President Biden’s final list of commutations was released Friday afternoon, laying out the names and registration numbers of nearly 2,500 inmates whose sentences were reduced by the president’s action.

This latest round of commutations cements Biden’s spot as the president with the largest number of pardons and commutations granted to individuals. The people on the list, according to a statement from President Biden, were determined to have received disproportionately harsh sentences for drug crimes, compared to sentences they would have received today.

‘Today’s clemency action provides relief for individuals who received lengthy sentences based on discredited distinctions between crack and powder cocaine, as well as outdated sentencing enhancements for drug crimes,’ Biden said in a statement Friday. ‘As Congress recognized through the Fair Sentencing Act and the First Step Act, it is time that we equalize these sentencing disparities.’

The new list of commutations comes after Biden already set a record for the largest single-day act of presidential clemency last month, when he commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 individuals who were placed on home confinement during the coronavirus pandemic and were largely accused of committing non-violent drug offenses, according to the White House. 

Following last month’s commutations, several Democrats urged Biden to issue even more pardons and commutations for people serving long sentences. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., who was among those pressing Biden to take action, applauded the president Friday for his action. 

‘Today, President Biden is taking another historic, transformative, and compassionate step toward healing and reuniting families by commuting the sentences of thousands of individuals serving unjustified lengthy sentences—a direct result of the failed policies of the War on Drugs,’ Rep. Pressley said. 

‘With this action, President Biden … is demonstrating the power of clemency to address the injustices of our criminal legal system. I thank President Biden for acting boldly and continuing to use clemency to change and save lives. This is what we’ve been calling for and this is the type of leadership the moment demands. This will be a defining part of President Biden’s legacy.’

OpenAI has partnered with a new AI initiative led by a group co-founded with outgoing Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry that has pushed left-wing causes and has several board members aligned with Democrats. 

OpenAI, led by CEO Sam Altman, is backing an initiative known as AI 2030, which is aimed at shaping ‘public dialogue about U.S. competition against China on AI,’ Politico reported in October.

The initiative is led by the ‘non-partisan’ think tank American Security Project (ASP), where Kerry was a founding member and served two stints on the board of directors. 

ASP has promoted the idea that climate change is a national security threat, and argued on its website that pulling out of the Iran Nuclear Deal was a bad idea that ‘harms national security.’ The group previously received a $500,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation ‘for use by its World War Zero initiative, an effort to achieve action and mobilization through awareness and public education to halt the increase of global carbon emissions.’  The Rockefeller Foundation has dished out tens of millions of dollars to left-wing causes.

Kerry’s former chief of staff David Wade, who gave Hunter Biden rapid response help as the Burisma scandal swirled, currently sits on the board of directors and recently authored an op-ed in The Hill explaining how AI in the U.S. has reached its ‘Sputnik moment,’ outlining the need to compete with China on AI.

Former Obama Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, who called then-President Trump an ’embarrassment’ in 2018, also sits on the board of ASP.

Rep, Don Beyer, D-Va., who is also on the board at ASP, has publicly opposed Trump’s tariff policies, calling them ‘idiotic’ and ‘illegal’ in a 2023 press release.

In 2018, ASP promoted an op-ed by Board Member Matthew Wallin in which he criticized Trump’s diplomatic tactics against Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

In 2017, Wallin amplified the debunked media narrative in a post on X, then Twitter, that Trump called White supremacists at the deadly Charlottesville rally ‘good people.’

Chris Lehane, who serves as OpenAI’s Head of Global Policy, is the author of the infamous and controversial ‘Vast Right Wing Conspiracy’ memo promoted by then-first lady Hillary Clinton dismissing the Monica Lewinsky scandal as part of a right-wing media conspiracy. 

Along with being a longtime Democratic Party consultant, Lehane has recently contributed money to help former Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. 

