FIRST ON FOX: Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., hit back at his critics within the GOP Conference at a closed-door member meeting on Tuesday morning. 

Three sources who were in the room told Fox News Digital that Johnson said something to the effect of, ‘We shouldn’t go out and tackle our quarterback before we even run the play.’

All three sources said it was in response to the public criticism beginning to emerge as old House GOP fractures that were temporarily pushed back by Johnson’s election as speaker resurface.

It’s a notable acknowledgment of the blowback from Johnson, who has not spoken publicly about any frustrations with wayward members of his conference.

Rep. Max Miller, R-Ohio, said he would give Johnson a ‘D-minus’ grade as speaker in comments to reporters last week.

‘I’ve lost a lot of faith,’ Miller said after another closed-door Republican Conference meeting. ‘He was never morally convicted in his values to begin with, since the six years he’s been here as a member. So is that someone I’m going to follow to the gates of hell and trust to go conference with the Senate? Absolutely not.’

Miller also unleashed on Johnson in an interview with Politico, calling him a ‘joke.’

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., has also been a sharp critic of Johnson’s decisions as speaker. She called his continuing resolution (CR) aimed at averting a government shutdown ‘a failure.’

Before that, she said in a November interview with the Daily Caller, ‘You know, in our conference, we had Matt Gaetz and seven other Republicans that declared red lines, where any speaker that passes a CR or funds Ukraine war funding should be ousted.’

One of the sources who spoke with Fox News Digital said of Johnson’s struggles, ‘He’s facing the same challenges from the same people.’ 

They confirmed Miller and Greene as two of Johnson’s top critics and suggested the speaker may be facing issues with the same Republicans who opposed ousted former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

Fox News Digital reached out to Johnson’s office for comment but did not immediately hear back.

EXCLUSIVE: President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris aren’t sitting idly by this week and letting Republican presidential hopefuls dominate the airwaves with multiple prime-time events without having their own say.

In coordination with the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the Biden-Harris campaign is doing a bit of its own trolling by erecting giant billboards across Tuscaloosa, Alabama, the site of Wednesday’s fourth Republican presidential debate, targeting the top-tier GOP challengers on their healthcare policies.

‘No to healthcare repeal. No to slashing Medicare and Medicaid, No to extreme abortion bans,’ the billboards read, alongside unflattering photos of either former President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, or former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.

The billboards went up early Tuesday morning across Tuscaloosa, near the University of Alabama where the debate will be held, and will remain in place through the debate on Wednesday night.

The effort by the Biden-Harris campaign and the DNC aims to shine light on the expressed opposition by those candidates to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), commonly known as ‘Obamacare,’ which Democrats say would leave more than 40 million Americans uninsured and millions more facing higher healthcare costs.

The campaign also wants to highlight that Alabama, a reliably Republican state, is one of only 10 states that has not expanded Medicaid under the ACA.

‘Tomorrow’s debate is a reminder of the choice facing voters next November: President Biden’s plan to protect Americans’ health care and their fundamental freedoms, or the extreme MAGA agenda that would rip away health care coverage, jack up families’ health care costs, and ban abortion across the country,’ DNC National Press Secretary Sarafina Chitika told Fox News Digital. 

‘Let’s be clear: If Donald Trump and the other 2024 Republicans had their way, they’d implement an extreme, unpopular agenda to end the ACA’s protections for preexisting conditions, kick young people off their parents’ health insurance, and strip reproductive freedom away from as many women as possible,’ she added.

According to one DNC aide, the effort to tackle Republicans’ healthcare policies head-on is a continuation of the Biden campaign’s focus on what it says is Trump’s vision for America in 2025, the year he would take office if victorious over Biden.

The aide added that the debate is an opportunity to frame Alabama as ground zero for what another Trump term would look like, including no Medicare expansion, hundreds of thousands of Americans without healthcare as a result, near-total abortion bans and laws that make it easier for criminals to carry firearms.

They added that the campaign would be focused on that message throughout Republican debate, as well Trump’s appearance in a Fox News town hall, which will be hosted by Sean Hannity and will air Tuesday at 9:00 p.m. ET.

A number of Biden surrogates will also be in Tuscaloosa on the day of the debate to make the administration’s case, including principal deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks, former Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala., and Democrat Alabama state Sen. Barbara Drummond.

