Mississippi senators are proposing an $80 million grant program for financially struggling hospitals and other programs to help the state attract and retain nurses and physicians, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said Wednesday.

The state health officer, Dr. Dan Edney, told legislators in November that 54% of Mississippi’s rural hospitals are at risk of closing. Mississippi has a large number of uninsured residents, and health care facilities have faced rising expenses during the COVID-19 pandemic.

‘There needs to be significant, positive changes in order to provide our citizens with the necessary rural health (care),’ Hosemann said.

The rural, impoverished Delta has lost population over the past several years, and some hospitals in that area have been curtailing services and cutting jobs.

Hosemann unveiled four proposals during a news conference, including Senate Bill 2372, which would create the hospital grant program. Hospitals that receive money would have to submit information about how many patients they have and what kinds of medical services they offer — data that the state could use in planning for the health care industry in the state.

Senate Bill 2373 would create program to forgive up to $18,000 in student loans for any person who becomes a nurse and works in Mississippi.

Senate Bill 2371 would create about $20 million in grants to community colleges for nursing and allied health programs. The bill also proposes $5 million to let more hospitals have residency programs for physicians — a move that Hosemann said would encourage those physicians to remain in the communities where they trained.

Senate Bill 2323 would remove bureaucratic barriers to help hospitals collaborate.

Hosemann said the Division of Medicaid is expected to seek federal permission to increase payments for some medical services, but that request does not require action from the Legislature.

Hosemann also said Wednesday that he will not push to expand Medicaid coverage to people in low-paying jobs that don’t provide private insurance — a position that puts him in line with other Republican leaders, including Gov. Tate Reeves and House Speaker Philip Gunn.

Medicaid expansion is allowed under the health care overhaul that former President Barack Obama signed into law in 2010, with the federal government covering most of the cost. Mississippi is among the 11 states that have not authorized the expansion.

The lieutenant governor reiterated one position that puts him at odds with the speaker, though. Hosemann said he still wants Mississippi to extend Medicaid coverage from 60 days to a full year after childbirth. Senators voted last year to extend the postpartum coverage, but the proposal failed in the House amid opposition from Gunn.

‘We won the pro-life case and now we don’t want to take care of our moms? I can’t understand how you are able to make that kind of argument,’ Hosemann said Wednesday.

The U.S. Supreme Court used a Mississippi case last summer to upend abortion rights nationwide by overturning the landmark 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade.

Gunn has said this year that he would support extending postpartum Medicaid coverage in Mississippi only if the state Division of Medicaid comes out in support of the extension. The program’s leaders have not taken a position on the issue.

New York City launched a plan Wednesday to become the first city in the nation to distribute free abortion drugs at its health clinics.

A sexual health clinic in the Bronx began to offer free chemical abortion pills Wednesday and three other clinics will do so by the end of the year — a plan that Democratic Mayor Eric Adams declared ‘no other city in the nation or in the world’ has launched. The efforts are part of a $1.2 million city fund for sexual health services.

‘For too long, health and health care has been centered around men,’ Adams said in a Tuesday press conference on women’s health. ‘If men had periods, pap smears and menopause, they would get a paid vacation. And if men could get pregnant, we wouldn’t see Congress trying to pass laws restricting abortion.’

City officials said the boost to sexual health clinics in the city is an attempt to counter restrictions on abortion after the overturn of Roe v. Wade last year. Abortion pills are available in the city’s 11 public hospitals, but the new plan extends this to four public health clinics, where they will be provided free of charge.

Ashwin Vasan, commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said that the free abortion pills will be ‘open to anyone.’

‘This is city dollars going to this specific purpose, and we’re the first in the nation to do that,’ Vasan said.

Abortion pills are taken to terminate a fetus through the first 10 weeks of a pregnancy. Medical studies and data show abortion pills have four times the complication rate of surgical abortions due to concerns over intense hemorrhages and bleeding.

The rate of emergency room visits after the use of abortion pills increased more than 500% between 2002 and 2015, according to government data collected by the Charlotte Lozier Institute. The pills are often taken without medical supervision.

The Food and Drug Administration has made a series of moves to deregulate abortion pills amid the Biden administration. The agency in January announced that it will allow retail pharmacies such as CVS and Walgreens to distribute abortion drugs as women are prescribed the pills from certified health care providers.