Altman recently followed other tech titans and made a substantial $1 million gift to Trump’s inauguration in his personal capacity, but has faced scrutiny for previous high-dollar donations to left-wing efforts, including a $250,000 donation to a Democratic super PAC and opposition research firm American Bridge during the 2020 election. 

Altman has donated to hundreds of Democrats in recent years compared to just one Republican, Newsweek reported this past summer. He was also recently tapped to be a co-chair for the incoming Democratic mayor of San Francisco’s transition team. 

In addition to hosting a fundraiser for Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang at his San Francisco home in late 2019, Altman has donated over $1 million to Democrats and Democratic groups, including $600,000 to the Sen. Chuck Schumer-aligned Senate Majority PAC, $100,000 to the Biden Victory Fund and over $150,000 to the Democratic National Committee (DNC). He also gave thousands to state Democratic parties and top Democrats in the House and Senate.

In 2014, Altman co-hosted a fundraiser for the DNC at Y Combinator’s offices in Mountain View, California, which was headlined by then-President Obama.

Following Trump’s victory in November, Altman posted on X, ‘congrats to President Trump. i wish for his huge success in the job.’

‘It is critically important that the US maintains its lead in developing AI with democratic values,’ he added. 

During Altman’s tenure from 2014 to 2019 as the CEO of Y Combinator, an incubator startup that launched Airbnb, DoorDash and DropBox, he talked about China in multiple blog posts and interviews. In 2017, Altman said that he ‘felt more comfortable discussing controversial ideas in Beijing than in San Francisco’ and that he felt like an expansion into China was ‘important’ because ‘some of the most talented entrepreneurs’ that he has met have been operating there. 

Altman’s résumé and AI efforts have drawn the ire of Trump ally Elon Musk in recent years. Musk said last year, ‘I don’t trust OpenAI. I don’t trust Sam Altman. And I don’t think we ought to have the most powerful AI in the world controlled by someone who is not trustworthy.’

Musk, who has been involved with a highly publicized legal tussle with Altman, has also said that OpenAI’s ChatGPT function is infected with the ‘woke virus.’

ChatGPT is an AI chatbot whose core function is to mimic a human in conversation. Users across the world have used ChatGPT to write emails, debug computer programs, answer homework questions, play games, write stories and song lyrics, and much more. 

‘It is going to eliminate a lot of current jobs, that’s true. We can make much better ones. The reason to develop AI at all, in terms of impact on our lives and improving our lives and upside, this will be the greatest technology humanity has yet developed,’ Altman said in a 2023 interview with ABC News. ‘The promise of this technology, one of the ones that I’m most excited about, is the ability to provide individual learning — great individual learning for each student.’

In recent months, OpenAI has reportedly been quietly pitching its products to the U.S. military and pursuing defense contracts, Forbes reported.

In a statement to Fox News Digital, a spokesperson for OpenAI said, ‘America has to win the AI race, and that is why Americans from both sides of the aisle are united in supporting policies that help the US maintain its competitive edge against China.’ 

‘ASP is a nearly twenty-year-old bipartisan organization that works with legislators, retired flag officers, subject matter experts, and groups from across the political spectrum to produce high quality research and forge bipartisan consensus on emerging threats to our national security,’ an ASP spokesperson told Fox News Digital in a statement. 

‘While OpenAI is one of many donors for AI Imperative 2030, we ensure an equal balance of opinions informed by independent experts and Consensus for American Security members, including Julia Nesheiwat, Ph.D., former Trump Homeland Security Advisor, and Neil Chatterjee, former Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission under Trump. We also recently hosted a roundtable featuring Nazak Nikakhtar, another former Trump official.’

The statement continued, ‘The primary objective of AI Imperative 2030 is to ensure that the U.S., not China, wins the race for AI supremacy. China aims to surpass the U.S. and lead the world in AI by 2030. We can’t let that happen. President Trump has been a leader in creating bipartisan consensus that the U.S. needs to compete more vigorously with China, and we look forward to working with his administration and the Republican Congress to design effective and cost-efficient policies towards this goal.’

