Some Republicans in the House are using a Homeland Security appropriations bill to push for sweeping amendments that would overhaul immigration enforcement, including hitting sanctuary cities, in response to the ongoing migrant crisis at the southern border.

While much of the energy on Capitol Hill is geared toward avoiding a government shutdown at the end of the month, Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, has introduced a slew of amendments to the appropriations bill, which funds the Department of Homeland Security for the upcoming fiscal year.

The vast majority of those amendments are focused on immigration and border security.

They include one that would bar funding for the processing of asylum claims from illegal immigrants who have passed through a prior country — a more intense version of the Biden administration’s efforts to limit asylum claims to those who have crossed illegally and failed to claim asylum in a country through which they have already passed.

Another amendment would adopt legislation to prioritize the removal of certain illegal immigrants, another would bar money from being made available for the release of illegal immigrants into the interior. One amendment would block money from being used for migrant transports in the interior without 72-hour notifications to the state and local officials of the destination and notification on the DHS website — tapping into concerns about late-night migrant flights.

Nehls wants to include language that would bar federal funding from going to ‘sanctuary’ cities — jurisdictions that block cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Conservatives say sanctuary policies in New York City and elsewhere encourage migrants to cross border.

The lawmaker wants to increase the number of ICE detention beds back to the numbers seen during the Trump administration, which have decreased under the Biden administration. Another amendment would require DHS to keep a minimum of 14,000 enforcement officers or else lose funding.

In a statement to Fox News Digital, Nehls said that Republicans had been given the majority ‘for a reason’ and said they have an obligation to hold the administration accountable.

‘This starts with stopping the flow of illegal aliens burdening communities, combating human trafficking, and fighting the influx of fentanyl and illicit drugs poisoning our communities,’ he said.

He also pointed to separate amendments by lawmakers to limit Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ salary to $1.

‘Taxpayer dollars should be used to secure our nation, not further spread the consequences of an open border. I was sent to Congress to fight for Texas, and I speak for them when I say they are sick and damn tired of empty promises,’ he said. ‘No security, no funding.’

Nehls’ amendments in particular got the support of hawkish groups. RJ Hauman, president of the National Immigration Center for Enforcement (NICE) who also serves as a visiting adviser at the Heritage Foundation, said Nehls is making the appropriation bill stronger.

‘His amendments address asylum abuse, provide more detention beds and ICE agents, make sure detention centers remain fully operational, and stop taxpayer dollars from flowing to sanctuary cities,’ he told Fox News Digital. ‘Every Republican — from leadership to rank and file — should unite behind what their border state colleague is seeking to do.’

Other amendments being submitted include an amendment from Rep. Scott DesJarlais, R-Tenn., to bar money from being used for programs that use humanitarian parole to release migrants into the interior.

It marks the latest House Republican effort to push back against the agenda of the Biden administration on immigration. Some Republicans have pushed for Mayorkas’ impeachment or have suggested defunding the agency.

Meanwhile, Republicans have passed their own legislation — the Secure the Border Act — which would restrict the use of parole to release migrants, limit the use of the CBP One app, increase Border Patrol agent numbers and restart border wall construction.

The Biden administration has pushed back against Republican criticism, calling on Congress to approve more funding and to pass comprehensive immigration reform — including a pathway to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants. It has also said its policies of expanding migrant parole pathways and renewing what it says are consequences for illegal entry — while pursuing more funding — are working, given the ‘broken’ system in which the agency says it is working.

‘Congress should work with us to keep our country safe, build on the progress DHS is making, and deliver desperately needed reforms for our broken immigration system that only legislation can fix,’ a spokesperson told Fox this week.

Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin refused to rule out throwing his hat into the ring for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination on Sunday.

Youngkin appeared on ‘Fox News Sunday’ with host Shannon Bream and repeatedly dodged questions about whether he had shut the door on a presidential run. Youngkin deflected by saying he was focused on the Virginia state assembly election slated for this fall.

‘You can’t run again for governor in Virginia. What are you thinking about in 2024? Are you definitively ruling it in or out?’ Bream asked.

‘Shannon, I’ve been really clear. I’ve been so focused on 2023. It’s the most important election in the nation in my view,’ Youngkin responded. ‘We have a chance to demonstrate that common sense conservative policies can, in fact, result in great outcomes.’

Youngkin went on to tout his administration’s accomplishments, highlighting his education policies and Virginia’s strong economy.

‘That sounds like a stump speech,’ Bream said. ‘Any chance you would take those skills toward running in 2024 for the presidency?’

