EXCLUSIVE: An influential House GOP caucus is urging Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to work with ‘willing partners’ in the Senate on a border security reform deal in a Tuesday morning letter outlining their priorities for the new GOP leader.

The business-minded Main Street Caucus outlined three major points they are calling the speaker’s attention to: Avoiding a government shutdown, establishing a debt commission, and enhancing national security.

‘Main Street Republicans stand ready to work with you to continue advancing a pragmatic, conservative agenda during the remainder of the 118th Congress,’ the letter said.

On national security, the GOP lawmakers specifically called for Johnson’s attention to border security and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). 

House Republicans’ border security bill H.R. 2, a marquee piece of legislation for the GOP majority, has been declared a non-starter for the Democratically-held Senate and White House. Conservatives’ attempts to attach it to a stopgap spending bill for averting a government shutdown were thwarted by Republican hardliners opposed to any short-term funding. 

But Main Street Republicans suggested they would support a watered-down version of the deal if it could pass the upper chamber of Congress.

‘While our bill did not pass the House, it was clear there was willingness among many Senators to find solutions to the border crisis,’ the letter said. ‘We ask that you prioritize a plan to secure the border with willing partners in the Senate as soon as possible.’

On the FISA front, their call to reauthorize it ‘with input from across the Conference’ is likely to cause friction with a few of the more libertarian members of the House GOP.

The lawmakers are also calling on Johnson to avoid a government shutdown ‘by immediately resuming the appropriations schedule that was interrupted’ by ex-Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s removal nearly four weeks ago.

‘Funding to pay our troops and [Customs and Border Patrol] agents and officers and to keep government open expires on November 17, and the House is far behind its projected schedule,’ the letter said.

And if a short-term extension of last year’s funding is needed to buy lawmakers more time, the Main Street Caucus urged Johnson to tack on an extension of the Farm Bill – a must-pass piece of legislation covering a wide range of programs, from rural broadband to urban food assistance. 

Johnson has already made clear he will prioritize passing the House GOP’s 12 individual appropriations bills. Hours before he was elected speaker last week, Johnson released a tentative schedule outlining how the remaining bills will get done. 

The House passed its fifth spending bill the day after Johnson was elected, and the speaker is aiming to pass three more this week. 

The Main Street Caucus’s remaining priority is the establishment of a bipartisan, bicameral commission to study the federal debt – something Johnson also suggested was a goal of his. 

The letter is just one set of priorities Johnson will have to deal with as he takes control of the House GOP’s razor-thin majority. He was elected unanimously by the House Republican Conference last week.

A Florida Republican congresswoman is introducing a bipartisan bill to strip the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) of taxpayer funding until the international body condemns the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., on Monday introduced the Stand With Israel Act to withhold U.S. funding to the UNHRC until a resolution is passed condemning Hamas after the group’s deadly surprise terrorist attack on Israel on October 7.

‘It should not be a heavy lift for the UN, which claims to promote global human rights, to pass a resolution condemning what will go down in history as one of the deadliest attacks against the Jewish people,’ Luna said in a press release exclusively obtained by Fox News Digital.

‘The United States should not fund the UN Human Rights Council until it stops targeting our closest ally,’ Luna said. ‘The UN must unequivocally condemn Hamas’s utter disregard for human life and the terror they are inflicting on Israelis and the innocent Palestinians they use as human shields.’

Luna said that until ‘this institution can defend objective human rights, not subjective ideological bias, it is a scourge to the values it claims to champion.’

‘The hypocrisy in all of this is while the UNHRC lectures Israel on defense, China (one of their HRC members) is actively putting Muslims in concentration camps,’ Luna said. ‘It’s time they save the world their virtue-signaling and we defund them.’

The Stand With Israel Act prohibits taxpayer funds from going toward the UNHRC until both the U.N. Security Council and U.N. General Assembly adopt a clear resolution condemning the Palestinian terrorist organization.

Luna’s bill has several co-sponsors, including Democrat Florida Rep. Jared Moskowitz and Republican Reps. Brian Babin, Lance Gooden, and Randy Weber of Texas; Andy Biggs of Arizona; Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma; Eric Burlison of Missouri; John Curtis of Utah; Nicole Malliotakis and George Santos of New York; Mary Miller of Illinois; Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey; Andy Ogles of Tennessee; and Victoria Spartz of Indiana.

