Liberals on social media seethed in reaction to Democratic lawmakers reportedly admitting behind the scenes that former President Trump isn’t a “threat to democracy” as their party loudly claims. 

New York Times columnist Ezra Klein appeared on The Bulwark Podcast Tuesday and revealed what “top Democrats” have told him off the record as they panic over whether they should support or abandon President Biden on their ticket. 

“People are weighing this set of things. Like, ‘It would be quite unpleasant for me personally to come out against the president as an elected official in the Democratic Party,’ and weighing what will happen if Donald Trump wins, and saying, in a revealed preference way, ‘I can live with Donald Trump winning,’” Klein said. “And I’ve heard people say that to me off the record, to be fair-“

BIDEN INTERVIEWERS SHED LIGHT ON HIS FRAILTY BEHIND THE SCENES: ‘IT’S IMPOSSIBLE NOT TO NOTICE’

“Really?” podcast host Tim Miller reacted. 

“I’ve had top Democrats say to me, basically, say something like, ‘I don’t know why all these Democrats who think Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy are acting the way they are. But the reason I’m acting the way I am is because I don’t think that,'” Klein continued. 

“Who the f— is this?” an angered Miller exclaimed. “Out your sources, Ezra!” 

“I find it maddening, but I do find it consistent,” Klein responded. 

Klein later told Miller, “I think you have to at some point say, whatever these Democrats are saying in public, they’re more resigned and more willing to just be the resistance to a Trump presidency than a lot of their public-facing rhetoric would suggest.”

“You have a calm voice, but you’re skyrocketing my f—ing blood pressure right now,” Miller said. “Ezra, I’m just, like, so f—ing mad.”

ABC’S GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS AFTER BIDEN INTERVIEW: ‘I DON’T THINK HE CAN SERVE FOUR MORE YEARS’

Miller shared the “GALLING exchange” on X, sparking anger among other anti-Trump voices.

“Absolutely f—ing enraging,” former Obama speechwriter and Pod Save America co-host Jon Favreau reacted.

“Correction: I was not being much too easy on the Democrats. I was being much, much, much too easy on them,” New York Magazine writer Jonathan Chait said. 

CRITICS PILE ON BIDEN FOLLOWING ABC INTERVIEW, BLAST HIS REFUSAL TO COMMIT TO COGNITIVE TEST: ‘DISQUALIFYING’

Progressive activist Aaron Regunberg posted, “This is a story with actual, legitimate villains. Here they are. May they rot in hell.” 

“If a party is filled with this many useless people, there is no reason for it to exist,” Vox writer Sean Illing said.

Washington Post assignment editor Damir Marusic remarked, “It’s so quaint, the idealism. It’s as if people living in a city devoted to politics don’t understand politics at all.” 

Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, offered a similar sentiment publicly in an op-ed published in the Bangor Daily News with the headline “Donald Trump is going to win the election and democracy will be just fine.”

Biden is facing mounting pressure to withdraw from the presidential race despite vowing to remain on the ballot til November following his disastrous debate performance. 

Democrats on Capitol Hill have been facing turmoil in recent weeks, with many publicly supporting Biden but reportedly expressing otherwise in private. 

Wednesday night Vermont Sen. Peter Welch joined eight House Democrats in calling for Biden to step aside. Several members of the media have also been vocal in calling for his removal from the ticket. 

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Hollywood A-lister and Democratic megadonor George Clooney, who co-hosted Biden’s star-studded fundraiser in Los Angeles just weeks before the debate, penned a scathing essay in The New York Times calling for a new nominee. 

“It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe “big F-ing deal” Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate,” Clooney wrote. 

A woman who was swept more than 50 miles out to sea while swimming at a Japanese beach has miraculously survived after spending 37 hours in the water, officials say. 

A cargo ship spotted the woman, identified only as a Chinese national in her 20s, drifting in a swimming ring early Wednesday off the southern tip of the Boso Peninsula, according to Japan’s Coast Guard. 

She vanished while swimming at Shirahama Ohama beach in Shimoda, about 125 miles southwest of Tokyo, the AFP reports. 

“It was around 7.55pm on July 8 when we received the information after the woman’s friend reported to a nearby convenience store that she was missing,” a local Coast Guard official told the news agency. 

‘OH GOD! YOU MADE IT!’: FLORIDA DIVER RESCUED BY FAMILY AFTER BEING SWEPT OUT TO SEA BY CURRENT 

The cargo ship that spotted the woman asked a passing LPG tanker, the Kakuwa Maru No. 8, to help. Two of its crew members jumped into the sea and rescued the woman, officials said. She was airlifted by a coast guard helicopter to land, they said. 

