by | Apr 9, 2025 | Fox News
EXCLUSIVE: Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., is clapping back against accusations from Democrats that Republicans are trying to make cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits for seniors.
“The message to seniors is really pretty simple. We are going to strengthen Social Security. That is our goal. And one of the ways we’re doing that is by rooting out waste, fraud, abuse,” she told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview, saying the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been an effective tool for doing so.
The senator is touting the RETIREES FIRST Act, which would raise the income bar for somebody to be required to pay federal taxes on their Social Security payouts.
ELON MUSK DUNKS ON SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER, DECLARING ‘HYSTERICAL REACTIONS’ DEMONSTRATE DOGE’S IMPORTANCE
“Now, there’s also legislation I have — and the president’s talked about this a lot — and it’s removing a federal income tax from Social Security benefits. And as we work on the tax package, you’re going to see this in one of those reconciliation packages,” she said.
“The left and the mainstream media continues to talk a lot about cutting Social Security, and we are not doing that,” she said. Blackburn’s office is circulating a memo highlighting a quote from President Donald Trump on “Sunday Morning Futures” last month saying he’s “not going to touch Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. Now, we’re going to get fraud out of there.”
“What we’re doing is strengthening. We are not cutting. What we are doing is making certain that people that are defrauding the system, people who are abusing the system, are no longer going to be able to do that. People that have paid into Social Security deserve to get every penny that they are in line to receive as a benefit, and we want to make certain that that happens,” the Republican said.
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Blackburn also took aim at the state of California, which made it a state law in 2024 to provide Medicaid, known in the state as Medi-Cal, to illegal immigrants. The program is now being partially blamed for the state going nearly $3.5 billion over budget for Medi-Cal, and the governor’s office has had to ask for billions in loans to cover the costs.
“So it’s all taxpayer money, and when you hear of a state like California who decided — they made a conscious decision, a very intentional decision — that they wanted to provide healthcare for those that were illegally entering the country, and they wanted the taxpayers to pay for it. And Tennesseans will say, ‘Well, we don’t want to shoulder that burden because that’s a policy we don’t agree with,'” Blackburn said.
DEMOCRATS HAVE BEEN ‘WRONG’ ON EVERY ISSUE: SEN. MARSHA BLACKBURN
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Democrats in Congress have raised alarms about cuts made to the Social Security Administration, including 7,000 staff layoffs.
“Make no mistake: What Elon Musk is doing at Social Security is cutting benefits. And Senate Republicans are standing with him. They blocked our amendments last week to protect Social Security from DOGE and reverse the Social Security layoffs and office closures,” Schumer tweeted Monday.
However, Elon Musk said cutting benefits for people actually taking them is not the case.
“The intern running Schumer’s social media account is lying,” Musk said in response to Schumer’s post Tuesday.
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by | Apr 9, 2025 | Fox News
Americans’ concerns over the economy, and specifically inflation and tariffs, appear to be partially fueling the downward trend of President Donald Trump’s approval ratings in a new national poll.
Trump stands at 41% approval and 53% disapproval in a Quinnipiac University survey conducted April 3-7 and released on Wednesday.
The president stood at 46%-43% approval/disapproval in a Quinnipiac poll conducted during his first week back in the White House, in late January. And Trump was slightly underwater at 45%-49% in mid-February. But the president’s approval ratings are basically unchanged from Quinnipiac’s previous survey, which was in the field early last month.
POLL POSITION: WHERE TRUMP STANDS WITH AMERICANS 11 WEEKS INTO HIS SECOND ADMINISTRATION
Most, but not all, of the most recent national public opinion surveys indicate Trump’s approval ratings in negative territory, which is a slide from the president’s poll position when he started his second tour of duty in the White House.
According to the new Quinnipiac poll, Trump stands at 40% approval and 55% disapproval on his handling of the economy. And asked how the president is dealing with the issue of trade, only 39% of respondents said they approved, while 55% gave Trump a thumbs down.
WHERE TRUMP STANDS IN THE LATEST FOX NEWS NATIONAL POLL
In the wake of Trump’s blockbuster announcement last week to impose tariffs on dozens of countries across the globe, nearly three-quarters thought the tariffs would hurt the U.S. economy in the short term, while just over half said the move by the president would also hurt the nation’s economy in the long term as well.
“A large majority of voters acknowledge the tariffs are delivering a bruising body blow to the economy in the near term. Will time reduce the pain? Some think it will, but a majority don’t envision that happening,” Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy emphasized.
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Given a list of four economic issues and asked which one worries voters the most right now, 47% of those questioned in the poll said the price of food and consumer goods, with one-in-five saying the cost of housing or rent, 17% saying the stock market, and 6% pointing to their job situation.
