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FLASHBACK: Top Harris campaign aide was key voice in WH push to remove COVID info from tech platforms

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A current top campaign adviser for VP Kamala Harris was deeply involved in pushing Facebook to suppress ‘misinformation’ in an effort to control the political narrative on COVID and other issues.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted in a letter on Monday while expressing regret that his company, Facebook, was pressured by the Biden-Harris administration to censor Americans, particularly regarding COVID-19 content, bringing to the forefront actions taken by Harris’ deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty as part of that pressure campaign.

Flaherty, who previously served as the White House director of digital strategy, helped lead the campaign to target alleged ‘misinformation’ relating to the COVID-19 virus and its vaccinations, FOX Business previously reported.

Flaherty emailed Google team members in April 2021 to ‘connect […] about the work you’re doing to combat vaccine hesitancy, but also crack down on vaccine misinformation,’ according to the documents. 

Flaherty continued asking for trends surrounding vaccine misinformation on the website, while offering government assistance in the form of COVID experts at the White House to partner in product work with YouTube. 

Google, in an internal email, noted that after a subsequent meeting with Flaherty, the White House staffer ‘particularly dug in on our decision making for borderline content’ – which is content that doesn’t cross Community Guidelines but rather brushes up against it, according to YouTube. 

A week later, Google acknowledged that it sent the White House the total amount of videos removed for COVID vaccine misinformation, while discussing the government’s desire for even more data.

‘Really [Flaherty’s] interested in what we’re seeing that is NOT coming down,’ read an internal Google email between employees, seemingly referring to videos that had not yet been removed. 

According to internal company communications viewed by FOX Business and reported on in 2023, Flaherty asked Facebook if they could provide government agencies with special access to tools to target users in 2021. 

‘Since it’s a global pandemic, can we give agencies access to targeting parameters that they normally wouldn’t be able to?’ Flaherty asked.

The idea came up in a conversation about how to convince people worried about side effects around the COVID vaccine to take it.

On an April 5 call, a Facebook employee mentioned how if someone was worried about nosebleeds as a side effect of the vaccine, in an ideal world, they would direct them to information addressing that concern. Flaherty asked the Facebook team, ‘Are you able to provide resources?’ 

Another Facebook employee replied that doing something like showing them a targeted resource addressing their concern might trigger people. The Facebook employee said they ‘have to be careful in how we approach.’ 

Flaherty asked, ‘If people are having the conversation, is the presumption that we let people have it. Direct them to CDC. What then?’ 

A Facebook employee replied, ‘We all know people that have had the experience that think that FB is listening to them.’ 

The Facebook employee told Flaherty that something like an immediate generated message about nosebleeds might give users ‘the Big Brother feel’ but suggested they show the content on a delay to avoid setting off alarm bells among users. 

‘We should pay attention to those conversations, make sure that people see information, even if it’s not right then,’ the Facebook employee said. 

Flaherty was involved in a tense exchange with GOP Rep. Jim Jordan, of Ohio, during a hearing on Capitol Hill earlier this year when Flaherty claimed that Elon Musk did not face ‘any adverse government actions’ in response to changing the outlet’s censorship policies.

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House and the Harris-Walz campaign for comment but did not receive a response.

‘Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions, including COVID-19-related changes we made to our enforcement in the wake of this pressure,’ Zuckerberg wrote in his letter to the House Judiciary Committee this week. ‘I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it.

Fox News Digital’s Hillary Vaughn and Chase Williams contributed to this report

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COUNTDOWN: Harris has just 4 days left to make good on sit-down interview proclamation

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The clock is ticking for Vice President Kamala Harris to schedule the formal interview she and her team promised would happen before the end of the month.

After formally receiving the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, Harris told reporters on the tarmac in Detroit earlier this month that she wanted to schedule her first formal interview as the party’s nominee before the end of August. Meanwhile, the exact date, time, place and media outlet that will be conducting the interview has remained a mystery, even as Harris’ self-imposed deadline quickly approaches.

