White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Monday appeared to fumble when asked whether there have been other Chinese surveillance missions flown over the United States during Biden’s presidency. 

The exchange came during a White House press briefing, two days after the U.S. military shot down the Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina. 

A reporter asked Jean-Pierre whether the Chinese balloon, carrying sensors and surveillance equipment, was the first one identified flying over U.S. airspace under the Biden administration. 

Jean-Pierre did not answer the question directly, saying ‘Chinese surveillance balloons have been around for some time’ and ‘we even briefed Congress this past August.’ 

‘So, don’t have anything more to say or to share,’ Jean-Pierre said. 

The reporter questioned how it was possible Chinese spy balloons traveled over the continental U.S. – at least three times – during the Trump administration but were not discovered until after Trump left office. 

Jean-Pierre seemed to fumble her words and, again, didn’t answer directly. 

‘But again, we are ready to brief key officials to let them know … what the intelligence community was able to figure out,’ Jean-Pierre said. 

She refused to share details of discussions with the intelligence community. 

The reporter questioned whether U.S. officials have had conversations with the Chinese about balloons over U.S. airspace during this administration. 

‘We’re not going to get into specifics of private diplomatic conversations we have with China. We’re just not going to do that from here,’ Jean-Pierre said. ‘We’ve been very clear that what China did was indeed a violation of international law.’ 

Fox News Digital has reached out to the White House for clarification on Jean-Pierre’s remarks. 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken was scheduled to be in Beijing on Monday, meeting with President Xi Jinping in a high-stakes bid to ease ever-rising tensions.

Instead, Blinken was spending the day in Washington after abruptly canceling his visit late last week as the U.S. and China exchanged angry words about the Chinese spy balloon the U.S. shot down. As fraught as the US-China relationship had been ahead of Blinken’s planned trip, it’s even worse now and there’s little hope for it improving anytime soon.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.  

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Monday that another one of its surveillance balloons that is now over the Caribbean and Latin America was also thrown off course by the weather, the same reasoning China gave for the spy balloon that floated over the U.S. last week.

‘With regard to the balloon over Latin America, it has been verified that the unmanned airship is from China, of civilian nature and used for flight test,’ said Mao Ning, the ministry’s spokesperson. ‘Affected by the weather and with limited self-steering capability, the airship deviated far from its planned course and entered into the airspace of Latin America and the Caribbean.’

In the same press conference on Monday, Mao used similar language to describe the airship that the U.S. shot down on Saturday.

‘The unmanned airship is found to be a civilian airship used for meteorological and other research purposes,’ she said of the craft that was over the U.S. ‘Affected by the Westerlies and with limited self-steering capability, the airship deviated far from its planned course.’

U.S. politicians and analysts have said they doubt the balloons were accidentally hovering over the U.S., as the Pentagon said the spy balloon over the U.S. was maneuverable, and several officials noted the balloon tracked over key U.S. military installations.

Over the weekend, China bristled over the U.S. decision to shoot down the airship that flew over the continental U.S., and said American officials overreacted by bringing it down. China regretted that the U.S. didn’t handle the matter in a ‘calm, professional and restrained manner,’ and on Monday, China went further by suggesting the U.S. is the one taking provocative actions.

‘As history shows, it is the U.S. that has repeatedly trampled on international law and violated the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other countries,’ Mao said. ‘The Chinese side has made it clear that this is entirely an unexpected, isolated incident caused by force majeure.’

‘The U.S. side’s deliberate hyping up of the matter and even use of force are unacceptable and irresponsible,’ she said.

CHINA’S SPY BALLOON WAS A TEST THE US ‘PLAYED RIGHT INTO,’ SAYS FORMER SPECIAL OPS ANALYST 

China has also warned it may take retaliatory actions against the U.S., but Mao did not outline any steps in that direction.

Back in the U.S., the State Department told reporters on Monday that there were no plans yet to reschedule Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Instead, U.S. diplomats are talking with U.S. allies about China’s incursion into U.S. airspace and explaining what happened over the last few days.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams says he ‘slept like a baby’ in a new mega-migrant shelter following a days-long controversy over an encampment of migrants who refused to relocate to the shelter last week. 

‘I slept like a baby, it was warm. I had my nice little blanket. That’s my favorite blanket. I’m like Linus, you know, on Charlie Brown,’ Adams said in an appearance on Fox 5’s ‘Good Day New York.’ The mayor paid an overnight visit to the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal relief center in Red Hook on one of the coldest recorded nights this year.

Last week, a group of migrants staying at the Watson Hotel through a taxpayer-funded relief program refused to relocate to the new Red Hook facility. The group of individuals camped outside in protest on the sidewalk of the $300-per-night hotel in Midtown Manhattan.

