Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, unloaded on ‘radical left elitists’ as he defended his vote against President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan. 

Golden’s leadership as co-chair of the moderate House Democratic Blue Dog Coalition was spotlighted by the Maine Beacon Friday after financial disclosures showed the group got a donation from student loan servicing giant Sallie Mae about two weeks after he voted against Biden’s plan. 

He was one of just two Democrats to do so in the lower chamber. 

‘Sadly, this is what radical leftist elites are learning about ‘democracy’ these days — silence and destroy anyone who disagrees with your views or goals. I stand by my vote and my opposition to forking out $10,000 to people who freely chose to attend college,’ Golden said in a statement posted to X, formerly Twitter.

He did not directly address the Maine Beacon or Sallie Mae’s donation, though he linked the relevant article in his post. Golden dismissed the scrutiny as a product of social media outrage. 

‘The Twitterati can keep bemoaning their privileged status and demanding handouts all they want, but as far as I’m concerned, if they want free money for college, they can join the Marines and serve the country like I, and so many others, have in the past, and many more will in the future,’ Golden said.

‘If they want a career and hard skills without college debt, they should join a union and enter an apprenticeship. But if they choose to attend college, they can pay back their loans just like working class people pay back home mortgages, car loans, and many other expenses that people choose to take out loans for.’

A House Republican-led bill aimed at repealing Biden’s student loan proposal, which has since been struck down by the Supreme Court, passed the House nearly along party lines in May. 

Golden and his fellow Blue Dog co-chair, Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp-Perez, D-Wash., were the only Democrats who voted with the GOP to pass it. The measure also passed the Senate with some Democratic support but was eventually vetoed by the president.

On June 14, the Blue Dog Coalition received a $5,000 donation from Sallie Mae, according to public financial disclosures. It’s the maximum amount allowed under current law. 

Biden has pledged his administration would pursue alternative pathways aimed at student debt forgiveness.

James Buckley, a former U.S. senator from New York and judge on the U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit, died Friday at 100 years old.

Buckley, the older brother of National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr., is one of the few people to have served in the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the Federal government.

The former judge died at a hospital in Washington, D.C., according to his son, David Buckley, of Arlington, Virginia.

Buckley was born on March 9, 1923. He went to the Millbrook School in New York and then on to Yale, where he majored in English. He served in the Navy and fought in the Far East during World War II. Later, he went to Yale Law School and became a corporate lawyer. 

In 1953, Jim Buckley married Ann Frances Coole, who died in 2011.

His illustrious political career began when he managed his brother’s mayoral campaign in 1965.

He went on to become senator in 1970 as part of the Conservative Party of New York.

Buckley is famous for challenging campaign finance laws in the wake of a post-Watergate world in the landmark Supreme Court case Buckley v. Valeo. 

In March 1974, Buckley shocked Republicans by calling on President Richard Nixon to resign and to pull the nation ‘out of the Watergate swamp’ and save the office of the presidency.

Buckley lost his senate seat in a reelection campaign to Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan in 1976, the same year he officially switched to the Republican Party. 

He later served in the Reagan administration as an undersecretary for security assistance in the U.S. Department of State and was later nominated by Reagan to a position as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Maui’s Emergency Management Agency administrator announced his resignation Thursday, a day after getting questioned about why the sirens did not sound during the devastating Lahaina wildfires, according to reports.

Hawaii News Now reported that Herman Andaya claimed he was resigning for health reasons.

When the death toll rose to 111 on Wednesday, Andaya defended not sounding the sirens during the blaze, saying authorities were ‘afraid that people would have gone mauka,’ a Hawaiian navigational term that could mean toward the mountains or inland.

‘If that was the case, then they would have gone into the fire,’ he added.

Honolulu Civil Beat reported Wednesday that Andaya was not an expert in emergency management when he was brought on in 2017 to lead the Maui Emergency Management agency.

The article claimed his educational background is in political science and the law, not disaster preparedness or response. He also never worked a full-time job in emergency management.

On Tuesday, he told Civil Beat as chief of staff to former mayor Alan Arakawa, he assisted in emergency operations.

When he was hired in 2017, Andaya edged out 40 other candidates for the position, Maui Now reported.

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump are seeking a trial date of April 2026 to face charges that he conspired to overturn the 2020 election. 

The suggested date would be years after the Justice Department’s recommendation last week that the trial should begin Jan. 2, 2024.