‘The UN’s inability to condemn Hamas’ barbaric terrorist attacks on Israel is an absolute disgrace to the international community,’ said Van Drew. ‘The United States should not be providing taxpayer dollars to a body that fails to uphold the very principles of human rights it was created to protect.’

‘The UNHRC should be ashamed and not a single cent of American tax dollars should fund this corrupt organization,’ said Burlison. 

‘That the United Nations—intended to promote and protect all human rights around the globe—can’t muster the decency to denounce one of the most egregious genocidal terror organizations is reprehensible,’ said Weber. ‘The horrors perpetrated by Hamas in killing thousands of Israelis are the definition of a blatant attack on human rights. Still, the historically anti-Semitic UN ‘human rights’ Council continues to prove that it is utterly useless, and it must be defunded.’

Luna’s bill comes as United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres faces calls to resign over a speech that critics said rationalized Hamas’ actions.

Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan on Tuesday urged Guterres to resign, ripping into the U.N. secretary-general for ostensibly rationalizing Hamas’ murder of 1,400, including Americans, Oct. 7 in Israel.

Guterres responded to the criticism against him by noting in a statement outside the U.N. Security Council, ‘I am shocked by the misrepresentations by some of my statements yesterday in the Security Council. As if… as if I was justifying acts of terror by Hamas. This is false. It was the opposite.’

The U.N. has long faced accusations of antisemitism. 

In 1975, a majority of U.N. member states passed a resolution equating the founding philosophy of the state of Israel — Zionism — with racism. Member states overturned the resolution in 1991, but critics say it damaged the reputation of the Middle East’s only democratic state, Israel. 

Fox News Digital’s Benjamin Weinthal contributed reporting.

FIRST ON FOX: House lawmakers are eyeing legislation to make dating app users more aware of potential scammers who tricked victims out of more than $1 billion in a single year. 

Rep. David Valadao, R-Calif., is reintroducing his Online Dating Safety Act this week alongside Rep. Brittany Pettersen, D-Colo.

If passed the bill would force dating apps and services to send users a fraud notification when they have interacted with someone banned from the app for using a fake identity or using the app to defraud others. 

‘It is alarmingly easy for predators online to lie about their identity and manipulate innocent people,’ Valadao told Fox News Digital. ‘While we can’t stop all criminals from abusing these platforms, the Online Dating Safety Act is an important step to enhance online safety, combat fraud and help people make more informed decisions.’

Pettersen called dating apps ‘a new frontier for criminals and scammers looking to exploit vulnerable individuals online and regulations are lagging behind.’

‘Notifying users if they have been in contact with a potential scammer is a basic security feature that every online dating service should provide,’ Pettersen said.

Nearly 70,000 people reported being the victims of a romance scam in 2022, according to a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) report from earlier this year. 

The median loss was $4,400, according to the report, with total losses at roughly $1.3 billion.

Nearly a quarter of reported victims said the scammer told them that they or someone close to them are sick, hurt or in jail, the FTC report said, making it the most common reason listed.

The second and third most popular scam was being offered insights or lessons on how to invest money, followed by claims of being in the military.

Forty percent of people scammed said they were first contacted on social media, followed by 19% on apps or websites.

A Senate hearing on a supplemental funding package to assist Israel in its war against Hamas descended into chaos Tuesday morning as more than a dozen hecklers were detained after yelling at Secretary of State Antony Blinken for a ‘cease-fire now!’ 

The unrest boiled over immediately after Blinken began speaking at the Senate Appropriations Committee meeting, with the first heckler screaming at Blinken to ‘stop supporting the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the people of Gaza.’ 

‘Cease-fire now! Save the children of Gaza, save the children of Gaza!’ the man shouted as his voice was cracking.  

‘Where is your pride, America?’ he asked the hearing room while being dragged out by security. 

LIVE UPDATES: ISRAEL AT WAR WITH HAMAS 

Less than a minute later, another woman stood up behind Blinken holding a sign reading ‘No More $$$ 4 Israel’ and began interrupting his statement. 

‘Not one senator is calling for a cease-fire, shame on you all!’ she yelled. 

Blinken then was interrupted several more times, with one of the protesters identifying herself as a former Army colonel and diplomat. 

‘I resigned on that war in Iraq that you talked about. That was a terrible thing. And what we’re doing right now in supporting Israel’s genocide of Gaza is a terrible thing, too,’ she said. 

Blinken never looked behind him as the chaos was unfolding, telling the committee that President Biden’s supplemental funding request for Congress ‘provides for our enduring support to Israel and Ukraine to democracies under brutal assault by actors determined to wipe their nations off the map.  

