A two-year spending plan that would cut income taxes, increase funding for K-12 schools and cut the University of Wisconsin’s budget in a fight over diversity, equity and inclusion programming is up for final legislative approval on Thursday.

Once the Republican-controlled Assembly passes the plan, it will head to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who could make changes with his partial veto or even wipe out the entire budget, though that would be unlikely as it would require lawmakers to start over and scrap aspects that Evers helped craft.

Evers hasn’t said what he will do and Republicans tried to write the budget in such a way that it would be difficult for him to make substantial changes even with his line-item veto power.

Evers previously threatened to veto the entire budget over the University of Wisconsin’s $32 million cut, funding that Republicans identified as going toward diversity, equity, or DEI, programming and staff. But the budget would allow for the university to get the funding later if it could show it would go toward workforce development and not DEI.

Republicans also refused to fund UW’s top building project priority, a new engineering facility on the Madison campus. The university, backed by the state’s business leaders, urged lawmakers to reconsider, saying the new building would get at the heart of Republicans’ goal of workforce development because it would allow for more students to graduate with engineering degrees.

The cut to UW stands out in a $99 billion budget where funding was increased or at least held steady across state government. Public K-12 schools, for example, would see a $1 billion funding increase under a deal Republicans reached with Evers that would also bolster funding for local governments by $1 billion.

Democrats also object to a $3.5 billion income tax cut that would benefit wealthy filers more than lower income earners. The tax cut shrinks Wisconsin’s brackets from four to three, moving it closer to the flat income tax rate in neighboring Illinois.

Evers had proposed an income tax cut more targeted to lower- and middle-income earners.

Democrats argue that Republicans are squandering a projected record-high $7 billion budget surplus, fueled largely by federal pandemic aid. Republicans defend their cuts to a child care program and a state office of school safety, saying the don’t want to commit too much of the surplus to areas that require ongoing spending.

The budget covers the two-year period that begins Saturday and runs through June 30, 2025. Current spending levels will continue until Evers signs a new budget.

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Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., is calling for President Biden and White House staff members to take a drug test after a bag of cocaine was found inside the executive mansion over the holiday weekend.

‘So let me get this straight, the White House is refusing to say whether the cocaine culprit will be arrested,’ Boebert questioned in a tweet on Thursday.

‘Well, I think we should drug test EVERYONE, including Joe Biden, until we know who smuggled illegal drugs into the White House,’ she said.

On Wednesday, the Secret Service confirmed to Fox News that the substance found in a bag in the West Wing of the White House by a member of the Secret Service on Sunday evening was cocaine. The discovery prompted the response of a hazmat team and the fire department while the Secret Service blocked the streets around the White House.

It was originally reported that Secret Service discovered the illegal drug in a common area of the West Wing, but it has since been confirmed that the cocaine was actually found in a more secure location near an entrance used by various staff members from different government agencies. The place where the drug was found is also near the Situation Room — a conference room and intelligence-management center located in the basement of the West Wing.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the law enforcement agency was still investigating while fielding questions about the culprit.

Allies of the Biden administration fumed at reports after the cocaine was found in the White House.

‘It’s all political fodder right now, political bull s***,’ an anonymous source close to the White House told The Hill. The insider scoffed that the story was predictably being leveraged by the right, after former President Trump claimed the illegal drug belong to President Biden and his son Hunter.

‘I think it’s comical. Of course, you’re going to do what you need to do. Any time the opposition has a way to lean in and provide some type of antidote or response that’s going to get people wired up — they’re going to do so,’ the source added.

While President Biden and his family were at Camp David over the July 4th weekend, White House officials refused to deny Trump’s claims during Thursday’s press gaggle.

White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates invoked the Hatch Act to dodge the question. ‘I don’t have a response to that, because we have to be careful about the Hatch Act,’ Bates said to a reporter.

The legislation prohibits federal employees from talking about or using federal resources for campaign purposes.

The Secret Service on Thursday still had no suspects in the investigation into who brought the illegal drug into the White House, and it’s not clear whether a culprit will ever be found, a source told Fox News Digital.

