Dr. Mehmet Oz was slammed by his detractors during a Senate confirmation hearing Friday on Capitol Hill for promoting unproven alternative health treatments, and one Democrat called it the ‘most ludicrous wellness grifting’ he’d ever seen.   

Oz laid out his plans for the agency, including potential reforms he is considering, during a confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Committee on Finance. The committee will soon vote on whether to advance Oz’s nomination to become the next director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services to the full Senate. 

While Oz’s medical expertise was not widely challenged Friday, his motivations were. Dubbed ‘America’s Doctor’ by Oprah Winfrey, Oz used his TV platform at times to promote alternative health remedies, endorsing questionable weight loss solutions like green coffee extract and raspberry ketones.

Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., sought to get Oz to admit that his promotion of certain supplements for weight loss, such as green coffee extract, were fraudulent. While Oz admitted green coffee extract is not a miracle weight loss drug, he argued that he never promoted it as such. 

‘There are many things I said on the show. I take great pride in the research we did at the time to identify which of these worked and which ones didn’t. Many of them are still being researched, like the green coffee bean extract you just mentioned,’ Oz told Hassan. The senator then inquired how much he was paid to promote these products, and Oz responded that he got nothing.

But Oz’s claim he wasn’t getting paid to promote the products didn’t convince Hassan, who pointed out press reports chronicling the ‘Dr. Oz effect,’ a phenomenon whereby sales of products he endorsed would skyrocket after being featured on his show. 

‘That was written about by the press,’ Oz told Hassan. Hassan then argued Oz seemed ‘unwilling to take accountability for [his] promotion of snake oil remedies.’

Oz’s financial ties to a litany of companies spanning many corners of the healthcare sector, including nutrition supplements, has been a point of scrutiny for his detractors. In an ethics filing submitted in advance of the hearing, Oz indicated he would divest his holdings in more than 70 companies and investment funds that could pose potential conflicts of interest.

One of those companies is iHerb, an online supplement retailer, which represents one of Oz’s largest financial holdings. According to his ethics filing, Oz’s holdings in iHerb are worth as much as $25 million.  

As the administrator of CMS, Oz would make decisions related to how the government covers procedures, hospital stays and medication within the federal healthcare programs, as well as the reimbursement rates healthcare providers get paid for their services. Oz, if confirmed, could theoretically take action to get federal healthcare programs, like Medicaid and Medicare, to cover a greater number of supplements not already covered. 

A committee vote to decide whether to send Oz to the full Senate has not yet been scheduled. He will need to garner at least 50 votes in the full Senate to be confirmed.

The Department of Defense has dissolved its Office of Net Acquisition – a think tank-like arm of the Pentagon that Republicans have claimed was involved in the Trump-Russia investigation.

Pentagon chief spokesperson Sean Parnell said civilian employees within the office would be ‘reassigned to mission-critical roles’ as the DOD established a plan to rebuild the office ‘in alignment with the Department’s strategic priorities.’ 

The office is meant to provide long-term strategic analysis within DOD, but it has become a target of Republicans who claim it has engaged in ‘projects unrelated to its mission.’

‘Praise the Lord. This wise move saves American taxpayers over 20 million dollars a year,’ Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a statement. 

He called the office ‘wasteful and ineffective.’

The office in recent years has been focused on strategizing a potential war with China. It championed a strategy known as ‘AirSea Battle,’ where a blinding campaign against the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of stealth bombers and submarines would take out China’s long-range surveillance before a naval assault. 

But Grassley has for years scrutinized ONA’s contracting practices. 

ONA has failed to produce classified net assessments for years, with whistleblowing analyst Adam Lovinger once complaining in emails to Director James Baker that the office seemed to attract overpriced academic-style papers instead of classified net assessments. 

‘On the issue of quality, more than once I have heard our contractor studies labeled ‘derivative,’ ’college-level,’ and based heavily on secondary sources,’ Lovinger wrote in a September 2016 email. ‘One of our contractor studies was literally cut and pasted from a World Bank report.’

