PHOENIX, Ariz. – While it is true that Erika Kirk is head of one of the nation’s leading conservative groups, at one point this weekend at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest, she made it clear that she holds an even more important title: mother.

After two days of infighting at the conference between some of its top stars, Kirk smiled on stage Friday night and said, ‘Well, say what you want about AmFest, but it’s definitely not boring. Feels like a Thanksgiving dinner where your family’s hashing out the family business.’

This is the best and most positive way to look at the squabbling in Phoenix between Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and other right-wing celebrities. It has been mostly over Israel, and it was a sideshow few attendees expected or particularly wanted.

Brent, in his 50s and from Oklahoma City, came to AmFest with his two sons.

‘I was in there the night Ben and Tucker went at each other, at one point, I told my wife, I’m going out for some air, I just felt like I needed to escape to the real world, you know?’ he told me over a smoke.

I did know. 

Along with sniping over Israel and antisemitism, the question of what a ‘heritage American’ is, or if it is a thing at all, also spurred division. Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy told the crowd, ‘I think the idea of a heritage American is about as loony as anything the woke left has actually put up,’ adding ‘There is no American who is more American than somebody else.… It is binary. Either you’re an American or you’re not.’

This would have been Civics 101, even for conservatives, not long ago, but Ramaswamy is right to mention wokeness, because proponents of the concept that a genealogy that leads back to nation’s founding is something special is mainly driven by such people being told for decades now that it is actually the only lineage that is not special, or something to be proud of.

I asked Dennis, who is the fourth-generation owner of a farm in South Dakota, which sounds pretty heritage-y to me, what he made of it all.

‘I don’t think much about that,’ he said. ‘If you love the country and follow the laws, you can be an American.’

Dennis was much more interested in, and comfortable talking about soybeans and sugar beets. I asked how the tariffs were affecting him, and he told me, ‘It’s hurt, but I look at the big picture and I think it will be good in the long run.’

It was tempting after speaking, not just with Dennis, but with many attendees, old and young, who are most focused on prices, to think, ‘It’s the economy, stupid, knock it off with the identity politics stuff.’ But Erika Kirk made a good point: These might be fights the right needs to have before settling into next year’s midterm elections.

TPUSA spokesman Andrew Kolvet posted on X with this very message.

‘If we force conformity without uncomfortable debates, there can be no winning consensus,’ he wrote. ‘There’s no civil war. This is the necessary work of a conservative coalition defining its dominant center ahead of the coming battles. We’re not hive-minded commies. Let it play out.’

It should also be noted how much better hashing all of this out at an actual live event is than endless sniping on social media where nobody is ever really forced to contend with ideas they oppose. The mere act of shaking hands with someone you disagree with can be a powerful calming influence.

On Sunday, the big finale of AmFest will be Vice President JD Vance’s speech to the assembled. As of 4 a.m., there was already a line for it.

Sarah, a college freshman told me, ‘I wasn’t old enough to vote for Trump, but I will get to vote for Vance, and I’m excited about that.’ This is good news for Vance, but it’s also a lot of pressure. Can he be the force that mends the wounds opening this weekend at AmFest? 

Erika Kirk is right, families sometimes fight. In fact, sometimes they have to. But the question is always what happens after the blowup, after the tears and recriminations?

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., told the crowd this weekend, ‘You may not like Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro, Steve Bannon or me. Guess what: If the radical left wins, we all hang together.’

This seems correct, and even after AmFest’s nasty internecine fighting, it is still a goal well within reach of TPUSA and the conservative movement. It is also almost certainly what Charlie Kirk would have wanted.

FBI Director Kash Patel said Saturday the agency is ramping up its use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools to counter domestic and international threats.

In a post on X, Patel said the FBI has been advancing its technology, calling AI a ‘key component’ of its strategy to respond to threats and stay ‘ahead of the game.’

‘FBI has been working on key technology advances to keep us ahead of the game and respond to an always changing threat environment both domestically and on the world stage,’ Patel wrote. ‘Artificial intelligence is a key component of this.

‘We’ve been working on an AI project to assist our investigators and analysts in the national security space — staying ahead of bad actors and adversaries who seek to do us harm.’

Patel added that FBI leadership has established a ‘technology working group’ led by outgoing Deputy Director Dan Bongino to ensure the agency’s tools ‘evolve with the mission.’

‘These are investments that will pay dividends for America’s national security for decades to come,’ Patel said.

