NationalWatch

No one will struggle to keep warm amid an historic heat wave gripping the eastern U.S.

But how about keeping “your comrade warm?”

No. You’re not back in the USSR.

But you might be in the Democratic party.

SOCIALISTS SWEEP NYC AS AMERICANS BALK AT MOVEMENT’S BRUTAL CATCH: ‘TALK TO IMMIGRANTS’

“You deserve to make sure that your international comrades are actually working with you and getting the benefits that you that you all deserve,” said Democratic New York House nominee Darializa Avila Chevalier at a union rally in New York City.

“Half of the people here are strangers to you all. But now you have comrades,” said Colorado Democratic Congressional nominee Melat Kiros who defeated Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO) Tuesday.

“I’ve got to give a shout out to my comrades,” said Missouri Democratic Congressional candidate Hartzell Gray on a podcast interview.

To Democratic Socialists, you don’t know how lucky you are.

“You have the solidarity of the entire labor movement. And you have my solidarity, too,” said Democratic New York House nominee Claire Valdez.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) didn’t endorse either Avila Chevalier nor Valdez. However, he did congratulate them. Jeffries naturally needs Avila Chavalier, Valdez and Democratic New York House nominee Brad Lander to win. They probably will this fall. But when asked about progressives who prevailed in the New York primary – who he didn’t endorse – Jeffries delivered a nuanced answer.

“I will support every single Democratic incumbent in the New York Congressional delegation and beyond,” said Jeffries.

CNN resuscitated a set of old tweets from Avila Chevalier. Some praised communism. Others called for more Marxist literature in libraries. Yours truly pressed Jeffries about whether he should call out Avila Chevalier for some of her old social media postings.

“Should she apologize or clarify some of these very inflammatory tweets that she sent?” I queried.

“That’s a question you’re going to have to ask her,” answered Jeffries.

“But as Leader, is that a problem?” I followed up.

“I’ve spoken to this issue. I’ve expressed my position as it relates to many of the things that she has said in the past over Twitter. my statement speaks for itself,” answered Jeffries.

Then the 29-year-old Melat Kiros whipped 29-year House veteran Diana DeGette in Colorado. Kiros’s victory demonstrated that the Democratic Socialist message didn’t just resonate in the urban canyons of lower Manhattan. But in the Rocky Mountains, too.

“What we are fighting for is Medicare for all. Universal child care. Abolishing ICE. And ending the genocide in Gaza,” said Kiros.

These are core subjects for the left.

“They’re winning on platforms like Medicare for all. Universal health care. Universal childcare. Raising the minimum wage,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA). “These ideas, whether you call it socialism or not, they are very popular across the country.”

Progressive influencer Hasan Piker believes victories by these candidates in New York and Colorado are just the beginning.

“Progressive politics, left populism. It can work in every district in every state. That’s why I kept saying over and over again, it’s coming to a city near you,” said Piker.

But not everyone is on board.

“Will Democrats continue to defend crazypants?” asked Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) on Fox.

Rep. Greg Landsman (D-OH) is another. He’s a moderate, pro-Israel Democrat in a battleground district in which President Trump carried in 2024.

HAKEEM JEFFRIES CONFRONTED ON ‘YOU’RE NEXT’ CHANTS FOLLOWING NY DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST VICTORIES

“My folks want really normal folks. Democrats, Republicans, just people who are going to get things done. And so they see this because this is what gets attention,” said Landsman. “I hope the party doesn’t go in that direction. Having a diversity of opinions is one thing. But some of what some of them think is beyond the pale. It’s just outrageous.”

Landsman wished Democratic leaders would speak out against controversial candidates and nominees.

“The fact that they won’t even call it out, I think is an underlying current within the Democrat Party that they’re scared of their own base,” said Rep. Russell Fry (R-SC).

Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-NY) is retiring after 32 years in Congress. She’s not aligned with her likely successor, Claire Valdez.

“So what do you make of some of the controversy about your prospective successor? And is that driving a wedge through the party?” yours truly asked Velazquez.

“Look, we are celebrating the outcome of this Supreme Court decision that reaffirm the fundamental principle of the Constitution that anyone born in this country is an American citizen,” answered Velazquez, trying to change the subject.

“But do you have but did you not see things eye to eye with your prospective successor here?” I followed up.

Velazquez sighed.

“Look, she won and I wish her well. And I offered myself to sit down with her and discuss the transition. But this is how democracy works,” said Velazquez.

Still, other Democrats believe the party can operate under a “big tent” and court voters.

“There’s room for conversations about where we go. But we’re not the party of one person or coalition and there’s going to be those discussions about where we move forward,” said Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL).

Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) asserted that wins by Democratic Socialists in New York City carried outsized weight. She also said that it was natural for the press corps to capitalize on possible divisions in the party.

“I think that you all try to stir it up. Stir up this language. Try to pit people against each other,” said Dingell.

I asked Dingell about “controversial things” which Avila Chevalier peddled over the years.

“I don’t have to agree with everything that she said. The Republicans are putting kerosene on the fire,” said Dingell.

“Didn’t she pour kerosene on it to start with?” I asked.

“Look, I wouldn’t have said some of the things that she said. But I don’t vote in New York. They do,” answered Dingell.

SOCIALISM GOES WEST AS DSA-BACKED CHALLENGER OUSTS LONGTIME DEMOCRAT

Republicans are adamantly opposed to socialism. But in a weird way, the Democratic lurch left might actually help the GOP beat the historic odds and hold the House.

“They’re a complete socialist party now,” said Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC). “They’ve got to either own it or disassociate themselves from it.”

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When the Beatles released Back In the USSR, American conservatives and right-wing reactionaries said this proved that the group harbored communist sentiments.

Now the American right says the Democratic party has turned to the left. Republicans say listen to the rhetoric of Democratic Socialists espousing their views. And to hear the GOP tell it, those candidates may as well be back in the USSR.

An Obama-appointed federal judge has issued a final ruling allowing an anti-Trump “86 47” flag to be flown, delivering a win to a progressive activist group as the National Mall remains a hot zone for vandalism and threats against President Donald Trump.

Progressive group Accountability Now USA flew the flag near the National Mall, and alleged that the National Park Service (NPS) violated their First Amendment rights by threatening to revoke their permit. U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss in Washington, D.C., ruled on Monday that the flag is protected political speech.

The administration has previously interpreted the number “86” as a political threat, pointing to its common use in the restaurant industry to mean removing or refusing service, while 47 appears to refer to Trump as the 47th U.S. president.

“This opinion is from an Obama-appointed judge. Flying a flag that is a threat to the Office of the President of the United States should not be permitted under any administration,” a Department of Interior spokesperson told Fox News Digital. “In what world have we lost all decency to demand that any threat against the President be taken very seriously?”

OBAMA JUDGE CLEARS LEFT-WING GROUP TO FLY OMINOUS FLAG AIMED AT TRUMP ON HIS OWN TURF

“[Its] ‘8647’ flag… is not a true threat to the President or incitement of violence,” Moss said in his ruling.

The group also displayed two flags accusing President Trump of sexually assaulting a minor. Moss ruled that those displays are “not legally obscene” and therefore remain protected by the First Amendment.

Moss was appointed to the federal bench by former President Barack Obama after previously serving in former President Bill Clinton ’s Justice Department. He has also contributed to and volunteered for Democratic candidates and causes.

OBAMA JUDGE CLEARS LEFT-WING GROUP TO FLY OMINOUS FLAG AIMED AT TRUMP ON HIS OWN TURF

The judge noted in a previous order on the case that “a true threat to the life or safety of the President would undoubtedly outweigh the interest of the public or the speaker in continuing to urge that unlawful conduct.”

The dispute over the nature of the messaging comes amid heightened administration scrutiny of “86 47” messages after the giant numbers appeared to be etched into the grass between the Washington Monument and the World War II memorial last month.

OFFICIALS ASK FOR HELP IDENTIFYING PERSON IN REFLECTING POOL DAMAGE INVESTIGATION

Grass samples were also collected for testing and examination in the area by investigators.

America’s 250th birthday brings major events to the nation’s capital as D.C. braces for massive crowds, tight security, road closures and heightened law enforcement presence.

Trump will attend the “Salute to America” event on July 4th. His remarks are expected to begin around 9 p.m. ET, prior to a massive fireworks display on the National Mall that has been touted by the administration as the largest in history.

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In April, there was an assassination attempt against Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, where a shooter attempted to break into the ballroom. The fallout from the latest attempt comes as the anniversary of the Butler, Pa., rally approaches on July 13. 

A bullet came close to ending Trump’s life that day in 2024 after it grazed his ear. And just two months later, another attempt on his life occurred when a man with a rifle was arrested in Southern Florida after he stuck a rifle through the bushes where Trump was golfing that day. 

Meanwhile, the National Mall has garnered special attention this year following a string of vandalism against the Reflecting Pool and monuments. The pattern emerged after Trump ordered a restoration and repainting of the reflecting pool, which was then met with “razor-blade cuts” to its lining, according to the White House.

FIRST ON FOX: Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, is demanding answers from Cincinnati’s mayor over a newly enacted city ordinance reorganizing procurement under a Department of Economic Inclusion and Procurement, arguing taxpayers should not be funding what he calls an expanding DEI bureaucracy that is potentially illegal.

“Taxpayers should never foot the bill for woke DEI policies or initiatives,” Moreno wrote in a letter to Cincinnati mayor Aftab Pureval on Thursday that was obtained by Fox News Digital. “Cincinnati’s taxpayers deserve a government that rewards competence and merit, not politically driven quotas or preferences based on race or ethnicity.”

