President Donald Trump is drafting Cabinet members and top aides – at least those who haven’t been fired or about to be let go – for a targeted new strategy aimed squarely at the midterms.

Key members will be criss-crossing the country, particularly in Republican districts, trying to minimize the party’s losses in November. 

In: The more popular parts of the Trump agenda.

Out: The more controversial aspects of the Trump agenda that have suddenly become politically inconvenient.

TRUMP FIGHTING FIERCE BATTLES, AT HOME AND ABROAD: WHY HE CASUALLY DISMISSES THE CONSEQUENCES

It’s an uphill climb. Trump has acknowledged that the president’s party usually gets shellacked in its sixth year. Some Trump loyalists privately acknowledge that the GOP will definitely lose control of the House, and possibly even the Senate. 

If Hakeem Jeffries becomes speaker, that will trigger endless investigations that are certain to make Trump seem even more of a lame duck than he is under the Constitution.    

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the classic example. He has spent most of the last year crusading against vaccines, in keeping with his lifelong anti-vax campaign that is not supported by scientific evidence. Kennedy has branded his movement Make America Healthy Again.

He has fired the CDC director (who said RFK ordered her to rubber-stamp his policies without evidence), ousted other agency officials, and still hasn’t come up with a permanent director.

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But as Politico reports, Kennedy has “been told by the White House to stay away from some of the more polarizing parts of the MAHA agenda, like vaccine skepticism, and focus instead on issues like nutrition.”

The campaign must reengage the roughly half of MAHA supporters who say that Trump and Kennedy haven’t done enough to make America healthier, the website says. RFK is a lifelong Democrat, and his party sees a chance to influence voters interested in goals long identified with the left, such as battling unprocessed foods and shrinking chemicals in the environment.

Trump is hardly the first president to utilize his Cabinet in the runup to the midterms. Jimmy Carter, in 1979, fired his health secretary, treasury secretary, energy secretary, transportation secretary and attorney general. It didn’t help. And when Iran seized 52 American hostages later that year, he was toast.

“Cabinet members will be urged to focus on several things Trump has done since taking office,” including tax cuts, Axios reports.

He is also considering removing FBI Director Kash Patel and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, according to media reports, but has dropped plans to dump national intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard after discussing it with aides.

The president took a hard shot at one of our longtime allies yesterday:

“We rebuilt Germany. How about Germany telling us, Germany telling that, well, it’s not their war. ‘We had nothing to do with it.’ They wanted me to go and tell them everything I was doing. ‘We didn’t know anything about it.’ Well, if I would have told them, they would have leaked it, and we wouldn’t have been nearly as successful, possibly, right?”

He also blamed the media for disclosing the disclosing there was a second crew member missing from the F-15 that Iran shot down, though that seemed to come out almost immediately.

“We didn’t talk about the first one for an hour. And then somebody leaked something, which we’ll hopefully find — that leaker. We’re looking very hard to find that leaker. And talked about there’s somebody missing. They basically said that we have one and there’s someone missing. Well, they didn’t know there was somebody missing until this leaker gave the information. So whoever it was, we think we’ll be able to find it out, because we’re going to go to the media company that released it, and we’re gonna say national security — give it up or go to jail. And we know who — and you know who we’re talking about.”

Amit Segal, a reporter for Israel’s Channel 12, posted this on X at 11:19 a.m Friday: “Western source: One of the American crew members was successfully rescued.”

CONSERVATIVE COLUMNIST SAYS DONALD TRUMP HAS LOST THE COUNTRY. IT’S COMPLICATED.

A New York Times report on deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, architect of the hardline mass deportation campaign, is revealing: 

“He faces questions about how aggressively he can continue to drive the deportation campaign, and how much appetite his party and the country have for tactics that proved successful in helping to boost arrests of immigrants but reignited a polarizing debate over what it means to be American…Miller even pulled back his public appearances for a time.”

So he’s pushing all the same policies, even against immigrants with no criminal record, but… quietly.

“Rather than Mr. Miller seeing his power recede, he has moved to apply it in other ways, seeking policies that would pressure undocumented immigrants to leave on their own.”

Oh, and one more thing.  

You might have the impression that there will be a huge blue wave in November.

But Charlie Cook, a seasoned and utterly nonpartisan political analyst, explains why that’s not the case.