In a filing, Trump’s lawyers say the years-long delay is necessary both because of the unprecedented nature of the case and the ‘massive’ amount of information — 11.5 million pages — that they have to review. They said they would have to review about 100,000 pages per day in order to meet the Justice Department’s proposed trial date.

‘If we were to print and stack 11.5 million pages of documents, with no gap between pages, at 200 pages per inch, the result would be a tower of paper stretching nearly 5,000 feet into the sky. That is taller than the Washington Monument, stacked on top of itself eight times, with nearly a million pages to spare,’ the defense lawyers wrote.

The question of when the trial will begin is ultimately up to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is expected to set at least a tentative trial date during an Aug. 28 court hearing.

Trump’s 2024 calendar was already expected to be packed with court dates and campaign appearances.

He is confronting both a presidential primary season and four criminal cases in four different cities. Next March 25, he is set for trial in a New York state case related to an alleged hush money payment to a porn actor. 

Trump and 18 others were charged in Fulton County, Georgia earlier this week with trying to undo the results of that state’s presidential election. Prosecutors there have proposed a March 4 trial date — a day before Super Tuesday when the most delegates are at stake in the primary contest to decide the next Republican presidential nominee. 

Additionally, a federal judge in Florida has set a May 20 trial date on charges that Trump illegally hoarded classified documents and concealed them from investigators.

Later Thursday, Trump canceled a planned press conference in Bedminster, New Jersey on Monday. The former president said he was going to present a report vindicating his claims that the 2020 election was stolen. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

FIRST ON FOX: Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., is calling on Congress to investigate Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, accusing her of conducting her court with open bias and partisanship in handling the cases of people linked to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Chutkan is also the judge overseeing the U.S. government’s case against former President Trump for allegedly attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Before that, she made headlines for dealing out sentences to members of the Jan. 6 crowd that were higher than those recommended by federal prosecutors. In his resolution, Gaetz also accused her of supporting the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, some of which were violent, while at the same time openly criticizing the Capitol riot.

He’s introducing a resolution in the House to both censure Chutkan and direct the House Judiciary Committee to probe her conduct.

‘It is deeply concerning to see a United States District Court judge show such blatant impropriety from the bench,’ Gaetz told Fox News Digital. ‘Judge Tanya Chutkan’s impracticality of her tough sentencing of Jan. 6th defendants, despite openly supporting the violent Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, showcases not only a lack of impartiality but also a disregard for the sacred duty of a judge to uphold justice fairly.’

One of the instances that Gaetz’s resolution zeroes in on is an Oct. 4, 2021, sentencing hearing during which Chutkan disagreed with a comparison made between the Capitol riot and the protests after George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020.

‘People gathered all over the country last year to protest the violent murder by the police of an unarmed man … to compare the actions of people protesting, mostly peacefully, for civil rights to those of a violent mob seeking to overthrow the lawfully elected government is a false equivalency and ignores a very real danger that the Jan. 6 riot posed to the foundation of our democracy,’ Gaetz cited Chutkan as saying.

Fox News Digital reached out to the D.C. court for comment but did not immediately hear back.

Gaetz also said the man she was sentencing at the time, Matthew Mazzocco, ‘was a nonviolent offender who spent merely 12 minutes on Capitol grounds and who urged others to remain peaceful on January 6, 2021,’ according to the resolution text. Chutkan had sentenced Mazzocco to 45 days in jail over the misdemeanor charge.

Trump and his allies in Congress and elsewhere have accused Chutkan of behaving politically as the former president continues to deny guilt in all of the four criminal indictments against him. They have lodged similar accusations against Special Counsel Jack Smith and Biden administration officials in the Justice Department.

Tensions around the case are flaring; a Texas woman was arrested recently for threatening to kill Chutkan if Trump was not reelected in 2024, according to multiple reports.

This is the third of a three-part series breaking down the Fox News Power Rankings ahead of the first 2024 GOP presidential debate. Read part one and part two here.

This edition of the Fox News Power Rankings for the GOP primary looks closely at each candidate’s early state polling, visits and field operations, then their national polling and fundraising positions. Today: ‘The outsiders.’

Asa Hutchinson

Asa Hutchinson lacks goodwill with both the moderate wing of the party and the hard-right base, leaving him without a constituency.