The city prepared to move these migrants, specifically single adult men, from the Watson Hotel to the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal facility, but faced pushback last week from over 50 individuals who camped outside the hotel. The NYPD eventually cleared the remaining holdouts days later from their sidewalk encampment.

Some individuals left the hotel for the migrant crisis center, but returned after claiming the facility was lacking in heat and water. Adams was quick to respond to accusations that the shelter forced migrants into inhumane conditions. The mayor’s Friday night stay in the 1,000-cot shelter appears to be the latest move to convince naysayers otherwise.  

‘I have my favorite blanket that I just hug up on and I had pleasant dreams, got up the next day, had breakfast and sat down and spoke with asylum seekers,’ Adams said

The Red Hook migrant shelter is one of five in New York – dubbed ‘Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers’ – created to house the 42,000-plus illegal migrants that have entered the Big Apple since last spring, according to a statement from the mayor. 

The Brooklyn Cruise Terminal Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center was scheduled to open after Adams said NYC had reached ‘its breaking point.’ The center, which will close this spring ahead of cruise season, will ‘provide adult men with a place to stay, access support, and get to their final destination.’

EXCLUSIVE: Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., blasted the Biden administration shortly after receiving a closed-door briefing Monday from senior officials regarding the Chinese spy flight crisis.

The classified briefing was ‘unspecific, insufficient and backward-looking,’ failing to adequately address the Chinese spy balloon that flew across the U.S. last week, according to Issa’s office. During the briefing, which was held in a sensitive compartmented information facility, officials also didn’t provide evidence of similar flights taking place during the Trump administration.

‘What I took away from this briefing confirmed that this administration and not the previous one had plenty of advance warning of an escalating Chinese espionage program, failed to act, and has now humiliated this country on the world stage,’ Issa, who serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Fox News Digital.

Fox News Digital has reached out to the White House for comment.

On Thursday, the Pentagon acknowledged that a Chinese spy balloon carrying intelligence-gathering sensors and equipment had been detected flying above Montana. Officials said the device had first been detected five days earlier off the western coast of Alaska before flying across the state, into Canada and entering the continental United States in Idaho.

Then, on Saturday, after the balloon continued its flight through several Midwestern and southeastern states, a U.S. fighter jet shot it down off the coast of South Carolina in the Atlantic Ocean. The unmanned surveillance aircraft had ultimately gone seven days from the time it was first detected over the Pacific Ocean to the moment it was taken down.

One day later, a senior Biden administration official said Chinese spy flights occurred during the Trump administration, but such information was discovered after former President Donald Trump left office. However, Trump and several top Trump administration officials refuted the claim, saying it ‘never happened.’

While President Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin explained the delayed response was to protect Americans who may have been harmed were the balloon to fall on land, Issa and other Republican lawmakers have criticized the administration for being too weak and indecisive.

‘U.S. officials have acknowledged they were monitoring this balloon since it flew over the Aleutian Islands – where it could have easily been shot down over water,’ House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said in a statement. ‘This balloon should have never been allowed to enter U.S. airspace.’

Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said the incident was enough to warrant Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to resign.

‘On Wednesday, when I was briefed on the balloon, I ordered the Pentagon to shoot it down, on Wednesday, as soon as possible,’ Biden told reporters Saturday. ‘They decided — without doing damage to anyone on — on the ground. They decided that the best time to do that was as it got over water, outside — within our — within the 12-mile limit.’

Austin said in a statement that the balloon, which was being used to surveil ‘strategic sites’ in the U.S., was an ‘unacceptable violation of our sovereignty.’

Fox News Digital reporter Brooke Singman contributed to this report.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Monday called on President Biden to negotiate with Republicans on the debt ceiling, find a compromise that cuts federal spending, and help Congress move toward a balanced budget to ensure the national debt doesn’t threaten future generations of Americans.

‘Mr. President, congressional Republicans are ready to act – to save our country and to make America stronger. I hope you will join us,’ McCarthy said Monday night in a prebuttal to Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday.

McCarthy said the excessive federal spending that many economists believe contributed to surging national inflation can no longer be tolerated. And while the White House has said it will not negotiate with Republicans, McCarthy said neither party has any choice but to reach a deal that extends the debt limit as Democrats want, but also meets the GOP goal of paring back federal spending.

‘Defaulting on our debt is not an option,’ McCarthy said. ‘But neither is a future of higher taxes, higher interest rates, and an economy that doesn’t work for working Americans.’

‘A responsible debt limit increase that begins to eliminate wasteful Washington spending and puts us on a path towards a balanced budget is not only the right place to start… It’s the only place to start,’ he said.

McCarthy said the nation watched as Democrats ramped up trillions of dollars in new spending, but asked, ‘does that sound responsible to you?’

