The Trump campaign is doubling down on former President Trump’s debate performance this week, calling it a clear victory against Vice President Kamala Harris, despite recent reports that Harris is gaining momentum in battlegrounds Georgia and North Carolina.

‘Their little reaction to the debate and performance is nothing but a sugar high, and it’s artificial, and it’s based entirely on the fact that she came out and she managed to deliver her memorized lines, and she put on a fine performance, which we anticipated she was going to do, because she’s able to go out and memorize things and go out and put on a performance,’ senior Trump campaign adviser Tim Murtaugh told Fox News Digital in an interview Thursday.

‘They placed so much emphasis on that debate, and so many millions of people tuned in to hear why she was running for president, because they had heard that she’d been in hiding most of the time, and they were expecting her to explain the rationale for what her record is and what her goals would be as president and what her plans would be. And they walked away not having heard or learned anything,’ he said.

The campaign’s assessment comes as Trump himself said Thursday he will not be doing any more debates.

While debate watchers initially gave the victory to Harris after Tuesday’s showdown, there are still six toss-up states on the map worth a combined 78 electoral votes. The election is still considered up for grabs for either candidate.

As of Thursday, Trump has lost his edge in Georgia and North Carolina in the latest Fox News Power Rankings, giving Harris a lead in the overall forecast for the first time. 

Over the last 12 months of the Fox News Poll, between 48%-50% of registered voters have said they supported Trump. While Biden polled as low as 45% earlier this year, Harris is now only one point behind Trump at 49% in the latest Fox national survey. 

Criminal indictments, a conviction, the primaries, a last-minute change in opponents and an assassination attempt did nothing to move the former president out of that three-point range.

But Murtaugh believes Trump had ‘a strong performance’ and that he refused to let Harris ‘escape her liberal record and her responsibility in the Biden-Harris administration.’ 

Murtaugh pointed to Harris’ flip-flop record in which she’s tried to distance herself from her former progressive record. 

‘And everyone knows what they are. It’s fracking, it’s the wall, it’s making illegal immigration or making illegally crossing the border not illegal. She reversed herself on outlawing health insurance that people get from their employer,’ Murtaugh said. ‘She reversed herself on gun confiscation. She’s reversed herself on a variety of tax cuts. You know, she’s actually even reversed herself on plastic straws.’

‘And she also needed to try to separate herself from the Biden-Harris administration,’ Murtaugh said. ‘And she absolutely did not do that. And so while the pundits might think, ‘Oh, wow, what a great performance she put on,’ because she went out and did her lines, in fact, the truth is, the grocery store will not let you buy food with style points.’

On top issues like the economy, Trump clearly has the upper hand, according to polls. In a CNN poll conducted after the debate, 55% of voters preferred Trump’s economic platform compared to Harris’, trailing behind at 35%. 

And while pundits and debate watchers called the victory for Harris, middle-of-the-road voters may not have been convinced, according to Reuters and the New York Times’ interviews with undecided voters.

‘She needed to connect with these people and convince them that she wasn’t hiding and that she is a serious candidate, and she failed. You don’t get another chance to make a first impression on those people,’ Murtaugh said. 

Fox News Digital’s Remy Numa contributed to this report. 

GOP Rep. Michelle Steel is rolling out a bill to block China and other American adversaries from accessing U.S. ports.

Steel, R-Calif., a member of the House Select Committee on Communist China, created the Secure Our Ports Act, which would prohibit companies owned fully, or in-part, by state-owned enterprises in China, Russia, North Korea and Iran from operating or managing a U.S. port. 

Steel told Fox News Digital that adversaries accessing U.S. ports can harm U.S. supply chains because it would enable them to access shipping infrastructure. 

Steel said her bill ‘would shore up America’s economic and national security in the face of threats from Communist China and their like-minded allies.’ 

‘Congress must protect America’s supply chains by restricting enemy governments from having high-level access to our ports,’ Steel told Fox News Digital. ‘Nations which threaten the very existence of the United States should not have easy access to our port infrastructure, a key lifeline of America’s supply chains.’

Steel’s home region in Southern California is home to two of the largest ports in the country: the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach. 