The former governor of Arkansas has a long list of conservative credentials. He was a U.S. House Republican, served in the George W. Bush administration and once chaired a National Rifle Association task force about school shootings. His occasional Trump criticism, however, and a decision to veto a bill outlawing transgender surgery for minors, have shut him out from Trump-friendly voters.

The Trump criticism should earn him some praise from moderate or persuadable Republicans (and some crossover donors), but his comments lack the frequency and punch of Chris Christie, or the authority of Mike Pence.

Hutchinson has gained a minimum of 1% in enough RNC-approved polls to make it to the August debate, but that 1% is frequently his ceiling as well. In fact, Hutchinson has only received more than 1% in one national poll, from any public pollster, since July.

More troubling is the lack of donor enthusiasm. He told CBS News last week he was ‘close to halfway there’ on reaching 40,000 donors, indicating limited grassroots support, even though he was among the earliest candidates to announce a presidential run.

Will Hurd

Will Hurd fits neatly into the moderate lane of the party and has an impressive résumé, but the lane isn’t wide enough for him to get significant support.

One of the last candidates to join the race, the former Texas congressman is a bona fide center-right candidate with moderate positions on spending, immigration and health care. He once livestreamed a road trip across America with Democrat Beto O’Rourke. He brings foreign policy experience to the table as a former CIA officer and was once the only Black Republican in the lower house.

The problem is that Hurd’s brand of solutions-based centrism has fallen out of favor in the modern GOP, with only about a quarter of the party identifying themselves as moderate. Even fewer favor working with the Democrats to find common ground.

There is also significant overlap between moderate and non-Trump primary voters, which leaves Hurd lurking in Christie’s shadow.

Like Christie, Hurd’s best pathway goes through New Hampshire, but he received just 1% in the July UNH poll and has shown no signs of growth since then. He also lacks the donors and the bankroll to improve his name awareness.

Francis Suarez

Francis Suarez might be the kind of candidate to take the GOP into the future, but his inexperience is an issue. 

The 45-year-old mayor of Miami is running on his work in the Magic City, calling out its economic growth, low unemployment and balanced budget. He is also the only Latino candidate in the race, making him an ideal ambassador for the party as it courts more Hispanic voters in 2024.

Since joining the field, Suarez has faced allegations of corruption related to his real estate investments and questions about the scope of his mayoral work since the city is largely run by the Miami-Dade County government.

It culminated in a damaging interview with Hugh Hewitt in July, when Suarez shrugged off a question about the Uyghur population in China. He later said he didn’t recognize the pronunciation.

Suarez reached 1% in our Fox Business Poll last month in Iowa, the state where he has also spent the most time on the ground since announcing. He is also sending $20 gift cards to new donors, which helps get him to the debate but depletes his war chest.

Larry Elder

Larry Elder has the messaging and skills to make a serious bid for the nomination but isn’t invested in this race. 

The longtime talk radio host has a story to tell about ‘liberal city values,’ using his show as a launching pad to talk about rising crime and the high cost of living under President Biden. These are popular themes among GOP primary voters, and as a longtime resident of Los Angeles, he can speak about them with more authority than any other candidate.

But Elder is doing that from the city itself, where he is tied down with a full-time broadcasting job. He has barely traveled to the early voting states and only has five staff members across the country. His strongest competitors have hired dozens in those early states alone.

This lack of investment is reflected in his polling and second-quarter cash-on-hand figures, which are the weakest in the field.

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) must consider whether it needs to set rules to prevent political campaigns from using artificial intelligence to create ads intended to deceive voters as the 2024 election cycle moves into full swing, an AI image analyst said.

‘The FEC will need to consider whether and how to regulate a campaign’s use of manipulated media in the service of its own candidate,’ Hany Farid, a University of California, Berkeley professor, wrote in a recent opinion piece for The Hill. ‘Manipulating the photographic record is only the first step in spreading lies.’

Presidential campaigns have already started using artificial intelligence to deceptively manipulate their campaign ads. Most notably, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign used AI-generated audio and video to criticize former President Trump’s policies, such as one portraying a fictional image of Trump affectionately hugging Anthony Fauci. 

U.C. BERKELEY PROFESSOR WARNS ABOUT DEEPFAKE AI IMAGES AND VIDEOS: 

‘The issue, however, is not fundamentally one of AI or technology, but of the standards to which we want to hold our current and future leaders,’ Farid said. ‘To this end, it seems eminently reasonable to insist that our politicians be truthful.’