COAST GUARD RESCUES 5 MEN HUDDLED ATOP CAPSIZED BOAT 11 MILES OFF FLORIDA COAST 

The woman was slightly dehydrated but was in good health and walked away after being examined at a nearby hospital, the officials said. 

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP 

The coast guard said she had drifted more than 50 miles and was lucky to have survived despite the dangers of heat stroke under the sun, hypothermia at night or being hit by a ship in the dark. 

At least one of the three suspects arrested in connection with the shooting death of a French Quarter tour guide in New Orleans is an illegal immigrant with a criminal history on American soil, according to immigration authorities. 

The immigration status of the other two suspects was not immediately clear.

New Orleans police arrested Joshua Bonifacio-Avila, 19, Jerben Albarec, 17, and Kevin Nunez, 15, the day after the slaying of 43-year-old Kristie Thibodeaux in her car on St. Peter Street, the morning of June 30.

Nunez is accused of pulling the trigger. And Aviala-Bonifacio, a Honduras national, is accused of entering the country illegally, Immigration and Customs Enforcement told Fox News Digital.

NEW ORLEANS TEEN MAY BE TRAFFICKING VICTIM AFTER SHE VANISHES FROM GROUP TRIP TO MUSEUM

“On May 11, 2019, U.S. Border Patrol encountered Bonifacio near Hidalgo, Texas, and determined him to be inadmissible into the U.S. pursuant to the Immigration and Nationality Act,” an ICE spokesperson said. “On multiple occasions, Bonifacio has been arrested for theft and contributing to the delinquency of juveniles. Since February 2024, Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office has booked Bonifacio for five local violations.”

ICE does not have purview over juveniles, so the immigration status of the other two suspects was not immediately clear.

The agency’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division, ERO, has lodged a detainer request for the suspect.

The slaying took place around 4:30 a.m. on June 30 as part of an armed robbery, New Orleans police said. They arrested all three suspects on July 1. The Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office identified Thibodeaux as the victim on July 2.

Police were asking anyone with information on the case to contact homicide detectives at 504-658-5300.

NEW ORLEANS COURTROOM BRAWL ERUPTS AFTER MAN PLEADS GUILTY TO KILLING HIS 3 CHILDREN

Nunez had an active arrest warrant at the time and was wearing an ankle monitor, according to the New Orleans-based FOX 8.

Aviala-Bonifacio also had a criminal history, including arrests for alleged theft and contributing to the delinquency of juveniles, according to ICE. He also used the alias Joshua Avila.

“This man should have never been in Louisiana,” Gov. Jeff Landry wrote on X. “Enough is enough. We must close our borders and keep our communities safe.”

Nunez’s criminal record on American soil included seven counts of aggravated assault, illegal possession of a handgun and domestic battery, WVUE-TV reported. Nevertheless, Chief Juvenile Court Judge Candice Bates-Anderson sentenced him to house arrest.

He allegedly violated the terms in May but was walking free, without real-time digital monitoring, because his ankle monitor had been deactivated, according to the outlet.

The Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office could not immediately be reached for comment before business hours Thursday. 

“With no guardrails from OJJ and OPJC, we as a city have to seriously consider shutting down electronic monitoring until we can be confident in the competence of the administrators to conduct real monitoring and the commitment of judges to ensure actual accountability for young defendants for violations and noncompliance,” prosecutors said in a statement to local media.

The incident reportedly attracted intense scrutiny upon the city’s juvenile justice system and the company that provides ankle monitoring services.

Jill Dennis, of the Assured Supervision Accountability Program, a competing contractor, told FOX 8 the failure to properly monitor violent offenders like Nunez “is chaotic and insane.”

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to a request for more information on the suspects.

Thibodeaux would have turned 44 next month. She is survived by her husband, her parents, four siblings and eight nieces and nephews, according to an online obituary.

Thibodeaux loved dogs, motorcycling, her Jeep, her old Mustang convertible and watching the sunset over Lake Pontchartrain with her husband, Jase.

A memorial service was held Wednesday.

The Supreme Court this term took a hammer to decades-old legal doctrine that largely saved executive branch agencies in legal disputes. Now, experts say Congress and the next president will have no choice but to work more closely together and stop relying on the “faceless leviathan” of federal agencies.