With only four days left this month, questions about the interview have been prevalent inside the beltway. Some of those questions include who on the Harris campaign is making the final interview decision, what kind of message Harris will try to send and who will be the figurehead posing the questions to her.

Harris campaign staffers have reportedly been asking journalists who they think the vice president should talk to, according to Politico. The outlet indicated CBS’ Norah O’Donnell and NBC’s Lester Holt were among the frontrunners. There has also reportedly been internal disagreements over how Harris should approach the interview.

With less than a week remaining for Harris to get something on the calendar, some journalists have begun weighing in on the process.

‘I understood why Kamala Harris wasn’t doing interviews before – she was getting her policy proposals hammered out behind the scenes before the convention. But now there are no more excuses. She needs to do interviews, a lot of them. We’re picking a president here. It’s important,’ said political commentator Cenk Uygur, host of The Young Turks, which describes itself as ‘America’s largest online progressive news network.’

‘The fact that there is so much internal turmoil over doing A SINGLE INTERVIEW is itself deeply revealing,’ conservative columnist Marc Thiessen wrote Tuesday morning on X, formerly Twitter. ‘This is not a ‘big decision.’ It exposes their lack of confidence in her and is making something that should be routine into a high stakes event.’

While the pressure on Harris to do an interview is getting greater by the day, some of her supporters have urged her to continue dodging the media. Rick Wilson, former GOP strategist and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, said last week that Harris ‘has no f—ing necessity to do interviews right now.’

The same opinion was echoed by legendary Hollywood director Quentin Tarantino, who told talk show host Bill Maher last Sunday that ‘sometimes it’s just about f—ing winning.’

‘I’m going to vote for her f—ing anyway, no matter what she says in the stupid f—ing interview, so don’t f— s— up,’ Tarantino added.

Harris has been utilizing a lighter than normal schedule since the Democratic National Convention concluded last week, according to Politico, which reported Harris has been using the time to prepare for her upcoming Sept. 10 debate and map out her future media strategy.

Fox News Digital reached out to both the Harris and Trump campaigns for comment. The Harris campaign did not provide a response, but the Trump campaign directed Fox News Digital to a Tuesday press release it put out, which called out Harris for going 37 days without an interview.

‘Kamala is dodging the press for a reason,’ the press release stated. ‘She doesn’t want to talk about her radical agenda.’

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US top general says tensions in Middle East have ‘somewhat’ eased amid new Iranian threats

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Concerns over an all-out war between Israel, Hezbollah and Iran have eased, according to comments made by U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. to Reuters on Monday, but statements issued by Jerusalem and Tehran suggest otherwise. 

Brown met with top Israeli officials in Tel Aviv to discuss ongoing security issues facing Jerusalem just one day after the Israel Defense Forces and Hezbollah exchanged fire on Sunday – during which hundreds of rockets and drones were fired by the terrorist group at northern Israeli military positions.

Jerusalem said it too had fired a series of strikes on Hezbollah strongholds after 100 warplanes took to the sky to preemptively hit thousands of rocket launchers reportedly positioned to fire upon Israel.

Despite the heavy fire that was exchanged, relatively few deaths were reported, with three Hezbollah militants and one Israeli soldier killed in the day’s events, which concluded by mid-morning Sunday. 

When asked if the threat of a large-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah – which is backed by Iran – had abated, Brown replied, ‘Somewhat, yes.’

Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah said the Sunday operation was ordered in response to the killing of Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr at the end of July, reported Al Jazeera. 

But the terror group and Iran have pledged retaliation for one other killing that also occurred late last month when Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated while visiting Tehran, though Israel has never claimed credit for the attack.

‘You had two things you knew were going to happen,’ Brown told reporters in detailing the two acts of revenge pledged by the Israeli adversaries. ‘One’s already happened. Now it depends on how the second is going to play out.’

‘How Iran responds will dictate how Israel responds, which will dictate whether there is going to be a broader conflict or not,’ Brown added. 

