The House of Representatives voted Thursday to terminate the Defense Department’s policy of allowing servicemembers to travel across state lines to get an abortion and reimbursing them for their travel costs.

Lawmakers voted 221-213 in favor of an amendment to the annual defense policy bill from Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, that would force the Pentagon to end this policy. The Defense Department put the policy in place shortly after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.

The House vote is a victory for conservatives who hinted that including the language in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was critical to their support for the entire bill. However, the language is certain to lead many Democrats to vote against the bill.

It would theoretically put House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., in a tough spot when it comes to passing the NDAA. With just a razor-thin House majority, he can afford to lose no more than four votes for any legislation to pass without Democratic support. It’s also not clear yet if hardliners in his conference will get everything they want in order to vote yes on the final bill.

‘My colleagues on the other side of the aisle like to thank the troops and talk about honoring their sacrifice, and that’s all frankly empty words and broken promises if this amendment passes,’ Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J., said during debate ahead of the vote. ‘This amendment puts service women and military families’ lives at risk by denying the basic right to travel for healthcare no longer available where they are stationed.’

In his defense of the amendment, Jackson argued the Biden administration’s policy is ‘in direct violation of federal law.’

‘In the wake of the Supreme Court’s historic Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the Biden administration immediately set out to side-step the ruling and circumvent the law wherever possible,’ Jackson said. ‘The Biden administration has encouraged every federal agency to create rules and adopt policies that not only expand abortion access but also leave American taxpayers on the hook to subsidize abortion services.’

He cited an existing rule, the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the use of federal funds to perform abortions.

‘No doubt my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will insist that taxpayer dollars are not directly funding abortions thereby rendering the current policy legally sound. This is absolutely misleading,’ Jackson said.

The vote was part of a series of 12 largely Republican-backed amendments to the NDAA being voted on as part of a series. There are more than 300 amendments offered in the House in total.

Amendments by GOP Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Gaetz of Florida to curb the U.S.’ funding to Ukraine failed with no Democratic support and were largely opposed by Republicans as well.

Another by Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., that would ban the use of military healthcare for gender transition surgeries or hormone therapies, passed 222-211.

Two amendments from Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, were aimed at cracking down on the use of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in the military, and both were approved. The first looked to ban the use of federal funds to establish diversity officer and advisor roles within the Pentagon, while the second prohibited the Defense Department’s educational arm from promoting teachings that call the U.S. and its founding documents racist.

It has been more than five months since the Chinese spy balloon was shot down off the coast of South Carolina. Since then, the FBI has been the main government agency looking into the espionage device. Other agencies, including the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon, are assisting with that probe. 

Defense officials recently said the balloon did not collect information in real time as it flew across the U.S.

‘We were aware that it had intelligence collection capabilities,’ Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said. ‘We also took steps to mitigate the potential collection efforts of that balloon.’

A senior Pentagon source told Fox News the device held specialized Chinese sensors. It also contained publicly available American-made equipment. The U.S. has export controls in place to prevent China from accessing its more sensitive technology.

‘The (People’s Republic of China) officials continue to object quite strongly to the export controls that we have imposed to prevent the transfer of sensitive U.S. technology to China,’ State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said. ‘We’re not going to allow you to take U.S. technology and use it against us.’

The Defense Intelligence Agency has been examining the military-related equipment within the device. The DIA told Fox News its analysis is still ongoing. It also pointed us to its report on China’s military power, which notes that China’s military equipment is ‘primarily domestic systems heavily influenced by technology derived from other countries.’

President Biden told reporters in June that China may not have been fully aware of the spy balloon’s whereabouts.

‘I think it was more embarrassing than it was intentional,’ President Biden said. ‘I don’t think the leadership knew where it was, knew what it was in it and what was going on.’

The DIA report also details China’s investment in developing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance equipment and how it uses those devices to deceive its adversaries.

According to the document, ‘The (People’s Liberation Army) uses military deception to reduce the effectiveness of adversaries’ reconnaissance and to deceive adversaries about the PLA’s warfighting intentions, actions, or major targets.’

The DIA often makes certain reports public that explain how adversaries spy on the U.S. The Wall Street Journal reported the agency was among other parts of the military that supported displaying the balloon debris publicly. Biden administration officials have pushed back on any public release.