Steel’s office told Fox News Digital that multiple China-owned conglomerates have an active presence in American ports, including on the West Coast. This includes the Chinese-Owned Shipping Company (COSCO) on the West Coast and China Oil and Foodstuffs Corp. (COFCO) on the Mississippi River.

The legislation is co-sponsored by Reps. Stephanie Bice, Ken Calvert, Rick Crawford, Richard Hudson, Doug LaMalfa, Nicole Malliotakis, James Moylan, Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen, John Rutherford and Randy Weber.

The bill comes after national security and defense officials last year began viewing giant cargo cranes at U.S. ports as potential Chinese spying tools. Officials have suggested that Chinese equipment and cranes at ports could be used for surveillance.

President Biden is facing mounting pressure to lift the ban on Ukraine using U.S. weapons to strike deep inside Russia and appeared to admit on Tuesday that his administration is moving in that direction. 

‘We’re working that out right now,’ he said when asked by reporters whether he would allow Ukraine to use the long-range Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, to target sites inside Russia.

Support for lifting the ban has come from all sides.

A group of high-level House Republicans wrote to the president this week arguing that such restrictions ‘have hampered Ukraine’s ability to defeat Russia’s war of aggression and have given the Kremlin’s forces a sanctuary from which it can attack Ukraine with impunity.’

The House GOP letter was signed by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul, House Intelligence Committee Chair Michael Turner, House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers and other committee leaders.

It critiques the Biden administration but contrasts statements from top Republicans like Donald Trump, who have suggested he could bring a diplomatic end to the war. 

On Wednesday, a group of liberal and progressive former high-level national security officials authored a letter calling on the U.S. and U.K. to allow unrestricted use of their weapons to strike Russian territory. 

A bipartisan group of House and Senate members sent another letter arguing that with the ban, Russia ‘is far too comfortable in its ability to focus on its offensive operations rather than defending itself.’

‘Easing the restrictions on Western weapons will not cause Moscow to escalate,’ they wrote. ‘We urge you to listen to your partners in Kyiv this week and allow Ukraine to strike all legitimate targets in Russia with the weapons the U.S. and U.K. have provided. Let Ukraine defend itself.’

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has implored U.S. officials to lift the ban they placed to avoid escalation of U.S. involvement in the war. Washington in recent months has partially done so, allowing Ukraine to use U.S. weapons for defensive strikes ‘within sovereign Ukraine territory.’

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Kyiv on Wednesday with British Foreign Secretary David Lammy and were expected to gather information on how such long-range strikes would factor into Ukraine’s broader battlefield strategy. The U.K. is also considering whether to allow Ukraine to strike deeper inside Russia with its own long-range system, the Storm Shadow.

Asked about the ‘green light’ to target inside Russia on Thursday, Blinken did not indicate any change in policy but restated a desire to keep adapting to Russia’s aggression.

Blinken said he expects Biden and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer to discuss the topic when they meet Friday in Washington.

Last week, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin pushed back on the notion that lifting restrictions and allowing Ukraine to hit deeper into Russia would change the tides of the war. 

‘There’s no one capability that will, in and of itself, be decisive in this campaign.’

‘There are a lot of targets in Russia, a big country, obviously,’ Austin said at a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Germany on Friday. ‘And there’s a lot of capability that Ukraine has in terms of (unmanned aerial vehicles) and other things to address those targets.’

The debate about whether to remove the restrictions comes amid the worrying beginning of transfers of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia.

Some worry the U.S. has a limited number of ATACMS to offer Ukraine without affecting U.S. readiness and that using the weapons to strike deep into Russia could deplete their supply for other parts of the military campaign, like inside Crimea. But advocates of lifting the ban argue Ukraine is already using ATACMS on territory that Russia sees as its own in Crimea.

Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe spoke with members of both the House and Senate in closed sessions Thursday to discuss the July 13 assassination attempt on former President Trump during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Rowe briefed members in both chambers about the agency’s interim report examining the USSS’s security lapses that led to a gunman being able to scale a nearby building and open fire on Trump, just minutes into his rally. 

Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., the lead Democrat on the Trump Assassination Task Force told Fox News Digital that the briefing with Rowe was a ‘very lengthy and very candid discussion.’ 

