The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources’ board approved a resolution Wednesday asking legislators for more money to manage wildlife habitat and maintain amenities on public lands.

Board member Greg Kazmierski introduced the resolution after complaining in February that funding to manage wildlife and maintain amenities on public lands such as boat landings, parking lots and signs isn’t keeping pace with land purchases.

The Department of Natural Resources manages more than 1.6 million acres of property. Republican lawmakers have been trying for years to slow or stop land purchases, arguing they drive up state debt.

State funding for one of the department’s responsibilities — wildlife management — has grown from around $7.2 million in fiscal year 2011-12 to around $11.2 million in fiscal year 2022-23, a department budget analyst noted in February.

The total state budget for public lands this year is $107 million. There’s also some federal funding.

Kazmierski told the board that’s not enough, although his resolution doesn’t specify how much funding there should be. It calls on the Legislature’s finance committee to provide ‘adequate funding’ for habitat management programs and public lands maintenance. The board approved it unanimously.

Kazmierski, who was appointed to the board by former GOP Gov. Scott Walker, said the point is to raise awareness about management needs on public land.

Republican state Sen. Howard Marklein, one of the finance committee’s co-chairs, was noncommittal about the funding request in a email statement. He did no say whether the committee might increase or decrease funding for managing public lands, saying only that ‘we are looking at all our options.’

The committee’s other co-chair, Republican state Rep. Mark Born, didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

A threatening letter containing white powder was sent to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office Wednesday, Fox News has learned. 

The New York Police Department and the city’s Department of Environmental Protection responded to the scene. 

‘NYPD testing determined the powder found in the mailroom to be non-hazardous,’ Bragg’s office said in a statement. ‘We thank our partners at the NYPD Emergency Service Unit and the NYC Department of Environmental Protection for their quick response.’

The malicious mailing comes a week after Bragg indicted former President Donald Trump on multiple charges allegedly involving falsifying business records. 

Trump, the leading Republican in the 2024 race for the White House, pleaded not guilty to the charges and shortly after departed from New York City for his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

The incident marks the second time the DA’s office has been targeted in recent weeks. A package with white powder was delivered to the mail room in the building housing the DA’s office last month.

A note stating, ‘Alvin – I’ll kill you’ was also found in an envelope. That package arrived amid Bragg weighing whether to proceed with an indictment against Trump for alleged hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016.

Bragg is alleging that Trump falsified New York business records in order to ‘conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election.’ 

On Tuesday, Bragg filed a federal lawsuit against U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, alleging that the Republican lawmaker from Ohio is trying to wage a campaign of intimidation over his prosecution of Trump. 

Bragg is asking a judge to invalidate subpoenas that Jordan, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, has or plans to issue as part of an investigation of Bragg’s handling of the Trump case.

Fox News’ Bradford Betz and Kyle Morris contributed to this report. 

Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Wednesday named Kathleen Corradi, a former elementary school teacher and lifelong anti-rat activist, as the city’s first director of rodent mitigation.Several former mayors, including Republican Rudy Giuliani and Democrat Bill de Blasio, have tried and failed to conquer the city’s notorious rat problem.’You’ll be seeing a lot of me and a lot less rats,’ Corradi said as Adams introduced her.

Every New York City mayor has waged war — and mostly lost — against one of humanity’s most cunning and enduring foes: rattus norvegicus. But has the city’s vilest enemy, better known as the common brown rat, finally met its match?

Mayor Eric Adams introduced a former elementary school teacher and anti-rat activist as his new ‘rat czar’ on Wednesday. Officially, Kathleen Corradi, the mayor’s new hire, will be known as the director of rodent mitigation.

Corradi is tasked with battling the potentially millions of rats lurking in myriad urban nooks and crannies, subway tunnels and empty lots.

Hers is a new job, which the city advertised with a help-wanted ad seeking applicants who are ‘bloodthirsty,’ possess ‘killer instincts’ and could commit to the ‘wholesale slaughter’ of rats.

‘When I first saw this job posting, I wasn’t sure if it was real. ‘Blood thirsty’ is not a word you usually see in a job description and it’s certainly not a word I usually (use to) describe myself,’ Corradi said in a news conference at a Harlem park.

‘You’ll be seeing a lot of me and a lot less rats,’ she vowed.

