FIRST ON FOX: Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., is going all in for President Donald Trump's controversial FBI director nominee, Kash Patel, despite being considered a wildcard vote ahead of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's nomination. 

In a significant show of support, Tillis will introduce Patel in the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation hearing Thursday morning. His speech will be short and sweet, Tillis explained. 

"I will be sharing about 700 words on his background, his upbringing, his work as a prosecutor, his work in the administration," the Republican shared in an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital. 

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The senator will also distribute several versions of a Patel-themed bingo game to his colleagues on the committee. 

The "K$H Bingo" game includes subjects Tillis expects to be brought up by Democrats during the hearing. The sheet includes subjects such as "Deep State," "Enemies List" and Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), among others. 

"I'm also going to be providing a bingo card because I know what everybody else is going to bring up," he said. "We know what the words are. And they already started it, because when they ran out of things to attack [attorney general nominee] Pam Bondi on, they started attacking Kash."

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"We know what they're going to do. And I want to make it clear to them there's no Perry Mason moment," the North Carolina senator said. "I'm not going to let innuendo and rumors rule the day. I'm going to hold them accountable."

Tillis' hard push for Patel to be advanced and confirmed by the Senate comes just days after Hegseth's confirmation came down to his vote, which wasn't at all assured to be in Hegseth's favor. 

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It wasn't until several minutes after the Hegseth vote had already begun that Tillis released a statement revealing he would support him. He previously told reporters he was still doing due diligence after new allegations surfaced against the nominee. 

Hegseth's former sister-in-law had claimed in an affidavit that Hegseth abused alcohol and made his ex-wife, Samantha Hegseth, fear for her safety. Tillis told reporters only hours before the confirmation vote he was looking for any corroborating evidence regarding the allegations. 

Hegseth answered additional last-minute questions from Tillis, which proved to be to the senator's satisfaction, since he ultimately voted yes and secured Hegseth's confirmation. 

"Look, I have an obligation to one person in advise and consent, and that is the President of the United States. I take it seriously," the senator explained. 

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"I take it very seriously," he reiterated. "I did with Pete. I ultimately voted for him and had to dispose of the allegations or assess the allegations that came at the eleventh hour."

The North Carolina Republican also shared that he thinks his support will be beneficial for Patel. 

"I believe I've established — even though I can be a pain to some people — as tedious as I can get with completing my due diligence. I think that it brings with it a certain amount of credibility, and that's why it's so important to me. I have to be consistent," Tillis said. 

In his first week in office, President Donald Trump has charged ahead with a series of executive actions, fulfilling a key campaign promise to challenge "gender ideology" in American institutions and promote "biological truth" rooted in "fundamental and incontrovertible reality." 

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is poised to rule on two significant gender-related cases this year, and Trump's new executive action could spell further controversy in the higher court.

Last week, SCOTUS agreed to hear Mahmoud v. Taylor, which would determine whether schools can force teachers to read LGBTQ books to elementary-age children despite parental objections. At issue is whether parents will have the right to opt their children out of such instructions.

"If the Supreme Court's doing its job, it shouldn't impact [the case decisions] at all," Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow Sarah Marshall Perry told Fox News Digital in an interview. "What Trump's executive order was is a statement of really what the policies are going to be for the executives going forward into the new administration. And he did exactly what [former President Joe] Biden did with his executive order expanding sex to include gender identity."

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Perry noted the separation of powers between the executive and judiciary branches, adding that while the executive is mostly a political entity, the judiciary is non-political. 

SCOTUS will be obligated to focus solely on the facts presented in the cases before them, she said, which "will include questions relative to the parameters of the parental rights guidance on school curriculums and exactly what constitutes curriculum for purposes of opt-out, whether gender medicine and age and medical-based restrictions that happen to impact individuals who are transgender is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause." 

She also pointed out that the executive order should not influence the Supreme Court's decision-making, adding, "The executive order should have absolutely no bearing on what the Supreme Court decides going forward."

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In another case that already had their oral arguments heard last year, Skrmetti v. U.S., the higher court is weighing whether the equal protection clause, which guarantees equal treatment under the law for individuals in similar circumstances, prevents states from banning medical providers from offering puberty blockers and hormone treatments to children seeking transgender surgical procedures. 

The Biden administration joined the lawsuit by filing a petition to the Supreme Court in November 2023.

