Secretary of State Antony Blinken twice declined to criticize Elon Musk after the SpaceX founder said he refused to help the Ukrainian government access his Starlink internet service in order to attack Russia.

Blinken was pressed by CNN’s Jake Tapper to comment on details in a new book confirmed by Musk, including that he refused the Ukrainian government’s requests to activate Starlink, a satellite internet service run by SpaceX, in Crimea so it could launch a submarine drone attack against Russian naval forces.

‘There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol,’ Musk posted Thursday on X. ‘The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor. If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.’

Tapper asked Blinken whether Musk should face repercussions after he ‘effectively sabotaged a military operation by Ukraine, a U.S. ally, against Russia, an aggressor country that invaded a U.S. ally.’

‘Jake, I can’t speak to a specific episode. Here’s what I can tell you: Starlink has been a vital tool for the Ukrainians to be able to communicate with each other and particularly for the military to communicate in their effort to defend all of Ukraine’s territory.’

‘I don’t know that you can’t speak to it, you won’t speak to it,’ Tapper fired back. ‘Musk says he was reportedly afraid that Russia would retaliate with nuclear weapons. Musk says that’s based on his private discussions he had with senior Russian officials. Are you concerned that Musk is apparently conducting his own diplomatic outreach to the Russian government? Really, none of this concerns you?’

‘Jake, I can’t speak to conversations that may or may not have happened. I don’t know,’ Blinked responded. ‘I’m focused on the fact that the technology itself, Starlink, has been really important for Ukrainians. It remains so.’

Tapper argued, ‘It sounds like Starlink’s so important, the U.S. government doesn’t want to risk offending a capricious billionaire who did some things that I think in another situation, the U.S. government might want to say something about, but let’s move on.’

Musk’s tweet last week came amid backlash over an excerpt from Walter Isaacson’s new biography, ‘Elon Mus,k’ that was published in The Washington Post. Isaacson claimed in the excerpt that Musk had Starlink’s connection in Crimea shut off.

But Musk said there was never Starlink coverage in Crimea.

Isaacson posted a clarification on Friday, writing, ‘To clarify on the Starlink issue: the Ukrainians THOUGHT coverage was enabled all the way to Crimea, but it was not. They asked Musk to enable it for their drone sub attack on the Russian fleet. Musk did not enable it, because he thought, probably correctly, that would cause a major war.’

Musk thanked Isaacson for the post and added, ‘The onus is meaningfully different if I refused to act upon a request from Ukraine vs. made a deliberate change to Starlink to thwart Ukraine.’

‘At no point did I or anyone at SpaceX promise coverage over Crimea,’ Musk wrote. ‘Moreover, our terms of service clearly prohibit Starlink for offensive military action, as we are a civilian system, so they were again asking for something that was expressly prohibited. SpaceX is building Starshield for the U.S. government, which is similar to, but much smaller than, Starlink, as it will not have to handle millions of users. That system will be owned and controlled by the U.S. government.’

Mykhailo Podolyak, a top aide to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, slammed Musk over the book excerpt and accused him of costing lives.

‘By not allowing Ukrainian drones to destroy part of the Russian military fleet via Starlink interference, Elon Musk allowed this fleet to fire Kalibr missiles at Ukrainian cities,’ Podolyak wrote. ‘As a result, civilians, children are being killed. This is the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego.’

Musk has previously defended limiting Ukraine’s use of Starlink for military purposes, declaring in February that SpaceX ‘will not enable escalation of conflict that may lead to WW3.’

SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell announced at the time that the company was restricting Ukraine from using Starlink, but that it could still be used in the country for typical communications and humanitarian relief, like linking families and hospitals.

Musk tweeted last September that Starlink was designed for peaceful uses only, and the terms of use state that the internet connections are not for military engagements.

Fox News’ Greg Wehner contributed to this report.

Vice President Harris responded to smack talk from Republican 2024 presidential candidates Sunday, claiming that the GOP is ‘scared that we will win.’

Harris made the comments during an appearance on CBS’ ‘Face the Nation’ on Sunday. Host Margaret Brennan asked Harris about comments from various Republican candidates stating that re-electing President Biden would essentially be voting to make her president.

Brennan quoted Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis, who called Harris ‘impeachment insurance’ for Biden.

‘People know if she were president – Katie bar the door. As bad as Biden did, it would get worse,’ DeSantis said.