Brown’s cautious optimism that a broader conflict had so far been avoided remains at odds with how Israel and Iran are viewing the current tensions.

Iran’s chief of staff of the armed forces, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, responded to the Sunday exchange of fire and warned that ‘revenge against the Israeli entity is inevitable’ following the death of Haniyeh. 

‘What we witnessed yesterday is only part of that revenge,’ he confirmed, according to a report by the Arab news outlet Al Mayadeen English. ‘[Iran] will decide how and when to take revenge and will not fall into the trap of media provocations initiated by the enemies.’

Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Monday also warned that ‘Iran’s aggression has reached an all-time high’ and said Israel and the U.S. must expand their joint defenses.

Gallant further emphasized the threat Iran poses in its continued pursuit of developing nuclear capabilities, adding that Jerusalem and Washington must work to stop Tehran’s military from gaining nuclear weapons. 

On Tuesday, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said there were no ‘barriers’ in communicating with the ‘enemy,’ which some news outlets interpreted as a potential signal that Tehran may once again engage in nuclear talks with the West. 

‘We do not have to pin our hope to the enemy. For our plans, we should not wait for approval by the enemies,’ Khamenei said, according to The Associated Press. ‘It is not contradictory to engage the same enemy in some places, there’s no barrier.’

The AP report said this rhetoric echoed comments made in the lead-up to the 2015 deal made between Iran, the U.S. and other Western nations.

But Khamenei also warned that ‘the enemy’ could not be trusted. 

Talks with Iran over its nuclear development collapsed after the U.S. withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) under the Trump administration in 2018 – a move Tehran has since claimed voided their commitments to the agreement.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said in June that Iran is not believed to possess nuclear weapon capabilities, though it has enriched uranium to levels just short of weapons-grade standards.

While any new deal with Iran appears unlikely, another ‘historic’ deal between the U.S. and a Middle Eastern nation, Saudi Arabia, may be on the horizon, Michael Ratney, the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said Monday. 

‘While we came very close and are very close on very important elements of this agreement, it is important that we finalize all of it together, and with that we would have a history-making agreement between the U.S. and Saudi,’ he told Saudi news outlet Asharq Al-Awsat, according to a translation reported by Al Arabiya English.

Ratney said the agreement would encompass several issues like bolstering the strategic partnership between Washington and Riyadh, enhancing military agreements and strengthening economic ties.

But it also includes efforts to normalize ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel – a push first launched throughout the Middle East under the Trump administration’s Abraham Accords. 

Washington, under both the Trump and Biden administrations, has held the belief that improving Israel’s ties in the Middle East could better secure it from terrorist organizations as well as the Iranian regime – which is often at loggerheads with several Sunni nations. 

‘We are in a complicated region and there are a lot of complexities to the agreement itself, but we will do it as quickly as possible,’ Ratney reportedly said.

The U.S. ambassador said the Biden administration and Riyadh support the establishment of a two-state solution when it comes to stopping the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly made it clear he does not support Palestinian statehood. 

‘We fundamentally believe that Palestinian statehood needs to come through a political process, through negotiations between the parties, not through any other means,’ Ratney said. 

‘In the meantime, the deep priority is to stop the violence in Gaza, to stop the misery of the people of Gaza, to move forward with our efforts toward a cease-fire, to release Israeli hostages, and to end this conflict to find ways to deliver much-needed humanitarian assistance in Gaza,’ he added.

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Trump adds RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard to his transition team as he recruits supporters ‘across partisan lines’

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Former President Trump has added former Democrats Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard to his transition team, broadening his coalition of supporters ‘across partisan lines.’ 

‘As President Trumps’s broad coalition of supporters and endorsers expands across partisan lines, we are proud that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard have been added to the Trump/Vance Transition team,’ Trump campaign senior advisor Brian Hughes told Fox News Digital.

‘We look forward to having their powerful voices on the team as we work to restore America’s greatness,’ Hughes added. 

