Environmental groups appear to be breaking with the Democratic Party after protesters disrupted a recent leadership meeting, which comes as the party attempts to regain its footing after suffering defeat in the 2024 presidential election.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) held a candidate forum on Thursday evening in Washington, D.C., ahead of their upcoming election to determine who will lead the campaign arm into the next election cycle. 

While the event was intended to showcase some of the party’s potential new faces, it was interrupted by several protesters, including climate activists from the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led, left-wing climate action organization, who demanded the DNC establish a working election strategy for the party after the 2024 loss.

‘What will you do to get fossil fuel money out of Democratic politics? We are facing a climate emergency!’ Fox News Digital heard one protester shout.

Other protesters made calls for the DNC chair candidates to bring back the party’s ban on corporate PAC and lobbyist donations.

‘To defeat Trump, the Democratic Party needs to loudly and proudly take a stand against billionaires and show voters that Democrats are the only party ready to fight for working people,’ Adah, an activist from the Sunrise Movement who made an interruption, said in a statement issued by Sunrise.

‘That’s how we will win back young voters and working class voters and defeat Trump,’ Adah added.

About a dozen protesters interrupted and were kicked out of the event — the final meeting ahead of Saturday’s DNC election. 

The Democratic candidates and moderates grew frustrated with the protesters who were interrupting the event. 

Jason Paul, a candidate running for DNC chair, said the protesters were ‘hijack[ing] the whole evening’ and turning the event ‘into scream night.’

‘I’m surprised I haven’t seen more of it,’ former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley told reporters after the event. ‘They’re going to be on this planet a lot longer than I am, and if they stop caring passionately about the planet, then we have no hope at all. So it didn’t bother me.’

Eight candidates are running to serve as chair of the DNC next cycle, including O’Malley, Wisconsin chair Ben Wikler, Minnesota chair Ken Martin, and former two-time Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson.

The DNC chair election will be held Saturday.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., is being criticized by Republicans after pledging Democrats would fight President Donald Trump’s agenda ‘in the streets.’

‘Right now, we’re going to keep focus on the need to look out for everyday New Yorkers and everyday Americans who are under assault by an extreme MAGA Republican agenda that is trying to cut taxes for billionaires, donors, and wealthy corporations and then stick New Yorkers and working class Americans across the country with the bill,’ Jeffries said.

‘That’s not acceptable. We are going to fight it legislatively. We are going to fight it in the courts. We’re going to fight it in the streets.’

Republicans blasted Jeffries for his choice of words, accusing him of inflaming political tensions in an already-tense political climate.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., immediately demanded that Jeffries apologize.

‘House Minority Leader [Jeffries] should promptly apologize for his use of inflammatory and extreme rhetoric,’ Emmer wrote on X. ‘President Trump and the Republicans are focused on uniting the country; Jeffries needs to stop trying to divide it.’

A senior White House official told Fox News, ‘Hakeem Jeffries must apologize for this disgraceful call to violence.’

Jeffries spokesperson Christie Stephenson told Fox News Digital, ‘The notion that Leader Jeffries supports violence is laughable. Republicans are the party that pardons violent felons who assault police officers. Democrats are the party of John Lewis and the right to petition the government peacefully.’

She also referred to the comments as promoting ‘nonviolent protest’ on X.

The House Democratic leader was holding a press conference in Brooklyn on Friday aimed at criticizing Trump’s federal funding freeze and his handling of the tragic aircraft collision in Washington, D.C., earlier this week.

Jeffries credited Democrats with stopping the Trump administration’s federal funding freeze.

‘As was demonstrated this week, House Democrats, Senate Democrats, Democratic governors, and everyday Americans all across the country rose up in defiance as it relates to the illegal, unlawful, and extreme federal funding freeze that is part of the Republican rip-off agenda,’ Jeffries said. ‘We fought it, we stopped it, and we will never surrender.’

The Trump administration’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued an order earlier this week pausing most federal funding while directing agencies to conduct thorough reviews of where taxpayer dollars are being spent.

