Shutdown fears move House Republicans to protect military paychecks
FIRST ON FOX: House Republicans are moving to protect U.S. service members’ paychecks in the event of a partial government shutdown. Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-Va., is re-introducing her Pay Our Troops Act on Thursday, with support from at least 20 fellow House lawmakers – 16 Republicans and four Democrats. It comes a day after more than a dozen House GOP lawmakers helped defeat Speaker Mike Johnson’s plan to avert a partial government shutdown by extending the current fiscal year’s funding levels through March, known as a continuing resolution (CR). IN THE ONLY STATE BORDERING RUSSIA, ALASKA GOVERNOR SAYS ITS DEFENSES ARE ‘STRONG’ The Republican-controlled House and the Democratic-held Senate must come to some agreement on federal funding by Sept. 30 to avoid a shutdown weeks before Election Day. “It’s really important that we send that message to our military men and women, that they will receive a paycheck even with all the talk and uncertainty about funding the government,” Kiggans, herself a veteran, emphasized to Fox News Digital. Her previous iteration of the bill, which netted 118 co-sponsors, was introduced in late September 2023 – when Congress was similarly barreling toward a partial government shutdown with no agreement in sight until the 11th hour. FLASHBACK: ALASKAN F-35s PREPARE FOR MAJOR SUB-ZERO ARCTIC WARFARE Johnson’s bill would also have included the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which adds a proof of citizenship requirement to the voter registration process – a bill Democratic leaders have deemed a nonstarter. Three Democrats crossed the aisle to vote for his plan, while 14 Republicans who were mainly opposed to a CR on principle helped defeat it. Johnson, R-La., however, has consistently vowed not to let the government shut down. But Kiggans’ bill is a sign that Republicans are growing anxious about the possibility of federal programs stalling and potentially thousands of workers being furloughed. The legislation would extend pay for all service branches, including the Coast Guard, which Kiggans said had been left out of military funding protections in past shutdowns. COAST GUARD OFFERS UPDATE ON DEADLY TITAN SUBMERSIBLE IMPLOSION NEARLY ONE YEAR LATER “It also covers for some defense contractors and civilians that are also essential to military service,” she said. “It just provides that reassurance we don’t need our military families to be worried about [whether they are] going to get a paycheck or not.” Asked whether the Wednesday vote made her more nervous about the prospect of a shutdown, Kiggans said there was “a lot of uncertainty in this Congress.” “I am disappointed that we weren’t able to pass the funding bills in a timely manner. I think the American public would agree,” Kiggans said. She said she would have preferred spending some of the August recess working on the 12 appropriations bills that Congress must pass every year rather than scramble for more time with a CR. “Am I surprised it didn’t pass? Well it’s – I wish it was different, and we had passed it,” Kiggans said of Johnson’s conservative CR, which the speaker’s allies hoped would be a strong opening salvo in the House’s negotiations with the Senate. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP “But we’ll have to continue to work, and hopefully we’ll get something passed soon,” Kiggans said. She said her office made Johnson aware that her bill was being prepared but cautioned the legislation would likely not be deployed for a House-wide vote unless a shutdown was imminent. “That’s my gut instinct, is that they probably will not bring it to the floor unless we are really faced with the reality of that,” Kiggans said.
