Senate Minority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., is expected to endorse Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., during his 2024 presidential campaign announcement Monday, a Scott official confirmed to Fox News.

Thune will deliver remarks at Scott’s presidential announcement event on Monday in North Charleston, according to the official. Scott filed the paperwork to run for president last week and has already started releasing campaign ads.

Thune is the second-highest-ranking Republican in the Senate behind Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. He will be the highest-ranking Republican on Capitol Hill to back the South Carolina senator. 

Fellow GOP South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds will also be endorsing Scott’s presidential run.

Scott’s entry into the race further crowds a Republican primary field that currently includes former President Donald Trump, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, businessman Perry Johnson, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, former radio host Larry Elder and businessman Ryan Binkley. 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to announce his candidacy this week while former Vice President Mike Pence is considering a run for the White House.

Thune’s support for Scott solidifies his efforts to move the party away from Trump, who holds a significant lead over his Republican competitors in recent polling. The South Dakota senator distanced himself from Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, stating at the time that attempts to challenge the election results would ‘go down like a shot dog’ on the Senate floor. 

As was the case with several other Republicans who refused to back Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of a stolen election, Thune drew the ire of the former president, who then threatened that the senator’s political career would be over. 

However, Thune easily won reelection last year.

After outlasting Trump’s failed attempt to oust him from Congress, Thune has said it is time for the GOP to move beyond the former president’s obsession with the 2020 election. Thune declared in November that ‘it’s clear that running on relitigating the 2020 election is not a winning strategy.’

In December, Thune expressed approval of a potential Scott presidential run.

‘He’s obviously helped a lot of people around the country in the last year, raised a lot of money and built a lot of relationships that can be very useful if he does [run],’ Thune told POLITICO at the time.

Scott, who is prolific at raising funds, has said he hopes to be a unifier in the Republican Party and to avoid the polarizing approach of other presidential candidates.

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House Republicans will be able to view documents this week relating to President Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal after months of stonewalling by the State Department.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, will access the documents at the State Department offices this week after threatening to hit Secretary of State Antony Blinken with a contempt of Congress charge. The document, a dissent cable from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, details any misgivings State Department officials there had with Biden’s withdrawal plans.

McCaul had subpoenaed the document multiple times in the early months of this year, but Blinken had failed to provide it. The State Department instead offered a briefing on the document’s contents, a move McCaul accepted while still demanding to see the document itself.

McCaul will visit the department this week to read the document alongside Rep. Greg Meeks, D-N.Y., the ranking member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, according to Punchbowl News.

The pair will view the document in full, but the names of those who contributed to the dissent report will be redacted.

Blinken has argued from the beginning that providing access to the dissent report could dissuade State Department employees from being truthful in future dissent reports. The document is meant to be an opportunity for officials to be candid regarding upcoming operations.

Blinken blew past the original subpoena deadline to supply the documents in March, then again in April when McCaul pushed back the deadline. McCaul set his latest line in the sand at May 1, and Blinken again refused to provide the documents.

McCaul threatened to charge Blinken with contempt of Congress as a result. The congressman told Fox News Digital last week that he planned to introduce the contempt charge on May 24.

‘I don’t take this lightly because a Secretary of State’s never been held in contempt by Congress before,’ McCaul told Fox. ‘And I think the secretary realizes that and the gravity. They probably prefer not to go down this route as well. But if they do not comply, we’re prepared to move forward next week with a markup for resolution of contempt.’

Even if passed by the House, the contempt charge would largely have been a symbolic move, as President Biden’s Justice Department would likely decline to prosecute the case.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has remained tight-lipped after Special Counsel John Durham’s report showed glaring missteps by the Department of Justice and FBI when it launched the Trump-Russia investigation.

Pelosi’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Fox News Digital this past week with regard to her response to Durham’s report that found ‘the Department and the FBI failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law’ during the origins of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

Pelosi’s office also declined to respond to the question of whether she would walk back any of her past insinuations that Trump colluded with Russia and that the 2016 election was somehow illegitimate.

‘This week we saw cold hard evidence of the Trump campaign, indeed the Trump family, eagerly intending to collude, possibly, with Russia, a hostile foreign power, to influence American elections,’ Pelosi said in July 2017 in response to news of Donald Trump Jr.’s 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower, a meeting over which the Mueller investigation ultimately declined to file charges.

