The Biden administration is pushing back on Republican efforts to end the COVID-19 vaccine requirement for international travelers flying into the U.S., citing the desire to reduce the spread of the coronavirus and avoid placing a burden on the country’s healthcare system.

‘While COVID-19 is no longer the disruptive threat that it once was, the Administration opposes Congressional action to reverse the vaccination requirement for noncitizen non-immigrants entering the United States by air,’ the administration said in a Tuesday statement.

‘This policy has allowed loved ones across the globe to reunite while reducing the spread of COVID-19 and the burdens it places on the health care system in the United States,’ the White House statement added.

The expressed support for continuing its policy for international air travelers comes amid a push by Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., to end the requirement.

Massie introduced HR 185 last month, which would prevent enforcement of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) order published in April 2022 prohibiting international travelers from entering the U.S. without showing proof of vaccination against the coronavirus.

‘If you watched C-SPAN last week, you saw 434 Members of Congress gathered in the Capitol screaming, yelling, cheering, and speaking. Many of these members are unvaccinated, and many haven’t taken boosters,’ Massie said in a statement on Jan.12. 

‘So, why do we subject visitors who want to see their families to this COVID-19 double standard? The CDC’s unscientific mandate is separating too many people from their families and has been doing so for far too long. It needs to end,’ he said.

Despite its continued support for the policy, the administration’s statement did acknowledge that the country was approaching ‘the end of the public health emergency,’ and that it would let science guide ‘any termination or modification’ of any given policy.

‘A vote for this bill undercuts that critical principle,’ it added.

Fox News’ Mark Meredith contributed to this report.

Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., announced that pro-life activist Mark Houck will be his guest to the State of the Union on Tuesday night.

Houck faced charges stemming from an Oct. 13, 2021 incident where the Department of Justice claimed that he ‘forcefully shoved’ Philadelphia Planned Parenthood volunteer Bruce love, who’s 72.

The pro-life activist was charged with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which ‘makes it a federal crime to use force with the intent to injure, intimidate, and interfere with anyone because that person is a provider of reproductive health care.’

Houck was acquitted by a Pennsylvania jury on Jan. 30. He was arrested in his home by several agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation in September 2022.

Perry said on Tuesday that Houck would be his guest to the State of the Union.

‘Privileged to welcome my SOTU guest, Mark Houck, an innocent victim of @POTUS’s reprehensible abuse of power, whose only ‘crime’ was to use his God-given constitutional rights to protect his family, faith, and way of life. @POTUS should see the faces of those he seeks to destroy,’ Perry said in a tweet.

In a statement to Fox News Digital, Perry said that Houck is a victim of the far left’s abuse of power.

‘Mark Houck and his family are innocent victims of the radical Left’s reprehensible abuse of power, which systematically seeks to destroy the lives of hard-working Americans whose only ‘crimes’ are using their God-given constitutional rights to protect their families, faith, and way of life. President Biden has weaponized the power of the federal government against anyone who thwarts his radical, Leftist agenda. He should see the faces of some of those Americans who have been relentlessly and unjustifiably persecuted by the same government sworn to protect their freedoms,’ Perry said.

Houck was facing a maximum prison sentence of 11 years and fines of up to $350,000 if convicted.

Fox News’ Louis Casiano contributed to this report.

A woman whose teenage son died by suicide in 2017 urged New Hampshire lawmakers Tuesday to pass legislation allowing kindergarten through 12th-grade students excused absences from school to deal with mental and behavioral health issues.

Martha Dickey told the state House Education Committee that the bill would complement two other proposals she championed: a law passed last year adding the telephone number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline to the back of every student ID card and a 2019 law that requires schools to develop policies and offer staff training on suicide prevention. The former was named the Jason Dickey Suicide Prevention Act in honor of her son, who died at age 19.

Dickey said the new proposal would help reduce the stigma of mental illness and help raise awareness that such conditions often interfere with a child’s education.

