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.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Sunday that fellow Democrat Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s election defeat last week should serve as a ‘warning sign for the country,’ rejecting criticism that he is feeding into the Republican narrative on crime in addressing public safety concerns in the Big Apple. 

‘Public safety is a prerequisite to prosperity. Same as Chicago, like New York, and many of our big cities across America,’ Adams said during an appearance on CNN’s ‘State of the Union.’ 

‘That is why we zero focus double-digit decrease in shootings, double-digit decrease in homicides, which we have witnessed this year, particularly the month of February,’ he added. ‘All of our index crimes are low, low for the entire year. We are focused on public safety because people want to be safe. They don’t feel safe. And they actually say then you’re going to lose control of your city.’

Lightfoot became Chicago’s first mayor in 40 years to serve just one term.

Asked if he considered what happened to Lightfoot a warning sign for him in New York, Adams countered, ‘To the contrary, I think is a warning sign for the country.’ 

‘Eric Adams has been talking about public safety, not only on the campaign trail, but for the first year I showed up at crime scenes,’ the mayor added, referring to himself in the third person. ‘I knew what New York was saying, and I saw it all over the country. I think if anything, it is really stating that this is what I have been talking about. America, we have to be safe.’

Adams responded to criticism from Rep. Mondaire Jones, D-N.Y., who argued the mayor was helping to feed the Republican narrative on crime and in turn, hurting Democrats ahead of 2024. 

‘You know the difference between a comment like that and what I say — I listen to Americans in New York. The polls were clear. New Yorkers felt unsafe, and the numbers show that they were unsafe,’ Adams said. ‘Now, if we want to ignore what the everyday public stated, then that’s up to them. I’m on the subways. I walk the streets. I speak to everyday, working-class people.’

‘And they were concerned about safety. We zeroed in on that unprecedented historic numbers of felony arrests, removal of guns on our streets, close in homicide cases. We have a recidivism problem in New York, and far too many people, about 2000 people who are repeatedly… catch, release, repeat in crimes. If we don’t take them off our streets, they’re going to continue to prey on innocent people.’

Earlier in the interview, Adams defended what some considered a controversial policy to involuntarily commit the homeless mentally ill who could not care for their own basic needs. The mayor said about 4,000 homeless people were brought in for care, while about 1,000 remain in the subways. 

His focus is now shifting to young people with mental health and substance issues, as Adams said his administration is working with the governor to open 8,000 new units of permanent housing with wraparound services. He estimated the cost of the mental health initiative, which will also include fentanyl testing strips and telemedicine, at about $20 million.  

Asked about comments he made at an interfaith breakfast about guns unfortunately replacing prayer in public schools, the mayor defended the remarks, saying ‘faith is who I am.’ 

‘Government should not interfere with religion. Religious should not interfere with government,’ Adams said when challenged on the separation of church and state. ‘That can’t happen, and it should never happen. But my faith is how I carry out the practices that I do in a policy such as helping people who are homeless, such as making sure that we show compassion in what we do in our city. Government should never be a religion. Religion should never be in government. And I hope I’m very clear on that.’ 

Former Secretary of State and potential Republican 2024 presidential contender Mike Pompeo on Sunday took a swipe at former President Trump, saying ‘any conservative president’ would ‘do a better job’ managing the national debt and deficit than him.

During an appearance on ‘Fox News Sunday’ Pompeo was asked whether he would do a better job than Trump managing national debt, prompting him to say, ‘I think a President Pompeo or any conservative president will do better than not only [what] we did in the four years of the Trump administration, but Barack Obama, George Bush.

‘The list is long, Shannon, the folks who come to Washington on one theory and aren’t prepared to stand up and explain to the American people how we’re actually going to get that right,’ Pompeo said. ‘It matters to the next generation. This system is at risk if we don’t get it right. We are $31 trillion in the hole. We’ve got to begin to grow the economy, build it back with lower taxes and when we do that and grow our economy we’ll get it right back right. It’s going to take a true conservative leader.’

Anchor Shannon Bream followed up to ask whether he was suggesting that Trump wasn’t a true conservative leader.

‘$6 trillion more in debt. That’s never the right direction for the country, Shannon,’ Pompeo said.

