President Joe Biden said Republicans are ‘fiscally demented’ while speaking at a Martin Luther King Day event Monday, amid GOP calls for more transparency regarding the president’s mishandling of classified documents.

The president began by claiming Democrats are fiscally responsible, before taking a jab at Republicans who criticized his administrations spending.

‘You’re gonna talk about big spending Democrats again,’ Biden said during a speech at the National Action Network’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day breakfast, referring to Republicans who frequently called out the president for signing massive spending bills into law in the midst of a recession.

‘Guess what,’ the president whispered into his microphone, ‘I reduced the deficit last year three hundred and fifty billion dollars.’

‘These guys, they’re fiscally demented. They don’t quite get it,’ Biden said drawing laughs from the crowd, before quickly returning to the teleprompter and reading the rest of his speech.

Biden continued to tout his trillion dollar spending packages throughout the speech, meanwhile inflation hit a 40-year-high of 9.1% in June and gas prices soared nationwide under his watch.

In November, the Biden administration claimed that they were responsible for the historical reduction in the federal deficit, leaving out other major contributing factors that led to the decrease.

‘The Biden-Harris Administration lowered the deficit with the single largest one-year reduction in American history,’ the White House tweeted. 

Twitter users quickly pointed out that despite the reduction, ‘the FY22 deficit is still the 4th largest in history and is 41% larger than FY19’ and highlighted that high COVID-driven deficits played a significant role in the drop.

Biden’s comment comes just days after several batches of classified documents were found at both his Penn Biden Center office and Delaware home, a recovery that sparked major backlash from the GOP after the president had called former President Trump ‘irresponsible’ for holding onto classified materials after leaving office.

An Ocala, Florida parent is outraged after an elementary school sent home a permission slip for students to learn the Black National Anthem, but not other topics like the Holocaust, according to reports.

Fox station WOFL in Orlando reported that the form went home with students from College Park Elementary in Ocala, Florida, which is part of the Marion County Public Schools.

Parents were asked to sign the form to give their third, fourth, and fifth grade children permission to learn the Black National Anthem, ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing.’

A reporter from WOFL spoke with a parent, who went by Amanda, and whose child attends the school.

‘When I actually sat down to read it, I was very confused,’ she said. ‘I was like, ‘What is this?’’

According to the NAACP website, ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ was written by NAACP leader James Weldon Johnson in 1900 as a poem that turned into a hymn.

The music was composed by Johnson’s brother, John Rasamond Johnson, and it was first performed in public in Jacksonville, Florida, to celebrate the birthday of President Abraham Lincoln.

The permission slip was sent to parents to give them the choice on whether to participate or not after the principal of the school felt the song may contain lyrics that some may find objectionable, the district told WOFL.

The line that raised concern was, ‘We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered.’

Amanda questioned why permissions slips were not sent out when her third-grade daughter learned about the Holocaust.

‘I know they’re different, but it’s history,’ Amanda said. ‘I would assume they’d send a form for that too, but nothing at all.’

She said there was nothing in the song that she considered to be a red flag, nor did any of the lyrics make her feel uncomfortable.

District officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the matter.

WOFL reported that the district said the song would be taught during school hours and that there was an optional performance of the song outside of normal school hours.

The D.C. Council is expected to override Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s veto of sweeping criminal reform legislation that will soften penalties for many violent crimes, including carjackings and burglaries.

Bowser vetoed the Revised Criminal Code Act earlier this month after the council, which lacks a single Republican member, voted unanimously to adopt it in November. The overhaul of the city’s criminal code includes reduced maximum sentences, the elimination of nearly all mandatory minimum sentences, and expanded rights to jury trials by those accused of misdemeanors. 

Criminal justice reform advocates say the bill is necessary to modernize the law, which was written in 1901, and ensure that punishments are proportionate to the crimes being committed. 

But opponents have sounded the alarm on provisions that would allow D.C. inmates to ask for early release 20 years into their sentence, even those accused of violent crimes like murder or sexual assault. 

Bowser voiced concerns about the reduced penalties provisions of the bill when she vetoed it on Jan. 3.

‘Anytime there is a policy that reduces penalties, I think it sends the wrong message,’ she said.

Council members are expected to override Bowser’s veto and send the bill to Congress, where federal lawmakers will have 60 days to review it. Within that period, Congress may enact a joint resolution disapproving the Council’s Act. If President Biden approves the resolution, the act will be prevented from becoming law. 