Support for Taylor Swift’s get-out-the-vote effort drops sharply among particular voting bloc: poll
A new poll suggests that support is dropping among all Americans for Taylor Swift’s efforts to encourage her legions of fans to vote in the upcoming elections. Fifty-three percent of voters questioned in a Monmouth University national survey released on Thursday said they approved of Swift’s voter encouragement efforts – which she did last week in a social media post following the first and potentially only debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump. Swift, in her social media post, also endorsed Harris in the race to succeed President Biden in the White House. Support for the pop star’s voter participation efforts is down 15 points from 68% in a Monmouth survey conducted in February, when Swift was in the spotlight for a debunked conspiracy theory surrounding the presidential election and the Super Bowl. CLICK HERE FOR FOX NEWS’ LATEST REPORTING ON TAYLOR SWIFT A baseless conspiracy theory at the time suggested that Swift was involved in a covert government plot to help Biden win re-election. Swift endorsed Biden in the 2020 presidential election and for years has encouraged her fans to vote. TRUMP MAKES BOLD PREDICTION IN HIS 2024 SHOWDOWN WITH HARRIS The president suspended his re-election campaign following a disastrous debate performance in late June with Trump, and Harris replaced Biden two months ago atop the Democrats’ 2024 national ticket. The new poll indicates that while support for Swift’s voter participation efforts remains high among Democrats – 87% in the new survey, unchanged from February – support has, not surprisingly, plunged among Republicans from an already low 41% earlier this year to just 20% now. Support among independents dropped from 73% to 52%, according to the survey. “Republicans were wary of Swift all along. What we don’t know is whether this will have any effect on the part of her fan base who already leans right,” Monmouth University Polling Institute director Patrick Murray highlighted in the poll’s release. More than 400,000 people clicked on the vote.gov website in the 24 hours after Swift’s endorsement of Harris in a post that also included a link to the voter registration website. What’s unclear is how many of those people will actually end up voting and whom they’ll support in the presidential election. Trump initially downplayed Swift’s endorsement of Harris in a “Fox and Friends” interview the morning after the debate. But on Sunday, Trump turned up the temperature, writing “I hate Taylor Swift” in a social media post. The Monmouth University poll was conducted Sept. 11-15, with 803 registered voters nationwide questioned. The survey’s overall sampling error is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points. Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.
Trump’s former ICE chief turns the tables on Harris’ ‘border hawk’ narrative
FIRST ON FOX: The head of immigration enforcement under former President Trump is seeking to sound the alarm about Vice President Kamala Harris’ “open borders” policies and the truth about the crisis at the southern border — just as Harris is claiming she is the right candidate to tackle the border. Tom Homan, a Fox News contributor who previously served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under former President Trump, is preparing to engage in a series of virtual town halls with his nonprofit, Border911 Inc. He intends for the town halls to bring awareness to the facts about the consequences of the ongoing crisis at the southern border, including sex trafficking and the smuggling of fentanyl into the U.S. MEXICAN GOVERNMENT BUSES MIGRANTS TO US BORDER AS ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION BECOMES TOP ELECTION ISSUE As part of that, Homan is challenging the narrative by Harris that she is tough on border security. A recent ad by Harris said that “fixing the border is tough, so is Kamala Harris.” Border911 Inc., which is led by experts on border and national security from both Republican and Democratic administrations, is releasing a video that instead points to past comments by Harris that it says conflict with that narrative. They include her saying she was open to “starting from scratch” with ICE, decriminalizing illegal crossings, saying she supported “sanctuary” city laws and comparing ICE to the Ku Klux Klan as a senator. “Kamala Harris wants everyone to believe she’s some border hawk now. But going all the way back to her days as DA in San Francisco, her statements and policies make it clear where she stands,” Homan, who served under multiple administrations, told Fox News Digital. “The fact is, she’s an open borders radical and, along with Joe Biden, she’s personally responsible for the current crisis.” HARRIS SHIFTS POSITIONS ON BORDER, ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION AS CAMPAIGN PROMISES ‘PRAGMATIC’ APPROACH Republicans and the Trump campaign have zeroed in on the border, including Harris’ role in tackling root causes of migration. They have linked the historic highs seen during the border crisis to the policies of the Biden-Harris administration, including the ending of Trump-era policies they see as having successfully brought the border under control. Conservatives have sought to paint Harris as a radical on illegal immigration, pointing to many of the same remarks featured in the video, just as the Harris campaign has sought to present her as the right candidate for border security. A Harris campaign adviser told Fox News last month that Harris’ positions have been “shaped by three years of effective governance as part of the Biden-Harris administration.” Her campaign said she believes illegal border crossings are illegal and supports “continuing to ensure sufficient resources to enforce our laws and prioritize detention and removal for