Rats have long bedeviled the city, a top public concern along with crime, homelessness and exorbitant rents. No traps nor poisonous bait have fully succeeded in reducing their numbers. Rats have thrived in subway tunnels and burrows within empty lots and city parks.

‘Rats are smart, they are resilient,’ said Adams, a Democrat. ‘Many of us live in communities where rats think they run the city.’

Over the past year, residents have called in almost 3.2 million rat sightings to the city’s 311 service request line, just shy of the record number of complaints in 2021.

‘Rats have proven to be one of the most formidable opponents that humans have faced. Here in New York City, we’re locked in a constant battle,’ said Councilmember Erik Bottcher, whose district includes Times Square.

New York City’s approach is in contrast to some efforts by animal-rights advocates in Paris, where there could be more rats than its 2.2 million people, perhaps twice as many, according to some estimates. A strike by garbage workers left some streets teeming with rats.

The animal rights group Paris Animaux Zoopolis has been trying to convince Parisians that ‘rats are not our enemies!’

Adams thinks otherwise.

As Brooklyn borough president, he once showed reporters a bucket filled with a toxic soup meant to drown rats.

‘There were people that were yelling, you know, ’Oh you murderer. You murderer!” the mayor said. ‘You know, we can’t be philosophical about things that impact the quality of life of New Yorkers.’

And he’s had trouble controlling them even outside the Brooklyn townhouse he owns — something he mentioned in jest Wednesday.

In February, the mayor challenged a pair of citations issued to him by his own health department for not doing enough to control rodents outside the townhouse. The administrative judge sided with the mayor on one citation but ordered him to pay $300 for the other.

In November, the mayor signed legislation intended to reduce the city’s rat problems, including new rules limiting how long garbage can sit out on curbs.

‘The fewer rats the better,’ said Nina Daugherty, a Harlem resident who came upon the news conference while jogging through a local park.

Corradi’s first task will be to launch a ‘rat mitigation zone’ in Harlem, where the city will invest $3.5 million to roll out ‘an accelerated rat reduction plan’ deploying 19 full-time and 14 seasonal employees to combat rats. Strategies that work in Harlem will be extended elsewhere.

Besides the ‘ick,’ factor, rats can spread disease like leptospirosis. On rare occasions, the ailment can lead to meningitis and cause the kidneys and liver to fail.

Corradi said her job will be to combat rats by taking away their food sources — often garbage and food scraps.

‘I have a long history with rats,’ she said. As a 10-year-old, she gathered signatures for an anti-rat petition in her neighborhood. She also led efforts by New York City schools to control the vermin in school buildings.

It’s not the first time a New York mayor has appointed a rat czar. Rudy Giuliani anointed one of his deputy mayors to handle the job — although Corradi will be the city’s first director of rodent mitigation.

During his time in office, Giuliani established a task force, which spawned a boot camp called the ‘rodent academy’ that still produces cadres of foot soldiers hoping to vanquish the city’s army of rats.

Former Mayor Bill de Blasio budgeted more than $30 million in his own failed bid to conquer rats. One plan relied on dry ice to suffocate rats in their burrows. It proved comedic at one demonstration for journalists when workers chased — but never caught — one of the fleeing vermin.

‘Everyone tried,’ Adams said, acknowledging the city’s noble efforts — and ultimate failures.

”We needed someone that was going to put all the pieces together and all the players together to coordinate this entire symphony of fighters. We needed a maestro.’

A Trump-backed Republican in Ohio whose military record was called into question during his unsuccessful 2022 congressional campaign announced Wednesday that he plans to run again next year.

J.R. Majewski launched his latest effort to win the GOP nomination and take on Democratic U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur in a video posted on Twitter.

‘This campaign is about the working-class citizens of Ohio,’ he said. ‘This campaign is about putting America first. This campaign is about fighting for you. Last cycle, we started a movement. This cycle, we win.’

Majewski, of Port Clinton, previously worked in the nuclear power industry. He drew attention for drawing a sprawling banner supporting former President Donald Trump across his lawn, and also had been a pro-Trump hip-hop performer and promoter of the baseless right-wing QAnon conspiracy theory. He was also at the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, though he was not accused of any wrongdoing there.

Majewski was the surprise winner of last year’s Republican primary for the Toledo-area 9th Congressional District. He bested two sitting Republican state lawmakers to secure the nomination, but ultimately lost to Kaptur, the longest serving woman in Congress, by more than 13 percentage points.