Just over one year prior, the agency made permanent its pandemic-era decision to allow doctors to prescribe abortion pills through remote appointments and to mail them to women through certified providers.

The popularity of abortion pills has increased steadily since they were approved in the U.S. in 2000. The pills accounted for more than half of U.S. abortions for the first time in 2020, which is likely to increase after the Roe overturn and FDA deregulation efforts. This does not include the use of black market abortion pills, which have grown in popularity since the overturn of Roe.

EXCLUSIVE: Former Indiana GOP congressional candidate Jennifer-Ruth Green says she feels ‘vindicated,’ yet ‘frustrated,’ after the Air Force admitted in a letter sent to her Wednesday that her military personnel records – the source of a pre-election Politico story that documented details about her sexual assault during her service in the branch – were released to a third party ‘without proper redaction.’

Speaking by phone to Fox News Digital about the letter of admission, which Green received from acting Compliance Division Chief William J. Alexander Jr., the Indiana Republican who challenged Democrat Rep. Frank Mrvan to represent Indiana’s 1st Congressional District last November lamented the failures of those in the media who worked to be a part of the ‘Democrat smear machine.’

‘I feel like I’m vindicated in what I’ve been saying all along. There are people that accused me of trying to have a last ditch smear effort on the congressman, and the [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee], and the Democrat machine,’ Green said. 

‘It happened exactly how I said it happened. My documents were obtained not through a FOIA request like Politico falsely claimed. Politico’s lawyers knew better, they knew these documents couldn’t be obtained through FOIA, and they worked to be part of the Democrat smear machine… they lied to cover their tracks,’ she continued.

Following the October 2022 story from Politico, Indiana GOP Reps. Jim Banks and Larry Bucshon spoke with Air Force Inspector General Lt. Gen. Stephen Davis about the release of Green’s records. At the time, the congressman, as well as the Air Force, noted the matter was still under investigation.

‘In this case, we reviewed our processes on the release of Department of the Air Force records to the public to determine whether the release of your OPR was made by DAF personnel through the Freedom of Information Act process or other official process, such as through Public Affairs,’ Alexander wrote in the Wednesday letter to Green. ‘We found that your information was released by the Air Force Personal Center to a third-party (‘Due Diligence’), a private company specializing in public record research without your consent via a SF-180 request.’

‘The findings indicated that Due Diligence Group LLC requested ‘Publicly releasable/redacted copy of your OMPF per Freedom of Information Act statutes,’’ Alexander added. ‘Ten interviews of personnel involved in this release who were in roles related to military records, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), or Privacy Act (PA) to determine if any criminal intent existed. It was concluded that a PII breach did occur due to the unauthorized release of your military personnel records to a third party without proper redaction. Based on all interviews, no evidence was presented to indicate any criminal intent on the part of the Air Force.’

There are also ‘many other actors in the middle’ of the situation, according to Green, who said she believes the media is the ‘working arm of the Dems.’

‘The local media in Northwest Indiana, they attacked me for demanding accountability. They were wrong, and they should retract their false reporting. The Due Diligence Group, they’re the Democrat opposition research firm who were hired by the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee to dig up dirt on me and attempt to smear my military career. But of course, as we talked about, they outed me as a survivor of sexual assault in the process.’

Last year, in a profile of Green’s career and candidacy in the contentious Indiana congressional race, Politico used the personnel records, which the outlet claimed ‘were obtained by a public records request and provided to Politico by a person outside the Mrvan campaign,’ to report that ‘an Iraqi serviceman sexually assaulted [Green] by grabbing her breast and exposing himself’ when ‘she and a small group of officers visited the national training center.’

‘The Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee closely coordinated with Congressman Mrvan’s campaign, and they ran over $1,000,000 in coordinated ads,’ she added. ‘So, the idea that Congressman Mrvan and his cronies were not involved in obtaining my records, and the DCCC working independently to leak my records without the Mrvan campaign’s knowledge, is disingenuous and it’s laughable. I feel vindicated, but I feel really frustrated because I don’t even know what’s worse, the fact that Congressman Mrvan’s allies did it, or the fact that he continues to lie about it and play the victim, but either way, he’s just unfit for political office – his lack of integrity is unsettling.’