‘A mental health day is not intended for a student to avoid classes or assignments, rather an approved mental health absence can help open the door for schools to assist struggling students with overall mental health care,’ she said.

Twelve other states have similar laws and others are considering it, said Emma Sevigny of New Futures, a health advocacy group.

‘Removing this barrier of having an absence on their report card removes the stigma of having mental illness and also improves the ability for students to take that time without fear of negative consequences to their grades and other aspects of their education,’ said Sevigny, the organization’s policy coordinator for children’s behavioral health.

No one at the public hearing spoke against the bill, which has both Republicans and Democrats as sponsors. That bipartisan support bodes well at a time when the 400-member House is nearly evenly split between the two parties.

The Maine Paid Family Leave Coalition on Tuesday launched a renewed push for a paid family and medical leave benefit as the Democratic-controlled Legislature takes up the issue.

Maine Sen. Mattie Daughtry, D-Brunswick, and Rep. Kristen Cloutier, D-Lewiston, who are leading the effort, said there has been no major progress at the federal level for three decades.

‘The United States is the only developed country in the world without a national paid family and medical leave policy, leaving it up to states to piece together solutions,’ Cloutier said.

The bill is still being worked out but it’s expected to allow up to 12 weeks of benefit with up to 90% of pay, to be funded through a payroll tax divided by workers and employers. The Legislature’s Paid Family Leave Commission recommended that businesses with fewer than 15 workers be exempted from participation.

Democratic Gov. Janet Mills wrote and signed a bill into law in 2019 allowed earned sick days for workers, and a spokesperson said she’s awaiting final recommendations from the commission for family leave.

‘The governor understands the importance of paid family leave, and she believes it is important that discussions before the Legislature take into consideration the landscape of Maine’s economy and the perspective of Maine employers, particularly small businesses,’ Ben Goodman, the governor’s press secretary, said Tuesday.

The federal government passed a law 30 years ago to make family leave an unpaid benefit. Across the country, 11 states including Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island in New England have since put a paid family and medical leave benefit in place.

Across the country, 20% of private sector workers have access to paid family leave through an employer and only 42% have access to short-term disability insurance, officials said. Nearly one in four mothers return to work within two weeks of giving birth, and one in five retirees leave the workforce earlier than expected to care for an ill family member, officials said.

Speaking in the aftermath of a brawl at a middle school basketball game that ended with the death of one of the participants, Vermont Gov. Phil Scott on Tuesday said there is too much anger in contemporary society and he called for a return to civility.

The civility challenges are not unique to Vermont and they have been building over the last several years, but Scott, a Republican, placed the Jan. 31 brawl in the Canadian border town of Alburgh on the same spectrum of anger that at its extreme end led to the Jan. 6, 2021, attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in Washington.

‘We’re constantly being divided into camps, whether it’s politics, religion, race, or social issues where everything has turned into us versus them,’ Scott said.

‘All of us have an obligation to tone down the rhetoric, recognize the humanity in everyone, including those we disagree with, and just be better role models for our kids,’ Scott said. ‘The idea that a brawl would break out among adults in front of their kids and a middle school basketball game is just plain sad.’

During his six years in office Scott, a Republican in a state where Democrats control the Legislature, has continually called for a toning down of divisive rhetoric, be it over debates about the best way to confront the COVID-19 pandemic, statehouse politics or a middle school boys basketball game.

‘I don’t care what the situation was,’ Scott said. ‘There’s no justification for a brawl breaking out among adults in front of their seventh and eighth grade kids who are playing basketball.’

The Vermont State Police are continuing to investigate the melee involving spectators during a seventh- and eighth-grade boys basketball game between Alburgh and St. Albans at the Alburgh Community Education Center. The fight ended before police arrived.

As one of the participants, Russell Giroux, 60, of Alburgh, drove home, he sought medical attention. He was taken by ambulance to the Northwestern Medical Center in St. Albans, where he was pronounced dead. The cause of death has not been released.

