Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has declined an invitation by Senate Democrats for him, or another justice, to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee concerning the ethics rules that govern the nation’s highest court.

The invitation from Committee Chairman Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., to testify at a May 2 hearing came last week amid the controversy surrounding Justice Clarence Thomas’ trips he took with a Republican mega-donor.

‘I must respectfully decline your invitation,’ Roberts wrote the committee in a letter dated Tuesday, citing the ‘exceedingly rare’ circumstances a Chief Justice of the United States would testify before Congress, ‘as one might expect in light of separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence.’

Roberts cited the few instances throughout U.S. history in which a chief justice had testified before Congress on ‘routine matters’ and ‘mundane topics,’ and noted the infrequency of the Executive Branch, meaning the president, also testifying before Congress.

Additionally, he attached a Statement of Ethics Principles and Practices he said all members of the Supreme Court abide by.

Durbin released a statement responding to Roberts’ letter, saying the hearing would continue as scheduled, and vowed there would be a reform of the Supreme Court’s ethics, regardless of its participation in the process.

‘I am surprised that the Chief Justice’s recounting of existing legal standards of ethics suggests current law is adequate and ignores the obvious. The actions of one Justice, including trips on yachts and private jets, were not reported to the public. That same Justice failed to disclose the sale of properties he partly owned to a party with interests before the Supreme Court,’ Durbin said.

‘It is time for Congress to accept its responsibility to establish an enforceable code of ethics for the Supreme Court, the only agency of our government without it,’ he added.

Earlier this month, Durbin asked Roberts to open an investigation into Thomas over what Democrats say is his ‘misconduct’ that was detailed in a report by ProPublica report accusing him of improperly receiving lavish vacations from Republican mega donor Harlan Crow, which reportedly included taking trips across the world on Crow’s yacht and private jet without disclosing them.

Experts have dismissed the report as political hit piece and explained that justices are permitted to accept invites to properties of friends for dinner or vacations without paying for it or disclosing it.

Thomas released a statement following the report saying that he has consistently followed ethics guidelines, and would do so in the future.

‘Harlan and Kathy Crow are among our dearest friends, and we have been friends for over twenty-five years,’ Thomas said. ‘As friends do, we have joined them on a number of family trips during the more than quarter-century we have known them.’ 

Early in my tenure at the Court, I sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary, and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable,’ he said. ‘I have endeavored to follow that counsel throughout my tenure, and have always sought to comply with the disclosure guidelines.’ 

‘These guidelines are now being changed, as the committee of the Judicial Conference responsible for financial disclosure for the entire federal judiciary just this past month announced new guidance. And, it is, of course, my intent to follow this guidance in the future,’ he added.

Fox News’ Brianna Herlihy contributed to this report.

FIRST ON FOX: A House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on Wednesday will feature the testimony from a whistleblower who will warn lawmakers that the U.S. has become the ‘middleman’ in a multi-billion dollar migrant child trafficking operation at the border.

The hearing, ‘The Biden Border Crisis: Exploitation of Unaccompanied Alien Children,’ will be held by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security and Enforcement and will examine the surge in unaccompanied children (UACs) at the southern border.

According to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) statistics, the number of UACs who came to the border shot up from 33,239 in FY2020 to over 146,000 in FY 2021 and 152,000 in FY 2022. So far in FY 2023 there have been over 70,000 encounters of unaccompanied children.

When child migrants are encountered at the border, they are transferred into the custody of Health and Human Services (HHS) and then united with a sponsor — typically a parent or family member already in the U.S.

But the Biden administration has been rocked by a number of reports that officials have been unable to make contact with over 85,000 child migrants, and more recently that administration officials ignored signs of ‘explosive’ growth in child labor. A number have been forced into indentured servitude to pay back smugglers and have worked in dire conditions.

The Wednesday hearing will hear from three witnesses: Tara Lee Rodas, an HHS whistleblower formerly with an inspector general’s office; Sheena Rodriguez, founder and president of Alliance for a Safe Texas; and Jessica Vaughn, director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies.

