CIA Director John Ratcliffe said Wednesday that a restructuring was underway at President Donald Trump’s direction to eliminate ‘well-documented politicization’ of the agency. 

Trump joked during a meeting of his Cabinet secretaries on Wednesday that perhaps Ratcliffe was the only one ‘who’s not allowed to talk about the great job he’s done,’ given the classified nature of the Central Intelligence Agency’s work. 

‘At your direction, the CIA has deployed our unique covert action, authorities in various places and continents, to successfully advance your national security and foreign policy priorities, to advance peace, to end wars, to take terrorists off the battlefield, and to keep illicit drugs from coming into this country and harming Americans,’ Ratcliffe reported to Trump, in front of news cameras. ‘Unfortunately, as much as I would love to detail your accomplishments in that regard, we can’t do so with this crowd. But you and I both know, Mr. President, that you have had a profound positive impact on America’s national security posture. And Americans are safer because of your leadership.’

‘Mr. President, the CIA is being restructured at your direction to focus on our core mission and to eliminate the political – the well-documented politicization that has taken place in the intelligence community from bad actors in the past to focus on our core mission and to Make America Safe Again,’ Ratcliffe added, thanking Trump for the opportunity without elaborating further. 

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard also referenced efforts to combat ‘politicization’ within the intelligence community at the Cabinet meeting. 

‘I’m grateful to have the privilege of leading the intelligence community towards ending the weaponization. Politicization of the intelligence community has gone on for far too long,’ Gabbard said. ‘And building out what is truly a lean and agile and effective intelligence community that is helping you deliver that promise to the American people of safety, security, and freedom.’ 

‘We’re working every day to hold the deep state accountable to end the politicization of weaponization of the intelligence community,’ Gabbard continued. ‘This past week, I sent three criminal referrals for illegal and unauthorized leaks to the media of classified intelligence for prosecution. We have 11 more that are under investigation. We’ve revoked, at your direction, 67 security clearances, and we continue the work of declassifying documents.’ 

The U.S. government has already declassified documents surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and Gabbard said she was working to declassify more documents around the assassination of former U.S. Attorney General and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy – the father of Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as well as the assassination of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. 

‘And we continue our extensive investigations around exposing the very serious issues we have related to election integrity, illegal abuses of FISA, Crossfire Hurricane, and others,’ Gabbard said. ‘Mr. President, under your leadership, we are working every day to bring about that transparency and accountability that the American people deserve.’ 

Last month, Trump signed an executive order instructing the FBI to immediately declassify files concerning the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, the agency probe launched in 2016 that sought information on whether Trump campaign members colluded with Russia during the presidential race.

At the Cabinet meeting, another U.S. intelligence leader, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, separately acknowledged that multiple federal agencies came together under the president’s leadership to capture terrorists, including the ‘evil individual responsible for the Abbey Gate bombing’ during the Biden administration’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal. Thirteen U.S. service members and roughly 170 Afghan civilians were killed when an ISIS-K suicide bomber detonated at Kabul’s airport. 

One of those agencies was the CIA. Ratcliffe told the gathering of Cabinet secretaries that the CIA ‘provided the intelligence that led to the apprehension of the Abbey Gate bomber, who is now being prosecuted by our great attorney general and providing a measure of justice to those 13 families that suffered as a result of that disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, during the last administration.’  

Trump reiterated at the Cabinet meeting that what happened at Abbey Gate was a ‘disgrace’ under the Biden administration and that U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi is working on prosecuting the alleged planner of the attack. The Justice Department announced last month that ISIS-K member Mohammad Sharifullah, also known as ‘Jafar,’ has been arrested on federal terrorism charges in connection to the attack and was extradited to the U.S. He made a brief appearance in Virginia federal court. 

Ratcliffe also told the Cabinet meeting on Wednesday that the CIA, at Trump’s direction, has negotiated and secured the release of Americans like Mark Fogel and Ksenia Karelina, ‘who had been wrongfully detained, sending the message that you will forget about no Americans that are being held in other places unfairly and unjustly.’ 

