House Republicans are pressing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for answers after the agency funded research experiments they say could result in a ‘supercharged’ monkeypox virus. 

In a letter to acting NIH Director Lawrence Tabak, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., and two subcommittee chairmen are demanding that the agency turn over documents and information regarding a government-funded experiment that reportedly involves swapping monkepox genes with a deadlier version of the virus. The lawmakers want to know whether this project was approved by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) review board tasked with oversight of research involving enhanced pathogens that could potentially cause a pandemic. 

This letter is a follow-up to an October 31, 2022, letter to which Republicans say the NIH never responded. GOP lawmakers accused NIH of ‘stonewalling’ in a press release. 

‘Based on the available information, it appears the project is reasonably anticipated to yield a lab-generated monkeypox virus that is 1,000 times more lethal in mice than the monkeypox virus currently circulating in humans and that transmits as efficiently as the monkeypox virus currently circulating in humans. The risk-benefit ratio indicates potentially serious risks without clear civilian practical applications,’ the Republicans wrote. 

‘Accordingly, this experiment would seem to involve risks reasonably anticipated to create, transfer, or use [potential pandemic pathogens] resulting from the enhancement of a pathogen’s transmissibility or virulence in humans. Thus, under the circumstances, we are interested in learning whether this experiment was reviewed under the HHS P3CO framework used to review research proposals posing significant biosafety or biosecurity risks.’ 

The project leader is Dr. Bernard Moss, a veteran poxvirus researcher at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. An article in Science magazine described his efforts to learn the differences between two variants of monkeypox virus: clade 2, the West African variant that caused a global outbreak last year, and clade 1, which is believed to be deadlier and has caused outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of Congo for decades. 

Moss’ research involves swapping the genes of the two variants, one at a time, to discover whether a specific gene in the clade 1 virus makes it deadlier. The Republicans want to know whether these lab experiments could artificially enhance the clade 2 variant. 

Such research, known as ‘gain-of-function,’ is highly controversial, because it involves extracting viruses from animals to artificially engineer in a laboratory to make them more transmissible and deadly to humans. Proponents say these experiments can help scientists understand the nature of viruses and develop new treatments and vaccines. Skeptics warn that gain-of-function experiments are one lab accident away from causing another global pandemic. 

Moss did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

‘Human disease associated with clade 2 or West African monkeypox virus infection is less severe and is associated with less than one percent mortality, whereas clade 1 or Congo Basin monkeypox infection has a 10 percent case fatality rate in unvaccinated persons,’ the Republicans wrote. ‘Because of its significantly greater lethality, clade 1 or Congo Basin clade monkeypox viruses are regulated as select agents by the Federal Select Agents Program. Entities that possess, use, or transfer this agent must comply with the HHS Select Agent and Toxin Regulations unless there is an applicable exemption or exclusion. 

‘Thus,’ the letter continues, ‘under these regulations, it would appear the clade 1 monkeypox virus experiment is a restricted experiment that must be reviewed by the Federal Select Agent Program, and may be further reviewed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention‘s (CDC’s) Intragovernmental Select Agents and Toxins Technical Advisory Committee (ISATTAC).’ 

The Republicans want NIH officials and employees to testify about Moss’ project and other related matters. They gave NIH an April 13, 2023, deadline to respond to their inquiry. 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took multiple jabs at President Biden on Saturday during a stump speech in Pennsylvania.

DeSantis, speaking at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference 2023, called Biden a ‘floundering leader’ and said the president’s poor performance contributed to Republican gains. 

‘We are in the highest percentage of the vote that any Republican candidate for governor has ever received in the history of the state of Florida,’ DeSantis told the audience. ‘We were able to flip Democrat counties or urban counties like Miami-Dade County. And not only did we flip it, we won it by double digits.’

‘It’s been a massive defeat for the Democratic Party,’ the Florida governor said. ‘They did not want to see Florida go red. They threw everything but the kitchen sink to stop us. And yet, we have left the Democratic Party for dead in the state of Florida.’