The White House later clarified the memo to mean funding going toward progressive causes that Trump had explicitly blocked through executive orders. 

Nevertheless, it was still blocked by a federal judge, and hours later, the memo was rescinded.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the OMB memo was rescinded in light of the court order but clarified that funding blocks set up by Trump’s executive orders were still in effect.

The top Republican on the Senate health committee, Sen. Bill Cassidy, faced criticism from fellow Republicans after he suggested his vote for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary is not a lock. 

Cassidy, chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, said during closing remarks at Kennedy’s second confirmation hearing of the week that he was ‘struggling’ to confirm the HHS secretary nominee over his inability to admit vaccines are safe and don’t cause autism. ‘A worthy movement called ‘MAHA,’’ Cassidy said Thursday, ‘to improve the health of Americans, or to undermine it, always asking for more evidence, and never accepting the evidence that is there … That is why I’ve been struggling with your nomination.’ 

GOP Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., did not hold back his anger over Cassidy’s remarks, saying, ‘RFK is going to run HHS whether you like it or not.’ The post included a photo of Cassidy and Kennedy shaking hands at Thursday’s confirmation hearing.

‘The Senate is ours, and the moment Trump decides he’s had enough of random senators delaying our mission, JD [Vance] is walking in and taking the gavel as president of the Senate,’ Higgins said. Vice President JD Vance would be the tie-breaking vote if the resulting tally goes along party lines and Cassidy and two other Republicans defect. Vance did so after GOP Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine voted against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s nomination.     

‘There’s zero you can do about that,’ Higgins said. ‘We, the people, will not be stopped. We’re saving the country and RFK is part of the formula. So, vote your conscience, senator, or don’t. Either way, we’re watching.’

GOP organizer and strategist Scott Presler said that if Cassidy did not vote for Kennedy, that he would ‘personally come to Louisiana’ to organize a primary challenge against Cassidy in an effort to oust him. ‘We already have a home base in Iberia Parish,’ Pressler said. Meanwhile, a chapter of the Louisiana Republican Assembly replied to Pressler’s threats, noting they were ‘ready to mobilize when needed.’

Charlie Kirk, another GOP organizer and activist who is also a close ally of President Donald Trump, shared a slightly more measured condemnation of Cassidy. ‘I believe this was a sincere moment from Chairman Bill Cassidy,’ Kirk wrote in response to the senator’s closing remarks at Thursday’s hearing. However, Kirk added that he ‘respectfully’ thinks that Cassidy ‘has this backwards.’

‘Many already don’t trust vaccine manufacturers who enjoy legal immunity for any injuries they cause. Many already don’t trust our big food producers and the ingredients they use. Many already don’t trust big medicine, big hospitals, or big pharma,’ Kirk said. ‘RFK Jr. has said repeatedly he’s pro-vaccine, but he’s willing to ask the same questions millions of parents are asking right now about ramped-up vaccine schedules, harmful ingredients, and a blind trust in the manufacturers that are enriched by government mandates, even after COVID.’

While Republicans were incensed by Cassidy’s remarks, the president of Advancing American Freedom (AAF), a conservative nonprofit founded by Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence, applauded Cassidy’s critical approach to Kennedy’s nomination.

‘It’s refreshing to see senators taking their advise and consent role seriously,’ AAF President Tim Chapman said when asked about Cassidy’s comments. ‘We have separate branches of government for a reason, and nominees, such as RFK, who will be handling the largest amount of taxpayer dollars and controlling the federal response to the life issue deserve serious consideration. Every senator must treat this nominee with the same gravitas that Senator Cassidy is.’

Fox News Digital reached out to representatives for Cassidy but did not receive a response by publication time. 

Congressional Black Caucus Chair Yvette Clarke has accused President Donald Trump of trying to ‘purge’ non-White workers from the federal government.

‘Ourrepublic’s president, Donald Trump, chose to address a nation in mourning with only fiction and White supremacist ideologies,’ Clarke said during a Friday press conference in Brooklyn, New York.