‘They discussed the … failings that occurred that day and what’s been done to fix it, as well as some of the resourcing constraints the Secret Service has faced this election cycle,’ Crow said of Rowe’s briefing with lawmakers. ‘He made an outline of their internal report and briefed us on their internal mission evaluation, which is now complete.’

Fox News was previously informed that the overall mission assurance probe conducted by the Secret Service is nearly complete and will soon be made public. 

According to Crow, Rowe told lawmakers that he had looked ‘at everything from the site selection and the planning for security for that day; interaction between local law enforcement and campaign staff for the event; the communication, or lack of communication as the case might be in several instances between Secret Service and local law enforcement; the issue of perimeter security and lines of sight and then the clearing of lines of sight.’

Speaking about his own visit to the site of the July rally, Crow said ‘the perimeter itself was too small…and the fact that the shooter was on a roof of a building a little more than a hundred yards away from the platform where the former president was standing and that was outside the perimeter is problematic.’ 

The Task Force is slated to hold its first public hearing with a focus on local law enforcement later this month. 

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told reporters Thursday that lawmakers ‘will have a report very, very soon that I think will absolutely shock the American people about the lapses and lags in protection that was afforded that day and the breakdown in communication, failure and responsibility.’

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., told reporters, ‘The most important point that we want to make is this is bipartisan.’ 

‘We truly believe the American people need to know the full truth, and the only way they’re going to have confidence in it is if it’s in a completely nonpartisan way.’ 

Meanwhile, Several senior Secret Service officials who planned to retire soon have been encouraged to do so more urgently to escape the scrutiny from Congress over the next several months.

Fox News has been informed that several high-level Secret Service officials who have either direct or indirect connections to the Butler, Pennsylvania security situation are retiring. While the employees are eligible for retirement, they’ve been encouraged by senior leadership to do so more quickly to avoid lengthy congressional interviews and investigations.  

Separately, the FBI is conducting a separate investigation into the shooter, and that is still ongoing. 

The Biden administration imposed sanctions Thursday against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and several of his associates for undermining the electoral process and violating the civil and human rights of its citizens.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre announced the sanctions while speaking to reporters during a briefing Thursday.

‘President Biden’s approach to foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere has been based on his belief that democracy is fundamentally vital for sustained economic prosperity and security,’ she said. ‘Now, Venezuela is no exception, and the blatant electoral fraud following the July 28 presidential elections must continue to be condemned and those obstructing democracy held accountable.

‘And that is why, to that end, today we took two important actions to hold Nicolás Maduro and his cronies accountable for their blatant electoral fraud, obstruction of a competitive and inclusive election and violation of the civil and human rights of the people.’

Jean-Pierre said U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen placed sanctions on 16 of Maduro’s affiliated officials along with visa restrictions on a number of his allied officials who ‘undermined’ the electoral process in Venezuela and ‘are responsible for acts of repression.’

The press secretary also said the U.S. has, to date, sanctioned over 140 current and former Venezuelan officials while also taking steps to impose visa restrictions on about 2,000 individuals.

Critics contend the real problem lies with allowing the Maduro regime continued access to lucrative oil contracts.

‘The current approach appears to be overly focused on a single tactic. What is the point of imposing sanctions if, at the same time, oil licenses continue to be renewed? Feeding kleptocracy $20B per year,’ Isaias Medina III, a former U.N. Security Council diplomat and Harvard Mason fellow, told Fox News Digital Thursday. 

‘Real pressure comes from taking decisive actions, such as issuing a red notice from Interpol, intercepting every drug shipment and blocking the coast to prevent the movement of oil. Instead of simply warning them, concrete steps should be taken to expose their involvement in drug trafficking, terrorism, corruption and human rights violations. This includes pushing for their removal from the United Nations due to their illegitimacy and compelling the international community to take a unified stance against them.’

Venezuela’s July 28 election saw Maduro claiming victory by more than 1 million votes. Maduro, who has been in power since 2013, was seeking a third six-year term. Meanwhile, the main opposition coalition, Vente Venezuela, has accused him of trying to steal the vote. The Vente Venezuela campaign has released records showing opposition candidate Edmundo González winning by a more than 2-to-1 margin. The main leader of the opposition, González, and opposition leader María Corina Machado have gone into hiding since the vote.

