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A Georgia state representative posted a scathing rebuke of her own party on Twitter Saturday, accusing fellow Democrats of prioritizing migrants over inner city children.

Mesha Mainor has served in the Georgia House of Representatives since January 2021, representing District 56. In a Twitter video, she accused Democrats of turning against her for being a staunch school choice advocate. 

‘I support school choice, parent rights and opportunities for children to thrive, especially those that are marginalized and tend to fail in school,’ Mainor began.

‘The Democrats at the [Georgia State] Capitol took a hard position and demanded every Democrat vote against children and for the teachers union,’ she explained. ‘I voted yes for parents and yes for children not failing schools.’

Mainor justified her position by noting that some schools in her district have 3% reading proficiency rates and that many kids cannot do simple math.

‘I have a few colleagues upset with me to the point where they are giving away $1,000 checks to anyone that will run against me,’ Mainor continued. ‘I’m not apologizing because my colleagues don’t like how I vote.’

Mainor then explained that parents are upset that some politicians ‘put the teachers union and donors ahead of their constituents.’

Mainor’s speech took a personal turn when she accused her colleagues of being upset that she stood up for her principles.

‘It’s ironic. I’ll say every election year, I hear ‘Black Lives Matter.’ But do they? I see every other minority being prioritized except Black children living in poverty that can’t read,’ Mainor argued.

‘We’ll send $1,000,000 to the border for immigrant services. But Black communities, not even a shout-out. I’m sorry, I don’t agree with this,’ she added. ‘I’m not backing down and I’m actually just getting started.’

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

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Republican Miami Mayor Francis Suarez on Sunday offered praise of a prominent Democrat mayor, saying he was happy that the Democrat was ‘standing up and talking about’ how the migrant crisis was impacting his city.

‘I’m actually quite proud of Mayor [Eric] Adams from New York for standing up and talking about how this is impacting the city of New York,’ Suarez said during an interview on CBS’ ‘Face the Nation.’

‘He has to focus on crime reduction, and instead you see images of police officers helping people in the classic Roosevelt Hotel find housing,’ he continued. ‘These officers should be, and you want them to be, focused on reducing crime, and instead, have to deal with this migrant crisis that as you’ve said should be a federal issue.’

Adams appeared on the same Sunday morning show and said 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. ‘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.’

Suarez also weighed in on the migrant crisis by expressing frustration about the federal government not helping Miami.

‘We haven’t received any support as of yet from the federal government that we are aware of,’ Suarez said. ‘We checked to see if we have gotten any help from FEMA – it turns out we have not.’

Suarez said his city has struggled to manage the flux of immigrants over the past year, especially from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti, which the Biden administration created a program for to ease the asylum process in January.

‘It is a migrant crisis in our city as well,’ Suarez said. ‘Just in the last two months, the Coast Guard has processed 408 migrants on our coast. Just last year in our public school system, we had over 14,000 new children – 10,000 of which came from four countries: Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti. And that’s the equivalent of five new 2,000-student school. It’s a tremendous burden on our system.’

Illegal crossings at the border spiked this month amid the expiration of Title 42, a COVID-19 emergency policy that allowed border agents to turn away migrants.

Suarez said this migrant crisis puts a burden primarily on large cities, many of which have received little to no federal aid.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., took action in May to help counter mass migration in his state when he signed a bill that requires businesses with more than 25 employees to check the immigration status of those whom they hire. A failure to comply leads to a $1,000 fine. The law has prompted immigration groups to discourage migrants from traveling to Florida.

FEMA and New York City Mayor Adams did not respond to a request for comment.

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Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, lashed out at President Biden for ‘scaremongering’ over the national debt Sunday, telling Fox News that the president is ‘willing to tank the economy’ rather than negotiate with Republicans.

Cruz’s comments came just hours after Biden declared himself ‘blameless’ should the U.S. default on its debt. The senator argued Biden should be negotiating with Congress in Washington rather than addressing G-7 nations in Hiroshima, Japan.

‘It really is unfortunate to see how Joe Biden is approaching this job. It’s all politics all the time, and he consistently goes to the hard left. He’s off in Hiroshima right now, in Japan. He should be in Washington, D.C. He should be sitting down and working out a deal, working out a compromise,’ Cruz said.

‘He could take default off the table. Joe Biden doesn’t want to take default off the table. Why? Because he wants to scaremonger. He wants to scare people into saying, ‘Look at this bad thing that I, Joe Biden, am threatening is going to happen,” he continued.

