Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who criss-crossed the country last year on a ‘Fight Oligarchy’ tour with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., spent over $550,000 in 2025 on private jet travel for himself using campaign funds, a Fox News Digital review of Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings found.

The majority of the spending came in the first two quarters, which cover up until July. That is also when Sanders and AOC had the majority of their tour stops across the country. 

In April, between stops on the tour, Fox News Digital exclusively obtained a photo of Sanders boarding a luxury Bombardier Challenger private jet at the Meadows Field Airport in Bakersfield, California. The source also indicated that they had spotted the New York congresswoman boarding the private jet as well. 

The pair were subsequently also seen in footage obtained by Fox News Digital exiting the plane in Sacramento later that evening, near where the self-identified Democratic socialists hosted a second rally in one day.  

The Bombardier Challenger private jet the pair flew on was operated by Ventura Air Services, which touts ‘one of the widest cabins of any business jet available today’ and provides ‘superior cabin comfort for its passengers.’ According to their website, the private jet can cost up to $15,000 an hour.

In 2025, according to Sanders’ FEC filings, he spent at least $354,000 in campaign funds to pay for private jet services through Ventura Jets. The other private jet companies Sanders spent campaign funds on included N-Jet and Cirrus Aviation Services. 

According to N-Jet’s website, the company pieds itself on their ‘personal touch,’ adding that customers will ‘arrive in style with your luxury, comfort, and safety always top of mind.’

Sanders, who has been a vocal supporter of the Green New Deal, the aggressive climate change policy targeting carbon emissions and fossil fuel production, and has called climate change an ‘existential threat’ to the world, was pressed about his private jet use last year, prompting him to tell Fox News’ ‘Special Report’ host Bret Baier that ‘that’s the only way to get around.’

‘You run a campaign, and you do three or four or five rallies in a week. [It is] the only way you can get around to talk to 30,000 people. You think I’m gonna be sitting on a waiting line at United…while 30, 000 people are waiting?’ Sanders said.

‘That’s the only way to get around. No apologies for that. That’s what campaign travel is about. We’ve done it in the past. We’re gonna do it in future.’

Sanders has a long history of using private jets on the campaign trail. During his failed 2020 presidential campaign, the Sanders campaign spent over $1.9 million on private jets, including Apollo Jets and the Advanced Aviation Team, a Virginia-based private jet company.

Private jets have faced the ire of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez’s fellow climate activists. According to the 2021 Transport and Environment report, private jets are up to 14 times more polluting than commercial planes.

‘For real, how many private jets do these CEOs need? It is insatiable. It is unacceptable,’ Ocasio-Cortez said in 2023, in one example of the New York congresswoman herself railing against private jets. 

Fox News Digital reached out to Sanders’ office and his campaign for comment on the spending but did not receive a response in time for publication.

‘You don’t expect a socialist to fly commercial do you?’ quipped conservative political communications consultant Matt Gorman. ‘There’s no bigger hypocrite than the liberal who chastises us for eating meat and using gas stoves, yet flies in private jets.’ 

In addition to Sanders’ hefty private jet spending that came during his tour with AOC, the New York Democratic socialist also spent big sums of campaign dollars at luxury and ’boutique’ hotels in states where the pair held their ‘Fight Oligarchy’ Tour. 

For example, AOC’s campaign paidThe Leo Kent Hotel, a boutique high-rise in Tucson, $3,165.76, around the time of a ‘Fight Oligarchy’ rally that was held there, according to an FEC filing from April 25. In 2025, AOC also spent thousands at luxury hotels like the Asher Adams Hotel in Salt Lake City, the Hotel Vermont in Burlington, The Langham-Huntington hotel in Pasadena, Calif., Hotel El Convento in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the Lansdowne Resort & Spa in rural Virginia, and more. 

Fox News Digital asked representatives for AOC if the congresswoman felt like she needed to explain her more than $53,000 in campaign spending on upscale hotels across the country in 2025, but did not receive a response.

