Democratic Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed praised Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s ‘energy and the concentration’ despite calls from both sides of the aisle that the California Democrat should leave office over health concerns. 

‘I think Sen. Feinstein has performed remarkably during her career. I think at this point, she has medical issues, she’s acknowledged those issues. She still is able to summon the energy and the concentration to come to vote,’ Reed told ‘Fox News Sunday’ host Shannon Bream. 

A handful of Democrats, including Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ro Khanna, have called on Feinstein to retire in recent weeks, saying her absence from voting has hurt the party’s efforts to pass legislation and that she is unable to fulfill her duties. 

Feinstein announced in March she was diagnosed with a case of shingles and had been absent from senatorial duties for a three-month period. She returned to Capitol Hill on May 11, when she attended a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting. 

In her absence, Feinstein missed at least 93 votes between February and May, Fox News Digital previously reported. 

FEINSTEIN ARRIVES OVER AN HOUR LATE FOR JUDICIARY COMMITTEE MEETING TO APPROVE DIVISIVE BIDEN JUDICIAL PICKS 

First elected in 1992, Feinstein is the longest-serving senator in California history and the longest-serving female senator in the nation’s history. She announced earlier this year that she would not seek re-election in 2024, when her term is up.

Reed was reacting to video of Democratic Rep. Katie Porter, who is running to replace Feinstein in the Senate, highlighting that Feinstein’s absence over health issues is not the first time Congress has had to cope with an absent lawmaker, citing Democratic Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman recently taking time off to receive health treatments. 

‘I think she deserves the opportunity to make a decision about her career. I had the opportunity to serve with Strom Thurmond, who was 100 years old when he retired. And there were some people back then who were saying he should go, but not with the same kind of intensity today,’ Reed said. 

‘Again, I think this is something that Sen. Feinstein should consider and make a decision,’ he added. 

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An ad from President Biden’s 2020 campaign declaring ‘the buck stops here’ is making the rounds on Twitter after the president said Sunday that he would be ‘blameless’ if the U.S. defaults on its debt in the coming days.

‘I’ve done my part,’ Biden said Sunday in Japan when asked about the debt ceiling, later adding, ‘On the merits, based on what I’ve offered, I would be blameless.’

An ad from Biden’s campaign in April 2020 slammed then-President Donald Trump for comments he made shirking responsibility for multiple pitfalls during the COVID-19 pandemic.

‘The buck stops here,’ a narrator said in the ad. ‘Harry Truman said it. It means no excuses. It means taking responsibility, the ultimate responsibility for the biggest decisions in the world.’

‘Donald Trump thought the job was about tweets and rallies and big parades,’ the narrator said. ‘He never thought he’d have to protect nearly 330 million Americans. So he didn’t.’

Biden wrote at the time in a tweet that the ‘office of the presidency comes with the ultimate responsibility for the biggest decisions in the world.’

‘Every great president throughout our history has met that duty with the leadership it demands. Donald Trump has not,’ he tweeted.

Republican strategist Matt Whitlock shared the ad Sunday on Twitter, suggesting Biden’s historically low job approval ratings were due to him ‘failing to live up to every single thing he ran on.’

Biden argued Sunday that certain ‘MAGA Republicans’ are seeking to cause a default in an effort to crash the economy ahead of Biden’s re-election effort.

The president made the claim during a news conference in Hiroshima, Japan, where he had traveled for meetings with G-7 nations. Republicans in Congress forced Biden to the negotiating table after months of the White House insisting there would be no debate over the issue. 

‘I’ve done my part,’ Biden said, adding that ‘it’s time for the other side to move their team positions because much of what they were proposed is simply quite frankly, unacceptable.’ This prompted a follow-up at the end of the news conference from Fox News’ Peter Doocy.

‘Mr. President, on the debt limit, you said already, ‘I’ve done my part.’ Do you think if there’s a breach, nobody can blame you?’ Doocy asked.