‘As I’ve said, I’m not in Iowa at the state fair, I was actually at the Rockingham County fair,’ Youngkin said. ‘I’m campaigning in Virginia for Virginians, not around the country.’

‘Ok, I will leave that as the door still seems like there might be a little crack open there,’ Bream finished.

If Youngkin does announce a presidential campaign, he would be joining an already stacked field of candidates trailing distantly behind former President Donald Trump.

Trump has maintained a commanding lead in polls throughout the Republican primary. While the criminal indictments against him threaten to tank his campaign, they also have resulted in major support from Republicans. Trump received a surge in donations after each indictment announcement this year.

Earlier in his ‘Fox News Sunday’ appearance, Youngkin emphasized the importance of his education policies as children across the country recover from the ‘catastrophic learning loss’ of the pandemic.

The governor also stated that parents must remain the ultimate authority when it comes to their children’s education.

Youngkin’s administration is currently cracking down on Virginia public schools that refuse to adequately enforce reforms requiring that parents be informed if their child expresses any gender confusion at school.

Dr. Anthony Fauci on Sunday said he believes recommendations to mask up could make a return this fall and winter, should the U.S. see a spike in cases of COVID-19. 

Fauci, the former White House chief medical advisor, appeared on ABC’s ‘This Week’ to discuss a recent rise in COVID cases and potential precautions heading into the colder months.

‘I can see that if we get a significant uptick in cases that you may see the recommendation that masks be used under certain circumstances in indoor crowded settings,’ Fauci said, adding that he does not foresee any federal mandates.

‘I would be extremely surprised if we would see that,’ he said, referring to a mandate. ‘There may be local organizations that may require masks, but I think what we’re going to see mostly are, if the cases go up, that there might be recommendations, not mandates. There’s a big difference there.’

Fauci said that the current rise in cases has resulted in a spike of ’17 or more percent in hospitalizations,’ adding that the number will increase going into the fall and winter months.

Despite the rising cases, Fauci said that hospitals likely won’t be inundated with patients.

‘I think none of us in the public health field are predicting that this is going to be a tsunami of hospitalizations and deaths the way we saw a year or more ago,’ Fauci said, adding that boosters will likely be available before the end of September.

After Fauci made similar comments on a possible return of mask-wearing recommendations, several physicians spoke to Fox News Digital, arguing that masks will not reduce the spread of the virus.

‘Let’s face it, regardless of mask usage, the population en masse will be exposed to SARS-COV-2, and its variants, as is the case with influenza,’ said Dr. Brett Osborn, a board-certified neurosurgeon in West Palm Beach, Florida.

‘This intermittent fluctuation is the new norm, so expect it — as COVID-19 is here to stay,’ Osborn added.

Fox News Digital’s Melissa Rudy contributed to this report.

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Vice President Harris responded to smack talk from Republican 2024 presidential candidates Sunday, claiming that the GOP is ‘scared that we will win.’

Harris made the comments during an appearance on CBS’ ‘Face the Nation’ on Sunday. Host Margaret Brennan asked Harris about comments from various Republican candidates stating that re-electing President Biden would essentially be voting to make her president.

Brennan quoted Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis, who called Harris ‘impeachment insurance’ for Biden.

‘People know if she were president – Katie bar the door. As bad as Biden did, it would get worse,’ DeSantis said.

‘We’re delivering for the American people,’ Harris responded. And the reality of it is that, unfortunately, very few of those who challenge our administration actually have a plan for America. You look at what we have accomplished, Margaret. We have created over 800,000 new manufacturing jobs in America, 13 million new jobs, unemployment at record lows. We have capped the cost of insulin for seniors at $35 a month. Capped the cost of prescription drugs on an annual basis at $2,000,’ Harris responded.

‘They’re honing in on you. Why do you think that is? How do you respond to those attacks? That’s not about policy, that’s about you,’ Brennan asked.

‘Listen, this is not new. There’s nothing new about that. I mean, listen, I am — in my career, I was a career prosecutor. I was the first woman elected district attorney of San Francisco, a major city in this country, and re-elected. I was the first woman attorney general of the second-largest Department of Justice in the United States and re-elected. I was a United States senator,’ Harris said. ‘I represented one in eight Americans, and I’m now Vice President of the United States. They feel the need to attack because they’re scared that we will win based on the merit of the work that Joe Biden and I, and our administration, has done.’

