President Biden’s campaign repeatedly dodged answering a point-blank question about whether Biden plans to take any drugs to enhance his performance during the CNN Presidential Debate on Thursday evening. 

Biden’s opponent at the debate, former President Trump, has led a rising chorus — that has come to include lawmakers — demanding that Biden take a drug test before the showdown. Those advocating a screening suggest that Biden may be motivated by a desire to quell mounting concerns about his mental acuity. 

Given the controversy, Fox News Digital reached out to the Biden campaign, White House and Trump campaign asking if the respective candidates have any plans to use performance-enhancing drugs for the debate.

The Biden campaign twice avoided a direct answer to the question.

‘Donald Trump is so scared of being held accountable for his toxic agenda of attacking reproductive freedom and cutting Social Security that he and his allies are resorting to desperate, obviously false lies,’ Biden campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt told Fox News Digital on Wednesday evening. 

When asked in a follow-up email for a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response, Hitt said her original statement answered the question.

‘The accusation from Trump on drugs is a ‘desperate, obviously false lie,” Hitt added. 

The White House did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

In contrast, the Trump campaign issued a direct response when asked if Trump planned to take any performance-enhancing drugs for the debate.

‘Absolutely not,’ Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News Digital. 

She added, ‘President Trump has naturally elite stamina and doesn’t need performance-enhancing drugs, unlike Joe Biden, who many are saying will be drugged up for the debate like he was at the State of the Union. President Trump has repeatedly asked Joe Biden to participate in drug testing. What does Team Biden have to hide?’

Despite the accusations of his political adversaries, there is no clear evidence that Biden has used any performance-enhancing drug or other similar substance during his tenure in the Oval Office.

Still, Trump has challenged Biden to take a drug test before the Thursday night debate, previously suggesting that Biden uses substances to enhance his cognitive functioning. Trump, when issuing his challenge to Biden, volunteered to also take a drug test.

Former White House physician Ronny Jackson, who is now a Republican congressman representing Texas, has also called on Biden to take a pre-debate drug test. Jackson cited the dozens of lawmakers and administration officials who described Biden as losing his mental edge in interviews for a recent bombshell Wall Street Journal report.  

‘This is a Biden-specific concern based on the unexplained change in his demeanor during the [State of the Union],’ Jackson previously told Fox News Digital. ‘President Trump has been the same his entire life, and there have definitely been no concerning changes. President Trump has also previously offered to take one if Biden does.’ 

In response to the Wall Street Journal report, the White House dismissed the unflattering portrait of the president as nothing more than partisan politics working to deride a ‘savvy and effective’ Biden. 

Earlier this year, Special Counsel Robert Hur raised further concerns about Biden’s mental acuity within a report detailing Biden’s handling of classified documents after his time as vice president in the Obama administration.

Hur announced in February that he would not recommend criminal charges against Biden for possessing classified materials after leaving government service, describing the 81-year-old Biden as ‘a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.’

‘Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone from whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt,’ Hur wrote in his report. ‘It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him — by then a former president well into his eighties — of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.’

The findings sparked widespread outrage that Biden had been effectively deemed too cognitively impaired to be charged with a crime yet was still serving as president.

The report has been repeatedly cited by critics and the media amid a string of gaffes and missed cues from Biden in recent weeks. 

Those include: former President Obama taking Biden’s wrist to seemingly lead him offstage at a fundraiser in Los Angeles this month; Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni directing Biden back to a gaggle of world leaders in Italy this month after he took a few steps away from the group to give a thumbs up to a parachutist; and viral video showing the president standing relatively motionless during a Juneteenth concert event at the White House. 

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre last week addressed the recent videos of Biden ‘freezing’ at public events, describing the footage as ‘disinformation’ promoted by ‘right-wing critics.’

‘They are cheap fakes. … They are done in bad faith. And some of your news organizations have been very clear, have stressed that these right-wing … critics of the president have a credibility problem because the fact-checkers have repeatedly caught them pushing misinformation, disinformation,’ she said.

Fox News Digital reported earlier this week that after Biden’s cloistered campaign strategy during the 2020 election cycle — which earned him the nickname ‘Basement Joe’ from Trump — Biden has delivered just three campaign rally speeches this year lasting longer than 30 minutes. 

Biden spoke for more than 30 minutes on just three occasions during his 11 rallies in 2024. Fox News Digital defines rallies in this instance as campaign events during which Biden took the stage alone, stood in front of a podium and was joined by cheering supporters, as opposed to intimate campaign stops, fundraising events or the brief remarks he has made while carrying out his duties as president.