The Florida governor has been walking a political tightrope for months as he refuses to officially declare his candidacy for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

At the same time, he has butted heads with both the Biden administration and former President Donald Trump’s campaign — both of whom view him as a rival for the presidency.

In speeches this year, the governor has pitched his numerous conservative policy victories in Florida as a roadmap for the entire nation. 

Sources in DeSantis’ wider orbit have said that any presidential campaign launch would come in the late spring or early summer, after the end of Florida’s current legislative session. 

However, the governor’s recent stops in the early-voting states of Iowa and Nevada and a trip next month to New Hampshire are sparking more 2024 speculation.

DeSantis said earlier this week that his state ‘will not assist’ in any extradition request by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg amid what he called ‘questionable circumstances’ while slamming the charges against Trump as ‘un-American’ and a ‘weaponization of the legal system to advance a political agenda.’ 

The former president and 2024 Republican presidential candidate was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury on Thursday after a years-long investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.

Fox News’ Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.

President Biden on Saturday visited the campus of the University of Pennsylvania for the first time since a controversy over the discovery of classified documents at the Penn Biden Center in Washington D.C.

Biden and first lady Jill Biden stopped by the university to visit Maisy Biden’s senior art show at a university gallery. It marks the first time Biden has visited the campus since the emergence in November of documents with classified markings at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, D.C.

Those documents were said to be from the Obama-Biden administration and were discovered ‘unexpectedly’ by Biden’s personal attorneys. The emergence of the documents was followed by assessments by the FBI and Department of Justice.

In January, the Department of Justice announced it was investigating the discovery of the documents, and Attorney General Merrick Garland said he was appointing Robert Hur as special counsel.

Attorneys also found batches of documents at Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware. Four batches of classified materials have been found in Biden’s possession in total, dating from both his time as vice president and as a senator from Delaware. 

In February, FBI agents searched Biden’s vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, for three and a half hours but did not find additional classified documents. The search was carried out on Hur’s first day on the job as special counsel.

Biden has addressed the controversy, saying his team is cooperating fully with the DOJ and suggested that his staff was to blame for not finding the documents when he left office in 2017.

‘But one of the things that happened is that what was not done well is as they packed up my offices to move them, they didn’t do the kind of job that should have been done to go thoroughly through every single piece of literature that’s there,’ Biden said. ‘But I’ll just let the investigation, you know, decide what’s going on, and we’ll see what happens.’

House Republicans have promised to investigate Biden’s handling of classified materials, with Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., telling Fox News that ‘nothing that Joe Biden’s done with respect to mishandling these classified documents is normal.’ 

Fox News’ Chris Pandolfo and Brianna Herlihy contributed to this report.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced Friday it will immediately begin accepting the gender identity of foreign nationals requesting immigration benefits even if they do not match the gender marker on their supporting documents.

The agency, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security and deals primarily with lawful immigration in the U.S., said it is updating its policy manual to clarify that ‘USCIS will accept the self-identified gender marker for individuals requesting immigration benefits.’  

‘The gender marker they select does not need to match the gender marker indicated on their supporting documentation,’ according to the USCIS announcement March 31, which the White House designated ‘Trans Day of Visibility.’

The agency, which is tasked with scrutinizing and processing legal immigration applications and renewals along with other documents, said nationals requesting immigration services do not need to submit proof of their gender identity when submitting a request to change their marker, with some exceptions. 

The Biden administration has marked that day, with President Biden urging Americans to ‘join us in lifting up the lives and voices of transgender people throughout our nation and to work toward eliminating violence and discrimination against all transgender, gender-nonconforming and nonbinary people.’

Currently, the markers available on forms are male and female, but the agency said it is requesting an additional marker of ‘X’ for ‘another or unspecified gender identity.’

The latest changes originated from a request for input from the public in 2021 on how USCIS could lift barriers to benefits and services. Some of the responses indicated that providing evidence for a gender change was a barrier.

The move echoes similar changes by the State Department, which no longer requires medical documentation to change gender markers on passports and also allows citizens to select ‘X’ as a gender.

A newly formed non-profit is bringing the spirit of ‘don’t tread on me’ to the kitchen, taking a stand against an ongoing campaign to ban gas-powered stoves.

