NationalWatch

Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel plans to step down after the South Carolina primary later this month and has given notice to former President Donald Trump, according to reports.

The New York Times reported that people familiar with the plans say Trump will likely move Michael Whatley, the chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party, into McDaniel’s position.

TRUMP MEETS WITH RONNA MCDANIEL–THEN CALLS FOR CHANGES AT REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE

“Nothing has changed,” Republican National Convention Spokesperson Keith Schipper told Fox News Digital. “This will be decided after South Carolina.”

The former president met on Monday with McDaniel at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.

Trump wrote in his Truth Social platform following the meeting that McDaniel was a “friend” but that he would be urging changes at the RNC after the Feb. 24 South Carolina GOP presidential primary, which is the next major contest in the Republican 2024 nominating calendar.

“Ronna is now Head of the RNC, and I’ll be making a decision the day after the South Carolina Primary as to my recommendations for RNC Growth,” the former president wrote.

Paul Steinhauser of Fox News Digital contributed to this report.

White House press secretary Karine Jeane-Pierre on Tuesday dodged a question on President Biden’s mental and physical health after the president appeared to confuse French President Emmanuel Macron with former French President François Mitterrand, who has been dead for nearly 30 years.

The gaffe came during a campaign stop in Las Vegas on Sunday. The president was recalling a meeting he had with Macron at the G7 summit in England, shortly after he assumed the White House in 2021.

But instead of Macron, Biden dropped the name of “Mitterrand,” who was the president of France between 1981 and 1995 and died in 1996.

Fox News’ Peter Doocy on Tuesday questioned how the president could convince large swathes of voters who are worried about his physical and mental health after making those comments.

Jean-Pierre, looking visibly annoyed, told Doocy, “I’m not even going to go down that rabbit hole with you, sir. We’re going to go ahead.”

“What is the rabbit hole?” Doocy asked.

“You saw the president in Vegas, in California. You’ve seen the president in South Carolina. You saw him in Michigan. I’ll just leave it there,” Jean-Pierre said.

HISTORIAN WHO CORRECTLY PREDICTED ALMOST EVERY ELECTION WINNER SINCE 1984 REVEALS WHO IS LIKELY TO WIN IN 2024

Later in the press conference, a reporter asked Jean-Pierre to respond to criticisms that Biden has given far fewer interviews during his presidency than his predecessors. The reporter noted that no press conference was scheduled during Biden’s hosting of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, nor was the president scheduled to give an interview during the Super Bowl.

“It just seems, again, like we’re in one of these instances where the president is not communicating with the press,” the reporter said.

“Stay tuned. That is the answer for you,” Jean-Pierre said, challenging the notion that the president was not engaging with the press.

The reporter pushed back, noting that Biden has given less than half the number of interviews his predecessors have given at this point in the presidency.

Jean-Pierre said the president communicates in “nontraditional ways.” As to why the president is not doing a Super Bowl interview – missing out on a “massive audience in an election year” – Jean-Pierre said people “want to see the game.”

“The president will find many other ways to communicate with Americans, the millions of Americans out there,” Jean-Pierre said. “And we will find those ways to do it, where we think the time is right.”

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Presidents have given pre-taped interviews with the networks broadcasting the NFL championship game for years now. This year the game is being broadcast by CBS. The practice became consistent starting during President Obama’s first term, though former President Trump skipped an NBC interview in 2018.

2024 will be the second Super Bowl interview in a row that Biden has declined.

The Republican-led House of Representatives on Tuesday failed to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over his handling of the crisis at the southern border – marking a major blow for House Republicans who have pushed for Mayorkas’ removal.

The House voted mostly along party lines, but Republicans suffered a number of defections which torpedoed the vote. Four Republicans ultimately voted no: Rep. Tom Clintock, R-Calif., Ken Buck, R-Colo., Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., and Blake Moore, R-Utah, who switched his vote at the last minute in a procedural move to be able to bring the resolution back to the floor.

But Democrats remained united. The vote was 214-216. Lawmakers voted on a resolution combining two articles of impeachment that accused Mayorkas of having “refused to comply with Federal immigration laws” and the other of having violated “public trust.” A Cabinet secretary has not been impeached since 1876, when Secretary of War William Belknap was impeached.

GOP LAWMAKER ON KEY IMMIGRATION SUBCOMMITTEE SLAMS MAYORKAS IMPEACHMENT 

The move is a crushing blow to the Republican majority, who held hearings throughout 2023 on Mayorkas’ “dereliction of duty” and additional hearings on the impeachment articles themselves earlier this year. Lawmakers accused Mayorkas of disregarding federal law with “open border policies” that have made the ongoing crisis at the southern border worse. They have pointed to the rolling back of Trump-era policies like border wall construction and Remain-in-Mexico as well as reducing interior enforcement and expanding “catch-and-release.” They say it has fueled record numbers at the southern border, where numbers breached the 300,000 mark in December.

“Under Secretary Mayorkas’ watch, Customs and Border Protection has reported more than 8.5 million encounters at our borders, including more than seven million apprehensions at the Southwest border,” Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green said on the House floor. “Even more terrifying is the approximately 1.8 million known gotaways, that Border Patrol agents detect, but are unable to apprehend. Millions of those inadmissible aliens who are encountered are eventually released into our communities. This has never happened before in our history. And it doesn’t happen by accident.”

Green said that Republicans had been left with “no other option” than to proceed.

“We, the people’s representatives, have no opinion, no option but to exercise this duty when branch officials blatantly refuse to comply with the laws we have passed threaten the separation of powers, imperiled the constitutional order, and expose Americans to untold suffering and death,” he said.

Democrats and the administration had painted the impeachment push as politically-motivated on nothing more than policy disagreements, and nothing that approaches high crimes and misdemeanors.

“Far from alleging high crimes and misdemeanors, this resolution relies on the same tired and untrue Republican talking points that Democrats have demonstrated for months are not true,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said.

Homeland Security Committee Ranking Member Bennie Thompson called the push a “travesty” and an “affront to the Constitution.”

“Rather than doing what’s right for America because it’s clear that Republicans have failed to make the case for impeachment. They have failed to articulate a single high crime and misdemeanor. The other side of the aisle reeks of desperation,” he said.

Mayorkas himself had attacked the push against him, calling the allegations “false” and “baseless.”

MAYORKAS LASHES OUT AT ‘BASELESS’ GOP ALLEGATIONS AHEAD OF KEY IMPEACHMENT VOTE

“I assure you that your false accusations do not rattle me and do not divert me from the law enforcement and broader public service mission to which I have devoted most of my career and to which I remain devoted,” Mayorkas said.

DHS has pointed to more than 500,000 removals since May and record seizures of fentanyl at the border to counteract claims that it has pursued open border policies. It has also called on Republicans to provide more funding and to work with the administration to fix a “broken” immigration system. Meanwhile it has pointed to Republicans and former DHS officials who have opposed the impeachment effort.

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“This farce of an impeachment is a distraction from other vital national security priorities and the work Congress should be doing to actually fix our broken immigration laws,” a DHS official said in a recent memo. 

After the vote failed, Democrats were gleeful.

“House Republicans just tried to impeach Secretary Mayorkas purely as a political stunt: AND THEY FAILED,” Jayapal said on X, formerly known as Twitter. “As they keep wasting their time in the majority, Democrats will continue working for the American people.”

A former Obama administration official who infamously used inexperienced reporters to manufacture support for the former president’s failed Iran nuclear deal is reviving an advocacy group with the sole purpose of keeping Donald Trump out of the White House.

Ben Rhodes, the former deputy national security advisor to the 44th president, alongside other Obama administration veterans, is set to re-launch National Security Action (NSA) in an effort to boost President Biden’s re-election bid by touting his foreign policy, a Tuesday report by Axios said.

According to the report, the group plans to unite Democrats divided over the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, and make the case that Biden is better than another four years of Trump.

