Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. and Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, are forming an unlikely alliance, teaming up in a bid to allow troops access to psychedelic drugs.

‘Psychedelics have shown so much promise,’ Ocasio-Cortez said of the effort, according to a report from the New York Daily News. ‘We desperately need the resources to treat PTSD, traumatic brain injury and depression. At least one in two PTSD patients cannot tolerate or do not respond adequately to existing treatments.’

The progressive lawmaker’s comments come as the military and Department of Veterans Affairs grapple with the growth of post-traumatic stress disorder in the ranks, an ailment that has doubled among veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan compared to Vietnam-era veterans. According to the VA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over 450,000 combat veterans have suffered from a some sort of traumatic brain injury between 2000 and 2021.

But new data suggest that unorthodox treatments with psychedelics help, leading Crenshaw and Ocasio-Cortez to form an unlikely alliance.

‘This is a real wild coalition,’ Crenshaw, a Navy SEAL veteran who lost an eye in Afghanistan, said of his partnership with Ocasio-Cortez, according to the New York Daily News. 

Crenshaw said the issue has personally touched him, recounting the stories of friends who have returned from war and were not cured of their aliments until they gained access to psychedelics, which are typically illegal in the United States.

‘I was turned on to this issue because I had so many friends… who were going down to a specific clinic and doing ibogaine – one treatment of ibogaine would cure them,’ Crenshaw said.

The duo targeted this year’s National Defense Authorization Act to introduce their proposal, managing to get a ‘watered-down version’ of the bill they authored into the massive yearly legislation.

Crenshaw said House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has promised the lawmakers to get a comprehensive version of the bill, which will include funding and clinical trials, in the legislation during meetings with the Senate to combine the two chamber’s versions of the bill.

Meanwhile, Ocasio-Cortez called on veterans to apply pressure to the Senate to make sure the provision gains approval.

‘I know the power of this community to rise up and make itself heard,’ Ocasio-Cortez said.

Former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms will be returning to the White House in a new role as a member of the President’s Export Council.

Bottoms served as director of the Office of Public Engagement and senior adviser to President Biden from June 2022 until April of this year. 

She announced Friday on social media that she is ‘honored’ to be rejoining the White House.

The President’s Export Council serves as the ‘principal national advisory committee on international trade. The Council advises the President of government policies and programs that affect U.S. trade performance; promotes export expansion; and provides a forum for discussing and resolving trade-related problems among the business, industrial, agricultural, labor, and government sectors,’ according to the White House.

Bottoms, a Democrat, served as the mayor of Atlanta from 2018 to 2022, but decided not to seek re-election. Though she was initially hired by CNN as a political commentator after her departure from the mayor’s office, she announced she would join Biden’s team beginning in June 2022.

Former Columbia, South Carolina, mayor Stephen Benjamin replaced Bottoms in the White House after she officially stepped down from her previous role on April 1.

Bottoms will succeed Cedric Richmond on the President’s Export Council – the same man she replaced as White House Office of Public Engagement Director and Senior Advisor to the president.

Bottoms was among a number of appointments announced by the Biden administration on Friday.

When announcing her role, the White House described Bottoms as a ‘visionary leader’ who headed the transformation of the Office of Public Engagement.

‘Through crafting effective engagement strategies and advising the president on matters concerning various stakeholders, Bottoms helped ensure that the diverse voices of the American public were heard and concerns translated into meaningful action by the administration,’ the White House said in a statement.

‘Serving as mayor of Atlanta in the midst of a global pandemic and racial justice movement, Bottoms proved herself to be a highly respected leader and voice,’ the statement continued. ‘During one of the worst economic downturns in history, Bottoms led her administration in proactively dealing with the impact of the COVID-19, successfully delivering four years of balanced budgets without resorting to property tax increases, layoffs, or furloughs of City employees.’

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MANCHESTER, N.H. – The founding co-chair of No Labels says it’s not a done deal that the centrist group will sport a bipartisan, third-party presidential ticket, if President Biden and former President Donald Trump are the major party nominees in the 2024 election.

‘We haven’t decided to run a ticket. It’s not even clear that if it ends up being Trump and Biden, as it looks like it will now, that we’ll do that,’ former Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut said in an interview with Fox News Digital ahead of No Labels town hall Monday in New Hampshire where the group will formally unveil its policy platform.

But speculation is mounting about a third-party ticket following last week’s announcement by No Labels that moderate Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia would serve as an honorary co-host of the group’s ‘Common Sense’ town hall, which will take place at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College in Manchester.