The Associated Press reported in September that Majewski had misrepresented his military record to voters. He claimed that he served in the Air Force in Afghanistan, but public records indicated that he had never deployed there and instead spent six months on a base in Qatar. Majewski denied the report and defiantly remained in the race, saying his deployment was classified and so not present in public records.

The AP later reported that Majewski was demoted in the military for driving drunk on an air base, another contradiction to his previous statements.

Majewski was among Ohio Republicans that Trump promoted at a November rally in Vandalia, Ohio.

The war in Ukraine is the war you’ve heard about the most over the past year.

A war over Taiwan is the war you may hear about next.

The conflict in Ukraine certainly carries geopolitical implications. There are issues of grain for Western Europe. Oil from Russia. And, there’s speculation over possible Russian designs on locales besides Ukraine.

But a battle over Taiwan could make Ukraine appear like a neighborhood skirmish.

It would all start with a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

‘Everybody thinks it’s going to happen,’ said Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla., on Fox. ‘The only difference of opinion is when it’s going to happen.’

Gimenez notes that many Chinese and intelligence analysts believe war comes by w.

But Gimenez is skeptical of that hypothesis.

‘I think it’s going to be earlier than that,’ said Gimenez.

What does this mean for the United States?

‘In all likelihood, the U.S. would be involved in a shooting war,’ said longtime China observer Gordon Chang. ‘If China were to invade Taiwan or invade some other country in the region, I think that you would see the United States coalesce very quickly to defend those countries.’

Where does that leave the U.S.?

‘We should be making it very clear that we will defend Taiwan,’ said Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Penn.

Would that mean sending troops? Or would the U.S. engage in a form of proxy warfare like what it’s done for the past 14 months with Ukraine?

‘I would be willing to fight for Taiwan,’ said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on Fox. ‘I’d be very much open to using U.S. forces to defend Taiwan because it’s in our national security interest to do so.’

‘My stomach’s been upside down since we started to hear of potential blockades of the Straits of Taiwan because of our dependency on Taiwan for so many things,’ said Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., a former General Motors Executive. ‘When I started in the auto industry, 40 percent of the chips in the world were made in this country. Now we’re down to less than 12 percent.’

A Chinese blockade of Taiwan could reverberate globally, sparking market shocks. It could even cripple trade with Japan, South Korea and Australia. That’s to say nothing of what a war could mean should North Korea – a Chinese ally – move provocatively against its neighbors.

‘We could see the North invade South Korea or it could cause provocations that would create a diversion that would require us to divert our assets to the Korean Peninsula,’ warned Chang. ‘What we’re talking about is global war. War can spread from Ukraine, both east and west, across the Eurasian landmass and in North Africa, because we can see the proxies of China and Russia.’

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., just met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen at the Reagan Library in California. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Tex., recently led a bipartisan Congressional delegation on a visit to Taipei.

In retaliation, China launched a series of dramatic military exercises.

‘They’re coming very close to Taiwan,’ said Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu. ‘And any accident might spark an uncontrollable war in between Taiwan and China. And if other countries are trying to intervene, it might be the start of a war of great scale.’

Beijing may be physically aiming its exercises at Taiwan.

But in reality, the target is Washington.

‘It’s one of the larger provocations they’ve done,’ said McCaul to colleague Bret Baier. ‘Taiwan is very nervous and they should be.’

But lawmakers are urging calm.

‘We’ve got to be very careful to not make inflammatory statements that in any way put kerosene on fires,’ said Dingell.

Rep. Ami Bera, D-Calif., accompanied McCaul on the bipartisan trip to Taipei.

‘The goal here is not to go to war,’ said Bera. ‘The goal here right now is really economic deterrence. It’s not always just military deterrence and making sure China understands that were they to go that route, it would be incredibly disruptive. Not just to Asia. But the entire world.’

Bipartisan lawmakers want Congress to make sure Taiwan receives $19 billion in weapons it bought from the U.S. as soon as possible. But the U.S. hasn’t filled the order yet.

‘What we need to do is be able to speed that up in the process to make sure Taiwan has the weapons they have to defend themselves,’ said McCarthy to colleague Ashley Soriano.

‘U.S. support is very critical for Taiwan to deter the war from happening,’ said Wu, specifically calling for American weapons and training.

McCarthy previously declared that Ukraine does not have a ‘blank check’ from the U.S. treasury. But how about Taiwan?