Fox News Digital’s Cameron Cawthorne, Andrew Mark Miller and Deirdre Heavey (formerly) contributed to this report.

Nicki Minaj, who has recently been a vocal critic of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, accused him in a new interview of trying to be like President Donald Trump, referring to recent social media posts of the governor’s that emulate the president’s frank style.

‘With Newscum, it’s the fact that with everything you said, but then having the audacity to be playing on Twitter, obsessed with Trump, trying to be Trump, trying to be funny when it’s not and then wanting to roll around in the mud with female rappers or whomever and completely missing the plot,’ Minaj told Katie Miller on her podcast this week.

Many of Minaj’s online attacks have been over the governor’s support of transgender children.

‘Imagine being the guy running on wanting to see trans kids,’ Minaj wrote on social media late last year. ‘Not even a trans ADULT would run on that. Normal adults wake up & think they want to see HEALTHY, SAFE, HAPPY kids. Not Gav. The Gav Nots. GavOUT. Send in the next guy, I’m bored.’

She suggested to Miller that Newsom would be better off not trying to compete with Trump.

‘But President Trump is already the president, get it?’ she said as if speaking directly to Newsom. ‘He’s already done it twice. He’s won. Good. OK. Meanwhile, you are embarking on what — a journey that will end up being a big huge failure for him.’

The ‘Tukoh Taka’ singer said the governor still doesn’t ‘seem to grasp the fact that these jokes that you’re making are only funny to your assistant, you know, the weirdo little guy that calls Black women stupid h— and stuff.’

Newsom’s assistant responded to one of Minaj’s slams on social media last year by posting a picture of a Nicki Minaj T-shirt in the trash. He captioned the image: ‘Stupid H–,’ a reference to her 2012 song of the same name.

She claimed that ‘no one cares’ about Newsom’s rhetoric online, ‘and he’s making a fool out of himself like when he went all the way to another country to speak ill of the country and the president. We would never want someone like that to be our president. Americans are so big on loyalty and that just showed us all you do not have a loyal bone in your body and no one is going to vote for you.’

Newsom spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month, expressing his concerns that ‘freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech’ are all under attack because of the Trump administration.

‘They’re censoring historical facts, they’re rewriting history,’ he added, also claiming that the administration had canceled an earlier event the governor was supposed to speak at.

Minaj said Newsom failed to respond to her when she asked for his office’s help ‘on Twitter about swatting calls that were happening that were clearly a part of their extended smear campaign. And he completely ignored it, right? And next thing you know, he’s on there flapping his gums about female rap stuff and trying to get in women’s business. So I had to. I had to show him who’s boss on Twitter.’

Newsom has only responded to her tirade of social media attacks once.

In December, he posted a mashup of videos and images of Trump, including with Jeffrey Epstein, set to Meghan Thee Stallion’s Minaj diss track ‘HISS.’

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

A pro-life group is releasing a new report claiming abortions have continued to rise nationwide since 2020 because of a Biden administration FDA policy that allows abortion pills to be prescribed via telehealth and shipped by mail — a move the group says the Trump administration could reverse.

In a report obtained by Fox News Digital, the Restoration of America Foundation (ROAF) argues that a COVID-era FDA policy under former President Joe Biden is driving an estimated more than 500 mail-order chemical abortions per day, citing data from Guttmacher and WeCount.

The data also shows that chemical abortions now account for the majority of abortions, making up about 63% in 2023, a jump from 39% in 2017.

The report also estimates that there were roughly 170,000 additional abortions in 2024 than would have happened if the abortion rate had remained at 2019 levels.