A spokesperson for the FBI told Fox News Digital it had nothing further to add beyond Patel’s X post.

The FBI uses AI for tools such as vehicle recognition, voice-language identification, speech-to-text analysis and video analytics, according to the agency’s website.

Earlier this week, Bongino announced he would leave the bureau in January after speculation rose about 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 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.’

A bipartisan Obamacare fix remains out of reach in the Senate, for now, and lawmakers can’t agree on who is at fault. 

While many agree that the forthcoming healthcare cliff will cause financial pain, the partisan divide quickly devolved into pointing the finger across the aisle at who owns the looming healthcare premium spikes that Americans who use the healthcare exchange will face. 

Part of the finger-pointing has yielded another surprising agreement: Lawmakers don’t see the fast-approaching expiration of the Biden-era enhanced Obamacare subsidies as Congress failing to act in time.

‘Obviously, it’s not a failure of Congress to act,’ Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told Fox News Digital. ‘It’s a failure of Republicans to act. Democrats are united and wanting to expand subsidies. Republicans want premium increases to go up.’

Senate Republicans and Democrats both tried, and failed, to advance their own partisan plans to replace or extend the subsidies earlier this month. And since then, no action has been taken to deal with the fast-approaching issue, guaranteeing that the subsidies will lapse at the end of the year.

A report published last month by Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit healthcare think tank, found that Americans who use the credits will see an average increase of 114% in their premium costs.

The increase can vary depending on how high above the poverty level a person is. The original premium subsidies set a cap at 400% above the poverty level, while the enhanced subsidies, which were passed during the COVID-19 pandemic, torched the cap.

For example, a person 60 years or older making 401% of the poverty level, or about $62,000 per year, would on average see their premium prices double. That number can skyrocket depending on the state. Wyoming clocks in at the highest spike at 421%.

In Murphy’s home state of Connecticut, premiums under the same parameters would hike in price by 316%.

‘When these do lapse, people are going to die,’ Murphy said. ‘I mean, I was talking to a couple a few months ago who have two parents, both with chronic, potentially life-threatening illnesses, and they will only be able to afford insurance for one of them. So they’re talking about which parent is going to survive to raise their three kids. The stakes are life and death.’

Both sides hold opposing views on the solution. Senate Republicans argue that the credits effectively subsidize insurance companies, not patients, by funneling money directly to them, and that the program is rife with fraud.

Senate Democrats want to extend the subsidies as they are, and are willing to negotiate fixes down the line. But for the GOP, they want to see some immediate reforms, like income caps, anti-fraud measures and more stringent anti-abortion language tied to the subsidies.

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., who produced his own healthcare plan that would convert subsidies into health savings accounts (HSAs), argued that congressional Democrats ‘set this up to expire.’

But he doesn’t share the view that the subsidies’ expected expiration is a life-or-death situation.

‘I’m not taxing somebody who makes 20 bucks an hour to pay for healthcare for somebody who makes half a million dollars a year, that’s what they did,’ he told Fox News Digital. ‘All they did was mask the increase in healthcare costs. That’s all they did with it.’

Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind., similarly scoffed at the notion, and told Fox News Digital, ‘The Democrat plan to extend COVID-era Obamacare subsidies might help less than half a percent of the American population.’

‘The Republican plan brings down healthcare costs for 100% of Americans,’ he said. ‘More competition, expands health savings accounts. That needs to be the focus.’

Democrats are also not hiding their disdain for the partisan divide between their approaches to healthcare.

Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, told Fox News Digital that the idea that this ‘is a congressional failure and not a Republican policy is preposterous.’

‘They’ve hated the Affordable Care Act since its inception and tried to repeal it at every possible opportunity,’ he said, referring to Obamacare. ‘The president hates ACA, speaker hates ACA, majority leader hates ACA, rank-and-file hate ACA. And so this is not some failure of bipartisanship.’

While the partisan rancor runs deep on the matter of Obamacare, there are Republicans and Democrats working together to build a new plan. Still, it wouldn’t deal with the rapidly approaching Dec. 31 deadline to extend the subsidies.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., predicted that the Senate would have a long road to travel before a bipartisan plan came together in the new year, but he didn’t rule it out.

‘It’s the Christmas season. It would take a Christmas miracle to execute on actually getting something done there,’ he said. ‘But, you know, I think there’s a potential path, but it’ll be heavy lift.’