Rodas will warn of a problem that predates the administration, but that has increased significantly during the recent migrant crisis, according to a copy of her written testimony obtained by Fox News Digital.

‘Today, children will work overnight shifts at slaughterhouses, factories, restaurants to pay their debts to smugglers and traffickers. Today, children will be sold for sex,’ she will say. ‘Today, children will call a hotline to report they are being abused, neglected, and trafficked. For nearly a decade, unaccompanied children have been suffering in the shadows.’ 

She will talk about her volunteering at an emergency intake site in California to help HHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) identify sponsors for minors who have come across the border.

‘I thought I was going to help place children in loving homes. Instead, I discovered that children are being trafficked through a sophisticated network that begins with being recruited in their home country, smuggled to the U.S. border, and ends when ORR delivers a child to a sponsor – some sponsors are criminals and traffickers and members of Transnational Criminal Organizations. Some sponsors view children as commodities and assets to be used for earning income – this is why we are witnessing an explosion of labor trafficking,’ she will say. 

‘Whether intentional or not, it can be argued that the U.S. Government has become the middleman in a large scale, multi-billion-dollar, child trafficking operation run by bad actors seeking to profit off the lives of children.’

Rodriguez, of the Alliance for a Safe Texas, will share her experiences at the border encountering unaccompanied children, including teenage boys who she said told her that cartel cooperatives transported children through Mexico and held them at warehouses with armed guards. She will also call for the investigation of federal agencies responsible and for the ending of releasing migrants to sponsors.

‘We can no longer turn a blind eye and pretend this isn’t happening. Congress has the power to stop this, which is why I am calling on you to do what is right,’ her testimony says.

Vaughn will call too for congressional action, including the ending of legal loopholes that she says force the government to ‘to operate a massive catch and release program for illegally-arriving alien children.’

‘They have been carelessly funneled through the custody of U.S. government agencies and contractors, and handed off to very lightly vetted sponsors (who are usually also here illegally) in our communities without regard to their safety and well-being,’ she will say. ‘There is no question that the system for processing minors who cross illegally is dysfunctional, and has been for some time, and needs to be fixed.’

Last month, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra pushed back on the agency being unable to contact 85,000 minors, and also said HHS authorities are limited by Congress.

‘I have never heard that number of 85,000, I don’t know where it comes from and …so I would say it doesn’t sound at all to be realistic, and what we do is we try and follow up as best we can with these kids,’ he said.

‘Congress has given us certain authorities. Our authorities end when we have found a suitable sponsor to place that child with. We try and do some follow up but neither the child or the sponsor is actually obligated to follow up with us,’ he said.

Meanwhile, domestic policy adviser Susan Rice — who this week left her role — responded to the Times report that her team was show evidence of a growing migrant child labor crisis.

‘We were never informed of any kind of systematic problem with child labor or migrant child labor,’ she said.

Indiana Republican state Senators signaled their final approval Tuesday of a bill that would remove the requirement for administrators to discuss some topics with a teachers union representative, a proposal educators across the state have denounced as an avenue to strip their negotiating power.

Proponents of the Senate bill have called the legislation a ‘deregulation bill’ that would better allow non-union teachers to discuss issues like curriculum, student discipline and class size.

Bill author Republican Sen. Linda Rogers said Tuesday the bill is ‘all about flexibility’ for teachers and school administrators.

‘This bill treats educators as the professionals they are,’ Rogers said before the 27-23 vote. ‘We cannot continue to embrace outdated mandates.’

Indiana’s Republican-dominated Legislature has restricted teacher union contract negotiations over the past decade, leaving negotiations solely to cover pay and benefits, such as health care coverage, and prohibiting those contracts from covering any other subjects.

The bill does not remove the requirement for school administrators to negotiate these contract topics with a teachers union representative. But critics of the proposal have said that if discussions, outside of the contract, about day-to-day issues at school are not required, student learning environments and teacher working conditions could worsen.

