RYE, N.H. – A seemingly more aggressive Gov. Ron DeSantis appears to be stepping up his criticism of 2024 rival Donald Trump for what he charges was the former president’s failure to deliver on campaign promises during his four years in the White House.

But DeSantis, who’s seen Trump’s double-digit lead over him expand in the two months since the conservative governor from Florida launched his GOP presidential nomination campaign, says he won’t match Trump insult for insult by taking part in ‘name-calling’ on the campaign trail.

‘I don’t like the name-calling. I don’t do it. I don’t think it’s effective, and I think it turns off a lot of voters,’ DeSantis said in a one-on-one interview with Fox News Digital on Sunday in New Hampshire, the state that holds the first primary and second overall contest in the Republican presidential nominating calendar.

DeSantis is halfway through a jam-packed four-day swing through New Hampshire, which directly followed three busy days on the campaign trail in Iowa, whose caucuses lead of the GOP schedule. 

DeSantis is aiming to rebound and change the narrative in the wake of staffing layoffs by his campaign last week in a move by top officials to ‘streamline’ the governor’s 2024 White House bid.

In his Fox News interview, in a gaggle with reporters, and taking questions from the crowd as he headlined the latest edition of former Republican Sen. Scott Brown’s No BS Backyard BBQ series with the GOP presidential contenders, DeSantis charged that Trump didn’t get ‘the job done.’

‘We will make sure of course that the differences between the two of us are aired out in terms of being willing to follow through on the promises and actually get the job done, which I’ve done in Florida across the board,’ DeSantis emphasized.

And he argued that Trump ‘has made promises – draining the swamp. Having Mexico build the border wall. Locking Hillary [Clinton] up and eliminating the debt. He did not follow through on those promises. That’s just the reality.’

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung, responding, charged in a statement to Fox News that ‘Ron DeSantis is nothing more than an off-brand, bootleg version of America First. No mater how much time he spends cosplaying as President Trump, he will never be him or achieve a hundredth of what was achieved during the Trump Administration. Ron DeSantis should pack his knapsack and hitchhike his way back home to focus on the serious issues facing the great state of Florida.’

Trump started unloading on DeSantis months before the Florida governor launched his presidential campaign in May.

On Friday at a major state Republican Party dinner in Iowa, Trump told GOP voters ‘not to take a chance’ on DeSantis – who’s a distant second to Trump in the polls. Trump continued to jab at the governor with derogatory nicknames a day later, at a Saturday night rally in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Pushing back, the DeSantis campaign on Sunday morning spotlighted a new report that indicated that a Trump political committee had spent more than $40 million on legal fees, as the former president faces multiple indictments.

DeSantis’ communications director Andrew Romeo argued that Trump’s spent tens of millions of dollars ‘falsely attacking Ron DeSantis and paying his own legal fees, not a cent on defeating Joe Biden.’

Asked for his reaction to the report on Trump’s legal fees, DeSantis told Fox News ‘I think people can make their own judgments about that.’

But he quickly spotlighted that ‘we also pointed out that his other big expenditure since going back to last year was spending almost $25 million to attack me. And he was attacking me even before I was a candidate for president. I was down in Tallahassee doing all this great stuff for the people of Florida.’

DeSantis emphasized ‘I just think we should be focusing our resources on beating the Democrats and on beating Joe Biden and that goes with all of this stuff.’

The governor reiterated that he thinks Trump’s ‘name-calling and stuff – I think is juvenile. It’s not something I’m going to be involved in. I’m a guy about substance.’

‘I’m a guy about getting the job done. So we’ve been very clear when people have asked about substantive attacks that he’s launched on policy, where we may disagree,’ DeSantis said. 

And pointing to Trump’s growing legal controversies, DeSantis highlighted that ‘you’re not going to be able to bring the administrative state to heal, to slay the deep state, to do all this, if you have distractions. If you’re not focused. You’ve got to go in there, guns blazing, spitting nails. But man, you’ve going to be focused on the task at hand and I will do that we will get the job done.’

