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Year: 2023

Republicans fume at Biden for vacationing as border crossings explode: ‘Dereliction of duty’

Republicans fume at Biden for vacationing as border crossings explode: ‘Dereliction of duty’

Republican lawmakers are criticizing President Biden for vacationing in the Caribbean with his family while the crisis at the southern border threatens to spiral out of control.  Biden is ringing in the New Year on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. He arrived Wednesday as strained discussions over how to handle the record number of illegal immigrants crossing the border continue in Washington. Border towns and sanctuary cities like New York City are seeing their infrastructures buckle under the surge of people. Sources told Fox News there have been more than 276,000 migrant encounters in December so far, already making it the highest month on record. “President Biden’s entire presidency has been a vacation from reality — 760,000 illegal immigrants have been encountered at the border since October,” Rep. Gary Palmer, R-Ala., chairman of the House GOP Policy Committee, told Fox News Digital. US-MEXICO MIGRATION TALKS INCLUDED BENEFITS OF ‘REGULARIZING’ ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS LIVING IN US  “This is intentional and tells the American people everything they need to know. President Biden has no desire to stop it. He will continue to vacation while the border burns because this is the outcome he wants. “President Biden’s dereliction of duty is on full display while he sits on the beach and ignores the thousands of illegal immigrants invading our country daily,” Rep. Randy Weber, R-Texas, told Fox News Digital. “America as we know it will be unrecognizable unless this administration comes to the table, starts enforcing the laws and stops the flow of illegal immigrants.” LIBERAL MAYORS PUSH BIDEN FOR EMERGENCY DECLARATION, ADDITIONAL FUNDING TO DEAL WITH MIGRANT CRISIS Rep. Mark Alford, R-Texas, said Biden and his officials “should be ashamed” at the state of the U.S. migrant crisis. “Every month, we continue to see record-breaking encounters at our southern border. Instead of pursuing solutions, Joe Biden is spending time on vacation,” Alford told Fox News Digital. “Mr. President, the world is watching. They see that our borders are in shambles and your administration has zero intention of course correcting.” Another Texas Republican quipped that Biden “might not see the problem from the beaches” but that it’s always present in the Lone Star state. “Texans are enduring some of the highest numbers of illegal crossings on record while the White House and Senate Democrats refuse to take action,” Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas, told Fox News Digital. MIGRANT CRISIS INCREASING STRAIN ON BORDER OFFICIALS, IMMIGRATION COURTS WITH MASSIVE NUMBERS  Since the new fiscal year began Oct. 1., there have been more than 760,000 migrant encounters at the southern border, making the first quarter of fiscal 2024 the highest quarter on record. Meanwhile, there have been 82,000 known getaways since Oct. 1.  It caps a year at the southern border when multiple records have been repeatedly smashed with Border Patrol consistently overwhelmed by the numbers it is seeing. Republicans have blamed the surge on the policies of the administration, including the ending of Trump-era policies, while the administration says it is dealing with a hemisphere-wide challenge and needs more funding and immigration reform legislation from Congress. Fox News Digital has reached out to the White House for comment. Fox News’ Griff Jenkins contributed to this report

State of the Race: Top 5 Senate seats held by Democrats most likely to flip in 2024

State of the Race: Top 5 Senate seats held by Democrats most likely to flip in 2024