The source, who is familiar with the Secret Service probe, told Fox News Digital that it will take time to review the evidence and said that officials admitted there is a possibility they will not be able to determine who brought the drugs into the building.

The source added that multiple tests have been run on the cocaine container, including DNA and fingerprints tests.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., wrote to the Secret Service on Wednesday to demand more information on the finding. 

‘If the White House complex is not secure, Congress needs to know the details, as well as your plan to correct any security flaws,’ he wrote. 

Fox News’ Kristine Parks, Andrew Mark Miller, and Houston Keene contributed to this report.

Republican Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach sued in state court Friday to mandate biological sex be listed on driver’s licenses and be immalleable to requests for changes by transgender motorists.Kobach argues that Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly — to whom he lost his bid for the governorship to in 2018 — is allowing state agencies to violate a recently-enacted law by letting sex changes be recognized on licenses. The law Kobach cites in the suit officially defines sex as immutable and designated by the ‘biological reproductive system’ identified at birth.

The Republican attorney general of Kansas sued in state court Friday to block transgender residents from changing their sex on their driver’s licenses and to rebuke the Democratic governor for defying his interpretation of a new law.

Attorney General Kris Kobach is seeking an order to stop Gov. Laura Kelly, and agencies under her control, from allowing the changes to transgender people’s licenses. Kobach contends a law that took effect Saturday prevents such changes and requires the state to reverse any previous changes in its records.

Kobach has argued that the law applies in the same way to birth certificates, but the lawsuit filed Friday doesn’t address those documents. The settlement of a 2018 federal lawsuit requires Kansas to allow transgender people to change their birth certificates.

More than 900 people have changed the listing for sex on their birth certificates in the past four years. About 400 have changed their driver’s licenses in that period, about four times as many a month this year as previously. The number of driver’s licenses changes accelerated in May and June as LGBTQ+ rights advocates encouraged people to do it ahead of the new law.

That new law defines a person’s sex as male or female, based on the ‘biological reproductive system’ identified at birth, applying that definition to any state law or regulation. It also says that ‘important governmental objectives’ of protecting people’s privacy, health and safety justify single-sex spaces such as bathrooms and locker rooms. Kansas is among at least 10 states with a law against transgender people using facilities in line with their gender identities, though the new law includes no enforcement mechanism.

Kobach’s lawsuit seeks to force the governor to enforce the law as he sees it. It names as defendants two officials who oversee driver’s licenses.

While Kelly isn’t named as a defendant, the lawsuit holds her responsible for the policy on driver’s licenses. It quotes John Adams, the nation’s second president, and cites the Declaration of Independence in arguing that Kelly ‘does not possess the power that English monarchs claimed’ centuries ago.

‘The Governor cannot pick and choose which laws she will enforce and which laws she will ignore,’ part of the lawsuit reads.

Kelly’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

It isn’t clear how quickly the district court in Shawnee County, home to the state capital, Topeka, could deal with the case.

The governor’s office said last week that the state health department, which handles birth certificates, and the motor vehicle division, which issues driver’s licenses, would continue allowing transgender people to change the markers for sex on those documents. Her office said lawyers in her administration had concluded that doing so doesn’t violate the new law. Kelly is a strong supporter of LGBTQ+ rights and vetoed the measure, but the Republican-controlled Legislature overrode her.

The new Kansas law was among a raft of measures rolling back transgender rights enacted this year in statehouses across the U.S. But only a few states do not allow transgender people to change their birth certificates. Federal judges last month upheld policies in Oklahoma and Tennessee, and a no-changes rule in Montana is expected to face a legal challenge.

Kelly won her first term as governor in 2018 by defeating Kobach, then the Kansas secretary of state. He staged a political comeback last year by winning the attorney general’s race as she captured a second term, both of them by slim margins.

The governor’s statements about the new law are at odds with descriptions from LGBTQ+ rights advocates before the Republican-controlled Legislature enacted it over Kelly’s veto. The advocates predicted that it would prevent transgender people from changing their driver’s licenses and amounted to a legal ‘erasure’ of their identities, something Kobach confirmed as the intent when he issued his legal opinion.