“In a rare moment of political unanimity, Democrats, Republicans and independents in equal numbers worry most about the prices of what they eat and what they buy,” Malloy noted.
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According to the poll, voters were divided over which party they think cares more about the needs and problems of people like them.
A third of respondents said the Democratic Party, with an equal amount (33%) saying the Republican Party. Thirty-one percent answered that neither party cared more.
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by | Apr 9, 2025 | Fox News
A former Democratic congressman is taking aim at President Donald Trump and Republican Sen. Thom Tills as he launches a Senate campaign in the key southeastern battleground state of North Carolina.
“Trump is shredding our Constitution and tanking our economy. Thom Tillis lacks the courage to stand up to him – I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit on the sidelines,” former Rep. Wiley Nickel argued in a social media post as he declared his candidacy for the Senate on Wednesday.
Nickel, an attorney who served as a staffer in former President Barack Obama’s administration before winning election as a state senator and later serving one term in Congress, is the first major Democrat to launch a campaign in the 2026 Senate race in North Carolina.
THIS POPULAR FORMER REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR WHOM TRUMP URGED TO RUN PASSES ON 2026 SENATE BID IN KEY SWING STATE
Democrats haven’t won a Senate election in North Carolina since 2008, but they view Tillis as vulnerable. While Trump carried the state in his 2024 presidential election victory by three points – an improvement over his razor-thin margin in 2020 – Democrats won the statewide races for governor, attorney general and secretary of state.
“North Carolina needs a fighter for what’s right for our state, not a rubber stamp for Trump. That’s who Thom Tillis is,” Nickel charged in a campaign launch video posted to social media.
POLL POSITION: WHERE TRUMP STANDS WITH AMERICANS 11 WEEKS INTO HIS SECOND TOUR OF DUTY IN THE WHITE HOUSE
Nickel edged Republican Bo Hines in 2022 to flip a red congressional district blue. But he declined to seek re-election in 2024 after his district was redrawn to favor the GOP.
In his campaign video, Nickel charged that Republicans “gerrymandered my district, so I couldn’t run again.”
The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), which is the campaign arm of the Senate GOP, took aim at Nickel
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“Wiley Nickel is a far-left radical who wants illegal immigrants voting in our elections, drug dealers free on the streets, and parents kept from having a voice in their children’s education,” NRSC spokesperson Joanna Rodriguez said in a statement to Fox News. “He’s so out-of-touch he chose to retire instead of facing voters in a tough election year, and he will be rejected by North Carolina voters in 2026.”
While Nickel is the first major candidate to enter the race, many national and North Carolina Democrats are hoping that former Gov. Roy Cooper, who in January finished his two terms in office, will also run.
WHY TRUMP, MUSK, FACE BLAME OVER BALLOT BOX SET BACKS LAST WEEK
Cooper, who was a popular governor, has yet to decide his next political step.
North Carolina is a top target for the Democrats in 2026, along with Maine, where moderate Republican Sen. Susan Collins is up for re-election in the blue-leaning state.
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Republicans currently hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate, and in next year’s midterm elections they are targeting open Democrat-held seats in Michigan and New Hampshire as well as Georgia, where first-term Sen. Jon Ossoff is viewed as vulnerable.
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by | Apr 9, 2025 | Fox News
Author Chris Whipple said Wednesday that former President Biden’s inner circle “convinced themselves” that former President Biden was able to run for re-election, despite the evidence that Biden wasn’t up to the job.
Whipple explained that a lot of people have referred to the events leading up to former Vice President Kamala Harris taking Biden’s spot at the top of the ticket as a “cover-up” orchestrated by the people closest to the president. However, Whipple argued that it was worse.
“The truth is actually stranger than that, and wilder than that. And it is that Biden’s inner circle, some of them you saw on camera just now, convinced themselves, in spite of all the evidence around them, they convinced themselves that Joe Biden could run for re-election and that he was capable of governing for another four years. I know this because I spent so much time talking to his inner circle. Mike Donilon, Ron Klain, all the others. They convinced themselves that Joe Biden could do it, and it’s astounding,” Whipple told Fox News on Wednesday.
EX-BIDEN AIDE SAYS FORMER PRESIDENT WAS ‘FATIGUED, BEFUDDLED, AND DISENGAGED’ PRIOR TO JUNE DEBATE: BOOK
His new book, titled “Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History,” which was released on Tuesday, recounted behind-the-scenes conflicts between members of the Democratic Party and the Biden administration over whether the former president needed to step out of the 2024 race after his disastrous debate with then-candidate Donald Trump on June 27.