‘Since hitting a low in 2017, the national abortion rate has seen a persistent and troubling climb,’ the report states. ‘In 2019, the last full year that abortion by mail was clearly illegal, there were an estimated 916,460 abortions. Using our estimate for 2024, the overall growth in abortion from 2019 to 2024 was 22 percent. Over the same window, the U.S. population grew by just 2.9 percent. Had the abortion rate remained steady from 2019, there would have been 171,103 fewer abortions in 2024.’

The findings show abortion-by-mail made up roughly one in four abortions in the U.S. in the first half of 2025.

WeCount data cited in the report also shows an estimated 244,590 do-it-yourself abortions were facilitated by telehealth in 2024, including more than 120,000 pills sent into states where abortion was restricted or banned after the Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade in 2022, giving the power to make abortion laws back to the states.

The Biden administration policy removed safety standards that required women to see a doctor to be prescribed mifepristone, allowing it to be prescribed through telehealth and sent by mail. The report argues that the FDA under Biden justified the change using limited studies and adverse-event data, despite most mandatory reporting requirements for mifepristone complications being removed in 2016 under the Obama administration. A research paper in 2021 additionally compared adverse-event data with Planned Parenthood data and concluded that the system is ‘inadequate’ to evaluate the safety of mifepristone abortions.

‘People are calling up and saying whatever they need to say to get the drug in the mail,’ ROAF CEO Doug Truax said in an interview with Fox News Digital. ‘The point that we’re making is that abortions are on the rise dramatically. 874,000 in 2023, up to 1.1 million in 2024. Then on this trajectory, by the time President Trump leaves office, it’d be about 1.4 million a year. And so it’s largely driven by the drugs going out in the mail.’

‘There’s about 150 women a day that are being seriously harmed by this drug,’ Truax continued. ‘So we need to get them to go see the doctor. The doctor needs to verify where they’re at with the pregnancy. Obviously, if it’s an ectopic pregnancy, it means they could take this drug, and they could die from it, which has happened. But there are all kinds of sepsis and rupturing and hemorrhaging and everything going on with this drug.’

‘So there are two angles to this. We’re very pro-life over here. We want to go to zero abortions in the country. But the other angle is that this is a women’s health issue. So we need to decrease the number of abortions, and we need to basically save women from being harmed by this,’ he added.

Truax also noted that states with higher populations are receiving the most abortion pills through the mail and that Democrat-led states have enacted shield laws preventing GOP-led states from taking legal action against providers.

‘For instance, Texas, they don’t have abortion anymore, but they sure do,’ he said. ‘People think it’s down to zero. It’s not at all. It’s about where it was. So you have all these abortionists in, to name a few, Massachusetts and California. There’s dispensing organizations now around the country and around the globe that will mail these things out. They’re very active getting these abortion drugs into states that said, ‘we don’t want abortion here.”

The FDA continues to keep the in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone suspended — a safety rule that had been in place for roughly 20 years before Biden’s FDA permanently removed it following a COVID-era suspension.

The policy was met with legal challenges under the previous administration, but the Supreme Court allowed it to remain in effect after ruling that the plaintiffs lacked standing. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled the FDA’s action under Biden was likely ‘arbitrary and capricious’ under the Administrative Procedure Act.

Truax said that the Trump administration has the authority to nix the policy, and urged the federal government to do so.

‘I think that from a political standpoint, they’d rather not talk about it. But our point is, from a political standpoint, it’s going to start hurting. Pro-life Americans are really grateful to the president for the Supreme Court that we have, they got Roe thrown out, as it should have been a long time ago. But there’s more work to be done. We’re grateful for defunding Planned Parenthood. That’s great for a year. But the bottom line is, if the number of abortions is actually going up and there’s a step you could take to stop it, we got to do that,’ he said.

‘There’s a massive number of pro-life Americans that are base supporters of the president who may say, ‘wait a minute, we’ve been in power for this entire time and the number of abortions keeps going up, and we could have stopped it,” he added.

Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill and state officials have been calling on the Trump administration to take action.

