Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) faced a fiery crowd during her two-hour townhall in Westfield, a northern suburb of Indianapolis, after defending tech billionaire Elon Musk and his work for President Trump's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Spartz, who represents Indiana’s fifth Congressional District, was repeatedly drowned out by boos from the raucous crowd during her Friday townhall. She talked about Russia’s three-year invasion of Ukraine and refused to call on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and national security adviser Mike Waltz to resign over the Signal chat debacle.

One attendee at the packed event asked Spartz, a Ukrainian-born congresswoman, if she would demand an “immediate” resignation of Hegseth, Waltz and the rest of Trump administration officials that were in the Signal group chat discussing strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen, a thread that The Atlantic magazine’s top editor Jeffrey Goldberg was inadvertently added to.

The crowd then broke out in cheers before Spartz responded, prompting boos.

“So let me just address, no, I will not demand their resignations,” Spartz said.

Waltz added Goldberg to the roughly 18-member chat where Hegseth, hours before the U.S. carried out strikes against the Houthis earlier this month, shared specific information about the weapons used and the timing of the airstrikes, including precise times MQ-9 drones and American F-18 fighter jets lifted off to Yemen.

Apart from the discussion about the Signal chat breach, Spartz also faced backlash for defending DOGE’s work. The advisory board has cut funding and looked to dismantle entire agencies and departments with the goal of rooting out waste and bolstering government efficiency. The initiatives have led to terminations of thousands of federal government employees, developments that have sparked strong criticism from Democrats.

Spartz praised DOGE, claiming the board has discovered “true fraud, waste and abuse,” according to Courthouse News Service.

“If you just came here to scream, then we will be unable to have a conversation right,” Spartz told the crowd. “I want you to hear, you might not like what I have to say but I thought you would like it, I thought you would like it.”

The Indiana Republican also said that she is a supporter of the NATO military alliance, calling it “an important institution, for the security of Europe,” but adding that Washington “needs to make sure Europeans do better too.”

The Chair of the Hamilton County Democrats Josh Lowry was with protestors outside of the townhall, according to a video he shared on the social media platform X.

“This is what democracy looks like,” the protestors could be heard yelling, with some holding signs that read “honor, love respect immigrants.”

After the event, Spartz thanked her constituents for attending the Friday event.

“These town halls are not easy in the current political environment but an important part of the process,” the House lawmaker wrote Friday night on X.

Spartz is not the only Republican in Congress who has faced blowback at town halls, which the House leadership advised them not to partake in.

Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) also received loud boos earlier this month for backing DOGE’s efforts and doubling down on her support for Trump’s agenda.

Nebraska Republican Mike Flood was rebuked this month by some of his constituents over the U.S.’s stance on the Russia-Ukraine war, the ongoing revamping of the federal government and the president’s escalating trade war.

Some of the members of the House Republican conference defended their decision to host in-person townhalls

“I went toe-to-toe with the progressive left, all 12 rounds. I believe that there were some media vehicles out there that helped me communicate effectively the things that we were doing. … I would certainly do it again,” Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-N.C.) told The Hill last week.

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A Delta flight received an onboard alert that an Air Force jet was close by as it took off near Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) on Friday afternoon, just months after the region experienced the deadliest aviation incident since 2001.

The Minneapolis-bound Delta flight — with 131 passengers on board — was cleared for takeoff while four U.S. Air Force T-38 jets were flying toward Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., for a flyover, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said. The agency is investigating the incident.

The close call, which was first reported by CNN, is the latest incident near Washington, as the nation's capital reels from a January midair collision between an American Airlines passenger plane and Army Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan National Airport that killed all 67 people on board both aircrafts.

On Friday, Delta’s Airbus A319 aircraft departed its gate at 2:55 EDT. The cockpit then received word from air traffic controllers at approximately 3:15 p.m. about the jet in the region. Both aircrafts took corrective action.

“Nothing is more important than the safety of our customers and people,” Delta said in a statement to The Hill. “That’s why the flight crew followed procedures to maneuver the aircraft as instructed.”

The military jet took off and landed at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, CNN reported. The Hill has reached out to the Air Force for comment.

Air traffic near DCA has been in the spotlight as concerns have emerged about close calls at the airport since the January collision led to an icy search through the Potomac River for what was left of the aircraft and the victims. The FAA has documented several close calls in recent years, as the Associated Press reported earlier this month.

Since the deathly incident, the Trump administration announced it would permanently limit military helicopter operations near the airport. And some lawmakers have called on the Defense Department to reduce air traffic near the airport even more.

Earlier this week, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chair Jennifer Homendy and acting FAA Administrator Chris Rocheleau testified at a Senate hearing about the collision – just two weeks after the NTSB unveiled its preliminary report following the incident.

President Trump and other Transportation Department officials have placed blame on the shortage of air traffic controllers and policies installed under the previous administration. The president vowed to overhaul the FAA after the January crash.