DeSantis argued that the attacks he’s facing from Trump and his other rivals in the large field of GOP presidential candidates shows that he’s a threat.

‘If you were up by so much, you would not be worried about anybody else,’ DeSantis said. ‘So I think the fact that I’m taking the incoming from all of these people, not just him, but a lot of the other candidates, a lot of the media, that shows people know that I’m a threat. They know what was going on in the ground in Iowa the last couple of weeks when we’ve had these functions. Everybody’s seen that.’

Trump’s the commanding front-runner in the latest GOP presidential nomination polls nationally and in the key early voting states, but DeSantis disagrees with suggestions the former president has a lock on the Republican primary electorate.

‘I don’t think he has a strong hold on the majority. I think he’s got a stronghold on some,’ the governor said as he answered a question from a GOP voter. ‘But I think the vast majority of Republican primary voters are either definitely going to vote for someone else or are willing to if you make the case. And with me, I think I’m the candidate that’s more likely to beat Biden. I’m more reliable on policy. ‘

DeSantis is expected to spotlight his policy differences with Trump when he rolls out his economic policy in a Monday speech in New Hampshire that was first reported last week by Fox News.

While DeSantis appears to be picking up the pace in the frequency of his jabs at Trump, they still pale in comparison to the attacks on former president by some of the lower tier contenders for the nomination – such as former Govs. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, and former Rep. Will Hurd of Texas.

Trump has not committed to taking the stage at next month’s first presidential debate, a Fox News hosted showdown on August 23 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

DeSantis told Fox News that ‘You’ve got to earn this nomination. People should show up. They should make the case. They should answer the questions, and then they should show Republican votes why they should be the nominee. And that’s what I’ll be doing.’

Asked if Trump’s participation or lack of participation in the debate will affect his gameplan, DeSantis said ‘we will be prepared for all eventualities. I mean clearly if here’s there it will add a different dynamic than if he’s not. But we’ll be ready either way. We’re looking forward to doing it. I think it’s a good part of the process.’

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has announced an ‘official criminal referral’ to the Department of Justice with regard to Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Paul pointed to an email from February 2020 in which Fauci detailed a call with British medical researcher Jeremy Farrar, who was director of the Wellcome Trust at the time. According to Fauci, those on the task-force call, including Francis Collins, former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, and other ‘highly credible’ scientists with expertise in evolutionary biology, expressed concern about the ‘fact upon viewing the sequences of several isolates of the nCoV, there were mutations in the virus that would be most unusual to have evolved naturally in the bats and that there was a suspicion that this mutation was intentionally inserted.’

‘The suspicion was heightened by the fact that scientists in Wuhan University are known to have been working on gain-of-function experiments to determine the molecular mechanisms associated with bat viruses adapting to human infection, and the outbreak originated in Wuhan,’ Fauci wrote, according to a screenshot of the newly unredacted email shared by RealClearPolitics White House reporter Philip Wegmann. 

‘This directly contradicts everything he said in committee hearing to me, denying absolutely that they funded any gain of function, and it’s absolutely a lie. That’s why I sent an official criminal referral to the DOJ,’ Paul wrote on ‘X,’ formerly known as Twitter, on Saturday.

In July 2021, Paul reminded Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and medical adviser to the president, that lying to Congress is a federal crime, suggesting that the NIAID director had done so with regard to COVID-19 gain-of-function research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

During a heated exchange, Fauci insisted he had ‘never lied before Congress’ during prior testimony in May, telling Paul that ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Fauci further denied that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded gain-of-function research, despite Paul citing a journal article titled ‘Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses.’

Paul, who graduated from Duke University School of Medicine and was a practicing doctor before being elected to Congress, noted how the paper’s author credits the NIH and lists the actual number of the grant given by the NIH. The author took two bat coronavirus spike genes and combined them with SARs-related backbone to create new viruses that are not found in nature, and the lab-created viruses were then shown to replicate in humans, Paul said during the July congressional hearing.

