Which of these things is not like the others? The economy. The border. Abortion. Foreign policy. 

The first three are issues many voters consistently tell pollsters are the subjects most important to them in 2024. Foreign policy? Dwarfed by the others. In fact, recent Fox polling shows that foreign policy decisions were the most important subjects to only 3% of registered voters surveyed in Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona. Foreign policy only climbs to 4% when Fox asked the question nationally.

So why care about foreign policy in a race like the one between Vice President Harris and former President Trump? The importance of foreign policy as a determining factor in the race for the presidency rises and falls. Vietnam wore on the public consciousness in the late 1960s. It drove former President Lyndon Johnson away from seeking re-election in 1968. The Iranian hostage crisis certainly didn’t help former President Carter as he stumbled in 1980. It’s believed that former President Reagan scored a boost from improving America’s image on the global stage. Staring down the Soviets certainly enabled Reagan to cruise to victory in 1984.

Former President George H.W. Bush seemingly received no benefit for the 1991 Gulf War nor the fall of the Eastern Bloc in the late ‘80s and early ’90s. This was ironic. The president earned a staggering 91% approval rating just after the Gulf War. Yet he lost to former President Clinton less than two years later. The events of 9/11 lifted the fate of former President George W. Bush in 2001. Bush won re-election in 2004. But casualties from the war in Iraq cost him support that fall. 

So, should we focus on foreign policy as a crucial issue in 2024? Hard to say. But in a tight race, anything might be decisive. Especially in battleground states where the race is a statistical dead heat.

‘Pocketbook issues are always the most important issues for most people,’ said Rep. Larry Bucshon, R-Ind. But Bucshon offered a caveat.

‘(Foreign policy) could be in the national security space part of the election narrative because the vice president was obviously part of this decision-making progress,’ the Indiana Republican said.

That is precisely what Republicans hope to highlight as Congress returns to session. Biden is out the door. Harris is now the Democratic nominee. And Republicans hope to tell the story of the vice president and foreign policy.

War in the Middle East. Executions of Israeli hostages. Even the controversy involving Trump honoring service members killed in Afghanistan three years ago. Curiously, the incident and questions surrounding how Trump and his team conducted themselves at Arlington National Cemetery may have actually retrained focus on why they were there in the first place: the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan under the watch of the president and vice president.

A mother of one of the 13 U.S. service members killed in the Abbey Gate attack at the Kabul airport railed against the administration.

‘We’ve been disrespected so much in the last three years,’ Kelly Barnett told Fox. She’s a Gold Star mother who lost her son, Taylor Hoover, in the terrorist attack. ‘No response from them. No ‘I’m sorry.’’

Republicans see this as connective tissue to Harris.

‘I think it’s open to criticism because the vice president was intimately involved in that discussion (to withdraw from Afghanistan),’ said Bucshon.

Harris even said as much during an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash in 2021 after the withdrawal.

‘(President Biden) just made a really big decision. Afghanistan,’ said Bash. ‘Were you the last person in the room?’

‘Yes,’ replied Harris.

‘And you feel comfortable?’ countered Bash.

‘I do,’ answered Harris.

On NBC, Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., noted that former President Trump ‘was never able’ to get out of Afghanistan despite wanting to do so.

‘I give President Biden and Vice President Harris credit for finally ending a war after 20 years,’ said Khanna.

The California Democrat conceded the administration bungled the withdrawal. But Khanna believes Harris and the president ‘deserve credit’ for actually extracting the U.S. from the protracted conflict. In addition, some Republicans point to the Israel/Hamas war as a flashpoint for the administration.

‘Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have tried to hamstring Israel every step of the way here,’ Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., said on Fox.

On Fox Business, Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Texas, argued that the only ‘two-state solution’ Harris and vice presidential nominee and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz care about is winning ‘Pennsylvania and Michigan.’

But when it comes to the Middle East, the administration contends it’s clear who is to blame — despite the Mideast crisis unfolding on its watch.