Hands Off My Stove is sponsored by the U.S. Oil and Gas Association and was created as a response to government proposals at the local, state, and federal level to restrict what stoves Americans can use in their homes to prepare their meals.

‘People are really upset about this because the kitchen is the center of everyone’s home — it’s where we raise our families and where we teach our kid and people see this as environmentalists kicking in their door and tattling on them to the government,’ Tim Stewart, president of the U.S. Oil and Gas Association, told Fox News Digital. ‘They feel like it is a gross invasion of their privacy and their personal space, and they want someone to tell them how to fight back. This is about choice and freedom, and it is about privacy.’

The push to regulate and ultimately eliminate natural gas-powered stoves gained national attention in January, when a member of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), a government agency, said a ban on gas stoves was ‘on the table’ because of the health risks they pose to consumers. However, the CPSC backed down after public outrage and ridicule. 

Soon thereafter, the Energy Department proposed an energy-efficiency regulation that officials acknowledge is so stringent that less than 50% of the gas stoves currently in use today would make the cut.

The Energy Department ‘proposes efficiency standards all the time — for lightbulbs, washers and dryers, refrigerators, and more,’ a department spokesperson recently told Fox News Digital. ‘Does it mean they’re coming to ban those appliances? Of course not. Instead, the department is building on decades-long efforts with industry to ensure our appliances work more efficiently and save Americans money.’

The department has also proposed a rule called the ‘Energy Conservation Standards for Consumer Conventional Cooking Products.’

According to Hands Off My Stove’s website, however, gas stoves are both cost effective and environmentally friendly — and proposals to ban them infringe on individual rights.

‘We are defending the rights of cooks and homeowners from the elitist policy makers and politicians who think they have the right to tell you how to make dinner,’ the group’s mission statement says. ‘We are pushing back against the climate activists who believe global warming happens because you made pasta last night. We have had enough, and we are fighting back.’ 

Beyond the federal level, Democrat-led states and cities are considering or actively implementing local gas stove restrictions as the GOP seeks to thwart such efforts at the federal level.

‘Much of the public attention has been focused on the federal government banning new appliances, but most of the nefarious activity is happening at the local level where environmental groups are pushing state and local elected officials to ban new gas hookups,’ said Stewart. ‘Hands Off My Stove is a grassroots effort designed to give people the ability not just have a say but the ability to push back hard.’

In New York, lawmakers and Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul have been reportedly negotiating a measure banning gas stoves and other natural gas-powered appliances from being installed in new buildings and new residential construction.

‘The other side hates to be mocked and hates to be questioned,’ said Stewart. ‘So, our messages will be funny and forceful without being mean spirited. We will point out hypocrisy of those who keep trying to tell us how they think we are supposed to live. Serial Stove User Stacy Abrams is the perfect example.’

Abrams, a failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate and prominent voting rights activist, recently joined an environmental group pushing to ban gas stoves. However, she’s featured a gas-powered stove in a campaign ad and other online videos in which she can be seen preparing food.

According to Stewart, Hands Off My Stove, whose stated mission is to ‘preserve our right to choose to cook our meals any way we want without government interference,’ its efforts must be driven by grassroots activists.

‘We can help get everyone started and give them information and ideas, but they have to take it from there,’ said Stewart. ‘It really does need to be grassroots effort and we are asking people to kick in $1 a month… Over the next few weeks, we will get to work running some great local advocacy efforts and protecting people’s right to choose and share that with everyone so they can do the same in their community if they are at risk.’

Over the last several months, the Energy Department has introduced a series of energy efficiency regulations impacting various home appliances such gas stoves, ovens, clothes washers, refrigerators, and air conditioners. Now the Biden administration is preparing to implement a sweeping nationwide ban that would prohibit retailers from selling incandescent light bulbs.

Transgender activists this week have been occupying state capitol buildings across the country to protest legislation placing restrictions on gender transition procedures for children and the teaching of gender identity in the classroom.

The protests came the same week police identified a transgender individual as the shooter responsible for murdering six people, including three 9-year-old children, in Monday’s shooting at a private Christian school in Nashville.

