Lame duck Biden gets high-stakes ultimatum over key White House failures
The ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus is signaling it will not help Congress avoid a government shutdown next month unless a short-term spending bill is linked to a bill requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote.
The House GOP rebels are also calling for a short-term spending plan to extend until the new year, at which point allies of former President Trump hope he will be in the White House again.
That puts the group in direct opposition to their more traditional GOP colleagues, including House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., who suggested last month that he would want to finish the government funding process by the end of 2024.
With just six of 12 individual appropriations bills having passed the House, and none yet in the Senate, it is all but certain that a short-term extension of the current year’s funding levels will be needed to keep the government open past the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.
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Even senior Republicans like Cole have admitted that a short-term bill, known as a continuing resolution (CR), will be needed to avoid federal offices shuttering and potentially thousands of federal employees getting furloughed. However, the Monday morning House Freedom Caucus statement, released while lawmakers are in the middle of a six-week-long recess from Washington, shows the beginnings of a potentially messy fiscal fight.
In a new statement obtained by Fox News Digital, the House Freedom Caucus said that “House Republicans should return to Washington to continue the work of passing all 12 appropriations bills to cut spending and advance our policy priorities … If unsuccessful, in the inevitability that Congress considers a Continuing Resolution, government funding should be extended into early 2025 to avoid a lame duck omnibus that preserves Democrat spending and policies well into the next administration.”
“Furthermore, the Continuing Resolution should include the SAVE Act – as called for by President Trump – to prevent non-citizens from voting to preserve free and fair elections in light of the millions of illegal aliens imported by the Biden-Harris administration over.”
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The House passed the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act last month with five Democrats voting with every single House Republican in passing the bill.
However, it is opposed by the White House and likely will not get a vote in the Democratically-held Senate, meaning its inclusion in a final CR would be fighting an uphill battle.
Cole told reporters last month that he would prefer something with wider bipartisan appeal, like supplemental disaster relief funding, to be attached to a CR instead.
“I haven’t really thought about it yet, it’s not a big deal to me. But again, if it can’t pass the Senate, it isn’t going to be an effective CR,” Cole said when asked about the SAVE Act. “So a real CR, you know, I’m more interested actually in disaster relief. That’s something that I think the two sides can come together on.”
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The 118th Congress has seen historic levels of discord over the issue of government spending, with GOP rebels clamoring for House Republican leadership to wield their razor-thin majority to force through conservative policy priorities or risk a shutdown.
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However, leaders on both sides have signaled that they want to avoid the political ramifications of a shutdown, especially one this close to the November election.
Last year’s spending fight saw the ouster of ex-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., by a handful of his own GOP colleagues after he helped pass a “clean” short-term funding extension in September of last year.
Biden admin official makes admission about Walz’s military record
Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz “slipped up” only “one time” on his military record, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg argued Sunday.
CNN’s “State of the Union” co-host Dana Bash asked Buttigieg to comment about Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance’s ongoing attacks against Walz, claiming Walz lied about details of his military service for political gain.
Buttigieg dismissed Vance’s claims, suggesting they prove Walz’s spotless record.
“The fact that they have to go back to find a clip from 2018 to find the one time that he slipped up when he talks about the weapons of war that he carried and said something instead about carrying weapons in war. It‘s kind of an exception that proves the rule in terms of how hard you have to look to find him all saying anything that isn‘t precise and accurate,” Buttigieg said.
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The clip Buttigieg referenced featured Walz discussing gun control and referring to his own military background.
“We can make sure that those weapons of war, that I carried in war, is the only place where those weapons are at,” Walz said in the clip, which was posted by Kamala Harris’ campaign on X.
A Harris campaign spokesperson later issued a statement admitting that Walz “misspoke” in the clip since he was never deployed in a combat zone.