‘Viruses that in nature only infect animals were manipulated in the Wuhan lab to gain the function of infecting humans,’ he said. 

Fauci said the paper to which Paul referred ‘was judged by qualified staff up and down the chain as not being gain of function.’

‘Let’s read from the NIH definition of ‘gain of function,” Paul said. ‘This is your definition that you guys wrote. It says that ‘scientific research that increases the transmissibility among mammals is gain of function.’ They took animal viruses that only occur in animals, and they increased their transmissibility to humans. How you can say that’s not gain of function – it’s a dance, and you’re dancing around this because you’re trying to obscure responsibility for 4 million people dying around the world from a pandemic.’

Hunter Biden was spotted in the early hours Friday morning as he arrived at a California airport less than two days after he contradicted his father’s claims about nobody in the Biden family receiving ‘money from China.’

The first son made his first appearance in a Delaware federal court on Wednesday, pleading not guilty after Judge Maryellen Noreika rejected a proposed plea deal that was criticized by Republicans as too lenient. Less than 48 hours later he would be spotted shortly before 1 a.m. PT at the Los Angeles’ Van Nuys Airport after getting off a private jet, according to photos obtained by Fox News Digital.

One photo shows Hunter talking to a man with a New York Yankees baseball cap before later embracing him for a hug.

Other photos, which were first reported by the New York Post, show a man who got off the private jet while carrying a camera with him. It is unclear if he was filming interactions between Hunter and the other passengers. Hunter was also spotted hugging at least one other passenger before his two-SUV motorcade left the airport.

Hunter’s arrival in Los Angeles came after prosecutors said in their proposed plea agreement with him that he received $664,000 from a ‘Chinese infrastructure investment company,’ according to the official court transcript.

Hunter then confirmed to the judge that he earned $664,000 from a company he formed in 2017 with the chairman of the CCP-backed CEFC.

‘I started a company [in 2017] called Hudson West, Your Honor, and my partner was associated with a Chinese energy company called CEFC,’ Hunter said.

‘Who was your partner?’ the court asked.

‘I don’t know how to spell his name, Yi Jianming is the chairman of that company,’ Hunter responded.

‘$664,000 from a Chinese infrastructure investment company – is that one of the companies we’ve already talked about?’ the judge continued.

‘I believe so, yes, Your Honor,’ he said before adding, ‘I believe CEFC.’

Hunter’s confirmation in the courtroom that he made more than a half-million dollars from a Chinese company directly contradicted President Biden’s previous denials that his family made money in China.

‘My son has not made money in terms of this thing about, what are you talking about, China,’ then-candidate Biden told then-President Trump during an October 2020 debate.

‘The only guy who made money from China is this guy,’ Biden said at the time, referring to Trump. ‘He’s the only one. Nobody else has made money from China.’

Biden denied the allegations again this year after the House Oversight Committee said that subpoenaed financial records revealed members of the Biden family received more than $1 million in payments from accounts related to Hunter’s business associate Rob Walker and their Chinese business ventures in 2017.

‘That’s not true,’ the president said March 17.

Hunter was expected to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax counts of willful failure to pay federal income tax as part of the deal to avoid jail time on a felony gun charge. However, the court hearing got contentious when Noreika pressed federal prosecutors on the investigation and questioned whether there was the possibility for future charges, and she asked prosecutors if Hunter Biden was currently under active investigation. Prosecutors said he was but would not answer specifically why the president’s son was under investigation.

Federal prosecutor Leo Wise, however, confirmed to Noreika that the DOJ is still investigating Hunter Biden over a potential Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) violation. According to the DOJ, a willful violation of FARA could result in up to five years imprisonment and $250,000 fine or both. Hunter would end up pleading not guilty after Noreika could not accept the plea deal. 

According to the judge, Hunter must ‘actively seek employment,’ abstain from drugs or alcohol, submit to random drug testing and not possess a firearm as conditions for staying out of jail.

Fox News’ Brooke Singman, Joe Schoffstall, Jessica Chasmar and Bradford Betz contributed reporting.

