Amid the circulation of videos on social media in recent weeks which appear to show President Biden’s mental acuity dwindling and a recent Wall Street Journal report adding fuel to the speculation, low expectations for his performance ahead of the debate next week against former President Trump could buck his chance of victory.

And Trump may be helping Biden set expectations low by dinging him on his age and acuity in recent interviews. Trump has called for Biden to be drug tested prior to taking the debate stage, saying that if he does well it will be due to performance enhancements. 

‘If he’s standing, they’ll say it was a brilliant performance,’ Trump said at the National Rifle Association (NRA) Convention last month in Dallas.

However, ‘low expectations’ will be used to Biden’s advantage, according to one expert.

‘I’d be wary of assuming that Biden’s going to have a bad performance, or of talking down his potential performance because he has surpassed expectations at the 2020 debate, at the State of the Union address, and at the press conference where they were talking about his mental acuity,’ presidential historian and author Tevi Troy told Fox News Digital.

‘That doesn’t mean he’s always all there, and I fully recognize that he is not the person he was in 2012 when he debated very effectively against Paul Ryan,’ added Troy, who served as a senior HHS official in the President George W. Bush administration. ‘But when you lower the expectations of your opponent’s performance, it’s easy for the opponent to exceed those expectations strategically. It’s something to worry about.’

Thursday’s presidential debate will be the first between the GOP and Democratic frontrunners, since neither Trump nor Biden participated in party primary debates – a first in several decades. 

Troy, also a senior researcher at the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank, believes the real problem for Biden next week ‘is it’s easy to run against Trump when Trump’s in office, but now Biden’s in office and people are still unhappy with one situation.’

‘They’re unhappy with the illegal immigration, they’re unhappy with inflation, and they’re unhappy with the sense that Biden doesn’t have it and doesn’t know what’s going on or isn’t on top of his game. So, the ‘memory campaign’ is a bit of a hard thing to pull off in this circumstance,’ he said.

Meanwhile, a GOP strategist told Fox News Digital ‘the bar is so low’ for Biden, ‘so him making it through a sentence is seen as a success in the eyes of the Democrat party.’

‘After the State of the Union, everyone was saying it was a great success for him, simply because he made it through with a few notable stumbles. He had a couple, but I think voters can’t forget, and they have to truly understand, like, what Joe Biden is actually saying. His union address was one of the most divisive speeches I’ve seen,’ the source said.

‘What voters really need to focus on are his policy positions,’ the source continued. ‘The platform that he ran on in 2020 that he’s going to unify the country. And I think a lot of voters can get behind that. But we have seen the exact opposite during his entire time as president. And I think Donald Trump can make a really good case about that. And on top of that, just being able to stumble him up a couple times.’

Meanwhile, the White House is working to discredit videos of the president online, terming them ‘cheap fakes,’ which are edited out of context, slowed or sped up.

‘The discredited right-wing critics of President Biden who spread other debunked lies, including that the 2020 election was stolen, are clearly threatened by the wide range of nonpartisan fact-checkers that have pulled back the curtain on the cheap fake smears they’re forced to rely on – since the last thing they want to discuss is Joe Biden’s agenda to cut taxes for working families and keep bringing violent crime to historic lows,’ White House spokesperson Andrew Bates told Fox News Digital this week.

The president’s mental acuity has become the center of political discourse this month after a bombshell Washington Journal report, which the White House dismissed, revealed that many lawmakers on Capitol Hill had questions about Biden’s mental acuity after many said his aging was apparent in private meetings.

As of Thursday, President Biden is the frontrunner in a hypothetical matchup against former President Trump for the first time since October, as positive views of the economy inch up — hitting their highest level thus far in the Biden presidency, according to a new Fox News national survey.

Since May, there has been a 3-point change in the presidential race. Trump was ahead by one point last month, while Biden is up by two points today: 50%-48%. That’s well within the margin of error. Biden’s current 50% support is his best this election cycle; he hasn’t been ahead of Trump since October 2023 and that was by just 1 point (49%-48%).

Fox News Digital’s Dana Blanton contributed to this report. 