“In making the case for why weapons of war should never be on our streets or in our classrooms, the Governor misspoke. He did handle weapons of war and believes strongly that only military members trained to carry those deadly weapons should have access to them, unlike Donald Trump and JD Vance who prioritize the gun lobby over our children,” the spokesperson added.
The Washington Post fact-checker called Walz’s claim “sloppy and false” on Saturday.
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The segment did not reference other accusations against Walz, such as his Harris campaign website biography claiming he was a “retired Command Sergeant Major.”
National Guard officials have said that Walz retired before fulfilling requirements for the position, including coursework at the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy. Though he achieved the rank of command sergeant major, he was later reduced in rank to master sergeant.
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Walz’s biography has been updated to say he “served as a command sergeant major.”
Expert details how Harris is adopting Biden’s ‘Trojan Horse’ strategy for victory
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, has not taken questions from reporters in the nearly three weeks since President Biden suspended his re-election campaign – a move that may work to her advantage like it did for Biden in 2020.
“She is running a similar play to Biden in 2020 where, of course, he used COVID as an excuse to stay in his basement the entire election,” Cody Sargent, spokesperson for Heritage Action for America, told Fox News Digital in an interview.
“Harris is running a Trojan horse campaign,” Sargent continued. “She’s distracting people with Megan Thee Stallion and rolling out a vice president commercials that don’t really say anything, distracting them with this big shiny object and Trojan horse. But, then inside that horse is socialism, the most radical candidate to ever appear at the top of her presidential ticket, and she’s avoiding doing any media, any real interviews, any sit down.”
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In 2020, during his presidential campaign, President Biden held very few press conferences. Throughout the year, he conducted around 12 to 15 press conferences or major media events, instead opting for virtual events.
“So right now it’s working for her,” Sargent said. “Because we, unfortunately, have a compliant press in this country that’s openly pulling for her.”
Harris was blasted for spending less than two minutes taking questions from reporters Thursday after being criticized for going 18 days without speaking to the media.
“Kamala refuses to do interviews because her team realizes she is unable to answer questions, much like Biden was not able to answer questions, but for different reasons,” former President Trump posted on Truth Social.
The vice president answered a handful of questions on the airport tarmac while campaigning in Michigan on Thursday, after Trump had held a lengthy news conference earlier in the afternoon.
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One reporter asked Harris to respond to criticism regarding how she has not given an interview or a formal press conference since she became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
“I’ve talked to my team. I want us to get an interview scheduled before the end of the month,” Harris answered.
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On Thursday, it was reported that Harris took the edge over Trump for the first time in the betting markets since May 1, when Biden was still in the race. On that day, Biden held a narrow 42.3% to 42.2% advantage in the Real Clear Politics betting average.
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Harris has a 50.7% chance to be elected president, while former President Trump sits at a 47.9% chance to win the election, according to the Real Clear Politics betting average on Thursday.
Trump and Harris agreed to a Sept. 10 debate hosted by ABC News.
Viral immigration presentation using a classic kids’ staple haunts Harris 30 years later
An old video of NumbersUSA founder Roy Beck using gumballs to describe the perils of mass migration into the United States went viral again last week, which the group he founded says demonstrates the timelessness of his message.
“Some people say that mass immigration into the United States can help reduce world poverty. Is that true? Well, no it’s not,” Beck said in the video. NumbersUSA, an advocacy group for limiting legal and illegal immigration, says the presentation has gotten more than 140 million views on various platforms over the years.
Former GOP congressional candidate Robby Starbuck shared the video to his 536,000 followers on X last week, where it got more than 3 million views. He added, “If you watch this and you’re still for mass migration because you think you’re a humanitarian, I’m pretty sure you’re a lost cause.”
NumbersUSA CEO James Massa said the “captivating imagery” of the video still resonates because it drives home the point that the world’s problems can’t be solved by bringing everyone to the United States.