‘We must return Washington to a basic truth: debt matters,’ McCarthy said.

‘The choice is clear,’ he said. ‘We can have reckless spending, or we can have responsibility, but we can’t have both. We can leave our children a future with higher inflation, higher interest rates, and crushing debt, or we can leave them free to pursue happiness as God intended.’

He said that on the government’s current spending pace, it will soon be spending $8 trillion a year just to pay the interest on the national debt, more than this year’s entire federal budget. And he all that spending would continue to push inflation higher.

‘Inflation has exploded. Mortgage rates have doubled,’ he said. ‘Working Americans – after inflation and taxes – have gotten a pay cut. And eggs – a staple of America’s breakfast – have gone from a cheap source of protein to a luxury good.’

McCarthy urged Biden not to draw ‘lines in the sand,’ but to negotiate to find ‘sensible, responsible solutions to our growing national debt.’

He said his preference is that both sides meet, just as Biden participated in debt ceiling talks years ago as a senator. He said ‘common ground’ must be found that allows for a ‘responsible’ debt ceiling increase.

‘Finding compromise is exactly how governing in America is supposed to work – and exactly what the American people voted for just three months ago,’ McCarthy said.

And he said a balanced budget must become a shared goal of both parties. ‘Future generations deserve nothing less,’ he said.

The U.S. government reached its borrowing limit last month and is now undertaking ‘extraordinary measures’ to avoid going over the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling. Some agreement will be needed by early June if the U.S. is going to avoid default on its current obligations.

For the last several weeks, the Biden administration has accused Republicans of planning dramatic spending cuts to Social Security and Medicare. On Sunday, Biden tweeted that the GOP will cut those programs as part of their effort to trim spending, and said he ‘won’t stand for that.’

But that message was flagged by Twitter users, who pointed to comments from Republicans that cuts to Social Security and Medicare aren’t being considered. McCarthy, perhaps anticipating that Biden might make that claim again in his State of the Union speech, repeated that line Monday night.

‘Cuts to Medicare and Social Security are off the table,’ McCarthy said.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Monday was repeatedly confronted with polls that indicate the American people have grown disillusioned with the Biden administration. 

During Monday’s press briefing, a reporter asked Jean-Pierre to explain why recent polls seem to contradict the White House’s assertion that President Biden helped Democrats achieve unexpected gains in the November midterms. 

The reporter cited a recent NBC poll showing only 34% of Americans believe the president is honest in trustworthy, 32% are confident in his ability to handle a crisis, 31% believe Biden is competent and effective as president, 28% believe he has the necessary mental and physical health to be president, and a mere 23% believe he can unite the country. 

As the poll notes, many of these scores are significantly down from when Biden first took office in January 2021. 

‘Given all that, why are you so convinced that it was President Biden that caused the Democratic success in the midterms and that the Democrats had success in spite of the fact?’ the reporter asked. 

Jean-Pierre said Democrats won in the midterms because they ran on the Biden’s successes like the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. 

‘If you hear the message that was coming out of Democrats during the midterms, it was that we were able to deliver … they used exactly what the president was able to do in order to get that success,’ Jean-Pierre said. ‘If you think about all of the pieces of historic legislation that became law, that we did last year – again, the president led that.’  

The exchange came amid the release of a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showing that just 37% of Democrats say they want President Biden to seek a second term – down from 52% in the weeks before last year’s midterm elections. 

While Biden has trumpeted his legislative victories and ability to govern, the poll suggests relatively few U.S. adults give him high marks on either. Follow-up interviews with poll respondents suggest that many believe the 80-year-old’s age is a liability, with people focused on his coughing, his gait, his gaffes and the possibility that the world’s most stressful job would be better suited for someone younger.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

The rules about the minimum and maximum sizes of lobsters that can be trapped off New England could soon become stricter, potentially bringing big changes to one of the most valuable seafood industries in the country.

Fishers are required to measure lobsters from eyes to tail and must throw back the crustaceans if they’re too large or too small. The rules, which can vary slightly based on fishing grounds, are intended to maintain a breeding population of the lobsters in key areas such as the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank.

The regulatory Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is considering changing the standards by a fraction of an inch in some of the fishing grounds. The commission said it’s considering the changes because of a worrisome lack of baby lobsters growing off New England.

The changes would arrive at a time when the lobster industry is experiencing record highs in both catch and value, and consumers are paying more for lobsters — already a premium product — than they were just a few years ago. The industry is also challenged by warming oceans and new fishing rules designed to protect rare whales.

Recent surveys that show declining levels of young lobsters are a concern for the future of the fishery, said Caitlin Starks, senior fishery management plan coordinator for the commission.