Trump will not be participating in Wednesday’s debate. Haley and DeSantis will be joined at the debate by entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

A Washington state couple’s nearly $15,000 tax bill was debated by the Supreme Court on Tuesday, in a case the Biden administration says could have ‘far-reaching consequences,’ potentially costing the government more than $5 trillion.

At issue is whether Congress has authority to tax people and companies for sums that have not yet been received, or ‘realized,’ as income.

The current case may be relatively small in scope, but the high court was told its eventual ruling could have an enormous impact on taxing the wealthiest Americans who shield their earnings through a variety of investment loopholes.

SUPREME COURT DISMISSES CASE IMPACTING ACCESSIBILITY INFORMATION ON HOTEL WEBSITES

In a lively two hours of oral arguments, the high court heard claims that its decision would cause financial chaos, upend much of the federal tax code, and derail a so-called ‘wealth tax’ that has been promoted by some Democrats, but has not yet been enacted.

The justices appeared cautious about issuing a sweeping ruling, and instead seemed ready to uphold the current tax on unrealized foreign income.

‘We don’t have to agree with you on that for you to prevail,’ said Justice Brett Kavanaugh on the implications of a sweeping decision, telling Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar that the government could win on narrow grounds.

‘Why is it that you think we can decide for you without putting any of those kinds of very established taxation schemes at risk?’ Justice Elena Kagan asked the lawyer for the investors.

Charles and Kathleen Moore, a retired couple from Redmond, Washington, are challenging taxes on their 13% minority shareholder stake in KisanKraft, an Indian corporation that supplies power tools to small farms in that Asian country.

The married couple says the company reinvested its earnings to expand the business rather than distribute dividends or payments to its stakeholders, and therefore should not be considered taxable income.

‘If you haven’t received any income, how can you be required to pay income taxes?’ Charles Moore says in a video from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian group representing the couple in court. ‘It seemed, to both of us, unconstitutional.’

The specific provision in question was part of a massive 2017 corporate tax overhaul passed by Congress and signed into law by then-President Trump.

A one-time levy – known as the ‘mandatory repatriation tax’ – is imposed on deferred earnings of American shareholders in foreign corporations, even any gains that have not been ‘realized’ or passed on to them. It was imposed as an offset to other tax benefits.

SUPREME COURT HEARS ARGUMENTS IN $6 BILLION PURDUE PHARMA SETTLEMENT THAT WOULD GRANT IMMUNITY TO SACKLERS

The IRS says that provision could reap the government $340 billion over ten years.

The provision was designed to address one of several workarounds investors have relied on for years to access unrealized investment property, before receiving it and paying taxes on it.

Groups supporting the government say while the Moores may not have received any actual money, their initial $40,000 foreign investment has increased over the years to more than a half-million dollars.

More broadly, groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce supporting the Moores’ situation say this case could be applied as a preemptive strike against any wealth tax on the assets of the richest Americans, including stocks that are only taxed when they are sold.

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has championed such a tax for years. Just last week, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR) led a group of 15 fellow Democrats to introduce the Billionaires Income Tax.

And President Biden has suggested a version of a ‘billionaire’s tax’ on U.S. households worth more than $100 million to pay a minimum of 25% on capital gains each year, whether those assets were sold for a profit or still held by them.

But none of the justices publicly expressed enthusiasm about venturing down that path, suggesting any consideration of a wealth tax or other IRS provisions is off the table.

The arguments focused instead on how a narrow ruling could be crafted, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor saying, ‘I don’t fault the parties for shooting for the stars but I guess the tenor of the questions is that nobody’s happy with anybody’s definition of anything, okay?’

The Moores’ appeal prompted one of the largest series of amicus briefs filed with the high court from a variety of interest groups and lawmakers.

Concerns were expressed over how a ruling would affect other longstanding tax provisions – including business partnerships, real estate investments, and charitable and philanthropic donations.

An underlying ethics question has dogged the Supreme Court’s consideration of the tax case.

Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats urged Justice Samuel Alito to recuse, because lawyer David Rivkin representing the Moores also co-conducted four hours of Wall Street Journal opinion page interviews with the justice.

Alito in a four-page statement in September refused to step aside.

‘There is no valid reason for my recusal in this case,’ he wrote. ‘We are required to put favorable or unfavorable comments and any personal connections with an attorney out of our minds and judge the cases based solely on the law and the facts. And that is what we do.’

Alito was an active questioner in the Moore case.

PROGRAMMING ALERT: Watch the ‘Hannity’ Town Hall with former President Trump on Fox News Channel at 9 pm ET.