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“It makes it very obvious, it’s very sensible, we have to have laws, we have to have a border, we have to have some way we make a conscious decision in terms of how many people come to the nation, so I think it’s common sense that resonates,” he told Fox News Digital last week.
Beck first used the idea in a presentation in 1996 before updating it in 2010. He used gumballs, representing one million people each, and glass jars, representing different countries, including the U.S. and other nations, to explain his views on immigration.
“In Africa alone there are 650 million people who make less than $2 a day,” Beck said, also displaying glass jars filled to the brim with gumballs that symbolized people in India and China who qualified as “desperately poor.”
“Finally, there’s 105 million of Latin America’s population that are desperately poor,” he said, adding up to 3 billion people in the world who qualify as extremely poor, according to a definition of extreme poverty given at the time by the World Bank.
“Of course, we don’t pull our immigrants from these desperately poor populations, do we? These people are too poor, too sick, too disconnected to make it here as immigrants. We tend to pull our immigrants out of the better-off poor of the world,” he said, with Mexico exemplifying that kind of immigrant.
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Beck said that while “Mexico is poor,” “5.6 billion people” in the world live in countries with average incomes lower than that of Mexico.
“What is it that the elites are telling us?” he said. “They’re telling us that when we take” roughly 1 million immigrants into the U.S., that the country is somehow “ackling world poverty, and we have to do it regardless of the effect on our unemployed, the working poor, the most vulnerable members of our society. Regardless of the effect on our natural resources.”
Beck said that the true “agents for change” in undeveloped nations are likely being drawn away from their home countries to the U.S.
“They have to be helped where they live,” Beck continued. “99.9% of them will never be able to immigrate to rich countries. There’s no hope for that. They have to bloom where they’re planted.”
“Let’s help them there,” he said to audience applause.
The immigration issue continues to resonate in 2024, as Vice President Kamala Harris’ role as the so-called “border czar” for the Biden administration has caused her White House campaign headaches due to widespread frustration with illegal immigration.
Beck’s conclusions have drawn their fair share of critics.
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“This ignores the practical realities of colonialism and globalization that have wreaked havoc on different societies across the globe, making infrastructural growth seem like a theory not rooted in reality,” one critic wrote in 2017. “It also ignores the fact that many immigrants continue to help their families and communities after leaving.”
NumbersUSA, which Beck founded in the 1990s, describes itself as the largest grassroots single-issue advocacy group in the United States. It worked closely with Barbara Jordan in the 1990s, the pioneering Black Democratic congresswoman from Texas who chaired the bipartisan U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform under President Bill Clinton.
The commission recommended cutting legal immigration numbers, more strictly enforcing laws against illegal immigrants and bringing in more skilled labor, among other policies that are now more associated with the political right. It also proposed admitting nuclear families of qualified immigrants but not extended families, in order to reduce volume.
Beck has since retired but remains on the board of NumbersUSA. Massa told Fox News Digital the group is not just focused on the southern border, which draws most of the headlines in the ongoing debate over immigration.
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“We just can’t ignore the border, but what we’re really focused on is comprehensive sensible immigration reform, and that includes legal immigration reform as well,” he said. “Currently, our nation is focused highly on family-focused immigration, so we are all in support of an immigrant having a nuclear family with them, but we are seeing since the 1960s there’s been a tremendous growth in chain migration.”
US Olympic gymnast scorches judges as new video evidence emerges in medal fight
Simone Biles and Suni Lee came to the support of Jordan Chiles on social media as the American gymnast’s bronze medal win in the floor exercise is in limbo.
Chiles may end up having to return the Olympic medal after the Center of Arbitration for Sport ruled Saturday that her score must revert to the original mark because the U.S. did not file an inquiry with judges in time. The International Olympic Committee on Sunday determined that Chiles must return her medal, but USA Gymnastics appealed the ruling, saying it had video evidence showing coaches made the inquiry in time.
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As Chiles wrote on her Instagram Stories over the weekend that she was heartbroken over the chaotic situation, Biles and Lee offered messages of support.