individuals who pose threats to public safety and national security, as well as ensure compliance with immigration proceedings and decisions, including removal.” More broadly, it has pointed to her backing of the bipartisan Senate package that emerged from negotiations in the chamber earlier this year, which increases funding for the border, including ICE bed space and a mechanism to limit asylum entries into the U.S. Conservatives said that bill would only serve to codify high levels of illegal immigration. CLICK HERE FOR MORE COVERAGE OF THE BORDER SECURITY CRISIS “The only ‘plan’ Donald Trump has to secure our border is ripping mothers from their children and a few xenophobic placards at the Republican National Convention. He tanked the bipartisan border security deal because, for Donald Trump, this has never been about solutions, just running on a problem,” Harris-Walz campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz said in a statement. “Like everything with Donald Trump, it’s never been about helping the country, it’s only about helping himself. There’s only one candidate in this race who will fight for bipartisan solutions to strengthen border security, and that’s Vice President Harris,” he said. Homan, however, says he isn’t trying to tell voters who they should pick in November, just to present the facts. “We want to show the American people the truth so they can make their own decisions,” he told Fox News Digital.
Trump’s former ICE chief turns the tables on Harris’ ‘border hawk’ narrative
FIRST ON FOX: The head of immigration enforcement under former President Trump is seeking to sound the alarm about Kamala Harris’ “open borders” policies and the truth about the crisis at the southern border — just as Harris is claiming she is the right candidate to tackle the border. Tom Homan, a Fox News contributor who previously served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under former President Trump, is preparing to engage in a series of virtual town halls with his nonprofit, Border911 Inc. He intends for the town halls to bring awareness to the facts about the consequences of the ongoing crisis at the southern border, including sex trafficking and the smuggling of fentanyl into the United States. MEXICAN GOVERNMENT BUSES MIGRANTS TO US BORDER AS ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION BECOMES TOP ELECTION ISSUE As part of that, he is challenging the narrative by Vice President Kamala Harris that she is tough on border security. A recent ad by Harris said that “fixing the border is tough, so is Kamala Harris.” Border911 Inc., which is led by experts on border and national security from both Republican and Democratic administrations, is releasing a video that instead points to past comments by Harris that it says conflict with that narrative. They include her saying she was open to “starting from scratch” with ICE, decriminalizing illegal crossings, saying she supported “sanctuary” city laws and comparing ICE to the Ku Klux Klan as a senator. “Kamala Harris wants everyone to believe she’s some border hawk now. But going all the way back to her days as DA in San Francisco, her statements and policies make it clear where she stands,” Homan, who served under multiple administrations, told Fox News Digital. “The fact is, she’s an open borders radical and, along with Joe Biden, she’s personally responsible for the current crisis.” HARRIS SHIFTS POSITIONS ON BORDER, ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION AS CAMPAIGN PROMISES ‘PRAGMATIC’ APPROACH Republicans and the Trump campaign have zeroed in on the border, including Harris’ role in tackling root causes of migration. They have linked the historic highs seen during the border crisis to the policies of the Biden-Harris administration, including the ending of Trump-era policies they see as having successfully brought the border under control. Conservatives have sought to paint Harris as a radical on illegal immigration, pointing to many of the same remarks featured in the video, just as the Harris campaign has sought to present her as the right candidate for border security. A Harris campaign adviser told Fox News last month that Harris’ positions have been “shaped by three years of effective governance as part of the Biden-Harris administration.” Her campaign said she believes illegal border crossings are illegal and supports “continuing to ensure sufficient resources to enforce our laws and prioritize detention and removal for individuals who pose threats to public safety and national security, as well as ensure compliance with immigration proceedings and decisions, including removal.” More broadly, it has pointed to her backing of the bipartisan Senate package that emerged from negotiations in the chamber earlier this year, which increases funding for the border, including ICE bed space and a mechanism to limit asylum entries into the U.S. Conservatives said that bill would only serve to codify high levels of illegal immigration. CLICK HERE FOR MORE COVERAGE OF THE BORDER SECURITY CRISIS “The only ‘plan’ Donald Trump has to secure our border is ripping mothers from their children and a few xenophobic placards at the Republican National Convention. He tanked the bipartisan border security deal because, for Donald Trump, this has never been about solutions, just running on a problem,” spokesperson Kevin Munoz said in a statement. “Like everything with Donald Trump, it’s never been about helping the country, it’s only about helping himself. There’s only one candidate in this race who will fight for bipartisan solutions to strengthen border security, and that’s Vice President Harris,” he said. Homan, however, says he isn’t trying to tell voters who they should pick in November, just to present the facts. “We want to show the American people the truth so they can make their own decisions,” he told Fox News Digital.