RFK Jr., who began the 2024 cycle running for president as a Democrat, then shifted to run as an Independent, suspended his campaign last week and endorsed former President Trump—a historic move for a member of the Democrat Kennedy family dynasty. 

Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard also switched party affiliation, and considers herself an Independent. 

Gabbard, a veteran and the former Democratic representative for Hawaii’s 2nd congressional district, endorsed Trump this week. 

‘I am proud to stand here before you today, whether you’re a Democrat, a Republican or an Independent,’ Gabbard said. ‘If you love our country, as I do, if you cherish peace and freedom as we do, I invite you to join me in doing all that we can to save our country and elect President Donald J. Trump and send him back to the White House to do the tough work of saving our country and serving the people.’

Gabbard, who ran in the 2019 Democratic presidential primary against Kamala Harris, was recently recruited by Trump to help with debate prep ahead of his Sept. 10 face-off against the vice president at the National Constitutional Center in Philadelphia.

Meanwhile, RFK Jr. took to social media this week to give his own definition of ‘MAGA.’ 

”Make America Great Again’ recalls a nation brimming with vitality, with a can-do spirit, with hope and a belief in itself. It was an America that was beginning to confront its darker shadows, could acknowledge the injustice in its past and present, yet at the same time could celebrate its successes,’ Kennedy wrote.

‘It was a nation of broad prosperity, the world’s most vibrant middle class, and a [sic] idealistic belief (though not consistently applied) in freedom, justice, and democracy. It was a nation that led the world in innovation, productivity, and technology. And it was the healthiest country in the world. I have talked to many Trump supporters. I have talked with his inner circle. I have talked to the man himself. This is the America they want to restore.’

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Hidin’ Harris 2024 is a terrible strategy and a danger for our democracy

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According to the Kamala Harris Democratic presidential campaign and her lapdogs in the liberal media, to the extent those entities are any different, the candidate’s refusal to take questions is fully justified by her small lead in some polling. The argument is cynical, insulting, and dangerous.

The cynicism is familiar, win by any means, nobody needs to hear about actual policies, just cook up some Russian collusion or call a laptop fake. All that matters is winning.

This idea is insulting because it suggests that as long as Harris can squeak by with 52% of the vote, then the other 48% of Americans can be completely ignored. It appears that, for the Harris campaign, these voters just don’t matter or even exist.

And that leads to what is dangerous here, because if the Hidin’ Harris 2024 model is successful, if it becomes the new norm, we will no longer have presidential elections about ideas, but rather, simple, tribal, political party exercises in winning over small margins.

There will be no more grand visions that can unify the country, no more great presidents who we can all admire, no more historic experiment in self-governance, but in its stead we’ll engage in a trench warfare of animosity and despair, leading nowhere.

When you talk to Democratic-leaning voters across the country, it becomes clear why this strange strategy of silence is being employed. After ousting President Joe Biden in favor of Harris, Democrats feel that right now, today, they have a coalition that can win. Not will win but can.

Here’s the rub. They need all of it, every single group in their diverse ideological diaspora.

That means holding on to voters who are pro-Israel, and those who support Hamas, coal miners and climate activists, those who want a stronger border and those who want amnesty for illegals. Thus far, the only way Harris can win over all of these people, all of the time, is by keeping her mouth firmly shut.

Here are some of the responses I’ve gotten from Democrats when I ask if they know who Harris is and what she stands for: ‘Not really, but I guess we’ll learn more in time,’ ‘She was an invisible vice president,’ and the rather blunt, ‘I have no idea.’

And this is exactly how the Harris campaign wants it, they want voters on the left of all stripes to simply graft their positions onto Kamala, without ever hearing her say them.

The good news for Americans of all political affiliations who prefer when candidates actually, you know, answer questions, is that Kamala’s say no evil approach is fast running out of steam.

Let’s face it, a bowling ball with a D after its name would have gotten a bounce after Joe Biden ended his death march of the Bataan campaign into oblivion, but today, the polls have steadied, and we are in a dead heat.