A majority of Americans believe the U.S. should focus more on issues at home and withdraw from foreign affairs, despite an increasing number of Americans believing the U.S. should be more engaged and take the lead when it comes to international events.

Just under two-thirds of Americans, 62%, believe the U.S. would be ‘better served by withdrawing from international affairs and focusing more attention on problems here at home,’ according to the results of the Ronald Reagan Institute’s 2024 summer survey, which was shared exclusively with Fox News Sunday.

Despite that finding, the percentage of Americans who believe it’s important for the U.S. to be more engaged and take the lead in international events is on the rise, up 12 points in the last six months.

A majority, 54%, expressed support for a more engaged U.S. foreign policy, up from 42% in November. The latest figure includes 66% of Democrats and 49% of Republicans.

‘From this year’s Reagan Institute summer survey, we’re seeing an uptick in the numbers of Americans who really want to see and are seeking policies that reflect American leadership in the world, that reflects President Reagan’s principles of leadership, of strength on the global stage when it comes to the chaos and conflict that we’re seeing around the world,’ Rachel Hoff, the policy director at the Ronald Reagan Institute, told Fox News Digital.

‘The number of Americans seeking American leadership and engagement is at a five-year high,’ she added.

Most Americans also said they believe U.S. involvement in international events is beneficial for both the United States (57%) and the world (61%).

Over three-fourths, 78%, of respondents indicated they agree that U.S. leadership and engagement in international affairs is ‘essential’ for boosting the economy and securing favorable trade arrangements.

A similar amount of Americans, 77%, indicated they believe it is important for the U.S. to stand up for human rights and democracy around the world, while 86% indicated it was important for the U.S. to maintain a strong military that can maintain peace and prosperity both at home and around the world.

The poll comes amid continued debate over how involved the U.S. should be in defending Ukraine amid its war with Russia, with some arguing that the billions of dollars spent equipping the Ukrainian military would be better spent on domestic issues.

Down two percent since the same Reagan Institute survey last summer, 57% of Americans said they support sending military aid to Ukraine, compared to 32% who oppose it. Another 11% indicated they were unsure.

Americans also believe it is in the best interest of the U.S. that Ukraine win its conflict against Russia, with 75% saying it is important Ukraine win compared to 17% who indicated it was unimportant. There was no change in those percentages compared to last year’s survey.

Hoff said the Reagan Institute’s data on Ukraine has stayed ‘remarkably consistent over time.’

‘So we started asking questions about Ukraine, about American support and military aid for Ukraine’s efforts in their war against the Russian invasion, and those numbers have not shifted at all since 2022,’ she said.

‘Even with all the debate and discussion that we’re seeing in the media and on Capitol Hill about aid to Ukraine and the really important conversations that policy leaders are having, it’s really important to remember and recognize that the American people, in the middle of all those conversations, have made clear that they want to continue supporting America’s allies and our friends around the world that are standing up against aggression… and they want to do that by sending U.S. military aid to Ukraine.’

The survey also found that Americans believe Israel — a war-torn country that responded forcefully to the October 7, 2023, invasion by Hamas militants — should be supported by the U.S.

‘Both Republicans and Democrats, in large numbers, want to support Israel in its fight against the Hamas terrorists in the Middle East,’ Hoff said.

A majority of Americans, 56%, said they support sending aid to Israel, compared to 35% who said they oppose the effort. Another 68% said they support the U.S. sending missile defense systems to Israel to ‘help it defend against’ drone or missile attacks.

‘I think the more we drill down into what the American people want our government to be doing to support our allies and friends around the world, to push back on tyranny and terrorism and to support those fighting for freedom and democracy, those numbers only rise,’ Hoff said.

Fifty-five percent of those surveyed also said they would support an Israeli counterattack against continued Iranian aggression, while 31% said they would oppose it.

Three-quarters of Americans, 75%, said they were concerned about humanitarian conditions in Gaza.

Seventy-four percent said they believe Israel’s war with Hamas matters to U.S. security and prosperity, compared to 73% who said the same for Ukraine’s war with Russia.