Biden-Harris’ taxpayer-funded electric school bus program is ‘enriching’ the CCP: House report
Lawmakers are claiming the Biden-Harris administration’s billion dollar clean bus project is promoting reliance on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in a new scathing report that details the taxpayer-funded price tag for the energy initiative. The Biden administration authorized the Clean School Bus Program in 2021, which appropriated $5 billion for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to incentivize the replacement of school buses with “clean” alternatives. The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations released a 51-page report on the project, reviewed by Fox News Digital, that highlighted the push for electric school buses over “cheaper” low-emissions alternatives and how “vulnerabilities for waste, fraud, and abuse riddle this program.” “Costly subsidies for ESBs are a poor use of federal taxpayer money at a time when school budgets are increasingly strained,” the report said. “Currently, it is only the existence of massive taxpayer-funded subsidies that enables ESBs to compete with diesel buses and low emission buses in the market.” BLACK ACTIVIST TO BLAST BIDEN ADMIN ENERGY AGENDA ALLEGEDLY CAUSING LOW-INCOME HOUSEHOLDS TO ‘SUFFER MOST’ The committee claims that the EPA funding structure “incentivized districts” to choose the electric school bus options. The average diesel school bus costs roughly $100,000, while the average electric school bus in the 2022 Clean School Bus Rebate Program costs $381,190, according to the committee’s findings. Advocates of electric buses told lawmakers that the initiative promoted lower operating costs compared to diesel buses, but the committee argued in the report that the “savings don’t come close to offsetting the tremendous upfront costs.” TRUMP’S EPA CHIEF OF STAFF SAYS HARRIS ‘HASN’T EVOLVED’ ON HER ENERGY POLICIES: ‘POLITICS AT ITS WORST’ The committee also cited a “serious security vulnerability” over the reliance on China for mineral mining. “ESB batteries rely on opaque supply chains rife with national security risks and that pose grave human rights concerns, and are to the benefit of adversarial regimes, such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which largely has a monopoly on certain parts of the supply chain for these products,” the report reads. “Promoting EVs like ESBs means enriching the People’s Republic of China and the CCP because, as Morgan Stanley estimates, 90% of the EV battery supply chain relies on China.” The committee also noted that Chinese companies will mine lithium in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, “thus enriching both China and the Taliban,” citing Paul A. Brinkley, a former U.S. deputy undersecretary of defense. During its investigation, the committee said they reached out to some of the schools that received funds from the EPA and found the agency “did not require attestations of truth from applicants, lacked procedures to verify applicant claims, and relied on insufficient self-certification to determine that applicants met EPA requirements.” “The program, led by the radical Biden-Harris EPA, props up a market that relies heavily upon a supply chain dominated by the Chinese Communist Party. Further, the program was constructed without the necessary safeguards to prevent fraud and incentivizes schools to use buses they otherwise would not choose,” the committee chairs wrote in a statement. Vice President Kamala Harris, the 2024 Democratic nominee for president, has been a vocal proponent of replacing older buses with electric vehicles. “Who doesn’t love a yellow school bus, right? Can you raise your hand if you love a yellow school bus? Many of us went to school on the yellow school bus, right? It’s part of our experience growing up,” Harris said while speaking at Lumen Field in Seattle in 2022. “It’s part of a nostalgia, a memory of the excitement and joy of going to school to be with your favorite teacher, to be with your best friends and to learn. The school bus takes us there.” Asked about the report, the EPA told Fox News Digital that the program is “creating the future that our children deserve – a future with cleaner air on the bus, in bus loading areas, and in the communities in which they operate.” “EPA appreciates Congress’ continued interest in the EPA Clean School Bus Program. EPA is committed to oversight and accountability and to ensuring that these funds are delivering clean air and climate benefits to communities. EPA continues to work with a diverse set of stakeholders, including the OIG, to continually improve the design, implementation, and monitoring of the program,” the agency said in a statement.