New D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb voiced support for the overhaul, tweeting, ‘This bill will improve public safety and provide long overdue clarity and fairness in our justice system. [The Revised Criminal Code Act] should be the law of the District.’

‘Today, @CMCharlesAllen and I are moving to override the Mayor’s veto of the Revised Criminal Code Act,’ tweeted council member Brooke Pinto. ‘The veto threatens to unravel years of work and thorough study that has culminated in a criminal code that is more just, equitable, & clear — making us all safer.’

‘I will vote to override the Mayor’s veto of the Revised Criminal Code Act,’ tweeted council member Matt Frumin. ‘The RCCA modernizes our criminal code, making it more transparent and equitable, and will promote public safety.’

Fox News’ Chris Pandolfo contributed to this report.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, on Monday dismissed White House criticism of how Republicans are investigating the classified documents in President Joe Biden’s home and former office, and he accused the Biden White House of a double standard when it comes to oversight.

‘Why was President Trump’s home raided but not President Biden’s?’ Jordan asked in a statement given to Fox News Digital. ‘Why did the FBI take pictures of President Trump’s so-called classified documents but not President Biden’s? Republicans just want fair and equal treatment under the law.’

Jordan last week notified the Justice Department that he is launching an investigation into the president’s ‘mishandling’ of classified records and the Justice Department’s probe into the matter. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., is also investigating the matter, and he told Fox News Digital on Monday that he will ‘continue to press’ the Biden administration for answers about who had access to the classified documents.

On Monday, White House spokesperson Ian Sams told Fox News Digital that House Republicans have ‘no credibility’ to complain about Biden because they were soft on former President Donald Trump after classified documents were found at his home in Florida last summer.

‘Their demands should be met with skepticism, and they should face questions themselves about why they are politicizing this issue and admitting they actually do not care about the underlying classified material,’ Sams said.

The White House has been facing scrutiny from both parities after it was revealed that classified records were found inside the Washington, D.C., offices of the Penn Biden Center think tank on Nov. 2, 2022 but only revealed to the public last week.

A second stash of classified documents was found last week inside the garage of the president’s Wilmington, Delaware, home where he keeps his corvette, prompting Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel to investigate the matter. And late last week, a third tranche of classified documents was discovered.

The White House counsel’s office Monday issued a statement saying there are no visitor logs of the president’s private home in Wilmington, Delaware, after Republican House lawmakers asked for the release of that information.

‘Like every President in decades of modern history, his personal residence is personal,’ the White House Counsel’s Office told Fox News Digital in a statement on Monday. ‘But upon taking office, President Biden restored the norm and tradition of keeping White House visitors logs, including publishing them regularly, after the previous administration ended them.’

Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman, Kelly Laco, Anders Hagstrom and Fox News’ Peter Doocy contributed to this report.

EXCLUSIVE: House Republican lawmakers are asking the Drug and Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to do more to get xylazine, sometimes called the ‘zombie drug,’ off streets where drug dealers are abusing the substance by combining the animal tranquilizer with fentanyl for a deadly combination, exacerbating the fentanyl crisis.

Reps. Jim Banks, R-Ind., Kat Cammack, R-Fla., and August Plfuger, R-Texas, wrote to DEA Administrator Anne Milgram and Acting CBP Commissioner Troy Miller Monday in a letter reviewed exclusively by Fox News Digital, asking the agencies to schedule xylazine, the animal tranquilizer drug, to properly recognize the drug as ‘the threat that it is.’ 

The lawmakers called government’s response so far to the damage the drug is causing is ‘wholly inadequate.’ Banks says if the White House fails to address the problem, House Republicans will introduce legislation. 

‘For once, I hope the Biden administration moves quickly to fight the deadly drug crisis in this country. If they don’t, House Republicans will introduce legislation to schedule Xylazine,’ Banks told Fox News Digital in a statement. 

‘The fentanyl crisis has already inflicted significant damage on our treatment clinics and programs, public health agencies, and our entire medical system,’ the lawmakers wrote. ‘The addition of yet another highly toxic and addictive substance to the illicit drug supply will only further escalate this crisis. It is of the utmost importance that all relevant agencies mount an active and energetic response to this emerging threat.’

‘As you may know, xylazine, also known by street names ‘tranq’ and ‘zombie drug,’ has emerged as an increasingly popular drug to combine with fentanyl to intensify drug effects and lower costs,’ the lawmakers wrote. 