Last summer, more than 20 attorneys general urged Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary to complete a safety review of mifepristone and consider reinstating safeguards or removing the drug from the market. Kennedy and Makary vowed to conduct a new review of the safety of the drug, but they have not released a timeline for the results.

‘President Trump, Secretary Kennedy, and Commissioner Makary already have the tools at their disposal to reverse the legally and scientifically dubious decisions of the Biden Administration’s FDA and to reinstate the in-person dispensing requirement. The Trump Administration must act swiftly to restore commonsense medical safeguards to the chemical abortion pill,’ the ROAF report says.

Venezuelan official Alex Saab, a former businessman and close ally of captured former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, was arrested in the Latin American country on Wednesday as part of a joint operation between the U.S. and Venezuela, according to a U.S. law enforcement official.

Saab, 54, who had previously been held in the U.S., is expected to be extradited to the U.S. in the coming days, the U.S. official told Reuters.

A lawyer for Saab, Luigi Giuliano, was cited in the Colombian newspaper El Espectador later on Wednesday, denying the arrest as ‘fake news.’ Journalists aligned with Venezuela’s government also made social media posts denying that Saab had been arrested.

Giuliano told Venezuelan news site TalCual that Saab may make an appearance to refute the arrest allegations himself but was consulting with the government about what had happened.

Venezuela’s top lawmaker, Jorge Rodríguez, did not confirm or deny the reports during a press conference, saying he had no information concerning the possible arrest.

This comes after the U.S. operation to attack Venezuela and arrest Maduro, and the Trump administration’s subsequent seizing of oil tankers from the country.

Saab’s arrest would suggest a new level of collaboration between U.S. and Venezuelan authorities under the government of interim President Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s former deputy, who currently controls Venezuela’s law enforcement agencies and actions.

The U.S. official highlighted the significance of Rodriguez’s cooperation in the joint operation.

Raul Gorrin, the head of Venezuela’s Globovision TV network, was also arrested in the operation, the official said.

Saab, who was born in Colombia, was previously detained in the African nation of Cape Verde in 2020 and held in the U.S. for more than three years on bribery charges. He was eventually granted clemency in exchange for the release of Americans held in Venezuela.

Before he was granted clemency, U.S. officials had charged Saab with taking around $350 million out of Venezuela through the U.S. as part of a bribery scheme connected to Venezuela’s state-controlled exchange rate.

Saab denied the allegations and appealed to have the charges dismissed on grounds of diplomatic immunity. An appeals court had not ruled on Saab’s appeal by the time the prisoner swap went through.

When he returned to Venezuela at the end of 2023, Maduro praised Saab’s loyalty to the country’s socialist revolution and called him a national hero.

Maduro later appointed Saab as industry minister, a position he held until last month, when he was dismissed by Rodriguez following the arrest of the country’s former leader.

Reuters contributed to this report.

The House of Representatives passed a federal funding bill aimed at ending the partial government shutdown on Tuesday, which will bring the four-day standoff to a close shortly after the legislation gets to President Donald Trump’s desk.

The funding bill, which passed the House 217-214, is a compromise struck between Senate Democrats and the White House that would fund roughly 97% of the federal government through the end of fiscal 2026.

Trump played an integral role in hashing out the new deal and quelling a subsequent rebellion by conservative lawmakers to get it over the finish line.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., signaled he was strongly against the plan, despite his Senate counterpart’s role in putting it together. But 21 Democrats bucked his concerns in the end to vote in favor of it.

Jeffries and his top lieutenants in the House Democratic Caucus all voted against the bill, however.

On the GOP side, 21 Republicans voted against the legislation while 196 were in favor.

Democrats had initially walked away from a bipartisan House deal to finish funding the federal government through the end of fiscal 2026 on Sept. 30, rebelling against a bill funding the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) over Trump’s handling of unrest in Minneapolis.

Their mutiny left roughly 78% of the government’s yearly funding hanging in the balance because the DHS bill was lumped into a wider package authorizing budgets for the departments of War, Labor, Health and Human Services (HHS), Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and Education.