‘For me to go into a bathroom and not have a marker that represents who I am, I was terrified. I was afraid I was going to get accosted or harassed,’ said Ty Goeke, a 37-year-old transgender Topeka resident who changed both his birth certificate and driver’s license last month.

Goeke participated in a transgender rights rally last week with his wife, Mallory, who carried a sign made from a toilet seat, calling for the new law to be ‘flushed.’ Ty Goeke said he sobbed with joy in a state health department office when he changed his birth certificate.

‘Now that I have the correct marker, I feel much better, feel more confident,’ he said. ‘I feel at ease with myself.’

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Six people were charged Friday in an alleged scheme to divert tens of thousands of dollars in public money to New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ campaign months before his election.

The indictment, announced by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, does not implicate Adams or other current city employees in the upended plot.

Rather, it describes a straw donor conspiracy orchestrated by people with business before the city who hoped to maximize their donations in exchange for political favors.

Among the defendants are a former NYPD commander who has known the mayor for decades and the owners of a construction safety business that’s currently working on a trash depot on Staten Island.

‘We allege a deliberate scheme to game the system in a blatant attempt to gain power,’ Bragg said in a statement. ‘The New York City Campaign Finance Board program is meant to support our democracy and amplify the voices of New York City voters. When the integrity of that program is corrupted, all New Yorkers suffer.’

Prosecutors said the effort to illegally structure donations was led by Dwayne Montgomery, a former NYPD inspector currently listed as the director of integrity for the Teamsters Local 237, which represents municipal workers.

Montgomery is accused of recruiting friends and relatives to take advantage of the city’s generous matching funds system, which provides an eight-to-one match for the first $250 donated by a city resident.

He allegedly orchestrated more than two dozens straw donations between 2020 and 2021, while also helping to organize fundraisers for Adams. It’s not clear how much money was ultimately steered to the campaign.

Evan Thies, a spokesperson for mayor’s campaign, acknowledged that Adams knew Montgomery ‘socially,’ noting the two served in the NYPD together and later worked on criminal justice issues. However, he denied that the campaign had any knowledge of the scheme.

The indictment also names Shamsuddin Riza, Millicent Redick, and Ronald Peek as helping to organize the illegal donations. Yahya Mushtaq and Shahid Mushtaq, the leaders of EcoSafety Consultants, a construction company with active city contracts, are named as well.

Although New York’s campaign finance rules bar those with business before the city from donating more than $400, prosecutors say the defendants devised a scheme to donate to the campaign under the names of EcoSafety’s employees, without their knowledge.

‘You could use a straw man,’ Riza allegedly told Yahya Mushtaq during a phone call. ‘Whoever’s on the LLC or the incorporation, those are the people that do business with the city. Anybody else is an employee, the employees don’t fall under that criteria.’

Riza, who owns a construction company and was previously charged with falsifying business records, also allegedly indicated that he was hoping to secure work from the city.

‘FYI ! This is the one I want , Safety , Drywall , and Security one project but we all can eat,’ Riza wrote in a July 2021 email to Montgomery in which he sent along the information for a construction project called Vital Brooklyn, prosecutors allege.

A City Hall spokesperson said Adams never discussed city business with any of the defendants, though he said it was likely the mayor and Montgomery had spoken about other matters in passing.

All of the defendants face charges of conspiracy, attempted grand larceny, and making false statements.

Muhammad Ikhlas, a lawyer for Riza, said his client pleaded not guilty on Friday and was released on his own recognizance. He declined to discuss the case further.

Scott Grauman, a lawyer for Shahid Mushtaq and Ecosafety Consultants, Inc., said they would ‘vigorously defend against these charges.’

Lawyers for the other defendants didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Thies, the campaign spokesperson, pledged to work with the campaign finance board and the district attorney as the case proceeds.

‘The campaign always held itself to the highest standards and we would never tolerate these actions,’ he said.

Adams has previously faced scrutiny over his fundraising practices. Earlier this year, he was fined $20,000 by the Campaign Finance Board for violating their rules on accepting donations from people with business before the city and failing to hand over paperwork in a timely manner.

Susan Lerner, the executive director of the watchdog group Common Cause New York, said it was too soon to know if Adams had acted improperly. But she said the indictment was evidence that the city’s public financing system was working as intended.