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We are now witnessing an outcry from Democrats, loan servicers and the media over the prospect of Congress scaling back the Department of Veterans Affairs's new mortgage bailout program, the Veterans Affairs Servicing Purchase program. If the program is curtailed as proposed by Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wisc.), they warn, tens of thousands of veterans — perhaps as many as 80,000 — will lose their homes.

But the reality is quite different and far more dangerous. Left unchecked, the program risks turning veteran homeownership into a costly, unsustainable entitlement for which taxpayers will be left holding the bag.

No one wants to see the nation’s heroes lose their homes. But a housing finance system that eliminates the possibility of foreclosure is inherently unsustainable, and that is exactly what the Veterans Affairs Servicing Purchase program does. Launched under the Biden administration, the program upends the traditional balance by having the VA buy troubled loans, hold them on its books, and absorb all future losses while servicers walk away whole.

Even more troubling, the program's overly generous terms invite strategic default. Veterans with 6 percent or 7 percent mortgages have a strong incentive to stop paying, just to qualify for a government refinance at 2.5 percent. Naturally, servicers love this. Under the traditional VA program, they shared up to 25 percent of losses; now the Veterans Affairs Servicing Purchase program makes them whole, giving them every reason to push borrowers into the program. It privatizes gains and socializes losses.

This isn’t a safety net — it’s a moral hazard factory that risks destabilizing the VA loan program and exposing taxpayers to massive losses.

The sheer scale of this program is already alarming. Since its inception in May 2024, more than 15,000 loans have moved into the pipeline, and the VA budgeted for 40,000.

Prior to VASP, private servicers shared the risk and had a clear incentive to work with borrowers to avoid foreclosure. This system provided veterans with affordable, no-down-payment loans while containing taxpayer exposure.

Today, those same workouts are harder to achieve due to higher interest rates. For most delinquent borrowers, the solution is straightforward: sell the home. AEI Housing Center analysis shows that roughly 84 percent could sell, cover their mortgage, arrears and closing costs and still walk away with an average of $128,000, thanks to a 50 percent jump in home values over the past five years. Instead of encouraging this dignified exit, however, VASP fosters dependency and shifts financial risk to taxpayers.

While selling is not an option for all delinquent veterans, this points to a deeper problem: many of these loans were made to borrowers with high debt loads, poor credit and little savings. That’s a failure of underwriting, not a justification for permanent bailouts.

This program is just the tip of the iceberg of programs implemented under the Biden administration. Other agencies, including FHA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, offer partial claims, modifications and deferral programs that allow missed payments to be tacked on to the end of loans — often combined with substantial payment reductions. These programs can let borrowers live virtually mortgage-free for years, fostering expectations of eventual forgiveness. In many cases, it’s a better deal than renting — with the added bonus of keeping any home price appreciation.

Supporters argue that these loss-mitigation programs save money long-term, since they avoid costly foreclosures, but we heard the same thing when the federalization of student loans helped fund Obamacare. We know how that ended: ballooning balances, widespread defaults and political demands for massive taxpayer bailouts.

In fact, the parallels between the Veterans Affairs Servicing Purchase program and the student loan debacle are striking. The 2010 Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act put student loans on the federal balance sheet. Then income-driven repayment and forgiveness schemes shifted the burden to taxpayers, while pause after pause encouraged borrowers not to pay, creating an enormous moral hazard.

How this may end should frighten every veteran and American, as it threatens the stability of the VA’s loan guarantee program. What we need is not another massive bailout but more prudent underwriting upfront, so borrowers are set up to succeed, not fail. Otherwise, like every other government "rescue," this will start small and swell into an unsustainable, permanent fixture.

Congress needs to act now, before the dangerous Veterans Affairs Servicing Purchase program becomes too entrenched and impossible to unwind.

Tobias Peter is co-director of the American Enterprise Institute’s Housing Center.

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Tech billionaire Elon Musk responded to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz's (D) quip about celebrating the dip in Tesla stocks, calling the former vice presidential nominee a "huge jerk."

During an interview with Fox News's Bret Baier, Musk was asked about the market drop, recent vandalism at Tesla dealerships, and criticism of his work with President Trump's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

"Think it would help sales if dealerships are being firebombed? Of course not. And Tesla customers are being intimidated all over the country and all over Europe," he told Baier. "Does that help Tesla?"

"I mean, you have Tim Walz, who’s a huge jerk, running on stage when the Tesla stock price has gone in half, and he was overjoyed," Musk continued. "What an evil thing to do. What a creep, what a jerk."

The Tesla CEO added, "Like, who derives joy from that?"

Earlier this month, during a town hall in Wisconsin, Walz said he boosts his mood by looking at the electric vehicle manufacturer's stocks. He also used the time to criticize Musk, the sweeping workforce cuts and federal funding freezes issued by the Trump administration and DOGE in recent weeks.