Asked whether she believes the Air Force’s improper release of her military records contributed to her election loss against Mrvan, Green said: ‘I think the fact that the liberal left media would not accurately be unbiased in covering the truth, that definitely had an impact because people didn’t get to hear the realities of what our congressman is willing to do for gaining a seat.’

‘I fully accept the verdict of the people, but I do believe that in the court of public opinion, people did see the difficulties with trusting the congressman,’ she added. ‘What I do know is that in the midst of them obtaining this paperwork, what it’s really done is expose the far left’s media hold and the fact that they are a part of the Democrat machine.’

In a statement to Fox News Digital, Ann Stefanek, chief of media operations for the Air Force, said: ‘The Air Force takes full responsibility for releasing the information. The investigation determined a junior individual didn’t follow proper procedures. We’ve adjusted our procedures and elevated the approval level to provide additional oversight.’

‘As originally disclosed in the story, the documents were obtained by a public records request and provided to Politico by a source. That is not at odds with what the Air Force has stated,’ a Politico spokesperson told Fox News Digital.

Regarding her next move, Green said it’s all about ‘accountability’ and working to ensure that what happened to her does not happen to another veteran seeking to be elected to Congress in the future.

‘We can’t have this partisan bureaucracy,’ she said. ‘If it is the military doing something malicious and someone in the military helping out the DCCC, we just can’t have that. So we have to demand accountability. I want to thank Senator Cotton, Senator Young, Senator Braun, Congressman Banks, and Congressman Bucshon. They demanded that the military investigate this case – the illegal release of my records – and I hope that members of Congress continue to hold people accountable.’

‘For other vets who are considering running, our personnel files are our private property and this invasion is wrong,’ Green concluded. ‘If there any other vets wanting to run, don’t be fearful because I’m going to do my best to continue to hold people accountable, to continue to highlight the hypocrisy of the left, and to not let situations like this continue to occur where we have unaccountable partisan bureaucracy that just gets swept under the rug.’

Fox News Digital did not receive an immediate comment from the DCCC or the Mrvan campaign.

A lesion removed by surgeons last week from first lady Jill Biden’s left eyelid was a noncancerous growth, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, physician to President Joe Biden, said Wednesday.

O’Connor said in a memo released by the White House that a biopsy showed that the legion was seborrheic keratosis, a ‘very common, totally harmless, noncancerous growth.’

Surgeons last week also removed a cancerous lesion above Jill Biden’s right eye and one on her chest. Those lesions were both confirmed to be basal cell carcinoma.

Basal cell carcinoma is the most common type of skin cancer, but also the most curable form. It’s considered highly treatable, especially when caught early. It is a slow-growing cancer that usually is confined to the surface of skin — doctors almost always can remove it all with a shallow incision — and seldom causes serious complications or becomes life-threatening.

‘Dr. Biden is recovering nicely from her procedures,’ O’Connor wrote. ‘She experienced some anticipated mild bruising and swelling, but feels very well.’

Amid a statewide battle over the future of fossil fuels, Uduak-Joe Ntuk stepped down last week as California’s top oil and gas regulator after three years in the job, state officials confirmed Wednesday.

Ntuk, a former Chevron engineer and petroleum czar for Los Angeles, was appointed as head of the California Geologic Energy Management Division by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019.

‘We are deeply thankful for Mr. Ntuk’s service and contributions to CalGEM and the state these last three years,’ said David Shabazian, director of the Department of Conservation.

In a statement to The Associated Press, Ntuk said he stepped down to focus on family and move forward with his career.

‘I’m incredibly proud of our work at CalGEM over the past three years, especially enacting the nation’s strongest regulations for protecting communities of color from the impacts of oil drilling, moving towards ending the practice of fracking in California, and securing more than $100 million in state and federal funding to address the state’s century long challenge of orphan oil wells,’ Ntuk said.

His departure comes just after the division began implementing a ban on neighborhood drilling that oil and gas industry groups are trying to overturn through a referendum. Lawmakers passed the ban on drilling within 3,200 feet of schools, homes and other community sites last year. Ntuk’s agency had previously begun a regulatory process to put similar restrictions in place, but some environmental groups thought it was taking too long.