TIM SCOTT RESPONDS TO TRUMP CONSIDERING HIM FOR VICE PRESIDENT: ‘THE ONLY THING I CAN TELL YOU IS…’

NSA was founded in 2018 to help Democrats in that year’s midterm elections and in 2020, by countering Republicans, including Trump, on national security-related issues. It was largely inactive during the 2022 midterm elections, but decided to jump back into the fray this year amid Trump’s surge toward becoming his party’s likely presidential nominee.

Although he’s been critical of Biden’s approach to Israel, Rhodes told Axios that this year the group would seek to “remind people that this is a choice that Trump represents a different approach to foreign policy that is very dangerous, and rather than making the crises in the world better, he is likely to make all of them worse.”

Rhodes became a nationally recognized name in 2016 after boasting in an interview with The New York Times Magazine that he and Obama’s foreign policy team built an “echo chamber” of experts to help sell the controversial Iran nuclear deal.

SWING DISTRICT DEMOCRAT WITH CLOSE TIES TO LARGEST TEACHERS UNION SILENT ON CALLS TO RESCIND BIDEN ENDORSEMENT

The article detailed how Rhodes’ “war room” worked to influence Capitol Hill lawmakers and reporters as the details of the Iranian nuclear deal were being hammered out in negotiations. According to Rhodes, the “echo chamber” was created by using arms-control experts that appeared at think tanks and were then used as sources for hundreds of reporters – whom the article described as “clueless.”

Of those experts, Rhodes said: “They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.”

He then took a shot at the modern media landscape, lamenting the closure of many newspapers’ foreign bureaus and the level of experience of many political reporters.

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“Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing,” he said.

Trump later pulled the U.S. out of the Iran deal in 2018, calling it “defective at its core.”

Fox News Digital reached out to National Security Action for comment.

Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Tuesday repeatedly blamed Republicans after the collapse of a bipartisan deal that paired border policy changes with billions in wartime aid for Ukraine. 

Throughout the press conference, Jean-Pierre accused the GOP of playing games with national security and not having a spine for supporting the deal. She said President Biden, in contrast, had taken the border issue seriously “from day one.” 

“He said, ‘I’m going to put forward a legislation,’ a comprehensive immigration legislation that was introduced more than three years ago … and [Republicans],” have failed to act, Jean-Pierre said when asked if President Biden bore some responsibility for the collapsed deal. 

Later on, Fox News’ Peter Doocy pressed Jean-Pierre on the matter.

“So, you guys talk a lot – including today – about how the border wouldn’t be such a big deal if Congress would have just passed your immigration bill on day one,” Doocy asked. “Who was in charge of Congress on day one?” 

SEN. ROGER MARSHALL DEMANDS SOUTHERN BORDER CRISIS BE CLASSIFIED AS ‘AN INVASION’

Jean-Pierre said the Biden administration has called on Congress to act since Biden took office more than three years ago, but Republicans “have gotten in the way” of trying to fix the border by using the immigration crisis as a political stunt. 

When President Biden took office, Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate. Republicans took back the House by a slim majority in the 2022 midterm elections. 

After taking office, Biden signed two executive orders on immigration and pledged to roll back many of the policies put in place by his predecessor, former President Donald Trump. Within a few months, Biden took more than 90 actions related to the border. 

Under the president’s stewardship, illegal immigration has skyrocketed to historic levels. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) report for fiscal 2023 showed that the number of illegal immigrants on the non-detained docket soared from 3.7 million in FY 2021 to nearly 4.8 million in FY 2022 to nearly 6.2 million in FY 2023. 

HOUSE CLEARS WAY TO ADVANCE IMPEACHMENT ARTICLES OF DHS SECRETARY MAYORKAS

The number of illegal immigrants being deported has increased, according to the report, but it is still a fraction of the increase in the illegal immigrant population. There were 142,580 removals in FY 23, up considerably from 72,177 in FY 22 and 59,011 in FY 21, but still down from the highs of 267,258 under the Trump administration in FY 19.

With the 2024 election looming, Biden has for months engaged in a plan to pair policies intended to curb illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border with $60 billion in wartime aid for Ukraine. The bill would have also sent tens of billions of dollars more for Israel, other U.S. allies in Asia, the U.S. immigration system and humanitarian aid for civilians in Gaza and Ukraine.

But after Republicans backed away from the compromise, the president and Senate leaders are now stranded with no clear way to advance aid for Ukraine through Congress. They have run into a wall of opposition from conservatives — led by Trump — who reject the border proposal as insufficient and criticize the Ukraine funding as wasteful.

Biden laid the blame for the bill’s demise squarely on Trump — his presumed Republican opponent in the November presidential election.

“For the last 24 hours he’s done nothing, I’m told, but reach out to Republicans in the House and the Senate and threaten them and try to intimidate them to vote against this proposal,” Biden said. “It looks like they’re caving. Frankly, they owe it to the American people to show some spine and do what they know to be right.”

Meanwhile, House lawmakers have cleared the way to advance an impeachment resolution against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, for alleging “refusing to enforce our nation’s laws.” 

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“An architect of destruction at our southern border, the secretary has caused serious injury to society, as the Founding Fathers discussed,” Rep. McCaul, R-Texas, said in a statement. 

Fox News’ Adam Shaw contributed to this report. 

New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday defended a reported $53 million pilot program to hand out pre-paid credit cards to migrant families housed in hotels despite public outcry. 

Appearing before a state legislative budget hearing in Albany on Tuesday, the Democrat mayor said he sought to dismiss “misinformation” about the program.

“We’re not giving people American Express cards,” Adams said. “We found that the food delivery service that we set up during the emergency – we could find a better way to do it in our belief that we want to cut 20% of the migrant costs. So we have a pilot project with 500 people that we are giving them food cards, so instead of a debit card, instead of having to deliver food, and have people eat food – we were seeing wasting food – they’re now able to get their own food, that is going to be spent $12 a day.”

“So we are going to save money on delivery, we’re going to save money on people wasting food, and this is a pilot project we’re going to use that is going to save us $6.7 million a year,” Adams said.  “And if the pilot turns out to be successful, then we’re going to expand it not only with the migrants and asylum seekers, we’d look to do that expansion throughout the entire system – trying to find smarter, more cost-effective ways to deal with this crisis that was dropped in our lap.”

NEW YORK CITY TO HAND OUT $53 MILLION IN PRE-PAID CREDIT CARDS TO MIGRANT FAMILIES: REPORT

Under the pilot program, migrants will be getting 40% more than the state gives to low-income and elderly New Yorkers under SNAP benefits.

Each migrant would receive about $350 a month to spend on food and baby supplies. As noted by Newsweek, that’s more than the maximum allotment that low-income New York residents receive in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. According to the state’s website, single households are eligible for up to $291 a month in SNAP benefits aimed at providing “low-income working people, senior citizens, the disabled and others” money to buy food products. 

The migrant pilot program also hands out more than two times the amount the state gives monthly in services for single veterans, Fox News’s Bryan Llenas reported. 

RAPPER 50 CENT SAYS ‘MAYBE TRUMP IS THE ANSWER’ AFTER SEEING NYC GIVE PRE-PAID CREDIT CARDS TO MIGRANTS

The mayor’s explanation came during an annual hearing, known as “Tin Cup Day,” when mayors make budgetary requests before the state legislature. 

Adams, who testified that the Big Apple’s shelter population has tripled since he took office, asked the state to cover 50% of the costs to handle the migrant crisis in New York City. 

New York City’s government has projected it will spend at least $10.6 billion on migrants by summer 2025. New York state has already vowed to contribute about $2 billion in the current budget cycle to the migrant crisis, but Adams told lawmakers on Tuesday that the state pledge would only cover one-third of the city’s migrant costs.

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Gov. Kathy Hochul, another Democrat, has suggested the state earmark $2.4 billion to go toward migrant services in the next budget cycle, but the details have not been ironed out before the state legislature. Adams’ office said even that allocation proposed by Hochul would be $600 million short of what the city needs in its next budget cycle, the New York Daily News reported. 

A group of Senate Republicans is growing weary of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s leadership and called for him to step down as they aired their grievances over what they called a “dead” bipartisan border bill slated for the first floor procedural vote on Wednesday. 