Americans also indicated concern over Chinese military build-up, with 82% saying they are ‘extremely’ or ‘somewhat’ concerned.

Other findings related to China included concern over the communist nation’s human rights violations (83%), technology theft (83%), overtaking the U.S. as the world’s superpower (75%), and the isolation of Taiwan (68%).

Based off previous Reagan Institute surveys, Hoff said public opinion on China ‘has been moving and shifting significantly over time’ and that there’s an increasing number of Americans who are ‘seeing China as an adversary.’

‘They’re concerned about, technology theft, economic practices, human rights abuses, abuses of the Chinese Communist Party, and they’re concerned about the Chinese military buildup,’ she said.

A slim majority, 51%, said they believe the social media app TikTok, which is owned by a Chinese company that is closely connected to the Chinese government, should be banned in the U.S. Another 39% percent said they oppose a ban of the app, while 10% said they were unsure.

The survey, which was conducted from May 20 to May 27, sampled 1,257 U.S. adults.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was critical of plans announced Sunday by his military to hold 11-hour pauses in fighting along a main road into Gaza to facilitate getting aid into the bomb-stricken area.

Reuters reported that the Israeli military announced daily pauses in battle from 5 a.m. to 4 p.m. local time between Kerem Shalom Crossing and Salah al-Din Road, then northwards.

‘When the prime minister heard the reports of an 11-hour humanitarian pause in the morning, he turned to his military secretary and made it clear that this was unacceptable to him,’ an Israeli official said.

While fighting would pause in the area defined, the military clarified it would continue normal operations in Rafah, which is the main focus of its campaign in southern Gaza.

Netanyahu’s reaction highlights heightened political tensions over aid being delivered into Gaza, where international groups have warned of a growing humanitarian crisis.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who leads one of the nationalist religious parties in Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, denounced the idea of a tactical pause, saying whoever decided it was a ‘fool’ who should lose their job.

The dispute is just the latest between members of Netanyahu’s coalition and the military over how the war is being conducted between Israel and Hamas, which has been going on for nine months.

Last Sunday, Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz quit Netanyahu’s emergency government, saying the prime minister was making ‘total victory impossible.’

In announcing his resignation on Sunday, Gantz said the government needs to put the return of the hostages seized on Oct. 7 by Hamas ‘above political survival.’

‘Months after the October disaster, the situation in the country and in the decision-making cabinet has changed. Netanyahu and his partners have turned unity into a void call who has no cover. Fateful strategic decisions are met with hesitancy and procrastination due to political considerations,’ Gantz said. ‘Netanyahu is preventing us from progressing to a real victory. That is why we are leaving the emergency government today with a heavy heart, but with a whole heart.’

‘Months after the October disaster, the situation in the country and in the decision-making cabinet has changed,’ Gantz added. ‘Netanyahu and his partners have turned unity into a void call who has no cover. Fateful strategic decisions are met with hesitancy and procrastination due to political considerations.’

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid called Gantz’s decision important and just, arguing that it was time to change Netanyahu’s government with one that will lead to restoring security, hostage releases and rehabilitation of the economic and international status of Israel.

Fox News Digital’s Bradford Betz contributed to this report.

The next president of the United States should be asked if he will release UFO-related documents, the New Paradigm Institute says.

A once-taboo subject that essentially forced whistleblowers like Bob Lazar into exile is the topic of a social media campaign applying heat to debate moderators to question each 2024 candidate about his willingness to declassify the files.

‘The next president of the United States will make critical decisions about UAP disclosure and government transparency,’ New Paradigm Institute Chief Counsel Daniel Sheehan said in a June 12 statement. 

‘It’s time for all presidential candidates — Joe Biden, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Donald Trump — to commit to UFOs/UAP disclosure and transparency. … Regardless of political affiliation, the time has come to inject UAP into the political discourse of our elections.’

Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., told Fox News Digital in a previous interview that documents relating to UFOs, or UAPs (unidentified anomalous phenomena), are ‘so compartmentalized that we’ll never get to the bottom of it.’

It will take a ‘commander-in-chief who says enough is enough,’ to declassify everything. 