“There’s this thing on my phone, I know some of you know this, on the iPhone. They’ve got that little stock app,” Walz said at the time. "I added Tesla to it to give me a little boost during the day."

He later walked back the comments, contending that he was just being a "smarta--" and "making a joke."

Still, Musk railed against the Minnesota Democrat, who has seemingly reemerged as a voice for the party after losing to Trump and Vice President Vance in November.

"And it was pointed out to him that actually, you know, the Minnesota state pension fund is a major investor in Tesla. But he didn’t care," the tech mogul told Fox News. "He was so overjoyed by Tesla stock going down."

"Does that sound like a good person to you? I don’t think so," Musk said.

"Shark Tank" investor Kevin O'Leary also criticized Walz, calling the rhetoric "beyond stupid."

The back-and-forth comes as the Trump administration has vowed to get to the bottom of recent Tesla vandalism, labeling the attacks as " domestic terrorism." At least three people have already been charged, per the Justice Department.

Musk said he has faith in the president to "go after" the people pushing what he called lies about his EV company.

To show his support for his senior adviser, the president even purchased a Tesla earlier this month during a ceremony at the White House.

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The online prediction market Kalshi is increasingly leaning into political and conversational questions of the day, including the latest executive actions by President Trump since he returned to the Oval Office.

“Will Brexit happen? Will Donald Trump win the election? Will it rain tomorrow, and who’s going to win the Oscars — those are things that people can relate to,” Kalshi founder and CEO Tarek Mansour said on NewsNation's “The Hill” Thursday evening.

“We want to build a financial market that is for everyone, not for a select, elite few," he told host Blake Burman.

One question posed by Kalshi this week was about Greenland, a Danish territory that Trump has suggested could join the United States. As of Friday afternoon, nearly 35 percent of participants predicted the U.S. will acquire at least some part of the Arctic island.

“We saw billions traded on the election,” Mansour said. “Since then, the exchange has been scaling and growing at an astronomical pace.”

He predicted that it could become a "trillion-dollar market."

What is a prediction market?

On its website, Kalshi said it’s the first regulated exchange where people “can buy and sell contracts on the outcome of events,” with contract prices reflected in the view of traders.

While the New York Stock Exchange is a traditional exchange where people can buy and sell shares in companies, Kalshi says its market is based on predictions, such as, “Will interest rates rise in the next quarter?”

The market has drawn scrutiny in New Jersey.

This week, regulators ordered Kalshi and Robinhood to stop offering sports-related prediction markets to Garden State residents.

Cease-and-desist letters from the regulators say the companies are offering unauthorized sports wagering services in New Jersey.

Donald Trump Jr., the president's eldest son, is a strategic adviser for the exchange.

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"This is NPR."

Unfortunately for National Public Radio, that proved all too true this week. In one of the most cringeworthy appearances in Congress, Katherine Maher imploded in a House hearing on the public funding of the liberal radio outlet.

By the end of her series of contradictions and admissions, Maher had made the definitive case for ending public funding for NPR and state-subsidized media.

Many of us have written for years about the biased reporting at NPR. Not all of this criticism was made out of hostility toward the outlet — many honestly wanted NPR to reverse course and adopt more balanced coverage. That is why, when NPR was searching for a new CEO, I encouraged the board to hire a moderate figure without a history of political advocacy or controversy.

Instead, the board selected Katherine Maher, a former Wikipedia CEO widely criticized for her highly partisan and controversial public statements. She was the personification of advocacy journalism, even declaring that the First Amendment is the “number one challenge” that makes it “tricky” to censor or "modify" content as she would like.

Maher has supported "deplatforming" anyone she deems to be "facsists" and even suggested that she might support "punching Nazis." She also declared that "our reverence for the truth might be a distraction [in] getting things done."

As expected, the bias at NPR only got worse. The leadership even changed a longstanding rule barring journalists from joining political protests.

One editor had had enough. Uri Berliner had watched NPR become an echo chamber for the far left with a virtual purging of all conservatives and Republicans from the newsroom. Berliner noted that NPR’s Washington headquarters has 87 registered Democrats among its editors and zero Republicans.

Maher and NPR remained dismissive of such complaints. Maher attacked the award-winning Berliner for causing an “affront to the individual journalists who work incredibly hard." She called his criticism “profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning.”

Berliner resigned, after noting how Maher's "divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR" that he had been pointing out.

For years, NPR continued along this path, but then came an election in which Republicans won both houses of Congress and the White House. The bill came due this week. Much of NPR's time to testify was exhausted with Maher's struggle to deny or defend her own past comments.

When asked about her past public statements that Trump is a "deranged, racist sociopath," she said that she would not post such views today. She similarly brushed off her statements that America is "addicted to White supremacy" and denounced the use of the words "boy and girl" as "erasing language" for non-binary people.