In the aftermath of the melee the school district banned spectators from home basketball games for the rest of the season.

The day after the event last week, Jay Nichols, The Vermont Principals’ Association, said that middle and high school sports are educational and are for the benefit of the student-athletes. Spectators who cannot behave appropriately can be barred from events and they can face criminal charges.

South Carolina will soon undergo a change of command at the Department of Veterans’ Affairs.

Gov. Henry McMaster on Tuesday nominated retired Maj. Gen. Todd McCaffrey to head one of the state’s newest cabinet agencies. The U.S. Military Academy graduate is expected to replace outgoing Secretary William Grimsley, who will leave his post by end of February after becoming the first leader of the department created in April 2019.

‘I am deeply honored to have the opportunity to continue to serve by supporting fellow veterans,’ McCaffrey said Tuesday at a press conference. ‘I pledge I will do all I can to ensure that their service is valued, their access to benefits is assured and their remarkable potential to our communities and state is recognized.’

McCaffrey’s nomination follows a 34-year career with the U.S. Army, where he served as the U.S. Africa Command’s chief of staff. He spent one year as the University of South Carolina’s senior director of strategic partnership for government and military programs and also founded a consulting company that has worked with the Department of Defense, higher education and nonprofits.

Sen. Katrina Shealy, who chairs the Family and Veterans’ Services Committee, expressed confidence Tuesday that the Senate would swiftly confirm McCaffrey.

The governor thanked Grimsley on Tuesday for his three years overseeing the agency tasked with advocating statewide for veterans and connecting them with benefits. Grimsley assumed the position after state Rep. Bobby Cox was found ineligible under a state law preventing lawmakers from running agencies created during their term.

Grimsley served in the Army for 33 years, finishing his military career as senior commander at Fort Hood, Texas, and chief of staff of the United States Strategic Command.

‘I’ve spent most of my adult professional life in service,’ Grimsley said Tuesday. ‘But now it’s time to place my family first — probably for the first time in my life as well — to ensure that I don’t miss all those ballgames, birthdays, school events and other things with our grandsons that I missed with my sons.’

President Joe Biden is set to deliver his second State of the Union address Tuesday night, in which he is expected to tout the economic progress made under his administration, and reflect on the COVID pandemic and the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021, while calling democracy ‘bruised’ but ‘unbroken.’ 

Since last year’s address, his administration has been faced with a growing migrant surge at the southern border, gasoline prices hit an all-time record, inflation reached a 40-year-high, continuing supply chain issues led to a nationwide shortage of baby formula, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has escalated with no end in sight.

The president’s 2023 address also comes as he is under special counsel investigation for his improper retention of classified records from his time as vice president under the Obama administration, and it is just weeks after the FBI searched his homes for additional documents with classification markings.

Perhaps most notably, the president’s State of the Union address also comes just days after an Air Force F-22 fighter jet shot the Chinese spy balloon down off the coast of South Carolina.

Senior U.S. defense officials said the spy balloon was launched from China on Jan. 21 and crossed into Alaska on Jan. 28. It entered the continental United States through northern Idaho on Jan. 31 and was spotted across several states, including near a handful of military bases, before it was finally shot down on Saturday.

And a senior administration official told Fox News that another Chinese spy balloon crashed near Hawaii just four months ago.

But on Tuesday night, Biden is expected to tout the progress made under his administration, specifically with regard to the economy and COVID.

‘The story of America is a story of progress and resilience…We are the only country that has emerged from every crisis stronger than when we entered it. That is what we are doing again,’ Biden is expected to say, according to prepared remarks.

‘Two years ago our economy was reeling. As I stand here tonight, we have created a record 12 million new jobs – more jobs created in two years than any president has ever created in four years. Two years ago, COVID had shut down our businesses, closed our schools, and robbed us of so much,’ Biden is set to say. ‘Today, COVID no longer controls our lives.’