‘The effects of xylazine are devastating and include severe necrotic skin ulcerations that often lead to amputation, and severe withdrawal symptoms that leave users trapped in a vicious cycle of addiction,’ they said.

According to the lawmakers, the drug is not detected by current toxicology screens, and, in cases of overdose, naloxone is not known to be effective.

A spokesperson for the DEA told Fox News Digital that the two-part process to schedule a substance has been in the works since October 2021. That process involves sending a data review to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and a request to HHS for a scheduling recommendation for xylazine.

In an effort to signal to HHS DEA’s growing concern with xylazine, DEA sent supplemental information in September 2022 to the agency in hopes to accelerate the scheduling processing. DEA is still waiting on HHS to provide a scheduling recommendation. 

‘The men and women of the DEA are relentlessly working to save American lives by stopping trafficking of xylazine and other deadly synthetic drugs,’ the spokesperson said, adding that they are looking forward to the completion of HHS’ scheduling recommendation. 

The lawmakers say that significant amounts of xylazine have already been found in drug samples in 36 states and the District of Columbia. Hospitals from across the country are reporting an increase in the prevalence of the drug.

In New York City, xylazine has been found in 25% of drug samples, though health officials say the actual number is likely much higher, the lawmakers claim. One estimate, the say, done in Philadelphia in 2021 found xylazine present in over 90% of fentanyl and heroin samples.

The lawmakers are asking the DEA to start the process of scheduling xylazine, according to the Controlled Substance Act if that process has not already been started, and for further details related to what the DEA is planning to stop xylazine’s illicit use. 

According to the DEA, ‘substances are placed in their respective schedules based on whether they have a currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, their relative abuse potential, and likelihood of causing dependence when abused.’

The House Republicans are also asking to what extent CBP is scrutinizing shipments from China.

The agencies have until Jan. 20 to respond. 

President Biden on Monday said those who argue they need assault weapons to fight the government need a much bigger arsenal to stand a chance. 

Speaking at the National Action Network’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast in Washington, Biden appeared to mock his conservative colleagues. 

‘I love my right-wing friends who talk about the tree of liberty is water of the blood of patriots,’ he said. ‘If you need to work about taking on the federal government, you need some F-15s. You don’t need an AR-15.’

The quote Biden refers to dates back to Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in a letter, ‘The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants.’ Jefferson was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, signer of the Constitution, and America’s third president. 

‘I’m serious. Think about it,’ he added. ‘Think about the rationale for this. It’s about money.’

The president also said so-called assault weapons serve no ‘social redeeming value.’

Biden has previously said gun-rights advocates need a much bigger arsenal of weapons to take on the federal government. In July 2021, he said: ‘You need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons’ during a White House speech to outline his plan to combat gun violence. 

In the same speech, he also falsely claimed there have always been limits on the Second Amendment. 

‘The Second Amendment, from the day it was passed, limited the type of people who could own a gun and what type of weapon you could own. You couldn’t buy a cannon.’

‘The point is that there has always been the ability to limit — rationally limit — the type of weapon that can be owned and who can own it,’ Biden added. 

These claims have been analyzed and found to be false when Biden has made them repeatedly over the past few years. Federal gun regulation was first passed in 1934.

Ohio’s restrictive new election law significantly shortens the window for mailed ballots to be received — despite no evidence that the extended timeline has led to fraud or any other problems — and that change is angering active-duty members of the military and their families because of its potential to disenfranchise them.

The pace of ballot counting after Election Day has become a target of conservatives egged on by former President Donald Trump. He has promoted a false narrative since losing the 2020 election that fluctuating results as late-arriving mail-in ballots are tallied is a sign of fraud.

Republican lawmakers said during debate on the Ohio legislation that even if Trump’s claims aren’t true, the skepticism they have caused among conservatives about the accuracy of election results justifies imposing new limits.

The new law reduces the number of days for county election boards to include mailed ballots in their tallies from 10 days after Election Day to four. Critics say that could lead more ballots from Ohio’s military voters to miss the deadline and get tossed.

This issue isn’t confined to Ohio.

Three other states narrowed their post-election windows for accepting mail ballots last session, according to data from the nonpartisan Voting Rights Lab. Similar moves pushed by Republican lawmakers are being proposed or discussed this year in Wisconsin, New Jersey, California and other states.

Ohio’s tightened window for receiving mailed ballots is likely to affect just several hundred of the thousands of military and overseas ballots received in any election. Critics say any number is too great.