When asked about her past assertion that the U.S. was founded on “black plunder and white democracy,” Maher said she no longer believed what she had said. She also wrote that “America is addicted to white supremacy”

When asked about her support for the book "The Case for Reparations," Maher denied any memory of ever having read the book. She was then read back her own public statements about how she took a day to read the book in a virtue-signaling post.

She then denied calling for reparations, but was read back her own declaration: "Yes, the North, yes all of us, yes America. Yes, our original collective sin and unpaid debt. Yes, reparations. Yes, on this day." She then bizarrely claimed she had not meant giving Black people actual money, or "fiscal reparations."

When given statistics on the bias in NPR's hiring and coverage, Maher seemed to shrug as she said she finds such facts "concerning."

The one moment of clarity came when Maher was asked about NPR's refusal to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story. When first disclosed, with evidence of millions in alleged influence-peddling by the Biden family, NPR’s then-managing editor Terence Samuels made a strident and even mocking statement: “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”

Now Maher wants Congress to know that "NPR acknowledges we were mistaken in failing to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story more aggressively and sooner."

All it took was the threat of a complete cutoff of federal funding.

In the end, NPR's bias and contempt for the public over the years is well-documented. But this should not be the reason for cutting off such funding. Rather, the cutoff should be based on the principle that democracies do not selectively subsidize media outlets. We have long rejected the model of state media, and it is time we reaffirmed that principle. (I also believe there is ample reason to terminate funding for Voice of America, although that is a different conversation.)

Many defenders of NPR would be apoplectic if the government were to fund such competitors as Fox News. Indeed, Democratic members previously sought to pressure cable carriers to drop Fox, the most popular cable news channel. (For full disclosure, I am a Fox News legal analyst.)

Ironically, Fox News is more diverse than NPR and has more Democratic viewers than CNN or MSNBC.

Berliner revealed that according to NPR’s demographic research, only 6 percent of its audience is Black and only 7 percent Hispanic. According to Berliner, only 11 percent of NPR listeners describe themselves as very or somewhat conservative. He further stated that NPR’s audience is mostly liberal white Democrats in coastal cities and college towns.

NPR's audience declined from 60 million weekly listeners in 2020 to just 42 million in 2024 — a drop of nearly 33 percent. This means Democrats are fighting to force taxpayers to support a biased left-wing news outlet with a declining audience of mainly affluent white liberal listeners.

Compounding this issue is the fact that this country is now $36.22 trillion in debt, and core federal programs are now being cut back. To ask citizens (including the half of voters who just voted for Trump) to continue to subsidize one liberal news outlet is embarrassing. It is time for NPR to compete equally in the media market without the help of federal subsidies.

If there was any doubt about that conclusion, it was surely dispatched by Maher's appearance. After years of objections over its biases, the NPR board hired a CEO notorious for her activism and far-left viewpoints. Now, Maher is the face of NPR as it tries to convince the public that it can be trusted to reform itself. Her denials and deflections convinced no one. Indeed, Maher may have been the worst possible figure to offer such assurances.

That is the price of hubris and "this is NPR."

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “ The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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A top vaccine official at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) resigned, citing Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “misinformation” and apparent lack of desire for “truth and transparency.”

Dr. Peter Marks, who has led the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), stepped down on Friday after earlier in the day he was given a choice to either resign or be terminated, according to multiple outlets. The Wall Street Journal first reported his resignation.

Marks said that he was “willing” to work to address Kennedy’s “concerns” about vaccine transparency and safety.

“However, it has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies,” Marks wrote in his Friday resignation letter that was addressed to acting FDA Commissioner Sara Brenner.

The Hill has reached out to the FDA for comment.

Marks has been at the FDA since 2012. In 2016, he became the director of CBER, the center responsible for the safety of “vaccines, allergenic products, blood and blood products, and cellular, tissue and gene therapies.”

Marks, who got his graduate degree in cell and molecular biology, and medical degree at New York University, was instrumental in helping authorize the first vaccines against COVID-19 and played a major role in kickstarting Operation Warp Speed during President Trump’s first term.

The top FDA official also criticized Kennedy on Friday over “undermining” the confidence in the vaccine against measles as the country faces an outbreak of the airborne viral disease. There are at least 400 confirmed cases in Texas.

“Undermining confidence in well-established vaccines that have met the high standards for quality, safety, and effectiveness that have been in place for decades at FDA is irresponsible, detrimental to public health, and a clear danger to our nation's health, safety. and security,” Marks wrote in the letter that was obtained by The New York Times.

Since taking the helm of HHS, Kennedy has worked to reshape the outlook department, looking to dismiss 10,000 workers as part of a restructuring effort, while another 10,000 would be cut through buyouts and early retirements.

The HHS secretary defended the upcoming cuts, saying on The Hill’s partner NewsNation that the agency is “not cutting front-line workers, we’re cutting administrators, and we’re consolidating the agency to make it more efficient.”