‘Noting in American government has a blank check,’ said McCarthy.

There’s no talk of sending U.S. troops to the region to assist Taiwan. But that scenario remains a possibility.

‘It’ll be highly welcomed,’ said Wu.

The U.S. hasn’t formally ‘declared war’ since 1942. And that was against Romania. However, the Constitution requires Congress approve an authorization to dispatch U.S. troops into hostilities abroad. Lawmakers greenlighted such approvals in 1991 for the Gulf War, in 2001 after 9/11 and again in the fall of 2002 for the Iraq war in 2003. All three of those wars were generally popular with the public – although support for the Iraq campaign diminished significantly by 2006.

However, there’s now a coalition of bipartisan, anti-interventionist lawmakers in Congress. The number is growing on the Republican side of the aisle. Plus, the public is suffering from ‘war fatigue.’ It’s unclear where public sentiment lies on sending troops abroad for a showdown over Taiwan.

That said, the president could use his own, Constitutionally-afforded ‘war powers.’ But Congress has ceded war powers to the executive since the Truman Administration.

‘There are some Members of Congress who are concerned about this, but they don’t seem to have the full support of a committee to challenge the President,’ said Constitutional scholar and war powers expert Louis Fisher. ‘We have some ambiguity and it’s all in favor of independent, exclusive, presidential power over external affairs. And that’s not what the framers wanted. That’s not what the text of the Constitution says.’

Still, it’s possible China could force America’s hand when it comes to troops.

‘You have a Chinese military that is just emotionally wanting to fight. They know that they shouldn’t. But there is a bloodlust and we have to take that into account,’ said Chang. 

That’s what concerns policymakers about China. The U.S. has prepared for decades to wage a ‘two theatre’ war. In other words, wage simultaneous conflicts in Europe and Asia. Congressional Republicans are now in a budget cutting mode. But what would the cost of war over Taiwan mean to the Pentagon budget? That’s to say nothing of lawmakers fretting about the debt ceiling this summer.

Chang notes that few Americans tuned in to a specific episode three decades ago which led to another global conflict.

‘Islamic terrorists detonated a bomb under the North Tower of the World Trade Center in 1993 and killed six Americans. And we couldn’t have cared less,’ said Chang. ‘Until of course, on one day when Osama bin Laden killed 2,977 Americans. Then we understood the significance of what happened in 1993.’

Chang believes there is a similar lesson for Americans to learn from the Chinese spy balloon which floated across the U.S. this past winter.

Americans were angry that it happened. But Chang says most didn’t understand the implications of it.

That could be the case. Unless there’s a war over Taiwan which draws in the U.S.

Two weeks after the North Dakota House failed to pass a measure that would have provided free lunch to low-income students in public schools, the state Senate has passed a bill that would give qualifying parents private school tuition assistance.

Under the bill passed Tuesday, $10 million in state funds would be allocated to parents for private school tuition assistance. A family of four with a household income of $150,000 or less would qualify for assistance.

Parents would receive around $3,200 for each child sent to a private school of their choice, said Republican Sen. Donald Schaible, of Mott, while carrying the bill on the Senate floor.

Supporters of the proposal said they wanted to help parents make choices to connect their kids with schools that meet their unique needs — regardless of where they live, their financial status or special needs status. Opponents criticized it, saying public dollars should be used for public schools, and rural children would be at a disadvantage.

‘The city in which I live is 50 miles from the nearest private school,’ said Republican Sen. David Rust, of Tioga. ‘There may be choice for those in a large city, but there really is no choice for those in a rural area, as there is no access.’

The bill’s passage comes after House lawmakers failed to pass a bill that would have allocated $6 million in state funds to children in public schools for meal assistance.

The failed bill would have given kids free lunch if their household income was at or below 200% of the federal poverty line — or $60,000 or less for a family of four.

Senate lawmakers passed the private school bill with a 27-19 vote Tuesday. The bill still needs final approval from the House and governor to become law.

School choice legislation has become more popular in recent years. At least a dozen other states have considered similar legislation in what has emerged as a landmark year for school choice battles. Those states include Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oregon, South Carolina and Texas.

President Biden called the arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in Russia ‘totally illegal’ Tuesday, one day after the State Department designated him as ‘wrongly detained.’