Pelosi also called on then-Speaker of the House Paul Ryan to establish a commission to ‘get to the bottom of the Trump campaign’s role in Russia’s assault on our democracy.’

‘Our election was hijacked,’ Pelosi tweeted in May of that same year. ‘There is no question.’

In June 2020, Pelosi continued to push the collusion narrative by saying that ‘all roads lead to Putin’ when it comes to President Donald Trump. ‘I don’t know what the Russians have on the president, politically, personally or financially.’

Durham said his investigation into the Trump collusion probe also revealed that ‘senior FBI personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor towards the information that they received, especially information received from politically-affiliated persons and entities.’

‘This information in part triggered and sustained Crossfire Hurricane and contributed to the subsequent need for Special Counsel [Robert] Mueller’s investigation,’ the report said. ‘In particular, there was significant reliance on investigative leads provided or funded [directly or indirectly] by Trump’s political opponents.’

‘The Department did not adequately examine or question these materials and the motivations of those providing them, even when at about the same time the Director of the FBI and others learned of significant and potentially contrary intelligence,’ the report added.

Trump has called for former FBI Director James Comey, who Pelosi called a ‘great man’ in July 2016, and other Democrats involved in pushing Russian collusion to pay a ‘heavy price’ in response to the Durham report.

Fox News’ Brooke Singman contributed to this report.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, said in a new interview Sunday that migrants from the U.S.-Mexico border should be sent to every city ‘throughout the entire country.’

‘We have 108,000 cities, villages, towns. If everyone takes a small portion of that, and if it’s coordinated at the border, to ensure that those who are coming here to this country in a lawful manner is actually moved throughout the entire country, it is not a burden on one city,’ Adams said in an appearance on CBS’s ‘Face the Nation’ Sunday. ‘And the numbers need to be clear. We received over 70,000 migrant asylum seekers in our city, 42,000 are still in our care. If this is properly handled at the border level, this issue can be resolved while we finally get Congress, particularly the Republican Party, to deal with a comprehensive immigration policy.’

Amid reports that the White House and fellow Democrat Adams have butted heads over the migrant crisis, notably as the mayor of New York City stepped away from President Joe Biden’s reelection advisory board, CBS host Margaret Brennan on Sunday asked about whether, in Adams’ view, the supposed $30 million in federal funding to address the influx into the Big Apple was enough. Adams said that New York City has already spent more than $1 billion in addressing the migrant crisis and is projected to need more than $4 billion more in funding. 

The mayor also pushed back on the argument from some Republicans that Democrat-controlled cities are drawing migrants due to their sanctuary status.

‘The problem is that Republicans for far too many years have failed to deal with real immigration reform,’ Adams said. ‘This is a national issue. No city should … be going through this, including El Paso, Brownsville [in Texas]. When I went to El Paso, Texas, and saw what was happening there, I raised the same concern. This should not be the burning of Chicago, Washington, Houston, Denver and New York City. That is what we want to focus on. How do we have real comprehensive immigration reform? And how do we have a real decompression strategy? And we really need to allow the migrants, asylum seekers, to be able to have work status so that they can actually work in various areas that we’re looking for employment.’

Adams continues to get pushback in courts to his administration’s plans to bus hundreds of single male adult migrants upstate and possibly to Long Island to stay in hotels for months. Those municipalities – under mostly Republican leadership – say they lack the resources to deal with asylum seekers processed in the Big Apple.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., will meet with President Biden on Monday to continue negotiations on raising the debt ceiling, McCarthy announced Sunday.

Biden and McCarthy spoke on the phone Sunday and had a ‘productive’ conversation, McCarthy said, despite throwing barbs at one another in public statements. Biden has stated that the current Republican offer is ‘unacceptable’ and complained that McCarthy has been dragged to the right by ‘MAGA Republicans.’ McCarthy, meanwhile, has claimed the opposite.

‘I just finished a phone call with the president,’ McCarthy told reporters. ‘I believe it was a productive phone call.’

Biden is currently on his way back to Washington after attending meetings with G-7 nations in Hiroshima, Japan. McCarthy says he told the president to get some sleep and get briefed up on the current state of negotiations after being absent during the international trip.