From a distance, Margarita Island looks like a Caribbean escape. Palm-lined beaches, duty-free shops, and resort towns sell the image of a tropical playground just off Venezuela’s northeastern coast. But U.S. officials say the Venezuelan outpost has become something else entirely: Hezbollah’s most important base of operations in the Western Hemisphere, strengthened by Iran’s growing footprint and the Maduro regime’s protection.

That threat, U.S. officials warn, reflects a broader security challenge emerging from the region. ‘The single most serious threat to the United States from the Western Hemisphere is from transnational terrorist criminal groups primarily focused on narcotrafficking,’ Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at an end-of-year press conference at the State Department on Friday.

‘Margarita Island might be of significance to the U.S. because of its location and the security dynamics around it,’ Melissa Ford Maldonado, director of the Western Hemisphere Initiative at the America First Policy Institute, told Fox News Digital. ‘It is close to Trinidad and Tobago and Grenada, in an oil-rich part of the Caribbean along key maritime routes, and it has long had a reputation for being a major drug-trafficking hub, possibly because it’s off the mainland and there’s not a lot of law enforcement there.’

The island’s isolation, she said, has made it attractive to ‘irregular armed groups, foreign intelligence actors and criminal networks that use it as a departure point for boats carrying illicit shipments out of Venezuela.’

Marshall Billingslea, the former assistant secretary for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes in the U.S. Treasury Department, said Margarita Island now serves as Hezbollah’s key foothold in the Western Hemisphere.

‘From what I have seen and what I have been told, there is a wide range of activities that Hezbollah and to some extent Hamas are engaged in,’ Billingslea told Fox News Digital. ‘Margarita Island is really the center of gravity for their activities.’

In written testimony submitted to the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control for an Oct. 21 hearing, Billingslea traced the island’s transformation back more than two decades. Under Hugo Chávez, he wrote, Venezuela ‘opened its doors to Hezbollah, allowing the group to establish a major footprint, including a paramilitary training site, on Margarita Island.’

‘When Nicolás Maduro seized power,’ Billingslea added, ‘the breadth and depth of Hezbollah’s presence in Venezuela dramatically expanded, as did their ties to the narco-terrorist regime and the Cartel de los Soles.’

‘The relationship is very close with the Cartel de los Soles, and it has been so for many, many years,’ Billingslea said, referring to the network of senior Venezuelan officials accused by the United States of drug trafficking.

Billingslea said Hezbollah has embedded itself into Margarita Island’s economy, exploiting the island’s duty-free status and cross-border access to Colombia to generate revenue through smuggling and drug importation. He said the group operates a wide range of companies on the island and also maintains several training camps there.

His testimony also detailed how Venezuela’s state apparatus helped embed Hezbollah inside the country. He wrote that former senior official Tareck El Aissami, while overseeing Venezuela’s passport and naturalization agency, ‘was instrumental in furnishing passports and citizenship documents to Hezbollah operatives as well as a large number of people from Lebanon, Syria, and Iran.’ Between 2010 and 2019, Venezuelan authorities issued more than 10,400 passports to individuals from those countries, according to the testimony.

A May 27, 2020, Justice Department announcement alleged that Diosdado Cabello directed Venezuelan lawmaker Adel El Zabayar to travel to the Middle East to obtain weapons and recruit members of Hezbollah and Hamas for training at clandestine camps inside Venezuela. The filing also describes a subsequent weapons delivery at a hangar controlled by Maduro at the country’s main international airport.

Recent developments in the Middle East have only increased Margarita Island’s importance, Billingslea said. Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon has damaged the group’s military leadership and financial infrastructure, forcing it to rely more heavily on overseas networks.

‘Israeli successes against Hezbollah in Lebanon in particular, including their strikes on the financial infrastructure Al-Qard al-Hassan that operates in Lebanon, are going to have two effects,’ he said. ‘The first is that it is making the fundraising and the revenue generation that comes out of Latin America even more important to the terrorist group. Secondly, we have seen indications that Hezbollah actually has been relocating fighters from Lebanon, several hundred from Lebanon to Venezuela in particular.’

Asked whether that shift moves the threat closer to the United States, Billingslea said Hezbollah is now operating ‘close to the U.S. and further away from the Israelis.’