GOP presidential candidates Nikki Haley and Asa Hutchinson disagree when it comes to talking about possibly pardoning former President Donald Trump.

Haley, the former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina governor, and Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, each appeared on CBS’ ‘Face the Nation,’ where they were asked about pardoning Trump should the former president be convicted on charges related to the handling of classified documents.

‘I think that one of the things we have to look at is not what’s in the best interest of the president, but what’s in the best interest of the country,’ Haley said. ‘We have to move forward.’

‘We can’t keep living with indictments and court cases and vengeance of the past,’ Haley continued. ‘We’ve got to start going forward. American people are not talking about these indictments.’

In a separate interview on the same program, Hutchinson remarked that there shouldn’t be any discussion about pardons during a presidential election.

‘You don’t put pardons out there to garner votes. That is premature,’ said the former governor, who has previously called on Trump to drop out of the race. ‘I think that anybody who discusses pardons during a presidential campaign is not serving our system of justice well, and it’s inappropriate.’

In the latest turn in the classified documents case against Trump, new criminal charges unsealed Thursday allege the former president sought to delete Mar-a-Lago surveillance footage to obstruct the Justice Department’s investigation into his handling of classified documents.

Trump on Sunday insisted that security tapes at his Mar-a-Lago club and residence in Florida were not deleted, and in fact were handed over to Special Counsel Jack Smith. 

‘Mar-a-Lago security tapes were not deleted,’ Trump wrote on TRUTH Social. ‘They were voluntarily handed over to the thugs, headed up by deranged Jack Smith. We did not even go to court to stop them from getting these tapes. I never told anybody to delete them. Prosecutorial fiction & misconduct! Election interference!’ 

‘Same as the Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX. They knowingly accuse you of a fake crime, a crime that they actually make up, you fight these false charges hard, and they try and get you on ‘obstruction.’ We are dealing with sick and evil people!’ he added in a second post. 

Fox News’ Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.

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North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, a 2024 Republican presidential candidate, accused the Republican National Committee of trying to keep new voices off the debate stage.

Burgum, the latest candidate to meet the RNC’s polling and fundraising thresholds for the first GOP debate on Aug. 23, made the comments during an appearance on ‘Fox News Sunday’ when addressing his controversial approach for attaining the required 40,000 unique donations.

‘These are in the clubhouse rules designed to keep fresh faces, fresh ideas, entrepreneurs and innovators off the stage because you set a limit like this and of course it favors people who’ve held national office, it favors people who have been, you know, pundits on TV, and it favors people that have been career politicians and their name recognition,’ Burgum said.

Fox News Digital reached out to the RNC but did not immediately hear back.

Burgum’s approach involved giving donors $20 gift cards for a $1 donation, something the second-term governor and former software executive has previously called a ‘completely legal’ hack. Burgum said it was a bargain compared to the ‘$100 per customer acquisition’ that consulting firms would have charged him.

The method helped secure his spot on the first Republican debate stage.

One of the Republican National Committee’s requirements is for debate participants to receive at least 40,000 individual contributions with at least 200 unique donors in 20 or more states. 

Its second qualification is that candidates either earn 1% support in three national polls, or in two national polls and two polls from two of the first four states voting in the GOP primary.

So far, the candidates qualified for the first debate are Burgum, former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

Fox News is scheduled to host the Aug. 23 showdown in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It remains to be seen if Trump will choose to participate.

Fox News’ Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.

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A federal judge has blocked the state of Arkansas from enforcing a law that would have subjected libraries and booksellers to criminal charges if they provided ‘harmful’ materials to minors.

Judge Timothy L. Brooks for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas issued a preliminary injunction against the law, which was set to take effect Aug. 1.

Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed the measure into law earlier this year. A coalition that included the Central Arkansas Library System challenged the law, saying fear of prosecution under the measure could prompt libraries and booksellers to no longer carry titles that could be challenged.

Brooks rejected a motion by the defendants, which include prosecuting attorneys for the state, seeking to dismiss the case.