Ntuk took on the leadership role at a time of change in the agency, which oversees and permits oil and gas drilling. The division, previously called the Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources, had long faced criticism that it was too cozy with the industry it regulated.

But Newsom, a Democrat, pledged when he took office in 2019 to take a harder line against oil and gas companies as he fought for aggressive climate policies. Several months into his tenure, he fired the division’s leader amid an uptick in permits for the oil and gas extraction process known as fracking and allegations that some employees held stock in companies they were responsible for regulating. Newsom also changed the division’s name.

Since then, the division has started denying fracking permits based on climate change and health concerns.

But environmental watchdog groups said permits for traditional oil drilling were climbing at the end of 2022 as the state’s ban on neighborhood oil drilling neared. Though the state has started implementing the law, it may be put on hold if the referendum is approved to go before voters in 2024. State officials will determine soon whether it qualified for the ballot.

‘We’ll be watching the Newsom administration closely to see if they will make the appropriate changes to get CalGEM on the right track,’ said Cesar Aguirre, a community organizer with Central California Environmental Justice Network, in a statement.

Oil and gas industry groups didn’t comment on Ntuk’s resignation.

Gabe Tiffany, the Department of Conservation’s chief deputy director, is serving as the interim oil and gas supervisor for the state. Ntuk was the first African-American to lead the division.

Days after he left the vice presidency in 2017, President Biden met with his inner circle at the Wilmington, Delaware, home where classified documents were recently discovered. 

While the White House revealed on Monday that no visitor logs exist for Biden’s Wilmington residence, several people have been identified as guests at the house, a Fox News Digital review found.

Just three days after leaving office, then-Biden aide Kathy Chung invited Biden’s son, Hunter Biden; Biden’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens; and several others to a ‘UDEL meeting at the Lake house’ on Feb. 7, 2017, according to emails recovered from Hunter’s abandoned laptop, which have been verified by Fox News Digital.

UDEL most likely refers to the University of Delaware, Biden’s alma mater, and the ‘lake house’ refers to Biden’s lakefront home in Wilmington.

Those copied on the email included Kate Bedingfield, who now serves as White House Communications Director, Mike Donilon, who now serves as Biden’s senior adviser, and Brian Mosteller, who currently serves as a senior advisor to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo.

Others on the email included Biden’s longtime friend, Mel Monzack, current Deputy Secretary of Commerce Don Graves, former Biden aide Richard Ruffner, and Steve Ricchetti, who currently serves as Biden’s counselor and previously was his chief of staff while he was vice president starting in 2013, before being tapped for a senior role at the embattled Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C.

Chung, who was Biden’s executive assistant when he was vice president and the Pentagon’s current deputy director of protocol, wrote at the time: ‘OK, lets do 10:00 am on Tuesday at the Lake house. I hope this gives everyone plenty of time to drive up to DE.  Please let me know if this is too early.  VP asked me to check with you all.  Thank you.’

On Feb 6, 2017, one day before the scheduled meeting, Chung reached out again to confirm the meeting, claiming that Graves was the only one who indicated he couldn’t make it.

‘Just to confirm tomorrow’s meeting at the Lake house,’ Chung wrote. ‘As of now, Don is the only person not attending. Please let me know if your status has changed.’

‘I will be there,’ Owens responded.

It is not clear who actually attended the meeting on Feb. 7, 2017. 

At least three batches of Obama administration-era classified documents have been found on Biden’s property in recent months: one batch at the Penn Biden Center and two at his Wilmington property.

The Justice Department began its investigation into Biden after the first batch was discovered by the president’s personal lawyers at the Penn Biden Center in November, just days before the midterm elections. The developments only became public this month after CBS News broke the story and the White House was forced to respond. Attorney General Merrick Garland launched a special counsel investigation after additional classified documents from Biden were found at the Wilmington home.

Chung was reportedly among several former Biden aides to be interviewed by law enforcement in relation to the case. Chung and the others questioned reportedly helped move materials and belongings from Biden’s office at the end of the Obama administration in early 2017.

The meeting of Biden’s inner circle in Wilmington on Feb. 7, 2017, came the same day it was announced that the former vice president would be leading the Penn Biden Center at the University of Pennsylvania and the Biden Institute at the University of Delaware.