‘Hamas is responsible for their deaths. And as the president said, most leaders pay for their crimes,’ said White House national security spokesman John Kirby.

The campaign trail now moves from battleground states like Nevada and North Carolina to Capitol Hill as Congress returns to session. Expect congressional Republicans to curate a narrative about the Biden administration’s foreign policy — and latch that to Harris.

The House is slated to vote on a number of measures in the coming days pertaining to China. There may even be legislation tied to Israel and the Mideast War. The House Foreign Affairs Committee is releasing an exhaustive report about the Afghanistan withdrawal imminently. The committee also issued a subpoena to Secretary of State Antony Blinken to testify about the withdrawal Sept. 19.

The State Department contends Blinken isn’t available then. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller called the subpoena ‘unnecessary,’ arguing Blinken worked with the committee in good faith. But Foreign Affairs Committee spokeswoman Leslie Shedd said Blinken knew the committee wanted his testimony since late May.

‘The chairman offered the secretary any session day in the month of September to come in, and he refused. Instead, he vaguely suggested November or December — when it is far too late for Congress to take legislative action to fix the problems at the State Department that led to the withdrawal,’ Shedd said.

Regardless, the coming days will present lots of fodder about what went wrong in Afghanistan three years ago. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., will present the families of the 13 service members killed in Afghanistan with the Congressional Gold Medal in a ceremony Tuesday.

So, do the foreign policy arguments stick to Harris? Unclear. However, you’ll notice that Republicans recently began to invoke the ‘Biden-Harris administration.’ That’s a concerted effort to pivot from Biden and Velcro issues to the vice president — once she became the nominee.

But will foreign policy make a difference? It can. But we won’t know until the vote is in. As observed earlier, George W. Bush won re-election over former Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., in 2004. But there were ‘micro’ costs to Bush’s campaign over the Iraq war in particular regions and precincts.

And in a close election, that’s why foreign policy might matter in 2024.

Political headwinds have recently shifted in eight close House races around the country. With less than two months until Election Day, Democrats continue to ride a wave of enthusiasm for their new presidential nominee.

Six races have shifted in Democrats’ favor, while just two are looking better for Republicans, according to a nonpartisan analysis by the Cook Political Report.

Meanwhile, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has spent the summer crisscrossing the country to campaign for fellow GOP lawmakers as he seeks to hold onto his razor-thin, four-seat majority in the House.

Two of the races that inched toward the left are in districts President Biden won in 2020 but are held by GOP representatives Don Bacon, R-Neb., and Michelle Steele, R-Calif. Both their ratings switched from ‘lean Republican’ to ‘toss up.’

Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, who flipped her seat from red to blue in 2020, saw her race move from ‘likely’ victory for Republicans to only leaning in their favor.

Three Democratic seats — those held by representatives Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, and Henry Cuellar, D-Texas — have also become safer for the left.

Moskowitz and Cuellar’s race predictions shifted to solidly and ‘likely’ blue, respectively, while Kaptur’s seat is now leaning Democratic after being classified a ‘toss-up.’

Democrats could be on track to lose a seat in the House, however, with the race for Rep. Mary Peltola’s seat becoming a ‘toss-up’ in Alaska, a state former President Trump won in 2020.

Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, which Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., is vacating to run in the nearby 4th Congressional District, is now ‘likely’ to be held by Republicans after her departure.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the House Democrats’ campaign arm, took a victory lap over Cook’s latest updates Friday. 

‘House Democrats continue to build momentum and grassroots enthusiasm across the country, while House GOP incumbents and candidates continue to fall flat on their faces,’ DCCC spokesperson Viet Shelton said in a statement to the press touting the update.

Republicans appeared to be on track to possibly win both the White House and Congress before Biden’s shocking decision to drop out of the 2024 presidential race in late July.

Democrats have since been riding a wave of enthusiasm for their new candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, despite a lack of expansive policy platforms and few unscripted media appearances.