Fox News’ Sean Hannity will sit down with Former President Donald Trump tonight at 9 p.m. ET for a one-hour interview. The exclusive town hall event will appear on ‘Hannity’ and was pre-taped in Davenport, Iowa.

Viewers can expect the former president to touch on issues that are important to the American people and could vary from immigration and border security to abortion, Obamacare and healthcare. Additionally, the former president’s looming indictments are a concern to many Americans and others believe they have been politically motivated.

In August, Hannity questioned the timing of Trump’s indictments, saying, ‘They want you to focus only on Trump indictments, court proceedings, January 6, documents, anything other than Joe Biden. And we went through the timeline last night. If Joe Biden gets bad news, the next day there’s another Trump indictment. Shocking.’

Viewers can anticipate mention of some or all of his 2024 GOP presidential rivals and opponents, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and the campaign trail leading up to November.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, U.S. Senator Tim Scott, political commentator Larry Elder, American author Perry Johnson, former U.S. Representative Will Hurd and Mayor of Miami Francis Suarez have all dropped out of the fight for GOP nominee in the 2024 presidential election. North Dakota Gov., Doug Burgum, is the latest candidate to withdraw himself from the campaign trail.

In a post on Instagram Monday, Burgum wrote: ‘Today, we have made the decision to suspend our campaign for President of the United States.’

‘Our decision to run came from a place of caring deeply about every American and our mission to re-establish trust in American leadership and our institutions of democracy,’ Burgum added.

In a June interview with FOX & Friends’ Brian Kilmeade, Burgum said of Trump’s indictments that ‘You cannot have a democracy where people don’t trust what’s going on.’

Trump, the GOP frontrunner, has opted out of GOP presidential debates during this campaign cycle thus far. The former president has skipped the first, second and third debates and is expected to sidestep the fourth debate on Wednesday, Dec. 6 in Alabama.

Hannity hosted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and California Gov. Gavin Newsom in a red vs blue state debate on Nov. 30. The political rivals went at it during a prime-time event over topics and issues including taxes, transgenderism, COVID-19, education, the Biden administration and more.

The FBI said its interviews of a Catholic priest and choir director were conducted during an investigation of ‘an individual threatening violence who has since been arrested,’ and not a broader probe into Catholics.

The FBI’s comment comes after the House Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government released a report suggesting the bureau has been investigating Catholic Americans as potential domestic terrorists after an FBI Richmond internal memo, titled ‘Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities.’ 

The committee stated that the FBI ‘relied on at least one undercover agent to develop its assessment and the FBI even proposed developing sources among the Catholic clergy and church leadership.’ It also said the FBI ‘interviewed a priest and choir director affiliated with a Catholic church in Richmond, Virginia for the memorandum.’

The committee said whistleblower disclosures reveal that the FBI interview of a priest and choir director affiliated with a Catholic church in Richmond, Virginia, was used to ‘inform on the parishioner under investigation.’ 

But the FBI told Fox News Digital that ‘any characterization that the FBI is targeting Catholics is false.’

The FBI explained that ‘the interviews of the priest and choir director highlighted by the committee’s report were conducted by FBI Richmond during an investigation of an individual threatening violence who has since been arrested.’ 

‘The interviews were not conducted for the domain perspective as characterized by the report,’ the FBI said. 

The FBI has maintained that ‘the intelligence product prepared by one FBI field office did not meet the exacting standards of the FBI and was quickly removed from FBI systems.’ 

‘An internal review conducted by the FBI found no malicious intent to target Catholics or members of any other religious faith, and did not identify any investigative steps taken as a result of the product,’ the FBI said. ‘The FBI is committed to upholding the constitutional rights of all Americans and we do not conduct investigations based solely on First Amendment protected activity, including religious practices.’ 

The FBI said it ‘investigates violence, threats of violence, and violations of federal law.’ 

‘We have provided hundreds of pages of documents and briefings to the Committee to address our findings and the numerous actions we are taking to address identified shortcomings,’ the FBI said. 

But House Judiciary Committee spokesman Russell Dye pushed back at the FBI’s denial, maintaining the committee’s findings.

‘The facts speak for themselves,’ Dye told Fox News Digital. ‘Contrary to the FBI’s assertions, the Committee has presented evidence that the FBI’s infamous Catholic memo relied on information from multiple field offices, not just the Richmond Field Office.’ 