‘What kind of society do we call ourselves if we are disenfranchising people from the rights that they are over there protecting?’ said Willis Gordon, a Navy veteran and veterans affairs chair of the Ohio NAACP’s executive committee.

Republican state Sen. Theresa Gavarone, who championed the tightened ballot deadline, said Ohio’s previous window was ‘an extreme outlier’ nationally. She said Ohio’s military and overseas voters still have ample time under the new law.

‘While there is certainly more work to do, this new law drastically enhances Ohio’s election security and improves the integrity of our elections, which my constituents and citizens across the state have demanded,’ she said.

Republicans’ claims that Ohio needs to clamp down in the name of election integrity run counter to GOP officials’ glowing assessments of the state’s current system. Ohio reported a near-perfect tally of its 2020 presidential election results, for example, and fraud referrals represent a tiny fraction of the ballots cast.

Board of elections data shows that in the state’s most populous county, which includes the capital city of Columbus, 242 absentee ballots from military and overseas voters were received after Election Day last November. Of that, nearly 40% arrived more than four days later and would have been rejected had the new law been in effect.

In 2020, a federal survey administered by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission found that Ohio rejected just 1% of the 21,600 ballots cast by overseas and military voters with the 10-day time frame in place. That compared with 2.1% nationally, a figure attributed mostly to voters missing state ballot deadlines.

All states are required to transmit ballots to registered overseas and military voters at least 45 days before an election, or as soon as possible if the request comes in after that date.

Former state Rep. Connie Pillich, an Air Force veteran who leads the Ohio Democratic Party’s outreach to veterans and military families, rejects arguments that the relatively small number of affected ballots is worth the trade-off.

‘These guys and gals stationed overseas, living in the sandbox or wherever they are, doing their jobs, putting themselves in harm’s way, you’re making it harder for them to participate,’ said Pillich, who led an unsuccessful effort to have GOP Gov. Mike DeWine veto the bill.

‘I can tell you everyone I’ve talked to is livid and upset,’ she said.

Those familiar with submitting military ballots said applying for, receiving and filling out a mailed ballot requires extra time for those who are deployed. Postal schedules, sudden calls to duty, even extra time needed to consult family back home about the candidates and issues are factors. Ohio’s new law also sets a new deadline — five days earlier — for voters to request a mailed ballot, a move supporters say will help voters meet the tightened return deadline.

Neither the Ohio Association of Election Officials nor the state’s elections chief, Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, asked lawmakers to shrink the existing 10-day window for receiving mailed ballots.

Aaron Ockerman, a lobbyist for the election officials’ group, said the seven-day post-election window called for in an early version of the legislation was a compromise that county election directors decided they could live with.

‘They felt the vast, vast majority of the ballots have arrived within eight days,’ he said. The group opposed making the window any shorter, on grounds that voters — including those in the military — would be disenfranchised.

Research by the Voting Rights Lab shows Ohio joined three other states — Republican-controlled Arkansas and Iowa, and Nevada, where Democrats held full control at the time — in passing laws last year that shortened the post-election return window for mailed ballots. Five states lengthened theirs.

Nationwide, a little more than 911,000 military and overseas ballots were cast in 2020. Of those, about 19,000, or roughly 2%, were rejected — typically for being received after the deadline, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

The Secure Families Initiative, a national nonpartisan group advocating for military voters and their families, is trying to push state election laws in the other direction, toward broader electronic access to voting for service members and their families.

Kate Marsh Lord, the group’s communications director, said they were ‘deeply disappointed’ to see DeWine sign the Ohio bill.

‘In fact, I’m an Ohio voter — born and raised in Columbus — and I’ve cast my Ohio ballot from as far away as Japan,’ she said. ‘HB458 set out to solve a problem that didn’t exist, and military voters will pay the price by having their ballots disqualified.’

Marsh Lord, currently in South Carolina where her husband is stationed in the Air Force, said mail sometimes took weeks to reach her family when they lived in Japan.

‘Even if I were to get my ballot in the mail a week ahead of time, a lot of times with the military postal service and the Postal Service in general, there are delays,’ she said. ‘So that shortened window doesn’t allow as much time for things that are really out of military voters’ control.’

She said it’s even more challenging for active-duty personnel deployed to remote areas — ‘the people on the front lines of the fight to defend our democracy and our freedom and the right to vote around the world. Those are the people who will be most impacted by this change.’