House Republicans passed a bill they say will lower healthcare costs for a broad swath of Americans by roughly 11%.

It’s a victory for Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who has been managing deep divisions within the House GOP on the topic of healthcare as insurance premiums are set to spike across the country in a matter of weeks.

One glaring issue that remains unresolved is Obamacare subsidies, which were enhanced during the COVID-19 pandemic but are set to expire at the end of this year.

The legislation passed 216 to 211. Just one Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., voted against it along with all House Democrats.

The bill’s passage comes hours after a group of moderate Republicans joined a Democrat-led discharge petition to force a vote on extending the subsidies for another three years.

A discharge petition is a mechanism for overriding the will of House leaders to get a chamberwide vote on specific legislation, provided it has support from a majority of lawmakers. It sets up the legislation for a vote sometime in the new year.

Each of the four House Republicans made clear that backing Democrats’ bill was not their first choice, but they felt they were left with few options after Johnson made clear this week that there would not be a separate vote on extending the subsidies before the end of this year.

But the majority of House Republicans are against extending the subsidies, at least without significant reforms. Conservatives have argued the subsidies amount to throwing more money at a long-broken system that does little to tackle the actual cost of healthcare.

‘Obamacare has been an unmitigated disaster for 15 years, crushing families with high premiums and rampant fraud while enriching insurance companies. It’s time for conservatives to get serious about advancing policies that can become law and therefore actually reduce costs,’ Republican Study Committee Chairman August Pfluger, R-Texas, who called the House bill a ‘solid first step,’ told Fox News Digital.

Republicans who are for extending them have also conceded that reforms are needed, but have positioned a short-term extension as the best course of action to buy more time to work on an off-ramp.

The House GOP bill, the Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act, includes provisions to codify association health plans, which allow small businesses and people who are self-employed to band together to purchase healthcare coverage plans, giving them access to greater bargaining power.

Republicans also plan to appropriate funding for cost-sharing reductions beginning in 2027, which are designed to lower out-of-pocket medical costs in the individual healthcare market. House GOP leadership aides said it would bring down the cost of premiums by 12%.

New transparency requirements for pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) are also in the legislation, aimed at forcing PBMs to be more upfront about costs to employers.

PBMs are third parties that act as intermediaries between pharmaceutical companies and those responsible for insurance coverage, often responsible for administrative tasks and negotiating drug prices.

PBMs have also been the subject of bipartisan ire in Congress, with both Republicans and Democrats accusing them of being part of a broken system to inflate health costs.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that enacting the bill would reduce the federal deficit by $35.6 billion for a 10-year period through 2035.

If the bill became law, it would also decrease the number of people with health insurance by an average of 100,000 per year between 2027-2035 and lower gross benchmark premium costs by an average 11% through 2035, CBO said.

However, it’s not immediately clear whether it will be taken up by the Senate.

Republicans in the upper chamber failed to advance their own healthcare plan last week after also rejecting Democrats’ plan to extend the Obamacare subsidies.

FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino is leaving the bureau in January after speculation rose this week concerning his departure.

‘I will be leaving my position with the FBI in January,’ Bongino wrote in an X post Wednesday. ‘I want to thank President [Donald] Trump, AG [Pam] Bondi, and Director [Kash] Patel for the opportunity to serve with purpose. Most importantly, I want to thank you, my fellow Americans, for the privilege to serve you. God bless America, and all those who defend Her.’

President Donald Trump hinted at the news on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews earlier in the afternoon, saying, ‘Dan did a great job. I think he wants to go back to his show.’

Bongino, a former Secret Service agent, had no FBI experience before Trump tapped him to serve in the No. 2 position there. Prior to Bongino, the role had for more than a century been filled by someone who worked at the bureau, according to the FBI Agents Association. The position does not require Senate confirmation.

Fox News confirmed Andrew Bailey, co-deputy director, has been on the job since September and will stay on for now in the deputy role reporting to Patel.

The White House and the FBI did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.

This is a breaking story. Check back later for updates.

Fox News Digital spoke to Minnesota state Rep. Kristin Robbins shortly after she unveiled millions in alleged fraud in the state’s assisted living program and identified an individual already indicted for fraud who is still receiving payments from the state, adding to the already exploding fraud scandal in the state. 

The Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Policy, chaired by Robbins, held a hearing that focused on a new sector of fraud, the state’s assisted living programs, that comes amid a massive unfolding fraud scandal in the state that has affected a variety of other sectors and resulted in calls for the state’s chief executive, Gov. Tim Walz, to resign. 