Fox News Digital’s Nikolas Lanum, Cameron Cawthorne and Joe Schoffstall contributed to this report.

The Treasury Department announced this week that it had recouped more than $31 million in fraud and improper payments to dead people during just five short months of having access to the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) federal death database. 

The Treasury Department issues billions of payments every year, including benefit payments, federally funded state-administered payments and other miscellaneous payments. Sending those funds and others by accident to people who are dead has been a long-standing problem within the federal government, according to fiscal watchdog group OpenTheBooks

In 2020, the Government Accountability Office estimated that during the first round of COVID-19 stimulus checks, $1.4 billion was sent to dead people. Across all three rounds of stimulus checks during the pandemic, nearly $3.6 billion went to dead people, according to OpenTheBooks.

The SSA is the only government agency with a database that records the deaths of U.S. citizens. In 2023, as part of an omnibus appropriations bill, Congress granted access for the Treasury Department, on a temporary basis, to have access to the database to help prevent improper payments to dead people. The temporary basis is set to expire in 2026.

‘While this should have been a no-brainer for a long time, it’s promising to see some taxpayer funds being recouped with basic communication among executive agencies,’ said John Hart, executive director of OpenTheBooks. ‘Too often the left hand just doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, and it’s resulted in trillions of dollars in improper payments.’

Hart blamed the nearly $4 billion in COVID-19 stimulus payments sent to dead people on the Internal Revenue Service’s failure to check the SSA’s death database. 

He also pointed out how, in addition to improper payments through the stimulus check program, the Small Business Administration also sent more than $3 billion more to dead people in the form of forgivable loans ‘to entities on the Treasury Department’s ‘Do Not Pay’ list.’

‘Today’s news is a step in the right direction, but there are miles to go before we break even,’ Hart said.

After news of the recovered payments was announced, Fiscal Assistant Secretary David Lebryk noted that the results were ‘just the tip of the iceberg.’

‘Congress granting permanent access to the Full Death Master File will significantly reduce fraud, improve program integrity, and better safeguard taxpayer dollars,’ he said. 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is leading 22 other attorneys general in suing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over a new rule that would fine the oil and natural gas sector for methane emissions that exceed a certain level. 

The GOP states are alleging the new rule, which was established in President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, is ‘arbitrary, capricious, [and] an abuse of discretion.’ The complaint against the EPA is scant on details, other than asserting the new rule is ‘unlawful’ because ‘the final rule exceeds the agency’s statutory authority.’ 

While the Supreme Court has articulated a very narrow authority on how Congress can delegate its legislative power, Steve Milloy, former Trump administration EPA transition adviser and senior fellow at the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute, said it is unclear to him how the EPA’s rule circumvents Congress. 

‘The IRA clearly says EPA is to levy a tax and prescribes the tax rate,’ Milloy told Fox News Digital, pointing to the section of the IRA’s ‘Waste Emissions Charge’ that sets a threshold for methane emissions at 25,000 metric tons. ‘I will be interested to see how the states support their claims.’ 

Nonetheless, Milloy is against the new fee on the oil and gas sector, noting methane is an ‘irrelevant greenhouse gas.’

‘The tax is pointless and will accomplish nothing except to make oil and natural gas more expensive,’ he said.

Milloy suggested the move to sue in the final days of the Biden administration is to start the process for the plaintiffs to settle with the Trump administration. According to him, this is a tactic that has been used by both sides of the green energy debate. He added that in the past, the Trump administration has sought to get rid of ‘sue and settle’ tactics.

‘Congress needs to change the law,’ Milloy said. ‘Because, let’s say that they sue and settle, well, the next administration can come back and undo it.’

Meanwhile, another forthcoming lawsuit from the Michigan Oil and Gas Association (MOGA) and the American Free Enterprise Chamber of Commerce (AMFree) has also asserted that the new rule circumvents Congress, but provided details explaining why.