‘At Penn, I look forward to building on the work that has been a central pillar of my career in public office: promoting and protecting the post-WWII international order that keeps the United States safe and strong,’ Biden said in a Feb. 7, 2017, press release.

It wasn’t the first time Biden’s inner circle had a meeting at the Wilmington residence to strategize Biden’s future plans at the University of Delaware. According to an email from Chung in March 2016, Biden and Second Lady Jill Biden were hosting a presentation ‘on the website for the Foundation from Ted Kaufman,’ Biden’s longtime confidante and neighbor, at their Wilmington home following a meeting at the University of Delaware. 

‘After the UDEL presentation this Friday, VP and Dr. Biden ask that you come back to the Lake house for a presentation on the website for the Foundation from Ted Kaufman,’ Chung wrote. ‘The presentation meeting should not last past 8:30 pm. We know this is a lot of time on a Friday afternoon, but your thoughts/input on this is greatly appreciated. Thank you and please let me know if you are able to stay for this meeting as well.’

One day before the meeting, Chung sent a follow-up email and noted who the University of Delaware attendees would be for the meeting at the university president’s residence and told them ‘you will all head back to the Lake house for a presentation from Ted Kaufman on the Foundation’s website.’

Chung was an executive assistant for Vice President Biden from 2012 through the end of the Obama administration. Emails reviewed by Fox News Digital showed that Hunter recommended Chung for the executive assistant role when the previous holder of the job, Michele Smith, departed the White House in the spring of 2012. 

Several of the people copied on the 2016 email have been in Biden’s orbit for several years, including Ricchetti, Donilon, and other top aides.

In January 2017, days after the Obama administration concluded, many of the same people were scheduled to attend a meeting at Biden’s home in McLean, Virginia.

‘Sorry if this is redundant to some,’ Chung wrote in an email titled ‘UDEL Meeting’ on Jan. 24, 2017. ‘Just need to capture everyone.  The VP would like to hold this meeting on Thursday, Jan. 26, 12:30 pm, at his residence [in McLean]. If you cannot be there in person, but would like to join, pls provide the best phone number to call. thank you.’

‘Don, can you pls include Ben Harris on this email, I don’t seem to have it.  thank you,’ she added.

That email was sent to Hunter, Valerie, Graves, Ricchetti, Donilon, as well as former Biden Cancer Initiative executive director Gregory Simon and Ted Kaufman, Biden’s longtime confidante of several decades who chaired his transition in 2020 and early 2021.

It is also unclear who wound up attending that meeting. The White House, Owens, Kaufman, and Hunter’s lawyer did not respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.

On Feb. 2, 2017, Bedingfield sent an email to Hunter, Owens and several of the others, with the addition of Robert Peters, a reported alias for Joe Biden, to confirm the wording for a University of Delaware press release announcing the Biden Institute.

‘Here’s the draft release with both UDel’s edits and mine,’ Bedingfield wrote at the time. ‘As I told the VP on the phone, Assanis wants to hold the news of the naming of the public policy school in order to do a bigger event on it down the line.  So the release is the announcement of the Institute, which I think is fine. Let me know of any concerns and edits.  We are planning for a Tuesday morning 2/7 rollout. Thanks!’

In addition to this meeting, Fox News Digital did a review and identified several other people who have been to Biden’s Wilmington house, despite the White House and Secret Service saying earlier this week that there are no visitor logs for the Wilmington house.

Biden hosted Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer, of New York, and Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, in October 2021 for breakfast at his Wilmington house to discuss Build Back Better, according to a White House press release. 

Others who have been at the house include past presidential campaign staff and current aides, including Ricchetti, who just traveled with Biden over the three-day holiday weekend to his Wilmington house. 

Biden’s son, Hunter, has had unlimited access to the Wilmington home. Though it remains unclear when the classified files from Biden’s time as vice president made their way into the home. Emails reviewed and verified by Fox News Digital show the younger Biden listed the Wilmington, Delaware, address as his own permanent residence for his credit card and Apple account in 2018 and 2019, respectively.

Biden converted the basement of his Wilmington residence into a de facto campaign headquarters in March 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, where he frequently hosted virtual events and would have had to rely on campaign aides to help. Annie Tomasini, who is currently the director of Oval Office operations at the White House, and Anthony Bernal, a senior adviser in first lady Jill Biden’s office, ‘were allowed in regularly’ because ‘neither of them had their own families, which meant they could devote themselves entirely to the Bidens,’ the ‘Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency’ book said.