Sens. JD Vance, R-Ohio, and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told reporters Tuesday afternoon in a press conference that McConnell, R-Ky, should have “walked away” from the border agreement, which they argue expands President Biden’s power and does not fully close the border. 

“We’re not committing ourselves to voting for this thing just because we entered the negotiation, and you hear this from some of our leadership – and hopefully they will stop – the idea that we committed to supporting whatever came out of this negotiation is pure, unadulterated bulls—,” Vance, one of Congress’ loudest critics against Ukraine assistance, said. 

He added, “We supported a negotiation to bring commonsense border security to this country. We did not agree to a border fig leaf to send another $61 billion to Ukraine.”

Cruz, a staunch critic of McConnell since 2013, said the long-standing leader offered no response when he asked him, “Is there anything we are willing to fight on?” regarding the closed-door border negotiations that began in December, which Republicans are now determined to tarnish. 

“Everyone here also supported a leadership challenge to Mitch McConnell in November,” Cruz said. “I think a Republican leader should actually lead this conference and should advance the priorities of Republicans.”

GOP SENATORS DEMAND ‘ADEQUATE TIME’ TO REVIEW BORDER SECURITY BILL

Fox News Digital has reached out to McConnell’s office for comment. Following the GOP luncheon on Tuesday, McConnell told reporters, “I think we can all agree that Sen. Cruz is not a fan.” 

Sen. James Lankford, of Oklahoma, the lead Republican negotiator, has been facing pushback from the caucus over the deal that was struck with Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., and Biden administration officials. More than 20 Republicans have already vowed to strike down the bill on Wednesday, arguing they need “adequate time” for amendments and further analysis. 

Meanwhile, Republicans are also hanging onto a post Murphy posted on X on Sunday after the text was released, which read: “The border never closes, but claims must be processed at the ports.” Cruz contended the Biden administration already has the ability to shut down the border and turn migrants away under the current immigration laws. 

“His first week in as president, he halted construction on the border wall, he reinstated the disastrous policy of ‘catch and release’ and he pulled out of the unbelievably successful remain in Mexico agreement that caused this explosion,” Cruz said. “It also means Joe Biden could solve it tomorrow, by reversing those three decisions.” 

The only way, Cruz said, the border bill would make it across the finish line in the national supplemental package is if the Senate passed H.R.2 – the GOP-led House’s immigration bill passed last year – which includes Trump-era style expulsions and security measures. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., already deemed the bill a “nonstarter” in the Senate. 

Meanwhile, the House has repeatedly called the Senate’s border bill “dead on arrival” – making it a near-impossible scenario that a border security bill gets passed. 

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., an unsuccessful contender against McConnell in the last election, said “a few people negotiated” the border, when it should have been open to the entire GOP conference to offer amendments.

“McConnell decided we’re not going to have something that forced a lawless administration to secure the border, and so this is where we are,” he said.

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., another “no” vote on Wednesday, told reporters McConnell was “fatally flawed” when he “entered into this secret negotiation with Schumer.” Vance added that Lankford was at a disadvantage in the negotiations because the White House 

“It normalizes thousands of people a day,” Johnson said. “It probably undermines the future president’s ability to secure the border by having things like a discretionary threshold.”

Other Republicans during Tuesday’s press conference, including Sens. Roger Marshall, of Kansas and Mike Lee, of Utah, also spoke out against the bill they argued has a “whole lot of loopholes.”

“Loopholes through which you could drive a Mack truck, a 747, and an Airbus A-380 simultaneously through them, and that’s concerning,” said Lee, who was among the first to criticize the deal.

Marshall defended Lankford and said not even “Henry Kissinger could have negotiated a better deal with the cards that he was dealt.” 

“This is not on the back of James Lankford,” he said. “I’m not going to speak for James, I think his hope was that we could take this bill and amend it and make it better. But I’m afraid it’s not close enough to do anything but stop the life support and pronounce it dead.”

SENATE RELEASES LONG-AWAITED BORDER LEGISLATION, MAJOR ASYLUM CHANGES

The proposed legislation, released Sunday evening after months of negotiations, will total just over $118 billion, with 50,000 new visas. Biden’s original request amounted to around $106 billion. 

On Tuesday, Biden said the border package “doesn’t address everything” he would have liked, such as creating a pathway for citizenship for illegal immigrants who are already living in the U.S. However, he called it the ‘toughest, fairest law that has ever been proposed relative to the border.”

“I’m calling on Congress to pass this bill, get it to my desk immediately,” Biden said. “But if the bill fails… every day between now and November, the American people are going to know that the only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican friends.” 

During negotiations, Trump urged senators over his platform Truth Social to reject a deal “unless we get EVERYTHING needed to shut down the INVASION of Millions & Millions of people.”

Republicans are concerned the bill does not flatly reduce the number of border crossings to zero. The bill’s provisions come into effect when there is an average of 5,000 or more daily encounters with illegal immigrants over a seven-day period or, alternatively, when a combined total of 8,500 or more aliens are encountered on any single calendar day. The calculation considers encounters at southwest land border ports, ports along southern coastal borders, and at a southwest land border port of entry.

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The bill would earmark $20 billion to immigration enforcement, including the hiring of thousands of new officers to evaluate asylum claims, as well as hundreds of Border Patrol agents. Some of the taxpayer funds would go to bailing out shelters and services in cities across the U.S. that have struggled to keep up with the influx of migrants in recent months.

However, the bill states that if the president “finds that it is in the national interest to temporarily suspend the border emergency authority, the President may direct the Secretary to suspend use of the border emergency authority on an emergency basis.” The “border emergency,” triggered at 5,000 crossings per day within a week, could be overturned by the president.

A House Republican on a key immigration subcommittee announced Tuesday that he will vote against impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, dealing a significant blow to GOP efforts to impeach the Biden official ahead of a vote expected later in the day.

“The only way to stop the border invasion is to replace the Biden administration at the ballot box. Swapping one leftist for another is a fantasy, solves nothing, excuses Biden’s culpability, and unconstitutionally expands impeachment that someday will bite Republicans,” Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., who heads the Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Later on the House floor, he called it a “stunt.”

HOUSE TEES UP VOTE ON IMPEACHING MAYORKAS OVER BORDER CRISIS 

The House is expected to vote later on two articles of impeachment, which accuse Mayorkas of having “repeatedly violated laws enacted by Congress regarding immigration and border security” and of having “made false statements to Congress” that the border is secure and closed and that DHS is in operational control of the border. 

McClintock’s “no” joins that of Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo. Fox News Digital is also told that Rep, Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., also raised concerns about impeaching Mayorkas at a closed-door meeting of the House Republican Conference. The House majority is slim and Republicans can only afford three defections if all lawmakers are present and all Democrats vote against impeachment.

Should the impeachment push fail, it would signify an enormous blow to House Republicans who spent much of 2023 investigating Mayorkas for his handling of the crisis at the southern border, before referring articles to the House Homeland Security Committee late last year.

The committee advanced the two articles last week. If Mayorkas is impeached, then it will go to the Senate for a trial.

Speaker Mike Johnson said that he had spoken to McClintock and Buck about their objections to the move to impeach the Cabinet Secretary — which would make it the first impeachment since 1876.

MAYORKAS LASHES OUT AT ‘BASELESS’ GOP ALLEGATIONS AHEAD OF KEY IMPEACHMENT VOTE

” I respect everybody’s view. I understand the heavy weight that impeachment is…next to the declaration of war, I believe impeachment is probably the heaviest authority that the House has given in the Constitution,” he said. “We carry that weight very carefully. What I will say about this Mayorkas impeachment is that the Homeland Security Committee has done an extraordinary job, a very deliberate job as you know over a long period of time.

Republicans have accused Mayorkas and the administration of fueling the crisis with “open border” policies including “catch-and-release,” reduced interior enforcement and the rolling back of Trump-era policies they believe helped secure the border. They also accuse Mayorkas of not following immigration law, which they say demands the detention of illegal immigrants, and of failing to secure the border. Mayorkas has vigorously denied those claims.

