Texas Gov. Greg Abbott again took aim at the Biden administration Tuesday to amplify the crisis at the southern border and a lackluster federal response he said has led to record numbers of illegal migrants entering the United States. 

Speaking during his inauguration ceremony in Austin for a third term, Abbott blamed Biden for failing to enforce existing laws to combat illegal immigration, which he said has negatively impacted many border communities. 

‘As a result, more illegal immigrants crossed our border last year than any year in the history of the United States of America,’ he said. 

‘In fact, over the past two years, more illegal immigrants crossed our border than the populations of Austin, El Paso and Houston combined,’ he added. ‘With the Biden administration missing in action, Texas is using every tool to protect our state.’

Texas has enhanced security at the southern border amid a record number of crossings. In December, El Paso declared a state of emergency as migrants overwhelmed authorities. Other communities have also seen an influx of migrants, some with criminal records and prior deportations. 

In Del Rio, U.S. Border Patrol agents recently arrested two convicted sex offenders, shortly after they illegally entered the U.S.

In an effort to bring attention to the matter, Abbott has been bussing illegal immigrants to so-called sanctuary cities where officials have criticized tough border policies. 

Over the weekend, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said there is ‘no more room in New York’ for asylum seekers being sent to the Big Apple while touring the border in El Paso. 

‘We have to give people accurate information, and that is what some of the centers are doing here. They are truly explaining to people that this is what’s happening in New York right now,’ he said. ‘New York, you go there, you are going to be living in congregate settings, that there is no more room in New York. That should be coordinated by our national government, not only done locally here by those NGOs, but it should be done by our national government. That is not happening.’

Abbott has also ordered the investigation of nonprofits operating in the state over their possible assistance to migrants illegally crossing into the United States.

The White House has previously claimed that President Biden works while taking trips to his Wilmington, Delaware home, but is now claiming that the residence is ‘personal’ amid a number of classified documents being found at the address.

During a White House press briefing on Feb. 25, 2022, former press secretary Jen Psaki said that Biden can get work done from anywhere.

‘I will note that, while every president can work from anywhere they are, because that is how presidencies are equipped, he is traveling to Delaware for the memorial service of a family member.  And he will be — that is why he’s traveling there this weekend,’ Psaki said.

‘The President has the capacity to make a secure call from anywhere he is, yes,’ she added.

But on Monday, the White House Counsel Office said that Biden’s Wilmington residence is personal. The office made the statement while explaining why visitor logs don’t exist at Biden’s Wilmington residence.

‘Like every President in decades of modern history, his personal residence is personal,’ the office said.

Notably, Biden has previously held legislative meetings at the Wilmington home, such as one gathering with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V.

In addition to classified documents being found at Biden’s private office at the Penn Biden Center in November, a number of Obama-era classified documents were also found last week in the garage of the Wilmington home.

The discovery was made during a search of Biden’s Wilmington residence for classified documents.

‘Because I have a security clearance, I went to Wilmington Thursday evening to facilitate providing the document the president’s personal counsel found on Wednesday to the Justice Department. While I was transferring it to the DOJ officials who accompanied me, five additional pages with classification markings were discovered among the material with it, for a total of six pages. The DOJ officials with me immediately took possession of them,’ White House special counsel Richard Sauber said in a Saturday statement.

Biden was asked about the classified documents Thursday, telling Fox Newsy they were in a locked garage.

‘Classified documents next to your Corvette? What were you thinking?’ Fox News asked Biden.

‘I’m going to get the chance to speak on all of this, God willing it’ll be soon. But I said earlier this week — and, by the way, my Corvette is in a locked garage — it’s not like it’s sitting out in the street,’ Biden responded.

‘So the documents were in a locked garage?’ Fox News asked.

Biden’s handling of the classified documents are now the subject of an investigation led by a special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland

Fox News’ Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report.

The Border Patrol union on Tuesday took Vice President Kamala Harris to task for her handling of the border, saying the crisis has only grown worse under her watch. 

‘If you were given a job 2 years ago with the explicit goal of reducing illegal immigration, and then you sit around and do nothing while illegal immigration explodes to levels never seen before, you should be fired and replaced. Period,’ the union tweeted, including a picture of the vice president. 

Harris was put in charge of tackling the border crisis by President Biden shortly after they assumed office in 2021. Since then, the number of illegal border crossings has soared to unprecedented levels. 

Migrant encounters have toped 200,000 each month for the past nine straight months. For comparison, there were only 458,000 migrant encounters in the entirety of FY 2020. FY 2021 then saw more than 1.7 million and FY 2022 broke that record with a staggering 2.3 million encounters. 