In addition, data compiled by Fox News shows Biden, in his official capacity as president, has held 36 news conferences as of June 2024, with the interactions lasting an average of 33 minutes. During the same time periods for their administrations, Trump held 60 news conferences and Obama held 74.

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that doctors in Idaho must — at least for now — be allowed to provide emergency abortions despite the state’s near-total ban, in order to comport with the federal law that requires emergency rooms to give ‘stabilizing treatments’ to patients in critical condition. 

In an unsigned opinion, the Court held that writs of certiorari in two cases involving the law were ‘improvidently granted,’ and vacated stays the Court granted earlier this year. The matter will continue to be litigated on the merits in lower courts, and could end up back before the Supreme Court in the future.

On Wednesday, the court mistakenly posted a draft of the opinion on the court’s website before it was taken down. Thursday’s opinion appears very similar to the accidental draft, with the same outcome but without a few paragraphs from the earlier draft. 

The consolidated cases, Moyle v. U.S. and Idaho v. U.S., had national attention following the high court’s 2022 ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade. 

In a concurring opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanagh, agreed with the highly unusual move by the Court ‘because the shape of these cases has substantially shifted’ since the Court granted certiorari. 

However, Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, called the Court’s decision ‘baffling.’ 

‘Recognizing the flaws in the Government’s theory and Idaho’s ‘strong’ likelihood of success, this Court stayed the preliminary injunction pending appeal on January 5. And, wisely or not, the Court also took the unusual step of granting certiorari before Idaho’s appeal was heard by the Ninth Circuit. Now the Court dismisses the writ and, what is worse, vacates the stay,’ Alito wrote. 

‘This about-face is baffling,’ he continued. ‘Nothing legally relevant has occurred since January 5. And the underlying issue in this case — whether EMTALA requires hospitals to perform abortions in some circumstances — is a straightforward question of statutory interpretation. It is squarely presented by the decision below, and it has been exhaustively briefed and argued.’

‘Altogether, we have more than 1,300 pages of briefing to assist us, and we heard nearly two hours of argument,’ he added.

‘Everything there is to say about the statutory interpretation question has probably been said many times over. That question is as ripe for decision as it ever will be. Apparently, the Court has simply lost the will to decide the easy but emotional and highly politicized question that the case presents. That is regrettable,’ he said. 

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote separately, concurring with the Court’s decision to lift the stay, but dissenting against its decision to dismiss the cases as improvidently granted. 

‘This months-long catastrophe was completely unnecessary. More to the point, it directly violated federal law, which in our system of government is supreme,’ Jackson wrote.

Idaho’s newly enacted Defense of Life Act makes it a crime for any medical provider to perform an abortion with exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother.  

The Justice Department argued that the state’s law does not go far enough to allow abortions in more medical emergency circumstances.

‘The Supreme Court sent the case back to the 9th Circuit today after my office won significant concessions from the United States that Justice Barrett described as ‘important’ and ‘critical,” Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador said in a statement. 

‘Today, the court said that Idaho will be able to enforce its law to save lives in the vast majority of circumstances while the case proceeds. The Biden administration’s concession that EMTALA will rarely override Idaho’s law caused the Supreme Court to ask the 9th Circuit for review in light of the federal government’s change in position. Justice Barrett wrote, those concessions mean that Idaho’s Defense of Life Act ‘remains almost entirely intact.’ The 9th Circuit’s decision should be easy,’ he said. 

The DOJ sued the state, saying that the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) requires health care providers to give ‘stabilizing treatment’ — including abortions — for patients when needed to treat an emergency medical condition, even if doing so might conflict with a state’s abortion restrictions.

The state had argued that ‘construing EMTALA as a federal abortion mandate raises grave questions under the major questions doctrine that affect both Congress and this Court.’ Proponents of the state’s abortion restriction accused the Biden administration of ‘subverting states’ rights,’ citing the Dobb’s decision which allowed states to regulate abortion access.

BETHLEHEM, WEST BANK – The escalating conflict between Israel and the Palestinian territories often brings focus on the tensions between Judaism and Islam, the two majority religions in the region.

However, the ongoing war and its sociopolitical ramifications threaten to further smother the already dwindling Christian presence on both sides of a broken Holy Land. 