‘Of course no one will blame me, I know you won’t, you’ll be saying Biden did a wonderful job,’ Biden joked.

‘Would you be blameless in a default situation?’ Doocy pressed.

‘On the merits, based on what I’ve offered, I would be blameless,’ Biden responded. ‘On the politics of it, no one would be blameless. And by the way, that’s one of the, one of the things some [people] are contemplating. Well, I gotta be careful here. I think there are some MAGA Republicans in the House who know the damage that it would do to the economy and because I am president, and presidents are responsible for everything, Biden would take the blame. And that’s the one way to make sure Biden’s not re-elected.’

Fox News’ Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., will meet with President Biden on Monday to continue negotiations on raising the debt ceiling, McCarthy announced Sunday.

Biden and McCarthy spoke on the phone Sunday and had a ‘productive’ conversation, McCarthy said, despite throwing barbs at one another in public statements. Biden has stated that the current Republican offer is ‘unacceptable’ and complained that McCarthy has been dragged to the right by ‘MAGA Republicans.’ McCarthy, meanwhile, has claimed the opposite.

‘I just finished a phone call with the president,’ McCarthy told reporters. ‘I believe it was a productive phone call.’

Biden is currently on his way back to Washington after attending meetings with G-7 nations in Hiroshima, Japan. McCarthy says he told the president to get some sleep and get briefed up on the current state of negotiations after being absent during the international trip.

McCarthy says he and Biden will meet ‘personally’ on Monday.

‘I told him, we don’t have to meet in the morning. You know, let’s have some sleep. And then we agreed that he and I are going to get together tomorrow, later in the afternoon, and work out that time to see what we can come to,’ McCarthy said.

Biden has 11 days to come to an agreement with House Republicans before the U.S. defaults on its debt for the first time in history. Biden appeared to wash his hands of the issue in a statement to reporters in Japan, however, saying, ‘I’ve done my part,’ and declaring himself ‘blameless’ if there is a default.

The White House claims some ‘MAGA Republicans’ are working to intentionally derail negotiations and cause a default, which would lead to economic disaster and potentially harm Biden’s re-election effort.

Meanwhile, McCarthy has argued the opposite, saying the president is in the thrall of left-wing Democrats.

‘The president has really shifted right after the more progressive socialist wing of the party stood up and says they want to spend more money,’ McCarthy told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday. ‘He’s now bringing something to the table that everyone said was off the table. It seems as though he wants default more than he wants a deal. That’s not where I’m at, and the one thing you know… about me, Maria, I will never give up.’

New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, said in a new interview Sunday that migrants from the U.S.-Mexico border should be sent to every city ‘throughout the entire country.’

‘We have 108,000 cities, villages, towns. If everyone takes a small portion of that, and if it’s coordinated at the border, to ensure that those who are coming here to this country in a lawful manner is actually moved throughout the entire country, it is not a burden on one city,’ Adams said in an appearance on CBS’s ‘Face the Nation’ Sunday. ‘And the numbers need to be clear. We received over 70,000 migrant asylum seekers in our city, 42,000 are still in our care. If this is properly handled at the border level, this issue can be resolved while we finally get Congress, particularly the Republican Party, to deal with a comprehensive immigration policy.’

Amid reports that the White House and fellow Democrat Adams have butted heads over the migrant crisis, notably as the mayor of New York City stepped away from President Joe Biden’s reelection advisory board, CBS host Margaret Brennan on Sunday asked about whether, in Adams’ view, the supposed $30 million in federal funding to address the influx into the Big Apple was enough. Adams said that New York City has already spent more than $1 billion in addressing the migrant crisis and is projected to need more than $4 billion more in funding. 

The mayor also pushed back on the argument from some Republicans that Democrat-controlled cities are drawing migrants due to their sanctuary status.