McCarthy says he and Biden will meet ‘personally’ on Monday.

‘I told him, we don’t have to meet in the morning. You know, let’s have some sleep. And then we agreed that he and I are going to get together tomorrow, later in the afternoon, and work out that time to see what we can come to,’ McCarthy said.

Biden has 11 days to come to an agreement with House Republicans before the U.S. defaults on its debt for the first time in history. Biden appeared to wash his hands of the issue in a statement to reporters in Japan, however, saying, ‘I’ve done my part,’ and declaring himself ‘blameless’ if there is a default.

The White House claims some ‘MAGA Republicans’ are working to intentionally derail negotiations and cause a default, which would lead to economic disaster and potentially harm Biden’s re-election effort.

Meanwhile, McCarthy has argued the opposite, saying the president is in the thrall of left-wing Democrats.

‘The president has really shifted right after the more progressive socialist wing of the party stood up and says they want to spend more money,’ McCarthy told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday. ‘He’s now bringing something to the table that everyone said was off the table. It seems as though he wants default more than he wants a deal. That’s not where I’m at, and the one thing you know… about me, Maria, I will never give up.’

An ad from President Biden’s 2020 campaign declaring ‘the buck stops here’ is making the rounds on Twitter after the president said Sunday that he would be ‘blameless’ if the U.S. defaults on its debt in the coming days.

‘I’ve done my part,’ Biden said Sunday in Japan when asked about the debt ceiling, later adding, ‘On the merits, based on what I’ve offered, I would be blameless.’

An ad from Biden’s campaign in April 2020 slammed then-President Donald Trump for comments he made shirking responsibility for multiple pitfalls during the COVID-19 pandemic.

‘The buck stops here,’ a narrator said in the ad. ‘Harry Truman said it. It means no excuses. It means taking responsibility, the ultimate responsibility for the biggest decisions in the world.’

‘Donald Trump thought the job was about tweets and rallies and big parades,’ the narrator said. ‘He never thought he’d have to protect nearly 330 million Americans. So he didn’t.’

Biden wrote at the time in a tweet that the ‘office of the presidency comes with the ultimate responsibility for the biggest decisions in the world.’

‘Every great president throughout our history has met that duty with the leadership it demands. Donald Trump has not,’ he tweeted.

Republican strategist Matt Whitlock shared the ad Sunday on Twitter, suggesting Biden’s historically low job approval ratings were due to him ‘failing to live up to every single thing he ran on.’

Biden argued Sunday that certain ‘MAGA Republicans’ are seeking to cause a default in an effort to crash the economy ahead of Biden’s re-election effort.

The president made the claim during a news conference in Hiroshima, Japan, where he had traveled for meetings with G-7 nations. Republicans in Congress forced Biden to the negotiating table after months of the White House insisting there would be no debate over the issue. 

‘I’ve done my part,’ Biden said, adding that ‘it’s time for the other side to move their team positions because much of what they were proposed is simply quite frankly, unacceptable.’ This prompted a follow-up at the end of the news conference from Fox News’ Peter Doocy.

‘Mr. President, on the debt limit, you said already, ‘I’ve done my part.’ Do you think if there’s a breach, nobody can blame you?’ Doocy asked.

‘Of course no one will blame me, I know you won’t, you’ll be saying Biden did a wonderful job,’ Biden joked.

‘Would you be blameless in a default situation?’ Doocy pressed.

‘On the merits, based on what I’ve offered, I would be blameless,’ Biden responded. ‘On the politics of it, no one would be blameless. And by the way, that’s one of the, one of the things some [people] are contemplating. Well, I gotta be careful here. I think there are some MAGA Republicans in the House who know the damage that it would do to the economy and because I am president, and presidents are responsible for everything, Biden would take the blame. And that’s the one way to make sure Biden’s not re-elected.’

Fox News’ Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report.

Democratic Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed praised Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s ‘energy and the concentration’ despite calls from both sides of the aisle that the California Democrat should leave office over health concerns. 

‘I think Sen. Feinstein has performed remarkably during her career. I think at this point, she has medical issues, she’s acknowledged those issues. She still is able to summon the energy and the concentration to come to vote,’ Reed told ‘Fox News Sunday’ host Shannon Bream. 