The critique comes after President Biden visited El Paso last week – his first visit to the border as president – following a number of new border measures designed to discourage illegal crossings and expand legal asylum pathways for migrants. 

Critics alleged that the president’s first-ever trip to the U.S.-Mexico border did not accurately portray the extent of the crisis, pointing to reports that migrant encampments were cleaned up, and local authorities were instructed to ramp up detentions in preparation for the president’s visit – allegations denied by the White House. 

The Border Patrol union, has been relentless in its criticism of the Biden administration. On Tuesday the group tweeted a photo of the Democratic president with the caption: ‘The problem with our border, captured in one photo.’ 

Fox News Digital has reached out to The White House for a response to the Border Patrol union’s comments on the Vice President. 

Fox News’ Adam Shaw contributed to this report. 

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is staying mum on whether all classified documents have been recovered from President Biden or whether searches are still underway after additional documents were discovered since she assured reporters the searches were complete last week.

‘You should assume it has been completed, yes,’ Jean-Pierre said during Thursday’s press briefing, later adding, ‘The search is complete.’

Two days later, White House lawyer Richard Sauber issued a Saturday statement saying he went to Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home Thursday evening and found more classified documents after other documents were previously discovered there in December. Classified documents were also found at Biden’s private office 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.

On Tuesday, Jean-Pierre was repeatedly asked to defend her comments days earlier and to clarify whether the searches were continuing.

‘Is it safe to assume now that all the documents that had been recovered, all the official records, all the classified documents are back in the custody of the National Archives, or are more searches underway to find out if there’s anything else there?’ one reporter asked.

Jean-Pierre refused to answer the question and repeatedly referred reporters to the White House special counsel.

‘I’m just going to continue to be prudent here,’ she said. ‘I’m going to let this ongoing review that is happening, this legal process that is happening and let that process continue under the special counsel. I’m not going to comment from here.’

‘One of the things that we have said for the last two years when it comes to the Department of Justice, when it comes to legal matters, when it comes to legal issues, we have been very clear that we are not going to comment. We are not going to politically interfere,’ she continued. ‘I will say that we are consistent with what we have said on cooperating fully with the Department of Justice on this issue, and we will continue to cooperate fully with the special counsel.’

Another reporter asked whether Jean-Pierre knew the additional documents had been found by the time she gave her briefing on Friday, when she was repeatedly asked about the situation.

‘So did you not know on Friday that those documents had been found when you were at the podium, or are you being directed by someone to not be forthcoming on this?’ a reporter asked.

‘I have been forthcoming from this podium,’ Jean-Pierre responded. ‘What I said yesterday was what the statement at the time was–what we all had. You all had the statement, and I was repeating what the counsel was sharing at that time.’

Jean-Pierre was also asked whether the White House’s inconsistencies have damaged her credibility.

‘Are you upset that you came out to this podium on Friday with incomplete and inaccurate information?’ a reporter asked. ‘And are you concerned that it affects your credibility up here?’

‘Well, what I’m concerned about is making sure that we do not politically interfere in the Department of Justice, that we continue to be consistent over the last two years,’ Jean-Pierre replied. ‘And that is continue to refer you all when it comes to an ongoing process.’

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday responded to an accusation from the White House that Republicans were launching ‘hypocritical’ investigations into President Biden’s handling of classified documents, pledging that lawmakers would conduct oversight of the special counsel investigations into both Trump and Biden. 

Speaking to reporters, McCarthy defended a new probe led by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, into Biden’s alleged ‘mishandling’ of classified records and the special counsel investigation into the matter. The White House blasted the House GOP probe Monday, telling Fox News Digital, ‘House Republicans are playing politics in a shamelessly hypocritical attempt to attack President Biden.’

McCarthy answered the accusation of hypocrisy by contrasting how the Justice Department treated former President Trump with how Biden has been treated. He said that Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special prosecutor to investigate Biden only after ‘other people raised the issue,’ asking, ‘Are the same amount of agents investigating this that are investigating President Trump?

‘Is the same push behind it? It just does not seem fair,’ he added. ‘This is why the American people get so upset and distrust their government when they see the law is not applied equally.’ 

The FBI led a raid on Trump’s Florida home at Mar-a-Lago last year, seizing some 300 documents with classified markings, including some labeled top secret. Trump had neglected to turn those materials over to the National Archives as required by federal law. However, his legal team has said it was in negotiations to do so before the raid. Trump is now under criminal investigation by a special counsel appointed by Garland. 

In Biden’s case, the president’s personal attorneys on Nov. 2 found 10 classified documents at his old office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C., a University of Pennsylvania think tank where Biden taught before becoming president. More documents were later found at Biden’s private home in Wilmington, Delaware, including in his garage, but these discoveries were not disclosed until last week.