Indiana teachers clad in red shirts, holding signs protesting the Senate bill, filled the Statehouse hallways last week, on the day the state House advanced the bill. With Tuesday’s approval, however, the bill goes to the desk of GOP Gov. Eric Holcomb.

‘I think one thing has been very clear throughout this session, and that is, teachers are not willing to hesitate to let their voices be heard,’ Democratic Sen. Shelli Yoder said Tuesday. ‘We have heard them, and they oppose this.’

Several Republicans joined all 10 Democrats in voting against the bill, including GOP Sen. Michael Young, who argued the bill would prohibit administrators from listening to teachers’ concerns about school safety.

‘If I was a teacher, I’d like to have the opportunity to speak to my administration about those issues,’ Young said. ‘And I think that’s legitimate to do.’

Indiana State Teachers Association President Keith Gambill called for Holcomb to veto the bill, saying lawmakers ‘ignored the impassioned pleas of our state’s teachers’ in approving it.

‘This brazen act of disregard for the educators who tirelessly serve our students is unacceptable,’ Gambill said in a statement.

Georgia is creating a $750,000 grant program to support mental health programs for military service members, veterans and their families through a law signed Tuesday by Gov. Brian Kemp.

Georgia’s Department of Veterans Service will offer grants to nonprofit groups to provide mental health and addiction services to those groups under House Bill 414.

The Republican Kemp told a group of lawmakers and veterans at a state Capitol ceremony in Atlanta that the effort is modeled on a clinic in Hinesville, near Fort Stewart, that opened last year. The Cohen Family Clinic provides free services to military members, veterans and their families and is run by Aspire Health Partners. The Florida-based nonprofit runs a similar clinic in Tampa.

‘For far too long, many of those who have sacrificed so much for freedoms have struggled with mental health challenges in silence,’ Kemp said Tuesday. ‘Whether due to the stigma, or lack of resources, or any number of other obstacles, these heroes have been unable to receive the help they need and deserve.’

To win a grant, an applicant must show that it uses evidence-based practices, trains staff members to understand the military, and connects clients to other mental health services upon discharge. Priority will be given to locations within 50 miles of a military base.

Applications for grants are supposed to be available soon.

Kemp on Tuesday also signed Senate Bill 21, which overhauls the board of the Georgia Veterans Service Foundation, and House Bill 175, which creates a retired military license plate and allows disabled veterans to exempt their vehicle from taxation even if they don’t use the current disabled veteran plate.

The Minnesota House was considering a ‘red flag law’ on Tuesday to allow the temporary confiscation of guns from people judged to be an immediate threat to themselves or others, as well as a proposal for expanded background checks for firearms transfers.

The two gun measures are part of a wide-ranging public safety bill that lawmakers were expected to debate late into the night before ultimately passing it.

‘Every other industrialized nation in the world can find a way to keep their freedoms and not kill their children and their citizens,’ Democratic Gov. Tim Walz said during a rally on the Capitol steps. ‘We can have both.’

First on the House agenda for the day, however, was the completion of work that started Monday night on a contentious bill to legalize recreational marijuana. It passed 71-59. The Senate is scheduled to vote Friday on its own cannabis bill.

The public safety bill was last on the day’s agenda. Republicans pre-filed over 30 amendments to various provisions of the public safety bill, portending a long debate.

‘We tackle gun violence head-on in this bill,’ Democratic Rep. Kelly Moller, of Shoreview, chair of the House Public Safety Committee, told reporters. ‘These are common-sense measures that our constituents for years have been telling us that they want.’

The proposals have gained traction in Minnesota this year now that Democrats control both chambers of the Legislature and the governor’s office, even as the national debate over preventing gun violence becomes increasingly polarized.

In Michigan, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed a background check bill earlier this month and said she would sign a red flag law that is still being negotiated if it reaches her desk. But in Colorado, Democratic lawmakers killed a bill Thursday that would have banned the sale and transfer of semiautomatic firearms, illustrating that even Democratic-controlled statehouses don’t have free rein when it comes to overhauling gun laws.