The opposition suffered a further setback when Venezuela’s controversial Supreme Court reasserted Maduro as the winner of the disputed elections. Maduro’s hand-picked court declared the voting tallies showing any reports of his loss were fabricated.

The U.S., European Union (EU) and a slate of Latin American countries have categorically rejected the Venezuelan high court’s certification. Maduro and his government have refused to release official tally sheets from last month’s election.

Maduro’s claim of victory ignited protests across Venezuela, prompting his regime to engage in a wave of violent repression. Security forces have apprehended more than 2,000 demonstrators, many of whom were taken to torture camps.

Earlier this month, the U.S. seized a plane owned by Maduro in the Dominican Republic.

Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) flew Maduro’s personal plane back to the United States Monday morning, when it landed in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and is now in U.S. custody, a U.S. official told Fox News following an initial report by CNN.

The plane, described by officials as Maduro’s version of ‘Air Force One,’ is used for Maduro’s state visits around the world and was seized in the Dominican Republic after it was purchased through a straw company in violation of sanctions laws and export controls, the official said. U.S. authorities cited a specific violation of U.S. Executive Order 13884, signed by former President Trump in 2019. 

The plane, valued at $13 million, is a Dassault Falcon 900-EX. The seizure was a result of a joint investigation between HSI and the U.S. Department of Commerce.

In August 2019, Trump issued Executive Order 13884, which prohibits U.S. persons from engaging in transactions with persons who have acted or purported to act directly or indirectly for or on behalf of, the government of Venezuela, including as a member of the Maduro regime. To protect U.S. national security and foreign policy interests, the Department of Commerce has also imposed export controls for items intended, entirely or in part, for a Venezuelan military or military-intelligence end user, according to the Department of Justice.

Fox News’ Kyra Colah, Danielle Wallace and Bill Melugin contributed to this report.

A New York appeals court on Thursday denied former President Trump’s request to pause his criminal case stemming from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation. 

The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals said in a filing that Trump’s motion for an emergency administrative stay in New York v. Trump is denied, following Judge Juan Merchan’s decision to delay the former president’s sentencing until after the presidential election. 

Trump’s sentencing was set for Sept. 18, but Merchan granted the former president’s request to move that date until late November — Nov. 26. 

This week, Trump’s attorneys, in a letter to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, asked for the case to be paused, arguing that there was not enough time between the court’s Nov. 12th presidential immunity ruling and the Nov. 26th sentencing to allow for appeal. 

Bragg’s office said a pause would be ‘legally unavailable’ and ‘unnecessary in light of the state criminal court’s adjournment of the sentencing. They also argued there is time for Trump to appeal the presidential immunity decision before sentencing. 

Trump’s initial sentencing was set for July 11 — just days before the Republican National Convention, where he was set to be formally nominated as the 2024 GOP presidential nominee, but Judge Juan Merchan agreed to delay that until Sept. 18. 

Trump requested the sentencing be moved until after Election Day, citing ‘naked election-interference objectives.’ 

Merchan granted that request last week, pushing the sentencing date ‘if necessary’ to Nov. 26. 

Trump has appealed the verdict, after pleading not guilty to all charges. Trump attorney Todd Blanche said the verdict should be overturned based on the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity, granting presidents limited immunity for official acts.

Judge Merchan will also now make a decision on Nov. 12 on Trump’s motion to vacate.

Blanche also pointed to Merchan’s daughter’s work at Authentic Campaigns, which represents top Democratic candidates. 

In his arguments for dismissal, Blanche argued that Bragg offered official acts as evidence during the six-week-long unprecedented criminal trial. Blanche said that included official White House communications with staffers like Hope Hicks, Madeleine Westerhout and others. 

The Supreme Court ruled in Trump v. United States that a former president has substantial immunity from prosecution for official acts in office but not for unofficial acts. The high court said Trump is immune from criminal prosecution for ‘official acts’ but left it to the lower court to determine exactly where the line between official and unofficial is.