“The constitutional case and evidence for impeaching Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is strong and compelling,” Committee Chair Mark Green said in an op-ed for The Washington Examiner this week. “My committee’s nearly year-long investigation identified Secretary Mayorkas’ willful and systemic refusal to comply with U.S. immigration laws and his breach of the public trust as the primary drivers of the unprecedented crisis at America’s borders.”

MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE PREDICTS MAYORKAS IMPEACHMENT ARTICLES WILL PASS HOUSE WITHOUT ANY DEM SUPPORT

But the process has come under fire from the Department of Homeland Security, as well as House Democrats and some Republicans. They see a pre-determined politically motivated push for impeachment based on policy disagreements rather than high crimes and misdemeanors, and the Biden administration has instead pointed to efforts made to secure the border by Mayorkas — including his role in a bipartisan Senate deal released this week. They have also pointed to more than 500,000 removals since May and record seizures of fentanyl at the border.

“House Republicans have failed to provide any legitimate Constitutional grounds for impeachment according to countless legal experts of diverse political views, House Republicans’ own prior impeachment witness, and their fellow GOP Members,” DHS officials said in a recent memo.

Mayorkas himself defended himself against impeachment last week in a letter to Republicans, in which he slammed the allegations as “false” and “baseless.”

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“I assure you that your false accusations do not rattle me and do not divert me from the law enforcement and broader public service mission to which I have devoted most of my career and to which I remain devoted,” Mayorkas said.

Other voices against the impeachment of Mayorkas include Jonathan Turley, who was a witness for the House majority earlier this year, and Alan Dershowitz, who was former President Trump’s defense lawyer during the first impeachment effort against him. Former Bush-era DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff recently called on Republicans to “drop this impeachment charade” and work with Mayorkas to solve the crisis.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said Tuesday that House Republicans “welcome” the dysfunction wrought in the Senate over its border security and supplemental aid bill.

Johnson has made no secret of his opposition to the bipartisan deal, declaring it “dead on arrival” multiple times since its release on Sunday night, including during House GOP leaders’ regular weekly press conference.

“Republicans simply cannot vote for the bill in good conscience, and that is why I declared it dead on arrival. And it looks like right now it may be in some jeopardy, it may be on life support in the Senate,” the speaker said.

“We welcome that development, because this is a matter that must be addressed in a manner that…actually solves the problem.”

SEN. TIM SCOTT A ‘HADES NO’ ON SENATE BORDER, IMMIGRATION DEAL

Republican opposition to the Senate’s bipartisan deal began with a trickle on Sunday night before turning into an avalanche of criticism by late Monday. 

Democrats have accused Republicans of going back on their own request for border policy changes in exchange for supporting aid to Ukraine. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said GOP opposition to the deal, particularly in the Senate, is a “dramatic transformation in Republican thought.”

IMMIGRATION ACTIVISTS, LIBERAL SENATE DEMS TRASH BORDER DEAL OVER LACK OF AMNESTY FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS

He also accused the House GOP of opposing the deal just because former President Trump was also against it, something Johnson has denied.

Johnson appeared to attack those accusations on Tuesday, beginning his press conference with references to specific points in the 370-page bill that he opposed.

5 KEY DETAILS IN CONTROVERSIAL SENATE BORDER DEAL

“Let me give you a couple of citations of just a few of our countless concerns with the bill in the form that it was sent to us,” the speaker said. 

“On page 321, for example, the bill expands work authorizations for illegal aliens, threatens American workers’ wages, and also acts as another magnet for illegal immigration. It’s a pull factor. You don’t want to tell people around the world to come on and over the border, we’ll give you work. And by the way, we’ll put most of you on public assistance so that the American taxpayer can spend billions and billions and billions of dollars to feed and clothe and educate you. That’s not the message that is helpful to send around the world.”

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He continued, “On page 116 of the bill, it endorses the Biden administration’s catch and release policy, endorses it by allowing illegals to be, quote, released from fiscal physical custody, unquote…The shutdown authority in the bill, you know, you’ve heard some things said about that, but it’s riddled with loopholes. You might not have heard that part. It gives Secretary Mayorkas, who is, of course, one of the chief architects of the catastrophe, that we’re all dealing with, the authority to undermine that.”

Meanwhile, Schumer teed up a cloture vote on the package for Wednesday, and at least 25 senators have vowed to vote against the motion, including three Democrats.

FIRST ON FOX: A coalition of hawkish immigration groups is warning congressional leaders that a border deal released this week by the Senate as part of a supplemental spending bill to fund Ukraine and Israel would limit the ability of future administrations to tackle illegal immigration.

“The legislative text confirms our worst suspicions: if enacted, the bill would codify the border crisis and severely limit any future enforcement-minded administration from securing the border,” the groups, led by the Heritage Foundation, said in a letter to congressional leaders.

Senate negotiators released the $118 billion supplemental spending deal late Sunday, which includes funding for Ukraine, Israel and $20 billion in funding for border and immigration-related matters.

IMMIGRATION ACTIVISTS, LIBERAL SENATE DEMS TRASH BORDER DEAL OVER LACK OF AMNESTY FOR ILLEGALS

It includes a new temporary emergency border authority to mandate Title 42-style expulsions of migrants when migration levels exceed 5,000 a day over a seven-day rolling average, and it narrows asylum eligibility while expediting the process, provides additional work permits for asylum seekers and funds a massive increase in staffing for Customs and Border Protection and asylum officers.

It also increases temporary visas and green cards, while establishing an expedited pathway for Afghans who were evacuated to the U.S. The legislation also includes $1.4 billion in FEMA funding for non-governmental organizations and cities to help settle migrants and $650 million to build and reinforce the border wall. It will also provide $450 million to countries to help them remove and integrate illegal immigrants back into their countries.

“The bipartisan agreement in the Senate is tough, fair, and takes meaningful steps to address the challenges our country faces after decades of Congressional inaction,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement.

GOP SENATORS DEMAND ‘ADEQUATE TIME’ TO REVIEW BORDER SECURITY BILL

Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., an author of the package, said this week that the bar on asylum eligibility would go a long way to fixing the crisis and change the operating stance at the border.

“New bars to asylum eligibility will stop the criminal cartels from exploiting our currently weak immigration laws. The bill also has new emergency authorities to shut down the border when the border is overrun, new hiring authorities to quickly increase officers, and new hearing authorities to quickly apply consequences for illegal crossings,” he said. “It changes our border from catch and release to detain and deport.” 

However, the bill has faced a firestorm of opposition from the right who remain unconvinced, and the coalition of hawkish groups say that it does not do enough to end catch-and-release and argues it replaces “current statutory monitoring with a mass release program of weaker discretionary ‘monitoring’” while failing to close loopholes for children to be “recycled” by cartels.

5 KEY DETAILS IN CONTROVERSIAL SENATE BORDER DEAL

“The advertised reform of standards in the asylum process would not significantly prevent asylum fraud, and when coupled with the supercharged catch-and-release, would only continue the flood of asylum abuse as a means of entry into the U.S.,” they said. 

“Moreover, the bill would expand funding to fund sanctuary cities and the non-governmental organization’s secretive infrastructure that processes, transports, and provides services for illegal aliens in the United States,” they added.

Groups on the letter include the American First Policy Institute, Numbers USA, Border 911, the Immigration Accountability Project, the Federation for American Immigration Reform and Citizens for Renewing America. It also includes former Trump officials including former acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf, acting Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Mark Morgan, former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott, former acting ICE Director Thomas Homan, former ambassador to Mexico Christopher Landau and former Office of Management and Budget Director Ross Vought.

The coalition of groups has previously shared the demand by Republicans in the House that the House border bill passed last year — H.R. 2 — must be included as part of any supplemental spending agreement. They have argued that anything that falls short of that is insufficient at a time of a historic border crisis.

They also argue that President Biden currently has the authority to end the border crisis without legislation, but have argued in favor of H.R. 2 in order to “close the loopholes that have been weaponized, not because new authorities to secure the border are needed.”