At the heart of the issue is a city ordinance approved by the Cincinnati City Council in June that creates a Department of Economic Inclusion and Procurement, which Moreno argues expands the city’s DEI bureaucracy and could inject DEI considerations into the contracting process. According to city documents cited by Moreno, the restructuring would make the city’s contracting process more efficient while preserving its focus on DEI.

In the letter, which was also sent to the Justice Department, Moreno said the ordinance comes amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on DEI programs across the federal government and argued it “completely ignores” the Justice Department guidance warning against engaging in “unlawful discrimination.”

DOJ DANGLES MASSIVE SIGNING BONUSES FOR LAWYERS READY TO FIGHT ‘LAWLESS’ CITIES FAR BEYOND DC

Since returning to office, President Donald Trump has made eliminating DEI initiatives a priority, signing executive orders to eliminate DEI programs and end DEI-related hiring and training practices, as well as directing agencies to review recipients of federal funding.

“The days of choosing public contract winners based on excellence are back,” Moreno wrote, adding that “the City of Cincinnati must be a better steward of public funds.”

SEATTLE COUNCIL MEMBER TOUTS ‘BLACK BUDGET,’ CALLS FOR BLACK RESIDENTS TO FORM ‘MOST POWERFUL POLITICAL PARTY’

Pointing to the city’s explanation of the ordinance, Moreno said that the city intends to continue incorporating DEI in its contracting process.

“Amazingly, your office even admits it in its explanation: ‘The goal of this restructuring is not to reduce the city’s focus on inclusion. Instead, it is intended to strengthen it,’” Moreno wrote. “Ohioans deserve to know that their hard-earned taxpayer dollars are awarded to individuals and businesses based on merit, not race or ethnicity,” Moreno wrote.

INTERNAL EMAILS EXPOSE HOW JULY 4TH BASH IS BEING DERAILED BY DEM-RUN COUNTY: ‘OFFENSIVE’

Moreno asked Pureval to respond within five business days with the exact amount of federal funding the city received during fiscal years 2024, 2025, and 2026, the projected cost of the ordinance and an outline of the process the new department will use when reviewing applications and awarding city contracts.

Moreno also requested information on how Cincinnati is planning to comply with the Justice Department‘s guidance and its recent law enforcement staffing data, adding that the city should prioritize addressing its $30 million budget deficit and public safety challenges instead of expanding DEI initiatives.

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“Additionally, the adoption of this Ordinance represents a gross misallocation of resources at a time when the city faces a surge in violent crime, including multiple recent homicides, a mass shooting, and a persistent law enforcement recruitment crisis that undermines public safety,” Moreno wrote. “Instead of fueling divisive social experiments, these public funds should be redirected to protecting Cincinnatians and restoring order to Ohio’s streets.”

Fox News Digital reached out to Mayor Pureval’s office for comment.

The U.S. Secret Service “missed multiple opportunities” to prevent or disrupt the July 2024 assassination attempt on Donald Trump as he spoke to supporters during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General said in a report released Thursday.

The 64-page document detailed several lapses in security that allowed Thomas Matthew Crooks to get a line of sight of Trump as he stood on stage in Butler, Pennsylvania, during the July 13, 2024, event.

“The Secret Service’s overall lack of policy and processes coupled with limited intelligence sharing and poor collaboration and communication with protectee staff and state and local law enforcement set the conditions that led to missing opportunities to prevent and detect the attempted assassination,” the report states.

Among the OIG’s findings was a failure to warn Trump’s protective detail that Crooks had a range finder and a long gun and had climbed onto the roof of a nearby building due to a lack of communication between the Secret Service and local law enforcement.

TWO MEN SHOT AT TRUMP’S BUTLER RALLY SUE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OVER SECRET SERVICE ‘PREVENTABLE FAILURES’

Instead, they operated out of separate locations 257 yards apart with intermittent and highly limited radio connectivity between them.

As a result, the Secret Service missed 102 radio transmissions regarding an increasingly intense search for a suspicious individual, including alerts that the suspect was on the roof with a long gun.

Because the Secret Service communications room only received a handful of phone calls and texts, agents failed to recognize the urgency of the threat and never warned Trump’s protective detail to delay the speech or remove him from the stage, the OIG said.

“Communications was a problem because of inoperability. There were too many command posts,” Paul Eckloff, a former Secret Service agent, told Fox News Digital. “The biggest failure that is probably not addressed in the OIG report is that they never should have accepted the risk of doing it at this site. It never should have been done. That roof had an egregious line of site.”

SECRET SERVICE, TSA AND NYPD TRANSFORM MADISON SQUARE GARDEN INTO FORTRESS FOR TRUMP’S NBA FINALS VISIT

Crooks was able to fire eight shots. Trump was grazed in the ear, and Corey Comperatore, 50, who was attending the rally, was killed. Two other spectators were critically injured but survived.

Moments after Trump was shot, Secret Service agents rushed the stage and moved him to safety.

In addition to a lack of communication, the Secret Service failed to detect Crooks’ drone flight that he used to view the campaign event stage less than three hours before the rally due to an under-trained operator and an equipment malfunction, the report states.

Crooks flew the drone undetected for almost nine minutes and flew 471 yards from the event stage at an altitude of 102 feet. During the rally, the Secret Service had a counter-drone system on site, but it malfunctioned.

The counter-drone system was not operational when Crooks flew his drone hours before he tried to kill Trump.

The agency also failed to share intelligence about a long-distance threat to Trump with the Pittsburgh field office and agents on site, the report said.

Agents also failed to secure the area outside the security perimeter and did not use available resources to block Crooks’ line of sight from the roof of the American Glass Research International building to Trump despite the line of sight being identified as a concern, the OIG said.

Despite identifying the AGR complex as a line-of-sight vulnerability during advanced walkthroughs, the Secret Service failed to ensure the view to the stage was obstructed.

“There should have been a better advance, more officers, more agents, but there’s simply a limit to that,” Eckloff said.

Officials originally proposed using trucks already onsite to block the view from the AGR complex, but Trump’s campaign staff rejected the idea because it would interfere with press photographs.

WHITE HOUSE UFC TERROR PLOT ‘RINGLEADER’ IS A MEXICAN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT, DHS CONFIRMS

An agent proposed a secondary location for the trucks but never verified that the campaign staff actually moved the equipment. As a result, Crooks had an unobstructed view of Trump’s podium from a distance of just 155 yards, the report said.

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Fox News Digital has reached out to the Secret Service and the White House.

The report offered several recommendations to improve the Secret Service’s processes for securing events, such as mandatory threat communication, enhanced counter-drone training and a process to formally document the identification and blocking of line-of-sight vulnerabilities.

David Axelrod, a Democratic political consultant and strategist, received backlash online for noting that emergency services in Chicago had declined to assist a seemingly homeless man outside the Art Institute of Chicago.

“An elderly man, probably homeless, was sprawled unconscious on the museum’s front stone steps in the midst of a heat emergency. I called 911, and the operator said, ‘Well, is he ASKING for help?’ When I said no, she said, ‘Well, I’m not going to send anyone.’ So the man remained, passed out in the blazing noon sun. I guess that’s how the City of Chicago deals with such situations,” Axelrod wrote.

“I hope we’re not all complicit in assisting an unintended suicide,” he added.

FAMOUS LANDMARKS SLASH VISITING HOURS AS DEADLY HEAT WAVE THREATENS TOURISTS

His comments sparked mockery online when observers highlighted similar encounters in a number of other Dem-run cities in the U.S.

“David Axelrod comes face to face with Democratic policies in action… turns out he doesn’t like them very much,” Abigail Jackson, a White House Deputy Press Secretary, observed on X.

Sen. Ted Cruz’s, R-Texas, deputy chief counsel Erielle Azerrad said, “Anyone who lived in the Mission district of SF has like 20 stories like this.”

“It’s awful to hear. It’s also why most of us who have witnessed it are so vehemently opposed to socialist nonsense ruining our once awesome cities. Welcome to the party, dude,” she continued.

“Democrat policy which you dedicated your career to impose,” New York Post columnist Miranda Devine posted on X.

“Does David Axelrod own a mirror?” conservative strategist Steve Guest asked.

Earlier this year, the city, led by Mayor Brandon Johnson launched a five-year homelessness initiative with the goal of making homelessness “rare, brief and nonrecurring.” The plan centers on seven core strategies, including emergency services, housing, health, education, employment, community cohesion and systems alignment.

MORNING GLORY: DEMOCRATS CLIFF DIVE OVER THE FAR-LEFT EDGE OF AMERICAN POLITICS

The plan does not come with a stated budget expectation but partners with several other city programs, such as a $1.2 billion housing initiative.

At least one other Democratic voice bashed Axelrod’s description and the city’s response.

“This is awful and unacceptable. In a case like this or a freezing/blizzard spell, the city must mobilize to render necessary aid, even if its refused,” Susana Mendoza, a candidate for Chicago mayor, said in her own post.

“Despite all the talk from this mayor and his administration about helping people like this in urgent need, they have abandoned them,” she added.

Notably, Axelrod described how the man had spoken with security at the Art Institute but declined to move or accept assistance.

“I asked a museum security guard about it and she said she had woken him 3 times and suggested he move into the shade and he refused each time,” Axelrod wrote.

SPENCER PRATT SEIZES ON HOMELESSNESS REMARKS BY KAREN BASS, BLASTS DEMOCRAT FOR FAILURES

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When asked about the situation, the Art Institute of Chicago confirmed to Fox News Digital that a man had been outside the building and added that he had departed.

“We are aware that a museum security officer checked on an individual on the front steps and that person left on their own accord shortly after,” the institute said in a statement.

FIRST ON FOX: Records obtained by a conservative legal group show Fairfax County, Virginia, declined to transfer 615 illegal immigrants to ICE over the past 16 months, while turning over just 11.