‘Yesterday, he spun that fiction for one reason and one reason alone, and that is to further his administration’s purge of America’s minority employees.’

Her comments are in response to Trump’s press conference on the deadly midair collision in Washington, D.C., this week. A Black Hawk military helicopter crashed into an American Eagle passenger plane that was moments away from landing, likely killing all 67 people aboard both aircraft.

Trump speculated whether diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts played a role in the tragedy during a press conference Thursday, though both he and other officials maintain the cause is not yet clear.

‘It just could have been,’ Trump said when asked if he believed the crash was caused by diversity hiring. ‘We’ve had a much higher standard than anybody else. And there are things where you have to go by brainpower. You have to go by psychological quality, and psychological quality is a very important element of it. These are various, very powerful tests that we put to use. And they were terminated by Biden.’

He claimed former President Joe Biden ‘went by a standard that seeks the exact opposite.’

‘But certainly, for an air traffic controller, we want the brightest, the smartest, the sharpest. We want somebody that’s psychologically superior. And that’s what we’re going to have,’ Trump said.

Investigations into the collision are still ongoing, and there currently is no evidence that points to DEI or other specific causes.

Though Trump did not mention race during his press conference, Clarke claimed Trump’s remarks were evidence of a ‘racist’ agenda.

‘We wait for the absolute truth of the matter. It is with great and righteous indignation that I recognize the comments and actions of one individual in particular, who did not attempt whatsoever to wait for those facts,’ Clarke said. 

‘The individual who, rather than empathize with the families of the 67 victims of this heartbreaking disaster, attempt to unify a grieving country, or even offer his prayers, chose to capitalize on this tragedy by furthering his racist, insane agenda against America’s diverse employees.’

She later said, ‘He will continue with the vilification and demonization, he will continue with this madness, until our republic is as White and as male as this administration can bend and break the law to make it.’

Democrats have hammered Trump for tying the collision to DEI policies under the last administration. 

Meanwhile, there are voices on the left pushing blame on Trump’s aim to slash the federal workforce and other Republican policies.

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment on Clarke’s remarks.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) plans to focus much of its campaign efforts on winning over rural voters in the 2026 midterm elections, according to the party’s outgoing chairman— a sprawling effort they hope will help the party engage with and educate new voters, and loosen what many see as President Donald Trump’s ironclad grip on many red state voters.

The new strategy was previewed exclusively to Fox News Digital by outgoing DNC Chair Jaime Harrison ahead of the DNC’s slated vote Saturday to select his successor as next party leader.

In an interview, Harrison said the strategy, which has been weeks, if not months in the making, is designed to refute many of Trump’s campaign trail claims on the economy, health insurance and taxes for average Americans.

Rather, Harrison said the aim is to tie Trump more closely to these policies and to make the case to voters directly that Trump is ‘using rural America, and giving rural voters nothing in return.’

‘An examination of Trump’s second term agenda and first administrative actions reveals that rural families and the resources they rely on are in greater jeopardy than ever before,’ the DNC said in a preview of its new election strategy memo, shared exclusively with Fox News. 

‘One can conclude, Donald Trump is using rural America and giving rural voters nothing in return,’ the memo continued.

Trump’s rhetoric has long been praised as refreshing by voters, who resonate with what many said they see as his unorthodox, anti-establishment bona fides. However, there is a difference between Trump as a presidential candidate and Trump as president. It is ‘him just saying things and not having the power to implement them,’ compared to being back in the Oval Office, Harrison said. 

The DNC’s effort, however, will seek to challenge that assumption by highlighting victories secured by former President Joe Biden in his first term, including tightening CAFE fuel economy standards for gas-fired vehicles, investing in EV manufacturing and battery supply chains, cracking down on PFAS contaminants and pollution, and allocating billions of dollars in clean energy and climate spending.

Trump has vowed to undo many of these policies after retaking control of the Oval Office.