Harris went on to say that she is ‘prepared’ to serve as commander-in-chief if Biden is no longer fit to serve, but she insisted that Biden is ‘going to be fine.’

Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie have made the same criticism of the Biden-Harris ticket as DeSantis. Biden would be 86 by the end of a second term, and the Republicans say Harris would effectively be the president.

‘I want to be clear that I pray every night for Joe Biden’s good health, not only because he’s our president, but because of who our vice president is,’ Christie said recently.

Biden is the oldest person in American history to run for president, followed closely by former President Donald Trump, who is 77.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken twice declined to criticize Elon Musk after the SpaceX founder said he refused to help the Ukrainian government access his Starlink internet service in order to attack Russia.

Blinken was pressed by CNN’s Jake Tapper to comment on details in a new book confirmed by Musk, including that he refused the Ukrainian government’s requests to activate Starlink, a satellite internet service run by SpaceX, in Crimea so it could launch a submarine drone attack against Russian naval forces.

‘There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol,’ Musk posted Thursday on X. ‘The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor. If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.’

Tapper asked Blinken whether Musk should face repercussions after he ‘effectively sabotaged a military operation by Ukraine, a U.S. ally, against Russia, an aggressor country that invaded a U.S. ally.’

‘Jake, I can’t speak to a specific episode. Here’s what I can tell you: Starlink has been a vital tool for the Ukrainians to be able to communicate with each other and particularly for the military to communicate in their effort to defend all of Ukraine’s territory.’

‘I don’t know that you can’t speak to it, you won’t speak to it,’ Tapper fired back. ‘Musk says he was reportedly afraid that Russia would retaliate with nuclear weapons. Musk says that’s based on his private discussions he had with senior Russian officials. Are you concerned that Musk is apparently conducting his own diplomatic outreach to the Russian government? Really, none of this concerns you?’

‘Jake, I can’t speak to conversations that may or may not have happened. I don’t know,’ Blinked responded. ‘I’m focused on the fact that the technology itself, Starlink, has been really important for Ukrainians. It remains so.’

Tapper argued, ‘It sounds like Starlink’s so important, the U.S. government doesn’t want to risk offending a capricious billionaire who did some things that I think in another situation, the U.S. government might want to say something about, but let’s move on.’

Musk’s tweet last week came amid backlash over an excerpt from Walter Isaacson’s new biography, ‘Elon Mus,k’ that was published in The Washington Post. Isaacson claimed in the excerpt that Musk had Starlink’s connection in Crimea shut off.

But Musk said there was never Starlink coverage in Crimea.

Isaacson posted a clarification on Friday, writing, ‘To clarify on the Starlink issue: the Ukrainians THOUGHT coverage was enabled all the way to Crimea, but it was not. They asked Musk to enable it for their drone sub attack on the Russian fleet. Musk did not enable it, because he thought, probably correctly, that would cause a major war.’

Musk thanked Isaacson for the post and added, ‘The onus is meaningfully different if I refused to act upon a request from Ukraine vs. made a deliberate change to Starlink to thwart Ukraine.’

‘At no point did I or anyone at SpaceX promise coverage over Crimea,’ Musk wrote. ‘Moreover, our terms of service clearly prohibit Starlink for offensive military action, as we are a civilian system, so they were again asking for something that was expressly prohibited. SpaceX is building Starshield for the U.S. government, which is similar to, but much smaller than, Starlink, as it will not have to handle millions of users. That system will be owned and controlled by the U.S. government.’

Mykhailo Podolyak, a top aide to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, slammed Musk over the book excerpt and accused him of costing lives.

‘By not allowing Ukrainian drones to destroy part of the Russian military fleet via Starlink interference, Elon Musk allowed this fleet to fire Kalibr missiles at Ukrainian cities,’ Podolyak wrote. ‘As a result, civilians, children are being killed. This is the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego.’

Musk has previously defended limiting Ukraine’s use of Starlink for military purposes, declaring in February that SpaceX ‘will not enable escalation of conflict that may lead to WW3.’

SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell announced at the time that the company was restricting Ukraine from using Starlink, but that it could still be used in the country for typical communications and humanitarian relief, like linking families and hospitals.

Musk tweeted last September that Starlink was designed for peaceful uses only, and the terms of use state that the internet connections are not for military engagements.

Fox News’ Greg Wehner contributed to this report.

The majority of California voters oppose offering cash reparations to the descendants of African American slaves, a new poll has found.