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As it stands, they warn the package will turn the border crisis into a “political talking point.”

“The only measure of the effectiveness of border security policy is whether it actually secures the border. This legislative package does not secure the border, and it will severely curtail the ability of future administrations to do so,” they said.

Senate Republicans are poised to obstruct the much-anticipated bipartisan border package released Sunday by negotiators, which includes heightened asylum restrictions and gives President Biden the authority to suspend the bill on an emergency basis.

By Monday night, the bill appeared to be in flames as Republicans argued in a closed-door leadership meeting that they don’t have enough time to look over the text and offer amendments. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., already teed up a cloture vote on the package for Wednesday. It will need 60 votes, or three-fifths of the upper chamber, to pass. If it fails, it will take another 60 votes to restart consideration.

Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., a member of the appropriations committee, told Fox News Digital in an interview Tuesday morning that “this will not pass” and predicted there would be 40 “no” votes in the chamber. So far, 25 senators – more than half of the votes needed to filibuster it – have already vowed they would vote against the cloture motion, including three Democrats.

GOP SENATORS RALLY AGAINST BIPARTISAN BORDER DEAL, CITING BIDEN’S POWER TO SUSPEND ‘EMERGENCY’ BILL

“In 2023, Secretary Mayorkas is assuring us that there is no crisis, that the border is secure. And suddenly, you come into an election year, they say there’s a crisis,” Hagerty said. “They put forward this legislation, ask for more authority, more funds, and frankly, more flexibility – and they say if we don’t go for it, Republicans are now responsible for the crisis at the southern border. It’s preposterous.”

Hagerty said “the way forward” if the bill fails is for the Senate to take up the House’s H.R.2 – the GOP-led bill that would restore most Trump-era and Title 42 style expulsions – which Schumer has already called a “nonstarter.”

“Everyone agrees the border is a mess. For years, years, our Republican colleagues have demanded we fix the border. And all along, they said it should be done through legislation. Only recently did they change that when it looked like we might actually produce legislation,” Schumer said on the floor Monday. “Well, we are producing legislation in a bipartisan way. And now, unfortunately, many on the hard right are running, are turning their back on this package.” 

Lead Republican negotiator, Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., also indicated he is considering voting against the package even though he supports it, which House Republicans have already vowed to tank.

“It’s determining if everybody had enough time to look at this,” Lankford told reporters Monday night. “Why would we force a vote on something that would kill it, to be able to force the vote now, versus give it more time and give the opportunity to be able to go through it?”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., “has read the conference” and may also vote against the cloture, Hagerty said. McConnell and Republican leaders are expected to give a press conference Tuesday afternoon after their policy lunches, where debate on the bill is expected to continue.

GOP SENATORS DEMAND ‘ADEQUATE TIME’ TO REVIEW BORDER SECURITY BILL

“We had a great discussion,” McConnell told Fox News Monday night. “We’ll continue discussing.”

Leaving the meeting Monday night, Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., told reporters “it’s the sense of the room” that Senate Republicans will not vote for cloture to advance the border bill on Wednesday. He added the bill may not be “dead” but wants a full legislative process to offer amendments.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told Fox News “there’s a lot of things” he likes about the bill, but “there are things that must change for it to be the bill that we want it to be.”

“I’m going to put together some ideas I have to make the bill better and insist that we take them up. So that’s where I’m at,” he said.

The package – negotiated by Lankford, Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., with Biden administration officials – also drew criticism from Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Barrasso, R-Wyo., on Tuesday.

“The proposed legislation does not meet most Americans’ standard of securing our border now,” he said in a statement. “It doesn’t force the Biden administration to end its abuse of current law. It leaves in place a number of the Democrat-created incentives that are fueling the crisis.”

Meanwhile, Democrat Sen. Alex Padilla, of California, who also plans to vote against cloture, argues the bill goes too far to the right, dubbing the bill a “failed Trump-era immigration policy.”

“After months of a negotiating process that lacked transparency or the involvement of a single border-state Democrat or member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, it is no surprise that this border deal misses the mark,” he said in a statement. “The deal includes a new version of a failed Trump-era immigration policy that will cause more chaos at the border, not less. It is in conflict with our international treaties and obligations to provide people with the opportunity to seek asylum. It fails to address the root causes of migration. And it fails to provide relief for Dreamers, farm workers, and the other undocumented long-term residents of our country who contribute billions to our economy, work in essential jobs, and make America stronger.”

SENATE RELEASES LONG-AWAITED BORDER LEGISLATION, MAJOR ASYLUM CHANGES

The proposed 370-page legislation, released Sunday evening after months of negotiations, will total just over $118 billion, with 50,000 new visas. Biden’s original request amounted to around $106 billion last October.

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The emergency border proposal, appended to the national security supplemental package, is aimed at gaining control of an overrun asylum system that has been overwhelmed by historic numbers of migrants illegally crossing the border. The bill proposes an overhaul to the system with tougher and quicker enforcement.

The bill’s provisions come into effect when there is an average of 5,000 or more daily encounters with illegal immigrants over a seven-day period or, alternatively, when a combined total of 8,500 or more aliens are encountered on any single calendar day. The calculation considers encounters at southwest land border ports, ports along southern coastal borders, and at a southwest land border port of entry.

However, the bill states that if the president “finds that it is in the national interest to temporarily suspend the border emergency authority, the President may direct the Secretary to suspend use of the border emergency authority on an emergency basis.” Essentially, the “border emergency” triggered at 5,000 crossings per day within a week can be overturned by Biden.

Fox News’ Aishah Hasnie contributed to this report. 

EXCLUSIVE: The White House on Tuesday said the bipartisan Senate border bill provides “a moment of truth for House Republicans,” declaring that the way in which GOP lawmakers vote will “define the legacy of their narrow majority” in Congress.

Fox News Digital obtained a memo penned by White House deputy press secretary and Senior Communications Adviser Andrew Bates, titled: “Will the House GOP vote with the Border Patrol to secure the border, or for more fentanyl and Donald Trump?”

HOUSE SPEAKER SAYS SENATE BORDER BILL ‘DEAD ON ARRIVAL’ IF IT REACHES CHAMBER: ‘EVEN WORSE THAN WE EXPECTED’

In the memo, Bates touted the Senate’s bipartisan $118 billion border security and foreign aid package. The bill allocates $20 billion for border security and gives the federal government temporary authority to expel migrants when the average number of daily crossings exceeds a threshold. The border security component also includes ending “catch and release,” increasing standards for asylum screenings and attempting to process asylum claims quicker.

While it has some Republican support in the Senate, House GOP lawmakers, like House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said the bill would be “dead on arrival” if it reaches the lower chamber and said it is “even worse than we expected.” Republicans say the bill does not do enough to remedy the border crisis and stop releases of illegal migrants into the interior.

“The bipartisan border security deal is the toughest, fairest, and most significant border security legislation in decades,” Bates wrote in the memo, saying it has gained support from the Border Patrol Union, the Chamber of Commerce and more.

5 KEY DETAILS IN CONTROVERSIAL SENATE BORDER DEAL

Bates, detailing the bill, pointed to more than 1,500 new U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel; 1,200 new U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel; equipment to help to detect fentanyl and thousands of new asylum officers.

The bill also includes a provision that allows officials to shut down entries into the United States at the southern border, but only when there is a rolling seven-day average of 5,000 encounters a day or 8,500 encounters in a single day.

At that point, DHS is mandated to expel all migrants without processing them, except for unaccompanied children. That authority can only end when encounters drop at least 25% for seven days, and DHS has 14 days to end the authority.

However, the president can suspend the authority for up to 45 days, and by the third calendar year, the DHS secretary is limited to using it for half the calendar year. DHS can also implement the authority at its discretion when the average number of encounters exceeds 4,000 a day.