Lovinger had complained about questionable government contracts awarded to Stefan Halper, an FBI informant who spied on the Trump campaign in 2016.

A DOD inspector general’s report later found that Halper had failed to properly document the research he did as a contractor on four studies valued at $1 million. The four contracts, spanning from 2012 to 2016, were meant to encompass relations between the U.S., Russia, China and India.

The report found that Halper had not provided proof of any meetings he had or locations he had visited as part of his studies. 

‘ONA personnel could not provide us any evidence that Professor Halper visited any of these locations, established an advisory group, or met with any of the specific people listed in the statement of work.’

For a study on what China relations could look like in 2030, Halper had proposed travel to London and Tokyo. 

‘The contract was fixed price based on the acceptance of the deliverables and did not require Professor Halper to submit travel receipts. ONA personnel could not provide documentation that Professor Halper traveled for this contract.’

Contracts show that Halper listed a Russian intelligence official as a consultant for an ONA project, the same intelligence official who was listed as a source in the Trump dossier used to spy on Carter Page. He was in contact with Page and former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, ‘raising questions about whether Halper used U.S. taxpayer dollars to seek connections with Trump campaign officials,’ according to Grassley. 

Halper was also a confidential human source for the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections who recorded conversations with officials from the campaign. 

The senator claims that ONA has stonewalled on his inquiries about Halper’s relations to the Trump-Russia probe. 

Senator Jack Reed, D-R.I., top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, called the office’s closing ‘shortsighted,’ adding that it would ‘undermine our ability to prepare for future conflicts.’ 

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is reportedly gearing up to cancel dozens of research grants about vaccine hesitancy by the end of the month, just four years after the Biden administration poured millions of dollars into combating COVID-19 vaccine skepticism.

According to an internal email obtained by The Washington Post this week with the subject line ‘required terminations — 3/10/25,’ the agency had ‘received a new list… of awards that need to be terminated, today. It has been determined they do not align with NIH funding priorities related to vaccine hesitancy and/or uptake.’

More than 40 grants are on the chopping block, according to the Post’s report, and when notifying researchers of the NIH’s termination, they should be told ‘not to prioritize research activities that focuses gaining scientific knowledge on why individuals are hesitant to be vaccinated and/or explore ways to improve vaccine interest and commitment.’

Fox News Digital has reached out to NIH and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for comment.

The report comes four years after the previous Biden administration spent millions to combat ‘misinformation,’ particularly related to the COVID-19 vaccine, in 2021. A November report by Open the Books, a government watchdog group, found that at least $267 million was spent on research grants and contracts related to ‘misinformation’ or ‘disinformation.’ 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) allocated more than $17 million over three weeks in February 2021, CBS News reported at the time, to 15 organizations advocating for Black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American populations. Progressive groups UnidosUS and National Urban League were granted $3.2 million and $2 million, respectively.

In a now-archived CDC page titled ‘Risk for COVID-19 Infection, Hospitalization, and Death By Race/Ethnicity’ in December 2022, the department reported that Black people are more likely to contract COVID-19 than White people.

‘Sure enough, the feds have spent at least $127 million in grants specifically targeted to study the spread of ‘misinformation’ — or to help people ‘overcome’ it, so to speak — by persuading them to go along with COVID-related public health recommendations and mandates,’ the Open the Books report said.

It’s unclear if the cancelation of grants came from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., but the Trump administration has been highly critical of the previous administration’s spending. Tech billionaire Elon Musk, head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has also been taking a scalpel to DEI-related funding amid President Donald Trump’s effort to downsize the government workforce. 

Kennedy has been focusing on reforming food policies, expanding healthcare coverage and holding big pharmaceutical companies accountable since his controversial Senate confirmation last month.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., wants federal agents caught destroying or concealing government documents to be eligible for a life sentence in prison.

Luna, who is leading a task force on the declassification of government records, is introducing a new bill called the Stopping High-level Record Elimination and Destruction (SHRED) Act of 2025.