At this South Texas political convention, everyone has a voice, regardless of legal status
Inspired by the work of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, the biennial “cumbre” helps South Texans organize for political change.
Iran envoy Malley may have been on ‘classified White House call’ after clearance suspended, watchdog finds
Iran envoy Robert Malley may have taken part in a “classified conference call” with the White House after his security clearance was suspended, according to the State Department inspector general’s new report. The State Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) did not interview Malley and could not confirm that he had been on the call, but his deputy notified a White House official that “Rob will call in” and that Malley had “accessed the controlled office where the call would have occurred.” At the time of the call, Malley’s clearance had been paused over misconduct allegations, but the envoy himself had not yet been notified. Malley – a controversial Washington figure who Republicans say is friendly to Iran – had been accused of storing classified information on his personal email account and phone. That material was later accessed by a “hostile cyber actor,” according to Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, the Foreign Relations Committee ranking member, and Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, the House Foreign Affairs Committee chair. They revealed this information in May. BLINKEN TRAVELS TO EGYPT FOR CEASEFIRE TALKS The FBI is investigating whether Malley committed crimes in moving classified information over to his personal email. OIG found that State had “deviated” from the normal procedure of clearance suspension by not letting Malley know until senior department officials had been made aware. Department officials also restored Malley’s access to sensitive but unclassified information after they had paused his clearance, worried that he might use a personal email account to conduct government business if they did not. Sen. Bill Hagerty, Tenn., top Republican on the subcommittee on State Department Management, accused the Biden administration of colluding with Russia after the report. “We see growing evidence of Iran collusion by members of the Biden-Harris administration amid the FBI’s reported ongoing investigation into Special Envoy for Iran Rob Malley’s mishandling of classified information and news reports that Malley and other Biden-Harris administration officials were part of the Iranian regime’s malign influence network known as the ‘Iran Experts Initiative’,” said Hagerty. IRAN SENT STOLEN TRUMP CAMP MATERIAL TO THE BIDEN CAMPAIGN, FBI SAYS Two people who had been commissioned by the Iranian Foreign Ministry to bolster the regime’s image in the U.S. ended up as top aides to Malley, according to a Semafor report. “The Inspector General’s report today includes new damning revelations about the cover-up, politicization, and systemic lack of accountability in the Biden-Harris Administration’s State Department.” OIG found that a “lack of standard policies for political appointees and the lack of supervision of Special Envoy Malley led to significant confusion as to what work Mr. Malley was authorized to do following the suspension.” The department also “failed to consistently notify employees who regularly interacted with Mr. Malley that he was no longer allowed to access classified information,” according to the report. It did not report the allegations against Malley to OIG, as required by law. The Biden administration made Malley special envoy to Iran in April 2021. He reported directly to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and was granted a top secret security clearance. On April 20, 2023, the Director of the Department’s Office of Personnel Security and Suitability received a referral to suspend Malley’s clearance pending an investigation, and the next day the director signed off on the referral. Malley, however, was not notified until the following day, April 22. On April 22, the department also issued an information and facility access restriction (IFAR) for Malley. Days later, his access to facilities was restored, and he was allowed to continue working on unclassified matters. He continued working until June 29, 2023, when he was placed on leave without pay and told to cease all department work. He was told that without a clearance, he could not perform the duties of the job. Malley retains the title of special envoy to Iran to this day, even as his employment and clearance remain suspended. He will continue to hold the title until he resigns or his clearance is officially revoked. “Instead of taking this seriously, the State Department and the White House have tried to sweep this under the rug and bury Mr. Malley’s egregious violations of our national security. These revelations are quite damning, but not surprising,” House Foreign Affairs Chairman Mike McCaul and Senate Foreign Relations top Republican Jim Risch said in a joint statement. “Congress remains in the dark on how Mr. Malley’s infractions impacted the conduct of the administration’s disastrous approach to Iran, or affected the safety of Americans.”