The deal struck between Senate Democrats and the White House would fully fund those remaining areas while only extending current funding levels for DHS through Feb. 13, in order to give Democrats and Republicans time to hash out a longer-term bipartisan plan.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters on Tuesday that the legislation would succeed, though he hinted at some dissatisfaction with how negotiations played out.

‘This is not my preferred route. I wanted to keep all six bills together,’ Johnson said. ‘But listen, the president agreed with Schumer that they would separate Homeland, and we’ll do that, and we’ll handle it.… The Republicans are going to do the responsible thing.’

The Senate’s federal funding deal survived an important hurdle late Tuesday morning, clearing a House-wide ‘rule vote’ to allow for lawmakers to debate the measure and set up a vote on final passage by early afternoon.

It comes after a pair of House conservatives announced they would be backing off their threats to sink the legislation during the rule vote if the legislation was not paired with an unrelated election integrity bill called the SAVE America Act.

Reps. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., and Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., warned they would not support the bill during the rule vote without the SAVE America Act attached but pivoted on Monday night after a conversation with the White House.

‘As of right now, with the current agreement that we have, as well as discussions, we will both be a yes on the rule,’ Luna said. ‘There is something called a standing filibuster that would effectively allow Sen. Thune to put voter ID on the floor of the Senate. We are hearing that that is going well, and he is considering that… so we are very happy about that.’

The SAVE America Act would require voter ID at the polls and create a new proof of citizenship mandate in the voter registration process.

But it appears Luna’s insistence that Thune had embraced the standing filibuster, a little-known and antiquated legislative maneuver, was not quite accurate.

Still, Thune said there were Senate Republicans who ‘expressed an interest in that, so we’re going to have a conversation about it. But there weren’t any commitments made.’

He noted that forcing the standing filibuster to try and pass the SAVE America Act, or any of its variations coming from the House, would be a massive drain on time in the Senate.

Doing so ‘ties up floor time indefinitely,’ Thune said. That’s because of rules that guarantee any senator gets up to two speeches on a bill. That, coupled with the clock being reset by amendments to the bill, means that the Senate could effectively be paralyzed for months as Republicans chip away at Democratic opposition.

‘There’s always an opportunity cost,’ Thune said.

‘Well, at any time there’s an amendment offered, and that amendment is tabled, it resets the clock,’ he continued. ‘The two-speech rule kicks in again. So let’s say, you know, every Democrat senator talks for two hours. That’s 940 hours on the floor.’

It’s not immediately clear when Trump will sign the funding bill, but it’s expected the White House will want to move fast. The longest government shutdown in history, which lasted 43 days, just ended in November.

The Iranian president, who just days ago accused President Donald Trump of provoking unrest and trying to ‘tear this country apart,’ is now striking a softer tone regarding talks about its nuclear program, following a warning from Trump. 

Trump said at the White House on Monday that the U.S. is talking with Iran and that he would ‘like to see a deal negotiated.’  

‘And if we could work something out, that’d be great,’ Trump added. ‘And if we can’t, probably bad things would happen.’ 

Masoud Pezeshkian then took to X on Tuesday and wrote, ‘In light of requests from friendly governments in the region to respond to the proposal by the President of the United States for negotiations: I have instructed my Minister of Foreign Affairs, provided that a suitable environment exists — one free from threats and unreasonable expectations — to pursue fair and equitable negotiations, guided by the principles of dignity, prudence, and expediency.’

‘These negotiations shall be conducted within the framework of our national interests,’ Pezeshkian also said. 

Axios has reported that U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff will meet Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Istanbul on Friday. However, a source familiar with the matter told Fox News on Tuesday that Iran wants to move the discussions to Oman.

Pezeshkian told state television on Saturday that Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and European leaders ‘rode on our problems, provoked, and were seeking — and still seek — to fragment society,’ according to Reuters.