‘Under Subpart W, facilities in the natural gas and petroleum supply chains must report greenhouse gas emissions if they emit 25,000 metric tons or more of carbon-dioxide-equivalent emissions each year,’ the second lawsuit explains. ‘For gases other than carbon dioxide, ‘equivalent’ emissions are determined by multiplying emissions by the gas’s ‘global warming potential’ (‘GWP’).’ 

Michael Buschbacher, a partner at Boyden Gray PLLC, which is representing MOGA and AmFree in their lawsuit, agreed with Milloy that it will take legislation to reverse the new methane rule, but said the purpose of their legal filings is ‘to get the most onerous mandates off the books, so the American energy industry can begin its march back to dominance under the new administration.’

‘The Biden-era environmental regulations aren’t going to magically vanish at 12:01 on Monday. It’s going to take time and legislation to unwind the mess that he has left behind,’ Buschbacher said.

The EPA declined to comment on the matter, citing the pending nature of the litigation.

Former President Obama wished his wife Michelle Obama a happy birthday on Friday, calling her ‘the love of my life.’ 

The former first lady, who turned 61, has largely avoided being out in public in recent weeks. She will not attend President-elect Trump’s inauguration on Monday, and was not seen at former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral last week. 

To commemorate her birthday, the former president shared a tribute to his wife on Instagram, writing, ‘You fill every room with warmth, wisdom, humor, and grace – and you look good doing it. I’m so lucky to be able to take on life’s adventures with you. Love you!’

Michelle later shared the post on X and captioned it, ‘Love you, honey!’ followed with a heart emoji and an emoji of a face blowing a kiss. 

Sources reportedly close to Michelle told People that the former first lady intends to skip Trump’s inauguration because she cannot contain her disdain for the Republican president-elect.

The former first lady repeatedly took jabs at Trump while on the campaign trail for Vice President Kamala Harris and during her speeches at the Democratic National Convention in August. In one speech at the DNC, she accused Trump of spreading ‘racist lies’ and opposing her husband’s political career because of his race.

Though she is often floated as a choice of Democratic candidate for president, the source emphasized that the former first lady also has no interest in being a public figure now that her public service has ended.

While Michelle will not be in attendance at Trump’s inauguration, former President Obama is scheduled to attend Monday’s inauguration along with former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and their spouses.

Unconfirmed rumors swirled late last year that the Obamas’ marriage was on the rocks and that former President Obama had been involved in a romantic affair with actress Jennifer Aniston.

Aniston emphatically denied the rumors, telling late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, ‘That is absolutely untrue. … I know Michelle more than him.’ 

When reached for comment at the time, an Obama representative told Fox News Digital, ‘Stop.’ 

Fox News Digital’s Kristine Parks and Caroline Thayer contributed to this report.

The members of the Republican National Committee, in a vote that was never in doubt, on Friday re-elected chair Michael Whatley to continue steering the national party committee. 

‘This organization has got to be the tip of the spear. And as your chairman, I promise this organization will be the tip of the spear to protect Donald Trump,’ Whatley said, as he spoke after the unanimous voice vote at the RNC’s annual meeting, which was held this year in the nation’s capital ahead of Monday’s inauguration of President-elect Trump. 

Whatley, a longtime Trump ally and a major supporter of Trump’s election integrity efforts, who was serving as RNC general counsel and chair of the North Carolina Republican Party, was named by Trump last March as chair as the former president clinched the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. Whatley succeeded longtime RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, whom Trump no longer supported.

In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital on the sidelines of the RNC’s winter meeting, Whatley says his job going forward in the 2025 elections and 2026 midterms is straight forward.

‘It’s really critical for us to make sure that the Trump voters become Republican voters,’ Whatley told Fox News Digital on the sidelines of the RNC’s winter meeting, which is being held in the nation’s capital.