Manchin, who often clashes with his party’s progressive wing, Senate leadership and the White House, has yet to announce whether he will seek another six-year term in the Senate in 2024 in a state that’s turned dark red in recent years. He’s also refused to shut down speculation about a possible presidential run. 

The senator is serving as an honorary co-chair of the No Labels event, along with former moderate Republican Gov. of Utah Jon Huntsman, who later served as ambassador to China in President Obama’s administration before running unsuccessfully for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination.

‘I think No Labels invited Joe Manchin and Jon Huntsman because they’re former chairs of our organization and they represent centrist Democrats, centrist Republicans, which is what we’re about,’ Lieberman told Fox News. ‘I guess it’s natural for people to speculate, particularly in Manchin’s case whether it means he will run on a possible No Labels ticket year. It’s way too early to say that. I think Joe hasn’t decided that at all, as he’s said, and No Labels hasn’t decided it.’

No Labels for months has been discussing the possibility of bipartisan, third party ‘unity ticket’ the organization could field in next year’s presidential election if it appears the nation is headed for a Biden-Trump rematch in 2024, which poll after poll has indicated many Americans would like to avoid.

Lieberman, a former longtime senator from Connecticut who served as the Democratic vice presidential nominee in the 2000 election and ran unsuccessfully in 2004 for his party’s presidential nomination before winning a final election to the Senate in 2006 as an independent, reiterated that No Labels is aiming to get on the ballot in all 50 states in order to be in the position to possibly field a third party ticket next year.

‘We call it the insurance policy project. We’re trying to qualify for a third ticket, bipartisan ticket in all 50 states. We’re working hard at that now,’ Lieberman explained.

But he emphasized that ‘we want to make sure is that we’re not going to be spoilers. We’re not going to elect one or another of the candidates. We want to run because we think we have a chance to win. And if we don’t have a chance to win, at least we will bring a different voice to the national debate in the election next year, which is toward the center and putting the country first and not the interest of the political parties first.’

Lieberman has praised Manchin, telling Fox Digital in May that Manchin, along with two other moderates – Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and former GOP Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland – ‘are very active members of No Labels’ and ‘would be naturals to consider’ for any potential third-party ticket. 

But No Labels CEO and co-founder Nancy Jacobson told Fox News last month that ‘this is too premature. We have not made any decisions,’ regarding a 2024 presidential ticket.

And Lieberman, ahead of Monday’s No Labels event, reiterated that ‘we haven’t really started to think about candidates, although naturally the media and others are.’

But he added that ‘we are going to start a process by the fall in which we can both talk to people who may be interested in being on a bipartisan party ticket, or frankly reach out and ask some people to think about it. And I think we want this search to be as wide as possible. Not just current elected officials or former elected officials but a lot of the other areas of leadership in our country.’

No Labels has already raised over $30 million as part of its effort to get on the ballot in all 50 states. And if it does move forward towards launching a third-party White House run, the potential ticket would likely be unveiled at the group’s national convention, which will convene next April in Dallas, Texas.

Democrats have been raising alarms for months about a third-party ‘spoiler’ effort that could upend the 2024 elections and allow Trump to win back the White House. And former longtime House Democratic leader Richard A. Gephardt is planning to launch a new bipartisan group this week to oppose the potential No Labels third-party presidential effort.

‘I have the greatest respect and affection for Dick Gephardt, so I guess I’m disappointed that he’s taken this leadership role,’ Lieberman said. 

And he argued ‘I think the Democrats have really, totally overreacted to what we’re doing. Look, they’ve got a problem now. Trump is either close or ahead of Biden in all the polling we’ve seen lately. I think to focus on No Labels and the possibility we would run a third ticket – even though we said over and over again we’re not going to do it if we think it will elect Trump – is just frankly wasted time.’

‘I don’t know what the Dick Gephardt group is going to do but somebody out there is convincing state election officials to try and block us from gaining access to the state ballots even when we’ve submitted enough signatures and satisfied enough legal requirements,’ Lieberman claimed. ‘Frankly that goes beyond freedom of expression. They’re violating a constitutional right that the Supreme Court has upheld which is that people have a right of political association, to form a new party and try to gain access to the ballot. I certainly hope and trust that Dick Gephardt won’t be part of doing anything like that.’

But Lieberman stressed that Monday’s gathering in New Hampshire, the state that for a century’s held first presidential primary in the race for the White House and which is a key general election battleground, is not about presidential politics.