Fairfax County — whose board hosts only one Republican supervisor for what is the most populous jurisdiction in the Old Dominion — formally designated itself a sanctuary jurisdiction in 2021 after passing the Public Trust and Confidentiality Policy or “Trust Policy” in shorthand.

America First Legal filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the county seeking records from the office of Fairfax County Sheriff Stacey Ann Kincaid, who testified at a contentious House hearing earlier this spring on Fairfax’s reluctance to cooperate with federal law enforcement.

The data, which was obtained directly from a Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office document, showed that for the entirety of 2025, Kincaid’s office refused to transfer 448 illegal immigrants to the Department of Homeland Security for processing and instead only turned over a total of nine to ICE. During the first four months of 2026, Fairfax declined to transfer another 167 illegal immigrants, while turning over only two.

WATCH: ANGEL MOM TURNS TABLES ON SANCTUARY POLITICIANS WITH BASIC QUESTION ABOUT THEIR PRIORITIES

Since then, county policy has barred law enforcement from honoring ICE civil detainers or otherwise assisting with federal immigration enforcement.

America First Legal (AFL), which first obtained the data, placed much of the blame on Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Stephen Descano, who sat beside Kincaid at the recent hearing and faced sharp questioning from Republicans over his prosecutorial discretion in cases involving illegal immigrants arrested in the county.

SOROS-BACKED DA’S LAX ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION POLICIES LED TO ‘PREVENTABLE’ BUS STOP STABBING MURDER: COMPLAINT

AFL said in a statement obtained by Fox News Digital that Fairfax’s overall framework encourages recidivism by illegal immigrant offenders and has directly led to several gruesome cases, including the murder of Fredericksburg, Virginia, woman Stephanie Minter, whose alleged killer is an illegal immigrant from West Africa with a lengthy criminal record in Fairfax County.

AFL noted that Descano is under investigation by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division over claims U.S. citizens are effectively discriminated against because of the prosecutor’s stated preferential policies, which appeared on his campaign pages and elsewhere and were highlighted by Subcommittee Chairman Tom McClintock, R-Calif., and others during the hearing.

The group pointed to fatal stabbings, the alleged assault of a woman on the Washington & Old Dominion Trail — a popular rail trail spanning from Washington, D.C., to Purcellville that has long been considered safe — and other crimes allegedly committed by illegal immigrants who, it said, received light sentences or had charges dropped.

FEDERAL JUDGE BLOCKS BLUE STATE’S LAW PROHIBITING ICE AGENTS FROM WEARING MASKS ON THE JOB

Descano has long defended his prosecutorial discretion as evidence-based and handled on a case-by-case basis.

A Descano spokesperson told Fox News Digital in a statement Thursday that the DOJ’s probe is politically motivated and has “distort[ed] the office’s policy.” The spokesperson also said the notice appeared to arrive intentionally just before Descano testified before McClintock.

“Our office’s policies are fair, legal, and reflect the values of Fairfax County, and we will not be distracted from our mission of keeping this community safe and holding individuals accountable when they commit crimes,” the spokesperson said.

Fox News Digital also reached out to Kincaid’s office for comment.

AFL counsel Will Scolinos rejected the county’s defense, telling Fox News Digital that tragic cases such as Minter’s murder are the product of the Trust Policy and the shielding of “hundreds of illegal aliens… from federal law enforcement.”

“This deliberate obstruction by county officials protects illegal alien lawbreakers and endangers every family in Northern Virginia,” Scolinos said. “For too many families, it is already too late. But to protect other Virginians from future crimes at the hands of illegal aliens with prior arrests, Fairfax County must reverse this reckless, anti-American governance immediately.”

In the most recent month recorded, April 2026, 32 illegal immigrants were listed as being in the sheriff’s office’s custody, with none released to ICE. All 32 were subject to an “informed detainer,” and three were listed as convicted.

AFL also noted that Santa Clara County, California — home to the San Francisco 49ers’ new stadium — informed the group that it received 529 ICE detainer requests in 2025 and honored none.

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“If each detainer represents a unique illegal alien, an average of 1.34 arrested illegal aliens were released into Santa Clara every day,” AFL said in April.

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The numbers reflect a pattern that is expected to continue drawing scrutiny from the Trump administration and groups such as AFL, which has also sought data from sanctuary jurisdictions nationwide.

Fox News Digital reached out to DHS for comment.

New York Attorney General Letitia James is facing renewed criticism from Republicans after the Trump administration suspended federal funding for the state’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU), citing years of poor criminal enforcement performance and leadership decisions that federal officials say left fraud investigations lagging.

The federal action gives Republicans a new line of attack against James as she campaigns for re-election. Republican challenger Saritha Komatireddy has made the state’s struggling Medicaid Fraud Control Unit a key issue in the race, arguing James failed to aggressively prosecute fraud. Federal watchdogs’ findings now lend new weight to those claims.

“Letitia James ran New York’s Medicaid Fraud Unit into the ground, and now we know why: a deliberate leadership choice to open fewer cases and let them drag on for years,” Komatireddy said in a statement to Fox News Digital. 

“This means New York taxpayers are losing their hard-earned money to fraudsters, and patients and seniors are being hurt or neglected, and no one is holding them accountable.”

DR. OZ NAMES 5 STATES IN FRAUD CRACKDOWN AS TRUMP ADMIN TARGETS MEDICAID ABUSE

The Republican Attorneys General Association also chimed in on the funding freeze, arguing it reflected broader differences between Republican and Democratic attorneys general in combating fraud.

“While Republican attorneys general are aggressively fighting fraud, waste, and abuse, Democrat AGs like Keith Ellison in Minnesota and Letitia James in New York knowingly aid and abet scams and fraud in their states,” RAGA Executive Director Adam Piper said in a statement. 

“Republican AGs are thrilled to roll up our sleeves and work with JD Vance, Republican AG staff alum Andrew Ferguson, Scott Brady, and the White House Task Force to save taxpayers billions of dollars and deliver maximum accountability.”

In a June 30 letter denying the unit’s annual recertification, Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (OIG) officials concluded that New York’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit had become the lowest-performing large state unit in the nation for criminal Medicaid fraud enforcement despite receiving roughly $60 million annually in federal funding and employing more than 270 staff members.

“The New York MFCU is not effectively prosecuting criminal Medicaid fraud,” the letter stated. “The Unit reported only 53 fraud convictions from 2023 to 2025. This is by far the lowest among similar-sized Units; the next lowest number of reported fraud convictions for this period was 129.

“Enough is enough.”

The report also found New York ranked last in criminal indictments, securing fewer than 10 fraud indictments in four of the past five years.

Federal officials further found that 34% of the unit’s open cases were more than three years old, while 69% of referrals from the state’s Medicaid Program Integrity Unit had remained pending for at least two years, contributing to a growing investigative backlog.

The HHS letter concluded that the unit’s poor performance stemmed in large part from “a deliberate leadership choice” to prioritize high-impact civil fraud cases over criminal prosecutions, finding that strategy had left the office ineffective at pursuing criminal Medicaid fraud despite its size and resources.

PENNSYLVANIA AG EXPLAINS WHY STATE LEADS NATION IN MEDICAID FRAUD CONVICTIONS WHILE OTHERS BATTLE MASS SCHEMES

While federal officials acknowledged the state’s fraud unit remained competitive in civil recoveries, they said those results did not outweigh the decline in criminal enforcement.

“The Unit has sacrificed its ability to effectively fight criminal fraud to obtain civil recoveries that are largely in line with its peers,” the report stated.

James blasted the funding freeze, accusing the Trump administration of targeting New York for political reasons.

“This administration’s unprecedented attack on New York is another political distraction,” James said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “During my time as attorney general, my office has recovered more than $627 million for Medicaid and was recognized by this very administration for leading the nation in anti-fraud efforts.”

James’ office noted that HHS highlighted New York as one of four states responsible for half of all civil recoveries nationwide in fiscal year 2025. The attorney general also pointed to several recent Medicaid fraud prosecutions, including multimillion-dollar fraud cases announced in recent weeks.

“The only people this decision benefits are the criminals we investigate every day,” James said. “We are considering all legal options to stop this outrageous action.”

TRUMP SAYS ANTI-FRAUD EFFORTS ARE UNCOVERING BILLIONS IN WASTE, CLAIMS SAVINGS COULD BALANCE BUDGET

Meanwhile, federal prosecutors in New York said they are expanding efforts to investigate Medicaid fraud and patient abuse.

“Attorney General James’ apparent inability to explain the New York MFCU’s indefensible criminal enforcement performance is not a political distraction as she puts it,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney John A. Sarcone III, who is spearheading the revival of the NDNY Health Care Fraud Task Force, said in a statement.

Sarcone noted that the New York MFCU averaged just nine criminal indictments a year between 2021 and 2025, compared with more than 100 annually during the three years preceding James’ tenure.

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“Public benefits fraud and Medicaid fraud did not abruptly stop in 2019,” Sarcone added. “Instead, under the failed leadership of AG James, criminal Medicaid fraud in New York State has been ignored.”

The suspension took effect July 1 and remains in effect through Sept. 30 unless New York completes a series of corrective actions ordered by HHS, including reducing case backlogs, increasing criminal indictments and improving coordination with federal investigators. If those deficiencies are not corrected, the Office of Inspector General warned New York it could lose its federal Medicaid Fraud Control Unit grant for fiscal year 2027.

President Donald Trump lost his Supreme Court bid to restrict birthright citizenship through executive order, but one of his own appointees may have handed Republicans a blueprint for pursuing much of the same goal through Congress.