Biden is also expected to reference the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

‘And two years ago, our democracy faced its greatest threat since the Civil War,’ Biden will say. ‘Today, though bruised, our democracy remains unbowed and unbroken.’

Biden is set to lay out his economic plan, which he will say is ‘about investing in places and people that have been forgotten.’

‘Jobs are coming back, pride is coming back because of the choices we made in the last two years,’ Biden is expected to say. ‘This is a blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America and make a real difference in your lives.’

Biden is expected to call on his ‘Republican friends,’ calling for bipartisanship in the new Congress.

‘The people sent us a clear message,’ he will say. ‘Fighting for the sake of fighting, power for the sake of power, conflict for the sake of conflict, gets us nowhere.’

Biden is set to double down on his ‘vision for the country,’ which he says is ‘to restore the soul of the nation, to rebuild the backbone of America: the middle class, to unite the country. We’ve been sent here to finish the job!’

During his address Tuesday night at 9 p.m. ET, a White House official said the president plans to ‘outline the progress made on maintaining international alliances to defend Ukraine, compete with China and assert American leadership in the world.’

But when asked whether the president would focus specifically on the threat China poses to U.S. national security and on the Chinese spy balloon, the official said Biden’s remarks ‘of course’ will ‘always take into account what’s happening in the world and how we meet the moment we’re in.’

‘But you will hear the president speak to his continued and successful effort to reassert America’s leadership around the world,’ the official said.

A White House official said Biden plans in his speech to underscore the ‘significant progress’ made under his administration during ‘one of the most challenging periods in our history’ as well as ‘the progress the American people want us to make by working together in the year ahead.’

Biden is expected to outline how he has ‘carried out his vision for an economy that grows from the bottom up and middle out instead of from the top down,’ the official said, adding that he will focus on progress made through ‘historic job growth, falling inflation, higher wages and record investments coming back to America.’

‘He will highlight the progress we have already made – and will keep fighting to make— on these and other commitments and priorities, illustrating in real terms how transformational his pieces of legislation are for Americans across the country,’ the official said.

But inflation has remained a key concern of Americans since Biden’s last State of the Union speech. In June, months after the address, inflation surged 9.1% year-over-year, the fastest uptick of its kind since 1981.

Rising consumer prices have impacted nearly every aspect of Americans’ lives from energy and food to shelter, apparel and everyday goods. While inflation has fallen below 7%, it remains far higher than government targets, and the Federal Reserve has continued tightening interest rates, which could have negative reverberations throughout the U.S. economy.

Energy prices like heating and gasoline costs have particularly put more strain on American families. Pump prices increased past $5 per gallon in mid-June, hitting their highest level ever recorded before falling again, but they currently remain 46% higher than when Biden took office.

Part of the pressure on energy costs has come as a result of Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, another crisis of which Biden has been faced. Biden has repeatedly stood alongside other Western nations in supporting Ukraine, sending the war-torn country tens of billions of dollars in military aid over the past nearly 12 months.

White House National Economic Council Director Brian Deese said Biden will lay out ‘a very clear and detailed plan’ to reduce the deficit and will ‘look for every opportunity when it comes to the economy and economic policy to reach out and work with Democrats and Republicans to find practical paths forward.’

Biden last week met with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy for the first time since he took the gavel, and the Republican House speaker said he saw an ‘opportunity to come to an agreement’ on the debt ceiling.

Biden’s speech also comes amid a worsening crisis at the U.S. southern border.

Sources told Fox News that nearly 300,000 illegal immigrants are known to have slipped past overwhelmed Border Patrol agents since the beginning of fiscal 2023, which began in October.

While Biden’s approval ratings have increased from 40.6% to 43.9% since his last State of the Union, his approval dropped to 36.8%, its lowest level, in July 2022, according to an average of polling data compiled by Real Clear Politics.