The president’s legal team says all the recovered documents were immediately turned over to the National Archives and the Justice Department. They have emphasized Biden is fully cooperating with DOJ and the second special counsel appointed to investigate the matter. House Republicans have meanwhile begun their own investigations, with the GOP-led House Judiciary and Oversight Committees seeking more information from the Biden administration. 

Both Republicans and the White House have since accused each other of double standards over the handling of classified materials. 

The White House claims GOP lawmakers did not care about classified records when Trump records were in question, yet cared about the treatment of the former president by the FBI.

Republicans claim the White House and the Biden administration weaponized the DOJ against Trump and are now downplaying the fact that Biden improperly retained classified records.

Asked if he was also concerned that Trump held classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, which was a violation of federal law, McCarthy said he has concerns ‘with any classified documents’ there ‘or anywhere else.’ 

‘We have a constitutional responsibility to oversee the Justice Department and that also means overseeing the special counsels, so we will look into both situations,’ he said.  

Fox News’ Brook Singman contributed to this report.

The Federal Election Commission ruled that Google’s email platform, Gmail, does not filter emails for political purposes after the Republican National Committee filed a complaint against the Big Tech giant, alleging it censored conservatives by sending GOP fundraising emails to users’ spam folders.

The RNC’s complaint alleged that the spam filter associated with Gmail disproportionately flagged Republican campaign emails as spam during the 2020 election cycle. The complaint also alleged that the spam filter eliminated a major source of political fundraising for GOP candidates and undermined their ability to communicate their messages to the public, resulting in prohibited corporate in-kind contributions to Biden for President.

‘In line with the Commission’s recent precedent, because Google credibly asserts that its spam filter is applied on a politically neutral basis and for a commercial purpose, the Commission finds no reason to believe that Google, LLC, made, and Biden for President and Keana Spencer in her official capacity as treasurer knowingly accepted, prohibited in-kind corporate contributions in violation of [U.S. code],’ the bipartisan FEC panel ruled.

The FEC panel stressed that ‘the available information indicates that Google’s spam filter is in place for commercial, rather than electoral, purposes.’

Republicans had pointed to a nonpartisan study by researchers at North Carolina State University that found Gmail allows the vast majority of emails from the Democratic Party to land in the user’s inbox while more than two-thirds of messages from conservative candidates are marked as spam.

Gmail ‘retained the majority of left-wing candidate emails in inbox (< 10.12% marked as spam) while it sent the majority of right-wing candidate emails to the spam folder (up to 77.2% marked as spam),’ the study found.

During the 2020 election cycle, an RNC official said the study found that Gmail routed Republican emails to spam at a rate approximately 820% higher than similar Democrat fundraising appeals.

Fox News first reported last year on the study, which found that conservative candidates raised $737 million on Republican fundraising platform WinRed from Gmail users in 2019 and 2020. Because just 32% of fundraising emails were delivered, Republicans estimate they missed out on $1.5 billion in contributions during the 2020 election cycle.

But the FEC found that authors of the study note that they ‘have no reason to believe that there were deliberate attempts from these email services to create these biases to influence the voters.’

The FEC also said the lead author has ‘since publicly stated that those who claim the Study demonstrates political bias are mischaracterizing it.’

In a statement to Fox News Digital Tuesday, Google spokesperson José Castañeda said the FEC’s ‘bipartisan decision to dismiss this complaint reaffirms that Gmail does not filter emails for political purposes.’

‘We’ll continue to invest in our Gmail industry-leading spam filters because, as the FEC notes, they’re important to protecting people’s inboxes from receiving unwanted, unsolicited or dangerous messages,’ Castañeda said.

As for the RNC, spokesman Nathan Brand told Fox News Digital that the party ‘will continue to hold Big Tech accountable for putting its thumb on the scales to help Democrats win elections.’

‘Google cannot explain away how they’ve overwhelmingly and systematically diverted Republican emails to voters’ spam folders while letting Democrat emails through,’ Brand said. ‘While we’re disappointed that the FEC dismissed this complaint, our lawsuit in California is still pending, and we look forward to that playing out in court.’

The RNC in October said Google was suppressing get-out-the-vote and fundraising emails by sending those messages to users’ spam folders during the midterm election cycle.

Google told Fox News at the time that political affiliation plays ‘no role’ in whether emails are placed in spam folders and pointed to an FEC-approved pilot program ahead of the midterms the company launched to ‘study whether these changes improve the user experience during this election period.’