‘They brought them into the streets and wanted, as they said, to tear this country apart, to sow conflict and hatred among the people and create division,’ Pezeshkian reportedly added about the anti-government protests and deadly crackdown that recently swept through Iran. ‘Everyone knows that the issue was not just a social protest.’   

Then in a series of posts on X on Tuesday, Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, ‘The United States wants to devour Iran; the Iranian nation and the Islamic Republic prevent this,’ and, ‘Iran stands firm and will continue to stand firm, and — God willing — will put an end to the United States’ mischief and harassment.’

‘The recent sedition was orchestrated by Zionists & the US. I was informed through a certain channel that the CIA & Mossad deployed all of their resources into the field!’  Khamenei also claimed, without providing any evidence.

Trump said last week that ‘time is running out for Iran.’

In a Truth Social post last Wednesday, Trump wrote, ‘A massive Armada is heading to Iran.’  

‘It is moving quickly, with great power, enthusiasm, and purpose. It is a larger fleet, headed by the great Aircraft Carrier Abraham Lincoln, than that sent to Venezuela. Like with Venezuela, it is, ready, willing, and able to rapidly fulfill its mission, with speed and violence, if necessary. Hopefully, Iran will quickly ‘Come to the Table’ and negotiate a fair and equitable deal — NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS — one that is good for all parties. Time is running out, it is truly of the essence!’ the president warned. 

Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be deposed by the House Oversight Committee at the end of this month.

Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., announced Hillary Clinton will sit for a closed-door transcribed interview on Feb. 26, and Bill Clinton will appear on Feb. 27 under the same terms.

Both interviews will be filmed, Comer’s press release said. 

It comes after weeks of back-and-forth between the former first couple and the House GOP-led committee about whether they would testify in the chamber’s probe into Jeffrey Epstein, and under what terms.

The Clintons were both facing contempt of Congress votes in the House this week if they did not agree to come to Capitol Hill for in-person interviews with the Oversight Committee.

Those votes were likely to succeed as well. Late last month, nine Democrats on the House Oversight Committee joined all Republicans in voting to advance Bill Clinton’s contempt of Congress resolution to a House-wide vote. Three Democrats voted to advance the resolution against Hillary Clinton.

A contempt of Congress vote would refer both Clintons to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for criminal prosecution.

A contempt of Congress conviction is a misdemeanor that carries a maximum fine of $100,000 and up to a year in jail.

‘Republicans and Democrats on the Oversight Committee have been clear: no one is above the law — and that includes the Clintons. After delaying and defying duly issued subpoenas for six months, the House Oversight Committee moved swiftly to initiate contempt of Congress proceedings in response to their non-compliance,’ Comer said in a statement.

‘Once it became clear that the House of Representatives would hold them in contempt, the Clintons completely caved and will appear for transcribed, filmed depositions this month. We look forward to questioning the Clintons as part of our investigation into the horrific crimes of Epstein and Maxwell, to deliver transparency and accountability for the American people and for survivors.’

Fox News Digital reached out to Bill Clinton’s spokesman for comment.

The Clintons were two of 10 people subpoenaed for testimony before the committee as it probes the federal government’s handling of Epstein’s case. So far just two people subpoenaed by the committee, former Attorney General Bill Barr and ex-Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, have appeared in person.

Their attorneys wrote to Comer last month calling his subpoenas legally invalid and a violation of separation of powers, arguments the Kentucky Republican rejected.

‘President and Secretary Clinton have already provided the limited information they possess about Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell to the Committee. They did so proactively and voluntarily, and despite the fact that the Subpoenas are invalid and legally unenforceable, untethered to a valid legislative purpose, unwarranted because they do not seek pertinent information, and an unprecedented infringement on the separation of powers,’ the letter read.

The two sides then went back-and-forth discussing various terms as Comer continued to forge ahead with contempt proceedings.