Voting with the 6-3 majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed that Executive Order 14160, which restricts automatic citizenship to people born to U.S. citizens or permanent residents, couldn’t take effect. But in a concurring opinion, he also pointed to a different path forward. Kavanaugh argued the court should have resolved the case under federal law rather than the Constitution, laying out a potential legislative path for Congress to pursue changes to birthright citizenship.

Congress first wrote the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship language into federal law in 1940, then carried it over into the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952.

Because Congress adopted that language after the Supreme Court’s landmark 1898 decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which established that most people born in the United States automatically become U.S. citizens, Kavanaugh said lawmakers effectively incorporated the court’s interpretation into federal statute.

TRUMP SUFFERS MAJOR SUPREME COURT DEFEAT AS JUSTICES UPHOLD BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP

Kavanaugh said Trump couldn’t use an executive order to change a law Congress had already passed, but instead suggested Congress could rewrite the law to limit birthright citizenship for children born to parents who are in the country illegally or temporarily.

“Congress could — consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment—amend §1401(a) or otherwise enact new legislation establishing exceptions to birthright citizenship for children born to foreign citizens unlawfully or temporarily in the country,” he wrote.

ALITO WARNS SUPREME COURT MADE ‘SERIOUS MISTAKE’ THAT COULD HAVE NATIONAL SECURITY CONSEQUENCES

Kavanaugh argued that large-scale illegal immigration and modern international travel have created circumstances the Reconstruction Congress never envisioned. In his view, that gives Congress room to establish new exceptions to birthright citizenship that are comparable to the historical exceptions recognized under the citizenship clause, including children born to foreign diplomats and enemy forces occupying U.S. territory.

“Those two categories of foreign citizens—namely, those unlawfully or temporarily in the country—are relevantly similar to the four categories of persons recognized as exceptions in Wong Kim Ark,” Kavanaugh wrote.

While the majority rejected Kavanaugh’s constitutional reasoning, Republicans quickly seized on the idea that any future effort to limit birthright citizenship would have to come through Congress rather than the White House.

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Hours after the Supreme Court’s ruling came out, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said birthright citizenship has “been abused” and suggested that Congress will have to amend the Constitution.

“It’s one of those things that was intended to serve a noble and important purpose and has been thwarted and overused and abused,” Johnson told reporters. “I’m sure that the conclusion from this decision is you have to amend the Constitution to fix that.”

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., renewed his push for a constitutional amendment to end birthright citizenship, arguing that legislation alone would not be enough.

“I introduced a constitutional amendment months ago, actually, to fix birthright citizenship,” Paul wrote on X. “After the Supreme Court decision, that amendment matters more than ever. I’m asking my colleagues to take it seriously and help me get this passed.”

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, echoed Paul’s calls to pass a constitutional amendment.

“The long fight for a constitutional amendment begins now,” Lee wrote on X. “We must explicitly exclude foreign nationals who break our laws, violate our borders, or exploit loopholes to make their families American.”

Trump argued that Congress could change birthright citizenship through legislation instead of a constitutional amendment.

“No long and unwieldy Constitutional Amendment is necessary!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Congress should start TODAY to work on ending expensive and unfair to our Country, Birthright Citizenship. They will have my Complete and Total Support!”

Several Republicans quickly pointed to existing legislation, including Sen. Tom Cotton’s, R-Ark., Constitutional Citizenship Clarification Act, as well as proposals from Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Rick Scott, R-Fla., aimed at cracking down on birth tourism.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department indicated it would shift tactics, announcing a crackdown on birth tourism by targeting alleged visa fraud and related criminal conduct rather than attempting to enforce Executive Order 14160.

But, Kavanaugh’s roadmap is far from a guarantee. On the constitutional question, a 5-4 majority concluded that the citizenship clause itself protects birthright citizenship, meaning any congressional effort to restrict it through ordinary legislation would likely face immediate constitutional challenges.

“Justice Thomas says in the final paragraph of his dissent that he’s not confident that the decision is going to stand the test of time, so it could well be that the court would revisit it if Congress were to take the steps that Justice Kavanaugh describes,” Notre Dame Law School professor Haley Proctor told Fox News Digital. “This is an important decision. I don’t think the court’s going to revisit it lightly, and the only sure way to get a new answer here would be to amend the Constitution.”

Kavanaugh offered a similar roadmap in a recent Trump case over tariffs. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that a federal emergency law known as IEEPA did not give Trump the authority to impose sweeping tariffs. But Kavanaugh argued the administration had simply relied on the wrong legal authority instead of rejecting the policy outright.

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“The Court today concludes that the President checked the wrong statutory box by relying on IEEPA rather than another statute to impose these tariffs,” Kavanaugh wrote.

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Instead, Kavanaugh said Trump could rely on several existing trade laws to impose many of the same tariffs, though those laws would require additional legal steps.

Trump later called Kavanaugh his “new hero” in a Truth Social post praising the justice’s dissent in the February tariff decision.

A Senate Republican revealed that even if President Donald Trump’s flagship election integrity legislation had the votes to pass, there’s not enough time to actually have it take effect for the upcoming midterm elections.

The Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act has increasingly become a problem for congressional Republicans desperate to move onto other must-pass legislation. But Trump has consistently demanded they find a way to pass it, particularly in the Senate, by any means necessary.

But Republicans aren’t unified behind the bill, and Democrats unanimously despise it. Even if it got 60 votes, which is an unlikely scenario, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., contended it wouldn’t have an impact in time for November.

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“Unless they do the work to get to the 60 votes, they know it’s dead, and so all this is theater,” Tillis told the Raleigh, North Carolina-based News & Observer.

Tillis, who was one of four Senate Republicans to vote against attaching the legislation to an immigration enforcement funding bill last month and was called out by Trump, is familiar with pushing for voter ID laws, which is only a portion of what the proposed SAVE America Act would do. During his time as House speaker in the North Carolina legislature, he was a major proponent of enacting the state’s voter ID.

But doing so takes time and money, he argued.

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“And honestly, here in North Carolina, or in virtually any state, the ability, if we go back to when we implemented voter ID in North Carolina, it took a year to get everything in place with adequate funding,” Tillis said.

The current version of the SAVE America Act doesn’t directly allocate funding to states to implement voter ID or its several other provisions. That is, in part, why the legislation wouldn’t work in the budget reconciliation process, as Trump has called for and House Republicans are mulling, which requires provisions to have a direct budgetary impact and not be policy only.

Tillis pitched the scenario that if everything worked out, it would eat into early voting periods or outright snuff them.

“Let’s assume you only allow early voting in the month of October,” Tillis said. “Then do you honestly believe that we can have this thing up in 50 states? There’s no funding. There’s no specific implementation instructions.”

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“It’s become a joke, in my mind, for somebody that’s actually implemented voter ID law, how anybody can look the American voters in the eye and suggest that it could be implemented in time without just causing a huge impact on the elections, and ironically undermine the confidence of it,” he continued.

Still, it hasn’t stopped a cohort of congressional Republicans, notably Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., from demanding that the Senate take action on the bill.

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And Trump is determined to strong-arm Republicans into passing it, demanding they nuke the filibuster, attach the SAVE America Act to must-pass legislation, or fire the Senate rules referee.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to allow mail-in ballots to be counted after Election Day, he renewed his call.

“In light of the tremendous loss in the Supreme Court today concerning Voter’s Rights, and the fact that ‘people’s’ votes are allowed to be counted LONG AFTER an Election is over, it is more important than ever to pass THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” Trump said on Truth Social.

Congressional Democrats are staying mum about their potential next moves after the Supreme Court dealt a blow to transgender athletes, underscoring a politically fraught issue that continues to divide the party ahead of the November midterm elections.

The court ruled Tuesday that states may bar biological males from competing on girls’ and women’s school sports teams, upholding laws in Idaho and West Virginia, and effectively preserving similar laws in the 25 other states that restrict participation based on biological sex.

The ruling — which prompted cheers among Republicans — did not interfere with the remaining states that continue to allow biological males on girls’ and women’s sports teams.

Progressive Democrats sharply criticized the decision, while the vast majority of elected officials in the party did not issue public statements. None, however, appeared to outline any legislative response.

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“I want every trans kid to know that there are people here in Congress fighting for you,” Rep. Sarah Jacobs, D-Calif., said in a video posted to social media. “We are going to stand up for all women and girls, which includes trans women and girls.”

Jacobs, a junior member of House Democratic leadership and co-chair of the Trans Equality Task Force, did not say whether Democrats would introduce legislation in response to the court’s ruling.

The Congressional Equality Caucus, a Democratic-aligned group advocating for LGBTQ rights, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., also did not outline any legislative response. The Equality Caucus, however, posted a series of posts on social media slamming the decision, including decrying the outcome as “devastating” for transgender athletes.

Fox News Digital reached out to spokespersons for Jacobs, Jeffries and the Congressional Equality Caucus for comment but did not hear back.

The relatively muted response comes as public polling has consistently found broad opposition to transgender athletes in women’s sports, including among Democrats, suggesting that some lawmakers may be out of step with their own voters.

A survey conducted by The New York Times in 2025 found that nearly eight in ten Americans opposed biological males competing in women’s sports. Roughly 70% of Democrats or those who “lean Democrat” held that view, according to the poll.

Democrats hailing from the centrist side of the party were largely quiet on the court’s ruling.

Few Democratic lawmakers facing competitive re-election challenges from Republicans commented on the court’s decision, a Fox News Digital analysis of Cook Political Report election data found.

Meanwhile, Rep. Don Davis, D-N.C., who is seeking a third House term in a Republican-leaning district, issued a positive statement following the court’s ruling.

“The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a significant ruling affirming that states possess the legal authority to maintain separate sports teams based on biological sex,” Davis wrote in a written statement. “Title IX has played a vital role in expanding athletic opportunities for women and girls, and we must continue safeguarding those opportunities.”