Trump spoke exclusively with Fox News Digital after Merchan granted the former president’s request to have his sentencing delayed until after the presidential election in November. 

‘The case was delayed because everyone realizes there was no case and I did nothing wrong,’ Trump told Fox News Digital. ‘It is a case that should never have been brought.’ 

Trump said ‘the public understands that and so does every legal scholar that has looked at it and studied it.’ 

‘I greatly respect the words ‘if necessary’ being used in this decision because there should be no, ‘if necessary,’’ Trump said. ‘The case should be dead.’

Trump was referring to a section of Merchan’s letter Friday, in which he notifies Trump attorneys of the delay, and says that ‘the sentencing on this matter, if necessary, is adjourned to November 26, 2024 at 10am.’ 

Merchan also said Friday the ‘public’s confidence in the integrity of our judicial system demands a sentencing hearing that is entirely focused on the verdict of the jury and the weighing of aggravating and mitigating factors free from distraction or distortion.’

Trump was found guilty in an unprecedented criminal trial on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree after a six-week trial stemming from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation.

Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, told Fox News Digital, ‘There should be no sentencing in the Manhattan DA’s election interference witch hunt. As mandated by the United States Supreme Court, this case, along with all of the other Harris-Biden hoaxes, should be dismissed.’

A new national poll conducted entirely after Tuesday’s debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump indicates Harris leading Trump by five points.

According to a Reuters/Ipsos survey conducted two-day poll, Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has the support of 47% of registered voters nationwide. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, lands the backing of 42% of registered voters questioned.

The five-point advantage for Harris is up slightly from a four-point margin in the previous Reuters/Ipsos poll, which was conducted in late August, prior to the debate.

The survey indicates that voters agree with political pundits in saying that Harris bested Trump during their Philadelphia showdown, which was their first and potentially only presidential debate.

Fifty-three percent of survey respondents who said they had heard at least some of Tuesday’s debate said that the vice president had won, with just 24% saying that the former president was the winner.

The poll surveyed 1,690 adults nationwide, including 1,405 registered voters. The survey had a sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points for registered voters.

With seven and a half weeks until Election Day and early voting getting underway this month in some of the key battleground states, most national surveys and swing state polls indicate a margin-of-error race between Trump and Harris, who enjoyed a wave of momentum in the weeks after replacing President Biden atop the Democrats’ 2024 ticket in mid-July.

Harris, at a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Thursday, reiterated to her supporters that ‘ours is going to be a tight race until the end.’

‘We are the underdog,’ she emphasized. ‘We’ve got some hard work ahead of us… hard work is good work.’

A top Biden White House adviser has been employed for decades as a minister at a Washington, D.C., church that has hosted several activists and religious leaders with long histories of antisemitism, including one Black activist who, during a 2002 speech, called for ‘Zionists’ in Israel, including their babies, to be murdered.

Rev. Thomas Bowen, who is listed on Shiloh Baptist Church’s website as a minister of social justice and has been employed at the church since 2002 in several leadership roles, joined the White House in February to serve as the senior adviser for the White House Office of Public Engagement, which ‘works at the local, state, and national levels to ensure community leaders, diverse perspectives, and new voices all have the opportunity to inform the work of the President.’

Shiloh Baptist Church, a historic Black church that Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband visited on Christmas Day in 2022, is led by Reverend Doctor Wallace Charles Smith, Shiloh’s senior minister and a longtime mentor of Bowen. During a sermon before Shiloh’s congregation last month, Bowen called Smith his ‘hero,’ ‘friend,’ and ‘mentor … to whom I owe a debt that I could never ever repay.’

Bowen’s social media is also littered with praise of Rev. Smith, who invited multiple activists with long histories of antisemitism into their church.

In April 2018, Rev. Smith hosted the National Black Men’s Convention at Shiloh Baptist Church, which was billed as a five-day summit for ‘mobilizing and organizing brothers for a better future for our community’ and opposing President Trump. Each day had a different theme, which included reparations, and several of the speakers involved with the summit had a problematic history of antisemitism and vile rhetoric against White people.