GOP SENATORS DEMAND ‘ADEQUATE TIME’ TO REVIEW BORDER SECURITY BILL

The bill also expedites two-year work permits for migrants who are released into the interior; provides government-funded legal counsel for migrants and children; tightens language for screening of migrants who claim asylum; work permits and temporary visas for 250,000 children of immigrants on temporary work visas who have since become adults; raises the cap on the number of green cards by 50,000 a year and more.

The bill also establishes an expedited pathway for Afghans who were evacuated to the U.S. to get green cards.

“This is a moment of truth for House Republicans,” Bates wrote. “After opposing the record border security funding Joe Biden has signed into law every year of his presidency, will the House GOP finally say ‘yes’ to securing our border and putting the needs of families above partisan games?”

Bates added, “Will House Republicans say ‘yes’ to more law enforcement like Border Patrol, whose union supports this bipartisan deal, or will they instead say ‘yes’ to more fentanyl and to Donald Trump’s insistence that border security be delayed in the name of politics?”

MIGRANT CRISIS BROKE NEW RECORD IN DECEMBER WITH 302K ENCOUNTERS, OFFICIALS CONFIRM

Bates said Republicans have a “critical choice” that “will define the legacy of their narrow majority.” 

“And it is House Republicans’ last meaningful chance to stop blocking the President from securing the border, a streak that goes back to their obstruction of his Day One comprehensive immigration reform plan,” Bates said.

However, Republicans are adamantly opposed, like Sens. Tom Cotton, Mike Lee, Mike Braun, Bill Hagerty, and others, and it also has significant opposition in the House.

“I’ve seen enough,” House Speaker Johnson wrote on X. “This bill is even worse than we expected, and won’t come close to ending the border catastrophe the President has created. As the lead Democrat negotiator proclaimed: Under this legislation, ‘the border never closes.’”

“If this bill reaches the House, it will be dead on arrival,” the speaker declared.

GOP SENATORS RALLY AGAINST BIPARTISAN BORDER DEAL, CITING BIDEN’S POWER TO SUSPEND ‘EMERGENCY’ BILL

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said the Senate bill would not receive a vote in the lower chamber. Scalise oversees the schedule in the House.

“Let me be clear: The Senate Border Bill will NOT receive a vote in the House,” Scalise wrote on X. “Here’s what the people pushing this ‘deal’ aren’t telling you: It accepts 5,000 illegal immigrants a day and gives automatic work permits to asylum recipients — a magnet for more illegal immigration.”

Additionally, former President Trump, the 2024 GOP frontrunner, warned Republicans that “only a fool or a Radical Left Democrat” would vote for the “horrendous” bill which “only gives shutdown authority after 5,000 encounters a day, when we already have the right to CLOSE THE BORDER NOW, which must be done.” 

“This bill is a great gift to the Democrats, and a Death Wish for the Republican Party,” Trump posted on his Truth Social, adding that the bill should not be tied to foreign aid.

Trump warned Republicans: “Don’t be STUPID!!!”

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“The Democrats broke Immigration and the Border,” Trump continued. “They should fix it.”

In a separate post, Trump said the “ridiculous bill” is “nothing more than a highly sophisticated trap for Republicans to assume the blame on what the Radical Left Democrats have done to our Border, just in time for our most important EVER Election.”

He added, “Don’t fall for it!!!”

Fox News Digital’s Adam Shaw contributed to this report. 

President Biden responded to former President Trump’s challenge to an “immediate” debate on Monday.

Trump had issued the challenge during a Monday radio appearance with conservative commentator Dan Bongino, saying a debate would be “good” for the country.

“I’d like to debate him now because we should debate. We should debate for the good of the country,” Trump said.

Biden was asked about Trump’s comments later that day while campaigning in Nevada.

BIDEN IS LYING LOW AHEAD OF SUPER BOWL AS COMMENTATORS WORRY THAT HE IS SEEN AS ‘NOT IN CONTROL’ OF THE NATION

“Immediately? Well, if I were him, I’d want to debate me, too. He’s got nothing else to do,” Biden told reporters.

With Trump holding a commanding lead in the GOP primary, the outlook for general election debates is uncertain. The Republican National Committee withdrew from the Commission on Presidential Debates in 2022, and Trump himself has called the organization “corrupt.”

BIDEN SKIPPING SUPER BOWL SUNDAY INTERVIEW FOR SECOND STRAIGHT YEAR

“They’re totally corrupt. They’re totally Democrat-leaning, that’s being nice when I use the word leaning,” Trump said in December, according to NBC News. “They are totally corrupt, and they’re terrible. With that being said, I would do 20 debates even if it was organized by them. I’ll do as many debates as they want. I’d do a debate every night with this guy. But he’ll never show up to a debate.”

Trump’s newfound willingness to debate comes after he flatly rejected calls to debate his challengers in the GOP primary race.

WHAT BULLY PULPIT? WHY BIDEN STAYS OFF TELEVISION DURING BIG BREAKING NEWS

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, the sole remaining challenger to Trump, participated in multiple debates with other candidates while Trump was absent.

Trump and his campaign argue that his massive lead in GOP polls freed him of any obligation to debate distant challengers.

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The debate commission has so far scheduled three general election debates, though neither Trump nor Biden have publicly agreed to them. The debates are scheduled for Sept. 16 at Texas State University in San Marcos, Oct. 1 at Virginia State University in Petersburg, and Oct. 9 at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, according to NBC.

President Biden is trailing significantly behind former President Trump in the number of small dollar donations their campaigns received in 2023, according to federal data.

Small dollar donations are a key indicator of overall enthusiasm for a candidate, and the Trump campaign received some 668,000 donations of less than $200 last year. Meanwhile, Biden’s campaign received 564,000, according to the New York Times.

Despite the discrepancy, Biden’s campaign finished last year with more cash on hand than Trump’s, indicating a strategy of targeting wealthy Democratic donors.

Trump’s small dollar lead is not just sourced from solid red states like Florida and Texas. He is also leading Biden in the metric in key battleground states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, according to the Times.

HEAD HERE FOR THE LATEST FOX NEWS POLLING IN THE 2024 RACE

The donation report comes as Trump also took a huge lead over Biden in a national NBC News poll released Sunday. The poll showed Biden struggling to compete with Trump on top issues like immigration and the economy, with Biden trailing Trump by 23 points when voters were asked who would be a better candidate to handle the economy.

HALEY EXPECTS TO HAUL IN $1.5 MILLION AT WALL STREET FUNDRAISERS TO FUEL GOP PRESIDENTIAL BID AGAINST TRUMP

Those numbers come despite Biden’s recent argument that his administration’s economic policies are starting to work, telling voters in Michigan last week that “inflation is coming down” and that they had “created 800,000 manufacturing jobs.”

BIDEN TOPS TRUMP IN NEW POLL, BUT LEAD SHRINKS AGAINST THIRD-PARTY CANDIDATES

Trump also boasted large leads over Biden when it came to securing the border (+35 points), having the necessary mental and physical health to be president (+23), and dealing with crime and violence (+21). The former president also has double-digit leads over Biden when it comes to being competitive and effective (+16) and on improving America’s standing in the world (+11).

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Overall, the NBC poll showed Trump leading Biden by five percentage points, 47% to 42%, among registered voters in a hypothetical 2024 general election rematch.

Fox News’ Michael Lee contributed to this report

FIRST ON FOX: Republican South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott has responded to Donald Trump’s consideration of him as his vice presidential running mate for the general election in November, telling Fox News Digital his top priority was ensuring the former president beats Joe Biden.

Trump revealed to Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo over the weekend he is considering Scott, along with South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, while detailing what criteria he’d like to see in a running mate.

“The only thing I can tell you is that the one thing we need is four more years of President Donald Trump,” Scott told Fox News Digital on Monday.

SWING DISTRICT DEMOCRAT WITH CLOSE TIES TO LARGEST TEACHERS UNION SILENT ON CALLS TO RESCIND BIDEN ENDORSEMENT

“We were better off under Trump. In order for us to be successful, the one thing I can’t afford to do is take my eye off the ball. The eye on the ball means making sure that President Trump gets four more years,” he added.