The Democrats’ panicked, unhinged and personal attacks on former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr clearly show that his endorsement is a boon for former President Donald Trump. Meanwhile, having already copied the former president’s ‘no taxes on tips’ policy, her campaign is now floating the idea that she suddenly supports a border wall.

Maybe the sitting vice president has had sincere changes of heart in the past 38 days over the border wall she once called ‘medieval,’ and fracking, which she promised to ban, and Medicare for all, which she called for, and whether Bidenomics was a great success, but none of it counts until it passes through her lips.

Once she does say these things, if she does, once she mimics Trump policies like Shooter McGavin trying to copy Happy Gilmore’s run-up golf swing, we will be back to a normal American election of questions and answers that puts voters first.

The bad news for Harris is that had she done a sit down two weeks ago, even if she flubbed it, it would have been a minor one or two day story. Now her first interview is the Super Bowl of politics, and I don’t care how friendly the outlet is, she will have to set some policies in stone instead of mumbling about opportunity economies.

It is finally time for Hidin’ Harris to have her closeup, and she better be ready.

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Accusations of Biden admin ‘interference’ in transgender surgery guidelines for minors probed by House GOP

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A House Oversight Committee panel is probing accusations that the Biden administration pressured a global medical recommendations body to drop age limit guidelines for transgender care.

‘The Committee on Oversight and Accountability is investigating allegations of political interference by the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in third-party medical organization recommendations,’ a letter to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra sent on Tuesday read.

‘We are concerned that HHS officials, acting in their official capacity, inappropriately applied pressure for changes to international pediatric medical standards.’

The letter was written by Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., chair of the subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services. She cited a June 2024 New York Times report that the administration pressed the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) to remove its age limit recommendations for transgender youth surgeries because it ‘could fuel growing political opposition to such treatments.’

The pressure campaign was led by the staff of HHS Assistant Secretary for Health Adm. Rachel Levine, a transgender woman, according to the report.

‘Officials applied this inappropriate pressure by urging for the removal of age limits that expands the pool of children and adolescents recommended for irreversible gender transition surgical procedures. The Committee requests documents and information from HHS to assist our investigation of this matter,’ McClain wrote.

‘The Biden Administration’s advocacy for expanding the pool of vulnerable children subjected to life-altering procedures they may later regret is reprehensible. Emails indicating that this advocacy was done for political advantage – possibly to satisfy extremist elements of its base – is even more outrageous.’

The topic of transgender medical care, particularly for minors, has been a political lightening rod in recent years.

Backlash over the Times report prompted the White House to say it did not support gender-affirming surgery for minors. 

However, the White House later altered its response after backlash from progressive groups, telling 19th News that such surgeries ‘should be limited to adults,’ but, ‘We continue to support gender-affirming care for minors, which represents a continuum of care, and respect the role of parents, families, and doctors in these decisions.’

The 2021 medical guidelines at the heart of McClain’s Tuesday letter initially recommended lowering the acceptable age for transgender hormone therapy to 14, the age for mastectomies to 15 and 17 years for genital or hysterectomy procedures.

However, those limits were dropped from the final version of those recommendations, according to the Times.

In the outlet’s story, WPATH President Dr. Marci Bowers rejected accusations that the change was politically motivated. Bowers said ‘the politics were already evident’ and said the body ‘doesn’t look at politics when making a decision.’

Nevertheless, the subcommittee demanded that HHS turn over all relevant documents and communications by Sept. 10, and warned the department not to obstruct the probe.

‘Under your purview, HHS has not cooperated in good faith with the Committee’s oversight of HHS and its subagencies, including the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services,’ the letter to Becerra said. 

‘It is unacceptable for HHS to interfere with congressional investigations by refusing and delaying cooperation with the Committee’s oversight.’

Fox News Digital reached out to HHS and the White House for comment but did not receive a response by press time. 

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Over 200 former Bush, McCain, Romney staffers endorse Harris: ‘The alternative … is simply untenable’

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More than 200 Republicans who previously worked for former President George W. Bush, the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., or Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, penned an open letter Monday endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president.