That’s why the New Paradigm Institute, an organization dedicated to securing the public release of UFO-related files, started a social media campaign to convince the next presidential debate moderators to include a question about UFOs. 

‘Candidates for president should be asked whether they will commit to UAP disclosure and government transparency,’ said Sheehan, adding the June 27 debate would be the ‘perfect forum’ for the public to learn the candidates’ stances. 

The UFO topic has been an ongoing subject of interest in Congress, as a bipartisan effort has been pushing for government agencies to release files.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was asked about UFOs during last April’s presidential primary debate, which he scoffed at and mocked. 

‘I get the UFO questions? C’mon, man!’ Christie said during the debate before joking with the moderator. 

After laughing, he responded with a vague answer.

‘The job of the president of the United States is to level with the American people about everything,’ Christie said. He went on to talk about how threats to children’s education were more significant than UFOs.

The answer annoyed many who have been fighting for years for the disclosure, including former Navy pilot Ryan Graves. 

‘When is laughter ever an acceptable response to a national security question?’ Graves told Fox News Digital after Christie’s answer.

The combination of mild mockery, chuckles and the fact it was a question posed to candidates vying for the highest office in the country epitomizes the current state of the topic. 

There is still some stigma about the potential existence of UFOs and extraterrestrial life, but it’s becoming more mainstream. 

In pop culture, it was a parody Super Bowl ad, which cost about $7 million per 30-second spot.

In government, Sen. Chuck Shumer proposed a bipartisan UFO disclosure bill, which was passed with the new budget, but the legislation still puts the power in the president’s hands to classify or keep specific records sealed. 

Whistleblowers have come forward to allege the government has run secret alien crashed craft retrieval programs to reverse engineer the technology, which became the topic of a congressional hearing. 

It’s a stark contrast to people like Lazar, who came forward with similar accusations in the late ’80s but was labeled an Area 51 conspiracy theorist. 

So far, President Biden has not forced federal agencies to release classified UFO documents, although there is a congressional bill on the table that would force the executive branch’s hand.

The bill sponsored by Burchett would essentially merge all the compartmentalized federal agency files on UFOs and dump them into one declassified pool of information. 

The Tennessee Republican lawmaker told Fox News Digital in a previous interview, ‘It’s simple. They spend all this time telling us they don’t exist, then release the files, dagnabbit. … We just got to put this stuff out. Let’s clear the air. And let’s move on.’

Lara Trump, co-chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC) and former President Trump’s daughter-in-law, vowed Friday to prosecute anyone who cheats in an election.

‘This year is the year we do it,’ Lara Trump said at Turning Point USA’s convention in Detroit, Michigan. ‘We are also sending a loud and clear message out there to anyone who thinks about cheating in an election, we will find you, we will track you down and we will prosecute you to the full extent of the law.’

The RNC on Friday launched a swing state initiative to mobilize thousands of polling place monitors, poll workers and attorneys to serve as ‘election integrity’ watchdogs in November. 

Lara Trump said the goal is to recruit more than 100,000 poll watchers and 500 lawyers to deploy at election sites across the country. 

For decades, the RNC was limited in its ability to coordinate poll watching and other election integrity activities by a federal court consent decree established to stop Republican-backed voter intimidation efforts. The decree was lifted in 2018. 

‘We have a unique opportunity right now that we have not had in 40 years as a party. For 40 years, there was a consent decree placed on the RNC that did not allow us to train people to work as poll workers,’ Lara Trump said at the Turning Point USA event. ‘Who was training all the people for the last 40 years? Not the RNC. Think about how many people the DNC got to train.’

‘So now we have this amazing opportunity so we can train you to work in a polling location. We can train you to work in a tabulation center when the mail-in ballots come in. We also want attorneys to work in every major polling location so we are not reactive, we are proactive,’ she said. 

The RNC has said its new effort will focus on stopping potential ‘Democrat attempts to circumvent the rules.’ The party will deploy monitors to observe every step of the election process, create hotlines for poll watchers to report perceived problems and escalate those issues by taking legal action. 