He said Iran’s role in Venezuela has deepened alongside Hezbollah’s. ‘There is a substantial Iranian footprint in Venezuela related to the trade of weapons and drones, in particular, for gold,’ he said. After suffering losses in the Middle East, he added, ‘the Iranians find themselves even more dependent on that supply of gold in exchange for drones and weapons.’

He said Washington faces a strategic choice. ‘I think the United States has positioned sufficient forces in the Caribbean at this time to take care of the Hezbollah threat,’ he said. ‘But obviously, when you have a terrorist group that has merged into the local population, highly precise intelligence is needed. I believe the Venezuelan opposition possesses a great deal of that intelligence, though it is not clear to me that the United States government is making the best use of that access.’

For Billingslea, the conclusion is cleaner — eliminating Venezuela’s narco-terrorist regime would significantly strengthen U.S. national security.

It’s not just Minnesota.

The past few weeks have made clear that fraudsters stole billions of dollars from states’ welfare programs, much of it from Medicaid. It also appears that Democratic politicians tolerated the heist for their own political benefit. 

Yet politicians in virtually every state have let waste, fraud and abuse spread like wildfire in Medicaid, putting taxpayers on the hook for an estimated $2 trillion in improper spending over the next decade alone. 

Thankfully, President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have given states a reason to clean up this mess and spare taxpayers that pain.

In a new paper, I show how Democrats have turned Medicaid into one of the most fraud-ridden programs in America — and how Republicans are fixing it. While Medicaid has long been plagued with improper spending, Democrats supercharged this crisis in the Obama years.

ObamaCare added tens of millions of able-bodied adults to the program, yet that population is much more likely to be ineligible.

The Obama administration refused to rigorously check eligibility, and the Biden administration adopted the same policy, deliberately hiding an explosion in waste, fraud and abuse. Meanwhile, states refused to police their Medicaid programs, confident that the federal government would look the other way and cover the tab.

The first Trump administration found that 27.4% of federal Medicaid spending was improper in 2020, or about $120 billion at the time. The administration also found that four out of every five improper payments were the result of eligibility errors. This money flowed to people who shouldn’t have been on Medicaid and therefore diverted money and care away from its intended recipients. Five years later, it’s highly likely that at least one in five Medicaid dollars is still wrongly spent.

Call this what it is — an assault on taxpayers. It’s also a clear violation of federal law. States are legally required to reimburse the federal government for Washington’s share of Medicaid payments if their improper payment rates are above 3%, a far cry from the 27.4% rate in 2020.

The Trump administration is once again conducting eligibility checks, but even without that info, it’s all but certain that every state already exceeds the 3% threshold. The only reason they’ve avoided a budget blowout is by receiving so-called ‘good faith waivers’ from Washington. Essentially, states have promised that they’ll tackle fraud and abuse, even when they have no intention of doing so.

Republicans called time on this rigged game in the law President Trump signed July 4. They effectively eliminated good-faith waivers and told states that, starting in 2030, they will be forced to cover the federal share of any improper payments above 3%. While five years may seem like an eternity, it’s an acknowledgment that states have a mountain to climb to bring their error rates into the low single digits. 

Consider Ohio. In 2019, it had an improper payment rate of nearly 45%, giving the Buckeye State the worst record in the nation for waste, fraud and abuse. Based on its most recent spending levels, Ohio would be on the hook for $9.7 billion, equal to roughly 15% of its current state budget. Illinois, with a 35.4% rate, would pay $6.4 billion, a tough ask given the state’s famous fiscal woes. Even states with lower improper payment rates, like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Missouri, would still be looking at annual costs of more than $1 or $2 billion.

Without reform, I estimate that states will pay a combined $100 billion in penalties beginning in 2030. Their only hope to avoid this fiscal pain is to immediately start rooting out waste, fraud and abuse. In the state legislative sessions that start in January, lawmakers should focus on several key reforms.

First, stop allowing Medicaid recipients to self-attest their income, address and other personal information. Using the honor system invites abuse.

Second, review recipients’ eligibility at least twice a year for able-bodied adults and once a year for everyone else, thereby removing ineligible individuals early and often.

Third, cross-check Medicaid data with easily accessible information such as wage, hiring and tax records; returned mail and changes of address; out-of-state food stamp transactions; and prison and death records. These basic good government measures can quickly identify people wrongly receiving taxpayer money.

Waiting to tackle Medicaid fraud is the most foolish thing states can do. So is hoping that Democrats get their wish and successfully repeal Republicans’ Medicaid reforms. That won’t happen while Trump is president. And if states wait to see the outcome of the 2028 election, they may be disappointed. At that point, they’d face an even steeper hill with barely a year to get their act together.