Fox News Digital traveled across Israel and the Palestinian territories to speak with Christian leaders who are fighting to keep the faith alive in the face of political, financial and violent threats to its very existence.

Christians of all denominations together make up only 2% of the entire population in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Approximately three-quarters of Christians in the region are Arab and tend to belong to ancient, apostolic denominations such as the Greek Orthodox, Coptic and Catholic churches.

If one superimposes modern geopolitical borders over a map showing the route Jesus Christ took throughout the Biblical narrative, it shows that the messiah’s birth, ministry, death and resurrection are not confined to either Israel or the Palestinian territories.

While Christians in the Holy Land may have Israeli or Palestinian passports, their faith does not align itself exclusively with either government. Nor is either government particularly sympathetic to the Christian mission of evangelization and custody of sacred sites within their borders.

Priests and lay leaders in the Catholic Church – the largest denomination in the Holy Land – are not uniform in their thoughts about the conflict and the path forward for their church. But it’s universally understood that the current situation cannot continue for much longer without severe harm to Christian witnesses in the land where Jesus walked.

‘Into the deep’

Eamon Kelly, an Irish priest in the Legionnaires of Christ, is the vice director of the Magdala Hotel, a lodging for pilgrims built on the banks of the Sea of Galilee. 

In addition to beautiful accommodations and a bespoke church constructed to convey the significance of the sea within the Biblical narrative, it is also the site of an archaeological dig that has uncovered a synagogue dating back to the first century AD.

Since the Oct. 7 massacre committed by Hamas last year, the Magdala Hotel has been housing Israeli families displaced by the carnage. Providing shelter for victims of the conflict has given Kelly a wider perspective on the Christian mission in the Holy Land, one that goes beyond dissecting demographics and institutions.

‘Usually the narratives focus on the heart of a certain group, a certain subsection of humanity under a particular category,’ Kelly told Fox News Digital. ‘And what happens actually in Magdala, before anything religious happens, is the appeal to the human dignity as such, that we are all made in the image and likeness of the Almighty.’

The massacre and the subsequent retaliation from the Israeli government dashed long-growing hopes that radicalism and terrorist occupation of entire swaths of Palestinian territory was slowly being tempered and brought under control.

‘October 7th [woke] a lot of people up to realize, well, the situation is not under control. And so there’s a lot of deep hurt and deep frustration, deep disappointment,’ Kelly continued. ‘And so you’re meeting people – no matter where they’re from, what background they’re from – that are bearing the burden of this. And that breaks their hope for the future. And so [that’s] probably one of the biggest ministries.’

Kelly spends his days managing the Magdala Hotel, providing tours of the archaeological digs for guests, saying Mass in the onsite church and generally being a friend or pastor to anyone in need.

The Irish priest, who has described himself as ‘only a teenager in the Holy Land’ after living there for 17 years, does not pretend that peace and goodwill is going to manifest overnight between Israelis and Palestinians, much less between the Israeli government and the terrorist group Hamas.

But Kelly suggests that Christians are differentiated from activists for ‘national goals’ because they don’t care about ‘desires and ambitions’ for specific political change but instead a unique witness to universal dignity.

‘There, negotiation is a key word. But for a person that belongs to a kingdom not of this world but that is present in the world, I think the issue is to strengthen people,’ Kelly told Fox News Digital. ‘First of all, in the basic strength to not yield to despair and discouragement, because by yielding to despair and discouragement, there’s no future for anything.’

Kelly draws sacred inspiration from the Biblical narrative of Jesus approaching St. Peter (then named Simon) on the banks of the Sea of Galilee, urging him to ‘go out into the deep’ before the miraculous manifestation of countless fish.

The ‘deep’ that Kelly is urging people to plunge into is not water but a vicious emotional turmoil that tests the human capacity for mercy and forgiveness despite cynical criticism that such reconciliations are impossible.

‘It is a major defining theme of Christianity. And the question that I personally find myself asking is: ‘Can we demand people to be merciful? Can we expect people [to be] merciful?’ Well, I think we could,’ Kelly said. ‘When we are looking at Christians, we should expect Christians as part of our identity to have this part in our thoughts and our interactions.’

Choosing sides

Not all Christians are apolitical; some actively seek cooperation with national governments as protectors from what they perceive as much worse alternatives.

Shadi Khalloul is an Israeli citizen of Lebanese heritage also living near the Sea of Galilee. 

As the president and founder of the Aram Christian Galilee Center, he has long advocated for Christian communities to embrace assimilation into Israeli society as a means of sustainable growth and safety. 