Later in the interview, Pompeo was pressed on his comments from Friday during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which many on social media speculated were about Trump.

‘We can’t become the left, following celebrity leaders with their own brand of identity politics, those with fragile egos who refuse to acknowledge reality,’ Pompeo said.

He defended his comment by saying that he was ‘talking about the time to elect serious leaders who are thoughtful, who speak about America as the most exceptional nation in the history of civilization.’

‘They’re not denigrating it. They’re not throwing out whoppers. They’re not spending all the time thinking about Twitter,’ he continued. ‘That’s what I was speaking to. It’s the moment for celebrity the moment for stars is not with us.’

Bream followed up and said Pompeo was leaving ‘us with no other assumption in that you are talking about your former boss,’ referring to Trump.

‘I’m talking about what’s happening in states and county school boards all across America. It is time for a thoughtfulness and a waiting list and a seriousness that I think we’ve kind of moved away from and we got to get back there,’ Pompeo said. ‘It’s not about former President Trump. It’s not about President Biden. It’s about the American people and getting this right.’

Trump told DailyMail.com on Saturday that he doesn’t consider himself a ‘celebrity leader of the country.’

Pompeo’s comments come as he is considering jumping into the presidential Republican primary. He said he hasn’t made a decision yet, but is discussing a potential announcement with his wife and will most likely make a decision sometime over the ‘next couple months.’ 

For the first half of Trump’s presidency, Republicans enjoyed control of both chambers of Congress. During those two years, before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump authorized billions in tax cuts and trillions in spending, causing the federal debt to balloon.

Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act alone added a projected $1.8 trillion to the debt, and the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 added nearly $450 billion, according to reports by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. By early 2019, the national debt had climbed to $22 trillion, roughly $2 trillion higher than the day Trump took office. The national debt would climb to over $27 trillion before Trump left office amid an unprecedented pandemic that would lead to hundreds of thousands of Americans dying from COVID-19.

The FBI was not forthcoming with the Trump, Biden and Pence classified documents during a House Intelligence Committee briefing last week, and lawmakers still don’t know exactly what the documents contained, the committee’s leaders, Reps. Mike Turner and Jim Himes, said Sunday.

Turner, R-Ohio, and Himes, D-Conn., appeared together on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press,’ where they said there were still unanswered questions regarding the classified documents discovered at the residences of President Biden, former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence.

‘The FBI is not being forthcoming,’ committee Chairman Turner said. ‘They are not giving us the information. They’re claiming it’s going to affect the outcome of their investigation, which, of course, it can’t because the people who are the targets of their investigation know what are in those documents.’

The lawmakers said the committee still does not know the classification level of each document or who had access to them. Despite these lingering questions, Turner said the committee is starting to ‘build an understanding.’

‘The thing that we know is that it’s unbelievable that administration after administration is apparently sloppy and messy in their use of classified documents,’ the congressman said. ‘And that’s one thing on a bipartisan basis we have to address.’

Himes, the committee’s ranking member, agreed that both lawmakers were left dissatisfied with the amount of information provided to the committee during the FBI briefing.

‘Let’s just say that neither one of us are satisfied that we got enough information to execute our primary responsibility of making sure that sources and methods have been protected,’ Himes said.

While the lawmakers said they still couldn’t discuss details of the briefing, Himes said they were beginning to get ‘a flavor’ of what the documents contained and that it ‘is a very serious issue.’

‘This wasn’t stuff that we can say clearly does not matter,’ he said.

When asked if the intelligence community no longer trusts Congress, Turner said it’s ‘more of a tension between the FBI and Congress,’ not the broader intelligence community.

‘I think that’s going to come to a head over the next couple of years,’ he said, adding that the FBI is ‘not special.’ 

‘They don’t have greater privileges than the president does,’ Turner continued. ‘And [the FBI is] continuing to act as if they have some privilege to operate without congressional oversight.’

GOP leadership on a House committee said Sunday it uncovered new email evidence suggesting Dr. Anthony Fauci ‘prompted’ the drafting of ‘proximal origin’ publication meant to ‘disprove’ the COVID-19 lab leak theory. 

