the rest of the organization.

‘The Standing Committee’s work is insulated from all other activities of the ABA to ensure its independence and impartiality,’ Bay wrote.

Presidents nominate federal judges, and the Senate votes on them. The judges, once confirmed, serve lifetime appointments.

Presidents and the Senate have for decades included the ABA in the nomination process, but Trump and President George W. Bush declined to give the ABA a first look at potential nominees before announcing them.

Former President Joe Biden continued Trump’s practice but clarified that he valued the ABA’s ratings and only gave it post-nomination access to nominee information to save time.

A DOJ spokesman said in response to Bay’s letter: ‘It’s clear that the American Bar Association has lost its way and no longer treats all nominees in a fair and impartial manner.’

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who leads the Senate panel tasked with vetting potential judges, said in response to Bondi’s decision that it was ‘hardly surprising’ and that the legal organization has ‘consistently taken partisan stances on political issues.’ Grassley noted the ABA could still weigh in on nominees independently of the administration.

‘The Judiciary Committee will still accept letters from the ABA, the same as we do for all outside organizations, but it doesn’t make sense for this administration to be giving favored access to an organization that’s consistently shown political bias,’ Grassley said.

Grassley’s Democratic counterpart, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, said in a statement online that the ABA’s ratings process was objective.

‘The Trump Administration is clearly just trying to cover for unqualified and extreme nominees,’ Durbin said.

Among those once rated as ‘not qualified’ by the ABA was DOJ chief of staff Chad Mizelle’s wife, Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, who serves as a federal judge in Florida. The rating was due to her lack of experience, as the ABA’s criteria for federal judges includes 12 years of experience practicing law.

The ABA had mixed reviews for Justice Clarence Thomas in 1991, ultimately giving him its mid-level ‘qualified’ rating.

– Sixteen Palestinian children, 10 of whom are cancer patients, were evacuated from Gaza on Wednesday as part of an ongoing Jordanian initiative to help civilians amid the war, Fox News has learned.

The humanitarian effort is part of a larger initiative called the ‘Jordan Medical Corridor’ that was developed by King Abdullah II and announced during a White House meeting between the Jordanian leader and President Donald Trump in mid-February.

‘Jordan is keen to bring more child patients from Gaza in each evacuation batch and to expedite the process,’ a Jordanian source told Fox News. ‘There are limitations due to technical and logistical challenges facing the World Health Organization (WHO), as well as Israeli restrictions.’

Despite the limitations, a total of 64 Palestinians were able to leave Gaza on Wednesday for Jordan. The youngest is a 5-month-old baby suffering from severe malnutrition. Other patients include a 6-year-old with explosive injury burns and a 2-year-old with blood cancer. 

Four of the patients were taken by helicopter from the Israel-Jordan border. In Amman, the entire group of children, with the exception of two who will be flown to nearby countries, will receive free medical treatment and housing until the completion of their care.

The current Jordanian mandate aims to evacuate 2,000 children from the Palestinian enclave, while continuing internal efforts to provide field hospital treatment and aid to those still trapped in Gaza.

‘The ongoing Israeli operations make it hard to ensure the safety of the child patients and their families during their transportation to the assembly point and inside the assembly point,’ a Jordanian source added. 

An Israeli official confirmed the evacuation took place at the Kerem Shalom crossing in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, adding that there is cooperation between Israel and Jordan despite the security challenges.

Earlier in the war, Jordan used C-130 aircraft to drop food into Gaza using pallets attached to large parachutes. Some of these drops were done in coordination with U.S. Central Command.

More than 600 days into the war, regional conversations continue to take place aiming for a ceasefire that would end the suffering of Palestinian civilians and bring the remaining 55 hostages held by Hamas home.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II has spoken out against discussions of forced displacement for Palestinians living in Gaza.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is rehiring more than 450 previously fired employees belonging to multiple divisions within the agency’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), according to an HHS official familiar with the matter.

The rehired workers come from four different operational divisions within the CDC: the National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention (NCHHSTP); the National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH); the Immediate Office of the Director (IOD), and the Global Health Center (GHC). 