It would levy a mandatory sentence of 20 years to life for any government official or employee of the Department of Justice (DOJ), or anyone in the wider intelligence community, found to have concealed, removed, or mutilated federal records, according to bill text previewed by Fox News Digital.

Federal law currently dictates that anyone found knowingly destroying, falsifying, or obstructing government records ‘with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States’ is eligible for a fine or up to 20 years in prison.

Any custodian of public records found to be destroying or concealing those records could be fined up to $2,000 or face up to three years in prison, or both.

Luna’s push for increased penalties comes amid her continued standoff with the Department of Justice (DOJ) over the declassification of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy Jr., among others.

Trump officials like Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel have repeatedly vowed to lead with transparency, including on the subjects of Epstein and Kennedy.

However, Luna told Fox News Digital earlier this week that she had not had significant communications with the DOJ about her task force matters.

‘The DOJ has not been really responsive,’ she said Tuesday. ‘Even if they are, you know, conducting a criminal investigation, you should probably pick up the phone and call us, and not talk about it on the news.’

Conservative influencer Benny Johnson reported on whistleblower allegations within the last month that rank-and-file agents within the FBI were destroying documents in a bid to block Patel’s work

Meanwhile, there has been a tidal wave of pressure from the right for Bondi and Patel to declassify documents about Epstein. An initial round of information, first released to conservative influencers at the White House, was blasted for containing no meaningful evidence implicating anyone in the deceased pedophile’s crimes.

Bondi told Fox News host Mark Levin earlier this month that she was misled on the Epstein documents, and that she was alerted after that initial release to the Southern District of New York ‘sitting on thousands of pages of documents’ that she was not in possession of.

She said Americans would see ‘the full Epstein files,’ adding, ‘We will have it in our possession. We will redact it, of course, to protect grand jury information and confidential witnesses, but American people have a right to know.’

The DOJ was not able to immediately return a request for comment by Fox News Digital.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Friday that ‘we have never been closer to peace,’ as the U.S. waits for Russia’s answer on a 30-day ceasefire agreement. Ukraine accepted the deal earlier this week after a meeting with U.S. officials in Saudi Arabia, on the condition that Moscow commits to the plan.

Leavitt noted that this morning President Donald Trump put out a scathing Truth Social post that included a message urging the Russians to accept the U.S. ceasefire proposal.

‘He is putting pressure on President Putin and the Russians to do the right thing,’ Leavitt told reporters. ‘Yesterday was a productive day for the United States of America and for the world. In terms of peace, we have never been this close to peace.’

In celebrating the administration’s success, Leavitt pointed out that yesterday NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte praised Trump’s handling of the Russia-Ukraine war.

Rutte told Trump that he ‘broke the deadlock’ in the Russia-Ukraine war with this week’s peace talks in Saudi Arabia and the opening of a ‘dialogue with the Russians.’

‘Ukraine, you broke the deadlock, as you said, all the killing and the young people dying, cities getting destroyed. And the fact that you did that, you started a dialogue with the Russians and the successful talks in Saudi Arabia, now with the Ukrainians. I really want to commend you for this,’ Rutte said.

Earlier on Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for tougher sanctions on Russia and accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of trying to drag out the peace talks to prolong the war.

However, on Thursday, while taking questions from reporters alongside Rutte, Trump said he would prefer peace to sanctions, but noted that there were things the U.S. could do financially that would be ‘very bad for Russia.’ He did not specify what that would entail.

– Former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu is keeping the door open to a possible Republican run next year in the race to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen.

Sununu, who enjoys a large national profile, thanks to his regular appearances the past few years on the cable news networks and Sunday talk shows, emphasized that the ‘door is not closed,’ when asked on Fox News Radio’s ‘The Guy Benson Show’ if he’s considering a Senate run. 

And Sununu, who was elected and re-elected to four straight two-year terms as governor of the key New England swing state, touted on Thursday that if he were to run, ‘I would win, by the way.’