‘I wouldn’t expect that we’re going to lay all that out for the public. This was an espionage piece of equipment. And we want to get a better handle on it, understand it for our own national security purposes,’ National Security Council Coordinator John Kirby told reporters in May.

The State Department deferred to the FBI for any public release. When asked for an update to its investigation, the FBI responded with Director Christopher Wray’s comments from his February Fox News interview and said it had nothing else to add.

‘Our technical folks, our lab folks, our counterintelligence folks who specialize in Chinese spying are working hand in hand with our military and other government partners to analyze all the debris. And that work is ongoing,’ Wray said in that interview. ‘This balloon thing is just one piece of a much broader threat.’

The FBI had no updates on the three smaller objects shot down over Alaska, Lake Huron and Canada’s Yukon Territory. Officials initially suspected they were likely research or recreational balloons. Search efforts for those ended soon after they began as U.S. and Canadian authorities announced that no debris was located.

‘What looks embarrassing is that we shot down some toys, it seems,’ Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said.

Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., and Sen Ted Budd, R-N.C., are hoping to pass legislation that would mandate tracking systems for high-altitude weather and research balloons.

‘The problem we face right now is, weather balloons, kid’s science experiments, universities have put up science payloads,’ Kelly said. ‘We’re going to have a way where we can identify it and track it because there’s enough of these things that we can’t be scrambling an F-22 to potentially shoot it down on a weekly basis.’

Congress has also pledged to hold China accountable and is questioning why the U.S. government didn’t detect the objects sooner. Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently met with Chinese officials in Beijing. His initial trip had been canceled over the spy balloon incident. He told NBC News relations with China have since stabilized so long as its spy balloons stay grounded.

‘We did what we needed to do to protect our interests,’ Blinken said. ‘We said what we needed to say and made clear what we needed to make clear in terms of this not happening again. And, so, as long as it doesn’t, that chapter should be closed.’

Some lawmakers want to keep that book open and have grown frustrated with the lack of information provided by the Biden administration.

‘There are a lot of questions left unanswered,’ Wicker said. ‘What does it say about our preparedness? What does it say about how seriously we take threats from China?’

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose reputation of being soft on crime and not prosecuting the most violent criminals, admitted that even he gets ‘a knot’ in his stomach when members of his family take the train in New York City.

The DA was interviewed recently by FOX 5 New York about NYPD crime statistics that show hard crimes like shootings, murders and robberies decreased in numbers during the first six months of the year, with shootings dropping 24%, and murders decreasing by 3%.

He credited the decrease to daily communication between his team and law enforcement officials.

Bragg also said prosecutors and police conduct long-term investigations involving wire taps, and targeted enforcement. As a result, the DA’s office and NYPD are seeing returns on their investigative work.

Overall, in the first six months of the year, major crime in the subway has decreased 4.4% compared to the same period last year.

But the statistics also showed major crimes in the transit system increased 18.2% last month, with 195 incidents last month compared to 165 during the same period last year.

‘I know the statistics that transit crime is down, but when one of my family members gets on the train, I, too, get a knot in my stomach,’ the DA told the news station.

Bragg acknowledged that the signs were encouraging and the statistics on crime across the city were moving in the right direction.

Still, he said more can be done.

‘I live here, I’m raising my family here, so we have a lot more work to do,’ Bragg told the news station.

The top Manhattan prosecutor was elected as a reform-minded DA. He has repeatedly been criticized for letting murderers and abusive individuals off the hook.

Bragg’s also been ridiculed for cutting a sweetheart deal with a career criminal who went on to punch a woman randomly; his slap on the wrist for a man who viciously assaulted a 55-year-old nurse; and jailing, yet ultimately releasing, the bodega owner who killed an aggressive ex-convict who attacked him on murder charges.

During his first year as the top prosecutor in 2022, Bragg downgraded over half of the felony cases to misdemeanors.

He campaigned on criminal justice reform and sent a memo to staff on ‘Day One’ to downgrade certain felonies like armed robberies of commercial businesses. The move came when crimes were up 27.6% in New York City.

Fox News Digital’s Emma Colton contributed to this report.