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Meanwhile, Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Wash., a top GOP target in November’s midterm elections and a member of the Equality Caucus, acknowledged Wednesday that the trans rights movement misses some of the “nuance” about women’s sports.

“At those town halls, what I saw was that the people who were the most upset, a lot of them had spent the last 12 years driving their girls to sports practice, and they view their best shot of their student getting a college education as an athletic scholarship,” Perez told CNN in an interview. “And so when we rush to moralize and be like, ‘This is all about love vs. hate,’ I think we miss some of the nuance.”

The Washington Democrat did not directly state whether she agreed with the court’s ruling.

In the Senate, responses to the decision were few and far between. Requests for comment from several Democratic lawmakers’ offices on whether they would seek to challenge the court’s decision, should they regain a majority in the upper chamber, went unanswered.

Notably silent on the issue was Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who lauded the Supreme Court’s decision upholding birthright citizenship the same day and had posted about attending New York City’s Pride parade days before.

Some of the most vocal supporters of trans rights in the upper chamber did, however, weigh in, vowing to “keep fighting” for transgender athletes.

Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., one of the earliest supporters of LGBTQ rights in the Senate, who introduced the Trans Bill of Rights, charged that the court’s decision “again cleared the way for Trump and MAGA Republicans to discriminate against the trans community.”

“This decision tears trans athletes from their teams and the sports they love,” Markey, who is in a tight bid for re-election against Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., said on X. “We will keep fighting. Discrimination and hate will not win.”

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., also weighed in, accusing “right-wing extremists and the MAGA movement” of being “determined to single out, target, and harm the trans community.”

“My heart is with trans kids and their loved ones,” she said on X. “I won’t stop fighting for them.”

Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Trump administration is still having to deal with the “madness” of former President Joe Biden’s “open border” policies, as the Justice Department announces new kidnapping and murder charges against eight members of the foreign terrorist group Tren de Aragua (TDA).

According to Blanche, all eight of the charged TDA members “crossed our southern border illegally” and “every one of them entered under the Biden administration between December 2021 and April 2024.”

Blanche said that in one of the cases, four men murdered a father in the Dallas area area and kidnapped his 13-year-old daughter and 12-year-old nephew. Five alleged TDA members were charged in connection with the incident, according to Blanche. In the Chicago area, three more alleged TDA members were charged in connection with a case in which a man was abducted, brutally beaten and ultimately shot several times.

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“None of these men should have been in this country. The father in Texas should be alive today. His daughter and nephew should have never been kidnapped. The young victim in Chicago should be alive,” lamented Blanche. “These violent crimes and murders happened because under the Biden administration, open border policies left our borders wide open and hundreds of suspected and now convicted TDA terrorists poured through those borders into our country.”

During a Wednesday press conference announcing the charges, Ryan Raybould, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, said the TDA members kidnapped the Dallas area man and the two children “in the middle of the night” on Aug. 24, 2024. Raybould said the man and children had their hands zip-tied while the gang members demanded money.

He said that “once the TDA members realized the man could not pay them any money, they pulled over by a bridge in Dallas and told the man to jump off.”

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When he refused to jump and attempted to flee, a TDA member “gunned him down execution style” in front of the two children, said Raybould.

The five TDA members charged in connection with the Dallas-area crimes are Hector Garcia Zuniga, also known as “Murray,” Carlos Luis Zambrano Bolivar, Jhonny Jesus Serrano, Yonatan Toro Gonzalez and Ehiker Mendoza. Raybould identified Garcia Zuniga as a high-ranking TDA member who, he said, is also facing racketeering charges, including murder, kidnapping and jackpotting spanning state lines and international borders.

Local outlet NBC DFW, reporting on the case in 2024, identified the victim as 33-year-old Nilzult Arneaud Petit. The outlet said Petit and the two children were forcibly removed from an apartment complex at 12:30 a.m. The children were later found unharmed, walking along a highway service road.

All five of these individuals are foreign nationals who Raybould said have been illegally present in the U.S. “at one time or another.”

Meanwhile, Andrew Boutrous, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, said the Chicago victim was abducted from a park, had his hands tied behind his back, left in an apartment for hours and ultimately was shot multiple times in the head and in the body.

Local outlet CWB Chicago identified the victim as 18-year-old Cristian Jose Rojas Barrios.

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Boutrous said the “victim’s lifeless body was left face down in the bathroom, partially in the bathtub, in an abandoned unit” at an apartment building. He said Kleiver Monasterio Briceno, Jose Pacheco Torres and “a third individual” are being charged in connection with the crimes.

“I want you to think about those facts for a moment. A man kidnapped from a park in Chicago in broad daylight, beaten, held against his will, taken to an abandoned building and shot multiple times and left in a bathtub. All in the name of Tren de Aragua,” Boutros said.

Boutros added: “And to show just how brutal and merciless this gang is — someone then went and called the victim’s mother and told her where she could find her lifeless son’s body.”

Tren de Aragua, Spanish for “Train from Aragua,” is a violent transnational criminal group that arose in Venezuela during the rule of socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro, who was removed from power in a U.S. operation ordered by President Donald Trump. As one of his first moves back in the Oval Office, Trump issued an executive order directing the State Department to designate TDA a “foreign terrorist organization.”

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According to Blanche, since Trump’s return to office, nearly 350 TDA members and associates have been charged or convicted of violent crimes, including murders, sex trafficking and kidnappings. He said that 350 TDA members have also been charged with weapons charges, drug trafficking and “widespread financial crimes,” including robbery and ATM “jackpotting.”

During the press conference, FBI Director Kash Patel said the agency has arrested 29,000 “violent gang members” since Trump was sworn in. He also said the FBI and its partners have “disrupted and dismantled” 2,700 gangs around the country, which he said is a 365% increase from the same period under the Biden administration.

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“We have seen, specifically as it relates to Tren de Aragua, a 519% increase in arrests,” said Patel.

Fox News Digital reached out to representatives for Biden for comment.

Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., tore into his Democratic counterparts after a hearing on immigration policies erupted into a heated squabble as the mother of a murder victim killed by an illegal immigrant pleaded to Congress for reforms to sanctuary policies.

In a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, Lawler reprimanded Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., for not having sympathy for American victims who were murdered by illegal immigrants — Laken Riley and Sheridan Gorman. The mother of one of those victims, Jessica Gorman, was called as a witness to share her story before the committee .

“They can save me their crocodile tears about they didn’t like my words or they didn’t like the fact that I spoke on policy as part of my introduction,” Lawler told Fox News Digital. “Grow the f—— up.”

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“To fully appreciate and understand why Jessica Gorman is here, you actually have to understand what happened to their daughter,” Lawler said.

“The reality is that they didn’t want to hear it. They didn’t want to hear what happened with Sheridan Gorman or that their policies that they support contributed to her death. That’s a fundamental fact.”

The New York Republican accused House Democrats of being more empathetic toward the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, anti-ICE agitators who were shot to death by federal agents earlier this year after they allegedly interfered with law enforcement during protests in Minnesota.

This led to chaos between the two, with Raskin shouting that Lawler didn’t belong on the Judiciary Committee and didn’t understand the Constitution.

RASKIN TELLS LAWLER TO ‘GET THE HELL OUT’ DURING CONTENTIOUS HEARING

He also asked Lawler if he felt any outrage for Good and Pretti.

“I said, ‘if you care about Alex Pretti and Renee Good, you should care as much about Sheridan Gorman,” Lawler said about his exchange with Raskin.

He continued, “The difference is I spoke out about Alex Pretti and Renee Good getting killed. They shouldn’t have died. The reason they died, however, is because sanctuary policies prohibited local law enforcement from cooperating on crowd control and traffic control.”

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Lawler told Raskin he should be “ashamed” of himself for his stance on sanctuary policies.

“Their nonsense that we had to sit there and listen to, that Jessica and Tom and Madeline had to sit there to listen to. I have no tolerance for it,” Lawler told Fox News Digital about Raskin’s comments.

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Raskin has been a strong proponent of sanctuary policies, arguing that having local police enforce federal immigration law is unconstitutional and often defending against what he views as federal overreach on sanctuary policies. He has also criticized proposals to withhold federal funding from cities and states that have limited cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“Sheridan Gorman would still be alive, but for open borders, sanctuary policies and pro-criminal cashless bail policies,” Lawler said. “They support those policies. I don’t. And that’s the fundamental difference here.”

A Republican lawmaker was booted from Pennsylvania’s Democrat-controlled State House chamber over his choice of patriotic attire celebrating the U.S. founding 250 years ago this week in the commonwealth.

The dispute comes as Americans prepare to celebrate the nation’s semiquincentennial and as the Trump administration showcases the Great American State Fair while the Shapiro administration features America250PA concerts and fairs from Pittsburgh to Wilkes-Barre.

America’s most prominent swing state has long enjoyed closely-divided government, with Gov. Josh Shapiro controlling the executive, Democrats holding a one-seat House majority and Republicans holding a four-seat Senate majority – which has led to dustups like that involving state Rep. Eric Davanzo this week.

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Davanzo, who represents a swath of Westmoreland County between Pittsburgh and Greensburg, said he was shocked by the reaction of House Speaker Joanna McClinton, D-Southwest Philadelphia, when he came to Tuesday’s session sporting a red, white and blue suit and tie.

Davanzo told Fox News Digital he walked around the chamber greeting colleagues and eventually stopped to chat with House Minority Whip Timothy O’Neal, R-Washington.

“We were talking, I turned around when a House photographer got a picture… and the next thing I know Whip O’Neal is gone.”

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“He comes back a few minutes later and he says, ‘hey, you’re not going to like this’,” Davanzo said, going on to recount that McClinton informed minority leadership that his attire was inappropriate.