He was inspired to work on behalf of his community after studying abroad in the United States and attending a class on the Bible as literature. 

As the class dissected the words of Jesus in the original Aramaic, a professor referred to it as a ‘dead language.’ This statement deeply upset Khalloul, as his Maronite Catholic Church still worships in Aramaic and sometimes uses it in day-to-day life.

This experience led him to dedicate his life to ensuring his Aramaic-speaking Maronite community would not only continue to exist but thrive and grow.

For Khalloul, that means embracing Israeli nationalism and the protections a first-world democratic country can provide.

‘Most Christians are for the ‘live and let others live’ mentality, the same as many Jews here. We accept and defend Israel and Jewish democracy. We enjoy it better than living under any other Arab regimes,’ Khalloul told Fox News Digital. ‘But we are realistic, too, and know that Islamic nations can’t allow this method to exist. They [seek to] control while others need to live under their Islamic Sharia laws as [non-Muslim subjects] with lack of basic human rights. We understand it.’

Khalloul is hawkish on ending the conflict and is an outspoken advocate for imposing Western ideologies onto the Islamic world.

‘The West must spread their ideology and values in the Islamic world and have equal rights [as Muslims do] in Western countries,’ he told Fox News Digital. ‘I’m sure if this happens, the Muslim world will change because the nature of people would go towards life and not follow the culture of death represented by these radical Islamic brotherhood movements.’

Many individual Christians are proud citizens of Israel and even serve in the nation’s armed forces. This is the relationship that Khalloul wants to foster. To him, service in the Israel Defense Forces is a key method of integration for Christians.

However, Israel’s overarching relationship with its Christian demographics and their leadership is currently far from collaborative.

The price of doing business

Multiple Israeli municipalities initiated tax proceedings against Christian churches this week, outraging religious prelates who called it a ‘coordinated attack.’

The municipalities of Jerusalem, Nazareth, Tel Aviv and Ramla are reportedly demanding decades-worth of alleged back taxes from Catholic, Orthodox and Coptic church leaders and seeking to end long-established exemptions for Christian real estate holdings that are not directly used for worship.

Christian prelates argue that churches’ commercial and real estate holdings are used to provide health care, education, housing and other resources to underprivileged communities.

The heads of the Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Orthodox churches in the Holy Land wrote a letter in response to these demands, accusing the Israeli government of attempting to push Christians out of the Holy Land.

‘We believe these efforts represent a coordinated attack on the Christian presence in the Holy Land,’ the church leaders wrote in the letter.

They continued, ‘In this time, when the whole world, and the Christian world in particular, are constantly following the events in Israel, we find ourselves, once again, dealing with an attempt by authorities to drive the Christian presence out of the Holy Land.’

In 2018, Christian leaders were faced with similar threats from the Israeli government challenging tax exemptions on church-owned properties not used for worship.

In response, the heads of six different churches in the Holy Land made the coordinated decision to close the Church of the Holy Sepulchre – identified as the site of Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection – in protest of existential concerns.

Then-Mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barkat eventually backed down after the Holy Sepulchre’s closure rallied Christian outrage in opposition to proposed taxes.

Christian leaders will not have the same leverage in the latest tax battle as Christian pilgrims and tourists have all but evaporated from the area due to the Israel-Hamas conflict. 

Praying for enemies

Less than 30 minutes from Jerusalem, separated by a security checkpoint and miles of concrete walls, sits Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ. 

Approximately 11% of the city’s population is Christian, the highest in the Holy Land. But hat statistic is plummeting, down from over 85% in 1947.

Bethlehem is home to one of the most sacred locations in all of Christianity: the Church of the Nativity, which was built to mark the spot where Jesus is believed to have entered the world.

It was constructed in the 4th century by Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great. It is currently in the shared custody of the Greek Orthodox, Catholic and Armenian Orthodox churches.

The church and the city’s religious significance once made Bethlehem a thriving tourist and pilgrimage destination for Christians from around the world. The town has seen a near total collapse of the industry since the latest conflict between Israel and Hamas began in the Gaza Strip. Having just begun to recover from the coronavirus pandemic shutdowns, this stagnation is like a death sentence for the community.

As the economy has disintegrated, Christian flight from Bethlehem has rapidly accelerated the collapse of the faith’s presence in Jesus’s hometown as many choose to flee where their families can make a living, if they are even able to leave.