"I think the American people are gratified that they've got a president who is common sensical, who recognizes biological reality, who recognizes the text of civil rights law and the rule of law itself, and now they're going to say we have someone who was willing to stand in the gap for us, including through the Department of Justice, if the cases get all the way to the Supreme Court," Perry said. "But parents should, and I think will, be involved to be able to bring more legal challenges."

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"I think this election really sort of rises to shift, not just politically, but for many people philosophically as well, because we recognize that America was sort of pulled back from the perilous brink on even understanding what it meant to be male and female, even understanding what it meant to live amicably in a pluralistic society," Perry said. "We are now, I think, thankfully, seeing a rebirth of those long-standing beneficial ideas."

Trump's executive order, signed on Inauguration Day and titled, "Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government," declares that the U.S. will recognize only two sexes — male and female — based on immutable biological characteristics. 

It prohibits the use of gender identity in legal and administrative contexts, mandates that federal agencies, including those overseeing housing, prisons, and education, adhere to this definition when enforcing laws and issuing regulations. The order directs changes to government-issued identification documents, bans the promotion of "gender ideology" in federal programs, rescinds previous executive actions that promoted gender identity inclusion and instructs federal agencies to eliminate guidance or regulations that conflict with the new policy.

Trump's executive order reverses the Biden administration's executive order titled "Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation," signed in 2021, which directed federal agencies to interpret and enforce civil rights laws to prohibit discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.

President-elect Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices during his first White House term, significantly reshaping the nation's top court. But President Biden appointed more federal judges than Trump in the past four years.

According to fresh data from the Federal Judiciary Center, Biden is slated to end his tenure having installed 228 judges to U.S. district and appellate courts, including record numbers of female and minority judges to district courts across the country. 

That total was aided in part by a flurry of eleventh-hour confirmations by Senate Democrats, who scrambled to approve Biden's judicial nominees last month in the final days of the 118th Congress and while they still held a narrow majority in the chamber.

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Trump appointed 226 federal and appellate court judges during his first White House term, just under Biden's total.

Biden also placed one justice on the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman on the nation's highest court.

Sixty percent of the judges appointed by Biden are Black, Hispanic, Asian or part of another racial or ethnic minority group, according to data compiled by the Pew Research Center, the highest percentage for any U.S. president. 

Biden's federal judge appointments, both in their diversity and scope, bear similarities to another single-term Democratic president, Jimmy Carter.

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Unlike Biden, Carter did not appoint anyone to the Supreme Court. But he appointed more than 260 federal and appellate court judges during his four years in office, including record numbers of women and minority judges, helping the courts better reflect the populations they represented. The appointments helped reshape the federal bench and paved the way for women and minorities to serve on the Supreme Court.

Most notably, Carter is credited with installing Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, a decision that set her up later for promotion when Democratic President Clinton tapped her for the nation's highest court in 1993.

President-elect Donald Trump's selection to be attorney general in his new administration faces the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning at a confirmation hearing. 

Trump tapped former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to lead the Department of Justice (DOJ) in late November after former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., withdrew from consideration. 

The Wednesday hearing begins at 9:30 a.m., and Bondi will be questioned by both Republican and Democrat members of the committee.

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"I hope that the Democrats give the same … courteous consideration to [her] that Republicans did of [Attorney General Merrick] Garland," Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told Fox News Digital ahead of the hearing.

"[A]nd I hope people stay within their timeline, because we've got to move right along," he added.

Members of the committee include Grassley and Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, John Cornyn of Texas, Mike Lee of Utah, Ted Cruz of Texas, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, John Kennedy of Louisiana, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Eric Schmitt of Missouri, Katie Britt of Alabama and Mike Crapo of Idaho. 

Also on the committee are ranking member Dick Durbin, D-Ill., as well as Democrat Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Chris Coons of Delaware, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Alex Padilla of California, Peter Welch of Vermont and Adam Schiff of California.

Durbin met with Bondi last week but emerged from their discussion with remaining concerns.
"In today’s meeting, I raised concerns with Ms. Bondi regarding her record – one in which she served as a personal attorney to President-elect Trump, was a leader in the effort to overturn the 2020 election, and has echoed the President-elect’s calls for prosecuting his political opponents. In addition, Ms. Bondi has a long track record of opposing fundamental civil rights, including reproductive rights, voting rights, and LGBTQ+ rights," he said in a statement.