Comer twice rejected offers for himself and Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the committee, to travel to New York with limited staff to interview Bill Clinton. 

Meanwhile, Democrats had accused Comer of pursuing the contempt charges for political motivations rather than to get closure for Epstein’s victims.

Bill Clinton was known to have a friendship with Epstein before his federal criminal charges and is among many high-profile names to appear in the trove of files being released on the late pedophile by the DOJ. But there has been no implication of wrongdoing by either of the Clintons as it relates to Epstein.

With a looming vote that could have set up an unprecedented criminal prosecution, the Clintons’ attorneys wrote to the committee on Monday, ‘[M]y clients accept the terms of your letter and will appear for depositions on mutually agreeable dates. As has been the Committee’s practice, please confirm the House will not move forward with contempt proceedings, as the Chairman stated in his letter this morning.’

: A group led by conservative moms is stepping into the fight against illegal Chinese-made vapes, inspired by the Trump administration’s efforts, and announcing it will be mounting an ‘aggressive’ 2026 campaign to educate parents on the dangers of illegal e-cigarettes. 

Moms for America Action, the nation’s largest conservative mothers organization, announced in a press release it will make combating illegal Chinese vapes a top priority in the 2026 election cycle, mobilizing parents and placing ads nationwide to demand tougher enforcement and accountability for manufacturers flooding the U.S. market with illicit products.

The group says the action is in line with the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal vape products manufactured in China that are marketed to children with a variety of flavors.

‘For moms, this is personal,’ Emily Stack, executive director of Moms for America Action, said in the press release.

‘Illegal Chinese vapes are showing up in our schools, our neighborhoods, and our homes every single day. Moms are fed up, and we’re taking action to stop these products from targeting our kids.’

Moms for America Actions says it will ‘mobilize moms’ to ‘advocate for stronger enforcement, accountability for foreign manufacturers, and protections for children and families.’

In the press release, the group points out that many illicit Chinese vapes are ‘deliberately designed’ to appeal to children and says that will be a main focus of their campaign’s pushback.

 ‘This is not an accident; it’s by design,’ Stack explained. ‘China has built a billion-dollar industry on addicting American kids to illegal products that have no place in our communities. Moms are fed up, and we fully support the Trump administration’s aggressive actions to shut down this black market.’

The group’s efforts are in line with the Trump administration’s push to combat illicit Chinese vapes, highlighted by an $86.5 million seizure of illegal vapes in Chicago last year that accompanied ‘Operation Vape Trail,’ an operation by Trump’s Drug Enforcement Agency to stem illegal vape sales. 

‘The Chinese are getting richer while our children get sicker,’ Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. posted on X last September. ‘We’re putting an end to that.’

‘We are targeting illegal Chinese vapes, and we will stop them from poisoning our children.’

China’s vape industry is estimated at $28 billion, and despite federal restrictions, government data indicates that two-thirds of its products reach U.S. consumers. More than 80% of vapes sold nationwide are illicit and not authorized for sale. 

‘President Trump’s actions send a clear message: profiting off the addiction of our children will not be tolerated,’ Stack said. ‘Moms want safe communities, honest enforcement of the law, and leaders who put American families first. We are committed to making sure these dangerous products are removed from our schools and neighborhoods for good.’

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer stood in the way of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE) this week, claiming that it represents ‘Jim Crow’ segregation laws, leading many on social media to bring up his identical claim about a Georgia voting law that resulted in record Black turnout.

Schumer pushed back on a Republican plan to add the SAVE Act, which would require states to obtain proof of citizenship in-person when people register to vote and remove non-citizens from voter rolls, to the spending package being debated in Congress.

‘I have said it before and I’ll say it again, the SAVE Act would impose Jim Crow-type laws to the entire country and is dead on arrival in the Senate,’ Schumer said on Monday. ‘It is a poison pill that will kill any legislation that it is attached to… The SAVE Act is reminiscent of Jim Crow era laws and would expand them to the whole of America. Republicans want to restore Jim Crow and apply it from one end of this country to the other. It will not happen.’