‘The campaign finance system we have in New York City deliberately makes it harder for people who want to buy influence,’ Lerner said. ‘The lesson here is do not try to game the system because you will be caught.’

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White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre lashed out at a reporter Friday who asked whether the cocaine found in the West Wing last weekend belonged to a member of the Biden family.

The exchange happened during the daily White House press briefing when New York Post reporter Caitlin Doornbos asked if Jean-Pierre could ‘say once and for all whether or not the cocaine belonged to the Biden family,’ and also asked why deputy press secretary Andrew Bates dodged questions related to the cocaine by citing the Hatch Act a day earlier.

‘So – a couple of things there,’ Jean-Pierre began, appearing visibly uncomfortable. ‘He mentioned the Hatch Act because the question was posed to him in – using Donald Trump. And so he was trying to be very mindful.’

She claimed the administration wasn’t ‘avoiding the question,’ and that she had ‘exhaustively’ answered questions on the cocaine for days.

‘You know, there has been some irresponsible reporting about the family. And so I’ve got to call that out here. And I have been very clear. I was clear two days ago when talking about this over and over again as I was being asked the question,’ Jean-Pierre said, appearing increasingly angry.

‘As you know, and media outlets reported this, the Biden family was not here. They were not here. They were at Camp David. They were not here Friday. They were not here Saturday. They were not here Sunday. They were not even here Monday. They came back on Tuesday. So to ask that question is actually incredibly irresponsible. And I’ll just leave it there,’ she added.

House Republicans opened an investigation into the cocaine discovery on Monday, calling on the head of the U.S. Secret Service to give Congress more information. House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., blasted the illicit discovery as a ‘shameful’ moment.

The situation has even attracted scrutiny from liberal network MSNBC, with one host speculating that the cocaine didn’t belong to just an ‘average’ person since it was found near the Situation Room in a secure location.

Republican lawmakers are raising questions about media reports that say the person who left a bag of cocaine in the White House might never be found.

‘I’ve been in and out of that entrance a million times. It’s one of the most heavily secured and constantly surveilled places on earth. They keep detailed records on who enters and exits and when. I find it difficult to accept that they can’t figure out who put the cocaine there,’ Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said on Thursday night. 

The comments come after multiple reports citing unnamed sources close to the U.S. Secret Service probe of the incident suggested the suspect’s identity might not be determined over the course of the investigation. 

‘How can the [White House] say the cocaine culprit will likely never be Identified? They have video and visitor logs as well as facial recognition,’ said Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., similarly questioned, ‘How can law enforcement officials say it is ‘unlikely’ they’ll be able to track down the culprit who brought cocaine into the White House?’

There have been conflicting reports about where the cocaine was found. When the news first broke, it was alleged that the substance had been found in the White House library. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Wednesday that it had been in a ‘heavily traveled’ part of the West Wing. Multiple outlets reported on Thursday that it had been found near the West Executive entrance, a more secure location than previously thought.

The Secret Service is currently investigating the incident, which the White House said occurred while President Biden and his family were away at Camp David.

Some of Biden’s Republican critics suggested they believed the administration was not interested in finding the person’s real identity. 

‘White House cocaine culprit unlikely to be found, as long as White House officials don’t want them found,’ said Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D.

Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., suggested going a step further and forcing top officials to submit to drug tests.

‘So let me get this straight, the White House is refusing to say whether the cocaine culprit will be arrested? Well, I think we should drug test EVERYONE, including Joe Biden, until we know who smuggled illegal drugs into the White House,’ she said.

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez voiced support for President Biden in an interview Thursday, though she said the president could have done better in certain areas.

Ocasio-Cortez appeared on the political podcast ‘Pod Save America’ on Thursday, where she was asked for her honest thoughts on the Biden presidency.

‘I think he’s done quite well, given the limitations that we have,’ Ocasio-Cortez said, adding, ‘I do think that there are ebbs and flows as there are in any presidency.’

‘There are areas that I think are quite strong — when he came right out of the gate with the American Rescue Plan, and of course the Inflation Reduction Act was a massive step in terms of our climate agenda.’ 