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"The role of the Attorney General is to oversee an independent Justice Department that upholds the rule of law and is free of undue political influence. Given Ms. Bondi’s responses to my questions, I remain concerned about her ability to serve as an Attorney General who will put her oath to the Constitution ahead of her fealty to Donald Trump," he added.

The ranking member is likely to question Bondi during the hearing on these same subjects. 

On Monday, Durbin outlined several concerns he has with Trump's pick.

"The obvious concern with Ms. Bondi is whether she will follow the bipartisan tradition of the post-Watergate era and oversee an independent Department of Justice that upholds the rule of law. Ms. Bondi is one of four personal lawyers to President-elect Trump who he has already selected for Department of Justice positions. She was a leader in the effort to overturn the 2020 election. She has echoed the President[-elect]’s calls for prosecuting his political opponents, and she has a troubling history of unflinching loyalty to the president-elect," he said in floor remarks.

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The attorney general hopeful met with Grassley in early December, after which he said in a statement, "Pam Bondi is a well-qualified nominee with an impressive legal career, including eight years as Attorney General of the State of Florida and nearly two decades spent as a prosecutor. Bondi is prepared to refocus the Justice Department (DOJ)’s attention where it ought to be: on enforcing the law and protecting Americans’ safety."

The Judiciary chair promised the committee would "move swiftly to consider her nomination when the 119th Congress convenes in January."

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Trump praised Bondi in his November announcement, writing in part, "For too long, the partisan Department of Justice has been weaponized against me and other Republicans - Not anymore."

"Pam will refocus the DOJ to its intended purpose of fighting Crime, and Making America Safe Again," he continued. "I have known Pam for many years — She is smart and tough, and is an AMERICA FIRST Fighter, who will do a terrific job as Attorney General!"

Since being picked by Trump, Bondi has received several influential endorsements. Recently, 60 former Democrat and Republican attorneys general urged senators to confirm her in a letter. Further, dozens of former Justice Department officials called on the Judiciary Committee last week encouraging them to confirm Trump's choice.

Republicans slammed the sentencing of President-elect Donald Trump on Friday, calling it a "disgrace."

Trump was sentenced Friday morning in New York City to unconditional discharge. He was convicted last year of falsifying business records after a years-long investigation by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

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"What a joke and a disgrace," wrote Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., on X. 

"This witch hunt and ruling was an insult to the American people," she added. 

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., reacted in a statement, remarking, "After four years of lawfare, restoring the American people’s trust in our system of justice will be critically important, and I support President Trump’s decision to appeal this decision and put this shameful chapter in American history behind us." 

Rep. Rudy Yakym, R-Ind., sounded off on the sentencing as well, writing, "Today’s sentencing is an unfortunate reminder that Democrats will stop at nothing, including weaponizing the justice system to try and destroy President Trump. Rest assured, their efforts have and will continue to fail. America’s comeback begins in 10 days."

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Despite Trump's attempts to delay the sentencing, it went forward just 10 days before his inauguration. 

The incoming president attended the proceeding virtually. "After careful analysis, this court determined only lawful sentence that permits entry of judgment of conviction is an unconditional discharge," Judge Juan Merchan said. "At this time, I impose that sentence to cover all 34 counts." 

"Today’s sentencing of President Trump confirms what the American people have known all along: these trials have been pure political persecution. The American people overwhelmingly rejected the weaponized judiciary and politicized lawfare. This ends January 20th," said Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., on X. 

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The unconditional discharge, as Merchan sentenced Trump to, does not impose a punishment on the convicted individual. It does maintain that the conviction stands. However, it means that any relevant penalties will not be imposed. 

While Trump will not face these penalties due to the sentence, he could still run into obstacles due to his felon status as long as the conviction is upheld. 

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Top Trump ally Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., responded to the news, saying, "Finally, this baseless NYC liberal activist charade is over. It’s worth a reminder: President Trump doesn’t have to do this job—he’s doing it to save America. We’re looking forward. 10 days."

Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., slammed the conviction and sentence as "a pathetic waste of taxpayer resources that should be used on the real crimes harming New Yorkers."

The decision by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to end Facebook's work with third-party fact-checkers and ease some of its content restrictions is a potentially "transformative" moment for the platform, experts said, but one that is unlikely to shield the company from liability in ongoing court proceedings.

The updates were announced by Zuckerberg, who said in a video that the previous content restrictions used on Facebook and Instagram — which were put into place after the 2016 elections — had "gone too far" and allowed for too much political bias from outside fact-checkers.