‘We’re delivering for the American people,’ Harris responded. And the reality of it is that, unfortunately, very few of those who challenge our administration actually have a plan for America. You look at what we have accomplished, Margaret. We have created over 800,000 new manufacturing jobs in America, 13 million new jobs, unemployment at record lows. We have capped the cost of insulin for seniors at $35 a month. Capped the cost of prescription drugs on an annual basis at $2,000,’ Harris responded.

‘They’re honing in on you. Why do you think that is? How do you respond to those attacks? That’s not about policy, that’s about you,’ Brennan asked.

‘Listen, this is not new. There’s nothing new about that. I mean, listen, I am — in my career, I was a career prosecutor. I was the first woman elected district attorney of San Francisco, a major city in this country, and re-elected. I was the first woman attorney general of the second-largest Department of Justice in the United States and re-elected. I was a United States senator,’ Harris said. ‘I represented one in eight Americans, and I’m now Vice President of the United States. They feel the need to attack because they’re scared that we will win based on the merit of the work that Joe Biden and I, and our administration, has done.’

Harris went on to say that she is ‘prepared’ to serve as commander-in-chief if Biden is no longer fit to serve, but she insisted that Biden is ‘going to be fine.’

Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie have made the same criticism of the Biden-Harris ticket as DeSantis. Biden would be 86 by the end of a second term, and the Republicans say Harris would effectively be the president.

‘I want to be clear that I pray every night for Joe Biden’s good health, not only because he’s our president, but because of who our vice president is,’ Christie said recently.

Biden is the oldest person in American history to run for president, followed closely by former President Donald Trump, who is 77.

The majority of California voters oppose offering cash reparations to the descendants of African American slaves, a new poll has found.

Fifty-nine percent of California voters oppose cash payments, while 29% of voters support the idea, according to a UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll that was cosponsored by the Los Angeles Times. A total of four-in-ten respondents reported they ‘strongly’ oppose cash reparations.

The poll comes after Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill in 2020 that established the California Reparations Task Force, which was launched to explore how the state could lead the nation on a potential reparations program.

‘As a nation, we can only truly thrive when every one of us has the opportunity to thrive. Our painful history of slavery has evolved into structural racism and bias built into and permeating throughout our democratic and economic institutions,’ Newsom said at the time. ‘California’s rich diversity is our greatest asset, and we won’t turn away from this moment to make right the discrimination and disadvantages that Black Californians and people of color still face.’

The task force published its final report earlier this summer and recommended compensating qualifying Black residents up to $1 million in cash payments from the state, along with other benefits such as eliminating child support debt and free tuition to public colleges. The cash recommendations from the task force would address issues such as health disparities, housing discrimination and mass incarceration. 

The task force, for example, recommends that eligible descendants of slaves receive $13,619 for each year of California residency to address health disparities, and $2,352 for each year of residency from 1971 to 2020, when the war on drugs raged, to compensate for mass incarceration and over-policing. 

Broken down by political party, a whopping 90% Republicans said they oppose cash reparations, with only 5% saying they support it, according to the poll, while 43% of Democrats said they support cash reparations, and 41% said they oppose such a measure. Sixty-five percent of Independents reported they don’t support the idea, compared to 22% who do.

Respondents who oppose the idea most often cited two reasons: ‘It’s unfair to ask today’s taxpayers to pay for wrongs committed in the past,’ and ‘It’s not fair to single out one group for reparations when other racial and religious groups have been wronged in the past,’ according to the LA Times. 

The poll found that Black voters were the most likely demographic to support the idea, at 76%, compared to 16% who said they oppose it. Six in ten Asian and Latino voters said they oppose the idea, while nearly two-thirds of White voters reported the same, the LA Times reported.

Newsom’s office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on the poll.  

Fox News Digital’s Kristine Parks contributed to this report. 

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The George W. Bush Institute executive who organized a joint statement by 13 presidential libraries pledging to unify to preserve democracy was previously revealed as the person who leaked the infamous Steele dossier to BuzzFeed after the 2016 election.

David Kramer, the executive director of the George W. Bush Institute, spearheaded a statement Thursday signed by 13 presidential libraries dating back to Herbert Hoover.

‘By signing this statement, we reaffirm our commitment to the principles of democracy undergirding this great nation, protecting our freedom, and respecting our fellow citizens,’ the statement read, in part. ‘When united by these convictions, America is stronger as a country and an inspiration for others.’