Biden also spoke with Gershkovich’s family while on Air Force One en route to Northern Ireland for a state trip Tuesday, White House officials said. 

‘We’re making it real clear that it’s totally illegal what’s happening, and we declared it so – it changes the dynamic,’ Biden told reporters before departing for the trip. 

The ‘wrongly detained’ designation frees up different federal agencies to work collaboratively across the government toward Gershkovich’s release. 

He was detained March 29 in Yekaterinburg, the fourth-largest city in Russia. Russian authorities formally charged him last week with collecting ‘information constituting a state secret about the activities of an enterprise within Russia’s military-industrial complex,’ according to Russian state media outlet Tass. 

Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal, and U.S. officials categorically deny the spying charges. 

Attorneys hired by Dow Jones visited Gershkovich, whose parents left the Soviet Union for the U.S. in the 1970s, last week at the infamous Lefortovo prison in Moscow. 

‘Psychologically it’s very difficult,’ Andrei Soldatov, a Russian journalist who was repeatedly interrogated at the prison for his coverage of the country’s secret services, told Fox News Digital. 

‘The history of this particular prison, many, many people were killed in the 1930s and 1940s during Stalin’s purges, so this kind of thing creates a huge psychological pressure on you, and it doesn’t help that Evan was so into Russian culture and Russian history, so maybe it would be better for someone who isn’t familiar with it.’

Wall Street Journal Editor-in-Chief Emma Tucker said last week that Gershkovich is in good health despite the conditions. 

‘Evan’s health is good, and he is grateful for the outpouring of support from around the world. We continue to call for his immediate release,’ she wrote in a message to the newsroom. 

Fox News Digital’s Joseph Wulfsohn and David Rutz contributed to this report. 

Democratic Massachusetts House Speaker Ronald Mariano unveiled a $654 million tax cut proposal Tuesday, aiming to provide relief for seniors, renters, businesses and wealthier homeowners.The plan would increase to $1.1 billion in relief come 2026.’This whole competitiveness issue is real as we face challenges from states like North Carolina,’ Mariano said, noting Americans’ continuing migration from tax-heavy blue states.

Massachusetts House Speaker Ronald Mariano on Tuesday unveiled a $654 million tax cut proposal for the 2024 fiscal year aimed at helping seniors, renters, businesses and wealthier homeowners while rewriting the law that sent about $3 billion back to taxpayers last year.

The plan, which would increase to $1.1 billion in tax relief for the 2026 fiscal year, includes a number of proposals the Democratic speaker said will help make Massachusetts more affordable and competitive.

‘We wanted to have something that we felt impacted all segments of the economy, all segments of our constituency with some fairness and some equity,’ Mariano told reporters Tuesday.

The package would change a series of tax policies, including increasing the estate tax threshold from $1 million to $2 million.

Massachusetts is one of just 12 states with an estate tax and has the lowest estate tax exemption threshold in the country, along with Oregon. Democratic Gov. Maura Healey, who released a $742 million tax relief package in February, would eliminate the tax for estates valued up to $3 million.

The House proposal would also make changes to the 1986 law designed to limit state tax revenue growth and return any excess to taxpayers. The law triggered nearly $3 billion in refunds last year.

The credit is applied to the personal income tax liability on a proportional basis, resulting in higher credits for those who paid more in taxes. The bill would credit an equal amount per taxpayer.

‘That whole package is based on the success of the economy,’ he said of the 1986 law. ‘It only gets triggered when the economy is very, very successful and we wanted everyone to share in that success.’

The House proposal would also combine the child care expenses credit with the dependent member of household credit to create one refundable $600 credit per dependent, double the senior circuit breaker tax credit from $1,200 to $2,400, increase the rental deduction cap from $3,000 to $4,000, and boost the earned income tax credit from 30% to 40% of the federal credit.

The package proposes lowering the short-term capital gains tax rate from 12% to 5%, and phasing in that change over two years.

The bill would also make changes to the state’s stabilization fund — also called the rainy day fund.

Under existing law if the amount remaining in the state’s stabilization fund at the end of a fiscal year exceeds 15% of budgeted revenues, the excess funds must be transferred to taxpayers through one time increases in the personal exemption. The bill would adjust the cap to 25.5%, allowing the state’s savings account to keep more money.

Mariano said some of the tax changes were meant to attract workers and encourage people already living and working in the state not to flee.

‘This whole competitiveness issue is real as we face challenges from states like North Carolina,’ he said.