Fox News’ Thomas Catenacci and Adam Shaw contributed to this report.

House Republicans Reps. Ashley Hinson and Young Kim are bringing two Afghanistan veterans to President Biden’s State of the Union address Tuesday, and say the Biden administration still needs to provide answers on the deadly withdrawal, from Afghanistan in 2021.

Hinson’s guest is retired U.S. Army Sergeant Trent Dirks and his K-9 companion Tracer. Dirks served in Afghanistan and has suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The former sergeant is focused on helping other veterans receive the mental health care they need and first met Hinson through an organization called ‘Retrieving Freedom’ that pairs veterans with K-9s to help them overcome PTSD.

‘There are programs that can provide you with that assistance and you can come out of the darkness and live a great life,’ said Hinson, R-Iowa. ‘And we want to express that gratitude to our veterans.’

Dirks said his dog Tracer has helped him live his life without succumbing to panic attacks.

‘My journey has been two opposite sides of the spectrum. I went from hardly leaving my house or not being able to go out into public without having a panic attack, let alone have a conversation with people or look anybody in the eye, to coming to Capitol Hill and speaking publicly about what I’ve been through,’ Dirks told Fox News Digital. ‘So it’s just been an incredible experience. And Tracer and Retrieving Freedom has helped me get here.’

Hinson said that while the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan was a ‘disaster,’ she appreciates Biden for signing her veteran mental health bill into law.

‘I do believe that the withdrawal from Afghanistan was a disaster. We have 13 new Gold Star families because of this administration’s policies and how they chose to withdraw. So I do think we need some answers there for us to be able to move forward as a country and make sure that that doesn’t happen again,’ said Hinson. ‘That said, I want to express my gratitude to the Biden administration for moving forward with the bill that we introduced last year.’

Kim’s guest, former U.S. Marine Captain Andrew Darlington, deployed twice to Afghanistan and worked closely with the congresswoman’s office to help rescue U.S. allies following the chaotic withdrawal from the country.

He received the Purple Heart and other accolades for his service, and worked to evacuate U.S. translator and ally Sayed Obaidullah Amin. Amin and his wife tragically died at the Abbey Gate during the Kabul airport attack on August 26, 2021 while trying to get his family safely out of Afghanistan. 

‘I’m really, really excited to have Andrew Darlington, who is a captain who served during the Afghanistan war. He has worked very closely with my office to help evacuate the Afghan refugees and even the Americans that we served with,’ said Kim. And so I really wanted to thank him. This is a small way of making sure that our country, not just me and my team, but our country say thank you to the veterans who were heroes, especially during the Afghanistan withdrawal when our government failed to bring everybody out.’

Darlington told Fox News Digital that it’s one of the ‘honors of my life’ to attend the State of the Union, although his story is ‘very painful’ to tell. 

‘It’s really a tragic reality of Biden’s withdrawal of Afghanistan. So it’s incredibly painful because, as Congresswoman Kim has said time and time again, we failed our moral obligation to these men and women,’ said the former captain. ‘And it’s not that anyone is advocating for some sort of open door policy where everyone comes in. But especially Afghan interpreters who have fought with folks in her district and my Marines who we vouch for and say they deserve to be here. They earn the American dream. It’s been very painful to tell that story moving forward in the last few years.’

Kim, who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and was just appointed head of the subcommittee on the Indo-Pacific, has continued to press the Biden administration for answers on the Afghanistan withdrawal. Her bill, the Rescue Endangered SIVs and Citizens and Urgently Evacuate to Safety (RESCUES) Act, would create strict oversight of the State Department’s evacuation operations in Afghanistan.

‘So moving forward, I simply hope the American people can get answers to understand what happens that we never do it again,’ said Darlington.

As for what message he would have for other veterans, Dirks told Fox News Digital ‘get help.’

‘Don’t be afraid to ask for help. And there’s help out there,’ he said. ‘Don’t give up. Just do not give up.’