To date, he has made good on his promise. Trump used his first week in office to sign hundreds of executive orders and actions, a dizzying flurry of orders that, among other things, sought to crack down on immigration, unleash U.S. liquefied natural gas exports and freeze all congressionally approved spending, if only temporarily.

Democrats, for their part, have sought to use Trump’s vice-grip on the post-inauguration news cycle to double down on their efforts to appeal to voters and prepare for the midterms, no matter how far-off they might seem.

This includes focusing on issues like healthcare coverage and medical providers, both of which have suffered ‘major’ disparities in rural America, and where doctors have exited en masse amid a flurry of hospital closures and a dearth of insured patients.

Many of the Republican-led states that did not opt to expand Medicaid saw wide hospital closures, higher out-of-pocket costs for prescriptions and much more limited access to opiod recovery or substance abuse programs, Harrison said.

Rural communities are also seeing more limited access to doctors, emergency treatment centers and a lack of access to important medication, as Biden-era programs wane.

‘These things are going to have a detrimental impact on rural America,’ he said.

Still, Harrison acknowledged that the Democratic Party also needs to do its part to meet voters where they are at in 2026, just months after the party’s humbling defeat in the 2024 presidential election.

However, changing hearts and minds will not happen overnight, he said.

Rather, it will require many conversations from state party leaders at the local level, who can both identify key issues for voters and help recruit good candidates for the upcoming election cycle.

‘I think what we have to do is paint a picture for the American people of all the things that we rely upon— all the things that are necessary and needed in these communities, and that sometimes we don’t even know are [programs] that the federal government is funding,’ Harrison said.

 ‘Those things are in jeopardy under this administration.’

‘We want to let people know these things aren’t just happening by happenstance. It’s happening because Donald Trump is taking this radical right wing extremist agenda and trying to implement and therefore impacting the quality of your life.’

The DNC’s effort will also spell out to voters what they say will happen if these policies are rolled back, in accordance with Trump’s plans, Harrison said. 

‘The second thing is having our cannons— we go out, and we work with our state parties, and recruit candidates to run in 2026,’ he said of candidates who are well-positioned to speak to the communities they are representing.

In Harrison’s view, this will also help explain to voters how Trump’s drastic cuts or reductions will impact their communities specifically. 

‘And then we continue to have that conversation, one-on- one, in small and larger groups with the people in those communities,’ he said. ‘And that is how we put ourselves on a much stronger foot going into the 2026 midterm election. ‘

A stunning new poll this week found that a mere 31% of Americans have a favorable view of the Democratic Party, with a whopping 57% viewing it negatively, and if you want to know why, look no further than the shameful antics of lefty senators in this month’s confirmation hearings.

What emerged through all the snide screeching and sarcastic snobbery is a Democratic Party that is pushing a Big Pharmaceutical agenda, agitating for forever wars, obsessed to the point of mania with January 6, and that believes the Army should be performing sex change operations. 

And they wonder why they lost the election.

In a pair of hearings featuring Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, the Democrats railed against his views on food and health, while ignoring the chronic disease and overprescription of drugs for our kids he seeks to address.

Sen. Bernie Sanders was specifically called out by RFK Jr. in the hearing for taking $1.5 million dollars from Big Pharma, to which the Vermont Senator shot back, ‘out of $200 million!’ while insisting that money came from pharmaceutical workers.

The American people aren’t dumb, they know that big pharma employees are, by and large, big fans of big pharma, and what RFK, Jr. was pointing out was that so are most Democrats in Congress.

When it came to Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s pick for director of National Intelligence, Sen. Mark Kelly D-Ariz., gravely expressed concern that her criticism of Middle East regime change wars was somehow Russian propaganda, not a legitimate policy position.

To this Gabbard wisely responded, ‘My fear was a repeat of the deployment of another half a million soldiers like we saw in Iraq toward what was the Obama administration’s goal, which was regime change in Syria.’