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, in an interview with Fox News Digital this week, said the construction of a wall at the southern border is not enough to stop the ongoing migrant crisis, and he said he believes the military should be deployed to both the southern border and possibly the northern border.

‘I think that building the wall is not and has not been enough. They are now building tunnels underneath that wall, literally underground tunnels that are being used to bring in illegal migrants and even to support human trafficking and drug trafficking,’ Ramaswamy said in Manchester, New Hampshire. ‘So, I think that’s a serious problem.’

Ramaswamy said that, if elected, he would deploy troops to the southern and potentially the northern borders.

‘I would use our own military to secure our own southern border. I think that is legally, ethically and constitutionally justified. That is how we seal the southern border. In fact, I think it’s going to be an approach that we will eventually need to seal our own northern border as well,’ he said.

Ramaswamy’s remarks come as the U.S. remains in a migrant crisis at the southern border now into its third year. Numbers have recently dropped from the highs seen before the ending of Title 42 in May, but it is unclear how long that will last.

The U.S. saw more than 1.7 million migrant encounters in fiscal year 2021 and more than 2.4 million in fiscal year 2022. Even with a sharp drop in encounters in May, there were still beyond 200,000 for the month.

Meanwhile, at the northern border, while numbers have been significantly lower, there has been a significant increase. So far in fiscal year 2023, there have been more than 115,000 encounters, compared to 109,535 in fiscal year 2022 and 27,180 in fiscal year 2021.

While the Biden administration has said it is rebuilding legal asylum pathways shut down by the Trump administration while also dealing with a hemisphere-wide migration crisis, Republican critics have accused the administration of fueling the crisis by ending Trump-era policies and expanding ‘catch-and-release.’

Republican presidential candidates have been firmly on the side of increased enforcement and stricter measures to combat illegal immigration – coming out in favor of policies that include restoring the Trump-era ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy and ending birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants.

Ramaswamy said he would not only restore ‘Remain in Mexico’ – which kept migrants in Mexico for the duration of their asylum hearings and was abolished by the Biden administration – but also put greater pressure on Mexico to control its own border.

‘Yes, absolutely. And I think this is part of what we are going to need – Mexico to regain its sovereignty means Mexico needs control of its own southern border. Many of the immigrants, most of the illegal migrants that come into the United States illegally through the southern border did not actually start in Mexico. They started in other countries south of Mexico. So, I think that ‘Remain in Mexico’ is absolutely essential to create the incentives for Mexico to take control of its own borders and its own sovereignty,’ he said.

The entrepreneur, who is the son of legal immigrants, reasserted his belief that birthright citizenship should not be in play for the children of illegal immigrants.

‘I don’t think that you should be able to earn citizenship, that you do legally earn citizenship if you’re the child of illegal immigrants who crossed that border illegally. And I say this as somebody who actually celebrates birthright citizenship as a major American accomplishment. Most nation’s identities were founded on an ethnicity or a monarch or a religion, not America’s. America was a country founded on a set of ideals that anybody could be a part of, regardless of their ethnicity,’ he said. 

‘So, I say that starting from a very good place in the unique heritage of this country, to say that still we’re a nation founded on the rule of law, and your first act of entering this country cannot be a lawbreaking one,’ he said.

The GOP hopeful said he would seek to pass a constitutional amendment on the matter and also go a step further and require those born in the U.S. to take a civics test at 18 similar to the way that foreign nationals are required to take.

‘I would go further and codify into a constitutional amendment that I would support if necessary that dovetails on the constitutional amendment that I’ve already said that I would support, which is to say that anyone born in this country, if you want to enjoy the full privileges of citizenship at age 18, that means that you have to pass the same civics test that a naturalized citizen has to pass in order to become a full voting citizen as well,’ he said.

‘So, in many ways, I’m going even further with the unique American vision that says: Yes, we are a nation founded on ideals. That means that more than just being born here, it’s being born here but also having the civic duty of knowing something about this country, of actually having a stake in this country in order to be a full voting citizen.’

Fox News’ Matteo Cina contributed to this report.

The left-wing campaign for cities, states and the federal government to pay reparations as a way to make amends for slavery and racism is gaining momentum as more communities across the country weigh payment proposals – including for historically oppressed groups other than Black Americans.