Rami Asakrieh is a Franciscan friar in Bethlehem who serves Catholics at the Church of the Nativity. He has seen firsthand the widespread anguish overtaking the West Bank and his city in particular.

‘If you lose the Christian community, or if the good people emigrate because of this instability – politically and economically – this means that we will lose a good part, an important part, of the identity of the holy places,’ Rami told Fox News Digital. ‘Because the holy places need the people who live here who are animated with their prayers, with their activities, with their pastoral activities, with their presence and with their effort to the society to keep it to having Christian charity.’

‘Our brothers in Islam and the Hebrew Israelis are numerous, but the Christians, all together, I think they are at about 60,000 [in Bethlehem],’ Rami said. ‘Anybody who has the chance will go. Even in this last war, even Israelis with American passports left.’

Rami is a sharp critic of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians who are not involved in the terrorist organizations that led to Oct. 7. 

While he acknowledges that Christians in Israel may see better opportunity within its borders, he argues that peaceful Palestinians seeking to carve out a future in the West Bank have been held back by Israeli policies that drive them into poverty and disrupt society.

‘Christianity tells us that everybody is created in the image of God and deserves to live with liberty, with freedom, with independence, to have their rights,’ Rami said.

‘We don’t know what will happen with [the Palestinian territory] if they are an independent country, if they have a real government,’ he told Fox News Digital. ‘There is no comparison between Israel and [the Palestinian territory] now because for 76 years [it] has been suffering. There is no independence, there is not really a government because of the conflict with Israel, but Israel has all the money, has all the government, has all the freedom and the army to build itself.’

Rami told Fox News Digital that many Americans’ enthusiastic support for Israeli military supremacy is often attributable to Third Temple theology: the belief in some Protestant denominations that a third Jewish temple will be built in Jerusalem prior to the return of Christ.

The Bethlehem priest warned that conflating the state of Israel with this evangelical theology is causing confusion about the nature of the conflict and threatens to only instigate further bloodshed. 

What Rami says he wants most is peace: ‘When you say about yourself that you are Christian and you go in the political view that […] you are supporting the war, supporting the weapons and guided by religious ideas, saying this is biblical; it’s similar to the time of the Crusades, when some superior in the church went with the politicians’ view, was guided by [outside] interests.’

‘So, this is what we have now in the evangelical churches, from my point of view, and they need to open their mind to the Bible,’ he told Fox News Digital. ‘The spirit of the Bible is all about love. Love everybody, even praying for enemies, and this is the word of Jesus.’

He continued, ‘So, if you are talking about some beautiful idea – the Temple – how this temple will happen, they need to ask more. And they will discover it is by destroying other religions, important places for other religions, in the war. And this is what they are supporting in an indirect way.’

Rami emphasized a need for radical belief in the universal humanity of all people as the first step in ending the divisions between Israelis and Palestinians.

‘First, believe that we are equal, that we are created in the image of God,’ Rami said. ‘I’m not talking about interpretation. I’m talking about the real books that all say that God created humanity in his own image.’

‘And from that, the church teaching is that everybody has inside of him some touch of our God, some touch of the beauty and goodness and love of our God,’ Rami continued. ‘People want to avoid that, they say that you don’t have a right to live.’ 

The Franciscan said this principal of forgiveness must even extend to bitter enemies who might have committed horrific crimes, because to fail to forgive is to lose one’s own humanity.

‘People will tell you that ‘If you kill my brother, I will be full of revenge.’ If I don’t have some faith to help me get back my humanity and to forgive, it is normal that I will tell you, ‘I will kill everyone who killed my brother,’’ Rami said.

‘You cannot say, ‘Because we are Christians, we are distinguished from others.’ We have victims because of the war. Israelis are victims and Muslims are victims. So, the war is bad for everybody,’ Rami concluded. ‘So, I hope there is a little bit of [intelligence] and humanity that the presidents of the world start to have. Because supporting war, that means stupidity and losing humanity and supporting killing.’

The Kingdom of God is Ethereal

Without their own territories and with virtually zero representation in national politics, the Catholic Church’s pleas for peace 

Fox News Digital spoke with Ambassador Michèle Burke Bowe, a diplomat of theSovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta (commonly referred to as the Order of Malta), about how the Catholic Church’s lack of effective political power may be a blessing in disguise.

Bowe serves as the Head of the Representative Office to the State of Palestine for the Order of Malta. Her work focuses mainly on Holy Family Hospital, a world-class maternity hospital in Bethlehem that serves pregnant women of all backgrounds and faiths, whether they are able to pay for care or not. 

