A majority of Americans say they are optimistic about the polices President-elect Trump will pursue in his incoming administration, according to a new poll from Monmouth University.

The poll found that 53% of Americans are either very or somewhat optimistic about Trump’s second term. That is a slight rise from the weeks prior to his first term, when just 50% of Americans said they were optimistic. The only segment of Americans who are less optimistic about Trump’s second term than they were about his first are Democrats, with just 10% saying they look forward to the next four years.

‘It should come as no surprise there is a stark partisan divide on the Trump agenda. The real question is how these policies will affect American families, especially among those who voted for Trump in 2024,’ Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute, said in a statement.

The poll also found that Trump’s least popular policy is his tariff agenda, with 47% of respondents saying they expect tariffs will hurt their family and just 23% saying they expected it to help. One of Trump’s most popular polices is his plan to eliminate income tax for certain wages, with 48% of respondents saying the plan would help their family, compared to just 15% who say it would hurt.

Monmouth conducted the poll from Dec. 5-10, surveying 1,006 U.S. adults via phone interviews and online surveys. The poll advertises a margin of error of 3.9%.

The poll comes as Trump is cruising toward his second inauguration and has begun targeting perceived enemies in the media. Trump on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the Des Moines register and pollster Ann Selzer. The lawsuit claims the plaintiffs committed ‘brazen election interference’ and fraud by publishing a final 2024 presidential poll showing Vice President Kamala Harris leading him in Iowa. Trump ultimately won the state by 13 points.

The lawsuit was filed Monday night in Polk County, Iowa under the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act and related provisions. It says it seeks ‘accountability for brazen election interference committed by’ the Des Moines Register (DMR) and Selzer ‘in favor of now-defeated former Democrat candidate Kamala Harris through use of a leaked and manipulated Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll conducted by Selzer and S&C and published by DMR and Gannett in the Des Moines Register on Nov. 2, 2024.’ The lawsuit is also against the parent company of the Des Moines Register, Gannett, which also owns other publications, including USA Today.

Trump attorneys said Selzer had ‘prided herself on a mainstream reputation for accuracy despite several far less publicized egregious polling misses in favor of Democrats’ and said she ‘would have the public believe it was merely a coincidence that one of the worst polling misses of her career came just days before the most consequential election in memory, was leaked and happened to go against the Republican candidate.’

‘The Harris Poll was no ‘miss’ but rather an attempt to influence the outcome of the 2024 Presidential Election,’ the lawsuit states, adding that ‘defendants and their cohorts in the Democrat Party hoped that the Harris Poll would create a false narrative of inevitability for Harris in the final week of the 2024 Presidential Election.’ 

‘Instead, the November 5 election was a monumental victory for President Trump in both the Electoral College and the Popular Vote, an overwhelming mandate for his America First principles, and the consignment of the radical socialist agenda to the dustbin of history.’ 

The lawsuit notes that Selzer, after more than 35 years in the industry, ‘retired in disgrace from polling less than two weeks after this embarrassing rout.’

Fox News’ Brooke Singman contributed to this report.

Progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., was defeated in her bid to be the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, losing to Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia.

Connolly, 74, bested the 35-year-old Ocasio-Cortez with 131 to 84 votes in what is seen as a blow for progressives who backed Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the progressive ‘Squad.’

‘I thank my colleagues for their support and the confidence they’ve placed in me to lead House Democrats on the Oversight Committee,’ Connolly said in a statement after being elected by the House Democratic Caucus.

Connolly called out ‘the Republican playbook,’ in which he accused Republicans of using ‘debunked conspiracy theories’ and enabling ‘the worst abuses of the Trump Administration.’

‘This will be trench warfare.’ Connolly said. ‘Now is not the time to be timid. I promise the American people that our Committee Democrats will be a beacon of truth and prepared from day one to counter Republican gaslighting.’

When Fox News Senior Congressional Correspondent Chad Pergram asked Connolly if he was up for a potential fight against the Trump administration, Connolly said he was ‘raring to go.’

‘I did it before for four years, and bested them on a number of occasions, and I’m raring to go again,’ he said.

Connolly said that President-elect Trump ‘may feel more emboldened’ after his reelection victory, though ‘that may also make him more reckless.’

‘There is a law in this land, and we’re going to make sure it’s enforced,’ Connolly said.

In his written statement, Connolly said Democrats will be ‘disciplined’ and ‘laser focused on getting results on the kitchen table issues that are affecting the American people the most.’

‘We will stand up for our democracy and for truth,’ the statement said. ‘And we will protect the tremendous and historic progress we have made as House Democrats.’

Fox News’ Chad Pergram and Tyler Olson contributed to this report.

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.