In the months before the convention, Rev. Smith met at Shiloh Baptist Church with the convention’s co-host Malik Shabazz, the founder of Black Lawyers for Justice and former chairman of the New Black Panther Party. Shabazz, who has been labeled by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as a ‘racist black nationalist with a long, well-documented history of violently anti-Semitic remarks and accusations about the inherent evil of white people,’ posted a photo of him and Smith hugging on his Facebook and said they had a ‘great meeting’ together. Shabazz also added that ‘Pastor Smith and other pro-Black Christian preachers will be speaking’ at the convention.

Shabazz, who posted a photo with notorious antisemite Louis Farrakhan in 2020 with the caption, ‘I HAVE WALKED WITH THE BEST’ and called the Nation of Islam leader ‘one of the great influences in my life’ last year, made several other posts in the months leading up to the 2018 convention touting Shiloh Baptist Church as the host of the convention, including videos that showed he was in attendance at church events while Bowen was on the church’s payroll.

SPLC’s website lists several vile quotes uttered by Shabazz, including remarks from a 2002 speech in Washington, D.C., where he reportedly said, ‘Kill every goddamn Zionist in Israel! Goddamn little babies, goddamn old ladies! Blow up Zionist supermarkets!’ In another speech from the early 2000s, he also pushed antisemitic tropes about ‘Zionists’ controlling the media and foreign policy.

Earlier this year, Shabazz posted a photo of him and former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from 2012 and said his ‘views are shaped by my experiences.’ He said he was invited by a now-deceased journalist for the Nation of Islam’s publication and said Farrakhan was in attendance with dozens of imams. Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called Israel an ‘illegitimate regime’ and has called for its ‘elimination.’

When pressed by Fox News Digital on his ties to Farrakhan and his long history of antisemitic remarks, he responded, ‘Have no associations with Louis Farrakhan. Am not anti semetic (sic).’ Fox followed up with a social media post showing him and Farrakhan, prompting him to say, ‘Meaning I have no current associations with him.’

The other co-host of the convention was Minister Hashim Nzinga, who has since died and was serving as the chief of staff for the New Black Panther Party when he died in 2020. He also made several controversial statements, according to SPLC, including saying, ‘Every White man and every Jew is the devil by nature.’ During a 2016 interview with the Los Angeles Times, he was asked to respond to Shabazz’s comment about killing Zionists, prompting him to admit, ‘I still say that all the time now. You’ve gotta kill them before they kill you. … If someone brings harm to us, we’re gonna kill them.’

‘In addition, Nzinga said in the interview that homosexuality is evil, that Jews control the media and are responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks and that blacks are God’s ‘chosen people,’ Jesus himself being black,’ the LA Times reported at the time.

An archived itinerary of the convention revealed that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ controversial uncle, Leonard Jeffries, was also a speaker at the event. The elder Jeffries, who has a long history of antisemitism, is described on the convention’s website as a ‘political scientist’ who ‘achieved national prominence in the early 1990s for his historical statements about Jews’ and highlighted how Jeffries ‘stated that Jews financed the slave trade, used the movie industry to hurt Black people, and that whytes [sic] are ‘ice people’ while Africans are ‘sun people.’’

Shabazz posted Jeffries’ speech on his Facebook page, where he opened his remarks by saying ‘Black power’ before asking the crowd to give a round of applause for Shabazz and Nzinga for organizing the convention. He also gave a shoutout to Farrakhan during his remarks.

Another speaker at the convention was Dr. Boyce Watkins, who wrote the book ‘The 10 Commandments of Black Economic Power’ and is a staunch defender of Farrakhan. In a 2018 tweet, Watkins defended Farrakhan comparing Jews to termites, saying, ‘Anyone attacking [Louis Farrakhan] for his statement about being ‘anti-termite’ is probably a termite themselves.’ He has also used antisemitic tropes like saying Jews control Hollywood and the music industry. 

In September 2023, Watkins said, ‘I love Farrakhan. Period.’ And in a 2022 video, he boasted about being invited to the Nation of Islam’s annual Saviour’s Day event and said the Nation of Islam ‘are like brothers to me. When I go in there, when I roll up there, I get so much love from all the NOI brothers and the sisters. I just want to give them a shoutout right now.’