It was the announcement Senate Democrats were dreading. When it came, it appeared to strike a major blow to their hopes of holding their razor-thin Senate majority in the 2024 elections. “I have made one of the toughest decisions of my life and decided that I will not be running for re-election to the United States Senate,” Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia announced in November. Manchin, a moderate Democrat and former governor, won over 60% of the vote in his 2012 re-election, but his margin of victory fell to just three points in 2018. CHECK OUT THE LATEST FOX NEWS 2024 POWER RANKINGS  The consensus was that Manchin was the only Democrat who could win in West Virginia next year after his state shifted dramatically to the right over the past decade. Former President Donald Trump carried West Virginia by nearly 40 points in the 2020 election. MANCHIN SPARKING MORE 2024 SPECULATION WITH UPCOMING TRIP TO KEY PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY STATE Democrats control the U.S. Senate with a 51-49 majority, but Republicans are looking at a favorable Senate map in 2024, with Democrats defending 23 of the 34 seats up for grabs. Three of those seats are in red states that Trump carried in 2020 — West Virginia, Montana and Ohio. Five other blue-held seats are in key swing states narrowly carried by President Biden in 2020 — Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. “Democrats have multiple pathways to protect and strengthen our Senate majority and are in a strong position to achieve this goal,” Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesman David Bergstein argued in a statement after Manchin’s announcement. “In addition to defending our battle-tested incumbents, we’ve already expanded the battleground map to Texas and Florida,” Bergstein added, pointing to what he called “unpopular Republican incumbents.” Texas and Florida, where respective incumbent Sens. Ted Cruz and Rick Scott are seeking re-election, appear to be the only potentially competitive GOP-held seats up for grabs next year.  Here’s a look at the five seats most likely to flip in 2024. With Manchin not seeking re-election, National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) chairman Sen. Steve Daines said, “We like our odds in West Virginia.” Right now, the main action is in the Republican Senate primary, where popular Democrat-turned-Republican Gov. Jim Justice has the backing of the NRSC and Trump. Justice has raised more money than his main rival, conservative Rep. Alex Mooney, who enjoys the support of the fiscally-conservative Club for Growth. The first Democrat to jump into the race following Manchin’s departure is 32-year-old Zachary Shrewsbury, a native West Virginian and Marine Corps veteran. Democrats breathed a sigh of relief when Sen. Jon Tester of Montana announced earlier this year that he would seek re-election in 2024 in a state that Trump carried by 16 points three years ago. The Democratic incumbent has hauled in a formidable $15 million in fundraising so far this year. Tim Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL and Purple Heart recipient who notched more than 200 missions in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere around the globe, launched a Republican Senate bid in late June. Sheehy, the CEO of Bridger Aerospace, a Montana-based aerial firefighting and wildfire surveillance services company, enjoys the NRSC’s backing. Rep. Matt Rosendale, a hard-right congressman, is seriously mulling a bid. Rosendale narrowly lost to Tester in the 2018 Senate election. Longtime Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown is the only member of his party to win a non-judicial, statewide election in Ohio in the past decade. As Brown runs in 2024 for a fourth six-year term representing Ohio, he will be heavily targeted by Republicans in a state that was once a premier general election battleground but has shifted red over the past six years. Trump carried Ohio by eight points in his 2016 presidential election victory and his 2020 re-election defeat. Last year, Trump’s handpicked Senate candidate in Ohio — Sen. JD Vance — topped longtime Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan by six points despite Ryan running what political experts considered a nearly flawless campaign. Brown, who has served as a congressman, state lawmaker and Ohio secretary of state during his nearly half-century career in elective politics, is well known across the Buckeye State. The senator, known as a champion for populist causes, raked in $3.6 million in contributions during the first three months of this year. Two Republicans who ran unsuccessfully for the 2022 GOP Senate nomination in Ohio are already in the race to oust Brown. State Sen. Matt Dolan, a former top county prosecutor and Ohio assistant attorney general, launched his campaign in January. Dolan, whose family owns Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Guardians, shelled out millions of his own money to run ads for his 2022 Senate bid.  He surged near the end of the primary race, finishing third in a crowded field of Republican contenders, winning nearly a quarter of the vote. In April, Bernie Moreno, a successful Cleveland-based businessman and luxury auto dealership giant, declared his candidacy. Moreno, an immigrant who arrived in the U.S. legally from Colombia with his family as a 5-year-old boy, also shelled out millions of his own money to run TV commercials to try and boost his first Senate bid. But he suspended his campaign in February 2022 after requesting and holding a private meeting with Trump. In July, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose joined the race, launching a much-anticipated Senate campaign. With Democrat-turned-independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema appearing to gear up for a re-election campaign — even though she hasn’t officially announced a campaign — the Senate race in battleground Arizona could be the most complicated of the 2024 cycle. Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego is already running on the left and has raised more money than Sinema, although the incumbent enjoys a healthy cash-on-hand advantage. Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb recently became the first major GOP contender to launch a campaign. But 2022 GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake instantly became the Republican front-runner when she jumped into the race in October. Lake, a former