Republicans enjoyed major victories in November’s elections, with Trump defeating Vice President Kamala Harris to win back the White House, the GOP flipping control of the Senate from the Democrats, and holding on to their razor-thin majority in the House.

Whatley, who was interviewed on Thursday on the eve of the formal RNC chair vote, said the GOP needs ‘to cement those gains’ made in the 2024 elections.

‘We’re going to go right back to the building blocks that we had during this election cycle, which is to get out the vote and protect the ballot,’ Whatley emphasized. 

The RNC chair pointed to ‘the lessons that we learned’ in the 2024 cycle ‘about going after low propensity voters, about making sure that we’re reaching out to every voter and bringing in new communities,’ which he said helped Republicans make ‘historic gains among African American voters, among Asian American voters, among Hispanic voters, young voters and women voters.’

Speaking a couple of days before the president-elect’s inauguration, Whatley emphasized that once Trump’s in the White House, ‘we’re going to go right back to the RNC. We’re going to roll up our sleeves and get to work. We’ve got a couple of governor’s races…that we’re going to be working on in ‘25.’

But Whatley said ‘everything is focused on ‘26,’ when the party will be defending its majorities in the House and Senate, ‘because that is going to determine, from an agenda perspective, whether we have two years to work with or four. And America needs us to have a four-year agenda.’

‘What we’re going to be doing is making sure that we are registering voters,’ he said. ‘We’re going to be…communicating with the folks that we need to turn out.’

Pointing to the 2024 presidential election, Whatley said ‘it’s the same fundamentals.’

But he noted that ‘it’s not just seven battleground states’ and that the 2026 contests are ‘definitely going to be a very intense midterm election cycle.’

While Democrats would disagree, Whatley described today’s GOP as ‘a common sense party… this is a party that’s going to fight for every American family and for every American community.’

Referring to former Democrats Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, whom Trump has nominated to serve in his second administration’s cabinet, Whatley touted ‘the fact that we have two former Democratic presidential candidates who are going to be serving in the president’s cabinet. That shows you that this is a commonsense agenda, a commonsense team, that we’re going to be moving forward with.’

In December, Trump asked Whatley to continue during the 2026 cycle as RNC chair.

‘I think we will be able to talk when we need to talk,’ Whatley said when asked if his lines of communication with Trump will be limited now that the president-elect is returning to the White House. ‘We’re going to support the president and his agenda. That does not change. What changes is his ability from the White House to actually implement the agenda that he’s been campaigning on.’

The winter meeting included the last appearance at the RNC by co-chair Lara Trump. The president-elect’s daughter-in-law is stepping down from her post.

She stressed that it’s crucial the RNC takes ‘the opportunity the voters have given us’ to ‘continue to expand the Republican brand.’

The elder Trump is term-limited and won’t be able to seek election again in 2028. Vice President-elect JD Vance will likely be considered the front-runner for the 2028 GOP nomination.

Whatley reiterated what he told Fox News Digital in December — that the RNC will stay neutral in the next race for the GOP nomination and that the party’s ‘got an amazing bench.’

‘You think about the talent on the Republican side of the aisle right now, our governors, our senators, our members of Congress, people that are going to be serving in this administration. I love the fact that the Republican Party is going to be set up to have a fantastic candidate going into ’28,’ he highlighted.

Unlike the DNC, which in the 2024 cycle upended the traditional presidential nominating calendar, the RNC made no major changes to their primary lineup, and kept the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary as their first two contests.

Asked about the 2028 calendar, Whatley reiterated to Fox News that ‘I have not had any conversations with anybody who wants to change the calendar, so we will wait and see what that looks like as we’re going forward. We’re at the RNC meetings this week and having a number of conversations with folks, but that is not a huge push.’

‘I don’t think that changing the calendar really helped the Democrats at all,’ Whatley argued. ‘And I think that us, making sure that we are working our system the way that we always have, is going to be critical.’