‘The evidence shows that the Richmond Field Office conducted the interviews of a priest and choir director as part of an investigation that served as a basis for the creation of the Catholic memo,’ Dye continued. ‘Whistleblowers have told us that the memo was distributed around the country.’ 

Dye also said the evidence shows that ‘FBI employees at all levels in the Richmond Field Office, including the office’s top lawyer, saw no concerns with the contents of the memo or its portrayal of faithful Americans.’ 

‘Worse, the evidence shows that the FBI considered formalizing the memo into an external product,’ Dye said. ‘The FBI’s actions here are inexcusable, period.’

The committee report also states that the basis of the original Richmond memo ‘relied on a single investigation in the Richmond Field Office’s area of responsibility in which the subject ‘self-described’ as a ‘radical-traditionalist Catholic.” But the committee found that FBI employees ‘could not define the meaning of an RTC when preparing, editing, or reviewing the memorandum.’ 

‘Even so, this single investigation became the basis for an FBI-wide memorandum warning about the dangers of ‘radical’ Catholics,’ the report states.

‘While the FBI claims it ‘does not categorize investigations as domestic terrorism based on the religious beliefs – to include Catholicism – of the subject involved,’ an FBI-wide memorandum originating from the FBI’s Richmond Field Office did just that,’ the report states. ‘Under the guise of tackling the threat of domestic terrorism, the memorandum painted certain ‘radical-traditionalist Catholics’ (RTCs) as violent extremists and proposed opportunities for the FBI to infiltrate Catholic churches as a form of ‘threat mitigation.’’

During a hearing in the Senate Tuesday, FBI Director Wray was pressed on the matter by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. 

Wray maintained that the interview of the priest and choir director was part of ‘an investigation of a specific individual who was amassing Molotov cocktails and posting about killing people. And it does not surprise me that there were people who knew that subject in that investigation.’

Meanwhile, the committee’s report states that the FBI produced a version of the Richmond memo with fewer redactions than the two previous versions it provided. That version revealed that investigations into Catholic organizations in Los Angeles and Portland fed into the Richmond office memo. The report states that FBI Milwaukee was also involved. 

But Wray, during the Senate hearing, said the ‘notion that other field offices were involved is a garble.’ 

‘And let me explain why,’ Wray said. ‘I mean, why I say that the only involvement of the two other field offices was the Richmond authors of the product, which included two sentences or something or thereabouts, referencing each of these other offices’ cases. And they sent those sentences about the other office cases to them, not the whole product, and asked them, ‘Hey, did we describe your case right?’’ 

Wray added: ‘That’s all the other offices had. So it was a single field office product, and I stand by that.’

Meanwhile, the report said the documents obtained by the committee’s subpoena show that ‘the FBI singled out Americans who are pro-life, pro-family, and support the biological basis for sex and gender distinction as potential domestic terrorists.’

The Israel Defense Forces and the Shin Bet security service released several images Tuesday discovered in tunnels constructed by Hamas, including one showing five senior figures of the terror group who were killed during a strike. 

The picture shows a group of Hamas leaders in a meeting while eating, according to a joint IDF and Shin Bet statement. The five led the Northern Gaza Brigade, the second largest in Hamas. 

‘With assistance from the IDF Intelligence Directorate and the ISA, IDF soldiers eliminated the brigade’s commander, Ahmed Al-Ghandoor, the Deputy Brigade Commander, Wael Rajab, and other senior operatives, including: the commander of the brigade’s support battalion, the head of the technical and operational support department, and the observation officer for the northern Gaza Strip,’ the statement said. 

Al-Ghandoor served as a member of the inner circle of Hamas’ military wing, authorities said. He was responsible for directing and managing all terrorist operations of Hamas in the Northern Gaza Strip area.

The five figures were killed during a strike on a tunnel in which they were purportedly hiding, the IDF said. The tunnel was reportedly under civilian homes and close to an Indonesian hospital. 

Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of shielding itself in and around civilian areas and sensitive locations like hospitals, homes and schools. 

Others killed include commanders of the Tsabra Battalion, Shati Battalion, Darj Tapah Battalion and Shejaiya Battalion, the IDF said. 

The units were part of the Hamas’ Gaza City Brigade, its largest, the report said. 

In Shati Battalion sector, the IDF took control of its central strongholds. That battalion is responsible for the central headquarters of Hamas, including the Hamas headquarters at the Shifa hospital. 

In addition, the heads of its anti-tank, air formation and naval formation were eliminated, the IDF said.