In a new memo released Sunday, Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Majority Staff alerted the rest of the committee members to ‘New Evidence Resulting from the Select Subcommittee’s Investigation into the Origins of COVID-19 – ‘The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2’’

‘New evidence released by the Select Subcommittee today suggests that Dr. Fauci ‘prompted’ the drafting of a publication that would ‘disprove’ the lab leak theory, the authors of this paper skewed available evidence to achieve that goal, and Dr. Jeremy Farrar went uncredited despite significant involvement,’ the memo says. 

On Feb. 1, 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Francis Collins, and at least eleven other scientists convened a conference call to discuss COVID-19. On the call, Fauci and Collins were first warned that COVID-19 may have leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, and, further, may have been intentionally genetically manipulated, the memo says. 

Three days later, four participants of the conference call authored a paper entitled ‘The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2’ (Proximal Origin) and sent a draft to Fauci and Collins. Prior to final publication in Nature Medicine, the paper was sent to Fauci for editing and approval. 

‘On April 16, 2020, slightly more than two months after the original conference call, Dr. Collins emailed Dr. Fauci expressing dismay that Proximal Origin—which they saw prior to publication and were given the opportunity to edit—did not squash the lab leak hypothesis and asks if the NIH can do more to ‘put down’ the lab leak hypothesis,’ the memo says. ‘The next day—after Dr. Collins explicitly asked for more public pressure—Dr. Fauci cited Proximal Origin from the White House podium when asked if COVID-19 leaked from a lab.’ 

The committee, chaired by Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, cited several emails GOP leadership says, ‘suggests that Dr. Anthony Fauci ‘prompted’ Dr. Kristian Andersen, Professor, Scripps Research (Scripps), to write Proximal Origin and that the goal was to ‘disprove’ any lab leak theory.’ 

‘On August 18, 2021, Scripps responded to then-Committee on Oversight and Reform Ranking Member, James Comer, and then-Committee on the Judiciary Ranking Member, Jim Jordan’s, July 29, 2021, letter to Dr. Andersen,’ the memo says. ‘In this letter, Scripps asserts that Dr. Andersen ‘objectively’ investigated the origins, and that Dr. Anthony Fauci did not attempt to influence his work. Both statements do not appear to be supported by the available evidence.’

In an excerpt from a Feb. 12, 2020, email included in the memo, for example, Anderson writes that he, Fauci, Farrah as well as colleagues Eddie Holmes, Andrew Rambaut, Bob Garry and Ian Lipkin ‘have been working through much of the (primarily) genetic data to provide agnostic and scientifically informed hypothesis around the origins of the virus.’ 

In a July 14, 2021, interview with The New York Times, Andersen was asked about how his view changed from possible lab leak to definitely zoonotic. Anderson claimed that he and other researchers ‘looked at data from coronaviruses found in other species, such as bats and pangolins, which demonstrated that the features that first appeared unique to SARS-CoV-2 were in fact found in other, related viruses.’ 

But as the committee majority notes, while Proximal Origin was going through peer review with Nature Medicine more than a year earlier, Andersen ‘actually did not find the pangolin data compelling.’

‘Privately, Dr. Andersen did not believe the pangolin data disproved a lab leak theory despite saying so publicly. It is still unclear what intervening event changed the minds of the authors of Proximal Origin in such a short period of time. Based on this new evidence, the pangolin data was not the compelling factor; to this day, the only known intervening event was the February 1 conference call with Dr. Fauci.’

In another email during the paper’s drafting process, Lipkin asserted, ‘It does not eliminate the possibility of inadvertent release following adaptation through selection in culture at the institute in Wuhan. Given the scale of the bat CoV research pursued there and the site of emergence of the first human cases we have a nightmare of circumstantial evidence to assess.’

In a Feb. 17, 2020, email, Lipkin thanked Farrar for ‘shepherding’ the paper, noting ‘Rumors of bioweaponeering are now circulating in China.’ Farrar agreed to push Nature to publish it. 

First Lady Jill Biden dismissed statements made by Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley who called for politicians over the age of 75 to undergo mental capacity tests, according to reports.

CNN reported that in an interview set to air on the network on Monday night, the first lady called the proposal ridiculous, and when asked if the president would consider taking a mental capacity test if elected, she said, ‘We would never even discuss something like that.’

Haley, 51, threw her name into the hat as a Republican presidential candidate last month and made headlines after calling for ‘mental competency tests.’

President Biden turned 80 in November and former President Trump, also a candidate for president this go-round, is 76.

A Fox News Poll conducted in late February found that, overall, 77% of Americans favor requiring such tests, with 83% of millennials, 84% of GenXers and 66% of Baby Boomers supporting the idea.

The study also found that 87% of Republicans, 74% of Independents and 67% of Democrats surveyed favor the mental capacity tests, as well.

Still, the First Lady rejected the idea of the tests when interviewed by CNN.

‘How many 30-year-olds could travel to Poland, get on the train? Go nine more hours, go to Ukraine, meet with President (Volodymyr) Zelensky?’ she asked the news network. ‘So, look at the man. Look at what he’s doing. Look at what he continues to do each and every day.’

The First Lady is not the first to reject Haley’s proposal, and likely will not be the last.

In fact, former Vice President Mike Pence disagreed with the presidential hopeful’s proposal in an interview with CBS last week.

‘I come from southern Indiana, where people think most politicians should have a competency test,’ Pence, 63, joked. ‘No, I think the American people can sort that out. I really do.’

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis ripped California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom during a speech Sunday in the Golden State, saying Californians are fleeing the state in droves to live in Florida where he said they can live freely.

‘I knew you guys got a lot of problems out here, but your governor is very concerned about what we’re doing in Florida, so I figured I had to come by,’ DeSantis joked at the start of his speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley.

DeSantis said Reagan ‘understood the vital role that government had to play’ and how it could be a ‘negative force if not applied properly,’ and he governed Florida with that same understanding throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

‘And I think if you look over the last four or five years, and you look at the performances of individual states, and you compare Florida versus California, New York, Illinois, some of those other states, we have had a great experiment, a great test in governing philosophies,’ he said. ‘Because, of course, you know, we approach things much differently in Florida than you guys have out here, much differently in Florida than they’ve done in New York and in Illinois.’

‘And if you look over the last four years, we’ve witnessed a great American exodus from states governed by leftist politicians imposing leftist ideology and delivering poor results, and you’ve seen massive gains in states like Florida, who are governing according to the tried and true principles that President Reagan held dear,’ he continued. ‘From the beginning of this state’s history, all the way until the last four or five years, people beat a path to California. You didn’t beat a path away from California. And yet now, you see the state hemorrhaging population.’ 

DeSantis said Florida became a beacon of freedom when states like California became a ‘biomedical security state’ due to outside pressure based on political ideology instead of data.

‘And I can tell you, we had families move from the Pacific coast just for the fact that we had schools open in Florida, when you didn’t have them open in many other states,’ he said. ‘We did things like ban vaccine passports in the state of Florida. States said, ‘You want to go stay in a hotel, go to a restaurant, you got to cough up your vax papers on these mRNA shots.’ And we said that’s none of their business. Everyone has a right to participate in society. That’s a personal choice that you make whether to take that or not, and we’re not going to let you be excluded.’

‘Now, what ended up happening because we did that, one of the things that ended up happening was in 2021, Florida set a record for domestic tourism,’ he said. ‘If you compare the change in tourism in California from 2019 to 2021, California tourism declined by 22%.’

DeSantis spoke to a crowd of more than 1,300 attendees at the Reagan library, DeSantis’ team told Fox News Digital.

Simi Valley police said vandals targeted the library overnight ahead of the governor’s visit with graffiti reading, ‘Ron DeFascist,’ KTLA reported. Library employees were reportedly able to clean up the paint before the governor’s visit.

Sunday’s event was to kick off DeSantis’ new book, ‘The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival,’ which released Tuesday. The governor has not officially announced a 2024 presidential run but is widely considered a likely candidate.

DeSantis revealed his proposal to ‘Make America Florida’ in his book, saying it will require ‘successfully combating a lot of powerful, elite institutions’ in the pursuit of freedom.

The book detailed DeSantis’ approach to the COVID-19 pandemic, which often contradicted guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and was the frequent target of liberal backlash. The governor argued in the book that the attacks were a ‘price worth paying’ for exercising leadership.

‘A governor who leads by aggressively pursuing policies that defy the leftist ideology of the nation’s elites will face fire — not only by the legacy media but also from activist groups, Big Tech, and corporate America,’ he wrote. ‘When I took strong stands against the prevailing narrative on draconian coronavirus policies, I may have been vilified by the usual suspects, but I was able to save the livelihoods of millions of people throughout Florida.’

The three House Democrats who have announced they are running for Senate in California are proponents of far-left actions to combat climate change and have endorsed the multi-trillion-dollar Green New Deal. 

The Democrats — Reps. Barbara Lee, Katie Porter and Adam Schiff — have supported aggressive policies to transition the U.S. grid from traditional fossil fuel sources to green energy like wind and solar power, argued for massive spending packages that would rapidly achieve such a transition and backed so-called environmental justice measures. The three have all recently entered the race to replace retiring Sen. Dianne Feinstein and are currently the highest-profile candidates.

According to the League of Conservation Voters, a left-wing Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group that tracks how lawmakers vote on environmental and climate issues, Schiff has a 98% lifetime score while Lee and Porter boast 97% lifetime scores. The high scores indicate the three have a long track record of supporting measures backed by the far-left organization.

‘From the devastating wildfires in my home state of California to the snowstorms in my birthplace of Texas, there’s no denying that the climate crisis is here, and the threat to the safety and economic security of our communities is growing by the day,’ Lee said after cosponsoring the Green New Deal alongside Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., in April 2021. 

‘In order to ensure a healthy and safe future for our children and grandchildren, the federal government must invest in bold policies that address the climate emergency head on, especially in communities of color and low-income communities that have experienced generations of environmental injustice,’ she added. ‘Our solutions must match the scale of the crisis—that’s why I’m proud to support the Green New Deal.’

Lee’s congressional website further states that fighting climate change is a top priority for her, noting that she has fought oil companies and is working to ensure ‘good-paying jobs created by the growing green energy sector are open to all, especially people of color, women and veterans.’

Lee also joined a congressional delegation to a United Nations climate conference in Egypt late last year where she reaffirmed her commitment to giving billions of taxpayer dollars to the international ‘Green Climate Fund’ and warned the ‘window is closing fast’ on saving the planet.

Porter has also been a vocal proponent of far-left climate proposals and signed on to the Green New Deal after she worked to strengthen ‘pro-worker provisions’ in the legislation.

‘Congresswoman Porter has fought to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for cleaning up after they drill, in addition to advocating for a future powered by clean energy,’ Porter’s website states. ‘Congresswoman Porter is taking action to accelerate our transition to clean energy and make the United States a leading green economy.’

‘She is a proud member of the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition, which advocates for policies that promote renewable energy, address climate change, and create good green jobs.’

Porter has also repeatedly attacked the fossil fuel industry for its supposed ‘misinformation campaigns.’ In August, she introduced legislation that would remove taxpayer-funded subsidies from oil companies that were used to help the industry market products, saying ‘it’s bad enough these corporations poison the planet.’

And Porter made headlines during an October 2021 hearing where she blasted oil executives over how much federal land their companies have leased. In a live demonstration, Porter used candy and rice to show how much land the companies controlled.

‘When you lobby and sue so that you can take more of our public land, you’re saying too much is never enough,’ Porter stated. ‘The American people are tired of this charade.’

Finally, Schiff is the only candidate of the three Democrats to list climate change as a key issue on his campaign website. He argues in favor of the Green New Deal which he was an original cosponsor of, major new green investments, developing a ‘green economy’ and leading the world in clean energy development.

‘Climate change is real, our planet is on fire, and we must act. Now,’ he states on his website. ‘That seems like common knowledge, but half of our country’s political structure still refutes that simple truth. And worse, refuses to act on it.’

‘The Green New Deal is not just a bold plan for addressing climate change and beginning to right the ship, it also is an urgent call to invest in growing a modern, green economy that is equitable and just for all,’ he adds.

On Wednesday, he introduced legislation that would create a sustainable investment fund for federal employees that avoids oil, pharmaceutical tobacco investments. He said the bill would help federal workers use investments to boost ‘sustainable practices that will help combat the climate crisis.’

He also slammed Republicans for passing legislation that would rescind a Biden administration rule allowing fiduciaries to factor environmental considerations into Americans’ retirement accounts, an action opponents have argued could significantly harm the interests of customers by placing social priorities over financial interests.