A PAC supporting DeSantis created an ad with AI-generated audio mimicking Trump’s voice criticizing Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds. The AI voice appears to have been based on comments Trump wrote on Truth Social but never said aloud.

Another video, distributed by Trump’s campaign, used artificial intelligence to recreate DeSantis’ 2024 presidential announcement on Twitter. The parody featured a Twitter Space with fictional guests, including billionaire Democratic donor George Soros, World Economic Forum Chair Klaus Schwab, former Vice President Dick Cheney, Adolph Hitler, the devil and the FBI.

‘The disinformation campaigns are now going to be fueled with generative AI audio, images and videos,’ Farid told Fox News in April. ‘Anytime I see the president speak or a candidate speak or a CEO speak or a reporter speak, now there’s this lingering doubt.’

The FEC advanced a petition last week, filed by the nonprofit Public Citizen, which seeks to include deceptive AI-generated content in the commission’s ban against ‘fraudulent misrepresentation’ in campaign ads. The FEC will consider additional action after the public comment period ends Oct. 16.

Lawmakers have also told Fox News they are concerned over how AI will influence elections, particularly the 2024 presidential race. 

‘Right now, we’re in the Wild West,’ Connecticut Democrat Sen. Richard Blumenthal told Fox News in late July. ‘AI enables, not only in effect, appropriation of creative products … but also impersonation, deepfakes, a lot of bad stuff.’

Meanwhile, the AI Accountability Act is making its way through the House. The bill, if it becomes law, would direct Commerce Department officials to meet with industry stakeholders and produce a report within 18 months of passage regarding threats from AI systems.

‘The landscape of photographic manipulation is long and varied and will continue to evolve beyond today’s generative AI,’ Farid wrote. ‘The power of generative AI, when coupled with the reach and speed of social media’s distribution and amplification, is a real threat to an information ecosystem already polluted with half-truths, lies and conspiracies.’

To watch Digital Originals’ latest interview with Farid, click here. 

Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy shared a list of what he called 10 truths to social media Thursday, with references to faith, gender, and capitalism.

Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur who is seeking the Republican nomination, shared the ideals on X, starting with, ‘God is real’ and ‘There are only two genders’ — the latter being a contentious claim by those on the Left.

The list also promotes the importance of fossil fuels, condemns ‘reverse racism,’ defends the role of parents in choosing their own children’s education, and boasts the U.S. Constitution as the ‘strongest guarantor of freedoms in history.’

While many voters may have started the 2024 presidential campaign unfamiliar with Ramaswamy, some polls have the rising Silicon Valley star in the top three among GOP candidates, behind former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

‘TRUTH,’ Ramaswamy said in all-caps, starting the post on X.

His list followed:

1. God is real.
2. There are two genders.
3. Human flourishing requires fossil fuels.
4. Reverse racism is racism.
5. An open border is no border.
6. Parents determine the education of their children.
7. The nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind.
8. Capitalism lifts people up from poverty.
9. There are three branches of the U.S. government, not four.
10. The U.S. Constitution is the strongest guarantor of freedoms in history.

He posted the list ahead of an event in California and as he continues a barnstorming blitz in several states before next week’s first Republican primary debate in Wisconsin, which will be hosted by Fox News.

During the event at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum located in Yorba Linda, Ramaswamy shared details of his upbringing and his concern that the American Dream may not exist for further generations.

‘My parents came to this country 40 years ago with no money in a single generation,’ he said at the event. ‘I have gone on to found multi-billion dollar companies and did it while marrying my wife, Apoorva, and raising our two sons. That is the American dream, and I am deeply worried that that American dream will not exist for my two sons and their generation.’

Ramaswamy also said the country was in ‘the middle of a national identity crisis’ where traditional ideals of ‘Faith, patriotism, hard work and family… have disappeared only to be replaced by new secular religions in American life [such as] wokeism, transgenderism, climate-ism, chauvinism, globalism, depression, anxiety, fentanyl, [and] suicide.’

‘These are symptoms of a deeper void of purpose and meaning in our country,’ he added.

Ramaswamy, 38, also said he and other millennials were ‘hungry for a cause.’

‘We are starved for purpose and meaning and identity at a time in our national history when the things that used to fill our void. Faith, patriotism, belief in God, nation. The things we talked about when those have disappeared. That leaves a moral vacuum in its wake. And I think that that presents our opportunity, not speaking to conservatives, I’m speaking to Americans. That is our opportunity to step up and to fill that void with a vision of what it means to be an American today,’ the candidate said in California.