A day after the 2020 election, several of Biden’s advisers, including O’Malley Dillon, Klain,  and Donilon, met with Biden in his study room at the Wilmington house, where O’Malley Dillon exclaimed, ‘Sir, you’re going to win.’

Biden has spent considerable time in Delaware since taking over the presidency, having been there for nearly 200 days, according to an Associated Press tally. During the visits, Biden stays at his Wilmington or Rehoboth Beach residences and has a full security detail. Others who have been at the house include past presidential campaign staff and current aides, including Steve Ricchetti, who just traveled with Biden over the three-day holiday weekend to his Wilmington house and is a longtime confidante.

Hunter has also made several trips to Wilmington with his dad since he became president in early 2021. 

On Mar 26, 2021, Hunter and his wife Melissa Cohen and their son Beau accompanied Biden on a trip to Wilmington.

On May 25, 2021, Hunter traveled to Wilmington for the funeral service of longtime Biden staffer Norma Long. Days later, Hunter was photographed with his father visiting Beau Biden’s gravesite in Wilmington. On Dec. 18, 2021, Hunter and his family attended church with the Bidens near Wilmington.

Fox News’ Joe Schoffstall, Bradford Betz, and Thomas Catenacci contributed to this report.

President Biden’s son Hunter Biden, who is facing wide-ranging probes into his business dealings, once noted that he and other family members ‘quarantined’ at his father’s home, where classified documents were recently found.

In his memoir published in April 2021, the president’s son said he and other close family members spent election night on Nov. 3, 2020, at the Wilmington, Delaware, home. Hunter Biden wrote that he, his children, his wife Melissa Cohen, and his half-sister Ashley Biden and her husband Howard Krein watched coverage of the presidential election together as votes were counted.

‘You would have loved the scene on election night, too, even though the night would’ve driven you nuts, not least because the vote counting dragged on for days,’ Hunter Biden wrote in the memoir.

‘Yet one of the benefits of waiting so long for the race to be called was that we all waited it out together, at Mom and Dad’s house – Melissa and the baby, my girls, Natalie and Hunter, Ashley and Howard,’ he continued in the passage. ‘More than waiting together, we were also quarantined together. There was no escaping one another.’

In addition to the revelation that Hunter Biden quarantined at the home during the 2020 presidential election, additional evidence has surfaced showing he has spent time at the home on numerous other occasions.

Hunter Biden was notably seen traveling with his father from the White House to Delaware on Dec. 16, just four days prior to the search of the residence that yielded the classified documents. According to the White House, the president’s attorneys searched the Wilmington home and found the documents on Dec. 20.

Hunter Biden also spent time in Wilmington on at least five other instances since his father took office, according to various media reports of his whereabouts. For example, on March 26, 2021, Daily Mail reporter Rob Crilly tweeted footage of Hunter Biden traveling with the president to Wilmington.

The Washington Free Beacon reported Wednesday that it had obtained photos placing Hunter Biden at the Delaware home on July 30, 2017, shortly after his father departed the White House with documents from his tenure. The pictures showed Hunter Biden driving in his father’s 1967 Corvette Stingray, which the president told reporters was parked next to where the classified documents had been found last month. 

The White House first revealed last week that a series of classified documents, including some marked ‘top-secret,’ dating back to Biden’s time as vice president had been discovered at the Penn Biden Center. Later in the week, the White House acknowledged a second batch of classified documents was found in the garage of the president’s Wilmington residence. 

‘As the President said, he takes classified information and materials seriously, and as we have said, we have cooperated from the moment we informed the [National] Archives that a small number of documents were found, and we will continue to cooperate,’ the president’s lawyer Richard Sauber said in a statement on Thursday.

‘We are confident that a thorough review will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced, and the President and his lawyers acted promptly upon discovery of this mistake,’ he added.

Then, on Saturday, Sauber disclosed that yet another batch of five documents were discovered at the home despite earlier assurances from White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre that the search had been completed.