“I’m like, ‘what? You’ve got to be kidding’,” Davanzo said, before learning McClinton wanted him off the House floor.

Davanzo initially decided to stay on the floor despite Democratic leaders’ wishes until a House security guard informed him McClinton was demanding he either remove his suit jacket or leave.

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“Instead of taking my jacket off, I walked off the House Floor,” he said.

Davanzo said that while it was clear McClinton objected to his America 250-themed suit, some Democratic lawmakers came up to him afterward in the Capitol and said they did not agree with his ejection.

One Philadelphia Democrat, Rep. Jordan Davis of Gray’s Ferry, had remarked to Davanzo the suit was “a very colorful jacket the representative is wearing today. Very patriotic, I see, my friend.”

Davanzo said House leadership had previously endorsed thematic attire in the chamber.

“They were asked to dress in pride colors because they were going to do a House photo on the floor,” Davanzo told Fox News Digital, noting June is Pride Month. “That’s OK. We can we can take our photos for pride but we can’t show up as a patriot and take a photo or even we can even get on the House floor apparently,” Davanzo said.He then read from a statement from McClinton about a Pride Month and how it encourages people to be “authentic” and “love freely.”

“You’re only able to love freely because the brave men and women died for this flag,” Davanzo said.

“They died for our country. This is complete hypocrisy. You’re allowed to wear tennis shoes on the floor. You’re allow to wear top hats. You can wear camo-jackets. Everything across the board, but don’t show up with a patriotic outfit on because you’re going to be asked to leave.”

He noted that the Declaration of Independence was signed 250 years ago Saturday about 250 miles east of his district in Philadelphia and that he is also a “Bicentennial Baby,” born in 1976 and celebrating his 50th birthday this year.

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Davanzo also leads the America First Caucus in the State House, which he said focuses on efforts like onshoring manufacturing in the increasingly postindustrial Keystone State and providing for an “automatic death penalty” for illegal immigrants convicted of murdering Pennsylvanians.

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“I introduced bills that we would give $250 checks out to every family household in Pennsylvania so that we can celebrate America[250]. This is what I stand for, this is what believe in. I’m just representing my folks back home of who I am,” he said.

“This is a big celebration coming up. I want to be patriotic, why not? What is so wrong with what I have on?” said Davanzo, who wore the very same suit during his interview.

Fox News Digital reached out to McClinton for comment.

Fox News Digital’s Hannah Brennan contributed to this report.

A national security group is urging Congress to investigate a prominent environmental-law nonprofit over past partnerships and programming ties with Chinese government-linked organizations, according to a report sent to lawmakers on Tuesday by State Armor, a national security organization.

The Environmental Law Institute, or ELI, has trained more than 2,000 American judges on environmental law through its Climate Judiciary Project since 2018, according to its website. During its decades of China-related work, the organization cultivated relationships with entities the report described as Chinese government-affiliated, CCP-linked or tied to China’s military research ecosystem, according to State Armor.

“Across three decades of engagement, ELI’s work has uniformly advanced Chinese strategic and national security interests while undermining American national security by constraining domestic energy producers and industrial expansion and simultaneously pushing America toward dependence upon energy sources dominated by the PRC,” a letter addressed to congressional leadership attached to the report reads.

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State Armor, a national security organization focused on state-level policy responses to foreign threats, is raising concerns that the ties could have domestic implications.

The organization is run by Michael Lucci, a lobbyist, and keeps its donors private to shield them from being targeted by the Chinese government. Lucci said in an April 2025 Wall Street Journal profile that his group refuses funding from corporate and foreign sources to avoid perceptions of conflicting interests.

“The question is not whether judges should receive continuing education but rather whether any educational initiative funded, organized, or influenced by organizations with relationships with foreign entities, particularly a foreign adversary, could affect the perception or reality of judicial impartiality,” the congressional letter reads.

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ELI, when asked about its ties to China, told Fox News Digital that its programming in China ceased in 2024 and rejected criticism that its work advanced Chinese government interests specifically.

“For over 50 years, ELI has worked to strengthen environmental protections in dozens of countries,” an ELI spokesperson told Fox News Digital on Thursday. “Our programming in China concluded in 2024 but was no different than our typical work — sharing evidence-based best practices on environmental regulation, not advancing any government interests. The Climate Judiciary Project has not conducted any programming in China.”

The Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit was founded in 1969 and describes its mission as developing “innovative, just, and practical” environmental law and policy solutions across borders and sectors. ELI launched the Climate Judiciary Project in 2018, which is a judicial-education initiative focused on climate science, climate change and the ways climate science arises in the law.

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Though ELI says it has ceased its work in China, ELI has continued to advance China-related scholarship and partner with individuals linked to Chinese government ventures. Fox News Digital is not aware of any ELI programming that has taken place in China since 2024.

As recently as May, the nonprofit, through its journal, published an English-language paper written by two Chinese academics hailing from state-run universities detailing how China had made progress on environmental protection.

Then, in June, ELI hosted a Chinese legal scholar for a panel discussion with speakers from multiple other countries on global career pathways in environmental law. The scholar, who received training through an ELI fellowship in 2021, “participated in ministry-level projects on environmental legislation and policy of China,” according to her biography on ELI’s website.

She also “managed internationally funded programs” to train Chinese “judges” and “environmental law enforcement officers,” according to ELI.

ELI did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on the paper by the Chinese academics or the panel featuring the Chinese legal scholar.

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ELI discloses on its website that it has “worked to improve environmental rule of law, enforcement, and compliance in China” since the “mid-1990s” in light of “the critical role that China, and its 1.4 billion people, has in global environmental protection.”

“ELI has worked to improve environmental rule of law, enforcement, and compliance in China in partnership with Chinese NGOs, universities, law firms, businesses, judges and environmental regulators,” the organization’s website reads. “ELI has held capacity-building workshops, high-level roundtables, seminars and panel discussions on Chinese policy issues, trained lawyers on environmental justice issues, and published articles and books on sustainability, environmental management, and constitutional environmental law in China.”

State Armor argued that this kind of knowledge sharing ultimately benefited the Chinese government, to the detriment of the United States. State Armor urged lawmakers to examine the scope of ELI’s cooperation with Chinese entities and review the funding, curriculum development, expert selection and governance structure of its judicial education programs.

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“Under the banner of ‘improv[ing] environmental rule of law,’ ELI’s China Program provides technical assistance, capacity building, and legal training to Chinese NGOs, judges, and environmental regulators,” the report reads.

While ELI has historically provided these services, Fox News Digital could not find evidence that ELI has provided any programming in China after 2024.

To support this assertion, State Armor cited public records showing that some of the organizations ELI worked with are tied to the Chinese Communist Party or the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

State Armor cited ELI’s own website, which states that the organization worked with the Policy Research Center for Environment and Economy (PRCEE), a think tank affiliated with China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment, to improve China’s environmental regulatory system.

State Armor argued that PRCEE’s affiliation with China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment and its stated policy-support role place it within China’s government environmental-policy apparatus.

In 2013, PRCEE worked on a report jointly published by the Chinese government and the United Nations Environment Programme dubbed “China’s Green Long March” — an apparent reference to the CCP’s famous 1934 “Long March” where it strategically retreated inland during the Chinese Civil War.

ELI also states on its website that its China International Business Dialogue on Environmental Governance (CIBDEG) working group provided “information and analysis to the Chinese government regarding environmental regulations in the United States and Europe as well as the concerns of multinational business.”

“The working group is designed to facilitate and encourage dialogue between multinational businesses and Chinese environmental regulatory authorities regarding best practices in environmental regulation and performance by governments and industries,” the group’s website reads.

ELI joined forces with the PRCEE, the Chinese law firm JunHe and the prestigious American law firm Latham & Watkins to launch CIBDEG in 2018. A press release from JunHe claimed that China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment was also involved in founding the working group.

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In addition to PRCEE and the CIBDEG, ELI has also worked with multiple universities that have been scrutinized by the United States government over their ties to China’s military.

ELI, for instance, “trained 265 environmental NGO workers, judges, prosecutors and attorneys from 26 provinces” at Tianjin University in 2018, only for the university to later land on the Commerce Department’s Entity List, an export-control list, over alleged trade-secret theft tied to military applications. ELI was not involved in the purported intellectual property theft.

ELI has drawn sustained scrutiny from Republican lawmakers and conservative activists over its China-related work, foreign partnerships and climate-focused judicial education programs. The critiques have been based on media reports alleging that ELI works closely with the Chinese government as well as with individuals linked to the CCP, not investigative findings produced by U.S. government bodies.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in particular has waged a prolonged campaign against ELI, alleging that the group has links to the Chinese government and that its operations materially harm the United States.

“We’re witnessing right now a systematic campaign against American energy. There is a coordinated assault by the radical left, backed and paid for by the Chinese Communist Party to seize control of our courts, to weaponize litigation against U.S. energy producers,” Cruz said during a June 2025 hearing. “The judiciary itself is being quietly captured and brainwashed as left wing nonprofits host closed door trainings that indoctrinate judges to adopt the ideological goals of the climate lawfare machine.”

“Perhaps the most insidious because it strikes at the very heart of the rule of law, judicial capture,” the senator continued. “It is being carried out by one organization with near total control over climate-related judicial training, the Environmental Law Institute, and its Climate Judiciary Project … They claim to be science driven but what they are doing is ex parte indoctrination, pressuring judges to set aside the rule of law and rule instead according to a predetermined political narrative.”

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In its letter to lawmakers, State Armor alleged that ELI promotes a policy agenda that disfavors American energy interests.