“Sending you so much love Jordan,” Biles wrote on her Instagram Stories. “Keep your chin up olympic champ! We love you!”
Lee wrote a loving message of support as well and took a swipe at Olympic officials over the debacle.
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“All this talk about the athlete, what about the judges?? Completely unacceptable. This is awful and I’m gutted for Jordan,” she wrote. “I got your back forever Jo. (You) have all my flowers and you will ALWAYS be an Olympic champion.”
Team USA wrote on its X account, “Forever THAT girl.”
If Chiles is stripped of her medal, she will become only the third gymnast in history to have an Olympic medal stripped. The other two were China’s Dong Fangxiao and Romania’s Andreea Răducan, both of whom lost their medals from the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
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Răducan’s individual all-around gold medal was stripped after testing positive for a banned substance from cold-medicine pills given to her by a team doctor. China’s team all-around bronze was stripped after it was discovered Dong was just 14 years old in Sydney, which is two years too young to compete.
NASCAR star unleashes on opponent after near-huge win stripped away
Joey Logano’s potential second win of the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season was wiped out in overtime of the Cook Out 400 at Richmond International Raceway on Sunday.
Logano battled Austin Dillon for the lead in the final stretch. It appeared Logano was going to pick up the win, but Dillon tapped him and spun Logano out and into the wall. Dillon also came into contact with Denny Hamlin, who also went into the wall.
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Dillon crossed the start-finish line in first place and secured his first Cup Series win since the 2022 Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway.
Rubbin’ is usually racin’ in NASCAR, but Logano was furious with Dillon.
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“It’s chicken s—. There’s no doubt about it,” Logano told NBC Sports in the immediate aftermath. “He’s four car-lengths back, not even close. Then he wrecks the 11 to go along with it. Then he’s gonna go up there and praise God and everything with his baby, it’s a bunch of B.S. It’s not even freaking close.
“I get it, bump and run. I get it. I didn’t back up the corner at all. He came in there and just drove through me. It’s ridiculous that that’s the way we race. Unbelievable.”
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Dillon became the 13th different driver to win a race this season and locked up a playoff spot with a few races to go.
“I hate to do that, but sometimes you just got to have it,” he said.
Tim Tebow’s wife reclaims her life after it was upended by an attempted carjacking
“I handed over my title as Miss Universe a good amount of years ago, and I remember walking off that stage feeling like I forgot something,” Demi-Leigh Tebow told Fox News Digital in an on-camera interview.
She also survived a dramatic carjacking attempt — and felt forever changed by those experiences and others. She’s taken what she’s learned and used it to help others.
Speaking from Jacksonville, Florida, the wife of Tim Tebow shared her focus on finding a stronger sense of personal identity amid change, uncertainty and fear — and helping others to do the same through a new book, “A Crown That Lasts.” (See the video at the top of this article.)
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“I left something, you know?” she said about walking off the stage that day after her Miss Universe term was complete.
“You know, you rush out of a hotel room and you’re like, ‘Oh, I’m forgetting something. Do I have my passport? Do I have my keys? Do I have my ring? Whatever that is. And you just feel like you forgot something.”
She added, “And I wasn’t able to fully figure out what I had forgotten on that stage when I handed over my title for probably a good year or two afterward.”
Tebow said that after the conclusion of her year-long term (2017-2018) of serving as Miss Universe, she “had to go through a process of untangling the roots of my identity, of uprooting weeds of doubt before I was able to plant new seeds of truth.”
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“Eventually I realized that I had left my identity on that stage alongside my Miss Universe crown, because I had attached my worth, my value to the thing that I thought made me important, worthy.”
“I believe we are called to strive for excellence.”
She added, “As believers, I believe that we are called to strive for excellence, chasing that corner office, that dream job, that next paycheck, that dream car, whatever that might be.”