In a David vs. Goliath dispute, a group of fishermen sued a government agency that mandated the fishermen pay $700 for “at sea monitors,” arguing that the rule is out of the bounds Congress set for the federal agency.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the fishermen in a 6-3 decision last month, and, in doing so, overruled what is known as the Chevron doctrine — a legal theory established in the 1980s that says if a federal regulation is challenged, the courts should defer to the agency’s interpretation of whether Congress had granted it authority to issue the rule, as long as the agency’s interpretation is reasonable and Congress had not addressed the question directly.

Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor dissented from the majority, warning that eliminating Chevron could give judges without expertise authority in legal disputes regarding regulation of food, medicine, the environment, etc. 

SUPREME COURT SIDES WITH FISHERMEN IN LANDMARK CASE DECIDING FATE OF THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE

But conservatives and Republicans, who argued Chevron gave the government too much power to rule through bureaucratic red tape, praised the decision. 

“The Supreme Court’s decision in Looper Bright v. Raimondo is a big win for the little guy and a big blow to big government. Power ought to reside with Americans and those they elect and not the faceless leviathan of 3 letter agencies that has thrived under Joe Biden,” said Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo.

“I think what this decision should mean is that our elected leaders in Congress should be the ones who are making the laws that impact Americans’ everyday lives, and not unelected bureaucrats in cubicles in Washington, D.C.,” Casey Mattox, vice president of legal strategy at Stand Together, told Fox News Digital. 

“It should mean the president having to work with Congress instead of just simply major swings from one direction to the other every four to eight years. That has not served America well,” he said. 

“Congress should not be passing the buck to unelected people to make the decisions,” Mattox added. “And so, I think essentially what the decision to overturn Chevron means is that when Congress is passing laws, it needs to actually get the expertise it needs and then be politically accountable for the decisions it’s making.”

HOW MAINE LOBSTERMEN TURNED A ‘SLAP IN THE FACE’ FROM THE WHITE HOUSE INTO A POLICY VICTORY

With Chevron eliminated, Congress will now be forced to write laws with more clear language and less ambiguity. 

John Vecchion, counsel for New Civil Liberties Alliance, who represented some of the fishermen in the case, said that one of the damages of the Chevron doctrine was that it incentivized Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, not to compromise on clear language when writing bills that become law. 

“Because they would make a bet that when their friend was in executive office, either the Republican or the Democrat, the regulation would be made in such a way that helped them, and they could then say ‘this is the law’ but not take the blowback if there were bad results from that,” he explained.

Republicans in Congress have already shifted focus to legislation that would eliminate more executive red tape. 

Reps. Kat Cammack, R-Fla., and Derrick Van Orden, R-Wisc. and Sens. Schmitt, Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, held a press conference Wednesday to press forward on regulatory reforms.

“It should infuriate Americans that for decades some of the most important policy questions have been decided by unelected bureaucrats and not their elected representatives,” Cammack said. 

SUPREME COURT SIGNALS INTEREST IN HEARING A MAJOR CLIMATE CHANGE CASE THAT COULD BE A ‘NIGHTMARE’ FOR LIBERALS

She added that the Supreme Court’s decision “cracked open the door” and that lawmakers need to “ensure that Congress is the chief lawmaking body, not bureaucrats.”

That assurance could come in the form of the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act, or REINS Act.

The bill would broaden the scope of the Congressional Review Act to require every new “major rule” proposed by federal agencies to be approved by Congress before going into effect.

Specifically, the House and Senate would be required to pass a joint resolution in order for a major rule to be approved by Congress.

The bill defines a “major rule” as any federal rule or regulation that may result in an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more; a major increase in costs or prices for consumers, individual industries, government agencies or geographic regions; or significant adverse effects on competition, employment, investment, productivity, innovation or the ability of U.S.-based enterprises to compete with foreign-based enterprises.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

“The REINS Act would… reverse the problem that we’ve got now today, where you can be deprived of life, liberty and property… simply by violating something that’s never even darkened the door of either chamber of Congress, let alone passed in the manner required,” Lee said. 

Additionally, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., on Tuesday sent letters to federal agencies to “demand the review of various overreaching regulations” in an effort to “free the American people from the power-hungry administrative state.”

“With their ruling in this case, the Supreme Court restored proper constitutional separation of powers as our Founding Fathers intended by overturning Chevron deference and requiring the courts to decide disputes over interpretation of statutory text,” he said Wednesday.

“Agencies can’t be allowed to run free without any checks on their power — we’ve already seen how frequently federal agencies will abuse their authority,” Scalise said.