After revealing his criteria for a running mate, which included ensuring the individual would be able to step up and handle the presidency in the case of an emergency, Trump said he likely won’t announce a vice presidential pick “for a little while.”

“What criteria are you using to identify who your running mate is?” Bartiromo asked.

BLAKE MASTERS’ CAMPAIGN SHARED MISLEADING FUNDRAISING NUMBERS, FAILED TO DISCLOSE CANDIDATE LOANED $1 MILLION

“Always, it’s got to be who is going to be a good president. Obviously, you always have to think that because in case of emergency. Things happen, right? No matter who you are, things happen. That’s got to be No. 1,” Trump said.

“Who is your running mate?” Bartiromo said.

“Well, I have a lot of good people. I have a lot of good ideas,” he added, saying he “talks to everybody.”

DEMOCRATS HOLD VAST FUNDRAISING ADVANTAGE AS REPUBLICANS FACE CASH PROBLEMS, DISARRAY IN CRUCIAL SWING STATES

“You know, I called [South Carolina Sen.] Tim Scott and people like Tim Scott, and I said you’re a much better candidate for me than you are for yourself,” Trump said. “When I watched him, he was fine. He was good, but he was very low-key.”

“I watched him in the last week, defending me and sticking up for me and fighting for me. I said, ‘Man, you’re a much better person for me than you are for yourself,'” he continued.

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Trump went on to praise Noem as well, noting that she said publicly that she would never run against him “because I could never beat him.”

Trump denied reports that his campaign reached out to independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to explore a potential ticket with him early on in the campaign season. Trump said the interaction “never happened.”

Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is preparing to bring a stand-alone Israel aid bill for a House vote on Tuesday, three sources told Fox News Digital, but early opposition from his right flank could already force the Republican leader to seek help from Democrats to pass it.

Johnson announced over the weekend that he intends to pass legislation to send $17.6 billion to Israel as it fights a war against Hamas. 

But GOP hardliners have already come out against it, which could force House leaders to fast-track the bill to the floor via suspension of the rules. 

It would bypass a procedural hurdle known as a rule vote in exchange for raising the threshold for passage to two-thirds of the chamber rather than a simple majority.

UN APPOINTS INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF UNRWA AMID ALLEGATIONS ITS WORKERS JOINED HAMAS-LED ATTACK ON ISRAEL

“Congress can pay for Israel aid by cutting funding for the United Nations, repealing the IRS expansion, rescinding the Department of Commerce ‘slush fund’ or ending leftist climate change tax credits,” House Freedom Caucus leaders said on Sunday. “Conservatives should not be forced to choose between borrowing money to support our special friend Israel or honoring our commitment to end unpaid supplemental spending that exacerbate our nation’s unsustainable fiscal crisis and further risks our ability to respond to future crises.”

Rule votes would traditionally fall across party lines; even lawmakers who oppose the legislation itself would vote along with their leadership to pass the rule. But it’s been weaponized several times during the 118th Congress by GOP factions that have deliberately sunk bills in protest of how Republican leaders are handling matters, even those unrelated to the legislation they’re voting on.

BIDEN ADMIN CUTS FUNDING TO CONTROVERSIAL UN AGENCY AMID ALLEGATIONS MEMBERS ASSISTED IN HAMAS MASSACRE

Putting up the Israel aid bill under suspension – which two GOP aides told Fox News Digital they anticipate is likely – would make Democrat support critical to its passage. 

Johnson has used suspension to pass several critical pieces of legislation this year, most recently including a bipartisan, bicameral tax bill. 

Making the situation trickier this time, however, is the Senate’s intent to vote on a $118 billion security agreement that includes a border security overhaul and, among other things, funding for Israel. 

NEW YORK DAD WHO CONFRONTED ANTI-ISRAEL PROTESTERS FELT LIKE ‘HOSTAGE’ IN PRO-PALESTINIAN TRAFFIC JAM

That bill, which is backed by the White House and Senate leaders on both sides, is expected to get a vote on Wednesday.

The White House threatened to veto Johnson’s Israel bill on Monday evening, a move the speaker called “an act of betrayal” – but one that could give more Democrats cover to vote against it.

And House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., blasted Johnson’s bill and accused him of trying to kneecap the Senate deal on former President Trump’s behalf. 

Johnson has repeatedly denied following Trump’s orders, but the former president does vocally oppose the bill.

Jeffries called Johnson’s Israel aid proposal “a cynical attempt to undermine the Senate’s bipartisan effort, given that House Republicans have been ordered by the former president not to pass any border security legislation or assistance for Ukraine.”

But at least two Democrats – Reps. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., and Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., who are both Jewish – have said they would vote in favor of the Israel aid bill on principle, but they criticized Johnson for decoupling it from the wider supplemental funding bill and for not including humanitarian aid for Gaza.

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Pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC also came out in support of the bill on Monday, writing on X, “We urge the House to pass this lifesaving aid package to ensure Israel can win its war against Hamas and protect its families.”

The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations announced Monday night that it’s endorsing both Johnson’s bill and the Senate deal, which includes roughly $14 billion for Israel.

The polls keep getting worse for President Biden.

His approval rating in a new NBC poll has hit a low of 37%, with Donald Trump leading him by 5 points in a hypothetical matchup. Worse, Trump beats him by 20 points on handling the economy.

Just as the press is churning out pieces about rising consumer confidence and the record-breaking stock market – Trump manages to claim credit for that too – it shows the public still has plenty of financial anxiety. 

You can’t use statistics to tell people how they should feel. It doesn’t work that way.

MEDIA MELTDOWN: WHY JOURNALISM IS BATTERED AND BLEEDING

The report last Friday showing a gain of 353,000 jobs in January was an absolute blowout. Economists across the spectrum agreed on that. Larry Kudlow, Trump’s chief economic adviser and now a Fox Business host, said if he was Biden he’d brag about it too, including rising wages.

Here’s what the president did not do:

He didn’t step before the cameras, take credit for the unexpected surge in employment and tout his economic program as a success.

Nope, he put out a statement.

Biden has a thing about statements, but television and the web thrive on video. A statement is read by anchors and hosts for perhaps half a day and then disappears.

So why would Biden pass up a video victory lap?

Which brings me to the point of this column.

Everyone knows that as president, Trump spoke to reporters far more often and did many times more sitdown interviews than his successor. I’ve complained about the lack of press access many times, and clearly it’s not going to change. Even as a former president, Trump makes far more news than his likely opponent.

Biden’s team has concluded that he needs to be protected from the press because he, well, might bumble or stumble or make a mistake – to which I would say, so what? Everyone already knows that about the 81-year-old president.

BIDEN BLASTED FOR PROMOTING OFFICIAL WHO OVERSAW DISASTROUS EVACUATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Consider:

After five days of largely conservative criticism for inaction after that Iranian drone killed three American soldiers, the Biden administration late Friday unleashed airstrikes against 85 targets in Iraq and Syria, killing more than 40 people – and there are said to be more attacks to come.

You might think this was a golden opportunity to play the commander-in-chief card, with a short and perfectly legitimate televised speech on why he ordered the attacks and how anyone who seeks to harm Americans will face the same kind of retaliation.

Uh uh. He put out a statement. Still hasn’t given that speech. I don’t get it either.

We also learned in recent days that, for the second straight year, Biden has refused the offer of a Super Bowl interview.

Talk about a major-league fumble. Massive audience. Usually a lighter tone, with perhaps a couple of hard questions, maybe some Taylor Swift chatter. Barack Obama even took Super Bowl questions from Bill O’Reilly. 

Why wouldn’t an underdog seize such a prime opportunity? Last year, when FOX had the big game, maybe you could say Biden didn’t want to deal with the network, but this time it’s CBS. He can’t handle Norah O’Donnell or Scott Pelley?

And one more. Biden, running against token opposition, surprised no one by winning 96% of the vote in Saturday’s South Carolina primary. That, of course, is the state that rescued his candidacy four years ago.

But Biden wasn’t even in South Carolina. He went to California for fundraising and then to Nevada, which holds the next contest.