The cohort of Republican officials, which also includes a handful of aides to former President George H.W. Bush, previously sought to rally voters against former President Donald Trump in 2020. In their letter, the GOP officials singled out ‘moderate Republicans and conservative independents,’ calling on them to vote for Harris.

‘Four years ago, President George W. Bush, the late Sen. John McCain, and then-Gov. Mitt Romney alumni came together to warn fellow Republicans that re-electing President Trump would be a disaster for our nation. In those declarations we stated the plain truth, each predicting that another four years of a Trump presidency would irreparably damage our beloved democracy,’ stated the letter, published Monday by USA Today.

‘We reunite today, joined by new George H.W. Bush alumni, to reinforce our 2020 statements and, for the first time, jointly declare that we’re voting for Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz this November,’ the letter continued. ‘Of course, we have plenty of honest, ideological disagreements with Vice President Harris and Gov. Walz. That’s to be expected. The alternative, however, is simply untenable.’

Monday’s big endorsement from GOP officials follows a separate endorsement released late last week from a dozen Republican White House lawyers who served under former President Ronald Reagan, as well as under both Bush administrations. Similar to the Monday endorsement, Republican officials argued that returning to a Trump administration ‘would threaten democracy and undermine the rule of law in our country.’

The Monday letter included nearly 240 signatures. It described Trump’s leadership as ‘chaotic’ and implied the former president wants to advance the goals of Project 2025 – a Republican blueprint for a potential GOP administration. Trump, however, has repeatedly sought to distance himself from the presidential transition blueprint, including during his recent visit to the southern border.

‘They’ve been told officially, legally, in every way, that we have nothing to do with Project 25,’ Trump said, according to NPR. ‘They know it, but they bring it up anyway. They bring up every single thing that you can bring up. Every one of them was false.’

Meanwhile, the Monday endorsement letter also charges Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, with ‘kowtow[ing]’ to dictators, such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, while ‘turning their backs’ on U.S. allies. 

‘We can’t let that happen,’ the officials wrote. 

‘We know now, thanks to exit polling and voter data, that it was moderate Republicans and conservative independents in key swing states that ultimately delivered the presidency to Joe Biden,’ the open letter concluded. ‘We’re heartfully calling on these friends, colleagues, neighbors, and family members to take a brave stand once more, to vote for leaders that will strive for consensus, not chaos; that will work to unite, not divide; that will make our country and our children proud.’

In response to the letter, Trump Campaign Communications Director Steven Cheung said, ‘It’s hilarious because nobody knows who these people are. They would rather see the country burn down than to see President Trump successfully return to the White House to Make America Great Again.’

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Israel rescues hostage after 325 days in Hamas captivity

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One more Israeli hostage has been rescued.

The Israel Defense Force and Israel Security Agency announced Tuesday that another hostage taken during the Oct. 7 terrorist attack has been rescued.

‘The IDF and ISA have rescued Qaid Farhan Alkadi from Gaza where he was held hostage, and brought him to his family in Israel. This operation was part of the IDF’s daring and courageous activities conducted deep inside the Gaza strip,’ said Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant.

‘This operation joins a series of actions taken by the IDF that bring us closer to achieving the goals of this war,’ Gallant continued. ‘I would like to reiterate and emphasize: Israel is committed to taking advantage of every opportunity to return the hostages home to Israel.’

Qaid Farhan Alkadi from Rahat was reportedly rescued by a mixed company of Israeli combatants, including members of the 401st Brigade, 162nd Division, and Shayetet 13.

Members of the engineering combat spec-ops unit Yahalom and intelligence operatives from the Israel Security Agency also contributed to the rescue.

Alkadi, 52, has been held in the Gaza Strip for almost a year. No further details are being made available on the nature of the rescue operation, ‘due to considerations of the safety of our hostages, the security of our forces, and national security.’

He is currently being held in the hospital for medical care and is undergoing extensive health checks. He is in stable condition.