WASHINGTON — Vice President JD Vance said the first 100 days of the Trump administration were about making changes ‘very quickly,’ but the next 100 days will require Congress and international partners to ‘step up to the plate.’

Vance spoke about the opportunities he sees ahead to ‘juice the economy’ and end the war between Ukraine and Russia during an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital Wednesday — Day 101 of the Trump administration — in his office in the West Wing of the White House. 

‘The first 100 days is — you’re almost fixing and addressing all the things that are very easy to do,’ Vance said. ‘I mean, the border crisis is a matter of presidential enforcement. You have a different president. You have different enforcement policies that happen immediately that don’t require an act of Congress. It is just something you can change immediately.

‘A lot of our energy policies are permitting policies,’ he continued. ‘We’re trying to make it easier to build things. Those are things you can change very quickly.’ 

But Vance cautioned that ‘the next 100 days are going to be a lot of things that don’t change as quickly.’ 

‘It’s the big, beautiful bill — the reconciliation bill that we think will lead to permanent tax relief for Americans, but also juice the economy a little bit,’ he said. ‘That’s going to be a major focus.’ 

‘Obviously, we have a lot of foreign policy issues that we’ve been working on that I think are going to come to fruition one way or another over the next 100 days,’ he said. ‘You know, the president made very clear that he doesn’t want Iran to have a bomb. He would like to bring the Russia–Ukraine conflict to a durable solution where you don’t have 5,000 people dying every single week on both sides of that conflict.’ 

When asked where negotiations stand with regard to Russia and Ukraine, Vance told Fox News Digital ‘the first and necessary step of getting the Russia-Ukraine conflict solved is to get each of them to make a peace proposal.

‘And that’s actually happened. The Ukrainians have said, ‘This is what we want.’ The Russians have said, ‘This is what we want,’ and now the work of diplomacy is to try to sort of bring these two sides closer together,’ Vance said. ‘Because there’s a very big gulf between what the Russians want and what the Ukrainians want.’ 

Vance said ‘a lot of our European friends who, in public, will say, ‘Well, you know, we didn’t necessarily agree with the president what he said, or what he’s done, or, you know, all parts of his policy.’ They will at the same time say he’s the only person who could have actually forced a peace proposal out of each side because these guys weren’t even talking — not to each other, not to anybody. They were just fighting. That was it.

‘So, we’ve got this first step,’ Vance added. ‘We’ve got the peace proposal out there and issued, and we’re going to work very hard over the next 100 days to try to bring these guys together.’ 

Meanwhile, the vice president will travel Thursday to Huger, South Carolina, for a factory tour at Nucor Steel Berkeley, one of the largest manufacturers of steel in the United States. 

‘The message tomorrow is really just a pro-American manufacturing message,’ Vance said, adding he is going to ‘tie it back to national security.’ 

‘One of the things that we learned the hard way over the last, you know, 15 to 20 years in this country is that national security is downstream of economic power,’ Vance said. ‘And if there are things that your troops need or things that your critical industries need that they can only get from a hostile adversary, then you’re not nearly as strong as you thought you were.’ 

Vance said President Donald Trump ‘has really set about rebalancing this in a very fundamental way.’ 

‘This is, in my view, a once-in-a-generation change, and it was totally necessary. It has to happen,’ Vance said. ‘And we’re going to talk about the things that we’re going to do to facilitate that rebalancing of global trade.’ 

Vance said that because supply chains of companies ‘are so complicated, the goal is to facilitate them, moving more stuff on shore.’ 

‘We work with industry,’ Vance continued. ‘The president has an extremely open door, and so when he is persuaded that he has to pursue a particular policy in an effort to facilitate more American manufacturing, that’s what he’s going to do, because that’s the goal. And I think you’re going to see, certainly, that continue over the next 100 days in the same way it has over the first 100 days.

‘So, that’s kind of how I think about it. The first 100 days, you can get a lot done with just the president’s signature on a piece of paper,’ Vance said. ‘The next 100 days are going to be a lot of things where we need Congress, and, in some cases, some of our international partners, to step up to the plate.