Kramer told C-SPAN last week that he had organized the statement in order to ‘remind fellow Americans that we are a great nation rooted in the ideals of freedom and democracy, and that we are best when we show compassion and tolerance, pluralism and respect for others, and that united we’re a much stronger country.’

He told The Guardian that former President Bush ‘did see and signed off on this statement.’

Kramer previously made headlines in March 2019 after his deposition on the debunked Steele dossier was unsealed by a judge for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

The 35-page dossier by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele – controversially published in its raw form in January 2017 by BuzzFeed – alleged that former President Trump had colluded with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election over Hillary Clinton and claimed that the Kremlin had blackmail material on the former president, including a tape of prostitutes urinating on him in a Moscow hotel.

Kramer, a former State Department official and McCain associate, was working at the McCain Institute for International Leadership when he was deposed in December 2017 as part of a defamation suit by a Russian oligarch over BuzzFeed’s publication of the unverified dossier.

Kramer told the court at the time that he had met with Steele in London at the direction of the late Senator John McCain, R-Ariz. He said he later had given the dossier to multiple news outlets, including BuzzFeed, as well as to McCain, who had then given it to then-FBI Director James Comey in December 2016.

Comey separately briefed then-President Barack Obama and Trump on the dossier on January 6, 2017, just days before Trump’s inauguration.

The dossier served as the basis for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants against Trump campaign aide Carter Page later that year, and it was later revealed that it originally had been commissioned by a research firm hired by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. 

The dossier has since been repeatedly discredited and debunked, including by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year investigation, which found no evidence of collusion.

The Bush Institute did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley slammed President Biden for recently sending a handful of cabinet members to China, arguing it was ’embarrassing’ for the U.S. 

‘China has been practically preparing for war with us for years,’ Haley told Jake Tapper on CNN’s ‘State of the Union’ Sunday. ‘They have killed more Americans than the Iraq … Afghanistan and Vietnam wars combined with their sending fentanyl over. I mean, how much more has to happen for Biden to realize you don’t send cabinet members over to China to appease them?

‘You start getting serious with China and say, ‘We’re not going to put up with it.” 

Haley was responding to the Biden administration sending Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on trips to China in recent weeks in a bid to improve relations with the country. 

‘They keep sending different cabinet officials over, Jake, and it’s embarrassing,’ she told Tapper. ‘You sent Raimondo right after she got hacked, her emails got hacked by the Chinese,’ Haley added, citing how Chinese hackers breached Raimondo’s email in July. 

Haley argued that China has purchased more than 400,000 acres on U.S. soil and has stolen billions worth of intellectual property from the U.S., while American law enforcement agencies are using Chinese-made drones to surveil the nation. 

‘Ninety percent of our law enforcement drones are Chinese. So, while Americans freaked out over the Chinese spy ballon, just imagine what’s happening with all these many spy balloons,’ she told Tapper. 

The former ambassador to the United Nations added that Biden should take a much stronger approach with China and not dispatch officials in an act to ‘appease’ the adversary. 

‘We should say, ‘You’re not buying any more U.S. soil, and we’re going to take back what you’ve already bought.’ We’re gonna go and make sure that we don’t have Chinese infiltration in our universities because our universities are going to have to pick between Chinese money or American money,’ she said. 

‘We’re going to end all normal trade relations with China until they stop killing Americans with fentanyl. And then we’re going to build up our military because China now has the strongest naval fleet in the world.’ 

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California Governor Gavin Newsom dodged responsibility for allowing the film industry to reopen while keeping churches closed in his state during the COVID-19 pandemic, instead blaming the collective ‘we’ for such decisions.

Newsom was confronted Sunday by ‘Meet the Press’ anchor Chuck Todd about his lockdown-heavy approach to the pandemic that faced so much criticism that it sparked a recall election against him.

‘You found a way to allow the motion picture industry and the movie industry to get back to work, but you didn’t allow people to grieve together at funerals or at churches,’ Todd argued. ‘This is this anger between the populace and the elites: Here you prioritize this industry, but you were tougher on those that just wanted to go worship.’

‘I think there’s a lot of humility,’ Newsom responded. ‘And we didn’t know what we didn’t know. And it was hardly ‘I’, it was ‘we’ collectively. I think all of us, in terms of our collective wisdom, we’ve evolved.’