While the Democrats are virtually assured of taking the House, “Only three Republicans were elected in 2024 in districts that Kamala Harris won. Among independents nationally, Trump’s approval ratings typically are down in the high 20s and low 30s, but gerrymandering and political self-sorting by the population has shrunk the number of purple districts, thus diluting independents’ power. There are very few Republican-held seats anywhere in that much peril.”

With Republican approval of the president in the 80s, “MAGA voters are so in love with him and trust him so thoroughly that nothing—not the Epstein files nor the attacks on Venezuela and Iran—are peeling them off. So Democrats have their work cut out for them to flip many red districts.”

That brings us to the math. “Only 17 GOP seats are rated as Toss Up or worse. Adding in the next level of competitive seats (‘Lean Republican’) brings only three more GOP seats to the competitive pile—still well below the post-World War II average midterm outcome of a 26-seat loss for the president’s party…Democrats could run the table, hold on to all their own vulnerable seats, and still fall short of their pickups in 2006 or 2018.”

SUBSCRIBE TO HOWIE’S MEDIA BUZZMETER PODCAST, A RIFF ON THE DAY’S HOTTEST STORIES

What’s more, says Charlie, in the last eight years, “the party that lost seats in the House actually gained in the Senate. With just a third of the Senate up every two years and only a handful of seats competitive in most years, the upper chamber’s results tend to be more idiosyncratic.”

Trump is deploying the Cabinet because he’s looking at serious losses in November. But it may not be the blowout that most prognosticators are expecting.

The Michigan Wolverines are finally national champions once more in men’s basketball, taking down the UConn Huskies, 69-63, to finish a thrilling NCAA Tournament in style at Lucas Oil Stadium on Monday night.

This is the first time Michigan has won since 1989, and just the second time in program history they’ve called themselves champions.

Meanwhile, the Huskies were looking to win their third title in the last four tournaments, but their shooting failed them in the end.  

CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM

While both team’s offenses came into this game working like a machine, it was a low-scoring affair to kick off this game. Michigan only owned a 33-29 first-half lead by the buzzer, but it wasn’t Yaxel Lendeborg leading the way in the points department for the Wolverines.

The Michigan star, who is playing on a sprained left MCL and left ankle, which came during the win over Arizona in the Final Four, was just 1-of-5 shooting for four points in the first half. It was Morez Johnson Jr. (10 points) and Elliot Cadeau (seven points) finding some rhythm for the Wolverines.

UCONN’S DAN HURLEY HEARS BOOS AFTER FINAL FOUR WIN OVER ILLINOIS

But it didn’t help that Michigan was scoreless from beyond the arc and shooting just 37% from the field. Meanwhile, UConn wasn’t doing themselves any favors either.

The Huskies shot just 33% in the first half, with Alex Karaban hitting two of his five three-point attempts. Solo Ball, who was spotted in a walking boot entering the game with “some type of foot sprain,” according to head coach Dan Hurley, had eight points on 3-of-4 from the field.

While they were down, UConn was certainly playing the type of game they wanted against Michigan – a rugged battle, especially on the glass. Michigan has shown its prowess of taking momentum and sprinting with it offensively, dominating opponents all year long, including this NCAA Tournament.

However, the Huskies know their scratching and clawing abilities for 40 minutes allows them to never let an opponent feel comfortable. Just ask the Duke Blue Devils what happened in the Final Four.

The Huskies had that same demeanor in the second half, though it didn’t help they took a page out of the Wolverines’ first-half playbook – they couldn’t find the stroke from range. UConn was desperate to hit a three-pointer, but despite open looks, they couldn’t get one to fall as the Michigan lead eventually got to 11 points after Cadeau finally broke the seal for his squad on the opposite end, burying a three-pointer to get to a double-digit lead.

But Hurley was firing up the crowd as the Huskies never quit, cutting the lead to five with less than nine minutes to play in the game. Lendeborg, though, after shaking his head on the bench as he wasn’t having the game he hoped in the national championship, stepped up when he checked back in.

Lendeborg saw a sweet pass from Cadeau in transition and got the lead back to 11 with a tough layup, making it 56-45 with less than six minutes to play. He would also come in clutch with another two points following a Braylon Mullins three-pointer.