The issue of reparations has dominated headlines in recent months in large part due to California, where a task force created by state legislation signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2020 has been examining the possibility of implementing statewide reparations.

Late last month, the task force released its final recommendations, which the state legislature will consider whether to implement and send to the governor’s desk to be signed into law.

In its approximately 1,000-page report, the task force proposed dozens of statewide policies and ways to calculate monetary reparations designed to redress slavery and historical injustices against Black Americans. According to the task force, such history has created lingering consequences that exist today in the form of systemic racism.

Critics counter that reparations proposals are fiscally unmanageable and don’t make sense by having people who never owned slaves pay money to others who never were slaves as way to atone for slavery.

Still, the task force estimated the minimum dollar amount in harm that California has caused or could have prevented totals at least $1 million per eligible Black Californian.

Beyond cash payments, the task force recommended a variety of other reparations proposals, such as ending the prosecution of low-level crimes and mandating ‘anti-bias training’ as a graduate requirement for medical school, among other measures.

California isn’t alone. The state legislature in New York passed a bill last month that would create a commission to study the effects of slavery and racial discrimination in the Empire State and make recommendations for potential reparations, such as restitution payments from the government. The commission’s recommendations would be non-binding, meaning the legislature would decide whether to take them up for a vote.

Gov. Kathy Hochul is reportedly reviewing the bill but hasn’t commented publicly on the legislation, which needs her signature to become law. If Hochul signs the bill, New York would be the second state to establish a reparations commission, following California’s lead.

According to the legislation, Hochul and legislative leaders from the state Senate and Assembly would each appoint three qualified members to the nine-member commission, which beyond slavery would also address lingering economic, political and educational disparities experienced by Black people in New York state.

While New York and California are the only states actively pursuing a comprehensive statewide reparations plan, several areas across the country may follow suit at the local level — and at least one city has already begun implementing reparations.

The Chicago suburb of Evanston in 2019 committed to spend $10 million over 10 years on local reparations. Two years later, it became the first U.S. city of any size to fund reparations, specifically $25,000 for qualifying Black residents for home repairs, property down payments and interest or late penalties due on city property.

Now, Evanston has become the first city to actually start paying reparations. City staff have met with 48 recipients who are each eligible for the $25,000, and 16 of them received payments this week, according to the Evanston RoundTable. The city expects to dole out the reparations to 140 mostly elderly residents by the end of this year out of about 75,000 total, officials told the Wall Street Journal.

‘I see it as like a test run for the whole country,’ Justin Hansford, a leading advocate for reparations and head of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center at Howard University, told the Journal.

Evanston is the first city of any kind to deliver on reparations, but San Francisco could be the first major U.S. city to fund such a policy as its own local commission explores potentially doling out millions of dollars each to qualifying Black residents.

Beyond San Francisco, some California cities – such as Oakland, Los Angeles and Sacramento – have been pushing their own reparations initiatives even as the state advances its own payment plan.

In Maryland, meanwhile, legislation to create a state reparations commission has died twice in the General Assembly in the past two years. However, Greenbelt in 2021 became the first city in Maryland to vote for setting up a commission that will study paying reparations. Baltimore did the same in May.

And then on Tuesday, the Caucus of African American Leaders voted unanimously to present a reparations resolution to Maryland officials, seeking programs to address the effects of slavery among Black residents. The resolution will be presented to Annapolis Mayor Gavin Buckley next week, and then to Gov. Wes Moore and Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman in August.

Elsewhere on the East Coast, Asheville, North Carolina, and Providence, Rhode Island, have each committed millions of dollars to their own local reparations programs.

All of these reparations plans were created with the idea of making amends specifically for slavery and anti-Black discrimination. However, with the idea of reparations becoming increasingly widespread, there are signs that other historically persecuted groups may soon be in the discussion for such payments as well.

Indeed, 11 Native American tribes are calling for reparations from the University of Minnesota, arguing the land was taken from them.

‘You have these schools that have tens of millions of dollars at their disposal, but they are not looking at any ways they can improve living situations for Indigenous peoples today,’ An Garagiola, a descendant of the Chippewa tribe, told the Washington Post. ‘Yet their existence as institutions, as schools of learning, are only there today because of everything that was taken.’