‘I know Monday in New Hampshire we’re going to try really hard to bring this back to our Common Sense policy agenda, which is in very specific terms our way of saying in the 2024 cycle at the presidential level and Congressional level, No Labels offers this program which is aimed at getting American politics back from the extremes, back to the bipartisan center where great things have always been accomplished in American history. We can do it again.’

Lieberman, pointing to No Labels polling and conversations with the public, highlighted that Americans ‘are actually in a lot more agreement than the leading spokesmen in the Republican and Democratic parties would have you believe. I think the Democrats and the Republicans have unfortunately divided America much more than it really is and I think most of the American people want to come back to the center, back to unity, and back to solving our problems, and that’s what No Labels is about.’

And Lieberman, spotlighting his group’s platform, argued that ‘neither of the two major political parties would put out a policy agenda like this.’

‘There’s a way to come back from extremes from both sides. There’s a way to come back from just fighting each other across party lines and to adopt something that will really make a majority of the American people satisfied or happy because a lot of what we’re recommending in this Common Sense policy agenda really follows an opinion of the majority of the American people,’ he emphasized.

The White House was silent when asked by Fox News Digital whether it agrees with Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (SPEC) John Kerry’s recent comments lamenting the Ukraine war’s carbon footprint.

Spokespeople for both the White House and National Security Council failed to provide a comment about Kerry’s remarks after they were contacted multiple times by Fox News Digital. Last week, Kerry doubled down on past comments that a key consequence of the ongoing Ukraine war stemming from Russia’s invasion last year is increased global greenhouse gas emissions.

‘Lots of parts of the world are exacerbating the problem right now, but when you have bombs going off and you have damage to septic tanks or to power centers etcetera, you have an enormous release of greenhouse gas, methane, all of the family of greenhouse gasses and the result is it’s adding to the problem,’ Kerry said during an interview with MSNBC on July 10.

Kerry added that the war in Ukraine is a fight ‘we have to make,’ but that there are ‘ancillary impacts as a result.’

Kerry’s remarks were later widely condemned by conservatives and Republicans including presidential candidate Nikki Haley who tweeted ‘you can’t make this stuff up’ and ‘the end of the Biden (Harris) administration can’t come fast enough.’

The comments were the latest example of Kerry warning about the climate change implications of war in Ukraine. Shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, for example, Kerry told multiple media outlets that he was concerned about emissions from a potential military conflict.

‘Equally, importantly you’re going to lose people’s focus,’ Kerry told BBC on Feb. 21, 2022. ‘You’re going to lose certainly big country attention because they will be diverted and I think it could have a damaging impact. Hopefully (Russian President Vladimir Putin) would realize that in the northern part of his country, they used to live on 66% of a nation that was over frozen land. Now, it’s thawing.’

‘I am concerned in terms of the climate efforts that a war is the last thing you need with respect to a united effort to try to deal with the climate challenge,’ Kerry told Reuters in a separate interview that same day. ‘Obviously we hope that we can compartmentalize, but it’s just made that much more difficult without any question.’

And months after the Russian invasion, in April 2022, Kerry again expressed concern about how the war may cause people to lose concentration on fighting global warming.

‘What’s happened in Ukraine has not helped to concentrate people on reducing [emissions],’ Kerry told The Washington Post on April 21, 2022. ‘It’s concentrated people on trying to find substitutes for Russian gas and to meet higher levels of production because of low supply. But it obviously does interrupt the momentum that we had created coming out of Glasgow.’

More recently, Kerry told The New York Times in June that the war shows ‘climate change is a threat multiplier.’

Shortly after taking office in 2021, President Biden appointed Kerry to be the U.S. SPEC, a position that hadn’t previously existed, didn’t require Senate approval, and gives him a spot on the president’s cabinet and National Security Council. The SPEC office is housed at the State Department and has an estimated $13.9 million annual budget with approval for 45 personnel.

Since taking on the role, Kerry has traveled worldwide, attending high-profile climate summits and diplomatic engagements in an effort to push a global transition from fossil fuels to green energy alternatives.

President Biden took to Twitter Monday to tout his economic policies and the impact ‘Bidenomics’ was having on workers’ wages over the last two years. His self-praise was short-lived, however, as Twitter fact-checkers said it ‘contains a factual error.’

‘Right now, real wages for the average American worker is higher than it was before the pandemic, with lower wage workers seeing the largest gains,’ the president wrote on Twitter. ‘That’s Bidenomics.’

Twitter’s Community Notes added context for readers that said: ‘The tweet’s claim about real wages contains a factual error.’