The RNC’s kickoff event took place at the headquarters of the Oakland County GOP, one of Michigan’s most influential local parties. Oakland County is an affluent Detroit suburb that for decades was one of Michigan’s premier bellwether counties. RNC Chairman Michael Whatley said Friday that the committee will place election integrity directors in 15 states, including the most hotly contested battlegrounds, and work with state parties to set up similar programs in the other states.

‘What we need to ensure is integrity in our electoral process,’ Lara Trump said during the kickoff event in Bloomfield Hills, in a suburban county that is crucial for winning Michigan. ‘We can never go back and repeat 2020, but we can learn the lessons from 2020.’ She said most of the RNC is currently focused on the committee’s election integrity program.

Both parties have a long history of organizing supporters to serve as poll monitors, and the Democratic National Committee said it plans its own volunteer recruitment effort. 

The launch of the RNC initiative comes as the GOP faces a significant disadvantage compared to Democrats in traditional political infrastructure on the ground in key states, such as campaign offices, community centers and canvassers, according to the Associated Press. President Biden’s campaign and his allies on the Democratic National Committee have opened hundreds of campaign offices nationwide, while Republican officials in many cases are still waiting for the Trump campaign and the RNC to engage.

DNC spokesperson Alex Floyd said the DNC, ‘alongside our partners at the state and local level, won’t let MAGA Republicans get away with these baseless attacks on our democracy, and we will continue to use every tool at our disposal to ensure that all Americans can make their voice heard at the ballot box.’ 

RNC leadership, which former President Trump handpicked in a major overhaul of the committee earlier this year, has followed his lead in forecasting the potential for foul play in this year’s election. Lara Trump qualified her answer on CNN earlier this month when asked if she would accept the election’s results.

‘I can tell you, yes, we will accept the results of this election if we feel that it is free, fair and transparent,’ she said. ‘And we are working overtime to ensure that indeed that happens.’

Asked Friday whether the committee planned to challenge the election certification process in any swing states Trump might narrowly lose, Whatley said, ‘We’re not going to cross any of those bridges right now.’

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

One of the most notorious far-left groups in the nation just handed 60 employees their pink slips.

It’s not the first time the Southern Poverty Law Center has seen a mass exodus from its workforce, but this round of layoffs may signal an important shift in the political winds just as the national election cycle begins to heat up.

As an erstwhile staffer claimed on X, formerly known as Twitter, the SPLC’s recent downsizing comes even while the non-profit is ‘hoarding’ over $1 billion of donor funds in reserves. While that assertion dwarfs much more reliable reporting tabbing the number just north of $160 million, what would appear to be a gross exaggeration actually provides a perfect window to understand the shell game the SPLC has been playing on the American people for the last four decades.

After all, exaggeration and outright lies have been the common currency at the SPLC for decades.

After gaining a reputation for successfully bringing to an end what was left of the Ku Klux Klan through lawsuits in the early 1980s, the SPLC shifted into full-time fundraising mode under its co-founder, Morris Dees.

A member of the Direct Marketing Association’s Hall of Fame, Dees was unceremoniously booted from the SPLC in 2019 while longtime president Richard Cohen resigned in disgrace amid swirling allegations of racism and sexism at company headquarters—a lavish facility employees have dubbed ‘The Poverty Palace.’

And don’t kid yourself into thinking that anything has changed. In 2021, one ex-SPLC staff member wrote at The Daily Beast that even the follow-up efforts to address this toxic culture were designed to ‘protect the reputation of SPLC and not to enact or recommend changes that would benefit staff—changes that were desperately needed.’

Apparently sniffing out the fact that the con was on decades earlier, the entire legal department resigned in protest. This was a group that could read the writing on the wall. As one former employee, Bob Moser, put it in a 2019 article for The New Yorker, ‘It was hard, for many of us, not to feel like we’d become pawns in what was, in many respects, a highly profitable scam.’

Of course, pawns only have value if they can remove an opponent’s pieces from the board. The key to that goal has been the SPLC’s absurd ‘Hate Map,’ which for years has lumped together KKK holdouts with mainstream conservatives and conservative organizations—including my employer, Alliance Defending Freedom—in a blatant attempt to push us to the margins of American life.