Biden suggested Sunday morning that he has the authority to unilaterally increase the debt ceiling using the 14th Amendment. Cruz and other experts have blasted that claim, however, saying it would never stand up in court.

‘Biden’s position on the 14th Amendment is legally frivolous,’ Cruz said. ‘By the way, someone else who agreed with that was Barack Obama. The left tried to convince Obama to do this and Obama said, ‘No, you can’t do this under the Constitution.”

Biden acknowledged Sunday that lengthy court proceedings would likely render the move moot, however, pushing a decision well past the debt ceiling deadline.

Republicans in Congress forced Biden to the negotiating table after months of the White House insisting there would be no discussion of the issue. Biden argued Sunday morning that certain ‘MAGA Republicans’ are seeking to cause a default in an effort to crash the economy ahead of his re-election effort.

‘I’ve done my part,’ Biden said.

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More than a dozen House and Senate Republicans have penned a letter to the director of the National Institutes of Health demanding answers over a study it funded titled ‘Psychosocial Functioning in Transgender Youth after 2 Years of Hormones,’ during which ‘two young people tragically died by suicide.’ 

The message to Dr. Lawrence Tabak, co-signed by Senators Marco Rubio and Rand Paul and Reps. Josh Breechen, Lauren Boebert and Andy Biggs, among others, highlights ‘grave concerns’ from the lawmakers over the study in which researchers examined 315 subjects  ‘between the ages of 12 and 20 who identify as transgender and were given cross-sex hormones,’ 240 of whom were minors. 

‘During this study, two young people died by suicide and eleven reported suicidal ideation,’ the letter read. ‘Rather than shutting the study down after such serious adverse events, the researchers published their paper, concluding that the study was a success because cross-sex hormones had altered subjects’ physical appearance and improved psychosocial functioning.’ 

The researchers have been ‘in search of an agenda and justifying an agenda, they’re not really about children’s safety as we’ve seen from the suicides,’ North Carolina Republican Sen. Ted Budd, who co-led the GOP letter, told Fox News. He described the study as ‘absolutely tragic.’

A summary published by the New England Journal of Medicine read, ‘Participants were enrolled in a four-site prospective, observational study of physical and psychosocial outcomes. ‘

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED FACES BACKLASH FOR NAMING TRANSGENDER FEMALE POP STAR KIM PETRAS AS SWIMSUIT COVER MODEL 

‘Participants completed the Transgender Congruence Scale, the Beck Depression Inventory–II, the Revised Children’s Manifest Anxiety Scale (Second Edition), and the Positive Affect and Life Satisfaction measures from the NIH (National Institutes of Health) Toolbox Emotion Battery at baseline and at 6, 12, 18, and 24 months after gender-affirming hormones initiation,’ it said. 

‘During the study period, appearance congruence, positive affect, and life satisfaction increased, and depression and anxiety symptoms decreased,’ the summary concluded. ‘Increases in appearance congruence were associated with concurrent increases in positive affect and life satisfaction and decreases in depression and anxiety symptoms. The most common adverse event was suicidal ideation (in 11 participants [3.5%]); death by suicide occurred in 2 participants.’ 

WYOMING SORORITY SISTERS SPEAK OUT AFTER LAWSUIT LAUNCHED OVER TRANSGENDER MEMBER 

But, the Republicans argued that ‘the four clinics and some of the researchers who conducted this experiment are outspoken advocates for conducting gender transition interventions on children.’ 

‘In a video it later removed from its YouTube channel, Boston Children’s Hospital, one of the clinics involved, went as far as to claim that children can know their gender identity ‘from the womb,’’ the letter read. 

‘Despite glaring shortfalls, this government-funded research is already being used to further the fallacy that chemically transitioning children is safe and effective,’ the Republicans also argued, adding, ‘It is alarming that vulnerable young people died by suicide while participating in a taxpayer-funded study that will almost certainly inflict devastating physical harm on those who participated.’ 

The letter asked Tabak, by June 9, to provide responses to questions such as, ‘Were the individuals who tragically died by suicide while participating in this study minors?’ and ‘Were participants and their parents given the opportunity to reconsider their consent and withdraw from this research in light of the suicides?’

The Food and Drug Administration told Fox News, when asked if the agency is seeking to expand clinical trials involving children: ‘Increasing the availability of safe and effective medicines for children is a key priority for the FDA. The best way to provide children with safe and effective treatment options is by including them in clinical research and providing additional safeguards to protect them during clinical trials.’