‘On 3/15/20 when US COVID lockdowns began real wages adjusted for inflation (AFI) were $11.15. As of 7/16/23 real wages AFI are $11.05,’ the Twitter note continued. It added: ‘Real wages AFI remain lower (not higher) than before the pandemic.’

Several users commented on the tweet, pointing out that inflation has risen to a historic high under the Biden administration.

The Republican Party responded, ‘Since Biden took office, real wages are down 3%.’

In June, Biden claimed he cut the deficit by $1.7 trillion, which the Washington Post rated ‘highly misleading,’ and the claim was similarly scrutinized by other fact-checkers. He also touted the impact of the new 988 suicide hotline, which was signed into law by former President Trump, and previously said healthcare was ‘a right not a privilege in this country.’ Twitter’s Community Notes said Biden has ‘never publicly supported universal healthcare or Medicare for All, and has suggested he would veto bills that implement such a system.’

Biden’s praise for his own economic policies comes as he is seeking re-election in 2024. He has spent recent weeks traveling from Maryland to Illinois to New York for a series of speeches and campaign receptions, where he peddled ‘Bidenomics’ and its alleged impact.

However, economists and voters remain unconvinced. Some economists who spoke with Fox News Digital equated the president’s economic policy to excessive spending and inflation.

‘Bidenomics has been defined by 40-year-high inflation, record drops in labor productivity, anemic economic growth, growing credit card debt, rising interest rates, insipid labor force participation, onerous regulation, falling real incomes, and runaway government spending, borrowing, and printing of money,’ EJ Antoni, a research fellow for the Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, told Fox News Digital. ‘Distilled down to a single word, Bidenomics means ‘failure.’’

‘They spend like drunken sailors — that is what’s causing problems,’ Desmond Lachman, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told Fox News Digital. ‘It’s easy to get unemployment down for a short period of time, but it’s difficult for a long period of time. The way they got it down so much is by overstimulating the economy, but now they have inflation.’

A Fox News poll from May found nine in 10 voters remain worried about inflation and the future of the economy.

According to the poll, 90% remain worried about higher prices while 88% are concerned about the future of the country.

The poll found Republicans are increasingly worried through three years of Biden at the helm of the country, while Democrats are only slowly rallying behind him.

Among Republicans, 96% said they were concerned about the future of the country. In 2017, 74% of Republicans said the same. In 2017, 91% of Democrats said they were worried and that figure has fallen to 83% under Biden.

‘With a Democrat in the White House, it’s no surprise that Republican concern about the future of the country is higher than it was in 2017,’ said Democratic pollster Chris Anderson, whose company Beacon Research conducts the Fox News Poll with Republican Daron Shaw. ‘But Democratic concern hasn’t fallen as fast as Republican concern has risen, so we have a particularly worried electorate heading into the 2024 elections.’

Biden’s approval rating on the economy was just 32%.

Biden took office in January 2021 with an inflation rate of a little over 1%, which hiked to 9% by June 2022, and has since fallen to 3%. The figure still exceeds the Federal Reserve’s desired 2%.

Fox News’ Patrick Hauf and Victoria Balara contributed to this report.

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Former President Donald Trump praised Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., and said the 2024 candidate may be a good fit in Trump’s own administration if he wins the White House.

Trump made the comment during an appearance on Fox News’ ‘Sunday Morning Futures’ with host Maria Bartiromo. Trump complimented some in the Republican primary field during the interview, saying he believed that many of his fellow candidates were ‘talented’ people, and hinted that he was already having thoughts about a potential running mate.

‘Is there anyone on that stage you see as potential running mate, as your VP?’ Bartiromo asked.

‘Possibly. I mean, I think you have some good people on the stage. Actually, I think you have some very talented people. I’ve been impressed by some of them. Some of them I’m very friendly with,’ Trump responded. ‘Actually, a number of them called me up not to ask for permission, but sort of to ask for permission, to say they’d like to do it. A number of the people up there – I’m not going to embarrass them by saying who – but no, I think you have good people. I think you have good potential Cabinet members to actually do that.’

‘Do you see yourself perhaps with the senator, Tim Scott?’ Bartiromo pressed.

‘I think he’s a very good guy. And we did opportunity zones together. It’s never been talked about. It’s one of the most successful economic development things ever done in this country. And Tim is very good. I mean, I could see Tim doing something with the administration, but he’s in right now campaigning…. But Tim is a talented guy, and you have other very talented people.’

When reached for comment, Scott’s campaign referenced a statement the candidate made to Fox News’ Neil Cavuto last week.

‘I did not enter this race to come in second place. Second place is the first loser,’ he said at the time.