‘Those numbers were declining,’ Starks said. ‘The levels of new lobsters recruiting into the fishery were particularly low, and there was concern that was going to foreshadow decline.’

The commission is soliciting public comment on the proposal and plans to hold public hearings about it in March, Starks said. The changes would affect lobster fishers from Maine to the waters off southern New England, and the hearings will be held in those places, Starks said.

Changes could be implemented by fall 2024 if they are approved, Starks said.

Lobster fishing groups such as the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association are following the developments, said Beth Casoni, executive director of the group. The association doesn’t have a stance yet because the exact specifications of the proposed changes are still to come, she said.

‘We’re waiting to see what the preferred management options are,’ Casoni said.

The size of the U.S. lobster catch has increased dramatically in the last 15 years. The catch in Maine, which is by far the largest producer of lobsters, is typically more than 100 million pounds per year. Fishermen had never even eclipsed 80 million pounds in a single year as recently as 2008.

But the population of lobsters off southern New England has crashed. And scientists who perform surveys of baby lobsters from eastern Canada to Long Island, New York, have found a below average number of them settling on the ocean bottom in areas such as the Gulf of Maine since 2012, the commission said in a statement.

‘Given the economic importance of the lobster fishery to many coastal communities in New England, especially in Maine, potential reductions in landings could have vast socioeconomic impacts,’ the statement said.

Canadian fishers harvest the same species of lobster and have their own measurement standards, which throws a wrinkle into efforts to manage the population.

The rationale for changing the U.S. measurement standards is that it gives lobsters more opportunity to reproduce, said Richard Wahle, a marine science professor at University of Maine who directs the Lobster Institute at the university. The change would also have ramifications such as marketing consequences for the U.S.-Canada trade, he said.

More restrictive measurement guidelines ‘would be consistent with the precautionary approach to hedge bets against poor year classes,’ Wahle said.

Originally started by Seattle teachers in 2016, Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action (BLMSWA) is a week-long focus on the ’13 Guiding Principles of the Black Lives Matter movement.’ Such principles include ‘fostering a queer-affirming network’ by freeing an individual from the ‘tight grip of heteronormative thinking’ and ‘disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure.’ 

BLMSWA is endorsed by several educator organizations including the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), American School Counselor Association, and the National Education Association. The AFT passed a resolution which, among other things, will ‘encourage its members to wear Black Lives Matter at School shirts to school that week and teach lessons about related topics.’

Here’s how some states have celebrated BLMSWA in past years: 

California: 

In 2022, the Aurora School in California incorporated ‘Julian is a Mermaid – Drag Queen Story Hour’ into its lesson planning for grade schoolers. The video, hosted on the YouTube channel ‘Queer Kid Stuff,’ is labeled for kids ages 3+ and features a ‘tie wearing queer lady,’ ‘her non-binary best-stuffed friend, Teddy’ and Angel from Drag Queen Story Hour.

District of Columbia 

The D.C. Area Educators for Social Justice is a ‘network of educators who seek to strengthen and deepen social justice teaching.’ One of their pages includes the PK-2 lesson titled ‘Introduction of Transgender and Nonbinary Identities with ‘I am Jazz.” According to the website, the purpose of the lesson is for students as young as four to ‘be able to define the words ‘transgender’ and ‘nonbinary’ and give examples of ways to support people of all gender identities.’

The teacher is instructed to pose a series of questions to the students about how to ‘know if someone is a boy or a girl.’ One of the questions states ‘How do doctors and parents guess if we’re a boy or girl?’ The teacher is then prompted to respond to student answers by stating that ‘doctors use our bodies to guess what our gender is’ but scientists are ‘finding out that only having two choices, boy or girl, doesn’t really make a lot of sense.’

Maryland

On January 21, 2021, the Board of Education of Howard County approved its resolution ‘recognizing Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action’ and the district’s participation in the event. 

The day-two lesson plan for middle school, titled ‘Diversity and Globalism,’ states that the ‘concept of privilege is difficult to understand and particularly difficult for those who have privilege to acknowledge.’ It continues by suggesting that the teacher ‘do personal research and reflection’ so that the teacher has ‘identified the impact of privilege’ on their life.

As part of the lesson, students are directed to complete the ‘Privilege or Oppressed? Worksheet’ by ‘identifying the places where they enjoy privilege and places where their status causes them to lack privilege.’ The plan directs the teacher by pointing out that ‘in order to understand globalism, students must comprehend privilege and understand that there are structural inequities.’ Continuing: ‘point out that people who benefit from privilege are unaware of the existence of the benefits they receive through their status.’

The staff-created lesson plan adds that ‘teachers should be prepared that this is not a place for controversy about sexual orientation,’ and that teachers ‘should not allow for space where sexuality is debated.’

Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action will be held from February 6-10, for participating schools and districts.