“My hope is that during the coming years, the unprecedented assault on scientific truth that has adversely impacted public health in our nation comes to an end so that the citizens of our country can fully benefit from the breadth of advances in medical science,” Marks said in the 2-page letter.

Kennedy said the National Institute of Health has a division that is “devoted” to studying long COVID and that the HHS is incorporating an agency within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that will “specialize in vaccine injuries.”

“Those are things that are priorities for me, and also Lyme disease. These are priorities for the American people,” Kennedy told NewsNation host Chris Cuomo. “More and more people are suffering from these injuries, and we are committed to having gold standard science to make sure that we can figure out what the treatments are and that we can deliver the best treatments possible with the American people.”

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(NEXSTAR) – In case gas prices weren't high enough already, there's always that pesky fraction added onto the end: nine-tenths of a cent tacked on to every gallon.

You'll usually see this odd pricing posted at the gas station (and pretty much nowhere else). After all, it's not like we can pay in fractions of a cent – so why don't gas station just round up? Where does that 9/10 come from anyways?

The practice is a 100-year old habit that just won't die.

According to Ed Jacobsen, who founded the Northwoods Petroleum Museum in Wisconsin, the fraction-of-a-penny pricing started with the very first gas taxes imposed by states and the federal government starting in 1919 into the Great Depression.

At the time, a gallon of gas might only cost about 10 cents per gallon, so the taxes were smaller, calculated in tenths of a cent, Jacobsen told WSYR. Gas stations passed on the tax straight to the consumer by tacking it on to the price of fuel that day.

The tax wasn't always nine-tenths of a penny. Sometimes it was a smaller fraction. But by the 1950s, gas stations started rounding up to the 9/10 pricing, "squeezing the buck as far as they can," Jacobsen told CNN.

He also mentioned the persistent practice of "psychological pricing," a technique advertisers use to make things feel substantially cheaper than they are. It's the reason you're much more likely to see gas priced at $3.99 (and nine-tenths of a penny!) than $4 even.

In practice, with gas prices now far above 10 cents a gallon, the fraction is unlikely to affect your budget. Since we can't pay in fractions of a cent anyways, the final price you pay is rounded up or down to the nearest cent.

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Efficient government is not the same thing as less government.

As the Trump administration, Congress and the Department of Government Efficiency take steps toward reform, they should not simply be trying to create a federal government that does less with less. Ideally, the goal should be to achieve good outcomes using no more tax dollars than necessary.

While it may not grab headlines, and while it hasn’t yet been fully put to the test, a bipartisan government-reform law passed several years ago could help.

Waste and fraud are obvious enemies of efficiency, and given the surge in such things that we’ve experienced since the pandemic, it’s a good place to focus on first.

According to the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, often referred to as the “congressional watchdog,” waste occurs when “individuals or organizations expend government resources carelessly, extravagantly or without adequate purpose.” Its officials have identified a huge amount of waste over the years, but nothing like they’ve found over the last few years.

Just this past year alone, they estimate that there were $162 billion in improper payments — those that a government agency made but should not have or which were made in incorrect amounts. GAO also estimates that the federal government loses between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud, which is willful misrepresentation to obtain something of value.

As always, the GAO makes recommendations aimed at reducing these payment errors. These may or may not be followed by federal agencies. There is more, however, to government efficiency than improper payments and fraud. What about the broader question of whether government programs achieve their intended outcomes, and whether they do so using more tax dollars than necessary?

For example, programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are designed to reduce poverty and provide economic support to lower-income families. In upcoming research, I have found that SNAP alone likely has a huge amount of fraud and may overpay benefits by over $10 billion a year.

Even if these or other programs were administered without waste and fraud, there is the question of how successfully they achieve their goals.

If this were the private sector, we’d measure efficiency by productivity. Economic data can tell us how inputs like labor, capital or materials are used to produce goods or services. Estimating government productivity, however, can be much more difficult.

Public goods and services can’t easily be valued in the same way because they lack market transactions. Reducing poverty is an intrinsically good and important goal, but to determine what works and what doesn’t, we still need to measure the specific economic value of doing so.

And because Americans are taxed to accomplish reductions in poverty — making some a little bit poorer — and because the government could spend those dollars in other beneficial ways, we also need to determine how many tax dollars should go toward reducing poverty.

The Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018 ( Evidence Act) was designed to help overcome this. Its overarching goal is to ensure that federal programs and policies are based on sound evidence and undergo rigorous evaluation of their performance.

Signed into law with an impressive amount of bipartisan support during President Trump’s first term, the implementation has now been going on through two presidential administrations.

A main tool is referred to as a “program evaluation,” a systematic process of collecting, analyzing, and using information to assess a program’s performance. That is, how well the program is working, whether it's achieving its intended outcomes, and whether it's operating efficiently. This evidence can be used to improve the program’s design, its implementation, and make decisions about how many future taxpayer resources it should receive.