To gain eligibility to that program, participants were required to meet security and authentication requirements and must comply with Google’s ‘bulk sender best practices.’

Under the program, users stayed ‘100% in control’ of their inboxes, meaning Gmail users were given the choice to mark a message as spam or to unsubscribe. If a user chooses to unsubscribe, the emails don’t just go to spam, but rather stop coming to the users’ inbox altogether, as it requires the campaign or party to remove that user from their distribution list within 24 hours.

Castañeda said that campaigns that hit a 5% spam rate would be removed from the pilot program.

The RNC has warned, however, that pilot program ‘could be weaponized because it demands unprecedented amounts of data from Republican organizations and our voters.’

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries,D-N.Y., is giving President Biden a pass over his mishandling of the classified documents found in his home and former office that some members of Congress said may have jeopardized U.S. national security.

Fox News Digital asked every member of Democratic leadership in both houses of Congress if they agreed with the assessment of some of their colleagues that Biden may have put the nation’s national security at risk by keeping classified documents in unsecured locations, but none answered.

Jeffries’ office, however, did respond to Fox’s request for comment, but only pointed to statements he made during a Monday interview on CNN, and didn’t address new questions about national security.

‘I remain having full confidence in President Joe Biden and his administration on this matter and on all other matters. I think he has led the country forward in a significant and meaningful way through a few tumultuous years,’ Jeffries said during the interview. He added that Biden’s mishandling of the classified material was ‘inadvertent’ and ‘not intentional.’

The office of Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., also responded, but only with his statement from Jan. 12 calling U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment of a special counsel to investigate the Biden documents a ‘commitment’ to ‘avoiding even the appearance of politicization.’

The statement focused little on Biden’s actions, and instead focused largely on the issue of former President Trump, whose Mar-a-Lago estate was raided by the FBI over the documents kept there. It made no mention of any national security concerns stemming from Biden’s mishandling of the documents.

No other members of Democratic leadership responded to Fox’s request for comment.

Their avoidance of the concerns comes just days after Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., suggested the intelligence community should assess the documents for any potential risk they could entail.

House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., also raised concerns about potential national security implications of the documents in a statement released last week, but prior to an additional trove of documents being found at Biden’s home over the weekend.

‘The fact that former Vice President Joe Biden inappropriately maintained and kept classified materials at his unsecured think tank raises serious questions about national security,’ she said.

‘Particularly when the documents were related to Ukraine when Biden family members were on a Ukrainian oligarch’s payroll,’ she added.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to say Tuesday whether President Biden’s lawyers are continuing to search for more classified documents Biden may have misplaced.

White House lawyers have so far found three batches of misplaced classified documents from Biden’s time as vice president, one in the Washington offices of the Penn Biden Center and two more inside the president’s home in Wilmington, Delaware. Jean-Pierre had initially told reporters on Friday that the search for classified documents was over, only for news of the third batch to break on Saturday.

‘Last week you told us that we could all assume, that the American people could assume, the searches were complete and all the documents had been recovered,’ a reporter began. ‘On Saturday the White House Counsel’s Office said that five additional classified documents had been found. Is it safe to assume now that all the documents have been recovered…or are more searches underway?’

‘We have addressed multiple questions from here. Multiple questions have been answered by the president,’ Jean-Pierre responded. ‘I’m just going to continue to be prudent here. I’m going to let this ongoing review that is happening, this legal process that is happening, and let that process continue under the special counsel.’

‘I’m not going to comment from here,’ she added, saying the Biden administration has made a habit of staying quiet on Justice Department matters.

A second reporter was more aggressive, pointing out that Jean-Pierre herself stood before reporters and stated that the search was over just one day before more documents were in fact found.

‘Did you not know on Friday that those additional documents had been found when you were at the podium, or were you being directed by someone to not be forthcoming on this issue?’ the reporter asked.

‘I have been forthcoming from this podium,’ Jean-Pierre responded. ‘What I said yes to was what the statement at the time was–what we all had. You all had the statement, and I was repeating what the [White House] counsel was saying at the time.’

Biden’s lawyers uncovered the first batch of classified documents inside the Penn Biden Center offices in November and said they immediately handed over the documents to the National Archives. Since then, searches uncovered two more batches inside the garage of Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware.

The trove of mishandled documents led Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel to investigate the matter last week, tapping former U.S. attorney Robert Hur.

Meanwhile, Republicans on Capitol Hill are demanding more transparency from Biden regarding the content of the documents and who may have had access to them. The White House Counsel’s office deflected by saying there is no visitor log for Biden’s Wilmington home.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said he will ‘continue to press’ for information about the documents despite the lack of a visitor log, however.