The move to bring these employees back follows the Trump administration’s sweeping efforts to reorganize HHS and its sub-agencies during its first few months, which reports said included as many as 10,000 layoffs at various health agencies. It also follows multiple actions by the Trump administration following those layoffs to rehire some of the HHS staffers who were initially let go, such as those within the CDC’s World Trade Center Health Program (WTCHP), the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the National Institutes of Health.

‘Personnel that should not have been cut, were cut,’ HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told CBS News in April. ‘We’re reinstating them. And that was always the plan. Part of the – at DOGE, we talked about this from the beginning, is we’re going to do 80% cuts, but 20% of those are going to have to be reinstated, because we’ll make mistakes.’

NCHHSTP will see the greatest number of its workers rehired out of the four divisions, with 214 returning. This HHS division consists of several smaller groups, including the Division of HIV Prevention, which media reports said was cut in half by the Trump administration. 

NCEH will see the next greatest number of returned employees, with 158 coming back. NCEH consists of multiple groups, including one titled the Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice, which the Trump administration initially eliminated altogether as part of its reforms.

IOD will see the third most returning with 71 and CDC’s Global Health Center will see the fewest employees return out of the four divisions with 24 rehired workers.

HHS is just one of several agencies that have rehired employees following reductions in force spurred by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The Internal Revenue Service, the Food and Drug Administration, the State Department, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development have all taken actions to rehire employees who were initially fired as a result of the reduction in force, per the Washington Post. 

‘Under Secretary Kennedy’s leadership, the nation’s critical public health functions remain intact and effective. The Trump administration is committed to protecting essential services – whether it’s supporting coal miners and firefighters through NIOSH, safeguarding public health through lead prevention, or researching and tracking the most prevalent communicable diseases,’ HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said. 

‘HHS is streamlining operations without compromising mission-critical work. Enhancing the health and well-being of all Americans remains our top priority.’

The Trump administration slammed the U.K., Norway, Canada, New Zealand and Australia after the five nations imposed sanctions and travel bans—along with other actions—against Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

‘These sanctions do not advance U.S.-led efforts to achieve a ceasefire, bring all hostages home, and end the war,’ Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement. ‘We reject any notion of equivalence: Hamas is a terrorist organization that committed unspeakable atrocities, continues to hold innocent civilians hostage, and prevents the people of Gaza from living in peace. We remind our partners not to forget who the real enemy is. The United States urges the reversal of the sanctions and stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel.’

Ben-Gvir praised Rubio for his statement, saying that ‘the American administration is a moral compass in the face of the confusion of some Western countries that choose to appease terrorist organizations like Hamas.’ He added that Israel would continue its fight against terrorism.

Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Sa’ar also thanked Rubio for being ‘a clear moral voice’ and said the U.S. official’s statement ‘should be a compass to the international community, to all those preaching [to] Israel, ignoring realities.’

Sa’ar condemned the U.K., Norway, Canada, New Zealand and Australia’s ‘outrageous’ actions against Ben-Gvir and Smotrich on Tuesday. He said the ‘actions and decisions against Israel also contribute to hardening Hamas’ stance in the negotiations for the hostage deal—and distance it and the ceasefire.’

In a joint statement issued by the foreign ministers of U.K., Norway, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich were accused of inciting ‘extremist violence and serious abuses of Palestinian human rights.’ 

All five nations whose foreign ministers issued the joint statement have been critical of Israel as it pursued its post-Oct. 7 war against Hamas.

In May, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the U.K., France and Canada of ‘enabling Hamas’ after the countries demanded that Jerusalem halt its military campaign in Gaza. 

‘I say to President Macron, Prime Minister Carney and Prime Minister Starmer: When mass murderers, rapists, baby killers and kidnappers thank you, you’re on the wrong side of justice,’ Netanyahu said in a video statement. ‘You’re on the wrong side of humanity and you’re on the wrong side of history.’

Australia and New Zealand also issued a joint statement on the Israel-Hamas war in December 2024 in which they called for a ceasefire in Gaza and scolded Israel over its treatment of U.N. agencies, such as the controversial United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

In his Tuesday statement, Sa’ar said Israel will convene a government meeting early next week to discuss its response to the actions taken against the ministers.