At least one House Republican who spoke with Fox News Digital this week was bullish about the GOP’s chances of victory, however.

‘If these predictive sites are to be believed, maybe Donald Trump’s got a 42% chance to be president. We’ve got a, you know, 60-some percent chance to take the Senate and a 55% chance to keep the House. So, that’s a better hand of cards than we’re holding today,’ the GOP lawmaker said. 

‘I would say this. If Donald Trump gets elected, he will likely usher in a Republican House and Senate along with him.’

Last month, House GOP leaders were expressing concerns about being out-raised by Democrats.

Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., head of the House GOP campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), confirmed he sounded alarm bells in comments to Fox Business in August.

‘That’s true, and we’ve seen the fundraising on the Democrat side just go through the roof. And so I’ve warned my candidates and my colleagues in the Congress that we’ve got to step up and continue doing the things we need to do to win,’ Hudson said at the time.

He said the response from House Republicans has been ‘great,’ adding, ‘Everyone stepped up. We had a number of people pledge more money to the committee. … I think folks are ready for the fight.’

Fox Business’ Grady Trimble and Fox News’ Tyler Olson contributed to this report

After six weeks of recess, the House is set to fast-track approval of a slew of China-related bills that aim to counter the U.S.’s growing foe beginning on Monday. 

With only three weeks of work on Capitol Hill before the November election, the Republican-led lower chamber is dedicating precious floor time to bills that would root out Chinese spyware within the country and set up the next president to take tougher action against Beijing. 

‘We wanted to combine them all into one week so that you had a real sharp focus on the fact that we need to be aggressive in confronting the threat that China poses,’ Majority Leader Steve Scalise told Fox News Digital about the planned ‘China Week.’

‘I think we can get real bipartisan support for a number of these,’ the Louisiana Republican said. ‘They’re all bills that should be very bipartisan, because there are things that China is doing right now that are direct threats to our country’s national security, and if we get strong bipartisan votes, you have a higher chance of getting through the Senate.’

Scalise said that four bills will come up under a rule, meaning that they will be debated by the House and that members can offer amendments. Still more will come up under suspension of the rules, meaning that the House is aiming to pass them quickly and without debate. 

Scalise highlighted one bill that would undo the Biden administration’s guidance allowing Chinese-made electric vehicles to qualify for a $7,500 tax credit. The move enraged even West Virginia’s Democrat-turned-Independent Sen. Joe Manchin, who helped author the Inflation Reduction Act that allowed for the credit. 

The End Chinese Dominance of Electric Vehicles Act, introduced by Rep. Carol Miller, R-W.Va., would tighten the Foreign Entity of Concern (FEOC) definition of a 30D EV that qualifies for the credit to exclude those vehicles with significant parts that are made in China. 

Another bill would broadly ban China from purchasing U.S. farmland. Chinese entities owned about 380,000 acres of agricultural land in the U.S. as of 2023, or less than 1%. 

Another bill, the No WHO Pandemic Preparedness Treaty Without Senate Approval Act, would prevent the U.S. from agreeing to any pandemic preparedness agreement negotiated by the World Health Organization (WHO) without the approval of two-thirds of the Senate. 

‘We’re giving an extra buffer so that the administration can’t just go partner up with WHO and come up with an agreement that would result in really bad policy for America,’ Scalise said. 

Another bill, the Biosecure Act, would ban federal agencies that run research labs from using any biotech equipment from any company that could be at risk of harnessing data to send back to the CCP.

Another, the DHS Restrictions on Confucius Institutes and Chinese Entities of Concern Act, would prevent any federal money from going to universities involved with CCP-run Confucius Institutes. 

‘You’re seeing China get more involved in our higher ed institutions,’ said Scalise. 

During former President Donald Trump’s administration in 2018, Congress ‘restricted federal funding to schools with institutes; nearly all of the institutes have since closed,’ according to Congress’s Government Accountability Office (GAO).

Another piece of legislation would re-establish a task force formed under Trump within the Department of Justice specifically focused on Chinese espionage. 