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EXCLUSIVE: One Republican lawmaker is officially calling for the Pulitzer Prize Board to rescind the 2018 award given to The New York Times and Washington Post for their reporting on the now-debunked Russia collusion hoax.

In a Wednesday letter to the board, Rep. Lance Gooden, R-Texas, called for the prize to be stripped from the two liberal outlets, citing the findings of Special Counsel John Durham’s final report on the FBI’s probe that found the agency, as well as the Department of Justice, ‘failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law’ when it launched the Trump-Russia investigation. 

‘If Pulitzer still believes in maintaining the integrity of its establishment and high standards for its prizes and award recipients, it should promptly undo this mistake by stripping the New York Times and the Washington Post of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize,’ Gooden wrote. 

‘To restore faith in the authenticity of the prize and to clarify the Board’s strong belief in accountability and impartiality, I request the Board ban the Washington Post and the New York Times from any nominations for a minimum of five years. I trust you will do the right thing,’ he added.

READ THE LETTER BELOW. APP USERS: CLICK HERE

In his letter, Gooden noted there was precedent for rescinding an award, specifically mentioning its decision to strip a Washington Post reporter of the 1981 award ‘for inaccuracies in a feature and autobiographical report.’

‘Even if this award was bestowed in good faith, the Board is bound by its duty and ‘mission’ to support accurate and responsible journalism. Now that the truth has been revealed, it is imperative that the Board correct this oversight,’ he wrote.

Gooden’s calls for the award to be rescinded have been echoed by others, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., during a recent appearance on Fox News.

‘I think the Pulitzer Prize given to The Washington Post and New York Times should be taken back because the entire episode was politically motivated crap. That’s not something you should get a Pulitzer Prize for,’ Graham told ‘America’s Newsroom.’

Fox News Digital reached out to the Pulitzer Prize Board for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

Fox News’ Brianna Herlihy contributed to this report.

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Lawmakers in Louisiana received a revised better-than-expected revenue forecast saying there will be hundreds of millions of dollars in additional surplus funds available to spend in this year’s budget.Gov. John Bel Edward’s administration is seeking to restore his previous proposal for teacher pay raises and additional early childhood education funds.Thursday’s Revenue Estimating Conference recognized an additional $323 million for the current budget and a more than $400 million bump for next year’s.

Louisiana lawmakers received a revised sunny revenue forecast Thursday, with economists saying hundreds of millions of dollars in additional surplus funds are available to spend for this year’s budget.

Despite the better-than-expected revised forecast, how lawmakers spend the extra funds remain up for debate. The House is taking the more conservative approach of wanting to pay down debt, while legislators in the Senate are hoping to breach the state’s expenditure cap to spend money in a multitude of areas, including infrastructure.

On top of the hundreds of millions of dollars in surplus that lawmakers were already working with, Thursday’s Revenue Estimating Conference recognized an additional $323 million for the current budget and a more than $400 million bump that lawmakers can spend on next year’s. With the extra money, Gov. John Bel Edward’s administration is making the plea that his previous proposal for teacher pay raises and additional early childhood education funds, which were cut from the House’s budget plan, should be restored.

With just three weeks left in Louisiana’s 2023 legislative session, which focuses on fiscal matters, lawmakers must draft and pass a budget before they adjourn on June 8.

Earlier this month, Louisiana’s Republican-dominated House advanced a budget plan that stripped dollars sought by Edwards to fund $2,000 teacher pay raises, early childhood education and public colleges. Instead, lawmakers steered a windfall of hundreds of millions of dollars in extra state revenue toward paying down retirement debt.

Republicans called the plan financially responsible and said it would save school districts money in the long run by letting them spend funds as they best see fit, which could include wage increases for educators. Additionally, proponents argue that it will prepare the state for a potential fiscal cliff in 2025 when a temporary 0.45% state sales tax expires.

Edwards’ administration argues to use the surplus funds elsewhere, especially following news of the revised revenue forecast.

‘Makes perfect sense to prepay some of your mortgage debt,’ Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne, Edwards’ chief budget architect, said Thursday. ‘But if you have a leaky roof, if you have something that needs to be fixed and you have one-time money that would address a critical need that’s important to you as a family, you ought to use the money for that purpose instead of prepaying a debt that has already been scheduled to be paid.’

Across the statehouse rotunda, the GOP-controlled Senate is debating busting Louisiana’s expenditure limit. Senate President Page Cortez argues that failing to breach the cap could cause the state to miss out on hundreds of millions of federal grant dollars and that Edwards could possible call them back to the Capitol for a special session, The Advocate reported.