The committee alleges that a number of individuals tied to other fraud schemes are receiving millions in taxpayer dollars for an assisted living program and that one of those individuals, referred to as ‘FOF Defendant,’ is already facing indictment charges as part of the Feeding the Future fraud scheme yet still receiving payments from Minnesota’s Department of Human Services. 

In a presentation, Robbins outlined properties owned by FOF Defendant connected to the assistant living facility fraud and what she called an ‘unbelievable’ network of fraud that slipped past any oversight procedures. 

‘I bring this to your attention because despite months of hearings, we continue to miss the most basic internal controls and the most basic checks and balances when we are enrolling providers,’ Robbins said during the hearing. ‘This is just one network. Our researchers has multiple networks that we could have discussed today.’

Robbins, who is a Republican candidate for governor to replace Walz next year, says she will be turning her findings over to the U.S. Attorney today for further investigation.

‘I just find it unconscionable that they, the department didn’t run a basic check of all these Feeding Our Future people who’ve been indicted or convicted, and make sure that they weren’t getting state money in other programs,’ Robbins told Fox News Digital.

While investigations into fraud have focus mainly on nonprofits who abused COVID-19 and food aid programs, the committee’s assertion that adult daycare services and assisted living facilities also engaged in fraud suggests that the scandal is more wideranging than previously reported.

‘I expect there will be more fraud uncovered in those sectors. And I’m assuming it’s happening in other states. as we’ve seen, there is a similar fraud going on in Maine, and I’m sure many other states. And so I think all agencies around the country need to be attuned to this and need to look at the programs,’ Robbins said.

She add, ‘And it’s not high finance. It’s basic internal controls that they should be doing.’

Fox News Digital reached out to Walz’s office for comment. 

The fraud scandal in Minnesota, that dates back to at least 2020 but has exploded into the national spotlight in recent weeks, has prompted several swift actions from the Trump administration and Congress.

The Small Business Administration is investigating a network of Somali groups in Minnesota that it says is tied to the scandal, and a House Oversight Committee has opened an investigation into Walz’s role.

The Department of Health and Human Services has launched a review into how Minnesota used billions of dollars in federal social service funding, requesting detailed records from Walz’s administration and other state entities after reports raised questions about whether portions of the money were misused.

On Tuesday, Fox News Digital first reported that Education Secretary Linda McMahon called on Walz to resign over the scandal. 

‘You have been Minnesota’s Governor since 2019,’ McMahon wrote. ‘During that time, your careless lack of oversight and abuse of the welfare system has attracted fraudsters from around the world, especially from Somalia, to establish a beachhead of criminality in our country. As President Trump put it, you have turned Minnesota into a ‘fraudulent hub of money laundering activity.’’

Venezuela tore into President Donald Trump’s Tuesday order to blockade the waters near Venezuela and prevent sanctioned oil tankers from passing through as ‘warmongering threats.’ 

In a statement, the government said Trump’s ‘irrational blockade’ was a ‘grotesque threat’ and an effort to ‘steal’ the nation’s oil wealth. 

Caracas formally filed a complaint with the United Nations Security Council Tuesday as the U.S. took aim at a key lifeline: oil shipments to China.

Venezuelan exports fell sharply this week as U.S. actions disrupted shipping lanes. On Tuesday, Trump demanded Venezuela return ‘stolen’ oil assets to the U.S.

‘Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America. It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before — Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us,’ he wrote on Truth Social. ‘I am ordering A TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE OF ALL SANCTIONED OIL TANKERS going into, and out of, Venezuela.’

Trump’s reference to ‘stolen’ U.S. assets stems from a long-running dispute over Venezuela’s seizure of American-owned oil projects more than a decade ago. Beginning in 2007, the Chávez government forced U.S. firms like ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips to surrender multibillion-dollar investments in some of the country’s largest oil fields, triggering arbitration cases that remain unresolved. 

Those expropriations targeted corporate property, not U.S. government land, but Trump has cast the episode as a broader theft from the American people as he presses for tougher measures against the Maduro regime.

With most Western buyers off the table, China has become Venezuela’s dominant customer for crude, often taking the vast majority of the country’s exportable barrels. Cutting or constraining those shipments threatens the government’s most reliable source of hard currency at a time when Maduro lives in fear of a potential U.S.-led effort to oust him from the presidency.

Oil accounts for around 88% of Venezuela’s $24 billion in export revenues, according to a recent New York Times report.

Amid dozens of strikes on alleged narco-traffickers in the waters near Venezuela, the U.S. has built up its largest military presence in the Latin America region in decades: 15% of all naval assets are now positioned in the Southern Command theater.