And it’s not clear yet if either of the two Minnesota gun measures can get through the Senate and make it to the desk of Walz, who has pledged to sign them if they do. They aren’t in the Senate version of the public safety bill, which passed earlier this month. Moeller said supporters hope the red flag and background check provisions survive when a conference committee negotiates the final version.

While House Democrats had enough of a majority to pass the overall bill, including the gun safety provisions, Senate Democrats hold only a one-seat majority. Some Democratic senators from rural districts where hunting, shooting sports and gun ownership are traditions have avoided taking stands.

Rob Doar, a lobbyist with the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, said in an interview that he’s ‘pretty confident’ there won’t be enough votes in the Senate for a red flag law. He said he does expect Senate support, however, for background check language that’s stronger than current law but doesn’t go as far as the House bill.

Democratic House Majority Leader Jamie Long, of Minneapolis, said recent school shootings show the need for both provisions. He recounted to reporters how his young daughter came home a few weeks ago and told him about a shelter-in-place drill that they had conducted at her preschool.

‘We have a gun violence epidemic in our country and in our state, and right now we are putting this on our kids. And we shouldn’t,’ Long said. ‘We are at a point where the adults need to step up and protect our kids and make sure that we are doing everything we can to keep them safe.’

While Long wasn’t optimistic about getting Republican votes for the bill, he noted that GOP Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has proposed something similar to a red flag law, and that red flag laws have won support in some red states. Lee frames his proposal as ‘temporary mental health orders of protection’ and says it’s not a red flag law. But top Republicans there don’t agree, and its chances are fading. Tennessee has become a flashpoint in the national debate in the wake of last month’s shooting at a Nashville school that killed three children and three adults.

The lead Republican on the Public Safety Committee, Rep. Paul Novotny, of Elk River, said at a news conference that the red flag proposal would violate due process and Second Amendment rights. He said the background check provision, which would apply to more kinds of gun transfers than current state law requires, would create ‘strict and impractical’ hurdles for law-abiding citizens who want to sell, give or loan guns to others.

The public safety bill also includes money for recruiting police officers, changes to the probation system aimed at reducing recidivism, increased penalties for fentanyl dealers, and grants for local nonprofits for violence prevention programs.

‘This is a transformational bill that positively impacts the safety of every Minnesotans across the state,’ Moller said.

Congressional Republicans are slamming Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, New York City Mayor Eric Adams and other Democrats for risking national security after the two attended an event last month with a man now facing federal charges for allegedly running a secret Chinese police station in Manhattan.

Video recorded on March 18 appears to show Lu Jianwang standing alongside Adams at a fundraising event for the Fukien American Association, a cultural nonprofit linked to the Chinese province. Schumer spoke at the event.

Lu was arrested last week and charged with conspiring to act as an agent of China’s government, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York.

‘Chuck Schumer, Eric Adams and New York Democrats have failed to take the threat of Communist China seriously and risked compromising national security for a photo op with Chinese foreign agents infiltrating New York State,’ House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik told Fox News Digital. ‘While far-left Democrats in New York are schmoozing our foreign adversaries, House Republicans are working to hold Communist China accountable for their malign actions and defend Americans from the malicious threat of the CCP (Chinese Community Party).’

In April 2022, Lu also met New York Democrat Rep. Grace Meng at a fundraising event, according to the Daily Caller, citing images the outlet found.

Records show that since 2006 Lu has contributed at least $32,625 to New York elected officials, including Adams and New York Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul.

On the other side of Capitol Hill, Republican senators say it is ‘no surprise’ that Chinese operatives mingle with Democrats, casting the party as a whole as ‘pro-China.’

‘It is not surprising that that CCP spies are mingling with prominent Democrats like Chuck Schumer, and it is clear that the left learned nothing after Eric Swalwell,’ Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., told Fox News Digital.