The ACLU of Arkansas, which represents some of the plaintiffs, applauded the court’s ruling and said the absence of a preliminary injunction would have jeopardized First Amendment rights.

‘The question we had to ask was – do Arkansans still legally have access to reading materials? Luckily, the judicial system has once again defended our highly valued liberties,’ Holly Dickson, the executive director of the ACLU in Arkansas, said in a statement.

Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin told the Associated Press his office would be ‘reviewing the judge’s opinion and will continue to vigorously defend the law.’

The Arkansas lawsuit names the state’s 28 local prosecutors as defendants, along with Crawford County in west Arkansas. A separate lawsuit is challenging the Crawford County library’s decision to move children’s books that included LGBTQ+ themes to a separate portion of the library.

The plaintiffs challenging Arkansas’ restrictions also include the Fayetteville and Eureka Springs Carnegie public libraries, the American Booksellers Association and the Association of American Publishers.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Former Burisma board member Devon Archer is scheduled to appear tomorrow morning before the House Oversight Committee for a closed-door, transcribed interview.

Fox is told that Archer is expected to appear this time – even though he ducked the committee three times before and is under subpoena. 

Moreover, one senior Republican close to the investigation says the DOJ tried ‘an intimidation tactic’ Saturday, asking a judge to set a date for Archer to report to begin serving jail time – Archer was found guilty of defrauding Native American tribes in 2022.

Fox is told investigators intend to ask Archer about previously undisclosed bank records and the purpose of those transactions. In particular, the committee wants to know what role if any President Biden had in those transactions.

There are also questions whether the legal counsel for the Bidens contacted Archer.

The committee believes Archer will tell investigators about meetings or phone calls he had with President Biden with regard to potential business deals.

Archer is slated to appear at 10 a.m. ET. The discussion is scheduled to last four hours total – two hours per side. The Republicans will go for an hour, then the Democrats for an hour, and so on.

With breaks, this likely does not conclude until 3 p.m. ET or so.

Fox is told to expect maybe a couple of lawmakers there, that House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio will likely attend.

Fox is also told that the committee intends to release the transcript of the transcribed interview ‘in three or four days.’

A Democratic congressman admitted that it’s ‘clear’ Hunter Biden broke the law during an interview on Friday.

Connecticut Congressman Jim Himes took a swipe at Republicans Friday night before acknowledging the first son’s legal troubles.

‘Let me say something that you never heard a Republican member of Congress say in the four years of the Trump administration, which is that if Hunter Biden broke the law, he should be prosecuted,’ Himes said on MSNBC. ‘And it is clear that he broke the law with respect to taxes and possibly the ownership of a handgun. He should be held accountable for that.’

Himes criticized Republicans for not speaking out against former President Donald Trump when he was indicted, but also acknowledged that Hunter Biden should be held accountable if he used his father’s influence to commit crimes.

‘If he traded on his father’s influence, he should be held accountable for that. And I’m emphasizing this because you never, ever heard a Republican say the same thing about Donald Trump or his family,’ Himes argued.

The Democratic congressman argued there was no evidence that President Biden colluded with his son on any crimes, but insinuated that any evidence should be taken seriously if it arises.

‘Now, to the question about impeachment, there is today zero evidence, zero evidence that Joe Biden, the president of the United States, knew about what his son was doing. If, if he did know about it, if he participated in that, then that is a very different conversation,’ Himes added.

Hunter, who is still under federal investigation, pleaded not guilty to two misdemeanor tax counts of willful failure to pay federal income tax on Wednesday. He was set to plead guilty as part of a deal, but the plea deal fell through.

The White House has stated that President Biden is supporting his son throughout the investigation. 

‘Hunter Biden is a private citizen, and this was a personal matter for him. As we have said, the president, the first lady — they love their son and they support him as he continues to rebuild his life,’ White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre previously said. ‘This case was handled independently, as all of you know, by the Justice Department under the leadership of a prosecutor appointed by the former president, President Trump.’ 

Fox News Digital reached out to Himes’ office for a statement, but has not heard back.

Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman and Jake Gibson contributed to this report.

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Republican Rep. John James slammed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Twitter Friday over DeSantis’ response to Republican lawmakers who criticized the 2024 presidential candidate on Florida’s new Black history education standards. 

‘@RonDeSantis, #1: slavery was not CTE! Nothing about that 400 years of evil was a ‘net benefit’ to my ancestors,’ James wrote. ‘#2: there are only five black Republicans in Congress and you’re attacking two of them.’ 

‘My brother in Christ… if you find yourself in a deep hole put the shovel down. You are now so far from the Party of Lincoln that your Ed. board is re-writing history and you’re personally attacking conservatives like @VoteTimScott and @ByronDonalds on the topic of slavery,’ James continued. ‘You’ve gone too far. Stop.’

DeSantis has recently traded blows with South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, who have criticized the state’s new school history curriculum and approach to teaching about slavery. 

‘There’s no silver lining in slavery. We founded this nation upon the notion of freedom,’ Scott told the NH Journal Friday. ‘Slavery is a deprivation of freedom. It is antithetical to who we are. That doesn’t need to be explained. That just needs to be digested.

‘Truth be told, whether you’re Kamala Harris or Ron DeSantis, having an opportunity to restate your position against slavery is always something that should be welcomed by all people: Conservatives, liberals, Black, White, rich, poor, red, blue. It doesn’t really matter.’

Donalds said Wednesday the ‘attempt to feature the personal benefits of slavery is wrong & needs to be adjusted.’ He called the rest of the standards ‘good, robust and accurate.’

‘I’m one of the members up here fighting hard against this radical agenda from the Biden-Harris administration,’ Donalds told FOX Business previously. ‘So, my stance, and where I am politically is very, very clear. But if I have an issue with one sentence, I’m allowed to have that. The fact that they made this a story is dumb in my view.’

The new curriculum states, ‘Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.’ 

DeSantis has held his position, accusing the Republicans of falling in line with Vice President Kamala Harris. Harris told a crowd in Jacksonville, Fla., the new Black history curriculum replaces ‘history with lies’ and that students there would be ‘told that enslaved people benefited from slavery.’

‘These extremist so-called leaders should model what we know to be the correct and right approach if we really are invested in the well-being of our children. Instead, they dare to push propaganda to our children. This is the United States of America. We’re not supposed to do that,’ Harris said, according to FOX 35. ‘It is a reasonable expectation that our children will not be misled, and that’s what’s so outrageous, happening right now.’ 

DeSantis’ administration has reportedly fiercely denied accusations claiming Florida’s curriculum teaches students that slaves in the U.S. ‘benefited from slavery.’

The Florida Department of Education said in a letter sent to Florida School District superintendents the Biden administration ‘intentionally misrepresented’ its ‘groundbreaking work’ in updating the new standards.

The DeSantis campaign pointed Fox News to a video the candidate posted to Twitter Friday. 

‘Part of the reason our country has struggled is because D.C. Republicans all too often accept false narratives, accept lies that are perpetrated by the left. And to accept the lie that Kamala Harris has been perpetrating even when that has been debunked, that’s not the way you do it. The way you lead is to fight back against the lies, is to speak the truth,’ DeSantis said. ‘So, I’m here defending my state of Florida against false accusations and against lies. And, we’re going to continue to speak the truth.’

On Saturday, DeSantis tweeted reacting to a News Nation story that reported Democratic lawmakers are seeking to determine if there are grounds to pursue legal action against the state of Florida for new curriculum standards regarding slavery.

‘This is just the latest — and absurd — example of the weaponization of the federal government. Standing up the lies of people like Kamala Harris is the right thing to do. We will defend Florida and stand firm against false, politically-driven narratives,’ DeSantis replied. ‘As president, I will end the weaponization of government and hold partisan bureaucrats accountable for abusing their power.’

Fox News’ Brandon Gillespie, Elizabeth Elkind, Joseph A. Wulfsoh, Chris Pandolfo and Joshua Nelson contributed to this report.