If the president had just stayed the night, he could have given a rousing victory speech, and the networks would have run clips for the next couple of days.

So what if he was running against Marianne Williamson and an obscure congressman?

E. JEAN CARROLL GOES ON VICTORY LAP AFTER $83.3 MILLION WIN OVER TRUMP

No speech.

Now some might argue that Biden should get himself on the tube to make a pitch for the Senate’s bipartisan budget bill that both Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson are trying to kill. Ronald Reagan excelled at garnering support this way.

But this is entirely an inside game; appealing to the public wouldn’t matter. Plus, the measure is almost certainly going down. 

In a normal environment, yesterday’s endorsement of the compromise measure by the Border Patrol union would have a huge impact. Not in this hyper-partisan atmosphere.

When Biden met with culinary union workers in Las Vegas yesterday, he spoke briefly to pool reporters.

What about the border bill?

“We don’t have enough folks. We don’t have enough judges. You don’t have enough folks here. We need help. Why won’t they give me the help?”

How would that happen? His answer was inaudible.

A reporter asked about King Charles’s cancer diagnosis.

“I’m concerned about him. Just heard about his diagnosis,” and hopes to speak with him “God willing.”

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That is how POTUS communicates with the press these days, with short, clipped answers.

At least the helicopter engines weren’t drowning him out.

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has applied for Secret Service protection because of increasing threats she has received on the campaign trail, Haley’s team confirmed to Fox News on Monday.

The former two-term South Carolina governor who later served as U.N. ambassador in former President Donald Trump’s administration is Trump’s last remaining major rival for the 2024 GOP nomination.

Haley discussed the request for protection in an interview Monday afternoon with The Wall Street Journal.

“We’ve had multiple issues,” the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador said after a campaign event in Aiken, South Carolina. “It’s not going to stop me from doing what I need to do.”

HALEY TOUTS JANUARY FUNDRAISING HAUL AHEAD OF FIRST RALLY IN SUPER TUESDAY STATE

Haley was asked at a news conference in Columbia, S.C. late last week about increased levels of security at her events.

WHAT NIKKI HALEY TOLD FOX DIGITAL ABOUT WHAT SHE NEEDS TO DO TO KEEP RUNNING

“When you do something like this, you get threats,” she told reporters. “It’s just the reality.”

Haley mentioned the need to “put a few more bodies around us,” but that it hadn’t affected her campaigning.

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“At the end of the day, we’re going to go out there and touch every hand, we’re going to answer every question, we’re going to make sure that we are there and doing everything that we need to,” she added.

Hours after Haley spoke to reporters, a heckler was removed from her campaign event in Hilton Head, South Carolina.

Once a very long shot for the nomination, Haley enjoyed momentum in the polls in the late summer and autumn, thanks in part to well-received performances in the first three GOP presidential primary debates.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis dropped out of the race last month, two days ahead of the Jan. 23 New Hampshire primary, making the nomination race a two-candidate showdown between Haley and Trump, who’s the commanding frontrunner as he runs a third straight time for the White House.

Haley captured 43% of the vote in New Hampshire, trailing Trump by 11 points.

The next major contest on the Republican schedule is Haley’s home state, which holds its GOP primary on Feb. 24. The latest public opinion survey indicates the former president has a large double-digit lead over Haley.

Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.

A fourth co-defendant in the Georgia case against former president Donald Trump has filed a motion for the court to disqualify embattled District Attorney Fani Willis. 

Co-defendant David Shafer, who in 2020 served as the Georgia GOP Chairman and a GOP presidential elector for Georgia during the 2020 election, filed a motion in court Monday saying Willis has engaged in a “pattern of prosecutorial, forensic misconduct” which he says should disqualify not only her, but her entire office and prosecution staff. 

Shafer’s motion follows co-defendant Michael Roman’s claims that Willis engaged in an “improper” relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade whom she hired to prosecute the sprawling racketeering case against Trump and asked the court to disqualify her from the case.

Willis on Friday responded to the allegations in a court filing and admitted to having a “personal” relationship with Wade but denied any conflict of interest. She also argued that according to Georgia law, in order for a district attorney to be forcibly removed from a case, the conflict of interest has to be harmful to a defendant’s case. 

FULTON COUNTY DA FANI WILLIS ADMITS PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH PROSECUTOR BUT DENIES CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Shafer on Monday claimed that Willis has a “pattern of prejudicial public statements” about the case through various media interviews and public speeches, and claimed that in making such statements, she intended to “reject and infect the jury pool.” Shafer and his lawyers argue that this is primarily what warrants her removal. 

The court filing Monday references when Willis first addressed the affair allegations in January during remarks she made at Bethel AME Church in Atlanta.

“They only attacked one,” she said. “First thing they say, ‘Oh, she’s gonna play the race card now.’

“But no God, isn’t it them that’s playing the race card when they only question one,” Willis asked.

FANI WILLIS WHO ‘RELISHED IN’ DONALD TRUMP PROSECUTION SHOULD BE REMOVED FROM CASE FOR ILLICIT AFFAIR: EXPERTS

“You cannot expect Black women to be perfect and save the world,” Willis said, adding that “we need to be allowed to stumble. We need grace.” 

Shafer argued in Monday’s court filing that, “The obvious intent of her remarks was to inject and infect the jury pool in Fulton County with unfounded allegations that anyone who dares question her or Mr. Wade’s conduct must have done so for racist purposes.”

“As an attorney and, most importantly, a public prosecutor, her comments which directly affected the pending litigation were indefensible and reprehensible. These comments constitute prosecutorial, forensic misconduct and warrant her removal and that of her Office from the prosecution of this case,” the filing states. 

In legal filings last month, Roman alleged that Wade billed Fulton County for 24 hours of work on a single day in November 2021, shortly after being appointed as a special prosecutor, and that Willis financially benefited from her alleged lover’s padded taxpayer-funded salary by taking lavish vacations together on his dime. 

According to the court documents, Wade, who has no RICO and felony prosecution experience, billed taxpayers $654,000 since January 2022.  

Shafer also argues that Willis’ employment of Wade “to investigate and prosecute the defendants and payments to Mr. Wade of over a half a million dollars from the Fulton County treasury while allowing Mr. Wade to pay for vacations for the District Attorney and other personal expenses constitutes a disqualifying conflict of interest as well as a violation of ethical rules applicable to attorneys and Fulton County employees, and potentially criminal law.”

The motion also claims that Willis’ “improper and inaccurate characterization” of Shafer and the other 2020 nominee Republican Presidential Electors as “Fake Electors” to the national media “has been exceedingly prejudicial” to Shafer, noting that “at all times material” to her indictment, Shafer was qualified as a “lawful” Presidential Elector pursuant to Georgia law through his nomination as a Presidential Elector by the Georgia Republican Party.

Shafer asked the court to keep in place a Feb. 15 evidentiary hearing set by Judge Scott McAfee, in which the parties will present evidence to try and compel the court to remove Willis and her office from the case.  

GEORGIA HOUSE VOTES TO REVIVE PROSECUTOR OVERSIGHT PANEL THAT COULD OUST FANI WILLIS

Shafer’s lawyer, Craig A. Gillen, wrote Monday that he “understands and appreciates that an evidentiary hearing regarding the District Attorney’s forensic misconduct and the financial aspects of District Attorney Willis and Mr. Wade’s personal relationship that create these disqualifying conflicts of interest is unseemly and an uncomfortable experience for all involved,” and that he “does not pursue these claims lightly.”

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“But, as noted,” Gillen states, “District Attorney Willis and Mr. Wade are not victims here—these are all self-inflicted and completely avoidable errors in which the defense had no hand, but are of such significance that the defense has no choice but to put them before the Court.”

Gillen said in the filing that Willis’ discomfort “pales in comparison to what Mr. Shafer – a presumptively and actually innocent man – has endured.”

“His life has been upended by unwarranted and meritless charges filed by District Attorney Willis (that she does not have the legal authority or jurisdiction to pursue),” the filing states. 

The Fulton County District Attorney’s office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.