‘The problem is that Republicans for far too many years have failed to deal with real immigration reform,’ Adams said. ‘This is a national issue. No city should … be going through this, including El Paso, Brownsville [in Texas]. When I went to El Paso, Texas, and saw what was happening there, I raised the same concern. This should not be the burning of Chicago, Washington, Houston, Denver and New York City. That is what we want to focus on. How do we have real comprehensive immigration reform? And how do we have a real decompression strategy? And we really need to allow the migrants, asylum seekers, to be able to have work status so that they can actually work in various areas that we’re looking for employment.’

Adams continues to get pushback in courts to his administration’s plans to bus hundreds of single male adult migrants upstate and possibly to Long Island to stay in hotels for months. Those municipalities – under mostly Republican leadership – say they lack the resources to deal with asylum seekers processed in the Big Apple.

Jeffrey Epstein allegedly threatened Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates with details on the tech billionaire’s alleged affair with a Russian bridge player, the Wall Street Journal reported. 

‘Mr. Gates met with Epstein solely for philanthropic purposes,’ a spokeswoman for Gates told WSJ. ‘Having failed repeatedly to draw Mr. Gates beyond these matters, Epstein tried unsuccessfully to leverage a past relationship to threaten Mr. Gates.’

Gates met Russian bridge player Mila Antonova in 2010, when she was in her 20s and Gates in his mid-50s, at a bridge tournament where the two played against each other, according to the Journal. Antonova is originally from Russia, but moved to the U.S. and began working as a software engineer in Silicon Valley, according to her LinkedIn. 

Antonova publicly discussed meeting the tech billionaire in a 2010 video detailing that she ‘didn’t beat’ Gates, but ‘tried to kick him with my leg,’ according to WSJ. Gates is a noted lover of the game of bridge and has even competed against fellow billionaire Warren Buffett. 

After meeting Gates, Antonova sought to start an online venture that would teach people how to play bridge. She began reaching out to potential donors, with Gates confidant Boris Nikolic connecting her with Epstein, according to documents reviewed by the outlet. 

In November 2013, Antonova and Nikolic reportedly met Epstein at his townhome in New York City to pitch the proposal and try to raise $500,000. Epstein ultimately did not donate to the proposal, dubbed ‘BridgePlanet,’ WSJ reported, citing Antonova. 

‘I deeply regret that I ever met Epstein,’ Nikolic highlighted to the outlet. ‘His crimes were despicable. I never saw anything like his illegal behavior. My heart goes out to his victims and their families.’

The following November, Antonova stayed at an apartment provided by Epstein, but ‘didn’t interact with him or with anyone else while there,’ she said. By that year, she had decided to become a software engineer and was looking for donors to help pay for programing classes.

‘Epstein agreed to pay and he paid directly to the school. Nothing was exchanged. I don’t know why he did that,’ she said, the outlet reported. ‘When I asked, he said something like, he was wealthy and wanted to help people when he could.’

Meanwhile, Epstein was trying to set up a multibillion-dollar charitable fund with JPMorgan, in part to reportedly help repair his public image following his 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitutes, including an underage girl. The plan hinged on him getting wealthy donors, including Gates, to pool their money for the fund, according to the report.

Gates and Epstein had met a handful of times before Epstein’s death in 2019, which Gates later said he regrets. In emails reviewed by WSJ, Epstein sent emails to JPMorgan trying to give the impression he was an adviser to Gates. The tech billionaire’s spokeswoman told the outlet that Epstein never worked for Gates and misrepresented their relationship to JPMorgan.

The fund stalled and ultimately went nowhere. 

‘The firm didn’t need him as a client,’ a JPMorgan spokesman told WSJ of Epstein. ‘The firm didn’t need him for introductions. Knowing what we know today, we wish we had never done business with him.’

In 2017, years after Gates’ alleged relationship with Antonova, Epstein emailed Gates about the bridge player, sources with knowledge of the incident told WSJ. Antonova denied providing comment to WSJ about Gates specifically, the outlet noted. 

Epstein reportedly asked Gates to reimburse him for the funds used to cover Antonova’s software programming classes. Gates did not send a payment, according to Gates’ spokeswoman.