Several universities are facing pressure to address the acquisition of their land, often purchased from Native American tribes for far less than the land was worth. Some of the schools are taking steps to make amends.

The University of California system, for example, has pledged to give free tuition to some Native American students amid a movement to reclaim tribal lands. The University of Wisconsin at Madison flew the flag of the Ho-Chunk Nation on campus for the first time in 2021 in an effort to acknowledge land taken from the tribe. And Cornell University launched a research project to account for all the land that it took from Native communities.

As for reparations at the federal level, racial justice groups and some Democrats in Congress have been pushing President Biden for months to establish a national reparations commission by executive order. The White House has indicated Biden, who’s largely been quiet about the issue, supports studying potential reparations for Black Americans but has stopped short of saying he’d back a bill introduced in Congress that would create such a commission.

Reparations at the federal government level appear stalled amid widespread Republican opposition and only partial support among Democrat lawmakers.

A key House Freedom Caucus member is predicting that Speaker Kevin McCarthy may not follow through on his word to not bring an omnibus spending bill to the floor at the end of this fiscal year, underscoring the tenuous relationship between House GOP leaders and the hardliners in their conference.

‘I’ve been here eight and a half years, and for eight and a half years, we’ve done the same thing every time,’ Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., told Fox News Digital in an interview in his office. ‘Leadership has promised, either Democrat or Republican leadership, has promised that we’re going to do 12 appropriations bills. We start on those 12 appropriations bills. There’s a hiccup for some reason, the Senate doesn’t do that. And we end up doing a large omnibus or, maybe at best, a couple of minute mini-buses.’

One of the key promises McCarthy made when he became speaker this year was to not bring an omnibus bill combining all of the government’s spending priorities into a single piece of legislation but rather stick to 12 separate bills.

But Buck instead predicted that Congress would by Sept. 30 settle on a continuing resolution that would extend the current spending priorities for ‘a matter of six or seven weeks’ and then use the holiday season to pressure lawmakers to pass a single large spending bill at the end of the year.

‘You watch, it’ll be for Dec. 23. So, that’s when the money will run out. And then everybody will say all week, ‘You’re going to do this to federal workers, you’re going to put them out of work right before Christmas, how heartless. You’ve got to vote for this ridiculous spending bill,’ so the country is on this terrible path,’ he said.

Buck was one of several conservatives who tried to stop McCarthy’s debt limit compromise with Biden from coming to the House floor. Last month, he and a similar group of lawmakers halted House floor proceedings for roughly a week in protest over how the debt was handled.

McCarthy reportedly agreed to keep this year’s appropriations bills to fiscal year 2022 levels, rather than the 2023 levels agreed to in the bipartisan deal, in order to lift the blockade. But Buck said on Tuesday, ‘The idea that we’re going to keep it to 2022 numbers is just not in the cards.’

‘I don’t have a lot of faith that we will reduce spending, we will follow any kind of spending limit. Ultimately, we will end up with a huge spending bill in December,’ Buck said.

But he would not say what kind of reaction that would elicit from himself and the other GOP rebels.

‘I think there’ll be a lot of disappointment in this process,’ Buck said. ‘I don’t know, you know, one of the things that we don’t do is tell people, ‘We’re going to shut down the floor.’ Because then other folks can plan on what do they do in the event that that happens. So, if it does happen, it will be spontaneous.’

Historically, a failure by Congress to reach a spending deal by Sept. 30 has led to a partial government shutdown. Buck refused to say directly whether he would prefer a shutdown to an omnibus bill, but he did go out of his way to place early blame on Democrats if the situation were to occur.

‘The real question is: Does government shut down now because we’re trying to get our act together and find ways to cut spending or does government shut down in the future because we run out of money?’ Buck said. ‘It’s not if government is going to shut down, it’s when government’s going to shut down. I’m in favor of making sure we reduce the spending as much as possible.’

‘If the Democrats want to shut down government by refusing to sign on to bills, or the president refuses to sign a bill or the Senate Democrats refuse to pass a responsible bill, that’s on the Democrats.’