Avoiding new wars is a big part of why Trump was elected and Kamala Harris was defeated. The American people want a sound foreign policy, not simply a knee-jerk reaction to whatever dictators around the globe say or do.

But the Democrats weren’t done impugning the president’s nominees. They saved particular ire for Kash Patel, who Trump tapped to head the FBI. 

Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., leading purveyor of the Russian Collusion Hoax, at one point asked the nominee to stand and face the Capitol Police in the room while the senator discussed Patel’s efforts to help the families of those imprisoned for the Capitol riot.

First of all, these are exactly the kinds of stupid antics that make Americans furious, and second, Schiff needs to realize that voters rejected Democrats’ constant hemming and hawing about January 6, they just want a fair FBI that doesn’t target political enemies.

Finally, in Pete Hegseth’s hearing for the top spot at the Pentagon, Democrats seemed more interested in making sure mothers can serve in combat and that the military perform sex change operations than ensuring the lethality and readiness of our armed forces. 

What we witnessed this month in the senate is not just a Democratic Party out of touch with the American people, but one that isn’t even in the same ideological galaxy.

Voters made clear that they want to Make America Healthy Again, they don’t want forever wars, they don’t want politics in the FBI, and they want a military focused on fighting, not social justice. The Senate Democrats seem to oppose all of this.

These are the wages of a political party that has spent the last decade solely defining itself as the opposite of Trump. Whatever Trump says or does, they’re against it. It is the only platform they have left.

And Trump knows and uses this fact, by putting himself on the common sense side of issue after issue, he forces Democrats, or maybe we should say tricks them, into defending the absurd and indefensible.

A glass-half-full Democrat may look at the abysmal poll numbers and say that this is natural after a big loss, or that there is plenty of time to fix it before the next election, but they have to want to fix it, and know what to fix.

In order to do this, Democrats must take their laser focus away from Donald Trump and his pugnacious braggadocio and put that focus where it belongs, on the American people.

If they don’t, if Democrats remain nothing more than the Anti-Trump party, then their period in the political wilderness could last a very, very long time.

House Republicans are rolling out a new package of election security legislation this week, with GOP lawmakers already setting eyes on 2026.

Republican Study Committee Chairman August Pfluger, R-Texas, introduced the bills this week, with four lawmakers co-sponsoring the entire package and various other members supporting specific pieces.

The three pieces of legislation are a bill to prohibit noncitizen residents of Washington, D.C., from voting in local elections, a bill to block noncitizens from helping administer elections and a constitutional amendment to prevent noncitizens from voting.

It is currently illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. Though the law does not apply to state and local elections, there is currently no state in the U.S. that allows noncitizens to vote in statewide elections.

Some areas, however, allow for noncitizens to vote in local-level elections – including Washington, D.C.

‘Free and fair elections are the cornerstone of our democracy, which is why protecting them from noncitizen influence is essential to our nation’s sovereignty and will ensure America has a flourishing democracy for decades to come,’ Pfluger told Fox News Digital.

‘These bills are three commonsense steps we can take to ensure noncitizens are not influencing our elections by voting in them or administering them. We must safeguard the integrity of our electoral system, and these bills will work to do just that.’

Earlier this year, House Republicans passed the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which requires proof of citizenship in the voter registration process.

The majority of Democrats have cried foul at GOP-led efforts to crack down on noncitizen voting, with progressive lawmakers accusing Republicans of trying to spread doubt about the country’s election processes by targeting something that’s already illegal in most cases.

Democrats also criticized Republicans for pushing bills like the SAVE Act just weeks before the November election. 

However, Pfluger and his GOP allies are now side-stepping that criticism by introducing the bills well ahead of the 2026 midterm races, when historical precedent suggests that House Republicans face an uphill battle to keeping their majority.

Among the co-sponsors of the entire package is House Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, who is playing a critical role in congressional Republicans’ efforts to pass a massive conservative policy overhaul via the budget reconciliation process.

Border security and immigration reform are expected to be a significant part of that forthcoming legislation.