It’s too early to judge precisely how successful this effort will be. Much of the effort so far has smartly focused on pushing agencies to collect useful evidence on how their programs are performing and establishing data and evaluation officers to do the work.

In 2020, the Trump administration took the next step by publishing program evaluation standards to guide agency evaluations. The following year, the Biden administration doubled down on this guidance by requiring agencies to create evidence-building and evaluation plans with an emphasis on the use of rigorous methodologies.

Americans are sharply divided on DOGE, but not long ago, Democrats and Republicans lined up behind an effort that could help deliver a more efficient government. Whatever else happens, let’s give the Evidence Act a chance.

Keith Hall is a distinguished visiting fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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Nikola founder Trevor Milton, convicted by a New York jury in 2022 for misleading investors about the electric vehicle (EV) maker’s technology, was pardoned Friday by President Trump, according to a White House official.

Milton said Thursday in a post on social platform X that he spoke to Trump over the phone and that he signed his pardon of “innocence.”

“The prosecutors can no longer hurt me; they can’t destroy my family; they can’t rip everything away from me; they can’t ruin my life,” Milton said in a video accompanying the post.

Milton, a major Republican Party donor, was convicted in October 2022 on securities and wire fraud charges. Prosecutors said he was overstating the claims about the company’s production of zero-emission trucks. Investors lost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The businessman was sentenced to four years in prison and was fined $1 million in late 2022. He has been free on bail while appealing the case, where he has denied wrongdoing.

Milton’s pardon comes just over a month after Nikola, an EV start-up, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company lost hundreds of millions over the scandal around Milton.

During the trial, prosecutors zeroed in on the company’s video, produced by Milton, of a prototype truck that looked like it was going downhill, appearing like the company created a working vehicle. The prosecutors said it was actually a General Motors unit that had a Nikola logo stamp, The Associated Press reported.

Milton resigned from Nikola in 2020 after investment fund Hindenburg Research released a lengthy report, accusing the company’s founder of making substantial false statements.

“We have never seen this level of deception at a public company, especially of this size,” the fund wrote in the report that was published in September 2022.

When asked about the pardon on Friday, Trump contended that Milton was persecuted because he was supportive of the president and that the Utah entrepreneur was “highly recommended” by lots of people.

“They say the thing that he did wrong was he was one of the first people that supported a gentleman named Donald Trump for president,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “He supported Trump. He liked Trump. I didn’t know him, but he liked him.”

“There are many people like that,” he added. “They support Trump, and they went after him.”

Milton has given nearly $3 million in contributions to various GOP lawmakers’ campaigns, PACs and GOP state-level committees since July 2016, Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings show.

He gave $920,000 to Trump 47 Committee, a joint fundraising committee that split money between Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, the Republican Nation Commitee (RNC) and state party groups, on Oct. 10, just over a month before the president won the last year’s election.

The same month, separately, he dished out $284,000 to the RNC, the records show.

Milton also supported the MAHA Alliance, a Super PAC that worked to convince Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s supporters to back Trump after the ex-independent presidential candidate dropped out of the race and endorsed the then-GOP nominee, with a $750,000 in mid-September last year, according to the FEC filing.

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Ras Baraka, the mayor of Newark, N.J., invited Alina Habba to the city for a tour, a day before she was sworn in as a federal prosecutor for the Garden State Friday.

"I’d be happy to give you a tour of Newark — a beautiful, thriving and diverse community built by working people with pride," he wrote in a Thursday post on social platform X, accompanied by a video.

"No MS-13 here, just resilience, culture and progress," he added, referring to a gang organization that has been in the headlines amid the Trump administration's crack down on illegal immigration.

Habba, a staunch defender of President Trump and White House counsel, was tapped to serve as U.S. Attorney for New Jersey earlier this week. She previously represented Trump in high-stakes cases such as the New York civil fraud trial and the defamation and sexual assault lawsuits brought against him by author E. Jean Carroll.

She was officially sworn into office by Attorney General Pam Bondi on Friday afternoon. Before the ceremony, Trump commended his former counselor for spearheading efforts to “defeat the corrupt and grotesque weaponization of our justice system.”

“She’ll be as good as it gets,” he said.

In his video online, Baraka pleaded with Habba to venture out of the "beautiful country clubs" of Bedminster, N.J. and visit Newark.

"Come hang out with us here in the city," he continued. "So you can learn about our community, our town, see beautiful working-class people and some, which are immigrants, who are doing the outstanding job of making this one of the best cities in the state of New Jersey."

He went on to share recent accomplishments of the city, including a reduction in homicides and shootings, citing a relationship with federal partners — including the FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Department of Justice and U.S. attorneys on both sides of the aisle.