‘It will ensure that Israel can continue to defend its people by building on the diplomatic, security and intelligence support that the United States has surged since Hamas’ appalling slaughter,’ he said, referencing the Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel that launched the war. 

FLORIDA REPUBLICAN URGES DEFUNDING UN HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL UNTIL UN CONDEMNS HAMAS 

He later mentioned the protesters at the hearing, saying, ‘I also hear very much the passions expressed in this room and outside this room.  

‘All of us are committed to the protection of civilian life. All of us know the suffering that is taking place as we speak. All of us are determined to see it end. But all of us know the imperative of standing up with our allies and partners when their security, when their democracy are threatened,’ Blinken said. ‘That’s what’s happening now. We stand resolutely with them as we stand resolutely for the protection of innocent civilians.’ 

More than a dozen hecklers were removed from the hearing, and a large police presence formed outside the room. 

‘Secretary Blinken, I just really want to thank the Capitol Police for their very calm and professional manner. We all appreciate it,’ Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said at one point. 

Fox News’ Tyler Olson contributed to this report. 

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says that two of its soldiers were killed during fighting on Tuesday, the first such casualties in Gaza since Israel began its ground operations there.

Until this week, Israel had largely relied on airstrikes and artillery to retaliate against Hamas’ massacre in Israel on Oct. 7. The IDF began expanded ground operations this week, however, and troops are now confronted with the deadly task of clearing out Hamas tunnels and other fortified positions.

The two deceased soldiers were both 20 years old. At least two other Israeli soldiers were wounded in the same fighting.

Israeli leaders have vowed to destroy Hamas in Gaza entirely. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed calls for a cease-fire in a speech on Monday.

‘Calls for a cease-fire are calls for Israel to surrender to Hamas, to surrender to terrorism, to surrender to barbarism. That will not happen,’ Netanyahu said.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, the Bible says that there is a time for peace and a time for war. This is a time for war – a war for our common future,’ he continued. ‘Today, we draw a line between the forces of civilization and the forces of barbarism. It is a time for everyone to decide where they stand. Israel will stand against the forces of barbarism until victory. I hope and pray that civilized nations everywhere will back this fight.’

Israeli forces entered the second stage of their conflict with Hamas this week, greatly expanding ground operations within the Gaza Strip. Military officials have warned that the war will be long and difficult.

Netanyahu also said Monday that the ‘horrors that Hamas perpetrated on Oct. 7 remind us that we will not realize the promise of a better future unless we, the civilized world, are willing to fight the barbarians.’

‘Because the barbarians are willing to fight us. And their goal is clear — shatter that promising future, destroy all that we cherish and usher in a world of fear and darkness,’ he continued.

As of Tuesday, as many as 9,900 people have been killed in the war on both sides, including at least 1,400 Israeli civilians and soldiers and 32 Americans.

Fox News’ Trey Yingst contributed to this report.

FIRST ON FOX: Republicans on the House Budget Committee are demanding a full accounting of all funds sent by the United States to Ukraine amid its war with Russia.

Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, and Budget Committee Oversight Task Force Chairman Jack Bergman, R-Mich., directed a letter to Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Shalanda Young, demanding transparency regarding the strategy behind sending billions of dollars overseas.

‘It has now been over 20 months since Russia invaded Ukraine. Congress has provided $114 billion in supplemental appropriations – not including potentially billions in additional repurposed, transferred, and reprogrammed funds – and yet we are no closer to getting a clear picture of the Biden Administration’s strategy for providing U.S. assistance in Ukraine,’ the letter reads, asserting that Congress remains in the dark on how funds are being spent.

In a press release shared first with Fox News Digital, the committee urged ‘the Biden Administration be accountable, transparent, and most importantly, honest, with the American people about funding for Ukraine.’

Members of the Budget Committee, alongside Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, sent an initial letter to OMB in January regarding the continuous funding to Ukraine, but have yet to receive a response as of October.

‘What has become abundantly clear, however, is that this conflict is far from over – therefore, it is imperative that the Biden Administration be accountable, transparent, and most importantly, honest, with the American people about funding for Ukraine,’ the committee wrote. ‘As you are aware, it is Congress that has the power of the purse, and there’s no excuse for Congress to be unaware of how congressionally appropriated funds are being spent.’

The United States sent over $100 billion of taxpayer dollars to Ukraine since the beginning of its war against Russia, according to the White House. 