She performs her job without a salary and usually pays for her own travel out of pocket, as do most ambassadors of the order.

‘[The Catholic Church] doesn’t have the protection of a state or constitution. It just exists because it’s always existed, as it always existed, you know, for 2,000 years,’ she told Fox News Digital. ‘And it’s not looking for economic gain or political power. It’s just looking to provide a safe place to worship and a way to relieve suffering.’

In this way, Bowe argues that the Catholic Church and its believers cease being a simple minority population and instead become spiritual missionaries outside the secular conflict, witnesses that must be guarded.

‘[The Church] is so ethereal. It’s really sort of part of the kingdom of God as opposed to being a super minority in the state of Israel,’ Bowe said. ‘Yet at the same time, the Church has to be able to help individual Christians maintain their presence, which requires both economic support and protection.’

Whether the conflict between the IDF and Hamas ends in a cease-fire or a total occupation of Gaza, the struggles of Christians across Israel and the Palestinian territories are far from over.

Missionaries and charity workers are fighting against overwhelming odds to continue the Catholic Church’s humanitarian work in the Holy Land.

Unless a sustainable and earnest effort is made on all sides to give room for Christian flourishing, there may soon come a day when there’s hardly any Christians left in the cities where Jesus preached to their ancestors 2,000 years ago.

Quotations in this piece have been lightly edited for clarity.

A key Republican lawmaker spearheading former President Trump’s outreach to Black voters will debut a six-figure ad buy calling out what he describes as President Biden’s ‘real record on race’ during the CNN Presidential Debate Thursday.

First-term Texas Congressman Wesley Hunt’s Hellfire PAC will air the 60-second ad on Fox News and CNN in major cities in key battleground states including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin on Thursday night. The ad, which puts a spotlight on several of Biden’s controversial comments on race, is part of Hunt’s strategy to convince Black voters to support Trump in November.

‘Joe Biden’s history as a politician reveals a pattern of making explicitly racist comments, authoring and endorsing discriminatory policies, and associating with individuals known as segregationists,’ Hunt told Fox News Digital in a statement. 

He announced that Hellfire PAC would begin a national campaign in multiple swing states ‘to inform voters of Joe Biden’s real history on race.’ 

The Hellfire PAC video begins with Biden’s own vice president, Kamala Harris, questioning his onetime opposition to school desegregation. In an infamous moment from the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, then-rival candidate Harris said Biden, as a freshman senator in 1975, had worked with segregationist lawmakers to oppose ‘bussing.’ 

‘You also worked with them to oppose busing,’ Harris told Biden during a primary debate, referencing two segregationist senators. ‘You know there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.’

The ad goes on to call into question Biden’s record on civil rights, noting his relationships with segregationist Southern Democrats, including former Sens. James O. Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia. Biden ignited a firestorm in 2019 after he spoke fondly of the ‘civility’ of the old Senate and his ability to work with those he disagreed with, name-dropping those opponents of racial integration. In response to attacks from his then-Democratic rivals, Biden said there is ‘not a racist bone in my body.’ 

The video quotes various cringe-inducing statements from Biden’s lengthy political career, including a campaign event from 2012 when the then-vice president told an audience of Black voters that Republicans are ‘going to put y’all back in chains.’ In another insensitive gaffe quoted from a 2019 campaign event in Iowa, Biden said ‘poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.’ 

Hellfire PAC’s ad also shows Biden describing his old running mate, former President Obama, as ‘the first sort of mainstream African American who is articulate, and bright and clean — nice looking guy.’ 

Hunt, who is Black, told Fox News Digital that no Republican would get away with the things Biden has said.

‘If any Republican had even the slightest history that Joe Biden has on race, they would be ostracized, canceled, and excoriated by the media,’ he said. ‘When Democrat President Joe Biden does it, there’s always an excuse, and, when there’s not an excuse, the behavior and the policies are simply memory-holed.’ 

The ad will air in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Charlotte, Milwaukee and Detroit during the CNN Presidential Debate. Americans across the country can tune in to the Fox News Channel from 9:00 p.m. ET to 11:00 p.m. ET to watch the CNN Presidential Debate Simulcast. Viewers can also tune into Fox’s live coverage before and after the debate for expert analysis.