The 78-year-old Shaheen, the first woman in the nation’s history to win election as governor and as a U.S. senator, announced this week that she would retire at the end of next year rather than seek a fourth six-year term in the Senate.

Even before Shaheen’s announcement, her seat in New Hampshire was considered one of the GOP’s top pick-up opportunities in the 2026 midterms – along with Michigan, where Sen. Gary Peters is also retiring, and Georgia, where Republicans consider first-term Sen. Jon Ossoff vulnerable – as Republicans hope to expand their current 53-47 majority.

Sununu, in 2021, expressed interest in running for the Senate against his predecessor as governor, Democrat Sen. Maggie Hassan, who was up for re-election in 2022. And the popular governor was heavily courted by national Republicans to take on Hassan.

But on Nov. 9, 2021, Sununu announced that he would instead run for a fourth term as governor, upsetting many Republicans in the nation’s capital.

And he heavily criticized the Senate.

‘When you look at what their (senators) job is and what a governor’s job is . . . it’s not even close. I can’t tell you how many senators told me, ‘You’re just going to have to wait around a couple of years to get anything done.’ Can you imagine me sitting around a couple of years,’ Sununu emphasized at the time. ‘They debate and talk and nothing gets done. . . . That’s not the world I live in.’

Fast-forward to this past year, and Sununu repeatedly said he wouldn’t seek to run for the Senate in 2026.

In a November interview with Fox News Digital, the then-governor reiterated what he had first said in a July interview.

‘Definitely ruling out running for the Senate in 2026. Yeah, definitely not on my dance card,’ Sununu said in an interview along the sidelines of the Republican Governors Association winter meeting in Florida.

The 50-year-old Sununu, who when he was first elected in 2016 was the nation’s youngest governor, was asked again about a 2026 Senate run in a Fox News Digital interview in early January, in his last full day in office.

‘I’m not planning on running for anything right now. I’m really not, at least for the next two, four, six years,’ he emphasized. ‘Who knows what happens down the road, but it would be way down the road and nothing, nothing I’m planning on, nothing my family would tolerate either short term.’

Sununu, in his interview on Thursday, cautioned that while he’s keeping the door open to a potential 2026 campaign, ‘I’m not saying it’s a high probability. Can’t wait to jump in. Definitely not.’

As for his change of mind from his steadfast no to a slight maybe, Sununu said that ‘some folks in New Hampshire especially, and some of our mutual friends in Washington, D.C., have asked me to at least keep the door open and reconsider, and I am.’

As for his timetable for making a decision, Sununu said on Friday in an interview on Fox News’ ‘America’s Newsroom’ that he would ‘take a few weeks to think about it.’

Sununu isn’t the only Republican mulling a Senate bid in New Hampshire.

Former Sen. Scott Brown, of Massachusetts, who later narrowly lost to Shaheen in New Hampshire in the 2014 election, is seriously considering a 2026 run.

Brown, who served four years as U.S. ambassador to New Zealand during President Donald Trump’s first administration, has been holding meetings with Republicans across New Hampshire for a couple of months and has met multiple times with GOP officials in the nation’s capital.

Brown recently met with top Trump administration political officials at the White House, sources tell Fox News Digital.

Brown, who told Fox News Digital late last year that he was seriously considering a Senate run, took aim at Granite State Democrats, arguing that ‘they’re just completely out of touch with what we want here in New Hampshire. And the more I think about it, I think we can do better.’

Sununu, who’s long been known for his frenetic pace and his confidence on the campaign trail, highlighted, ‘I know how to run. I know how to win. . . . I think we’ve got a great record here. I just know my voters, and they know me. . . . And so, if I really wanted to do this, I have no doubt we could be very, very successful. I know that sounds arrogant. . . . I don’t care. I’m just saying things are the ABCs of me winning.’