Many on social media quickly pointed to Schumer previously calling a Georgia election integrity law ‘Jim Crow 2.0’ before the law resulted in record Black turnout in the 2022 state election.

‘Schumer used the same line to describe Georgia laws that indisputably expanded voter access back in 2022,’ commentator and writer AG Hamilton posted on X. ‘It’s incredibly offensive and unserious to pretend that every voting law equates to a renewal of Jim Crow.’

Many Democrats, from Schumer, to President Joe Biden, to failed Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, warned that the Georgia voter integrity law would be ‘Jim Crow 2.0’ and Major League Baseball even pulled its All-Star Game from Atlanta in 2021 amid public pressure.

Ultimately, the Georgia Secretary of State revealed that the law did not suppress turnout, but rather increased it, particularly among minority voters.

‘Chuck Schumer sounds like a broken record,’ Honest Elections Project Executive Director Jason Snead told Fox News Digital. ‘When Georgia passed a new voting law in 2021, Schumer labeled it ‘Jim Crow’ even though the state went on to see explosive turnout in 2022.’

Snead pointed to a University of Georgia poll after the 2022 election finding that 0% of Black respondents had a poor experience voting. 

Snead continued, ‘Now, Schumer is smearing the SAVE Act the same way because he has no legitimate excuse for opposing a law that makes sure only American citizens are voting—which more than 80% of Americans support. Schumer’s smears were false then, and they are false now.

‘Schumer and the Democrats keep trying to rig the rules of our elections by pushing failed, California-style election laws that invite chaos and fraud. That’s not what Americans want.’

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

A Senate Republican suggested Wednesday that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., had his feelings hurt by not being included in the Trump-Schumer deal to fund the government. 

The House passed the five-bill funding package, along with a two-week funding extension for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), on Tuesday. Jeffries and most House Democrats, save for 21, voted against it as the partial government shutdown entered its fourth day. 

Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., said it was because Jeffries was ‘butt hurt’ that he was not looped into the deal brokered between Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and President Donald Trump. 

‘He’s butt hurt that President Trump didn’t call him, too,’ Marshall told Fox News Digital. ‘But I think that’s on Schumer.’

Marshall described the scene in the Oval Office last week, where top-ranking Senate Republicans met with Trump as the funding deadline neared, and Senate Democrats were digging in deeper into their demands to renegotiate the DHS funding bill. 

‘The president says, ‘Get Schumer on the phone.’ They get Schumer on the phone. They broker a deal,’ Marshall said.

‘So really, it’s on Schumer that he agreed to this deal, really, before bringing Hakeem in,’ he continued. ‘And really it comes down to that Hakeem’s feelings are butt hurt, and to him, he’s fighting for his political life and really struggling.’

While the deal does fund 11 out of the 12 agencies under Congress’ purview, DHS remains an open question.

Senate Democrats, following the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti during an immigration operation in Minneapolis, demanded that the bipartisan bill to fund the agency be sidelined in order to cram in more restrictions and reforms for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). 

Turning to a two-week continuing resolution (CR) to further negotiate the bill has Republicans concerned that they will end up in the same position within the next few days, given the truncated timeframe to hash out major issues with one of the most politically perilous funding bills.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said that negotiations with Senate Democrats would be carried out by Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., who chairs the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee. 

He acknowledged, however, that Trump would be the deciding factor. 

‘Ultimately, that’s going to be a conversation between the President of the United States and the Democrats here in the Senate,’ he said.

But Schumer insisted that Thune needed to be in on the negotiations. 

‘If Leader Thune negotiates in good faith, we can get it done,’ Schumer said. ‘We expect to present to the Republicans a very serious, detailed proposal very shortly.’

Fox News Digital reached out to Schumer and Jeffries for comment.