It is unclear whether Bowen, who previously served as director of African American strategic engagement in the executive office of DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, was involved with the planning for the convention or was in attendance. But an archived version of Shiloh’s website says he was one of the five ‘assistant pastors’ at the time of the convention. He did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

A few years earlier, in 2015, Rev. Smith hosted Farrakhan and dozens of Black community leaders at his church for an invitation-only meeting to discuss the upcoming 20th anniversary of the ‘Million Man March.’ Farrakhan, who was surrounded by several Nation of Islam members in addition to Rev. Smith and Cora Masters Barry, who faced backlash earlier this summer for an unearthed clip saying, ‘F— the White women,’ spoke at the private event. 

An article from the Washington Informer, a ‘woman-owned multimedia news organization serving the African-Americans’ in the DC area, reported at the time that Farrakhan, while speaking at Shiloh, said he believed it was time for Blacks to ‘distribute the pain’ so they aren’t the only ones suffering.

Shiloh also hosted former President Obama’s controversial pastor Jeremiah Wright that year, according to a tweet from Bowen saying he was ‘preaching’ the ‘Miseducation of the Palestinians.’ Wright previously delivered the viral ‘God damn America’ sermon and used an antisemitic trope to blame Jews for keeping him from talking with Obama after Obama won the 2008 presidential election. The comments ignited backlash from the Anti-Defamation League at the time, calling Wright’s comments ‘inflammatory and false.’

‘The notions of Jewish control of the White House in Reverend Wright’s statement express classic anti-Semitism in its most vile form,’ an ADL spokesperson said in 2009. ‘In a short succinct sentence, Reverend Wright manages to both label some of the President’s closest advisors solely by their religious beliefs and give them powers superior to the President himself.’

The White House and Shiloh Baptist Church did not respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.

Seventy-nine Democrats voted against a bill effectively banning Chinese military companies from doing federal business in the United States, but the Harris-Walz campaign declined to say where it stands on the legislation amid concerns over Gov. Tim Walz’s ties to an institute that did business with one of the companies targeted in the bill.

The Biosecure Act, HR 8333, passed the House by a vote of 306-81, with 79 Democrats and two Republicans voting against it. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, would not allow federal agencies to ‘procure or obtain any biotechnology equipment or service produced or provided by a biotechnology company of concern.’

One of the companies called out in the act, Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI), has been labeled a ‘Chinese military company’ by the Pentagon and has done extensive work with a medical research institute with deep ties to Walz, Fox News Digital previously reported.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Harris-Walz campaign multiple times for comment over the last six days on whether it supports the Biosecure Act, but they refused to say where the campaign stands.

BGI’s presence in the United States was brought to the forefront again this week after Fox News Digital reported that the House Oversight Committee is aware of a machine operated by BGI that is in use at Los Alamos, the nation’s most secretive government laboratory.

‘I spoke in favor of my bill, the BIOSECURE Act, on the House floor today. This legislation is the first step towards breaking our reliance on Chinese biotech and pharmaceutical companies while protecting the genetic data of millions of Americans from the CCP,’ Wenstrup posted on X shortly before the bill was passed.

‘From harvesting genetic data for research to aiding and abetting the CCP in genocide, China’s biotech companies have proven they will stop at nothing to assist the CCP. It’s time we reclaim our independence and protect the health care of all Americans.’

Earlier this year, the House Oversight Committee announced it is investigating Walz’s ties to China and on Thursday the Washington Examiner reported that the investigation has expanded and documents have been requested. 

Walz worked briefly in China as a teacher, traveling to Guangdong in 1989 for a teach abroad program to teach English and American history. Walz has made dozens of trips to China and The Wall Street Journal, citing local media reports, reported that one trip to China doubled as his honeymoon in 1994, and he planned his wedding date to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

‘I’ve lived in China and, as I’ve said, I’ve been there about 30 times…. I don’t fall into the category that China necessarily needs to be an adversarial relationship. I totally disagree, and I think we need to stand firm on what they’re doing in the South China Sea, but there’s many areas of cooperation we can work on,’ Walz said in an interview with Agri-Pulse Communications.