Fifty-nine percent of California voters oppose cash payments, while 29% of voters support the idea, according to a UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll that was cosponsored by the Los Angeles Times. A total of four-in-ten respondents reported they ‘strongly’ oppose cash reparations.

The poll comes after Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill in 2020 that established the California Reparations Task Force, which was launched to explore how the state could lead the nation on a potential reparations program.

‘As a nation, we can only truly thrive when every one of us has the opportunity to thrive. Our painful history of slavery has evolved into structural racism and bias built into and permeating throughout our democratic and economic institutions,’ Newsom said at the time. ‘California’s rich diversity is our greatest asset, and we won’t turn away from this moment to make right the discrimination and disadvantages that Black Californians and people of color still face.’

The task force published its final report earlier this summer and recommended compensating qualifying Black residents up to $1 million in cash payments from the state, along with other benefits such as eliminating child support debt and free tuition to public colleges. The cash recommendations from the task force would address issues such as health disparities, housing discrimination and mass incarceration. 

The task force, for example, recommends that eligible descendants of slaves receive $13,619 for each year of California residency to address health disparities, and $2,352 for each year of residency from 1971 to 2020, when the war on drugs raged, to compensate for mass incarceration and over-policing. 

Broken down by political party, a whopping 90% Republicans said they oppose cash reparations, with only 5% saying they support it, according to the poll, while 43% of Democrats said they support cash reparations, and 41% said they oppose such a measure. Sixty-five percent of Independents reported they don’t support the idea, compared to 22% who do.

Respondents who oppose the idea most often cited two reasons: ‘It’s unfair to ask today’s taxpayers to pay for wrongs committed in the past,’ and ‘It’s not fair to single out one group for reparations when other racial and religious groups have been wronged in the past,’ according to the LA Times. 

The poll found that Black voters were the most likely demographic to support the idea, at 76%, compared to 16% who said they oppose it. Six in ten Asian and Latino voters said they oppose the idea, while nearly two-thirds of White voters reported the same, the LA Times reported.

Newsom’s office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on the poll.  

Fox News Digital’s Kristine Parks contributed to this report. 

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The George W. Bush Institute executive who organized a joint statement by 13 presidential libraries pledging to unify to preserve democracy was previously revealed as the person who leaked the infamous Steele dossier to BuzzFeed after the 2016 election.

David Kramer, the executive director of the George W. Bush Institute, spearheaded a statement Thursday signed by 13 presidential libraries dating back to Herbert Hoover.

‘By signing this statement, we reaffirm our commitment to the principles of democracy undergirding this great nation, protecting our freedom, and respecting our fellow citizens,’ the statement read, in part. ‘When united by these convictions, America is stronger as a country and an inspiration for others.’

Kramer told C-SPAN last week that he had organized the statement in order to ‘remind fellow Americans that we are a great nation rooted in the ideals of freedom and democracy, and that we are best when we show compassion and tolerance, pluralism and respect for others, and that united we’re a much stronger country.’

He told The Guardian that former President Bush ‘did see and signed off on this statement.’

Kramer previously made headlines in March 2019 after his deposition on the debunked Steele dossier was unsealed by a judge for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

The 35-page dossier by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele – controversially published in its raw form in January 2017 by BuzzFeed – alleged that former President Trump had colluded with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election over Hillary Clinton and claimed that the Kremlin had blackmail material on the former president, including a tape of prostitutes urinating on him in a Moscow hotel.

Kramer, a former State Department official and McCain associate, was working at the McCain Institute for International Leadership when he was deposed in December 2017 as part of a defamation suit by a Russian oligarch over BuzzFeed’s publication of the unverified dossier.

Kramer told the court at the time that he had met with Steele in London at the direction of the late Senator John McCain, R-Ariz. He said he later had given the dossier to multiple news outlets, including BuzzFeed, as well as to McCain, who had then given it to then-FBI Director James Comey in December 2016.

Comey separately briefed then-President Barack Obama and Trump on the dossier on January 6, 2017, just days before Trump’s inauguration.

The dossier served as the basis for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants against Trump campaign aide Carter Page later that year, and it was later revealed that it originally had been commissioned by a research firm hired by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. 

The dossier has since been repeatedly discredited and debunked, including by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year investigation, which found no evidence of collusion.

The Bush Institute did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

California Governor Gavin Newsom dodged responsibility for allowing the film industry to reopen while keeping churches closed in his state during the COVID-19 pandemic, instead blaming the collective ‘we’ for such decisions.