Hunt traveled to Atlanta for an event with Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., on Wednesday that the duo calls, ‘Congress, Cognac and Cigars.’ Moderated by former ESPN host Sage Steele, the two Black lawmakers will have a discussion in a cigar lounge and field questions about how Black male voters will impact the 2024 election. 

Hunt told Fox News Digital’s Elizabeth Elkind in an interview that he aims to help Republicans capture 25% to 35% of the Black male vote — a long-shot goal, though one that would spell almost certain defeat for Biden’s campaign. 

Multiple exit polls show Trump having won 19% of Black male voters in 2020, though the vast majority of Black voters still went for Biden.

Fox News Digital’s Elizabeth Elkind, Paul Steinhauser, Joe Schoffstall and Brandon Gillespie contributed to this report.

A House Judiciary subcommittee hearing Wednesday addressing the ‘politicization’ of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) during the pandemic exposed how the Biden administration allegedly pressured medical professionals to expedite the COVID-19 vaccine for children before enough testing was completed to confirm or deny its safety. 

At the onset of the subcommittee hearing, ‘Follow the Science?: Oversight of the Biden COVID-19 Administrative State Response,’ Chairman Thomas Massie, R-Ky., read from past testimony of Dr. Marion Gruber, the former director of the FDA’s vaccine office, regarding conversations she had with Dr. Peter Marks, the agency’s top vaccine regulator, about the efficacy of the COVID vaccine in children. Massie said Gruber expressed a need for more trial testing in the pediatric population, specifically among males ages 12 to 17, but Marks allegedly pushed to further compress the schedule to license the vaccines so they could be mandated.

‘Right when they were getting the warnings that myocarditis and pericarditis are real and serious side effects to the vaccine, the top scientists at FDA had already agreed to compress the schedule as much as possible, right when they got the message that there were serious side effects,’ Massie said. ‘And Peter Marks, instead of telling them, ‘We’re going to give you more time to study this,’ he told them to compress the schedule even more.

‘And when they said that compressing the schedule was not possible, he fired them. He took them off the job, he assigned them to other duties. The top vaccine officials who had been there for 30 years, taken off the job because they wanted more time to study the effects of the vaccines. And they were told they needed to do this quickly because they needed to be mandated.

‘The Biden administration was mandating the vaccine on the military and young people going to school despite a lack of testing and data, despite growing reports of vaccine injuries. This kind of decision made by the administrative state is concerning. The FDA should not have approved a vaccine for children, EOA or otherwise, without proper testing. Injury from COVID vaccination is real.’ 

During a separate line of questioning, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, asked the witnesses, ‘Would you agree that the biggest reason for vaccine hesitancy is because of what the United States government told us about COVID and about the vaccine itself?’ 

‘I agree,’ Dr. Jordan Vaughn, an internist at a private practice in Birmingham, Alabama, said. ‘They were told one thing and, fairly, most people, once the opposite happens, usually start to question whoever told them that.’ 

‘The cause of vaccine hesitancy, the reason this got so political, in my judgment, is because our government told us time and time again things that were not accurate,’ Jordan said. 

Vaughn testified earlier in the hearing that, since 2022, he has treated more than 2,000 ‘unique patients’ with complications from the COVID-19 vaccination, including more than 30 service members.

He provided six specific examples of otherwise healthy members of the military who, upon receiving the COVID-19 vaccine and mandated booster shots, were suddenly hospitalized with flu-like symptoms, chest pain or shortness or breath. Some needed emergency surgery to remove a pancreas, some became too weak to walk or were eventually discharged after being deemed no longer physically fit enough to serve. In one case, one man had a cardiac arrest and died on his bathroom floor.

‘Especially in those with vaccine injury, their faith in medicine and public health is shattered. Many of those patients were holdouts from getting vaccinated because they either knew their own immune systems’ sensitivities or already had a prior infection of COVID-19,’ Vaughn said in his opening statement. 

‘However, it was under the August 2021 military service member, federal employee and OSHA mandate these individuals faced a decision to either vaccinate against their conscience and common sense or lose a career and gainful employment. Disabled from the adverse effects of these mandated injections, the profession they once held dear is an afterthought to just hoping for a diagnosis and possible treatment. Among the most egregious is our service members needlessly harmed through the mandate.

‘Knowing the emerging data in the spring of 2021 around the hearts of young athletic individuals and myocarditis from the mod mRNA COVID-19 injections,’ Vaughn said, ‘the FDA and the Biden administration sought to speed up approval and mandate it to the military in the name of military preparedness.’ 