There’s no avoiding the reality that Democrats broke Medicaid — in Minnesota and everywhere else — or that Republicans have given states an urgent mandate to finally root out the waste, fraud and abuse.

 Michael Greibrok is a Senior Research Fellow at the Foundation for Government Accountability.

A photo of former President Bill Clinton topless in a dimly lit hot tub with his arms folded behind his head was included in a massive trove of Jeffrey Epstein files released Friday by the Department of Justice (DOJ).

In another photo, Clinton is seen wading in a pool next to Ghislaine Maxwell and a woman whose face was redacted by authorities.

Subsequent photos showed Clinton posing with American pop stars Michael Jackson and Diana Ross and seated on a plane next to a female wearing an American flag pin whose face was redacted.

He was also seen smiling arm-in-arm with the late disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Epstein at what appeared to be a dinner party, wearing a festive shirt.

The locations where the photos were taken were not included, and no context was provided.

White House deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson took to social media Friday afternoon to comment on the never-before-seen photos of the former POTUS.

‘Here is Bill Clinton in a hot tub next to someone whose identity has been redacted. Per the Epstein Files Transparency Act, DOJ was specifically instructed only to redact the faces of victims and/or minors,’ Jackson wrote. ‘Time for the media to start asking real questions.’

Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, Angel Ureña, accused the White House of trying to ‘hide [things] forever,’ in a statement on X, implying President Donald Trump continued a relationship with Epstein after his crimes were revealed.

‘The White House hasn’t been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton. This is about shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what they’ll try and hide forever,’ Ureña wrote in the post. ‘So they can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton. Never has, never will be. Even Susie Wiles said Donald Trump was wrong about Bill Clinton.

‘There are two types of people here,’ he continued. ‘The first group knew nothing and cut Epstein off before his crimes came to light. The second group continued relationships with him after. We’re in the first. No amount of stalling by people in the second group will change that. Everyone, especially MAGA, expects answers, not scapegoats.’

The DOJ dumped thousands of documents and hundreds of photos on its website Friday, all supposedly obtained by authorities during investigations into Epstein and Maxwell’s sex trafficking cases. 

Other photos showed interior and exterior views of Epstein’s properties, personal photos of Epstein with various people and heavily redacted potential victim exhibits.

While more than a dozen politically known individuals appeared in the files, Clinton and other notable figures’ inclusion in the files does not necessarily imply wrongdoing.

The document drop was triggered by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which required the DOJ to make the files public 30 days from its Nov. 19 signing by President Donald Trump.

Some files may be withheld by the DOJ if disclosure would jeopardize an ongoing investigation or prosecution, to safeguard victims’ privacy or to avoid publishing sensitive child sexual abuse material.

Ross’ communications teams did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that Moscow would refrain from launching new attacks on other nations provided his country is treated ‘with respect.’

The Kremlin made the remarks during his annual televised press conference in Moscow as concerns persist among European nations that Russia poses a security threat, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

‘Will there be new special military operations? There will be no operations if you treat us with respect, if you observe our interests, just as we have constantly tried to observe yours,’ Putin said.

Putin uses the phrase ‘special military operation’ to describe Russia’s offensive in Ukraine, according to AFP.

He added there would be no further Russian invasions ‘if you don’t cheat us like you cheated us with NATO’s eastward expansion,’ according to the BBC.

The Russian leader also claimed he was ‘ready and willing’ to end the war in Ukraine ‘peacefully,’ though he offered few details suggesting a willingness to compromise, the BBC reported.

The yearly news conference, which typically runs at least four hours, features questions from reporters and members of the public across Russia. 

More than 2.5 million questions were submitted for this year’s event, which focused heavily on the war in Ukraine, Reuters reported.

Putin also noted during the event that the nation’s ‘troops are advancing’ and expressed confidence that Russia will accomplish its objectives through military means if Ukraine does not assent to Russia’s terms during peace talks, according to The Associated Press.

‘Our troops are advancing all across the line of contact, faster in some areas or slower in some others, but the enemy is retreating in all sectors,’ Putin declared.

As the war drags on, the European Union has just agreed to provide Ukraine with a loan of over $105 billion.

Fox News Digital’s Alex Nitzberg contributed to this report.