Klain said Biden was “out of it” and “exhausted” during debate preparation in June, according to Whipple’s book.
The author wrote that Klain “was startled,” adding, “He’d never seen him so exhausted and out of it. Biden was unaware of what was happening in his own campaign. Halfway through the session, the president excused himself and went off to sit by the pool.”
“In spite of all that, Ron Klain was fighting three weeks later to keep him in the race. It’s an amazing story,” Whipple told Fox News host Dana Perino on “America’s Newsroom.”
According to Whipple, ABC News host George Stephanopoulos said his post-debate interview with former President Biden in June was “heartbreaking up close.”
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Whipple said Stephanopoulos’ questioning of the former president was “gentle.”
Whipple described Biden as “hoarse and semi-coherent” throughout the interview and noted Stephanopoulos was equally disappointed.
“Stephanopoulos questioned the president gently, like a grandson,” Whipple wrote. “Afterward, when I asked the ABC anchor by email for his impressions, he replied: ‘Heartbreaking up close.’”
Whipple maintained during the discussion that Biden was able to govern in a narrow sense.
“The morning of his abdication on July 21st, he was on the phone parsing the details of a multi-nation prisoner swap. This is a guy who could do that. And yet he was a shadow of himself on the campaign trail. And that’s why they were hiding him,” the author said.
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“From day one, this really came down, in my view, from Anita Dunn and the entire White House comms team. They were overprotective,” he added.
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by | Apr 9, 2025 | Fox News
Candace Cameron Bure is getting candid about a challenge that “a lot of women struggle with.”
During Tuesday’s episode of “The Candace Cameron Bure Podcast,” the “Full House” alum, 49, opened up about her personal battle with body image and explained how her faith has helped her find “a whole new perspective” on how she views herself.
“I’ve whipped my body,” an emotional Bure told podcast guests Allie Schnacky and daughter, Natasha Bure. “I’ve spoken to it so harshly. So mean.”
CANDACE CAMERON BURE FEELS PEOPLE ARE ‘LESS AFRAID OF BEING CANCELED’ IN HOLLYWOOD FOR THEIR FAITH
Recounting a dream she once had, Bure said a certain Bible verse – Numbers 22 – allowed her to view her body in a different light.
“And then God allowed my body to speak back, and my body said back to me, ‘Have I not been the body that’s carried you all the days of your life? Am I not your legs that allow you to walk? Am I not your arms that allow you to pick up and feed yourself?… Why do you hurt me so badly, and why do you talk to me so badly, and why do you treat me this way? I can lift you up… you have to tell me what to do. I’m following your lead.'”
“And it was like this amazing revelation in my life,” she continued. “And the weirdest story out of the Bible, that God spoke to me about how mean I’ve been to my body. I never saw it that way – it’s this beautiful amazing thing that God gave me.”
Bure admitted she now has “a whole different perspective of how I think about my body.”
The actress took to social media to share a clip of the episode.
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“I was so mean to myself… and looking back it breaks my heart. Learning to speak with kindness to my body has been a journey, and I know I’m not alone in this. To those who relate – I hope you can feel me giving you the biggest virtual hug right now. And I hope you’ll join me in showing ourselves the grace and love we truly deserve.”
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This isn’t the first time Bure has opened up about her struggles.
In 2016, the mom of three detailed the ins and outs of how she developed an eating disorder years ago.
“I had a great body image growing up,” Bure said at a panel for #EatingRecoveryDay in New York City, according to People. “My parents were wonderful, and protective of not allowing the entertainment industry to shape me into what they believed a standard of body image of perfection was.”
“The change of having worked since I was 5 years old to now becoming a wife and soon-to-be mom, and living in a city where I didn’t have family and friends around me, I kind of lost the sense of who I was,” she said.
Bure said she spent many nights alone, so she turned to the one friend that was “so readily available anytime I wanted, and that for me was food.”
“It became a very destructive relationship, and it was one that really caught me off guard,” she said. “I got into a cycle of binge eating and feeling such guilt and shame for that, that I would start purging. And without even knowing, it soon just took over to a point where you feel such a loss of control.”
She said her faith eventually helped her recover. “It was never about the weight for me,” she told People. “It was an emotional issue.”
Bure has always proudly shared her Christian faith, and she’s seeing others start to do the same.
“I feel like people are just a little less afraid of being canceled now that they can share their faith openly or whatever their opinions are [even] if they’re not congruent with some other people’s opinions,” she recently told Fox News Digital on the red carpet for the Movieguide Awards.
“And, so, I love seeing this in our country, and I’m hopeful. I’m very hopeful.”
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