Meta will now replace that system with a "Community Notes"-style program, similar to the approach taken by social media platform X, he said. X is owned by Elon Musk, the co-director of the planned Department of Government Efficiency.

"We’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship," Zuckerberg said. "The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point toward once again prioritizing speech. So we are going to get back to our roots, focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms."

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The news was praised by President-elect Donald Trump, who told Fox News Digital that he thought Meta's presentation "was excellent."  "They have come a long way," Trump said.

Still, it is unlikely to ease the legal liability for Meta, which in recent months has been hit with the possibility of a multibillion-dollar class action lawsuit stemming from a privacy scandal involving the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. 

The Supreme Court in November rejected Meta's effort to block the lawsuit, leaving in place an appellate court ruling that allowed the class action suit to move forward. 

Meta has also been the target of multiple Republican-led investigations in Congress. Republicans on the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government probed Meta's activity and communication with the federal government and the Biden administration last year as part of a broader investigation into alleged censorship. 

The platform also came under scrutiny by the House Oversight Committee in August, as part of an investigation into claims that the platform suppressed information about the July 13 assassination attempt of Trump. 

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Combined, these factors make it unlikely that Meta will see its legal problems go away anytime soon, law professor and Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley told Fox News Digital in an interview.

"Facebook is now looking at a tough patch ahead," he said. "Not only do the Republicans carry both houses of Congress as well as the White House, but there is ongoing litigation in the social media case in Texas."

Additionally, the Supreme Court's conservative majority is also unlikely to be sympathetic to the views of Meta in any case centered on First Amendment protections and rights to free speech.

The House investigations and litigation have both forced more of Meta's actions into public view— something Turley said expects to come under further scrutiny in the discovery process in Missouri v. Biden, a case that centers on allegations of political censorship.

"That discovery is still revealing new details," Turley said. "So Meta understood that in the coming months, more details would be forthcoming on its censorship program."

Still, he said, this "could be a transformative moment," Turley said. 

"And an alliance of Zuckerberg with [Elon] Musk could turn the tide in this fight over free speech," Turley said. "And as one of Zuckerberg's most vocal critics  I welcome him to this fight."

Separate ethics complaints filed by members of Congress and an advocacy group against Justices Clarence Thomas and Ketanji Brown Jackson will not be referred to the Justice Department, federal court officials announced.

The U.S. Judicial Conference said Thomas has agreed to follow updated guidelines on listing free private travel and gifts from friends, following previous reporting on undisclosed hospitality.

For her part, Jackson has amended her financial disclosures following complaints about her husband’s consulting income as a physician.

Democratic Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Ron Wyden (D-OR), along with Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), had asked for an investigation by the judiciary itself into undisclosed hospitality provided to Thomas by billionaire friend Harland Crow. ProPublica reported on several instances of private travel and lodging over the years.

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Judge Robert Conrad, who heads the judicial conference policymaking body, said in letters to the lawmakers that Thomas had filed amended financial disclosures "that address several issues identified in your letter." 

Additionally, Conrad said that it was not clear whether the judiciary itself could make criminal referrals against a sitting Supreme Court member.

"Because the Judicial Conference does not superintend the Supreme Court and because any effort to grant the Conference such authority would raise serious constitutional questions, one would expect Congress at a minimum to state any such directive clearly. But no such express directive appears in this provision," Conrad said.

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Conrad noted that Whitehouse and Wyden had separately asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to name a special counsel to investigate then-former President Donald Trump. Garland has not acted yet on that request.

Whitehouse, in a statement, criticized the Judicial Conference’s decision.

"By all appearances, the judicial branch is shirking its statutory duty to hold a Supreme Court justice accountable for ethics violations," said Whitehouse.

The complaint filed against Jackson came from Citizens for Renewing America, led by Russ Vought, who was nominated by President-elect Trump to lead the Office of Management and Budget.

Questions over ethics, including unreported private travel by some justices, have led the court to adopt its first code of ethics last year.

However, compliance is left to each of the nine justices, leading to concerns the court is not taking its own ethics enforcement standards seriously.

A two-year investigation by Senate Democrats released last week found additional luxury travel by Justice Thomas in 2021 was not noted on his annual financial disclosure form. 

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Fix the Court, a group which advocates for greater judicial transparency, urged Congress to act. 

"The Conference’s letters further underscore the need for Congress to create a new and transparent mechanism to investigate the justices for ethics violations since the Conference is unwilling to act upon the one method we had presumed existed to do that," said Executive Director Gabe Roth.