‘Mr. Gates had no financial dealings with Epstein,’ the spokeswoman said. 

Sources said the cost of the classes were irrelevant to both men, but that the tone of the email showed Epstein was aware of the alleged affair and could expose Gates. 

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Texas is one step closer to banning diversity, equity and inclusion offices from public colleges in the state.  

The Texas House voted 83-60 on Friday in support of Senate Bill 17, which would ban DEI offices, programs and diversity training, according to The Texas Tribune.

Democrats forcefully pushed back against the bill during an hours-long debate, arguing it could risk universities losing federal grants while potentially making some students feel less welcome at the schools, the outlet reported.

The bill’s Republican sponsor, state Rep. John Kuempel, offered an amendment to the bill that would require the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to conduct a study each year examining how the elimination of such offices affected issues such as students’ grade point averages, rates of recruitment and acceptance.

The amendment, which was approved, would also allow the colleges and universities to make ‘reasonable efforts’ to reassign employees in the DEI offices to other positions with comparable pay.

The amendment was also introduced in an effort to quell concerns from Democrats that the legislation would risk schools losing federal grants, as grants often require applicants to show how they promote diversity, according to the Tribune.  

If passed, Texas would join Florida in banning such DEI initiates from public colleges. Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed SB 266 into law last week, which bans all state funding for DEI programs at public universities and colleges. 

The Texas bill will now head back to the Senate, where the body will decide to accept or deny House members’ changes. The legislation would take effect Jan. 1 if passed and signed into law. 

After the Senate passed its version of the bill last month, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick released a statement praising state lawmakers for their ‘strongest pushback on woke policies in higher education.’ 

‘The Texas Senate has now passed the strongest pushback on woke policies in higher education nationwide. For far too long, academia has been poisoned by woke policies and faculty seeking to indoctrinate our students. Professors did not believe we would push back on their advances, but they were wrong. Students should be taught how to think critically, not what to think,’ he said last month. 

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A prominent civil rights attorney deleted his viral tweet that attacked a female New York City hospital worker hours after her lawyer threatened defamation lawsuits in a Fox News segment against those who defamed her.

Ben Crump, who has been a lead attorney in several police brutality cases, tweeted a viral video with more than 4 million views of a verbal altercation between a pregnant New York City physician assistant and multiple young Black men before deleting it hours later after the segment aired and went viral on Twitter.

‘This is unacceptable!’ Crump captioned the tweet with the video. ‘A white woman was caught on camera attempting to STEAL a Citi Bike from a young Black man in NYC. She grossly tried to weaponize her tears to paint this man as a threat. This is EXACTLY the type of behavior that has endangered so many Black men in the past!’

There was no follow-up tweet with a correction or an apology.

Sarah Comrie, a physician assistant at Bellevue Hospital, was put on leave after the video sparked outrage. Her attorney, Justin Marino, said Comrie is six months pregnant and had just finished a 12-hour shift prior to the viral footage.

‘She’s been called a racist,’ Marino told Fox News on Friday. ‘She’s been called a thief. There are reasons defamation laws exist, and we plan to pursue that.’

Crump deleted his tweet hours after the Fox News segment. Marino said Comrie had to go ‘in hiding’ after the video went viral.

The men in the video with Comrie said they had paid to use the bike, despite her lawyer saying that receipts show she purchased it.

‘Around that time these individuals were claiming that that was their bike,’ Marino said, ‘someone pushed the bike while she was on it, back into the docking station so it locked again.’

Marino said he was hired because Comrie feared she may lose her job.

Crump did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on whether he plans to apologize for his tweet.

Republican Miami Mayor Francis Suarez on Sunday offered praise of a prominent Democrat mayor, saying he was happy that the Democrat was ‘standing up and talking about’ how the migrant crisis was impacting his city.