Blackburn was referring to an incident in 2020 in which a suspected Chinese spy, known as Fang Fang or Christine Fang, targeted Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., by reportedly taking part in fundraising for his 2014 reelection campaign, although she did not make donations nor was there evidence of illegal contributions. Fang’s relationships with at least two Midwestern mayors turned sexual, according to reports, and at least two incidents were caught by FBI surveillance.

‘While the Biden administration is attempting to appease Beijing and work on climate change, CCP spies are infiltrating cities and organizations around the country,’ Blackburn said.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said that it is ‘no surprise that Chinese operatives found their way into Democrat events.’

‘The Democrat Party is structurally pro-China,’ Cruz told Fox News Digital. ‘Democrats get their money from Big Business, Big Hollywood, Big Universities and Big Tech, all of whom get their money from China.’

2 NEW YORK RESIDENTS ALLEGEDLY RAN SECRET CHINESE POLICE STATION   

‘Democrats are happy to ignore China’s genocide of the Uyghurs, other human rights atrocities, culpability for COVID and intellectual property theft,’ Cruz added.

A spokesperson for Sen. Schumer told Fox News Digital, ‘Senator Schumer attends countless events in every corner of New York, including with the Asian American community. He was attending the annual Fukinese Association dinner, as he has in years before, and took photos with those present. He had never met this man before and did not know who he was.’

Adams’ office told Fox News that the mayor’s attendance at an event is either to show support for a local community or the city and does not signal any kind of endorsement. A spokesperson for Adams also said he does not know Lu.

When announcing Lu’s arrest last week, U.S. Attorney Breon Peace for the Eastern District of New York said China’s Ministry of Public Security ‘has repeatedly and flagrantly violated our nation’s sovereignty, including by opening and operating a police station in the middle of New York City.’

The CCP’s overseas police stations allow Chinese authorities to ‘carry out policing operations on foreign soil’ and have aided a CCP campaign to combat citizens living abroad, according to the pan-Asian human rights organization Safeguard Defenders.

Chen Jinping was also charged with conspiring to act as an agent of China’s government.

The FBI raided the illegal police station before Lu and Chen’s arrests.

Peace said his office and the FBI’s New York field office are the ‘first law enforcement partners in the world to make arrests in connection with the Chinese government’s overseas police stations.’

Fox News’ Bryan Llenas and Greg Norman contributed to this report.

President Biden was ripped by critics Monday when he made a statement suggesting the children of parents across the nation belonged to the whole country to raise rather than just their own families.

‘There is no such thing as someone else’s child. No such thing as someone else’s child. Our nation’s children are all our children,’ Biden said, quoting a former teacher during a speech in the White House Rose Garden honoring the 2023 national and state teachers of the year. 

His statement drew sharp criticism on social media from politicians and parents alike, blasting him suggesting the state and the political left had ownership over the children of the country.

‘This is that Hillary Clinton, it takes a village nonsense,’ one critic wrote, referencing former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s controversial and highly scrutinized book,’It Takes a Village.’

‘As the great Senator Bob Dole said in 1996, ‘It doesn’t take a village to raise a child. It takes a family to raise a child,” they added.

Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., told Biden he was ‘absolutely wrong’ in his claim, while 1776 Project PAC, a group dedicated to electing candidates opposed to the teaching of ‘woke’ subjects in schools, wrote, ‘The left believes they own your kids.’

‘Sorry but Hunter’s on you,’ another critic wrote, appearing to mock Biden’s son, Hunter, who has battled drug addiction and is currently under federal investigation. 

‘We do NOT CO-PARENT with the GOVERNMENT,’ parental rights group Moms for Liberty wrote, while Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, wrote that Biden’s comments speak for themselves.

‘This is why [Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky.] and I introduced amendments last month to, respectively, abolish the Department of Education and short of that, to block grant $ to the states,’ Roy added.

Biden’s comments were reminiscent, not only of Clinton’s ‘village’ take, but also of a liberal former MSNBC host calling in a 2016 commercial for the collective care of a community’s children instead of parents taking care of their kids themselves.