Conservatives blast Republican Ohio governor as ‘coward’ for transgender bill veto

Conservatives blast Republican Ohio governor as ‘coward’ for transgender bill veto

Conservatives online torched Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, over his veto of a state bill to protect women’s sports. The bill, the Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act, passed the GOP-controlled state legislature but was vetoed by DeWine on Friday. The SAFE Act would have barred sex change treatments for minors while blocking transgender women and girls from participating in female sports leagues in Ohio. OHIO GOVERNOR VETOES BILL BANNING GENDER-REASSIGNMENT TREATMENT, TRANS PARTICIPATION IN WOMEN’S SPORTS “Were I to sign Substitute House Bill 68 or were Substitute House Bill 68 to become law, Ohio would be saying that the State, that the government, knows what is best medically for a child rather than the two people who love that child the most, the parents,” DeWine said in his veto message. “While there are rare times in the law, in other circumstances, where the State overrules the medical decisions made by the parents, I can think of no example where this is done not only against the decision of the parents, but also against the medical judgment of the treating physician and the treating team of medical experts,” he continued. The veto did not sit well with conservatives online, who blasted DeWine over the move. “This is a slogan, not a justification,” Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, posted Friday on X. “There are many things the law rightfully says no one, including parents, may do to children.” “This slogan also ignores the extraordinary pressure from interest groups and big pharma to green light poorly understood, irreversible procedures,” Vance continued. “I’m extremely disappointed in the governor’s decision and hope it is overridden.” GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who is from Ohio, wrote on X that DeWine “just vetoed a simple law that would have stopped boys from competing in girls’ sports [and] stopped kids from undergoing genital mutilation [and] chemical castration.” “Even Ohio’s Lt. Governor [Jon Husted] favored passage of the bill,” Ramaswamy wrote. “Shame on DeWine.” “Governor Mike DeWine has vetoed HB 68, a bill that would protect women’s sports and prevent child mutilation,” women’s sports advocate Riley Gaines wrote. “Fortunately, Ohio has the votes to override the veto.” “[DeWine] is a spineless coward that needs to be removed from office,” she added. Other conservatives didn’t hold back on DeWine over the veto. DeWine’s office pointed to the governor’s press release containing the veto message when asked for comment. Not all Republicans joined in the pile-on of DeWine, however. Ohio state Rep. Gary Click, a Republican, said the governor was working to “find a solution.” “The governor did not end the dialogue today. He joined it. I look forward to our discussions,” Click added on X. “There remains much more to say and do. A veto is not the final word.” The Ohio state constitution requires a three-fifths majority vote in both chambers to override the governor’s veto. The Ohio state Senate has 33 seats, while the state House is made up of 99 seats. Currently, Republicans control the super majority in both chambers, with the GOP holding 26 of the 33 state Senate seats and 67 of the 99 state House seats. Fox News Digital’s Paulina Dedaj contributed to this report.