‘I’m actually quite proud of Mayor [Eric] Adams from New York for standing up and talking about how this is impacting the city of New York,’ Suarez said during an interview on CBS’ ‘Face the Nation.’

‘He has to focus on crime reduction, and instead you see images of police officers helping people in the classic Roosevelt Hotel find housing,’ he continued. ‘These officers should be, and you want them to be, focused on reducing crime, and instead, have to deal with this migrant crisis that as you’ve said should be a federal issue.’

Adams appeared on the same Sunday morning show and said that migrants from the U.S.-Mexico border should be sent to every city ‘throughout the entire country.’

‘We have 108,000 cities, villages, towns. If everyone takes a small portion of that, and if it’s coordinated at the border, to ensure that those who are coming here to this country in a lawful manner is actually moved throughout the entire country, it is not a burden on one city,’ Adams said. ‘And the numbers need to be clear. We received over 70,000 migrant asylum seekers in our city, 42,000 are still in our care. If this is properly handled at the border level, this issue can be resolved while we finally get Congress, particularly the Republican Party, to deal with a comprehensive immigration policy.’

Suarez also weighed in on the migrant crisis by expressing frustration about the federal government not helping Miami.

‘We haven’t received any support as of yet from the federal government that we are aware of,’ Suarez said. ‘We checked to see if we have gotten any help from FEMA – it turns out we have not.’

Suarez said his city has struggled to manage the flux of immigrants over the past year, especially from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti, which the Biden administration created a program for to ease the asylum process in January.

‘It is a migrant crisis in our city as well,’ Suarez said. ‘Just in the last two months, the Coast Guard has processed 408 migrants on our coast. Just last year in our public school system, we had over 14,000 new children – 10,000 of which came from four countries: Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti. And that’s the equivalent of five new 2,000-student school. It’s a tremendous burden on our system.’

Illegal crossings at the border spiked this month amid the expiration of Title 42, a COVID-19 emergency policy that allowed border agents to turn away migrants.

Suarez said this migrant crisis puts a burden primarily on large cities, many of which have received little to no federal aid.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., took action in May to help counter mass migration in his state when he signed a bill that requires businesses with more than 25 employees to check the immigration status of those whom they hire. A failure to comply leads to a $1,000 fine. The law has prompted immigration groups to discourage migrants from traveling to Florida.

FEMA and New York City Mayor Adams did not respond to a request for comment.

A Georgia state representative posted a scathing rebuke of her own party on Twitter Saturday, accusing fellow Democrats of prioritizing migrants over inner city children.

Mesha Mainor has served in the Georgia House of Representatives since January 2021, representing District 56. In a Twitter video, she accused Democrats of turning against her for being a staunch school choice advocate. 

‘I support school choice, parent rights and opportunities for children to thrive, especially those that are marginalized and tend to fail in school,’ Mainor began.

‘The Democrats at the [Georgia State] Capitol took a hard position and demanded every Democrat vote against children and for the teachers union,’ she explained. ‘I voted yes for parents and yes for children not failing schools.’

Mainor justified her position by noting that some schools in her district have 3% reading proficiency rates and that many kids cannot do simple math.

‘I have a few colleagues upset with me to the point where they are giving away $1,000 checks to anyone that will run against me,’ Mainor continued. ‘I’m not apologizing because my colleagues don’t like how I vote.’

Mainor then explained that parents are upset that some politicians ‘put the teachers union and donors ahead of their constituents.’

Mainor’s speech took a personal turn when she accused her colleagues of being upset that she stood up for her principles.

‘It’s ironic. I’ll say every election year, I hear ‘Black Lives Matter.’ But do they? I see every other minority being prioritized except Black children living in poverty that can’t read,’ Mainor argued.

‘We’ll send $1,000,000 to the border for immigrant services. But Black communities, not even a shout-out. I’m sorry, I don’t agree with this,’ she added. ‘I’m not backing down and I’m actually just getting started.’

Fox News Digital reached out to Mainor for a statement, but has not heard back.

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