The expenditure restraints were inserted to the state constitution decades ago. Cortez proposes increasing the limit by nearly 5% this year and nearly 5% next year, giving lawmakers more room for spending. However, in order to do so it requires a two-thirds approval from both chambers. Negotiations over breaching the limit continue. Additionally, the Senate Finance Committee continues to draft its budget proposal in which there will be two versions — one that breaches the expenditure cap and one that does not.

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Alaska lawmakers have passed a state spending package, which includes a dividend of about $1,300 each to residents this year, and ended their special session after one day.

The special session began and ended Thursday, one day after the 121-day regular session ended without a budget deal.

The Senate, controlled by a bipartisan coalition, on Wednesday passed a budget for government operations and infrastructure projects and sent it to the House as a take-or-leave proposition. The House adjourned without voting on it.

On Thursday, the measure was returned to the Senate, where $34 million in infrastructure projects was added before it was again passed in that chamber. Ten members of the Republican-led House majority then joined the 16-member House minority to approve the budget. The minority is largely composed of Democrats.

The budget allows for an additional check to residents of up to $500 next year if revenues exceed the current forecast. It also includes $175 million in one-time funds intended as a boost for schools. School leaders and advocates had urged a permanent increase in funding, citing inflation and other cost concerns.

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The FBI improperly used warrantless search powers against U.S. citizens more than 278,000 times in the year ending November 2021, according to an unsealed Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) filing.

U.S. citizens covered in that improper effort included people involved in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021; George Floyd protesters during the summer of 2020; and donors to a failed congressional candidate, the filing said.

Section 702 of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) allows the government to conduct targeted surveillance of non-U.S. persons located abroad to acquire foreign intelligence information. When U.S. citizens are flagged as part of these investigations, the FBI takes over the process of querying them for possible security reasons.

The court filing, which spanned 127 pages, was unsealed Friday by the FISC, but was filed in April 2022.

‘As Director Wray has made clear, the errors described in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s opinion are completely unacceptable,’ a senior FBI official told Fox News Friday. ‘As a result of the audits that revealed these instances of noncompliance, the FBI changed its querying procedures to make sure these errors do not happen again. These steps have led to significant improvement in the way we conduct queries of lawfully obtained Section 702 information.’ 

‘We are committed to continuing this work and providing greater transparency into the process to earn the trust of the American people and advance our mission of safeguarding both the nation’s security, and privacy and civil liberties, at the same time,’ the senior FBI official said.

The FBI has faced scrutiny for the misuse of Section 702, and FBI Director Christopher Wray has said the bureau has taken steps to reform the system.

Fox News Digital first reported last month that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said there was a ‘significant decline’ in the total number of queries the FBI made into U.S. citizens between 2021 and 2022 under Section 702, due to the changes the bureau made to its ‘systems, processes, and training relating to U.S. persons queries.’

In the year ending November 2022, the FBI conducted a total of about 204,000 queries, a 94% drop from the previous year’s reporting period when it conducted nearly 3.4 million.

The filing released on Friday detailed a number of the improper queries, including a batch query for ‘over 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign.’

‘The analyst who ran the query advised that the campaign was a target of foreign influence, but NSD [National Security Division] determined that only eight identifiers used in the query had sufficient ties to foreign influence activities to comply with the querying standard,’ the filing stated.

It is unclear to which congressional campaign the filing is referring. Fox News has learned the candidate was not a member of Congress and did not win his or her election.

The filing also said another batch of queries was made in June 2020, ‘using identifiers of 133 individuals arrested in connection with civil unrest and protests between approximately May 30 and June 18, 2020.’

The civil unrest was due to the death of George Floyd in police custody in May 2020.

‘The query was run to determine whether the FBI had ‘any counter-terrorism derogatory information on the arrestees,’ but without ‘any specific potential connections to terrorist related activity’ known to those who conducted the queries,’ the filing stated.

The filing revealed that an FBI employee ran more than 23,000 queries ‘to find possible foreign influence, although the analyst conducting the queries had no indications of foreign influence related to the query term used.’

The filing said ‘no raw Section 702 information was accessed as a result of these queries.’

Queries can help to ‘find connections between individuals and entities,’ as well as to identify threats to the U.S. homeland or national security interests abroad. Queries also help to identify potential victims of national security threat activity — like possible victims of cyberattacks on U.S. infrastructure by foreign actors.