Once again, the Huskies wouldn’t quit, as Mullins finally found his shot beyond the arc, knocking that Michigan lead back to single digits with a follow-up three-pointer again to Lendeborg’s layups. But, just as gritty as the Huskies played, the Wolverines seemed to always have the answer in this hard-fought contest.

A key example of that was, after Karaban buried a three-pointer to cut the Michigan lead to six, Trey McKenney stepped back and drilled a 26-footer with 1:49 left in the game to get the lead back to nine points. The Wolverines faithful in the crowd went ballistic, knowing how much that basket meant considering what UConn has been able to do in this tournament.

With 37 seconds left in the game, Ball got some help from the backboard, making a three-pointer to cut the lead to 67-63 for the Wolverines. Roddy Gayle Jr. made things more interesting in this game, as he couldn’t knock down his two free throw attempts for Michigan. But Karaban didn’t have another clutch three-pointer in him, coming up short with 13 seconds left.

That was it for UConn’s desperation attempt, and Michigan celebrated their win.

In the box score, Cadeau led all scorers with 19 points on 5-of-11 shooting and 8-of-9 from the free throw line. Lendeborg was just 4-of-13, though he still had 13 points. Johnson had a double-double with 12 points and 10 rebounds for the Wolverines as well.

Cadeau was named the Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four.

Michigan was just 2-of-15 from the three-point line, and head coach Dusty May even noted after the game getting dominated on the glass, as they were out-rebounded by UConn, 46-39.

The Huskies, though, couldn’t find it offensively. Karaban finished with 17 points and 11 rebounds, but shot just 4-of-14 and 3-of-10 from three-point territory. Tarris Reed Jr. had a double-double as well with 13 points and 14 rebounds, while Mullins, the hero against Duke with his half court shot, was only 4-of-17 for 11 points.

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NBA champion or not, legendary Duke Blue Devils head basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski isn’t too worried about Michael Malone, who was reportedly hired to replace Hubert Davis with the UNC Tar heels, getting the program back on track.

After all, Krzyzewski’s biggest rival during his illustrious Duke tenure was UNC. And he invoked Bill Belichick when asked about the Malone hire during his appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show” on Monday.

“They had an NFL champion hired as the coach, and Duke beat Carolina football this year,” Krzyzewski told McAfee and A.J. Hawk with a smirk on the program. “That doesn’t mean coach Belichick isn’t a great coach, but there is time for adjustments. It takes longer coming from the pros to college.”

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Belichick learned that firsthand last season, his first in college football with the Tar Heels. While Duke finished with a 9-5 overall record, and won the ACC title, UNC was a paltry 4-8 with a 2-6 ACC record.

Also, as Krzyzewski mentioned, Duke defeated Belichick’s UNC crew, 32-25, to end his first season with a loss.

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Of course, the college game has completely changed now, with name, image and likeness (NIL) deals paving ways for richer programs to pay for the cream of the crop in the transfer portal as well as out of high school.

Belichick and his staff will need to be more creative, and perhaps open the checkbooks more, as this new college system continues to stay in place.

But football isn’t king at Chapel Hill – basketball reigns supreme. Krzyzewski knows this, as the Blue Devils were usually pitted against the Tar Heels as top teams in the country fighting for not just bragging rights, but national titles.

Malone coached the Denver Nuggets for 10 seasons, which included an NBA title in 2023. However, he was fired in April 2025, quickly taking a sports media role with ESPN one month later.

The Tar Heels, who fired Davis following UNC’s crushing loss to VCU in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, are taking a similar route as the football program – a coach with a great track record in the pros, but no head coaching experience in college.

Malone was an assistant at Oakland, Providence and Manhattan before transitioning to the NBA with the New York Knicks in 2001. His first NBA head coaching gig came with the Sacramento Kings before cementing his spot in Denver.

“Mike is a terrific coach and a terrific guy, there’s a learning curve,” Krzyzewski added. “Whatever the reasoning is, maybe they’re changing; they now have two pro coaches coaching in college. The infrastructure of their athletic department is now going to become more of a pro-organization, which I think everybody should be doing that. He knows how to do that, and so does coach Belichick. Maybe it’s a sign that they’re moving in that direction organizationally.”

Malone is hoping for a better inaugural season in Chapel Hill than Belichick, who returns for another football season looking to turn the tides on the gridiron.