The Democratic mayor, who is running for New Jersey governor, added that his invitation was intended to foster a relationship with Habba, not to merely push Trump's "Make America Great Again" agenda in the city. He pressed the newly minted prosecutor to meet with local law enforcement officials to "see the incredible work" the staff is doing each day.

"We don't need that disrupted. We don't need that upended. We don't need it undermined by political cheerleading," he added. "What we need is leadership and a continuation of what we've been doing in this city."

Habba has not yet responded to the invitation.

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It's been five years since the start of a zoonotic COVID-19 pandemic that killed millions of people. Now, the United Nations is urging member governments to take coordinated action to address the “unprecedented” spread of highly pathogenic bird flu — a threat to health, food security, biodiversity and more. The world has reached an inflection point, another chance to do what is needed to prevent a health crisis.

This will either be remembered as the moment we failed to save lives or the moment we finally reckoned with the dangers of factory farming and our mass exploitation of animals.

The warning from the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization came on March 17, the same day the a new U.S. outbreak of dangerous H7N9 bird flu was reported. Since it first emerged in 2013, the strain has a nearly 40 percent mortality rate in humans, translating to 616 human deaths in China.

Despite troubling signs that the virus is mutating and could become more transmissible, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s $1 billion strategy to fight bird flu is likely to create more danger, as the federal agency funnels $400 million into factory farms as reimbursements for chickens lost. In so doing, it is propping up the very industry fueling the spread of zoonotic disease.

Since early 2022, nearly 170 million farmed birds have died or been killed in the U.S. due to bird flu outbreaks, equivalent to roughly half the country’s human population. Just since last year, 70 human cases have been reported, the majority of which resulted from direct exposure to livestock. Three came from unknown sources.

We already know that 75 percent of emerging human pathogens are zoonotic. Thus, by farming animals in the billions, we are playing with fire. Factory farms confine thousands of animals into unsanitary facilities, where workers are often left unprotected from disease.

While some have blamed wild birds for the presence of bird flu on large-scale farms, it is more likely that failures to prevent diseases from spreading on farms are the real culprits. Furthermore, research has shown that ventilation systems on factory farms may be fueling airborne transmission of bird flu; scientists are currently tracking wastewater from these intensive operations as a potential avenue for the virus’s spread. The hazards of factory farms themselves are compounded by the clearing of forests for animal agriculture, which diminishes planetary resilience and pushes humans and wildlife into ever closer contact and toward a higher risk of disease transmission.

Rather than protecting the public, the U.S. government remains focused on bolstering corporations and lowering egg prices, which, according to a recent report, have likely been artificially inflated by agribusiness titans taking advantage of consumers.

As the USDA bails out animal agriculture and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggests that the nation allow bird flu to spread through its poultry industry, it is critical that a country in which 99 percent of all farmed animals are kept on factory farms begin taking this escalating threat seriously.

To protect the health of animals and humans, the Trump administration should quickly shift support away from factory farming in favor of a safer and more sustainable plant-based food system. Otherwise, we could be reflecting on an even deadlier pandemic five years from now.

As Mark Twain said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”

Gene Baur is president and co-founder of Farm Sanctuary, the world’s premier farm animal sanctuary and advocacy organization, and author of the books “Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds About Animals and Food” and “Living the Farm Sanctuary Life.”

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Hundreds of fired government employees filed into the Department of Education headquarters in Washington on Friday in order to collect their personal belongings and say their goodbyes.

Former workers were given 30 minutes to do this. Afterward, they were walked out of the building's doors.

Earlier this month, nearly half of the department's staff was laid off. The education workforce now totals 2,183 workers, down from 4,133 when President Trump returned to office in January.

Supporters and other federal workers, some of whom still work for the Education Department, were also at the headquarters to rally against the cuts.

Downsizing the federal government has been a core goal of Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). But some say there is a human toll to workers losing their jobs.

"It's unconscionable that federal workers are being treated like this," Bradley Custer, one former worker, told NewsNation. "We are public servants who trusted our government as both employers and as constituents, and it's a major betrayal."

Trump Education Department order

Trump last Wednesday signed an executive order calling for the dismantling of the Department of Education. This would require an act of Congress, though, and eliminating the department would not get the votes needed to do that.

So instead, through cuts by DOGE, the Trump administration aims to "starve" the department so it becomes a much smaller version of what it was before.

The Education Department oversees student loans, Title IV and IX enforcement and manages K-12 grant programs as well as school meal programs for low-income students.

Trump has previously said that student loans, special needs and nutrition programs will shift to other departments rather than being eliminated entirely.

A recent Quinnipiac University Poll shows that 60 percent of all voters surveyed are against cutting the department. However, this was split along party lines: 67 percent of Republicans were in favor of getting rid of the department, while 98 percent of Democrats were opposed to it.