Alkadi’s family has been alerted to his recovery and are being accompanied by IDF personnel to meet with him.

Following the rescue of Alkadi, 108 Israeli hostages remain under terrorists’ control in the Gaza Strip. 36 are confirmed dead.

The vast majority were taken during the Oct. 7 attack last year and have been held for over 320 days.

Fox News Digital’s Yonat Friling contributed to this report.

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Biden is in charge of country on second straight vacation, White House insists

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The White House insisted again Monday that President Biden remains in charge of the country despite being on a second straight week of vacation. 

During a teleconference Monday, White House National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby recognized the three-year-anniversary of the Aug. 26, 2021, Abbey Gate suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members and more than 100 Afghans outside Kabul Airport. 

Biden, who is at his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, for the week, notably remained out of public view on the anniversary of the deadly terrorist attack. Last week, Biden was vacationing in California, including when the Israeli military said they launched a preemptive strike destroying thousands of Hezbollah rocket launchers in Lebanon, essentially deterring a major attack by the terrorist group intended for central Israel.  

A journalist noted Biden’s public absence in a question to Kirby on Monday.

‘The President’s public comportment and the paucity of events on his public schedule, as on this very day, have fostered a public perception that Mr. Biden is increasingly disengaged from the presidency,’ Newsmax’s James Rosen said on the teleconference. ‘Time and again, the question I am hearing from members of the general public, and which I put to you here, Admiral, is: Who is running the country?’

‘Is he a ceremonial figure in some sense at this point?’ he added. 

‘James, now you know better than that. I mean, my goodness, he talked to Prime Minister Modi today,’ Kirby said of Biden. ‘He had calls with leaders in the region and in Europe, President Zelenskyy, last week.  He monitored in real time what was going on over the weekend. I mean, come on.’ 

‘The President is on vacation, but you can never unplug from a job like that, nor does he try to,’ Kirby added. ‘He’s very much in command of making sure we can continue to protect our national security interests here at home and certainly overseas.’ 

Former President Trump participated in a wreath laying ceremony Monday with relatives of the 13 fallen at Arlington National Cemetery. Biden and Vice President Harris, the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, were both absent but released separate statements listing the names of the 13 U.S. service members killed. 

Some of the relatives of the fallen took to the stage of the Republican National Convention last month to condemn Biden for never publicly stating their names, and the Trump campaign doubled down on their criticism of the Biden-Harris administration’s Afghanistan withdrawal, noting that Harris had ‘bragged’ about being the last person in the room with Biden before he made the decision.

The Trump campaign on Monday also slammed how neither Biden nor Harris, despite their written statements, have ever said the names of the 13 Americans killed out loud publicly and stressed how their handling of the withdrawal ‘stranded thousands of American citizens and left billions of dollars worth of U.S. equipment behind for the Taliban.’ 

The statements from Biden and Harris each noted that ‘America’s longest war’ was over and remembered the 2,461 U.S. service members killed and the 20,744 wounded during the two-decade-long conflict. 

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Kamala Harris is the most left wing major party candidate for the presidency in post-World War II America

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Vice President Kamala Harris gave a nice, no-calorie acceptance speech last week. She said nothing about her two substantive policy proposals to date—price controls and a Publishers Clearinghouse-style giveaway of $25,000 for first time new home buyers—and steered clear of formal repudiation of her 2019 presidential campaign platform. (As Senator Tom Cotton pointed out repeatedly to ABC’s Jonathan Karl Sunday, Harris has not said a word about her alleged repudiation of her 2019 proposal to abolish employer-provided health care and a move to ‘Medicare for All.’ An unnamed staffer has told some media outlets that she no longer believes that, but she herself has not said so, and what she does believe about health care policy we do not know.)

Harris has been the nominee of the Democratic Party for 36 days and has not given an interview or taken any serious questions. Her acceptance speech was a dance of GOP cliches—yes, Republican go-to talk like ‘opportunity society’—and represented a very calculated misdirection from her actual record. But we do know that as senator she was once rated as the most liberal member of the Senate. We know that during her 2019 presidential campaign she vowed to close illegal immigrant detention centers ‘Absolutely. On Day 1.’ 