Ramaswamy will join his other 2024 contenders for the Republican debate at Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee on August 23, 2023. The debate will be moderated by Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum.

–>

The firearms industry took a blow Thursday when a federal court ruled that New Jersey can sue gun manufacturers under the state’s ‘public nuisance’ law. 

A three-judge panel on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that a legal challenge brought against the law by the National Sports Shooting Foundation (NSSF) was premature. Though the court acknowledged the law is somewhat vague about what conduct can trigger a lawsuit from the state, it nevertheless said the firearms industry ‘jumped the gun’ by filing a legal challenge before demonstrating injury. 

‘The National Shooting Sports Foundation challenges a new state gun law as violating its members’ constitutional rights. But we see little evidence that enforcement is looming,’ wrote Judge Stephanos Bibas, a former President Trump appointee. 

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, signed the ‘public nuisance’ law in July 2022, clearing a path for the state’s attorney general to file lawsuits against local gun businesses based on an exception to the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), which broadly protects the industry from liability.

Four months after it took effect, NSSF sued to block it, claiming the law runs afoul of the federal statute. In January, a district court granted the NSSF’s bid for a preliminary injunction, saying the law was in ‘direct conflict’ with the PLCAA.

However, since NSSF sued before New Jersey had a chance to enforce its law, the 3rd Circuit panel held that NSSF’s complaint was hypothetical.

‘With so much still vague and uncertain, a court should not weigh in,’ Bibas wrote.

In a statement, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin said he was ‘thrilled’ with the court’s decision. 

‘Our law never should have been enjoined, and now it will be back in effect in its entirety,’ Platkin said. ‘This law is an important public safety tool, which is why I created the Nation’s first statewide office dedicated to holding accountable those whose unlawful conduct causes bloodshed, and fuels the gun violence epidemic, for the sake of their bottom line.’

NSSF General Counsel Lawrence Keane said in a statement the group will file another complaint against New Jersey should the ‘public nuisance’ law be enforced against the gun industry. 

‘While we respectfully disagree with the court’s decision on our pre-enforcement challenge, it is important to note the court did not say New Jersey’s law does not violate the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act; it clearly does,’ Keane said.

New Jersey was among the first states to pass a law opening the gun industry up to litigation in response to several mass shootings and the Supreme Court’s landmark 2022 decision broadly expanding gun rights. Blue state governors in Colorado, Hawaii, Washington and Illinois have signed similar laws in recent months.

The 3rd Circuit’s ruling is the first time a federal appellate court has weighed in on one of these laws.

Reuters contributed to this report. 

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., has been rated the most bipartisan member of the U.S. Senate, as he faces what could be his toughest re-election battle yet in deep-red West Virginia.

The centrist Democrat tops a list of all 100 senators compiled by the Common Ground Committee, a nonprofit dedicated to highlighting bipartisanship in U.S. politics. He’s followed by Sens. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., and Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., and Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va.

It comes against the backdrop of a public fallout between Manchin and the White House, as the former accuses President Biden of misusing the bipartisan Inflation Reduction Act to promote his progressive climate policy goals. 

Meanwhile, Republicans have used Manchin’s support for the legislation, which was key to its passage, as a political cudgel. 

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Senate GOP’s campaign arm, successfully recruited West Virginia’s popular governor Jim Justice to run for Manchin’s seat in 2024. 

Manchin has not yet said what he’ll do for the next election, but he has not ruled out running for his seat again or even for president under a third-party label. He recently told West Virginia Metro News’ Hoppy Kercheval that he’s ‘seriously’ considered shedding his Democrat status in favor of filing as an Independent. 

The only statewide Democrat officeholder left in West Virginia, Manchin has reached across the aisle more than any other senator, scoring an 83 out of 100 on the Common Ground Scorecard. The ranking weighs legislative action, media access and communications, among other factors.

Among members of Congress overall, Manchin ranks 15th. The top spot is shared by Reps. Don Bacon, R-Neb., and Dean Phillips, D-Minn., who both scored 104 points. 

But they’re all outliers – overall, the average score for the House is 27, and it’s 36 in the Senate. 

Forty-one lawmakers scored zero out of 100. Two saw their rankings go into negative territory, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz.