The House Oversight Committee is stepping up oversight of the Biden administration with eight expected hearings being held over the next three days. 

‘We have eight hearings this week!’ tweeted the committee’s official account Monday. ‘Accountability is coming!’

The first hearings kick off Wednesday on COVID origins, advances in artificial intelligence, the border crisis and the depletion of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). The border hearing will feature testimony from chief border patrol agents and the COVID origins investigation will showcase the former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director and health and science experts.

Thursday, the committee will examine the role of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the government’s largest employer, and also ‘waste, fraud and abuse’ in pandemic spending. OPM’s Director Kiran Ahuja and officials from the Treasury Department, the Small Business Administration and the Department of Labor are set to testify.

Finally, on Friday, the committee is set to investigate the Biden family after allegations that the Treasury Department is ‘stonewalling’ the GOP probe into the president’s son Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings.

The Treasury Department’s chief of legislative affairs Jonathan Davidson is set to testify as the sole witness Friday. Davidson previously worked on the Biden-Harris transition team as the Economic Nominations Confirmation team lead and previously worked as chief of staff for Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo. for a decade.

Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., previously told Fox News Digital that the investigation into how the Biden family ‘peddled influence and access around the world for profit’ is the ‘top priority’ for the new GOP House majority.

There will also be a separate hearing on government spending amid nationwide inflation Friday.

West Virginia’s governor has signed a bill splitting the ailing Department of Health and Human Resources into three new departments.

Gov. Jim Justice signed the bill Saturday that separates the massive agency into the departments of Health, Health Facilities and Human Services starting next January. Each department will be headed by a secretary appointed by the governor.

The agency has faced repeated allegations of abuse and mistreatment of the state’s most vulnerable residents in its care. The department, the state’s largest, runs West Virginia’s foster care system, state-run psychiatric facilities and a host of other offices and programs.

Lawmakers have said the department’s current setup is too large to manage in a crisis and that separating the department will increase transparency in the budget process. The DHHR’s $7.6 billion budget currently accounts for about 40% of annual state spending.

The three departments will still maintain an office of shared services containing more than 400 employees responsible for compiling quarterly reports on the efficiency of the new agencies.

The office of a state advocate for foster kids and families will be allowed to independently investigate the state and provide recommended changes to the Legislature. Previously, the office could not interact with the Legislature, according to lawmakers.

According to a dashboard that debuted last year, there are more than 6,100 children in the care of the state. One-third of the in-state placements are children living with relatives acting as certified foster parents.

Last year, Justice vetoed a bill that would have split the DHHR in two parts, saying he first wanted a review of its ‘issues, bottlenecks, and inefficiencies.’

A consulting firm hired by Justice concluded in November that the DHHR should not be split as lawmakers wanted. The McChrystal Group of Alexandria, Virginia, said the current configuration ‘is not an option’ but that splitting the agency would ‘divert time, funding, and leadership’s focus away from serving West Virginians.’

President Biden appeared to stumble once again while attempting to board Air Force One this week, marking the second time the 80-year-old president has been caught on camera having trouble climbing the stairs to his plane in less than two weeks.

Biden’s latest stumble came Sunday as he was leaving the airport in Montgomery, Alabama, after a trip to Selma to commemorate the 58th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march, a significant event in the Civil Right Movement.

In the video, Biden stumbles as he nears the top of the stairs, but is able to regain his balance before completely falling forward. This comes following the viral video of Biden falling while boarding Air Force One in Warsaw, Poland, on Feb. 22.

That incident occurred shortly after the Biden wrapped up his trip to Eastern Europe to visit Ukraine and Poland, and involved Biden falling near the top of the staircase on the airport tarmac before catching himself, turning to wave and entering the aircraft. 

It remains unclear on both occasions what might have caused Biden to trip on the steps.

Biden’s apparent stumble on the steps leading to Air Force One comes nearly two years after he similarly fell on the same steps at Joint Base Andrews. 

Following the March 2019 fall in which Biden was filmed tripping on multiple steps, the White House said he was ‘doing 100% fine’ and blamed the stumble on the gusty conditions.

Fox News’ Thomas Catenacci contributed to this report.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan subpoenaed Nina Jankowicz—the former chief of the Biden administration’s ‘Disinformation Governance Board’—to appear for deposition before the panel.

Separately, Jordan, R-Ohio, on Monday, also subpoenaed Chip Slaven—the former interim executive director and CEO of the National School Boards Association (NSBA)—and Viola Garcia—the former president of the NSBA—to testify before the committee.

The House Judiciary Committee is conducting oversight of the now-disbanded ‘Disinformation Governance Board’ that operated under the Department of Homeland Security. The panel is investigating its creation, activities and related matters.

Jordan, in notifying Jankowicz of her subpoena, said that the committee has ‘repeatedly sought information’ from her concerning her ‘official duties as a DHS employee and former Executive Director of the Board, including how the Board intended to define disinformation, how it planned to collect information and from what sources, how it anticipated countering disinformation, and how it proposed to protect First Amendment rights.’ 

Jordan reminded Jankowicz that Republicans on the panel first wrote to her in May 2022 requesting her ‘voluntary cooperation’ with their oversight of the board, and again in December 2022. Jordan said the committee reiterated its requests for documents and a voluntary interview in January, February, and March 1 of this year.

‘You have declined to comply voluntarily with our request for a transcribed interview,’ Jordan wrote, notifying her of the subpoena to compel her to appear for a deposition.

Upon her appointment to the board, critics questioned Jankowicz’s ability to be impartial, pointing to her past positions on social media posts, including casting doubt on the legitimacy of reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop before the 2020 election.

Jankowicz ultimately resigned from the post and DHS put the board on pause.

Meanwhile, as for the NSBA officials, Slaven and Garcia co-signed the September 2021 letter to President Biden requesting federal law enforcement assistance to target parents voicing concerns at local school board meetings.

Their letter led to an Oct. 4, 2021 memo, which directed the FBI to partner with local law enforcement and U.S. attorneys to identify parental threats at school board meetings against faculty and ‘prosecute them when appropriate.’

Slaven and Garcia’s testimony will come as part of the committee’s investigation into how the FBI allegedly misused ‘federal criminal and counterterrorism resources’ to target parents at school board meetings.

Jordan has also subpoenaed FBI Director Christopher Wray, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to turn over documents related to the matter.

Fox News’ Tyler Olson contributed to this report. 

Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates Janet Protasiewicz and Dan Kelly have agreed to meet in at least one debate ahead of the April 4 election.

The candidates’ campaigns announced Monday that they will meet in a televised debate sponsored by the State Bar of Wisconsin, WISC-TV and WisPolitics.com on March 21st.

The winner of the election will determine the court’s ideological leaning for the next two years. Right now conservative-leaning justices hold a 4-3 majority but conservative Justice Patience Roggensack is stepping down, creating the open spot Kelly and Protasiewicz want. The race is officially nonpartisan but conservatives back Kelly and liberals support Protasiewicz.

A lawyer for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was arrested and charged with domestic terrorism over the violence that broke out in Atlanta on Sunday in relation to protests of a planned training facility for police officers in the city, the SPLC has confirmed. 

‘An employee at the SPLC was arrested while acting — and identifying — as a legal observer on behalf of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG). The employee is an experienced legal observer, and their arrest is not evidence of any crime, but of heavy-handed law enforcement intervention against protesters,’ the SPLC said in a statement on Monday. 

Thomas Webb Jurgens was among the list of 23 suspected domestic terrorists released by the Atlanta Police Department on Monday. Violence broke out in Atlanta on Sunday after protesters of a planned police training facility hurled bricks and Molotov cocktails at officers and set cars on fire. 

The Atlanta Police Department revealed all the suspects are from out of state or from another country except for two, including Jurgens. 

Fox News Digital previously reviewed a LinkedIn account for one Tom Jurgens, earlier on Monday which stated he is a staff attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center. That LinkedIn account has now apparently been removed.

Fox News Digital also examined The Florida Bar’s profile of Jurgens, which shows he graduated from the University of Georgia School of Law in 2019 and currently works for the Southern Poverty Law Center in Decatur, Georgia. Both the Florida Bar website and State Bar of Georgia website also include Jurgens’ middle name, Webb, which matches the name of the man arrested on Sunday. 

‘This is part of a months-long escalation of policing tactics against protesters and observers who oppose the destruction of the Weelaunee Forest to build a police training facility. The SPLC has and will continue to urge de-escalation of violence and police use of force against Black, Brown and Indigenous communities — working in partnership with these communities to dismantle white supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements and advance the human rights of all people,’ the SPLC continued in its statement on Monday. 

Jurgens’ listed office number went straight to voicemail when Fox News Digital attempted to reach him. Fox News Digital also attempted to reach Jurgens’ family members, including one man who appears to be his father and who promptly hung up after stating the reason for the call. 

‘On March 5, 2023, a group of violent agitators used the cover of a peaceful protest of the proposed Atlanta Public Safety Training Center to conduct a coordinated attack on construction equipment and police officers. They changed into black clothing and entered the construction area and began to throw large rocks, bricks, Molotov cocktails, and fireworks at police officers,’ the Atlanta PD said in a statement when it released the booking photos for the 23 people charged. 

Dubbed ‘Cop City’ by its detractors, the planned $90 million training complex for law enforcement officers has been the ire of environmentalists and anti-police activists since 2021 when the Atlanta City Council approved the complex in June of that year.

Protesters say the complex will promote the militarization of the police department and destroy the South River Forest. 

The Southern Poverty Law Center did not respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment on the arrest. 

GEORGIA GOV. KEMP DEALS BLOW TO BUCKHEAD SUBURB TRYING TO SECEDE FROM ATLANTA OVER VIOLENT CRIME 

The SPLC describes itself as a ‘catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond, working in partnership with communities to dismantle white supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements, and advance the human rights of all people.’

The group has come under fire for designating mainstream conservative and Christian organizations as ‘hate groups,’ putting them on a list alongside organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. Back in 2019, a former staffer for the SPLC argued the organization uses its ‘hate group’ accusations to ‘bilk’ donors.

In 2012, the Family Research Council, a Christian nonprofit that was labeled a hate group by the SPLC, was targeted by a man who fired a gun in the group’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. A security guard managed to subdue him before he could kill anyone. 

The man told investigators he was motivated to carry out the attack after seeing FRC listed as an anti-gay group on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website. 

Republicans are sounding the alarm about the growing threat Mexican cartels face to the U.S. after four Americans were kidnapped in the country after crossing the border from Texas, the FBI said Sunday.

The FBI is trying to locate four Americans who were last seen Friday in the northern Mexico border city of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, an area that is notorious for warring factions of the Gulf drug cartel.

On Friday, ‘four Americans crossed into Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico driving a white minivan with North Carolina license plates. Shortly after crossing into Mexico, unidentified gunmen fired upon the passengers in the vehicle. All four Americans were placed in a vehicle and taken from the scene by armed men,’ the FBI said in a statement.

The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the victims’ return and the arrest of the kidnappers.

Tamaulipas state police said a number of people were also killed or suffered injuries on Friday but did not provide details on how many were affected or whether the incidents were connected. The violence that day was so bad that the U.S. Consulate issued an alert.

Republicans who spoke with Fox News Digital pointed to President Biden’s immigration policies as sharing the blame for the kidnappings, arguing that his lack of enforcement at the border has emboldened Mexico’s cartels.

‘The cartels couldn’t ask for a better partner in crime than Joe Biden—his weakness allows them to operate unchecked,’ Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said. ‘President Biden needs to secure the border and declare war against the cartels to protect Americans from drugs and this bold-faced violence.’

‘Mexico has become a captive narco state with compromised leaders,’ Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., said. ‘But even corrupt Mexican officials don’t enrich the cartels as much as President Biden does. We will continue to see the cartels and thugs emboldened as Biden projects weakness.’

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said the cartels have been ‘running wild’ since Biden entered office.

‘On his first day in office, Joe Biden threw open America’s southern border,’ he said. ‘What immediately followed was open season on frontline border patrol officers and open access to deadly fentanyl and human trafficking. Biden has also completely failed to strategically engage Mexico and target the cartels that have run wild since he entered the White House.’

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), said, ‘Dictators, cartels and bad guys around the world know that Biden is a weak appeaser with open border policies, and they’re absolutely taking advantage. His botched border policies prioritize criminals and cartels over legal immigration and Americans’ safety. Instead of sending the DOJ to harass parents at school board meetings and do his political bidding, Biden should direct those resources to ending America’s deadly fentanyl crisis and decimating the cartels that caused it.’

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said, ‘President Biden encouraged mass illegal immigration into America and now every single state is dealing with the burden. We cannot allow it to continue. Just last month, I introduced legislation that will ensure individuals who pay cartels, smugglers, and coyotes face criminal charges for enriching criminals’ pockets. Congress needs to do everything in its power to stop this administration’s incentivizing illegal mass immigration.’

Fox News’ Lawrence Richard contributed to this report.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., was grilled by CNN on whether President Biden pulled ‘the rug out’ from House progressives when he said he wouldn’t support Washington, D.C.’s revised criminal code, and he suggested the president could reverse his position again.  

Biden infuriated some House Democrats on Thursday when he announced he would not veto a bipartisan resolution that would overturn sweeping criminal justice reform legislation passed by the Washington, D.C., Council in November.

CNN’s Dana Bash asked Jeffries on Sunday whether Biden pulled ‘the rug out from under you and your fellow House Democrats.’

‘Not at all,’ Jeffries responded. ‘We have the House, we have the Senate, and then we have the White House. In terms of my particular reasons for voting the way that I did – one, I believe that local government should have control over local matters and that’s a principle that I’ve supported from the moment that I arrived in Washington, D.C. It’s one of the reasons why I believe in D.C. statehood.’

‘Right,’ Bash replied, ‘but the Democratic president has signaled that he doesn’t agree with that, and he’s going to sign a Republican bill to override what you just described. Are you OK with that?’

‘Well, let’s take it one step at a time,’ Jeffries said. ‘I haven’t had an opportunity to talk to the White House yet about the president’s views, so I’m not going to characterize his position one way or the other until we’ve had a chance to talk about that issue.’

‘Well, he said it,’ Bash fired back. ‘I mean, he’s made it clear, unless he changes his tune again.’ 

‘Well, there are public conversations and there are private conversations,’ Jeffries said. 

The minority leader said regardless of the outcome, Democrats remain united on ‘the big picture issues.’

Bash still wasn’t convinced, and she pressed Jeffries again.

‘OK, you’re the Democratic leader,’ she said. ‘I, obviously, am not. If I’m hearing from frustrated House Democrats, I can’t imagine what you’re hearing. They feel like the White House, again, pulled the rug out from under them. You have to be hearing that.’

‘Well, that actually has not been the sense that I’ve gotten,’ Jeffries responded. ‘When we talk about putting people over politics, that is not just a slogan, it’s a way of life for us. It’s what we’ve done.’ 

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Friday pushed back on Democratic critics of Biden’s decision not to support Washington, D.C.’s revised criminal code, arguing that a Statement of Administration Policy (SAP) issued by the Executive Office of the President on Feb. 6 specifically opposed to the House resolution disapproving of D.C.’s revised criminal code was not a promise that Biden would veto the legislation.

‘The way that it’s laid out speaks to the president supporting D.C. statehood,’ Jean-Pierre told reporters. ‘We never laid out where we, where the president was going to go once that, once it came to his desk because we wanted to allow Congress to move forward in the way that they normally do.’

Reporters at the press briefing seemed confused by the press secretary’s explanation. The policy statement released by the White House states, ‘While we work towards making Washington, D.C., the 51st state of our Union, Congress should respect the District of Columbia’s autonomy to govern its own local affairs.’ 

The plain language of the administration’s policy suggested that Biden would oppose a Republican-led effort to overturn D.C.’s criminal code – which was passed by the D.C. Council in January, overriding a veto from Mayor Muriel Bowser. Opponents of the measure in Congress called it a soft-on-crime bill, pointing to reduced criminal penalties for homicides, armed robberies and other violent offenses. 

However, Biden shocked pro-criminal justice reform Democrats on Thursday by suddenly announcing he would not veto the congressional resolution to block D.C.’s crime code if it reached his desk.

‘I support D.C. Statehood and home-rule – but I don’t support some of the changes D.C. Council put forward over the Mayor’s objections – such as lowering penalties for carjackings,’ Biden tweeted Thursday. ‘If the Senate votes to overturn what D.C. Council did – I’ll sign it.’

House Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., told Fox News on Friday that Biden’s decision was a ‘great disappointment.’

‘I had hoped that perhaps this disapproval resolution on the criminal code would be in line with his usual support for what the district does,’ Norton said. She called the president’s announcement ‘an anomaly,’ and said rising crime made it difficult for Democrats to support criminal justice reform. 

Fox News’ Chris Pandolfo contributed to this report.

A judge denied a request from a Jan. 6 defendant to push back the start of her trial to allow time to review about 44,000 hours of Capitol riot footage from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg acknowledged that the ask from defendant Sara Carpenter is ‘certainly not a frivolous request by any means,’ but said the defense failed to clarify why any additional footage would be exculpatory, Politico reported. Carpenter, a retired NYPD officer, is facing two felony charges over the Capitol riot.

Boasberg, who is soon to become Washington D.C.’s chief district court judge, also argued that delaying trials for Carpenter and other Jan. 6 defendants to allow time to review the Capitol and police surveillance footage from McCarthy’s office could ‘derail dozens of trials that are set in the next few months.’ 

Prosecutors say they already provided Carpenter with an ‘overwhelming’ amount of CCTV footage documenting her 34 minutes inside the Capitol building, leaving only ‘a matter of seconds’ unaccounted for.

They say they’ve been left in the dark as to what McCarthy’s footage might add. 

‘We don’t have what the speaker has,’ Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Cook said during Friday’s hearing, according to Politico. ‘In any case, there’s always the possibility some information may be out there.’

In 2021, Capitol police already shared some 14,000 hours of footage – including the hours of noon to 8 p.m. on Jan. 6 – to Trum House impeachment managers and two House committees investigating the riot that interrupted Congress certifying Joe Biden’s presidential victory. 

In requesting a 60-day delay in the trial, Carpenter’s attorneys argued some of McCarthy’s footage might help fill the ‘gaps’ and provide more context to the defendant’s actions inside the Capitol. 

Prosecutors are required to provide defendants with any potentially exculpatory evidence they might bring in the case, but limits exist when dealing with another agency, such as Capitol Police, which is an arm of Congress, or if the court deems the government has acted in good faith in turning over as much material as possible. 

The Justice Department, in bringing cases against more than 950 defendants in connection to Jan. 6, 2021, has already cited a massive cache of video evidence including from Capitol security cameras, police body cameras, journalists and demonstrators themselves, who recorded hundreds of hours worth of footage. 

The DOJ reportedly has not indicated whether it will attempt to review the footage from McCarthy’s office.

Other Jan. 6 defendants, including Proud Boys on trial for seditious conspiracy, have questioned how the tens of thousands of hours of footage will affect their cases. 

Rep. Barry Loudermilk, the Republican chairman of the House Administration Committee’s oversight subpanel, has reportedly said the footage from McCarthy’s office would also be made available to Jan. 6 defendants on a case-by-case basis to ensure they’re afforded due process. 

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., declined to endorse a potential reelection effort by President Biden on Sunday, saying he preferred to wait to see other options.

Manchin made the statement during a Sunday appearance on CBS News’ ‘Face the Nation.’ The senator went on to also punt the question on his own political future. The West Virginia moderate is facing a serious challenge from Republicans in 2024.

‘Are you going to endorse Joe Biden if he runs re-election?’ host Margaret Brennan asked.

‘There’s plenty of time for the election. This is the problem with America right now. We start an election every time there’s a cycle coming up,’ Manchin responded. ‘The bottom line is, let’s see who’s involved. Let’s wait until we see who all the players are. Let’s just wait until it all comes out.’

 BIG HINT FROM TOP BIDEN AIDE ABOUT PRESIDENT’S 2024 INTENTIONS

Biden’s White House continues to insist that the president ‘intends to run,’ but Biden himself has yet to make an announcement.

Manchin went on to clarify his own political intentions as Republicans in his state gear up to flip his seat.

‘I’m not going to make my announcement for anything until the end of the year. I’m not going to make my decision about what my political position is going to be, or what I’m going to do for my political future,’ Manchin said. ‘I won’t do it until the end of the year. I’ve got too much to do now.’

Manchin’s comments come as the 2024 Republican Primary is heating up, with former President Trump already throwing shots at his potential opponents. So far, only he and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley have formally announced campaigns. Nevertheless, there are several other anticipated candidates, such as former Vice President Mike Pence and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.