We also know she was charged, explicitly by President Biden with ‘stemming the migration to our southern border.’ President Biden also said in March of 2021 that among Harris’s responsibilities at our border was to persuade Central American countries and Mexico to ‘enhance migration enforcement at their borders—at their borders.’ At least 10 million uninvited migrants have crossed our southern border since Biden tasked Harris with getting it under control. So we know for sure that Harris is a spectacular failure in her big mission set as Vice President, and indeed, until Joe Biden’s incapacity became too obvious to hide, Democrats were persuaded that an incoherent Biden was preferable to the candidacy of Harris. 

That’s because Harris is a perfectly awful candidate who has never won an election other than in deepest blue California. Her interviews have always been rambling disasters. Her laugh is infamous and her quick wit non-existent. Perhaps her candidacy will survive the September 10 debate with former President Trump. Stranger things have happened. There are strategies out there that, if she can execute without a teleprompter and an adoring audience, will work. We shall see. 

What we have already seen, however, is that legacy media, like Jonathan Karl with Senator Cotton—indeed like every other legacy network anchor and lead reporter since the Biden abdication—are complicit in the ‘see no Harris, hear no Harris, speak-no-skepticism-much-less-ill of Harris’ campaign strategy. 

James Carville and George Stephanopoulos famously laid down the iron law of Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign: ‘It’s the economy stupid.’ Whomever is running the Harris campaign has a similar dictum: ‘Say nothing at all, often.’

This is brilliant when your candidate is from the far left of the Democratic Party, is the real deal ‘San Francisco Democrat,’ and cannot give interviews or answers without great embarrassment. And especially when legacy media is in your corner and helping at every turn. Harris has one enormous advantage in the campaign: All of legacy media is all in for her. 

It is as though the cartel of legacy media leaders gathered and agreed: ‘We will emphasize every negative about Trump and erase every positive from his presidency. We will also erase every negative about Harris and emphasize every positive that we can find.’ 

The cartel also agreed that it would not publicize that Harris is a child of Berkeley, California and Montreal, Canada—Harris Iived in Berkeley until she was 12 and then Montreal and until she left for Howard University in the District of Columbia after her high school years. She left Canada for good after completing Westmount High School in Montreal and enrolling at Howard University in D.C. She apparently did spend time with her father, a Stanford economist, and family friends during summers and vacations during her junior high and high school years, but the Harris campaign is tight-lipped on Harris’s Montreal years or her visits in the Bay Area. (Apparently records, year books and classmates from Westmount High School in Montreal are much more difficult to locate than those belonging to Georgetown Prep, where Justice Bret Kavanaugh which all figured mightily in his confirmation hearings). 

The one portion of policy that made it into Harris’s speech was a spectacular bit of ‘moral equivalency’ when Harris first noted the horrors in Israel perpetrated by Hamas and various other residents of Gaza while emphasizing ‘At the same time’ the hardships visited on Gaza because of that attack and Hamas’s refusal to surrender its Israeli (and American) hostages. That peculiar, awkward phrasing should shock supporters of Israel who don’t follow national security issues or figures closely. It did not shock those who know the past positions of her National Security Advisor Philip Gordon or her likely White House National Security Advisor Maher Bitar if, as is rumored, Gordon wants a Cabinet seat if Harris wins. 

The country knows everything about Trump, not only his record as president but every detail of his life. Scores of books have been written about the former president. We know nothing about Harris except her record in the Senate, her campaign for president in 2019 and her time as Joe Biden’s right hand on the border. 

The legacy media is fine with situation. Because like Harris, the Manhattan-Beltway media elite is far to the left of the center.

Independents and moderates of both parties should be repulsed by the idea of voting for a candidate who is hiding in plain sight. They should ask: Why is that?

Hugh Hewitt is host of ‘The Hugh Hewitt Show,’ heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990.  Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.

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