He was also quoted by a local outlet in 1990 reflecting on his visits to China, saying, ‘No matter how long I live, I will never be treated that well again.’

‘They gave me more gifts than I could bring home. It was an excellent experience,’ Walz said, adding that he was ‘treated exceptionally well.’

The remark came in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 and amid continued and still ongoing mass human rights abuses by the communist regime.

Fox News Digital’s Morgan Phillips and Cameron Cawthorne contributed to this report

Then-Sen. Kamala Harris bragged in 2019 about working ‘behind the scenes’ when she was California attorney general to change the state’s policy she said was unfairly hindering transgender inmates from receiving taxpayer-funded gender surgery.

Video of an interview Harris did as a candidate for the 2020 presidential election with the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) Action Fund began circulating online following Tuesday night’s debate, after former President Donald Trump argued his opponent ‘wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison.’ 

His remarks were immediately met with bewilderment by members of the media and Harris supporters, who suggested the claim was untrue. 

‘When I was Attorney General I learned that the California Department of Corrections, which was a client of mine – I didn’t get to choose my clients … they were standing in the way of surgery for prisoners,’ Harris said during the 2019 interview. ‘And there was a specific case. When I learned about the case, I worked behind-the-scenes to not only make sure that that transgender woman got the services she was deserving – it was not only about that case – I made sure that they changed the policy in the state of California so that every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access to the medical care that they desire and need.’

The 2019 interview was part of a series of other talks by NCTE Action Fund, called ‘TRANSform the White House,’ which sought to talk to the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential candidates about where they stood on the issue of LGBT rights. 

Trump’s claim Tuesday about Harris wanting to give detained illegal immigrants access to taxpayer-funded sex-change surgeries started a firestorm on social media. 

”She wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens who are in prison’ is the WILDEST thing I’ve ever heard in any debate. EVER,’ former CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill wrote on X shortly after Trump made his claim Tuesday evening. 

‘Trump made history last night for sure. Who will ever forget him ranting on stage about immigrants eating people’s dogs? Or insisting that the Vice President ‘wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in jail’?’ posted The New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser. 

Meanwhile, Time magazine was forced to make a correction after implying Trump’s claim was ‘false.’

Trump’s comments on Tuesday evening and the subsequent frenzy over where Harris now stands on providing taxpayer-funded medical procedures to transgender inmates was preempted by news that while Harris was running for the presidency in 2019, she indicated in a candidate questionnaire to the American Civil Liberties Union that she did indeed support gender transition surgeries for detained migrants.

‘I support policies ensuring that federal prisoners and detainees are able to obtain medically necessary care for gender transition, including surgical care, while incarcerated or detained,’ Harris wrote in the questionnaire. She also checked a box ‘Yes’ in response to whether she would use her executive authority as president to ensure transgender inmates, ‘including those in prison and immigration detention,’ can receive transgender surgery.

‘The Vice President’s positions have been shaped by three years of effective governance as part of the Biden-Harris Administration,’ a Harris campaign adviser told Fox News when asked about Harris’ response to the questionnaire. In an additional statement to CNN, the campaign added that ‘As President, [Harris] will take that same pragmatic approach, focusing on common-sense solutions of the sake of progress,’ but did not elaborate in response to questions on where Harris currently stands on the issue. 

‘That questionnaire is not what she is proposing or running on,’ Harris campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler also told Fox News. 

Besides her remarks during the 2019 interview on LGBT rights about changing California policy to help ‘every’ transgender inmate get the surgery they ‘desire,’ Harris bragged during the interview about helping train prosecutors around the country on how to defeat the so-called ‘trans panic defense.’ She also touted her work starting what Harris said was California’s first taxpayer-funded victims assistance program for transgender individuals, while lamenting the ‘epidemic’ of Black transgender women getting murdered and insisting transgender people do nOt seek the assistance they need out of fear of judgment.

‘Way back when, with the power that I had [as California Attorney General], I used it in a way that was about pushing forward the [trans rights] movement frankly, and the agenda,’ Harris insisted during the 2019 interview.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Harris campaign for comment but did not receive a response by publication deadline.