And “it’s not like any of those things are bad, but it’s when we attach our identity to something that is temporary that we walk a real tightrope.”
That was her inspiration for her new book, published this week on August 13.
“My book is titled ‘A Crown That Lasts,’ and while, ironically, my crown did not last, I know that I have been able, through the process that I have gone through the last couple of years, to find an identity that is rooted in not just something, but something that is eternal.”
“The major catalyst was the horrific carjack that I experienced at gunpoint.”
After serving as both Miss South Africa and Miss Universe, Tebow has been active as a philanthropist, entrepreneur and speaker, particularly in her focus on helping other women understand how to handle dangerous scenarios after she survived an attempted carjacking.
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It’s why she founded a project she calls the #Unbreakable Campaign.
“‘Unbreakable’ was born when I wanted to really empower college students with how to look out for themselves, how to be preventative in certain situations,” she told Fox News Digital.
“Growing up in South Africa, unfortunately, women and children face severe amounts of domestic violence and abuse, and [this] has really broken my heart for women all around the world.
“It started in my home country, and really, the thing that serves as the major catalyst for me — growing ‘Unbreakable’ and wanting to reach more women around the world — was the horrific carjack that I experienced at gunpoint.”
She shared the experience in vivid detail.
“Shortly after I won Miss South Africa, about three months later, I was on my way to an event as the official Miss South Africa … And I was stopped at a red traffic light. And before I could even blink, I was surrounded by five men, by multiple men, and some of them were armed.
“I knew not to go to the second destination.”
“You know, in a traumatic situation like that, it’s hard to react. It’s hard to know exactly what to do. But I knew two things. And it’s because my dad forced me to go on safety driving courses, on self-defense workshops” earlier in her life.
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“In that traumatic situation, I knew not to go to the second destination, because whatever is about to happen somewhere downtown, in some dark alley with [maybe more people present] is not going to be better than right here: broad daylight, peak-hour traffic with hundreds of people around me.
“And, so, I tried to run away. I tried to get out of that vehicle. The man on my side of the vehicle grabbed me, pushed me back into the vehicle, said, ‘Get in, you’re going with us.'”
And that’s when she remembered “the second thing,” she said.
“The throat. It’s obviously lethal. So please don’t ever try this at home. It’s absolutely just to be used in a life-threatening situation. But I punched him as hard as I could in his throat, and that bought me a split-second window of opportunity to run away.”
“It truly shaped my heart to continue fighting for women around the world.”
“That incident was so dramatic,” she added. “But the most dramatic part of that story was running up that avenue in broad daylight … Nobody would stop to help me.
“I remember looking over my shoulder, not knowing if I’m being chased and [about to be] shot in the back, not knowing what their intent was. I just knew that it was not good.”
“That moment really broke my heart and made me never want to be one of the [people behind] the many car windows that I knocked on, begging, asking, yelling for help. I want to be the one girl that eventually stopped for me … to help somebody in need.
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“And, you know, I have dedicated the last couple of years of my life and in such a big way to use what I have with where I am to serve people in need.”
And “it truly shaped my heart to continue fighting for women around the world,” she said.
“It started off with learning about what women in South Africa face, but it has snowballed and grown into learning about the fight against human trafficking, about fighting for survivors of human trafficking and being able to provide for them.
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“My husband and I, when we first met, you know, being from two different countries, we didn’t necessarily always have a lot of things in common, but we had so much purpose in the fight against human trafficking.”
It is why, she said, that for both our birthdays this year, we have chosen through different ways to fight against human trafficking by loving and caring for the victims and the survivors of human trafficking.”
Each year Tim Tebow has been using his early-August birthday to help shine a light on the needs of others, as he did last year as well, as he has told Fox News Digital previously. The Tebows work to raise awareness about the disturbing developments and growth of human trafficking — estimated to be a $150 billion industry, with some 50 million people trapped in bondage, Tebow and his team have noted.