‘So think about what you ended up collectively prioritizing,’ Todd fired back. ‘You prioritized an industry, one specific one, but then didn’t prioritize ones whose maybe values you didn’t connect with.’

Newsom said he wasn’t the only one who locked down his state, comparing his actions to those of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

‘All of us went through a process,’ he said. ‘I mean, there was few states that didn’t go on aggressive lockdowns, including Florida’s Ron DeSantis.’

Newsom acknowledged that the criticism he’s facing now over his pandemic approach is ‘legitimate, in terms of reflection.’ 

While the governor said he would have done ‘everything’ differently, he declined to name a specific example.

‘We would have done everything differently, because we would have understood outdoors as an example,’ he said.

Todd interjected, ‘You wouldn’t have shut schools down, you would have tried to figure out how to maybe have outdoor classrooms?’

Newsom refused to answer the question and again pointed to Florida’s response.

‘Understanding the spread in the context of how it spread very differently indoors than outdoors is one perfect example of what a lot of us would have done differently, including, again, in red states that shut down their beaches in the early part of the pandemic,’ he said.

Sunday was Todd’s last time hosting ‘Meet the Press’ after he announced he was stepping down in June.

While DeSantis, like most governors across the country, followed then-President Trump’s stay-at-home guidance and briefly shut down the state of Florida, he was one of the first to reopen the state, which brought on a wave of Democratic backlash.

Newsom was the first governor in the country to issue a stay-at-home order, and he was the last governor to reopen schools. He also frequently faced backlash for breaking his own rules during the lockdowns, including mingling without a mask with California Medical Association officials at the ritzy French Laundry restaurant in Napa in November 2020.

That controversy came only one month after Newsom outraged parents by sending his four kids back to in-person learning at a private school in Sacramento County when public schools in the county were still closed.

In February 2021, Newsom filmed a TikTok video inside a Fresno restaurant while in-person dining was still banned. The governor later defended himself for participating in the video, saying that he hadn’t eaten at the restaurant.

RYE, N.H. – Sen. Tim Scott was anything but the loudest voice at the first Republican presidential nomination debate, but that’s just fine with the conservative lawmaker from South Carolina.

‘The loudest voices too often say too little,’ Scott said in a Fox News interview this past week in what was a clear jab at some of his rivals for the GOP nomination.

Scott, a rising star in the GOP, has been spotlighting an uplifting conservative message as he seeks his party’s presidential nomination. And because he mostly avoided the numerous verbal fistfights at the first debate on Aug. 23, he rarely enjoyed the glare of the primetime spotlight.

The senator — who didn’t target his fellow candidates and wasn’t targeted by any of them — grabbed far less speaking time than most of his onstage rivals and appeared to fade into the background amid the jousting.

Scott repeatedly said the past two weeks that he was the ‘adult in the room’ at the first showdown and that the crossfire between the other candidates on the stage only helps the Democrats and the media.

Scott insists that ‘having an optimistic, positive message, I think is necessary not only for us to be successful in a primary but for us to be successful in the general election.’

And Scott — who was interviewed by Fox News after headlining a ‘No BS Backyard BBQ’ series event in Rye, New Hampshire, hosted by former GOP Sen. Scott Brown — emphasized that in order to win the White House ‘we’re going to have a conservative who’s optimistic, positive, anchored in conservatism, that has a backbone. That is the recipe to persuade not only our base but also independents to join the team and save the nation from the road to socialism.’

At an event in New Hampshire — which holds the first primary and second overall contest in the Republican presidential nominating calendar — right after the first debate, Scott acknowledged that ‘following the rules does not give you more time.’

‘So, lesson learned,’ he added.

But looking ahead to the next debate, a FOX Business-hosted showdown on Sept. 27 at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, the senator said, ‘I’m going to remember that lesson, but I’m also going to comport myself in the same fashion.’

And in a Fox News Channel interview on Wednesday, Scott reiterated that substance will drive his debate performance: ‘I’ll provide the American people with an adult in the room.’

It’s the same message from his campaign, which tells Fox News their candidate’s staying the course.

But plenty of pundits and strategists say Scott missed out on a breakout moment at the first showdown and wasted an opportunity.

‘I was very disappointed in his performance,’ longtime New Hampshire-based Republican consultant Mike Dennehy told Fox News.