Republicans, meanwhile, have zeroed in on whether Hunter Biden had access to the classified information – which included intelligence regarding Ukraine, Iran and the U.K. – in the aftermath of the discovery of the documents in the president’s home. Hunter Biden is currently under federal investigation and faces congressional inquiries regarding his business dealings.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed career prosecutor Robert Hur to serve as a special counsel to investigate the president’s handling of classified documents.

Fox News’ Pat Ward contributed reporting 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took a shot at President Biden on Wednesday after classified Obama-era documents were recently found in the president’s Delaware home and a former office. 

‘Look, he said that it was incredibly reckless to have classified — he said all this stuff on ’60 Minutes,” DeSantis said at a news conference. 

‘And now you find out he had them stashed behind his Corvette at his house that Hunter had access to, which is definitely a security risk in my book,’ he added. ‘And so, I think it just shows you what some of these folks do.’

‘They had all this stuff to say. Now they’re acting like this is something — like it’s not a big deal. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. You can’t have two different sets of rules based on your political party,’ the governor concluded to applause.

In an interview with ’60 Minutes’ last year, Biden criticized former President Donald Trump after top-secret documents were found — and then seized by the FBI — at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. 

‘When you saw the photograph of the top-secret documents laid out on the floor at Mar-a-Lago, what did you think to yourself looking at that image?’ CBS’ Scott Pelley asked. 

‘How that could possibly happen, how one anyone could be that irresponsible?’ Biden replied. ‘And I thought what data was in there that may compromise sources and methods. By that, I mean, names of people helped or etcetera.’ 

Trump had reportedly resisted requests from the National Archives and Records Administration to return the documents.

Biden’s team has emphasized that his attorneys immediately notified the Archives upon discovering the documents. 

The White House has notably confirmed that Biden has not independently maintained records of who has visited his residence since he became president.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s nominee to lead the state’s highest court was rejected by a state Senate panel Wednesday, dealing the governor a high-profile setback after weeks of criticism from progressive activists and union officials about the judge’s record.

Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee voted not to forward Hector LaSalle’s Court of Appeals nomination to the full Senate after questioning him for more than four hours. Most of Hochul’s fellow Democrats voted against LaSalle.

‘The nominee was thoughtful, engaged and responsive,’ said Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who chairs the judicial committee. ‘But I believe that there were questions that remain.’

The governor nominated LaSalle just before Christmas, hoping he would become the first Latino to lead the seven-member high court and oversee New York’s judicial system. The state Senate routinely approves such nominees, but Hochul’s pick ran into trouble after a vocal coalition of opponents claimed LaSalle’s judicial record was too conservative.

Democratic senators at the hearing said they were worried that the judge’s record showed he favored prosecutors’ positions over civil rights and grilled him on individual decisions they considered unfair to workers and unsupportive of reproductive rights. Critics included a number of Senate Democrats, creating an intra-party conflict just as state negotiations over spending and policy are heating up.

Hochul called the Senate hearing unfair and said she believes the state Constitution required action by the full Senate, not just the committee.

‘Judge LaSalle demonstrated exactly why he is the right person for this role — because of his extensive experience, judicial temperament and integrity,’ Hochul said in a prepared statement.

LaSalle cast himself as product of a humble background, a believer in women’s rights and unions, and a conscientious judge.

‘To every one of these positions, I have brought and will continue to bring my lived experience, my experience as a person of color growing up in a working-class community,’ LaSalle told the senators.

LaSalle currently serves as a presiding justice of the Second Department, where he leads the largest state appellate court in the nation with a budget of about $69 million. He was appointed to that position in 2021 by then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

His opponents have focused on a small number of midlevel appeals court opinions, most dealing with technical legal issues, rather than big societal questions.

LaSalle told senators he based his decisions on case law. Senators supporting him accused critics of cherry-picking particular cases to make it seem like he was an arch-conservative.

‘In reading your decisions and especially in listening to your opening statement, I thought for a moment I was in the wrong room. You do not come across as a right-wing conservative nut,’ said Republican Sen. Andrew Lanza.

Hoylman-Sigal said the concerns about LaSalle’s record needed to be thoroughly aired, given an increasingly conservative U.S. Supreme Court.

‘If some people think we are applying an exacting standard at this hearing, we are because we have to,’ Hoylman-Sigal said at the hearing. ‘The stakes are just too high.’