However, Ocasio-Cortez questioned the enthusiasm of the president — and the entire Democratic Party — on immigration issues.

‘There are also areas that I think could have gone better. The president and I think the Democratic Party in general continues to struggle with immigration. We don’t want to own this issue,’ she said.

‘There are plenty of other issues as well,’ she continued. ‘Even with what is happening with asylees — the ability to grant people basic work authorization so that they can work while they are going through their legal processing. There is [an] enormous amount of political resistance to that.’

Ocasio-Cortez has been a tepid supporter for Biden since his election in 2020. In the Democratic Party’s primary, she backed fellow democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders.

She has, until now, refrained from saying she will support the president in a 2024 Democratic primary. 

In her Thursday interview, she noted that she would back Biden out of the current line-up of candidates.

‘So, president’s only primary opponents are Marianne Williamson, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Haven’t been any rumors about anyone else even thinking of jumping in. Will you be supporting Joe Biden for re-election?’ asked ‘Pod Save America’ host Jon Favreau asked.

‘I believe, given that field, yes,’ Ocasio-Cortez replied.

A nonprofit aligned with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has pulled in hundreds of millions of dollars from secret donors in recent years as the New York lawmaker decried dark money in politics, tax forms show.

Majority Forward, an advocacy group that conceals its contributors and has links to the Senate Majority PAC, has seen its war chest exponentially expand by nine figures over the past three years compared to its first three years in operation. 

Between July 2019 and late June 2022, Majority Forward received $271.6 million in anonymous donations, according to a Fox News Digital review of tax forms. The nonprofit, launched in 2015, saw only $69 million in donations from June 2015 to May 2018. 

The $200 million boost over the past three years compared to its first three years came as Schumer and other Democrats ramped up their attacks against Republican dark money operations. The skyrocketing cash also exemplifies Democrats’ increased reliance upon a practice they consistently rail against. 

According to Majority Forward’s most recent tax forms obtained by Fox News Digital, the group raked in $75.2 million between early July 2021 and late June 2022. During this time, it funneled $31.2 million in grants to eight left-wing organizations like Priorities USA, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Americans for Economic Growth, Save My Country Action Fund, Protect Your Vote Nevada, Swing Left and Emily’s List. 

But its biggest recipient was the Senate Majority PAC, which is also aligned with Schumer and works to elect Democrats to Congress’s upper chamber. During the calendar year, the nonprofit doled out $23 million to the PAC, which has consistently received large sums from the group. This means that considerable amounts of secret money have been poured into elections to aid Democrats across the country.

JB Poersch, a long-time Schumer ally, is president of both Majority Forward and Senate Majority PAC. Both groups share office space and personnel, and Majority Forward has put hundreds of thousands toward the PAC for salaries, insurance and IT security, federal filings show.

Schumer, meanwhile, has publicly criticized dark money as Democrats have benefited from it. The Senate majority leader has advocated for legislation against the practice and urged right-leaning judicial groups to identify their backers.

As part of the push, Schumer has championed the For the People Act, which contains provisions to make political nonprofits disclose donors who give more than $10,000. The bill also calls for nonprofits to file disclosure reports to the Federal Election Commission when they drive more than $10,000 into election-related activities.

Schumer, dark money critic Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and other Democratic politicians also called on the Judicial Crisis Network, a right-leaning organization, to release a list of donors who provided the group with more than $10,000.

The senators criticized the group for concealing ‘the identity of its donors’ who ‘have contributed tens of millions of dollars used to fund political advertising campaigns in support of nominees like Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch.’

The lawmakers made the demand as they reaped the rewards from their own judicial dark money groups, including Demand Justice and the Alliance for Justice. Both groups have undertaken initiatives to influence President Joe Biden on judicial nominations, including with Supreme Court Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson.

Schumer has also regularly assailed dark money on his social media feeds.

‘The Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United paved the way for endless dark money in our elections,’ Schumer said last September. ‘The Senate is voting on the DISCLOSE Act because we must cure this cancer of dark money. Every Senator has a choice: Vote for transparency, or stand with the forces of dark money.’

Majority Forward did not respond to a request for comment.