A crowd of LGBTQ activists on Friday marched on the Florida Capitol after the state’s Republican-controlled House passed a bill that would restrict the way teachers and students can use preferred pronouns in schools. The legislation also bolsters the ability of concerned parents, students and others to object to instructional materials and school library books.

The measure passed on International Transgender Day of Visibility, when several transgender marches were held nationwide. Students packed the Florida Capitol and shouted in protest, chanting ‘This is what democracy looks like’ and called to take control of the schools.

Two days earlier in Kentucky, state police confirmed 19 people were arrested at the Capitol as large crowds gathered to protest Republican lawmakers overriding Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto of legislation that bans puberty blockers, hormones and gender transition surgeries for children under 18.

The bill also bans lessons on gender identity and sexual orientation, requires trans students to use the bathroom of their biological sex and stops school districts from requiring teachers to use a student’s pronouns if they don’t align with their sex at birth.

At the same time Wednesday, hundreds of protesters descended on the Missouri Capitol after the Republican-led state Senate passed legislation barring transgender youth under 18 from receiving gender-affirming health care such as puberty blockers and hormone treatments. The state Senate also passed a bill preventing transgender students from participating on sports teams that align with their gender identity.

‘We show up clearly today in love and in community, certainly, but we also show up in righteous anger and in rage,’ Katy Erker-Lynch, executive director of PROMO, an LGBTQ public policy and advocacy organization, said at the protest.

Two days earlier in Texas, swaths of trans activists stormed the Capitol as the state House was debating a similar bill banning gender transition procedures for children. Protesters chanted ‘protect trans kids’ and lay on the floor in an apparent effort to obstruct those trying to walk by.

The Texas protest occurred the same day of the Nashville shooting at The Covenant School. Police say the shooter was Audrey Hale, a 28-year-old transgender individual who was a former student at the private Christian school. Hale, who was killed after firing at responding officers, left behind a manifesto, according to authorities, who did not rule out that gender identity may have been a motivation.

On Thursday, dozens of protesters swarmed the Tennessee Capitol, demanding lawmakers take action on gun violence as they appeared to mourn Hale’s death.

‘Every death is a tragedy, y’all. Seven lives,’ one protester could be heard saying in footage posted to social media.

Seven people were killed in the shooting, including Hale.

Law enforcement officials have worked out the details of how former President Trump will be escorted to his alleged hush money scandal-related arraignment on Tuesday.

A source told Fox News that Trump is expected to arrive at the 100 Centre Street courthouse in New York City at around 11 a.m. on Tuesday morning. 

The arraignment – which is expected to last 15 to 30 minutes – is scheduled for 2:15 p.m. before Judge Juan Merchan. The security detail will be extensive, with officials expecting to magnetically search everyone in the courthouse twice.

No other business will be done at the courthouse until the arraignment concludes. The entire building will be cleared and inspected to ensure safety.

For security reasons, there is not expected to be a ‘perp walk’ or public arrival by the former president. Trump will also likely not be arrested in handcuffs, as his legal team made an arrangement with the DA’s office.

Judge Juan Merchan, who previously oversaw the case and trial of the Trump Organization and its former CFO Allen Weisselberg, is expected to read Trump’s charges and ask him to enter his plea. Trump will be escorted out after.

The details of the indictment have not been released, as they typically remain under seal before the arraignment takes place. The charges are expected to relate to Trump’s 2016 alleged hush money scandal, which the DA’s office has been investigating for five years.

If the charges relate to the hush money scandal, prosecutors are expected to argue that the $130,000 sum given to Stormy Daniels and the $150,000 given to former Playboy model Karen McDougal were improper donations to the Trump campaign, which helped his candidacy during the 2016 election.

The former president has expressed his disapproval of the indictment by DA Alvin Bragg, saying it is politically motivated.

‘This is Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history,’ Trump said in a statement. ‘From the time I came down the golden escalator at Trump Tower, and even before I was sworn in as your President of the United States, the Radical Left Democrats- the enemy of the hard-working men and women of this Country- have been engaged in a Witch-Hunt to destroy the Make America Great Again movement.’