‘We have never invested as much in public education as we should have because we’ve always had kind of a private notion of children. Your kid is yours and totally your responsibility. We haven’t had a very collective notion of these are our children,’ Melissa Harris-Perry said in the commercial for the liberal network’s then-‘Lean Forward’ campaign.

‘So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities,’ she said.

Climate change, spurred by the burning of fossil fuels, is the biggest danger to marine life including whales, a panel of Democratic officials and environmental groups said Monday.

The gathering, held in an oceanfront conference room as a half-dozen dolphins frolicked in the ocean behind them, also strongly criticized a bill in the House of Representatives containing numerous incentives for oil and gas companies, and which eliminates several environmental protections currently in effect.

It also was a retort to opponents of offshore wind development, who claim that preparation for wind farms off New Jersey and New York are killing whales along the U.S. East Coast. Numerous federal and state agencies say there is no evidence that the deaths are related to offshore wind survey work.

The event came a week after U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. and other New Jersey Congressional Democrats wrote to the White House Council on Environmental Quality ‘demanding real solutions in response to the death of marine mammals off New Jersey’s coast.’

But the letter did not seek pause in offshore wind projects as many Republicans demand. Chris Smith and Jeff Van Drew, two Republican Congressmen from New Jersey, want the work stopped at least temporarily. Neither responded to a request for comment Monday. No Republican elected officials were at Monday’s event.

Earlier this month, Republican New Jersey state senators Declan O’Scanlon and Ed Durr introduced a resolution calling on the federal and state governments to enact a moratorium on offshore wind preparation, saying ‘We cannot ignore the surge in marine life deaths that has occurred while offshore wind project preparation activities have been conducted along the coast.’

At Monday’s event, Pallone said, ‘The science has not linked the whale deaths to offshore wind activities. Climate change is the biggest threat to marine mammals.’

Pallone and others said that as water temperatures rise, fish species that whales prey upon have been moving into different areas, bringing whales more frequently into the path of heavily traveled shipping lanes off the East Coast.

Shawn LaTourette, New Jersey’s environmental protection commissioner, said the migrating bait fish are ‘bringing marine life into direct contact with the shipping superhighway that sits off our coast.’

As Ed Potosnak of the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters put it, ‘They’re having a picnic in the Parkway; they’re getting hit.’

Of the 32 whales that have died off the East Coast since Dec. 1, many have shown signs of being struck by ships or being entangled in discarded fishing gear, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In an interview with The Associated Press earlier this month after a speech at Monmouth University, NOAA’s administrator, Richard Spinrad, said ship strikes are a common cause of recent whale deaths.

‘We study the fisheries, where the fish are, what the populations are, and there is some thought as to the whales following a change, a shift in where the prey is that the whales feed on, which may be a consequence of a change in the ocean itself,’ Spinrad said. ‘By moving further inshore these whales are then more vulnerable to things like ship strikes. The science that we have conducted suggests there is not a link between the activities of offshore wind and the strandings we’ve seen along the East Coast.’

U.S. Sen Cory Booker said burning fossil fuels ‘is causing our house to be on fire, and we have been supplying the matches.’

Capt. Paul Eidman, of the group Anglers for Offshore Wind Power, said climate change is already affecting commercial and recreational fishing by changing where bait fish — and their predators — travel.

‘Offshore wind energy offers a clean, economical, beneficial opportunity to combat the climate crisis and an alternative to continuing to burn fossil fuels,’ he said. ‘We cannot ignore the fact that the impacts of climate change are disrupting species migration and holding patterns, posing serious risks to the long-term future of recreational fishing and the species we rely on.’

Panelists sharply criticized HR1, a bill being pushed by House Republicans to lower energy costs by giving incentives to fossil fuel industries, rolling back many environmental laws and protections, and limiting the power of a president or government agency to limit or prevent energy projects on federal land.

The bill has been attached to legislation the Republicans support in return for increasing the nation’s debt limit and avoiding a government financial default.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer dodged questions from Fox News on Monday after being photographed last month with a man at a gala who is now facing federal charges for allegedly running a secret Chinese police station in New York City. 