‘I have great confidence in Congress. I have some confidence in our international partners. We’ll see how it goes.’ 

Elon Musk received a round of applause from President Donald Trump’s Cabinet as he prepares for a planned exit from his role at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). 

‘You have been treated unfairly,’ Trump said to Musk during a Cabinet meeting Wednesday. ‘But, the vast majority of people in this country really respect and appreciate you. And this whole room can say that very strongly. It’s really been a tremendous help. You opened up a lot of eyes as to what could be done. And we just want to thank you very much.’

‘You’re invited to stay as long as you want,’ Trump added as applause broke out in the room for Musk. ‘At some point, I guess he wants to get back home to his cars and his family.’ 

Musk has been the public leader of DOGE since the administration began in January, leading teams through various federal agencies in search of government overspending, fraud and mismanagement, which has received repeated praise from Trump and his administration. 

The tech billionaire, who leads both SpaceX and Tesla, was hired as a ‘special government employee,’ which is a role Congress created in 1962 that allows the executive or legislative branch to hire temporary employees for specific short-term initiatives.

Special government employees are permitted to work for the federal government for ‘no more than 130 days in a 365- day period,’ according to data from the Office of Government Ethics. Musk’s 130-day time frame, beginning on Inauguration Day, runs dry May 30. 

White House chief of staff Susie Wiles told the New York Post Tuesday that Musk is no longer working regularly from the White House. 

‘Instead of meeting with him in person, I’m talking to him on the phone, but it’s the same net effect,’ Wiles told the outlet as the tech billionaire prepares to depart from his role at DOGE. ‘He hasn’t been here physically, but it really doesn’t matter much.’ 

Musk said during the Cabinet meeting Wednesday that DOGE has now saved the U.S. $160 billion through his efforts trimming government fat, and celebrated the accomplishments of the administration in the meeting. 

‘The American people voted for secure borders, safe cities and sensible spending,’ Musk said. ‘And that’s what they’ve gotten. Tremendous amount has been accomplished in the first hundred days. As everyone has said, it’s more than has been accomplished in any administration before. Ever. Period. So, this portends very well for what happens for the rest of the administration. I think this could be the greatest administration since the founding of the country.’ 

The tech billionaire notably wore two Trump hats during the meeting, quipping: ‘Mr. President they say I wear a lot of hats,’ he said. ‘Even my hat has a hat.’

DOGE is a temporary cross-departmental organization that was established to slim down and streamline the federal government. The group itself will be dissolved July 4, 2026, according to Trump’s executive order.

Musk and Trump have both previously previewed that Musk’s role was temporary and would come to end in the coming weeks. 

‘You, technically, are a special government employee and you’re supposed to be 130 days,’ Fox News’ Bret Baier asked Musk during an exclusive interview with the DOGE leader in March. ‘Are you going to continue past that or do you think that’s what you’re going to do?’ 

‘I think we will have accomplished most of the work required to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars within that time frame,’ Musk responded. 

Trump also told the media in March that he would keep Musk ‘as long as I can keep him,’ but that ‘he’s got a big company to run.’

Tesla dealerships have faced repeated protests amid Musk’s work with DOGE, including physical attacks on cars and monetary boycotts of the company. 

Musk noted during the Cabinet meeting that protesters ‘do like to burn my cars, which is not great,’ which received laughter from colleagues.

The Congressional DOGE Caucus is planning a meeting with the White House sometime next month, one of the group’s leaders confirmed to Fox News Digital.

‘We’re talking with the White House about our next meeting, and they may be hosting us. We’ll see what happens,’ Rep. Aaron Bean, R-Fla., told Fox News Digital on Tuesday.

‘We’re ready to take the reins and continue to push no matter who’s leading [the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)].’

Bean did not give a date for the meeting but said, ‘The answer is always, whenever Trump wants to host.’

It’s not immediately clear if President Donald Trump himself will participate, but the meeting would come as Republican lawmakers get ready to consider a roughly $9 billion list of spending cuts proposed by the White House, known as a rescissions package.