Dennehy, a veteran of multiple GOP presidential campaigns who remains neutral this cycle, said, ‘[T]o me, it’s not that he didn’t attack anyone. He just wasn’t engaging and forceful. He had what appeared to be rehearsed platitudes.’

‘I absolutely appreciate Scott being the happy conservative warrior. I think that’s important in this race,’ Dennehy said. ‘He has one of the best images of all the candidates.’

But he argued that ‘Tim Scott needs more than just being the happy conservative warrior. He’s stuck. He’s running in place and in neutral right now.’

While Scott crisscrosses the early voting states in the weeks between the two debates, he enjoys a campaign war-chest advantage over many of his rivals.

As Fox News reported last month, his campaign’s shelling out $8 million to run ads in the early voting states, with a Scott-aligned super PAC dishing out $40 million to run spots.

Sources in Scott’s political orbit tout that the senator ‘has the message and the resources to stay competitive’ in the months leading up to the start of the presidential nominating calendar.

Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.

Two Republican members of the New Mexico State House of Representatives are calling for Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to be impeached after she temporarily suspended open and concealed carry across Albuquerque and the surrounding Bernalillo County for at least 30 days.

Grisham on Thursday said she needed to respond to recent gun-related deaths, which include an 11-year-old boy who was shot and killed while outside a minor league baseball stadium on Wednesday night.

The suspension of open and concealed carry was classified as an emergency public health order.

‘When New Mexicans are afraid to be in crowds, to take their kids to school, to leave a baseball game — when their very right to exist is threatened by the prospect of violence at every turn — something is very wrong,’ Lujan Grisham said in a statement.

Republican state Reps. Stefani Lord and John Block announced on Saturday they are calling for the governor to be impeached.

‘I am calling on counsel to begin the impeachment process against Governor Grisham,’ Lord said. ‘This is an abhorrent attempt at imposing a radical, progressive agenda on an unwilling populous. Rather than addressing crime at its core, Governor Grisham is restricting the rights of law-abiding gun owners. Even Grisham believes this emergency order won’t prohibit criminals from carrying or using weapons; a basic admission that this will only put New Mexicans in danger as they won’t be able to defend themselves from violent crime.’ 

Speaking with Fox News Digital, Lord said that Grisham is a ‘rogue governor.’

‘She put this emergency order together and it violates her oath. And she’s supposed to be protecting and defending the rights of New Mexico, she can’t just raise her hand one day and say, I promise to uphold this oath and promised to protect the people of New Mexico and the Constitution, and then just one day decide, oh, just kidding,’ Lord said.

Block told Fox News Digital that there ‘is no such thing as a state public health emergency exception to the U.S. Constitution.’

‘It is an absolutely flagrant attack on law-abiding citizens who she is targeting with this order, and she is trying to force litigation and waste more taxpayer dollars while doing it, because New Mexicans are the ones that are going to have to pay the legal bills on this, not her personally.’

The National Association for Gun Rights and Foster Haines, a resident of Albuquerque, announced on Saturday they filed a lawsuit against Grisham and New Mexico Secretary of Health Patrick Allen, arguing the emergency order is unconstitutional. They are asking for a temporary restraining order against the measure to be issued.

‘Gov. Luhan Grisham is throwing up a middle finger to the Constitution and the Supreme Court,’ said Dudley Brown, President of the National Association for Gun Rights.

‘Gov. Luhan Grisham is throwing up a middle finger to the Constitution and the Supreme Court’

Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., weighed in on Grisham’s executive order, saying it’s unconstitutional.

‘I support gun safety laws. However, this order from the Governor of New Mexico violates the U.S. Constitution. No state in the union can suspend the federal Constitution. There is no such thing as a state public health emergency exception to the U.S. Constitution,’ Lieu said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

David Hogg, who advocates for stricter gun laws, said on X ‘I support gun safety but there is no such thing as a state public health emergency exception to the U.S. Constitution.’

Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen said after the order was issued that he has concerns.

‘While I understand and appreciate the urgency, the temporary ban challenges the foundation of our constitution, which I swore an oath to uphold,’ Allen said. ‘I am wary of placing my deputies in positions that could lead to civil liability conflicts, as well as the potential risks posed by prohibiting law-abiding citizens from their constitutional right to self-defense.’

Fox News’ Landon Mion contributed to this report.

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Rep. Nancy Pelosi told a reporter Friday that she’s mainly running for office to raise money for herself and other Democrats.