Veiled rebellion: Female medical students go underground in Afghanistan

Veiled rebellion: Female medical students go underground in Afghanistan

Lima stayed home the last time the Taliban inspected the hospital where she secretly trains as a nurse. After five years of medical training, Lima, 28, should be one year into her residency as a doctor, perfecting her diagnostic skills. Instead, she takes temperatures and administers injections, tasks she has been doing at an emergency room in Kabul for three months now. While this is not the work she expected to be doing at this point in her career, she’s happy to at least be doing this. “Being at the hospital means I can stay close to my field. It helps me to stay connected to it,” Lima told Al Jazeera over the course of several telephone calls. She is identified by her first name only for safety reasons. Lima was just weeks away from graduating from a medical school in Kabul when the Taliban banned higher education for women last December, interrupting her studies and that of thousands of other women. Women already qualified as doctors, nurses and other medical workers are permitted to continue in their jobs, but no new women may enter the field or undertake training. More than 3,000 women who had already graduated from medical schools before the ban were barred from taking the board exams required to practise, depriving the country – already struggling from a dire shortage of female medical workers – of a desperately needed infusion of new doctors. For Lima, medicine has been a lifelong dream. She longs to become a surgeon, partially because she knows there is a shortage of them. “My biggest hope is to help people,” she said. Her family moved home to Afghanistan from Pakistan so she could attend university in Kabul where she thrived – she did well in her classes and was appointed her class’s “leader”, handling administrative tasks. On the day they heard about the new ban on women completing medical studies, Lima and her classmates were having lunch together. They cried together because of what this would mean for their future and because they were worried they would not be able to see each other again. The Taliban’s strict ban on women leaving their homes without a male chaperone makes meeting friends near-impossible. After the news broke, Lima called one of her professors and persuaded him to let her and her classmates take one of the exams they were scheduled to take that week. It was not for an official grade but just for them to know they could do it. The professor agreed, but when Lima and her classmates arrived at the university to take the test, the Taliban, armed with guns, were already guarding the doors. It was no longer safe, the professor told Lima. Girls in Herat gather to stage a demonstration demanding the right to continue their education in schools and universities, on September 20, 2021, in Herat, Afghanistan [Anadolu Agency via Getty Images] A secret internship Almost a year later, many women have refused to give up on their chosen path and have continued studying on their own or online, hoping that they will one day be allowed to study officially at university and medical school again. Some women have managed to work around the restrictions, finding secret internships and residency opportunities. “It’s like a refreshment for my studies, for my knowledge. This is the best way for me to do something for my goals,” says Noor*, whose name has been changed to ensure her anonymity. Like Lima, she was just about to graduate from medical school when the Taliban’s ban brought her studies to an abrupt halt. The order hit her hard. She spent months studying solo, holding on to medicine as “the only goal” she ever had in her life. She reviewed her notes, read thick medical books in English and took online courses, focusing on what she believed to be any gaps in her knowledge. But working alone for weeks on end, she says she fell into a depression and had to listen to motivational speakers for an hour per day just to muster the will to keep going. In September, nine months after the ban, Noor lost hope that the university would reopen and called the hospital that had offered her a two-month internship back in 2020. They agreed to let her come in to complete it. Everyone treats it as a secret. When the two months were up, the hospital allowed her to stay on to continue observing surgeries for as long as she wished. Noor says she is too afraid to even think about what would happen if the Taliban discovered her studying there. It is unclear what would happen if she was discovered, but women found studying medicine or undertaking internships would likely be removed from hospitals and banned from returning, if not worse. There have already been arrests of activists who tried to defy the ban on girls’ education. Whatever the risks, however, women refuse to stop trying to defy the ban on higher education completely. “Never in the history of Afghanistan have we had so many educated, well-aware-of-the-world and well-aware-of-their-duties-and-rights women. It’s impossible to silence them, it’s impossible to push them aside,” says Fatima Gailani, a London-based women’s rights activist and former president of the Afghan Red Crescent Society, in an interview over WhatsApp. Afghan nurses wait to receive their salaries at the Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan, on February 24, 2022 [Hussein Malla/AP Photo] Women’s healthcare at stake Despite the Taliban’s initial promise to take a moderate approach towards women’s rights after it seized power in August 2021, the ban on higher education is just one of many steps that the armed group has taken to further segregate the country and limit women’s role in society. In the immediate aftermath of August 2021, the Taliban banned girls from going to school beyond the sixth grade and imposed strict rules requiring women to wear hijabs and to travel only with a male chaperone. They closed down