That hasn’t slowed us down. Since 2011, ADF has been blessed to argue and win 15 cases at the U.S. Supreme Court and hundreds more in lower courts. As the high court was deciding one of those cases, protecting donor privacy, the SPLC launched its ‘Hate Free Philanthropy’ campaign, which gives a not-too-subtle go at bypassing the ruling by urging private companies to dox our donors anyway.

Tellingly, the SPLC’s round of layoffs comes just days after releasing its annual update to the laughable ‘hate group’ document, which one federal judge—an Obama appointee—deemed ‘entirely subjective.’ Included on the list were grassroots parental rights groups like Moms for Liberty and physician groups who oppose experimenting with transgender medical interventions like cross-sex puberty hormones on children.

That’s wildly out of step with most of the country. Polling reported by The Washington Post shows that most Americans agree with the position of doctors on the SPLC’s hate list that the law should protect minors from harmful puberty-blocking regimens.

Meanwhile, the SPLC’s animus toward peaceful, religious Americans prompted the Federal Bureau of Investigation to issue a field memo targeting Roman Catholics who celebrate the Latin Mass. The blowback caused the FBI to retract the memo and spurred a congressional investigation.

The SPLC has overplayed its hand with the American people. Disagreement is not discrimination or hate. We’re tired of seeing our neighbors slandered as bigots and bullied from polite society simply because they have the nerve to say what everyone else is thinking.

The only question remains: Will the political left more broadly learn this lesson, or will it be left to ex-SPLC staffers to think things over in the unemployment line?

Editor’s note: This is the sixth in a series of profiles of potential running mates for presidential candidate Donald Trump on the 2024 Republican Party ticket.

The race to determine who will be Donald Trump’s running mate this November is continuing to heat up, with the former president telling Fox News last week he has ‘sort of a pretty good idea’ who he’ll select.

The identity of that person remains a mystery, but a number of prospective contenders were recently asked to provide documents to Trump’s team as part of the vetting process, including firebrand Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, who some insiders say could be the key to flipping working-class Democrat voters in a number of consequential battleground states.

‘J.D. Vance has become a fixture on the road for Donald Trump and is extremely popular with the Trump base,’ one top GOP strategist told Fox News Digital, referencing Vance’s frequent appearances with Trump on the campaign trail and beyond.

‘He would be a lot of help across the entire Rust Belt and could help pick up working-class Democrat votes in places even outside his own state of Ohio. He would be an asset everywhere, really, but especially in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.’

The three states mentioned were all won by Trump in 2016 when they constituted part of the so-called ‘blue wall’ for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton but flipped to President Biden in 2020.

All three are once again taking center stage in the presidential race and could be the deciding factor for who wins the presidency this year. Vance’s blue-collar upbringing, which he detailed in his bestselling 2016 memoir, ‘Hillbilly Elegy,’ particularly appeals to many voters across those states in the same fashion Trump did during his first presidential run, another insider argued.

‘[Vance] capably handles hostile media interviews with the poise and precision of a Yale Law School graduate while also sharing an authentic connection with blue-collar voters in the key states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. So, it’s easy to see why he’s on Trump’s list of potential picks,’ said GOP strategist Matt Wolking, who served as deputy communications director for Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign.

‘A combat veteran and a good friend of Donald Trump Jr., Vance is a fresh face from the populist, noninterventionist, union-friendly wing of the new Republican Party,’ Wolking added, referencing Vance’s service in the Marine Corps and deployment to Iraq.

Wolking noted some potential downsides to Vance’s selection include that he would be the youngest vice president in 70 years, and, considering he was elected to the Senate in 2022, has only held elected office for 18 months as of June.

‘He has only one general election under his belt in a state Trump won by eight points,’ he added.

Another GOP strategist with experience in presidential campaigns told Fox that because Trump is working hard to court the business community, Vance’s ‘anti-big business inclinations would give some of those potential donors major heartburn.’

Others who have been floated as possibilities to join Trump on the Republican ticket include House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Sanders, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott.

Trump has suggested he will likely wait until July’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee to name his pick.