The committee seeks to understand where each dollar went, specifically demanding ‘a full accounting of expenditures, transfers and reprogrammed funds, as well as obligations, apportionments, and outlays for each appropriations account providing assistance to Ukraine.’

As the House seeks to gain answers on past funding expenditures to Ukraine, President Biden’s OMB is asking Congress to pass an emergency supplemental funding package that would supply even more aid to the country amid its conflict with Russia.

The $100 billion package also includes assistance to Israel and U.S. southern border funding, but it gives $61.4 billion to Ukraine and only $14.3 billion to Israel amid its brutal war with Hamas.

The request was quickly counteracted by Senate Republicans who are seeking to eliminate additional Ukraine funding from aid packages to Israel. GOP Sens. Vance, Roger Marshall, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee introduced the Israel Supplemental Appropriations Act, which seeks to increase Israel’s defense capabilities against Hamas and contains no additional funding to Ukraine.

As Congress scrambles to align on an aid package, the House Budget Committee seeks to ensure that the Biden administration’s ‘spending and revenue decisions are transparent.’

‘Pursuant of Rule X the Committee on the Budget has jurisdiction over ‘the budget process generally,’ including the executive budget process. The Committee’s responsibilities in this area include ‘ensuring spending and revenue decisions are transparent and effectively carried out by the Executive Branch,’’ the committee’s letter read. ‘This entails the duty to elicit accurate information about expenditure and related matters from the Executive Branch to keep the federal government accountable to the American people.’

The committee also requests Young testify before the House Budget Committee on the spending of the funds.

Fox News’ Jamie Joseph contributed to this report.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has admitted to lawmakers Tuesday that ‘we have to anticipate’ some of the humanitarian aid flowing into the Gaza Strip will end up in the hands of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. 

Blinken made the remark in front of the Senate Appropriations Committee as he said the U.S. is trying to coordinate 100 trucks of aid per day into the conflict zone this week, arguing that it is the ‘bare minimum of what is needed.’ 

‘Can I promise you in this committee that there’ll be 100% delivery to the designated recipients? No, there will inevitably be some spillage,’ he said. ‘We haven’t seen it to date, but I think we have to anticipate that. But the overwhelming, overwhelming majority of the assistance thus far is getting to people who need it. And we need more.’ 

Blinken said so far, the U.S. has gotten up to 50 trucks of aid per day into the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. 

LIVE UPDATES: ISRAEL AT WAR WITH HAMAS 

‘Before the conflict in Gaza, before Hamas’ aggression against Israel and its response, the U.N. and other agencies and other organizations providing relief were sending in between 500 and 800 hundred trucks a day,’ he said. ‘Right now, we’re up to almost 60. We’re trying to get to 100 this week.’ 

When asked about the process to make sure the aid is not going to terrorists, Blinken said ‘from day one, we have been working with the Israeli government, with Egypt, with the U.N. agencies, as well as with other actors to try to make sure that assistance could get in to people who need it in Gaza, but get in, in a way that doesn’t go to the people who don’t need it. And that’s Hamas. 

HECKLERS SCREAM AT BLINKEN FOR ISRAEL-HAMAS ‘CEASEFIRE’ DURING SENATE HEARING 

‘So we’ve set up a system where assistance is coming through Rafah, the gate between Egypt and Gaza. The assistance is checked by Israel at a site that has been established to do that, so that every truck that goes in is verified by Israel as well as by the Egyptian authorities. The trucks go in. These are U.N. trucks. They go in, they connect to other U.N. trucks on the other side of the line in Gaza. These trucks then go to distribution facilities that are run by U.N. agencies,’ Blinken explained.  

‘The supplies are then taken from those agencies to various points to hospitals to bakeries, because bread is critical and to other end points throughout this process, we have an ability and others have an ability to track where the assistance is going,’ he added. ‘We’re then able to do monitoring on the other end by contacting the designated recipients to ensure that it’s actually gotten to where it’s supposed to go and not been diverted.  

People in China are calling attention to the fact that the state of Israel is not present on online maps in China, a concerning development given China’s historical obsession with map boundaries.

While it is unclear when Chinese companies like Baidu and Alibaba removed references to Israel, Chinese internet users began discussing the absence after Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre.

Searching for ‘Israel’ on Baidu’s map portal prompts it to zoom in on the correct region, but Israel’s name is absent from the map despite cities like Jerusalem being correctly marked.

Israel’s neighbors like Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt also appear and are named accurately on the maps.