It’s expected to include a host of USAID programs, one of Trump’s first targets in his campaign on government efficiency.

A senior House GOP lawmaker told Fox News Digital they expected that package to be delivered to Congress next week.

The Congressional DOGE Caucus was founded by Bean alongside Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, and House GOP Conference Vice Chair Blake Moore, R-Utah, to coordinate a legislative response to Elon Musk’s work with DOGE.

Musk recently told Tesla investors that he would be stepping back from the federal role beginning next month.

‘Starting probably next month, May, my time allocation to DOGE will drop significantly,’ Musk said on a first-quarter earnings call.

He added, however, ‘I’ll have to continue DOGE for, I think, the remainder of the president’s term just to make sure that the waste and fraud that we stop does not come roaring back.’

A spokesperson for the Congressional DOGE Caucus declined to comment when Fox News Digital reached out for more details on the tentative White House meeting.

A senior White House official did not say whether Trump would attend the meeting nor whether the rescissions package would be discussed.

‘The president is reviewing a wide range of tax cut proposals for inclusion in the reconciliation bill. He is most focused on tax policy that will help create more good-paying jobs in America and delivering the major tax cuts he campaigned on for working and middle-class Americans,’ the official said.

The United States and Ukraine are on the verge of signing a mineral deal after months of fraught and chaotic negotiations, although a last-minute snag still needs to be ironed out.

Ukraine’s prime minister said First Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko was flying to Washington on Wednesday to sign the deal, which is central to Kyiv’s efforts to mend ties with President Donald Trump and the White House as the U.S. president tries to secure a peace settlement in Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The latest version of the minerals agreement was reached after Kyiv secured a significant concession from the Trump administration that only future military aid would count as the US contribution to the deal, according to the Financial Times.

Trump had indicated in February that he wanted access to Ukraine’s rare earth materials as a condition for continued U.S. support in the war, describing it as reimbursement for the billions of dollars in aid the U.S. has given to Kyiv.

But a famous Oval Office spat with Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy set negotiations back. However, the pair met face-to-face in Rome on Saturday at the Pope’s funeral.

According to a draft of the new agreement seen by Reuters, the two countries would create a joint reconstruction fund funded by 50% of profits from Ukraine’s new mineral licenses.

The draft agreement gives the U.S. preferential access to new Ukrainian natural resources deals but does not automatically hand Washington a share of Ukraine’s mineral wealth or any of its gas infrastructure, the draft showed.

Ukraine would not be required to pay back previous aid provided to the war-torn country by the U.S., with only future aid being counted as America’s contribution to the fund.

‘Truly, this is a strategic deal for the creation of an investment partner fund,’ Shmyhal said on Ukrainian television. ‘This is truly an equal and good international deal on joint investment in the development and restoration of Ukraine between the governments of the United States and Ukraine.’

However, a snag arose as Svyrydenko’s plane headed to Washington, with U.S. officials reportedly demanding that Ukraine sign three documents at once—the framework, a detailed fund agreement and a technical document—which Ukraine says is not immediately possible due to required parliamentary ratification, according to the Financial Times citing three people briefed on the situation.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s team told her she should ‘be ready to sign all agreements, or go back home,’ the Financial Times reports, citing three people familiar with the matter.

The U.S. is seeking access to more than 20 raw materials deemed strategically critical to its interests, including some non-minerals such as oil and natural gas. Among them are Ukraine’s deposits of titanium, which is used for making aircraft wings and other aerospace manufacturing, and uranium, which is used for nuclear power, medical equipment and weapons. Ukraine also has lithium, graphite and manganese, which are used in electric vehicle batteries.

Unlike an earlier draft, the deal would not conflict with Ukraine’s path towards European Union membership — a key provision for Kyiv.

The two sides signed a memorandum, published on April 18, as an initial step towards clinching an accord on developing mineral resources in Ukraine. In the memorandum, they said they aimed to complete talks by April 26 and to sign the deal as soon as possible.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.