A handful of Democrats, including Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ro Khanna, have called on Feinstein to retire in recent weeks, saying her absence from voting has hurt the party’s efforts to pass legislation and that she is unable to fulfill her duties. 

Feinstein announced in March she was diagnosed with a case of shingles and had been absent from senatorial duties for a three-month period. She returned to Capitol Hill on May 11, when she attended a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting. 

In her absence, Feinstein missed at least 93 votes between February and May, Fox News Digital previously reported. 

FEINSTEIN ARRIVES OVER AN HOUR LATE FOR JUDICIARY COMMITTEE MEETING TO APPROVE DIVISIVE BIDEN JUDICIAL PICKS 

First elected in 1992, Feinstein is the longest-serving senator in California history and the longest-serving female senator in the nation’s history. She announced earlier this year that she would not seek re-election in 2024, when her term is up.

Reed was reacting to video of Democratic Rep. Katie Porter, who is running to replace Feinstein in the Senate, highlighting that Feinstein’s absence over health issues is not the first time Congress has had to cope with an absent lawmaker, citing Democratic Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman recently taking time off to receive health treatments. 

‘I think she deserves the opportunity to make a decision about her career. I had the opportunity to serve with Strom Thurmond, who was 100 years old when he retired. And there were some people back then who were saying he should go, but not with the same kind of intensity today,’ Reed said. 

‘Again, I think this is something that Sen. Feinstein should consider and make a decision,’ he added. 

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A prominent civil rights attorney deleted his viral tweet that attacked a female New York City hospital worker hours after her lawyer threatened defamation lawsuits in a Fox News segment against those who defamed her.

Ben Crump, who has been a lead attorney in several police brutality cases, tweeted a viral video with more than 4 million views of a verbal altercation between a pregnant New York City physician assistant and multiple young Black men before deleting it hours later after the segment aired and went viral on Twitter.

‘This is unacceptable!’ Crump captioned the tweet with the video. ‘A white woman was caught on camera attempting to STEAL a Citi Bike from a young Black man in NYC. She grossly tried to weaponize her tears to paint this man as a threat. This is EXACTLY the type of behavior that has endangered so many Black men in the past!’

There was no follow-up tweet with a correction or an apology.

Sarah Comrie, a physician assistant at Bellevue Hospital, was put on leave after the video sparked outrage. Her attorney, Justin Marino, said Comrie is six months pregnant and had just finished a 12-hour shift prior to the viral footage.

‘She’s been called a racist,’ Marino told Fox News on Friday. ‘She’s been called a thief. There are reasons defamation laws exist, and we plan to pursue that.’

Crump deleted his tweet hours after the Fox News segment. Marino said Comrie had to go ‘in hiding’ after the video went viral.

The men in the video with Comrie said they had paid to use the bike, despite her lawyer saying that receipts show she purchased it.

‘Around that time these individuals were claiming that that was their bike,’ Marino said, ‘someone pushed the bike while she was on it, back into the docking station so it locked again.’

Marino said he was hired because Comrie feared she may lose her job.

Crump did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on whether he plans to apologize for his tweet.

Texas is one step closer to banning diversity, equity and inclusion offices from public colleges in the state.  

The Texas House voted 83-60 on Friday in support of Senate Bill 17, which would ban DEI offices, programs and diversity training, according to The Texas Tribune.

Democrats forcefully pushed back against the bill during an hours-long debate, arguing it could risk universities losing federal grants while potentially making some students feel less welcome at the schools, the outlet reported.

The bill’s Republican sponsor, state Rep. John Kuempel, offered an amendment to the bill that would require the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to conduct a study each year examining how the elimination of such offices affected issues such as students’ grade point averages, rates of recruitment and acceptance.

The amendment, which was approved, would also allow the colleges and universities to make ‘reasonable efforts’ to reassign employees in the DEI offices to other positions with comparable pay.

The amendment was also introduced in an effort to quell concerns from Democrats that the legislation would risk schools losing federal grants, as grants often require applicants to show how they promote diversity, according to the Tribune.  

If passed, Texas would join Florida in banning such DEI initiates from public colleges. Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed SB 266 into law last week, which bans all state funding for DEI programs at public universities and colleges. 