On his past criticism of how the Senate functions, Sununu noted that ‘there’s something that definitely changed from when I really didn’t want to do it in ’22 to today. You know, specifically just the priority. I mean, back then, I had Republicans in the U.S. Senate telling me balancing budgets didn’t matter,’ Sununu elaborated.

And he argued that ‘clearly that has changed.’

Sununu, who regularly highlights that he is a ‘budget hawk,’ pointed to President Donald Trump’s recently created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which aims to overhaul and downsize the federal government. DOGE, steered by Elon Musk, the world’s richest person and the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, has swept through federal agencies, rooting out what the White House argues was billions in wasteful federal spending. It has also taken a meat cleaver to the federal workforce, resulting in a massive downsizing of employees. The moves by DOGE have triggered a slew of lawsuits in response.

‘We have DOGE going on. Thank you, President Trump. He’s talking about balancing budgets. He’s driving that message. And clearly, there’s a need for some leadership on something that I believe very, very strongly,’ Sununu said. ‘There’s a different attitude here. They’re taking their job seriously.’

Following Trump’s first term in the White House and in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters aiming to upend congressional certification of former President Biden’s 2020 election victory, Sununu became a leading vocal GOP Trump critic.

Sununu was a top surrogate and supporter of former U.N. ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Trump’s final challenger in the 2024 GOP presidential primaries. 

But he did back the Republican nominee in the general election.

Asked about his current relationship with Trump and his team, Sununu shared in his Fox News Radio interview, ‘I was at the white House three weeks ago and emphasized ‘that relationship is not of concern.’

‘There’s a great understanding. I’ve been very supportive of what he’s [Trump] been doing, Sununu added. ‘Everyone has seen me out in the media for the last year, working hard for the Republican Party, working hard to get folks to vote the right way.’

And he added that his relationship with Trump and the president’s team ‘is the least of my concerns, to be honest.’

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., wants federal agents caught destroying or concealing government documents to be eligible for a life sentence in prison.

Luna, who is leading a task force on the declassification of government records, is introducing a new bill called the Stopping High-level Record Elimination and Destruction (SHRED) Act of 2025.

It would levy a mandatory sentence of 20 years to life for any government official or employee of the Department of Justice (DOJ), or anyone in the wider intelligence community, found to have concealed, removed, or mutilated federal records, according to bill text previewed by Fox News Digital.

Federal law currently dictates that anyone found knowingly destroying, falsifying, or obstructing government records ‘with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States’ is eligible for a fine or up to 20 years in prison.

Any custodian of public records found to be destroying or concealing those records could be fined up to $2,000 or face up to three years in prison, or both.

Luna’s push for increased penalties comes amid her continued standoff with the Department of Justice (DOJ) over the declassification of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy Jr., among others.

Trump officials like Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel have repeatedly vowed to lead with transparency, including on the subjects of Epstein and Kennedy.

However, Luna told Fox News Digital earlier this week that she had not had significant communications with the DOJ about her task force matters.

‘The DOJ has not been really responsive,’ she said Tuesday. ‘Even if they are, you know, conducting a criminal investigation, you should probably pick up the phone and call us, and not talk about it on the news.’

Conservative influencer Benny Johnson reported on whistleblower allegations within the last month that rank-and-file agents within the FBI were destroying documents in a bid to block Patel’s work

Meanwhile, there has been a tidal wave of pressure from the right for Bondi and Patel to declassify documents about Epstein. An initial round of information, first released to conservative influencers at the White House, was blasted for containing no meaningful evidence implicating anyone in the deceased pedophile’s crimes.

Bondi told Fox News host Mark Levin earlier this month that she was misled on the Epstein documents, and that she was alerted after that initial release to the Southern District of New York ‘sitting on thousands of pages of documents’ that she was not in possession of.

She said Americans would see ‘the full Epstein files,’ adding, ‘We will have it in our possession. We will redact it, of course, to protect grand jury information and confidential witnesses, but American people have a right to know.’

The DOJ was not able to immediately return a request for comment by Fox News Digital.