FBI Director Christopher Wray estimated last year his agency has more than 2,000 active investigations related to Chinese spying. 

The FBI estimates that Chinese counterfeit goods, pirated software and theft of trade secrets have cost the U.S. economy between $225 billion and $600 billion. 

Actress and environmental activist Jane Fonda once again addressed an overseas audience, warning Democratic voters abroad that former President Donald Trump will ‘jail’ anyone who protests his policies if he’s re-elected. 

‘If you are young out there abroad, you’re going to want to vote so that you have a livable future. And you’re going to want to vote so that you have a voice in a democracy. Now, with a Harris ticket, you will have a voice, if you want something to happen, or you want something to not happen, you can lobby. You can protest, demonstrate, you can do all kinds of things,’ Fonda said during a Democrats Abroad campaign event for the Harris-Walz ticket Thursday afternoon. 

‘The Orange Man will not let that happen. He puts the people who don’t agree with him in jail, and he said he’s going to make their lives miserable,’ Fonda continued before a moderator for the campaign event interjected that their next speaker, Sen. Ed Markey, was set to address the virtual event. 

Democrats Abroad is the official arm of the Democratic Party for American citizens living overseas, including registering them to vote and keeping them apprised of key policy issues during election cycles. About three million U.S. citizens live abroad and vote overseas, according to the Federal Voting Assistance Program. 

The group held an hours-long campaign event Thursday afternoon on Zoom, where a bevy of elected Democratic officials and Hollywood elites spoke to those living overseas about why they are supporting the Harris-Walz ticket. 

Hollywood stars such as Kyra Sedgewick, Rob Reiner, Alfre Woodard and Fonda, as well as elected officials including former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, former Attorney General Eric Holder and Rep. Adam Schiff, delivered short remarks to those watching, encouraging them to snub Trump at the ballot box. 

‘One of the main reasons … this particular election in this coming November is so utterly critical, is because one of the two top tickets – and I don’t think I need to mention the names – will take us in the absolutely wrong direction. I’m going to say the Orange Man. Okay, the Orange Man has let us know in no uncertain terms that on day one, if he is elected, it’s going to be ‘Drill, baby, drill.’ And as I said, the world cannot afford another four years of not paying attention to the climate crisis. It’s going to be too late to solve this existential crisis. We need a strong democracy. And the Orange Man has also let us know that he’s not crazy about democracy,’ Fonda continued in her remarks. 

Pelosi also slammed Trump, while opting to call the 45th president ‘what’s his name’ and arguing that ‘our democracy is at stake’ this election cycle. She added that she’s grateful to God that she was serving as speaker of the House on Jan. 6, 2021, when supporters of Trump’s breached the U.S. Capitol, instead of a Republican House leader. 

‘I want to say this immodestly, but I was very glad that God placed me to be the speaker on January 6 of last time. Because if it had been a Republican speaker, the whole story would be different now. So, Hakeem Jeffries must be the Speaker of the House on January 6. That’s a must. It’s up to you. No burden, just up to you,’ Pelosi said. 

The former attorney general under the Obama administration, Eric Holder, also addressed those watching, arguing that Trump’s political statements and policies during the 2024 campaign cycle have been ‘chilling.’ 

‘They’ve grown comfortable with everything from gerrymandering to voter suppression to outright intimidation. And this is profoundly, you know, un American. I mean, earlier this summer, Donald Trump asked a part of his MAGA base, talking to some Maga supporters, he told them that you just have to vote just this time. Vote just this time. And then he said you won’t have to do it anymore. That’s a pretty chilling thing,’ Holder said. 

Holder joined the Harris campaign earlier this year to lead the vetting process of her potential running mates before Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was announced as the candidate last month.

September is a key month for American voters abroad, with federal law requiring absentee ballots to be sent to members of the military and voters overseas 45 days before the election. The ballots will be sent out by Sept. 21 during this election cycle.