Between December 2021 and November 2022, the FBI’s queries conducted based on evidence of a crime ‘increased slightly.’ But the number of instances in which the FBI ‘failed to obtain a required court order prior to reviewing the results of certain evidence of a crime-only queries declined.’

The report also shows the FBI opened ‘zero’ investigations into U.S. persons who are not considered a threat to national security in the year ending November 2022.

FISA Section 702 is set to sunset on Dec. 31, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are proposing reforms in order to reauthorize the section, with more congressional oversight.

FISA reform became a priority for both Republicans and Democrats following a 2019 review from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz. That review found significant inaccuracies and omissions by the FBI in a FISA warrant application to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in 2016, and has proposed significant reforms to FISA Section 702 since.

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Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., blasted Democratic Senator John Fetterman’s ‘unbecoming’ decision to attend a Senate press conference while wearing a hoodie and shorts.

‘John Fetterman redefined Casual Friday on a Thursday morning,’ Boebert wrote on Twitter. ‘It’s truly unbecoming for someone to show up like that to any job, let alone a job that only 100 people are elected to do.’

The Pennsylvania senator attended a Thursday news conference to discuss debt limit negotiations wearing a white hoodie, gray workout shorts, and running shoes, while standing alongside four fellow Democratic Senators who all were dressed in a suit and tie.

‘There’s just no excuse for it,’ the Colorado Republican said in her tweet blasting Fetterman’s Senate attire.

During his time as Mayor of Braddock and campaign for the Pennsylvania Senate, Fetterman was known for wearing sweats on the job, but raised eyebrows when he showed up to the United States Senate in a hoodie.

Fetterman has been seen wearing a hoodie and shorts in the Senate several times since his return from a six-week hospital stay, where he was being treated for clinical depression.

Fetterman initially checked himself into the hospital in February, and did not return in-person to the Senate until April.

On his first appearance in the chamber since his weeks-long hospital stay, the Senator was seen wearing a black Carhart hoodie and blue casual shorts.

Fetterman’s office didn’t immediately return a request for comment on Boebert’s criticism.  

Among the debate about Fetterman’s controversial Senate attire, Fox News Digital recently reported the Senator’s office doctored his remarks in their transcriptions from several hearings, amid concern over the Senators health.

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House Democrats’ campaign arm has launched a new website that targets moderate and vulnerable Republicans for supporting spending cuts outlined in Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s debt ceiling bill.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) unveiled ‘GOPVotedToDefault.com,’ which names 31 Republican members of Congress and accuses them of seeking to cut funding for veterans, Social Security and seniors’ healthcare.

Those are the same attack lines Democrats have been using against Republicans even as Congress and the White House are trying to find an agreement on how to raise the debt ceiling before the government is unable to pay its bills after June 1.

Among those listed is Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, who narrowly won her re-election by just a few hundred votes. Others targeted are Reps. Don Bacon of Nebraska, Ryan Zinke of Montana, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and most freshman New York Republicans.

The website features a prominent timer tracking how many days it’s been since House Republicans passed their Limit, Save, Grow Act, which seeks to raise the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion while also cutting discretionary spending by roughly $150 billion from this year to the next.

It says underneath, ’31 vulnerable Republicans sided with extremists to hold our economy hostage in order to enact cruel cuts to programs that keep Americans healthy, safe, and secure. See how your congressperson’s default ransom note will impact your district.’

House Republicans have said their bill does not include any of the cuts Democrats are warning about, and have vowed not to reduce funding for veterans’ care or touch seniors’ benefits.

The new online pressure campaign comes just as Democrats are gathering signatures to make an end run around McCarthy to bring a clean debt limit increase to the floor — something every GOP lawmaker has spoken out against.

Their discharge petition, which would allow them to bring a bill to the floor over the speaker’s objections provided it gets 218 signatures, has 210 of 213 Democratic names on it. Rep. Mary Peltola’s, D-Alaska, office told Fox News Digital that she intends to sign it upon her return to Washington, D.C. But to go anywhere, it would need at least several Republicans, which the conference has signaled would be an uphill battle.

The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), the House GOP’s rival to the DCCC, accused Democrats of ignoring their ‘spending crisis’ to launch a partisan online attack.

‘Instead of addressing the spending crisis they created, Democrats spend their time mocking up a microsite full of already debunked lies. Every moment wasted on useless stunts like this is a lost opportunity to work in a bipartisan way to avoid an economic catastrophe,’ NRCC national press secretary Will Reinert told Fox News Digital.

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