Newsom was confronted Sunday by ‘Meet the Press’ anchor Chuck Todd about his lockdown-heavy approach to the pandemic that faced so much criticism that it sparked a recall election against him.

‘You found a way to allow the motion picture industry and the movie industry to get back to work, but you didn’t allow people to grieve together at funerals or at churches,’ Todd argued. ‘This is this anger between the populace and the elites: Here you prioritize this industry, but you were tougher on those that just wanted to go worship.’

‘I think there’s a lot of humility,’ Newsom responded. ‘And we didn’t know what we didn’t know. And it was hardly ‘I’, it was ‘we’ collectively. I think all of us, in terms of our collective wisdom, we’ve evolved.’

‘So think about what you ended up collectively prioritizing,’ Todd fired back. ‘You prioritized an industry, one specific one, but then didn’t prioritize ones whose maybe values you didn’t connect with.’

Newsom said he wasn’t the only one who locked down his state, comparing his actions to those of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

‘All of us went through a process,’ he said. ‘I mean, there was few states that didn’t go on aggressive lockdowns, including Florida’s Ron DeSantis.’

Newsom acknowledged that the criticism he’s facing now over his pandemic approach is ‘legitimate, in terms of reflection.’ 

While the governor said he would have done ‘everything’ differently, he declined to name a specific example.

‘We would have done everything differently, because we would have understood outdoors as an example,’ he said.

Todd interjected, ‘You wouldn’t have shut schools down, you would have tried to figure out how to maybe have outdoor classrooms?’

Newsom refused to answer the question and again pointed to Florida’s response.

‘Understanding the spread in the context of how it spread very differently indoors than outdoors is one perfect example of what a lot of us would have done differently, including, again, in red states that shut down their beaches in the early part of the pandemic,’ he said.

Sunday was Todd’s last time hosting ‘Meet the Press’ after he announced he was stepping down in June.

While DeSantis, like most governors across the country, followed then-President Trump’s stay-at-home guidance and briefly shut down the state of Florida, he was one of the first to reopen the state, which brought on a wave of Democratic backlash.

Newsom was the first governor in the country to issue a stay-at-home order, and he was the last governor to reopen schools. He also frequently faced backlash for breaking his own rules during the lockdowns, including mingling without a mask with California Medical Association officials at the ritzy French Laundry restaurant in Napa in November 2020.

That controversy came only one month after Newsom outraged parents by sending his four kids back to in-person learning at a private school in Sacramento County when public schools in the county were still closed.

In February 2021, Newsom filmed a TikTok video inside a Fresno restaurant while in-person dining was still banned. The governor later defended himself for participating in the video, saying that he hadn’t eaten at the restaurant.

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley slammed President Biden for recently sending a handful of cabinet members to China, arguing it was ’embarrassing’ for the U.S. 

‘China has been practically preparing for war with us for years,’ Haley told Jake Tapper on CNN’s ‘State of the Union’ Sunday. ‘They have killed more Americans than the Iraq … Afghanistan and Vietnam wars combined with their sending fentanyl over. I mean, how much more has to happen for Biden to realize you don’t send cabinet members over to China to appease them?

‘You start getting serious with China and say, ‘We’re not going to put up with it.” 

Haley was responding to the Biden administration sending Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on trips to China in recent weeks in a bid to improve relations with the country. 

‘They keep sending different cabinet officials over, Jake, and it’s embarrassing,’ she told Tapper. ‘You sent Raimondo right after she got hacked, her emails got hacked by the Chinese,’ Haley added, citing how Chinese hackers breached Raimondo’s email in July. 

Haley argued that China has purchased more than 400,000 acres on U.S. soil and has stolen billions worth of intellectual property from the U.S., while American law enforcement agencies are using Chinese-made drones to surveil the nation. 

‘Ninety percent of our law enforcement drones are Chinese. So, while Americans freaked out over the Chinese spy ballon, just imagine what’s happening with all these many spy balloons,’ she told Tapper. 

The former ambassador to the United Nations added that Biden should take a much stronger approach with China and not dispatch officials in an act to ‘appease’ the adversary. 

‘We should say, ‘You’re not buying any more U.S. soil, and we’re going to take back what you’ve already bought.’ We’re gonna go and make sure that we don’t have Chinese infiltration in our universities because our universities are going to have to pick between Chinese money or American money,’ she said. 

‘We’re going to end all normal trade relations with China until they stop killing Americans with fentanyl. And then we’re going to build up our military because China now has the strongest naval fleet in the world.’ 

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