NC GOP gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson facing calls to drop out amid rumors of looming bombshell
Unrest has reportedly taken over the North Carolina GOP in anticipation of a forthcoming negative news story about Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the current candidate for governor. Reports say the story, which has yet to be published, has to do with Robinson’s activity on adult websites in the 2000s, according to The Carolina Journal. Robinson and his campaign did not respond to requests for comment from Fox News Digital. Sources told the Journal that members of Robinson’s staff and former President Donald Trump’s campaign are encouraging Robinson to drop out of the race. Michael Lonergan, the communications director for Robinson’s campaign, rejected the claims in a statement to the journal. “Whomever your sources are here, it is complete fiction,” he told the outlet. REPUBLICAN MARK ROBINSON ON HISTORIC LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR WIN: ‘THIS PARTY IS OPEN TO EVERYBODY’ The reports come after Robinson canceled two campaign events Thursday. He was scheduled to appear alongside Sen. JD Vance, but his campaign said Robinson tested positive for COVID. NRA SUPPORTS GOP CANDIDATE FOR GOVERNOR WHO WENT VIRAL FOR PRO-GUN SPEECH: ‘I’M THE MAJORITY’ A source reportedly told the Journal that Trump’s campaign told Robinson he is not welcome at campaign events earlier this week. The story reportedly originated from the campaign for Robinson’s opponent, Attorney General Josh Stein, which leaked the information to CNN and a local outlet. Robinson secured the GOP nomination for governor in March. He would be the state’s first Black governor if he wins the election. NORTH CAROLINA’S REPUBLICAN LT GOV MARK ROBINSON LAUNCHES CAMPAIGN TO REPLACE DEMOCRAT GOV ROY COOPER Trump endorsed Robinson this spring, calling him “Martin Luther King on steroids.” The reported damaging news story about Robinson is expected to drop sometime Thursday, according to the Journal.
Nancy Pelosi claims Dem primary process was ‘open’ and Kamala Harris ‘won it’
Former Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi insisted on Wednesday that her party’s presidential nominating process after President Biden dropped out was “open,” and Vice President Kamala Harris “won it,” despite the absence of any such contest. Prior to Biden stepping down as the Democratic Party’s nominee in mid-July, Pelosi reportedly said she favored a competitive open primary process to replace him if needed. On Wednesday, Semafor’s Kadia Goba asked Pelosi if she had changed her mind after seeing all the “excitement” Harris generated when she was tapped to replace Biden. “No, I didn’t change my mind. We had an open primary and [Kamala Harris] won it. Nobody else got in the race,” Pelosi said. “Yes people could have jumped in – there were some people who were sort of preparing, but she just took off with it, and actually it was a blessing because there was not that much time between then and the election and it sort of saved time.” “But it wasn’t that we didn’t have an open primary,” Pelosi added. “It’s just that nobody got in because she had a running start.” NANCY PELOSI GRILLED FOR TAKING SWIPE AT 30% OF REPUBLICANS: ‘NASTY, UNTRUE AND CRUEL’ Amid intra-party pressure, Biden dropped out of the race for president on July 21 and endorsed Harris as his successor the same day. Harris was the informal nominee from that point forward until the Democratic National Committee decided to implement an unprecedented virtual roll call ahead of its national nominating convention in August. The first-of-its-kind roll call vote ended with Harris getting 99% support from the party’s participating delegates. Harris was the only candidate who qualified for the virtual roll call vote, despite three challengers who wanted to run against her. The failed challengers were reportedly unable to collect the 300 delegate signatures necessary to gain access to the virtual ballot, according to Politico. Conservatives focusing on the election called Pelosi’s comments about Harris’ nominating process a “joke” and a “lie.” “The votes of 14 million Americans