Speaking with outlet Politico, the 83-year-old representative from California said her veteran status in Congress is a major asset for raising funds.

‘My focus is the House and presidency; you’re in a stronger position as a candidate,’ Pelosi told Politico in the interview. ‘You may not know this, but if you’re not a candidate, you really can’t raise money for yourself. And raising money for myself enables me to spend that on other people.’

‘For the House Democrats, though, I needed to be able to still raise significant money for them as a candidate,’ she added.

Pelosi declared her candidacy for her state’s 11th Congressional District representing San Francisco in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. It would be her 20th term in the House of Representatives.

She told the outlet Friday that she has been invigorated by the 2024 election cycle and prospect of taking back the House — and perhaps defeating former President Donald Trump, whom she would not address by name.

‘I feel so excited about the prospect of engaging people in this, I don’t want to use the word ‘fight,’ but this decision for our country,’ she said. ‘I feel I have a leverage, an influence, it’s not power — you know, I had power as speaker — it’s influence and that I shouldn’t underutilize it.’

Pelosi said her decision to run again for office has the full support of her husband.

‘I wouldn’t be doing it if he were objecting,’ she said. ‘He’s apolitical, but he knows what is at stake.’

First elected to Congress in 1987, the Democratic leader made history becoming the first female speaker in 2007, and in 2019 she regained the speaker’s gavel.

Pelosi stepped down from serving as leader of the House Democratic Caucus last year, passing the torch to current House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. She now serves among the rank-and-file, though Democratic lawmakers have dubbed her as ‘Speaker Emerita’ out of respect for her more-than-35-year tenure in the House.

Her announcement puts to rest any suggestion of retirement, though it comes amid concerns over the advanced age of numerous elected officials, including octogenarian Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., 90-year-old Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and President Biden, who is 80.

Fox News Digital’s Chris Pandolfo contributed to this report.

FIRST ON FOX: Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a Democratic candidate in the closely watched 2024 U.S. Senate race in Michigan, has had a change of heart toward one of her Republican opponents who she previously praised and said she ‘would never’ run against.

‘It’s important Michiganders understand exactly who Mike Rogers is: He was on the Trump national security transition team, and was in talks to be Trump’s FBI Director, but then got fired. Then he became a critic of Trump,’ Slotkin said in a Wednesday fundraising email, just hours after former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers launched his campaign.

‘Regardless of his record on Trump, he’s a true conservative. He supports an extreme nationwide abortion ban with no exceptions for rape, incest, or common miscarriage; he voted to cut Social Security and Medicare; and, with an A rating from the NRA, he voted to *expand* access to guns. He represented a version of my current congressional district, 4 years before I flipped it – but with a different set of values,’ she added.

Her emailed statement ran in stark contrast to her previous praise of Rogers, including that she was ‘proud’ to have him representing her district. Slotkin previously served as a CIA officer and briefed Rogers while he served as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, which he led until his retirement in 2015.

‘I remember being kind of proud that he was the congressman from back home, and Michigan, and had a very strong national security background,’ Slotkin told the Lansing City Pulse in June 2018 amid her first congressional run.

‘I tell people very openly that I would never be running in this race if Mike Rogers were the congressman because he had offices all over the district. He was engaging people. He had a strong presence on Capitol Hill that was bringing things back to the district. And that, to me, is the core thing. I don’t have to agree with everything he believed in to know that he was working hard for the district,’ she added.

On another occasion in July 2018, Slotkin praised Rogers as ‘different’ than his Republican successor, then-Rep. Mike Bishop, and lauded his maintaining an office in what she called the ‘populist’ part of Michigan’s 8th Congressional District.

Slotkin ultimately defeated Bishop in her 2018 race and represented Rogers’ former district until the state’s congressional map was redrawn following the 2020 census. She has represented the 7th Congressional District since.

When reached for comment, Rogers’ campaign was appreciative of Slotkin’s prior support. 

‘Mike Rogers is working hard to earn the support of every Michigander. We’re happy to hear the congresswoman agrees that Mike is the most qualified candidate for the U.S. Senate,’ campaign communications director Chris Gustafson said.

Slotkin’s campaign did not respond to Fox’s request for comment.

The race is expected to be one of the most closely watched of the 2024 election cycle, and will likely help determine which party ultimately controls the Senate. 

Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.