‘President Biden promised to have the most transparent administration in history, but he refuses to be transparent when it matters most,’ Comer told Fox News Digital. ‘The White House, National Archives, and the Justice Department withheld information from Congress and the American people about classified records found in unsecure locations from Joe Biden’s time as vice president. The American people deserve transparency, not secrecy.’

The new speaker of the Pennsylvania House said Tuesday that the first meeting of a bipartisan work group he assembled got off to a good start and that he’s hopeful they will help bridge the chamber’s partisan divide.

Speaker Mark Rozzi, D-Berks, held the first meeting with the group of three Democratic and three Republican state representatives shortly before a new governor was sworn in at noon.

Rozzi has said little in public since he was the surprise choice Jan. 3 to serve as speaker. As he walked from Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro’s inaugural event to his Capitol offices, he said the work group is developing proposed rules for the chamber and considering how to make progress on a measure Rozzi has long sought to allow some victims of child sexual abuse to file otherwise outdated lawsuits.

Since Rozzi became speaker two weeks ago, the House has not adopted rules, announced committee membership or held any votes.

‘I think we just want to show that Democrats and Republicans can work together and not only find a pathway forward for the statute of limitations, but what can we do together? What other legislation can we pass that we can come to a compromise on?’ Rozzi said.

He said the working group is ‘going to see where it goes. I think they’re willing to sit down and talk about how we move forward right now.’

Rozzi, who has vowed to serve as an independent speaker, on Thursday announced six lawmakers he chose to serve as what he’s calling the Speaker’s Workgroup to Move Pennsylvania Forward. Any rules they develop will have to be approved by a majority in the House in order to take effect.

Republican leaders and a few other GOP members joined with all Democrats to elect Rozzi speaker after a close November election and three Democratic vacancies resulted in a temporary 101-99 Republican margin. Democrats had been in the minority for 12 years.

Rozzi, who has spoken of his own abuse at the hands of a Catholic priest, has long advocated for a two-year ‘window’ during which child sexual abuse survivors can sue. A constitutional amendment to create the two-year window needs to pass both legislative chambers any time over the next two years in order to go before voters for final approval in referendum form.

Democrats are hopeful they will reach a 102-100 majority once three House special elections are held in Democratic-leaning seats in the Pittsburgh area on Feb. 7, along with a Senate special election Jan. 31 in which an incumbent Republican House member is running.

Two former North Carolina House members who have now returned as representatives after years away have landed committee leadership positions, Speaker Tim Moore announced on Tuesday while unveiling committee rosters for the new session.

Rep. Stephen Ross, an Alamance County Republican, was named a House Commerce Committee chairman with GOP Rep. John Sauls of Lee County. Ross had served four House terms before losing to Democrat Ricky Hurtado in 2020. Ross defeated Hurtado in a repeat election matchup in November.

Democratic Rep. Tricia Cotham of Mecklenburg County will be one of three chairs of the K-12 education committee, joining two Republicans. Cotham served in the House for nearly 10 years through 2016 before returning as a candidate last year.

Cotham is one of a few Democrats who have received top committee positions in a chamber where Republicans now hold 71 of the 120 seats.

They include Rep. Shelly Willingham of Edgecombe County, who is now one of three chairmen leading the alcoholic beverage control committee. Also, veteran Rep. Michael Wray of Northampton County was elevated to one of four senior chairmen of the powerful House Finance Committee.

House leadership also chose GOP Rep. Keith Kidwell of Beaufort County to join Wray as a new finance committee senior chairman, joining returning Reps. John Bradford of Mecklenburg County and Mitchell Setzer of Catawba County at the post. A previous senior chairman, GOP Rep. John Szoka, didn’t seek reelection last fall. Kidwell and Wray were vice chairs during the 2021-22 session.

The senior chairmen of the House Appropriations Committee remain GOP Reps. Dean Arp of Union County; Donny Lambeth of Forsyth County; and Jason Saine of Lincoln County. Wray and Sauls also remain chairs of the House Ethics Committee.

Tuesday’s list also shows that 18-term GOP Rep. Julia Howard of Davie County has regained some prominence in committees after a public feud with Moore over a tax relief bill led him to remove Howard as a senior chair of the finance committee in 2021. Howard will be on the second tier of the committee’s leadership — labeled a chair — and she will be the top leader of a new unemployment insurance committee. The House also has created a new ‘oversight reform’ committee. There are now three judiciary committees, down from four.

The General Assembly met for one day last week to pick new chamber leaders like Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger, who has already announced the Senate’s committee assignments. The legislature reconvenes Jan. 25 to begin the two-year session in earnest.