Several state officials, again in mostly red states, say they'd be happy to have the money that the federal government issues be in their hands so that they can make decisions closer to the local level.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R), speaking to NewsNation's "Blake Burman", said he's fully in support of DOGE cuts to the federal department.

"What we want is that money unfettered and our ability to place that in the classroom where it belongs," he told Burman.

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California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) took a swing at his own party Friday evening, claiming Democrats have become too "toxic" and "judgmental."

Newsom, in an appearance on "Real Time with Bill Maher," was asked about other Democrats' criticism of the party and those who have questioned the governor for bringing GOP guests on his new podcast, " This Is Gavin Newsom," calling it "platforming."

"I mean, this idea that we can't even have a conversation with the other side ... or the notion we just have to continue to talk to ourselves or win the same damn echo chamber, these guys are crushing us," he continued, referencing Republicans who have seen better numbers in recent elections.

"The Democratic brand is toxic right now," the governor said, adding later that "we talk down to people. We talk past people."

The governor also gave a nod to recent guests on his show, which some have viewed as controversial including former White House adviser Steve Bannon and Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk.

"And I think with this podcast and having the opportunity to dialog with people I disagree with, it's an opportunity to try to find common ground and not take cheap shots," he said. "I'm not looking to put a spoke in the wheel of their or ... a crowbar in the spokes of their wheel to trip them up."

His comments come after polling shows the Democratic Party's favorability rating sitting at a record low. A recent NBC News poll, referenced during the show, shows only 27 percent of respondents having a positive view of the party.

Another survey, released earlier this month by CNN, found 54 percent of respondents had a negative opinion of the party, while just 29 percent said the opposite. Those numbers mark a shift from before President Trump was sworn into office in January, when 48 percent of respondents said they had an unfavorable view of Democrats.

In the interview Friday, Newsom pointed to Democrats' leaning on "cancel culture" and other personal attacks as a possible reason for the dip.

"Democrats, we tend to be a little more judgmental than we should be," the Democratic governor told host Bill Maher. "This notion of cancel culture... You've been living it, you've been on the receiving end of it for years and years and years. That's real."

"Democrats need to own up to that," he said. "They've got to mature."

Newsom, who has been floated as a possible 2028 presidential contender, is not the only Democrat to criticize the party. Sens. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — who caucuses with Democrats — have also raised questions and given advice on how they should move forward.

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Dr. Katrina Armstrong, Columbia University’s interim president, resigned Friday amid the school's tussle with the Trump administration over federal funding and criticism around its response to pro-Palestinian protests on campus.

Following the announcement, the school's board appointed Claire Shipman to serve as acting president. Armstrong, the second Columbia leader to step down in less than a year, will return to lead the school's Irving Medical Center, according to a news release.

“It has been a singular honor to lead Columbia University in this important and challenging time. This is one of the world’s great universities, in its most vital city, and I am proud to have worked with extraordinary faculty, students, and alumni,” Armstrong wrote in a statement. “But my heart is with science, and my passion is with healing. That is where I can best serve this University and our community moving forward.”

The leadership shake-up at the influential school comes after the federal government axed $400 million in grants to Columbia University following an antisemitism investigation into the institution.

“Universities must comply with all federal antidiscrimination laws if they are going to receive federal funding," Education Secretary Linda McMahon said earlier this month. "For too long, Columbia has abandoned that obligation to Jewish students studying on its campus."

Just over a week ago, the New York City school announced that it agreed to the administration's list of demands as it sought to regain access to the $400 million in federal funds. Still, two education groups sued the Trump administration over the funding pause, which caused an uproar in the higher education community.

In its concession, the school said it would ban face masks unless they are utilized for medical or religious reasons. In those cases, students need to present their Columbia ID if asked. The university also stated that it would hire more campus police officers and allow them to arrest students.

Under the new regulations, Columbia will also adopt the updated definition of antisemitism and pick a new senior vice provost to oversee its Center for Palestine Studies and the departments of Middle East, South Asian and African studies, the school said.

McMahon lauded the university for its "appropriate cooperation," in a joint statement with the Department of Health and Human Services and General Services Administration.

"We look forward to a lasting resolution," she wrote.

Armstrong has served as the school’s interim president since August last year when she took over for Minouche Shafik, who resigned over her handling of student protests against Israel’s war with Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

“Now is not the time for Columbia University to regress as it works to combat the rampant antisemitism plaguing the school. So far Columbia has largely failed to uphold its commitment to Jewish students and faculty — leaving them to face harassment, intimidation, and even assault,” House Education and Workforce Committee Chairman Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) said in a Friday evening statement, shared on social platform X.

He added that the school's administrators "must put in the work to combat this evil.”

“Ms. Shipman, while we wish you all good success, we will be watching closely,” Walberg wrote.

The news comes as the Trump administration has targeted those linked to the campus protests at several universities in recent weeks — leading to several arrests, visas being revoked and other legal turmoil.

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