The Texas bill will now head back to the Senate, where the body will decide to accept or deny House members’ changes. The legislation would take effect Jan. 1 if passed and signed into law. 

After the Senate passed its version of the bill last month, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick released a statement praising state lawmakers for their ‘strongest pushback on woke policies in higher education.’ 

‘The Texas Senate has now passed the strongest pushback on woke policies in higher education nationwide. For far too long, academia has been poisoned by woke policies and faculty seeking to indoctrinate our students. Professors did not believe we would push back on their advances, but they were wrong. Students should be taught how to think critically, not what to think,’ he said last month. 

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Jeffrey Epstein allegedly threatened Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates with details on the tech billionaire’s alleged affair with a Russian bridge player, the Wall Street Journal reported. 

‘Mr. Gates met with Epstein solely for philanthropic purposes,’ a spokeswoman for Gates told WSJ. ‘Having failed repeatedly to draw Mr. Gates beyond these matters, Epstein tried unsuccessfully to leverage a past relationship to threaten Mr. Gates.’

Gates met Russian bridge player Mila Antonova in 2010, when she was in her 20s and Gates in his mid-50s, at a bridge tournament where the two played against each other, according to the Journal. Antonova is originally from Russia, but moved to the U.S. and began working as a software engineer in Silicon Valley, according to her LinkedIn. 

Antonova publicly discussed meeting the tech billionaire in a 2010 video detailing that she ‘didn’t beat’ Gates, but ‘tried to kick him with my leg,’ according to WSJ. Gates is a noted lover of the game of bridge and has even competed against fellow billionaire Warren Buffett. 

After meeting Gates, Antonova sought to start an online venture that would teach people how to play bridge. She began reaching out to potential donors, with Gates confidant Boris Nikolic connecting her with Epstein, according to documents reviewed by the outlet. 

In November 2013, Antonova and Nikolic reportedly met Epstein at his townhome in New York City to pitch the proposal and try to raise $500,000. Epstein ultimately did not donate to the proposal, dubbed ‘BridgePlanet,’ WSJ reported, citing Antonova. 

‘I deeply regret that I ever met Epstein,’ Nikolic highlighted to the outlet. ‘His crimes were despicable. I never saw anything like his illegal behavior. My heart goes out to his victims and their families.’

The following November, Antonova stayed at an apartment provided by Epstein, but ‘didn’t interact with him or with anyone else while there,’ she said. By that year, she had decided to become a software engineer and was looking for donors to help pay for programing classes.

‘Epstein agreed to pay and he paid directly to the school. Nothing was exchanged. I don’t know why he did that,’ she said, the outlet reported. ‘When I asked, he said something like, he was wealthy and wanted to help people when he could.’

Meanwhile, Epstein was trying to set up a multibillion-dollar charitable fund with JPMorgan, in part to reportedly help repair his public image following his 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitutes, including an underage girl. The plan hinged on him getting wealthy donors, including Gates, to pool their money for the fund, according to the report.

Gates and Epstein had met a handful of times before Epstein’s death in 2019, which Gates later said he regrets. In emails reviewed by WSJ, Epstein sent emails to JPMorgan trying to give the impression he was an adviser to Gates. The tech billionaire’s spokeswoman told the outlet that Epstein never worked for Gates and misrepresented their relationship to JPMorgan.

The fund stalled and ultimately went nowhere. 

‘The firm didn’t need him as a client,’ a JPMorgan spokesman told WSJ of Epstein. ‘The firm didn’t need him for introductions. Knowing what we know today, we wish we had never done business with him.’

In 2017, years after Gates’ alleged relationship with Antonova, Epstein emailed Gates about the bridge player, sources with knowledge of the incident told WSJ. Antonova denied providing comment to WSJ about Gates specifically, the outlet noted. 

Epstein reportedly asked Gates to reimburse him for the funds used to cover Antonova’s software programming classes. Gates did not send a payment, according to Gates’ spokeswoman.

‘Mr. Gates had no financial dealings with Epstein,’ the spokeswoman said. 

Sources said the cost of the classes were irrelevant to both men, but that the tone of the email showed Epstein was aware of the alleged affair and could expose Gates. 

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