“The jurisprudential frameworks ELI promotes to American judges disproportionately favor regulatory constraints on U.S. domestic energy production, with no commensurate frameworks within China’s system,” State Armor’s report reads. “Consciously or not, this is an instance of ELI pushing for American unilateral disarmament in energy security and industrial production.”

Two Minnesota brothers are being hailed as leaders of the next generation of American patriots after their lemonade stand raised a whopping sum for a nonprofit that supports veterans.

Noah Dingels, 11, and Cole Dingels, 8, of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, first popped up their stand five years ago at a golf tournament hosted in their community by a nonprofit called Tee It Up for the Troops.

The national organization hosts tournaments nationwide to support its six-pillar mission of helping American veterans when they return from war. Those pillars include PTSD and traumatic brain injury support, suicide awareness and prevention, employment, sports and recreation, housing and family and caregiver support.

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“I really liked it, it’s cool to see the veterans and present the money at the end of the night,” Noah told Fox News Digital about the first year of the lemonade stand in an interview with his brother Cole and mother Angela.

“Honestly, it felt good,” Cole added.

In their first go-around, the boys raised $359, which motivated them to grow their operations. They have since raised $60,000 for Tee It Up for the Troops.

“It feels like a lot, and it’s fun to do it,” Noah said.

Along with lemonade, the boys have added candy bars — Snickers is preferred among tournament players, they said — and golf balls to their sales repertoire.

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They have garnered local sponsors over the years, who also chip in to support the boys in their mission.

“The lemonade stand has always been about giving back, and so the boys have done a great job of using their time and talents every year to show their patriotism and show their gratitude to our veterans,” their mother Angela said.

She described the fundraising efforts as “contagious,” and said community members, including Noah and Cole’s classmates and sports teammates often stop by the stand to offer them support.

“It’s been a really cool opportunity,” she continued. “During the event, they get to meet different veterans, thank them for their service and show their love for our country.”

One of those veterans is Harry Wisdom, a decorated U.S. Army helicopter pilot who was awarded a Silver Star for his heroism during the Vietnam War.

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But Wisdom, now 86, found another use for his prestigious award.

“He very graciously brought that [Silver Star] and gave that to the boys last year at the lemonade stand as a sign of his appreciation for their work and everything they’re doing to support veterans,” Angela said. “He wrote them an incredible letter, and so it’s just been a very special connection that we look forward to every year.”

Tee It Up for the Troops was founded in 2005 and is based in Burnsville, Minnesota.

Chris LaRocque, an Army reserve officer himself, is the group’s executive director and president.

“We’ve we’ve raised, just over $19 million in funds that have gone to directly support veterans and their families,” he told Fox News Digital. The organization has supported 400,000 military families over its 21-year lifespan.

Aside from the golf tournaments held across this country, 45 of which are on the calendar this year, Tee It Up for the Troops hosts an annual event in Florida called REUNION, which brings together veterans who forged friendships in the service.

“REUNION brings together combat veterans and battle buddies, that they’ve lost connection with, as well as some of their family members,” said LaRocque. “We go through a lot of their stories, through shared experiences. We have small group leaders and mentors there, and it’s really a powerful experience and really a unique thing.”

Of course, LaRocque had high praise for Noah and Cole.

“We’ll receive donations that are made out to Noah and Cole’s lemonade stand or Tee It Up for the Troops,” he said. “What a cool thing that these young entrepreneurs, young men that are growing, want to do something bigger than themselves.”

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“What a great message for all of us in our country, especially at the 250th anniversary of our founding,” he added.

LaRocque who has been deployed overseas three times recently and has combat experience, describes Tee It Up for the Troops’ mission as near and dear to his heart.

The reason we’re able to to celebrate the 250th is because of generations of men and women that have sacrificed for it, sometimes ultimately with their lives,” he said, adding that he believes America is still the greatest country in the world despite facing some challenges.

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“What’s so special to me is that we’ve got some, some young men that are seeing that more than many. and doing something about it,” said LaRocque of Noah and Cole.

“They’re like stepping up and going, ‘hey, here’s something we could do. I see this as like a gap. I want to help our community and veterans in our community and do something bigger than just an individual effort.’ And, I think it’s special.”

The Trump administration is set to unveil a sweeping overhaul of federal appliance efficiency rules that officials say will end “Green New Scam” appliance mandates, restore consumer choice, and block future federal crackdowns on gas stoves, fluorescent lightbulbs, HVAC systems, and other household appliances.

“In America, you should be able to choose between a drying machine that takes multiple cycles to dry your clothes and one that does it on the first try — unfortunately, past administrations thought otherwise,” Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Fox News Digital.

The Department of Energy is expected to propose a sweeping rewrite of federal appliance regulations that would change how energy-efficiency standards are written, creating what the Trump administration says is a permanent safeguard against future efforts to regulate household appliances. The proposal was viewed by Fox News Digital.

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“For too long, the American people paid the price for mandates that restricted consumer choice and drove up costs. President Trump promised to end this nonsense and that is exactly what we are doing. This proposed rule will preserve the American people’s ability to choose home appliances and equipment that actually work — at prices they can afford. It’s called commonsense.”

Officials said previous Obama and Biden administrations interpreted Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA) standards as requiring increasingly stringent efficiency standards that made some appliances more expensive or less functional.

Biden-era changes in 2021 and 2024 that loosened the Trump administration’s 2020 rules by making the procedures non-binding and removing several provisions, including a significant energy savings threshold and other procedural requirements.

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The proposal is open for public comment for 30 days before being made an official rule. It comes as the U.S. and Europe face a major heat wave.

Paris Deputy Mayor Audrey Pulvar recently released a statement blaming the United States for the deadly heat wave over France by saying the issue is climate change – not the lack of air conditioning in Europe.

“Dear American journalists and social media ‘influencers’: for days, some of you have been criticizing and making fun of Paris because the city does not have A/C in every room. OMG, this is so rich!” she wrote on Instagram.

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Due to regulations, only 20% of households have air conditioning compared to 88% in the U.S., according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

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She added, “As the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, you bear a significant amount of responsibility for global warming and the consequences we, in France, are experiencing. Your cities ‘90% air-conditioned’ are not unrelated to this. In Paris, we take responsibility.”

Fox News Digital’s Lindsay Kornick contributed to this report.

After weeks of Iranian missile and drone attacks exposed the vulnerability of major U.S. military bases across the Gulf, the Pentagon is weighing whether decades of relying on large, permanent installations within range of Iranian weapons still makes strategic sense.

Defense officials are considering dispersing some capabilities and reassessing parts of the U.S. regional base posture, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

The Gulf base network is how the U.S. responds quickly to Iran, protects shipping lanes, reassures Arab partners and keeps pressure on ISIS and al Qaeda. If the Pentagon reduces or disperses that footprint, it could make U.S. forces harder to hit — but also slower to surge in a crisis.

For decades, the tradeoff was straightforward: the closer U.S. forces were to the fight, the faster they could respond. But Operation Epic Fury reignited a long-running debate over whether concentrating aircraft, ships, command centers and thousands of troops at a handful of large Gulf bases had become an increasingly dangerous liability in an era of precision missiles and drones.

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Retired Navy Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery said the military already has started relying more heavily on alternate command-and-control locations — the headquarters and communications hubs commanders use to direct military operations — and rotating forces rather than concentrating capabilities at a handful of installations close to Iran. 

“We’re not relying on them in the same way that we did before the war,” Montgomery told Fox News Digital. “I think we are going to reposition these forces.”

The Pentagon has spent decades building a network of Gulf bases designed to put aircraft, ships and troops within minutes of potential crises across the Middle East. That strategy relied on concentrating combat power at a handful of large installations that offered unmatched access to the region.

But during Operation Epic Fury, Iran launched repeated missile and drone attacks against some of the Pentagon’s most important regional installations, including Naval Support Activity Bahrain, home to the U.S. Fifth Fleet, Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates and Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait.

While U.S. and partner air defenses intercepted many incoming weapons and casualties remained limited, the attacks demonstrated that virtually every major American operating hub in the Gulf now sits within range of Iranian missiles and drones.

U.S. forces in the Middle East have endured rocket and drone attacks for years, many carried out by Iranian-backed proxy groups against individual outposts in Iraq and Syria. Operation Epic Fury marked a broader test of the Pentagon’s regional basing model, with Iran directly targeting multiple major air and naval hubs that underpin U.S. military operations across the Gulf.

Naval Support Activity Bahrain alone sustained extensive damage to command facilities and communications infrastructure, The Wall Street Journal reported. Since the conflict began Feb. 28, 13 U.S. service members have been killed and 400 wounded, with most wounded returning to duty.  

Many of the fatalities resulted from a small number of attacks, including a missile strike in Kuwait and an attack on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.

Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins, Central Command spokesperson, declined to discuss battle damage assessments but told Fox News Digital the U.S. military “rightfully prioritized the protection of people over buildings, and our strategy of protecting people worked. Iran shot more than 8,000 missiles and drones and only two resulted in U.S. fatalities. We did far more damage to Iran than they did to us — by a lot.”

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What that future posture ultimately looks like remains under review. 

A senior U.S. official told Fox News Digital questions about dispersing forces and reducing reliance on a handful of large Gulf bases had been debated since well before Operation Epic Fury, which had reignited those conversations. 

“As a planning organization, we continually assess the security environment and make adjustments to best support operations and protect our troops. This has always been the case and remains so going forward,” Hawkins said in response. 

Defense officials are weighing whether to disperse military capabilities across a broader network of facilities, move some bases or functions further west and even relocate certain operations to Israel, while reducing the U.S. presence at some installations in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, the Journal reported. Officials also are reportedly considering moving some command structures underground, or forgoing rebuilding damaged structures. 

“We do not have any force posture changes to announce or anything to provide at this time,” a War Department official told Fox News Digital. 