who voted for Joe Biden were thrown away as Harris was installed as the Democrats’ nominee for president – a job for which she has never received a single vote,” said Ryan Walker, executive director at Heritage Action For America, a conservative political advocacy organization in Washington, D.C., affiliated with the Heritage Foundation. “Saying she won an open primary is a joke.” ‘PAISANS FOR KAMALA’ EVENT FEATURES DE NIRO, PELOSI BLASTING TRUMP ON IMMIGRATION “Listening to Nancy Pelosi’s comments about Joe Biden, you could almost forget that she was one of many who lied to us about his condition, right up until the moment it was no longer to her political advantage to do so,” Jenny Beth Martin, president of Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund, added. “It doesn’t surprise me at all that she’d now to try to lie about what she calls the ‘open nomination’ process that led to Kamala’s ascension.” Meanwhile, academic elections experts told Fox News Digital that nothing illegal or undemocratic took place because ultimately it is each party’s purview how they go about nominating their candidate. “You could probably sue the party for a civil tort and say, you know, ‘They did something wrong to me here.’ But it wouldn’t be a violation of election law,” said Jeremy Mayer, a professor at George Mason University’s Schar School of Public Policy and Government. “It’s not a coup, as some would say.” American University professor Leonard Steinhorn, a political communications expert, questioned what other options the party had at that point with the election being less than four months away. “One has to ask themselves: What else would a party do?” he asked. Mayer and Steinhorn also argued that the Republican Party would likely have done something similar with Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, Trump’s vice presidential running mate, if the GOP nominee faced some sort of hurdle preventing him from running. PELOSI SUGGESTS ‘30%’ OF REPUBLICANS ARE RACIST, SEXIST, HOMOPHOBIC: THEY’D ‘NEVER’ VOTE DEMOCRAT “You can always talk in ideal circumstances about what’s best and what ought to be. But you know, as there’s that old 1980s expression, ‘Reality Bites,’ and you have to be able to adjust and adapt to the circumstances that you have,” Steinhorn said. “In an ideal world, you may want to have the candidates vetted by the public more, whether it’s an open primary – which might have been impossible to set up in any number of critical mass states – or forums that would allow people to sort of evaluate different candidates. But at that point, Vice President Harris moved quickly with Joe Biden’s support, to consolidate her support and get the majority of the delegates. In which case, why would anyone else run?” Mayer and Steinhorn also pointed out that, while the process did go against contemporary norms, it is not entirely unprecedented. “She was picked in the way that we picked our candidates from 1832 to 1968 – the convention – and that produced some pretty good presidents, but we expect today for a president to be picked by the people of the party in an open primary process. And that’s not what happened with Harris,” Mayer said. Meanwhile, Steinhorn pointed to former President Gerald Ford, who he said “did not once face any primaries or any national referendum at all.” Last week, Pelosi also responded to questions on the fairness of the Democratic Party’s nomination process during an episode of ABC’s “The View.” “It was an open [process],” Pelosi insisted. “Anybody could have gotten in. She got in, and she won, and a president of the United States had endorsed her who was very respected. So, that meant a lot, but people don’t understand, other people could have gotten in. She just locked it up. Politically astute, as I said to you before.” Fox News Digital reached out to Pelosi’s office for comment but did not receive a response.
India reacts to report on diversion of Indian defence exports to Ukraine, says, ‘it is…’
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Thursday rejected Reuters reports claiming that Indian defence exports have been diverted to Ukraine, labelling them “speculative and misleading.”