The prominent New York Democrat was asked twice about the matter outside the Roosevelt House at Hunter College in Manhattan – where Schumer was the honorary speaker at an Equal Rights Amendment event this morning – but he chose not to respond. 

Before and after the event, Schumer appeared to be on his phone. 

‘Hi, Senator, what can you tell us about attending a gala last month and taking photos with a suspected CCP agent?’ Schumer was asked as he walked outside the building. 

VIDEO SHOWS SUSPECT ACCUSED OF OPERATING SECRET CHINESE POLICE STATIONS MINGLING WITH SCHUMER, ADAMS 

‘How well do you know the man accused of running the secret police station in New York City?’ Fox News’s Jennifer Johnson also asked the senator before he got into a vehicle. 

Schumer’s office also did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday from Fox News Digital. But a spokesperson later told Fox News Digital: ‘Senator Schumer attends countless events in every corner of New York, including with the Asian American community. He was attending the annual Fukinese Association dinner, as he has in years before, and took photos with those present. He had never met this man before and did not know who he was.’

Video recorded on March 18 appears to show Lu Jianwang standing alongside New York City Mayor Eric Adams at an event where Schumer also spoke. 

2 NEW YORK RESIDENTS ALLEGEDLY RAN SECRET CHINESE POLICE STATION   

Lu was arrested last week and charged with conspiring to act as an agent of China’s government, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York. 

The event was a fundraiser for the Fukien American Association, a cultural nonprofit linked to the Chinese province. 

When announcing Lu’s arrest last week, U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said China’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS) ‘has repeatedly and flagrantly violated our nation’s sovereignty, including by opening and operating a police station in the middle of New York City.’  

‘Two miles from our office, just across the Brooklyn Bridge, this nondescript office building in the heart of bustling Chinatown in Lower Manhattan has a dark secret. Until several months ago, an entire floor of this building hosted an undeclared police station of the Chinese National Police,’ Peace said. ‘Now, just imagine the NYPD opening an undeclared secret police station in Beijing. It would be unthinkable.’ 

In a statement, Adams’ office told Fox News that the mayor’s attendance at an event is either to show support for a local community or the city, and does not signal any kind of endorsement.  

A spokesperson for Adams also said he does not know Lu.  

Fox News’ Bryan Llenas contributed to this report. 

Riot police have descended on Montana’s capitol after left-wing protestors disrupted proceedings in the state House of Representatives in support of transgender lawmaker Zooey Zephyr, a Democrat, who was censured by the body last week, multiple reports have said.

According to The Independent, an unknown number of protestors were arrested Monday when police units from the Montana Highway Patrol and the Lewis and Clark County sheriff’s office commenced an operation to break up the group packing the observation gallery of the House chamber.

The group chanted, ‘Let her speak!’ for ‘nearly half an hour,’ according to another report, bringing the session to a halt in support ending the censure against Zephyr.

Zephyr, a bisexual and the first transgender lawmaker in Montana legislature history, drew criticism Tuesday after telling Republicans during a House floor debate on amendments to Senate Bill 99, which would prohibit sex change treatment for minors, that they have ‘blood on (their) hands,’ a notion the lawmaker hopes will be present in their prayers.

‘The only thing I will say, is if you vote yes on this bill and yes on these amendments, I hope the next time there’s an invocation when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands,’ Zephyr said referencing the body’s opening prayer.

Zephyr’s comments lead to the House voting in favor of the lawmaker’s censure on Thursday, citing ‘hate-filled testimony.’ 

‘I want to be clear: no amount of silencing tactics will deter me from standing up for the rights of the transgender community,’ Zephyr said following the censure. ‘I will not apologize for speaking with clarity and precision about the harm these bills cause. Montana Republicans say they want an apology, but what they really want is silence as they take away the rights of trans and queer Montanans.’

The bill ultimately passed both the state House and Senate, and was sent to Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte’s desk on Friday. He is expected to sign the bill into law.

Fox News’ Kyle Morris contributed to this report.