China has a long history of hyperfocusing on maps. It has redrawn maps in recent months in an effort to lay claim to disputed territory in spats with India and Malaysia.

India in August formally lodged an objection through diplomatic channels with the Chinese on the so-called 2023 ‘standard map’ that lays claim to India’s territory.

The version of the Chinese map published earlier that month on the Ministry of Natural Resources website clearly shows Arunachal Pradesh and the Doklam Plateau, over which the two sides have feuded, included within Chinese borders, along with Aksai Chin in the western section that China controls but India still claims.

China’s strong relationship with Iran may be a reason for Israel’s absence from the map. China remains Iran’s largest trading partner, and Iran is the prime source of funding for both Hamas and Hezbollah, terror groups devoted to the destruction of Israel.

The U.S. has also acknowledged China’s obsession with maps. In 2021, President Biden’s administration cut a video feed of a Taiwanese minister when the map behind her depicted China and Taiwan in different colors.

The map showed Taiwan in green, signaling it was ‘open’ to civil rights, while China remained red and was marked ‘closed.’ The feed was cut after roughly one minute.

China has long claimed ownership over Taiwan, though the self-governed island operates independently.

A high-ranking United Nations official has retired after calling for a one-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. In his letter, the official wrote on what he called ‘essential points’ regarding the war between Israel and Hamas terrorists.

In what was described as his ‘last official communication’ as the director of the New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Craig Mokhiber sent an Oct. 28 letter to Volker Türk of Austria, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, detailing what he believes a ‘U.N.-norm-based position’ on the war would look like.

In what critics are calling comments devoid of historic fact, Mokhiber called for a one-state solution, which could mean the end of the Jewish state.

‘We must support the establishment of a single, democratic, secular state in all of historic Palestine, with equal rights for Christians, Muslims and Jews, and, therefore, the dismantling of the deeply racist, settler-colonial project and an end to apartheid across the land,’ Mokhiber stated.

‘Mokhiber wrote this letter as one of the U.N.’s highest ranking ‘human rights’ officials, on U.N. letterhead, with a U.N. email address,’ professor Anne Bayefsky, the director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, told Fox News Digital. ‘As such, his overt call for the destruction of the Jewish state lays bare what is really going on at the U.N. in the war now being waged by and at the U.N. against Israel.’

‘Listen to Mokhiber’s chilling words. Yes, Israel is engaged in an existential fight. At the U.N., there are human rights for everyone but Jews, who are supposed to lay down their arms in the face of a genocidal enemy currently enslaving their people. Mokhiber’s phony ‘human rights’ cover is extremely disturbing. He says equality means 21 Arab states, 56 Islamic states and zero Jewish states. That’s antisemitism dressed up as human rights,’ Bayefsky added.

Just last week, Israel’s U.N. ambassador, Gilad Erdan, called for the secretary-general’s resignation following a speech on the issue. Antonio Guterres said Hamas’ attacks ‘did not happen in a vacuum,’ and the ‘Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.’ Erdan called Guterres’ words a ‘pure blood libel.’

Guterres responded to the criticism against him, saying, ‘I am shocked by the misrepresentations by some of my statements yesterday in the Security Council. As if … I was justifying acts of terror by Hamas. This is false. It was the opposite.’

The U.N. has long faced accusations by critics of antisemitism and anti-Israel hatred.

Mokhiber’s letter also took aim at the U.S. and Western allies.

‘This is a text-book case of genocide,’ he wrote. ‘The European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase, toward the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine. What’s more, the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, and much of Europe, are wholly complicit in the horrific assault. Not only are these governments refusing to meet their treaty obligations ‘to ensure respect’ for the Geneva Conventions, but they are in fact actively arming the assault, providing economic and intelligence support, and giving political and diplomatic cover for Israel’s atrocities.’

In a statement to Fox News, the Office of Human Rights said, ‘Mr. Mokhiber retires today. The views in his letter are his personal views. The position of the Office is reflected in its public reporting and statements.’

Bayefsky noted that, ‘If he indeed suddenly ‘retired,’ instead of immediately being fired, it means the U.N. has made some kind of deal to save his pension. A new outrage – and one that leaves U.S. taxpayers on the hook.’

A spokesperson for the U.N. secretary-general did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on whether Mokhiber’s comments were representative of the U.N. as a whole or whether they are sentiments shared by Guterres.

Fox News’ Benjamin Weinthal and Courtney De George contributed to this article.