A Joint Staff spokesperson told Fox News Digital that the military is tracking diplomatic developments in the region while continually monitoring and evaluating U.S. force posture.

Former counterterrorism director Joe Kent, who resigned over the Trump administration’s war with Iran, has long pushed for the U.S. to reduce its presence in the Gulf. 

“Our bases in the Middle East are strategic liabilities not strategic assets. Less bases = less targets for Iran to shoot at and that = less leverage for Iran,” he wrote on X Saturday. 

“It’s absolutely being discussed,” Retired Adm. Kevin Donegan, the former commander of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which leads U.S. naval operations across the Middle East, told Fox News Digital. “After (the Iran conflict) is over, I think in each country it’ll be independently evaluated based on our relationships with those countries.”

Montgomery said geography itself has become part of the problem. Many of the Gulf’s largest U.S. bases sit only about 90 miles from Iranian launch sites, leaving little time and space to respond to incoming drones.

“They’re just too close,” Montgomery said. “They’re…90 miles away from Iranian launch points.”

Fighter aircraft have become one of the primary tools for intercepting Iranian drones, but Montgomery said the Gulf’s proximity to Iran leaves defenders with less time and space to intercept drones after launch.

“Our way of shooting down drones, the best way is aircraft equipped with rockets,” he said. “But to do that, you got to get behind the drones. That’s hard.”

Moving some operations farther west would not put U.S. troops beyond the reach of all Iranian weapons. Iran’s longer-range missiles can reach Israel and other parts of the region, and former commanders cautioned that there may no longer be any truly safe rear area. 

But dispersing command nodes, aircraft, logistics hubs and personnel across more locations could reduce the risk that a single strike disabling a critical U.S. capability.

“Everywhere we have forces around the world, they are under the missile envelope of potential adversaries,” he said. “So, where do you go to?”

“What you can do is buy yourself a little time against the threat, but in the end, we still need to have access to basing, because our being in the Gulf is not just to revolve around Iran, we have other reasons to be there, whether that be to ensure that terrorists like ISIS and Al Qaeda, etc. don’t threaten stability,” Donegan went on. 

The bases that came under attack form the backbone of America’s military presence in the Gulf.

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The U.S. typically maintains about 40,000 troops across the Middle East, anchored by a network of major bases built up during the post-9/11 wars. Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar —home to the forward headquarters of U.S. Central Command and the largest U.S. military installation in the region — alone hosts about 10,000 American personnel. Other major hubs include Naval Support Activity Bahrain, home to the U.S. Fifth Fleet, Camp Arifjan and Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait, and Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates.

Those installations became the backbone of U.S. military operations during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and remain central to American air, naval and logistics operations across the region.

Fox News Digital reached out to the U.S. Fifth Fleet, the White House and the governments of Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Israel for comment.

Trump has not publicly commented on the matter. 

The Department of Justice announced murder and kidnapping charges on Wednesday against eight illegal migrants who are allegedly members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang.

The charges were filed for two separate crimes. In one case, four men allegedly murdered a father in front of his teenage daughter outside Dallas, Texas, said acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

In the other case, three men were accused of kidnapping a man in Chicago before beating and shooting him to death.

The defendants crossed the U.S.-Mexico border between December 2021 and April 2024, according to Blanche.

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“None of these men should have been in this country. The father in Texas should be alive today. His daughter and nephew should have never been kidnapped. The young victim in Chicago should be alive,” Blanche said, before placing blame at the feet of the Biden administration for its “open border” policies.

U.S. Attorney Ryan Raybould, who leads Texas’ Northern District, said the victims outside Dallas were a man, his 13-year-old daughter and his 12-year-old nephew.

On Aug. 24, 2024, the four alleged TdA members kidnapped them all in the middle of the night and demanded money from the father, Raybould said.

“Once the TDA members realized the man could not pay them any money, they pulled over by a bridge in Dallas and told the man to jump off. When he refused to do so and attempted to flee, a TDA member gunned him down execution style in front of the two children,” Raybould said.

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Local police found the man on the side of the road, bleeding through a single gunshot wound in the head, Raybould said.

A Texas grand jury indicted the four men involved — as well as a fifth man involved in other related crimes — for murder, kidnapping and ATM jackpotting.

One of the men indicted was a high-ranking TdA official, Raybould said.

Separately, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Chicago filed charges against three alleged TdA members who are accused of murdering a man in May.

Andrew Boutros, the top prosecutor in the Northern District of Illinois, said at the Wednesday news conference that the three defendants forced the victim into their car while he was walking in a park.

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They drove him to a Chicago apartment, Boutros said, where they tied his wrists and left him for hours. After that, the men transported him to an abandoned building, where they shot him in the head and body, Boutros said.

“I want you to think about those facts for a moment. A man kidnapped from a park in Chicago in broad daylight, beaten, held against his will, taken to an abandoned building and shot multiple times and left in a bathtub. All in the name of Tren de Aragua,” Boutros said.

Boutros added: “And to show just how brutal and merciless this gang is — someone then went and called the victim’s mother and told her where she could find her lifeless son’s body.”

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FBI Director Kash Patel, also present at the news conference, praised federal law enforcement in his remarks for increasing arrests of violent gang members under President Donald Trump’s second administration.

“We’ve arrested 29,000 violent gang members since President Trump was sworn in,” Patel said. “We have seen, specifically as it relates to Tren de Aragua, a 519% increase in arrests.”

According to the federal government, Tren de Aragua was formed around 2014 inside the Tocorón Prison in Aragua, a state in Venezuela. It has since grown into a transnational criminal organization.

U.S. authorities have tied the gang to sex trafficking, drug trafficking, kidnappings, murders and other crimes. TdA has been designated a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department since February 2025.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents discovered and seized over $3.7 million worth of cocaine in what was supposed to be a shipment of cucumbers last Wednesday.

Agents at the Pharr International Bridge near the southernmost point of Texas discovered 112 packages in a tractor-trailer after a canine inspection and a subsequent nonintrusive imaging system scan revealed anomalies in the vehicle.

CBP officials seized the load, totaling 278.88 pounds — a haul with a $3,723,654 street value, according to the agency.

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The stopped shipment, just one of many shipments traffickers have tried to mask as other merchandise, highlights how smuggling remains a challenge for law enforcement along the U.S. border — even as illegal border crossings have plummeted to record lows.

According to Port Director Carols Rodriguez, who manages the Hidalgo Port of Entry, it’s one of the many reasons CBP must maintain high levels of scrutiny.

“This interception is a powerful reminder that our CBP officers are on duty 24/7, employing every resource to detect and deter those who attempt to exploit our borders,” Rodriguez said in a statement to Fox News Digital.

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Since the end of 2024, border crossings have plummeted, going from over 144,000 encounters in December 2024 to just 10,000 in April.

Even so, CBP has reported several high-profile smuggling attempts.

In February, CBP detained a truckload of “roses” concealing over 515 pounds of cocaine. Just a little later, on April 2, CBP reported seizing 298 pounds of cocaine worth roughly $2.6 million in another commercial truck allegedly carrying carrots.

And the smuggling efforts haven’t been limited to drugs, either.

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Later in April, CBP announced it had prevented a car carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, 16 AK rifles, 24 rifle magazines, 16 rifle stocks, 20 pistol grips, and other weapon parts from crossing the border.

“The threat of illicit narcotics is constant, but so is our vigilance,” Rodriguez said

Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., accused the U.S. Supreme Court of betraying the nation on Tuesday and introduced a proposal to crack down on birthright citizenship.

The nation’s high court on Tuesday ruled against an executive order President Donald Trump issued last year that took aim at the notion that infants born on U.S. soil are entitled to American citizenship.

The 14th Amendment states, in part, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

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Trump’s order declared it to be U.S. policy “that no department or agency of the United States government shall issue documents recognizing United States citizenship, or accept documents issued by State, local, or other governments or authorities purporting to recognize United States citizenship, to persons:  (1) when that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth, or (2) when that person’s mother’s presence in the United States was lawful but temporary, and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.”

Ogles slammed the Supreme Court ruling on Tuesday, asserting in part of a post on X that the Supreme Court had “betrayed America.”

In a statement that his office provided to Fox News Digital on Wednesday, Ogles asserted, “Yesterday, the Supreme Court cheapened the most valuable thing on planet Earth: U.S. citizenship. Not only is birthright citizenship clearly not in the U.S. Constitution, but this broken system has allowed foreign nationals to take advantage of our country, our benefits, and our generosity. These foreigners have embedded themselves into our society and are being trained by foreign governments to corrupt our culture.”

SUPREME COURT LAMBASTED OVER ‘DESTRUCTIVE’ AND ‘OUTRAGEOUS’ BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP DECISION

He added, “I refuse to let these anchor babies colonize our country. Save our sovereignty. Anchors away!”

The congressman’s “Anchors Away Act” aims to crack down on the issue.

The proposal would amend U.S. law — which states that those born in the U.S. and subject to its jurisdiction are citizens at birth — to stipulate that for a child to be considered under U.S. jurisdiction, one of the parents must be “a citizen or national of the United States,” “an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence in the United States whose residence is in the United States” or “an alien with lawful status under the immigration laws performing active service in the armed forces (as defined in section 101 of title 10, United States Code).”

TRUMP SUFFERS MAJOR SUPREME COURT DEFEAT AS JUSTICES UPHOLD BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP

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The measure would also amend U.S. law to stipulate, “Any alien seeking admission to the United States as a nonimmigrant who is pregnant and is not married to a citizen of the United States is inadmissible.” Though it also notes, “Nothing in this subparagraph may be construed to render inadmissible an alien seeking legitimate medical treatment relating to childbirth.”