James Rooney, President and CEO of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce said the group was pleased with changes to the tax code that he said have put employers at a disadvantage to other states.

‘Massachusetts needs to take proactive, meaningful action to ensure that employers and people will start, stay, and succeed here,’ he said.

The House is expected to vote on the proposal on Thursday. The bill then heads to the Senate, which will write their own tax package before hammering out a compromise proposal to send back to the governor for her signature.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin briefed reporters on the leaking of dozens of sensitive and highly classified documents Tuesday, saying they were ‘somewhere in the web.’

‘Well, they were somewhere…in the web and where exactly and who had access at that point, we don’t know. We simply don’t know at this point,’ Austin said.

Fox News learned earlier Tuesday through conversations with a variety of American defense and intelligence officials that as many as 53 documents were posted online, which were dated between Feb. 23 and March 1. 

The documents, officials told Fox News, may have come from outside the Pentagon.

Austin addressed the leak at the beginning of a news conference with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs Enrique Manalo and Philippine Officer in Charge of the Department of National Defense Carlito Galvez, regarding the additional sites being established on the island nation to help facilitate training opportunities and improve disaster response.

Austin told reporters he was first briefed about the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive and classified material on the morning of April 6.

‘Since then, I’ve been convening with senior department leaders daily on our response, and I’ve directed an urgent cross department effort,’ he said. ‘We’ve referred the matter to the Department of Justice (DOD), which has opened a criminal investigation.’

One reporter asked him how he was only just made aware of the documents a week ago when leaked classified documents from the Pentagon had been posted online for months.

Austin told the reporter the documents his department was aware of were dated Feb. 28 and March 1, adding that he did not know if there are other documents that were online before those dates.

‘These are things that we will find out as we continue to investigate,’ he said. ‘We take this very seriously and will continue to investigate and turn over every rock until we find the source of this and the extent of it.’

Austin said he could not say much more about the leaked documents because of the open investigation.

LEAKED PENTAGON DOCUMENTS PAINT GRIM PICTURE OF UKRAINIAN AIR DEFENSE SUPPLIES 

‘Nothing will ever stop us from keeping America secure,’ Austin said.

The Department of Defense did not immediately respond to questions regarding the timeline of the leak and why Austin was notified of the leak weeks after allegedly being posted.

The briefings from the DOD are typically distributed to anywhere between 1,000 and 5,000 people with necessary security clearances and include details on the war in Ukraine and battlefield assessments.

DOD briefings are also delivered electronically on secure iPads, and if printed out, investigators can track where they were printed from because they must run through secure printers that are often numbered.

Fox News learned that within the classified documents published online, there is intelligence that was not part of the DOD briefing books that appears to be produced by agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency.

Milancy Harris, the deputy under secretary of defense for intelligence and security, is leading the Pentagon’s internal investigation, coordinating with the DOD’s office of Intelligence and Security, Public Affairs, Office of General Council, Legislative Affairs and the Joint Staff. 

A defense official said each agency will have their own point person for the investigation, and that there is not yet any one person leading a whole interagency effort. 

Greg Norman and Jennifer Griffin of Fox News contributed to this report.

Oklahoma’s Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters is on his way out as Gov. Kevin Stitt’s secretary of education.

Stitt on Tuesday announced in a press release that he is appointing Oklahoma State University professor of education Katherine Curry to serve on his cabinet in the role Walters has held since 2020.

Walters, a Republican, was elected in November as state superintendent of public instruction and will continue to serve in that position overseeing the State Department of Education and K-12 public schools in Oklahoma.

Stitt spokeswoman Carly Atchison said the governor was ‘thrilled with Ryan’s service on the cabinet’ and that he will remain a close advisor to Stitt on education matters.

‘We’re simply adding another player to our team to push the governor’s education freedom agenda forward,’ Atchison said.

Walters’ inflammatory rhetoric accusing teachers of indoctrinating students with liberal ideology and providing access to ‘pornographic material’ has rankled many lawmakers, including Republicans. The secretary of education must be confirmed by the Oklahoma Senate, and it’s not clear that Walters had enough support in the 48-member body.

Curry has been a professor at Oklahoma State since 2011. She has taught masters and doctoral courses in the College of Education and Human Sciences and currently serves as a professor and program coordinator of the Educational Leadership/School Administration Program.