Former President Jimmy Carter served just a single term in the White House, but it proved to be an impactful one for the federal courts, which saw the appointment of more than 260 federal judges across the country, including some who would go on to wield considerable influence in the nation's top courts. 

His appointments were barrier-breaking and diverse, helping reshape the federal bench and paving the way for women and minorities to serve on the Supreme Court. 

Here are just some of the ways Carter helped reshape the federal judiciary during his four years in office.

Diversifying the bench  

Carter appointed a total of 262 federal judges during his four years in the White House, more than any single-term president in U.S. history. And despite never getting to appoint a Supreme Court nominee, Carter's judicial appointments were history-making in their own right. That's because he appointed a record number of minority and female jurists during his presidency, announcing 57 minority judges and 41 female jurists during his four years in office.

This was aided in part by Carter's creation of the Circuit Court Nominating Commissions during his first year as president, which he tasked with identifying potential judicial candidates as part of an overarching effort to make the U.S. courts look more like the populations they represented.

These judges helped diversify the federal judiciary. More broadly, they also helped shape the hundreds of court opinions handed down at the district and appellate court level.

Supreme Court impact

Speaking to NBC News’s Brian Williams in 2005, Carter revealed that he had planned to nominate a woman to serve on the Supreme Court if a vacancy had opened up during his presidency. 

In fact, Carter even had a name in mind: Judge Shirley Hufstedler, who in 1968 was appointed by then-President Lyndon B. Johnson to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. She was the first woman to serve as an appellate court judge. 

"Had I had a vacancy," he told Williams, Hufstedler was "the foremost candidate in my mind."

Carter did go on to choose Hufstedler for another role: the nation’s first secretary of education.

"If I had had a Supreme Court appointment, she was the one in my mind that I had in store for the job," Carter said. 

It would instead be Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, who would go on to nominate the nation’s first female Supreme Court justice, Sandra Day O’Connor, in 1981.

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Though Carter did not directly appoint any judges to the Supreme Court as president, two of his appellate court nominees would go on to serve on the nation's highest court: Stephen Breyer, who he tapped for the U.S. Appeals Court, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who Carter appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Both were tapped by former President Bill Clinton to serve on the Supreme Court in the early 1990s and both were subsequently replaced by women jurists. Breyer retired in 2022, replaced by President Biden's sole nominee to the court, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Ginsburg died in September 2020 and was replaced by Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

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Ginsburg was praised for her trailblazing work on gender discrimination. In nominating her to the Supreme Court in 1993, Clinton lauded Ginsburg for being "to the women's movement what Thurgood Marshall was to the movement for the rights of African Americans."

In public speeches, Ginsburg often credited Carter for his work in reshaping the judiciary.

"Women weren’t on the bench in numbers, on the federal bench, until Jimmy Carter became president," Ginsburg said in a 2015 speech at the American Constitution Society.

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Carter "deserves tremendous credit for that," she said.

A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a jury’s verdict finding Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing the writer E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s—delivering a blow to the president-elect, and leaving him on the hook for the $5 million payout ordered by the jury.

A three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said Monday in an unsigned opinion that Trump had failed to demonstrate "that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings" and "has not carried his burden to show that any claimed error or combination of claimed errors affected his substantial rights as required to warrant a new trial."

The decision comes after a New York jury last year found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll, a former Elle magazine advice columnist, in the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman store in the mid-1990s—and for subsequently defaming her when she came forward with her story during his first term in office.

In a separate case, Trump was also ordered by a jury to pay Carroll more than $80 million in damages for the defamatory statements made in his first term in the White House, though the president-elect’s appeal of that decision is still pending.

The decision was praised by Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan.

"Both E. Jean Carroll and I are gratified by today's decision," Kaplan said in a statement. "We thank the Second Circuit for its careful consideration of the parties' arguments." 

The Trump transition team were quick to respond to the decision Monday, which they vowed to appeal. They also took aim at what they described as the "political weaponization" of the courts.

"The American People have re-elected President Trump with an overwhelming mandate, and they demand an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and a swift dismissal of all of the Witch Hunts, including the Democrat-funded Carroll Hoax, which will continue to be appealed," Trump transition spokesman and incoming White House communications director Steven Cheung told Fox News in a statement Monday.

"We look forward to uniting our country in the new administration as President Trump makes America great again," Cheung added.

This is a breaking news story. Check back soon for updates.