On Dec. 10, the U.S. seized a major oil tanker known as the Skipper, and plans to seek a warrant to seize the oil, worth tens of millions.

Analysts say the regime has few practical ways to hit back without doing even more damage to itself.

Maduro could target U.S. oil interests in Venezuela — Chevron still has a license to operate there — but doing so would almost certainly inflict more pain on his own cash-starved regime than on the United States.

President Donald Trump took some not-so-subtle swipes at his predecessors with new plaques below their portraits in the new White House Presidential Walk of Fame.

Former President Joe Biden had already been mocked in the installation, which was unveiled in September, when Trump used a photo of an autopen to represent the 46th president. Now, there are two plaques that include Trump’s nicknames for Biden.

‘Sleepy Joe Biden was, by far, the worst President in American History,’ the top plaque states. ‘Biden oversaw a series of unprecedented disasters that brought our Nation to the brink of destruction. His policies caused the highest Inflation ever recorded, leading the U.S. Dollar to lose more than 20% of its value in 4 years.’

‘Nicknamed both ‘Sleepy’ and ‘Crooked,’ Joe Biden was dominated by his Radical Left handlers. They and their allies in the Fake News Media attempted to cover up his severe mental decline, and his unprecedented use of the Autopen,’ the second plaque reads. ‘Following his humiliating debate loss to President Trump in the big June 2024 debate, he was forced to withdraw from his campaign for re-election in disgrace.’

Trump also took jabs at former President Barack Obama, calling him ‘one of the most divisive political figures in American History.’

‘As President, he passed the highly ineffective ‘Unaffordable’ Care Act, resulting in his party losing control of both Houses of Congress, and the Election of the largest House Republican majority since 1946,’ the first of two plaques says.

‘Obama also spied on the 2016 Presidential Campaign of Donald J. Trump, and presided over the creation of the Russia, Russia Hoax, the worst political scandal in American History,’ the second plaque reads. ‘His handpicked successor, Hillary Rodham Clinton, would then lose the Presidency to Donald J. Trump.’

Despite not ever being president, and therefore not being pictured in the walk of fame, Hillary Clinton is referenced more than once.

Beneath the picture of former President Bill Clinton, a plaque says, ‘In 2016, President Clinton’s wife, Hillary Clinton, lost the Presidency to President Donald J. Trump!’

In November, Trump gave Fox News Channel’s Laura Ingraham a tour of the walk of fame and told her that ‘beautiful bronze plaques’ were going to be installed. He said the plaques would describe the presidents but did not tease the political jabs written on them.

President Donald Trump and participated in the dignified transfer for two members of the Iowa National Guard who were killed in Syria this weekend.

The Wednesday transfer at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware saw the return of Sgt. Edgar Brian Torres-Tovar, 25, and Sgt. William Nathaniel Howard, 29, return to U.S. soil. The two men were killed in an ambush by an ISIS gunman. Their interpreter, U.S. civilian Ayad Mansoor Sakat, was also killed, and his case was also brought home on Wednesday.

War Secretary Pete Hegseth also attended the transfer. First lady Melania Trump was scheduled to attend the event, but she was ultimately unable to participate.

‘The dignified transfer is not a ceremony; rather, it is a solemn movement of the transfer case by a carry team composed of military personnel from the fallen member’s respective service,’ Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations reads. ‘A dignified transfer is conducted for every U.S. military member who dies in the theater of operation while in the service of their country.’

Wednesday’s event was the first dignified transfer Trump has attended since returning to office in January.

Torres-Tovar and Howard were assigned to 1st Squadron, 113th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry Division of the Iowa National Guard.

 Meskwaki Nation Police Chief Jeffrey Bunn had identified his son Nate as one of the U.S. service members who was killed in the attack in a Sunday Facebook post.

‘My wife Misty and I had that visit from Army Commanders you never want to have. Our son Nate was one of the Soldiers that paid the ultimate sacrifice for all of us, to keep us all safer. He loved what he was doing and would be the first in and last out, no one left behind. Please pray for our soldiers all around this cruel world. We will see you again son, until then we have i[t] from here,’ Bunn wrote.

Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Saturday that two Army soldiers and one civilian U.S. interpreter were killed, and three were wounded during the attack.

The service members had been conducting a key leader engagement with local partners in support of ongoing counter-ISIS operations when the attacker opened fire.

A Pentagon official told Fox News Digital the attack occurred in an area outside the control of interim Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, and that initial assessments indicate it was likely carried out by ISIS.

Fox News’ Ashley Carnahan contributed to this report.