Later, Jordan told Vaughn, ‘Tell me about that relationship, and how politics played into the relationship that’s supposed to exist between the doctor and their patient.’ 

‘I think the biggest trust was lost when they were mandated to get something against their conscience, and I think that is one of the things that needs to be — especially when you talk about a physician who knows his patient — there are certain patients that don’t need to have their immune system, in a sense, poked,’ said Vaughn, also the founder of the Microvascular Research Foundation, an organization dedicated to finding treatments for vaccine injury and long COVID. 

‘That knowledge is what a physician and their patient have and the relationship that exists. It is not something that is found in a parking lot when you roll down your window.’ 

Among the witnesses was Aaron Siri, a vaccine litigation expert handling lawsuits over COVID-19 vaccine injury. 

He told Jordan ‘billions of dollars were on the line for these pharmaceutical companies, and that really affected the way that these vaccines were rolled out. That’s a financial conflict of interest, especially when they didn’t have to pay for any injuries, and they knew it beforehand because the federal government contractually agreed that immunity applied to every single vaccine that was rolled out.’ 

Along with Gruber, his former boss, Dr. Philip Krause, former Deputy Director, FDA Office of Vaccines Research & Review, testified before the hearing Wednesday that he quit the FDA after 30 years of employment in various roles within the agency in protest over political pressure from the Biden administration to authorize vaccine boosters in young people in 2021.

‘The rapid move to mandates, which was foreshadowed by other Biden administration comments, suggested that the rapid review of the vaccine was motivated more by a desire to mandate vaccine than by other public health considerations,’ Krause said in his opening statement. 

‘It would be unrealistic to assume that politicians would have no interest in vaccine policy in the middle of a pandemic,’ he added. ‘Of course, they might hope to influence decision-making in a way that might increase their political capital. But every time this happens, there is collateral damage to trust. Now, if politicians were to own their decisions and state that they were responsible for them, that would at least be transparent and wouldn’t affect the trust in the public health agencies. 

‘But if politically appointed and Senate-confirmed agency heads announce these decisions as though they were the result of the normal processes, it becomes almost impossible for the public or for physicians to figure out which decisions are public health based and which are politically motivated.’

A letter signed by 16 top economists warning of the economic dangers of electing former President Trump, which is being amplified by the Biden campaign and other Biden surrogates, is littered with signatories who have either donated to Biden or supported him politically in the past.

‘While each of us has different views on the particulars of various economic policies, we all agree that Joe Biden’s economic agenda is vastly superior to Donald Trump,’ the economists wrote in a letter first reported on by Axios this week that has been promoted by various members of the Biden campaign on X, formerly known as Twitter. 

The letter’s Nobel Prize-winning signatories show political donations to President Biden’s 2020 and 2024 campaigns. The signatories also donated tens of thousands of dollars to other Democrat candidates and signed previous letters supporting Biden’s agenda, including attacking ‘selfish and reckless’ Trump, a Fox News Digital review found.

Economist Joseph Stiglitz, the Columbia University professor who reportedly spearheaded the letter, previously signed a letter supporting Biden’s Build Back Better agenda and donated $1,250 to the Biden Victory Fund in 2020. 

Between 2004 and 2020, Stiglitz donated over $90,000 to Democrat candidates, FEC records show.

Georgetown University Professor George A. Akerlof, who is married to Biden’s Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, donated $25,000 to the Biden Victory Fund and maxed out as a donor in 2020, giving the campaign $5,600.

Akerlof, who donated nearly $90,000 to Democrats between the 1990s and 2022, also signed a letter supporting Build Back Better, and signed a letter in 2020 calling Trump’s re-election effort ‘selfish and reckless.’

Harvard University economist and historian Claudia Goldin donated $500 to the Biden campaign in 2020 and 2024 and has donated over $8,000 to Democrats in recent years. Goldin also signed a 2020 letter endorsing the Biden campaign. 

Economist and mathematician Eric Maskin signed a 2020 letter expressing support for the Biden campaign’s agenda and donated $3,000 to Democrats in recent years, including Senate candidates Raphael Warnock, Beto O’Rourke and Jon Ossoff. 

When reached for comment on his background supporting Biden and Democrats, Maskin said, ‘Although I am a registered Democrat and have donated money to Democratic candidates on occasion, I have also voted for many Republicans over the years (including Bill Weld and Charlie Baker for governor of Massachusetts)’ in a statement to Fox News Digital.

He added that he considers himself to ‘be more a centrist than a strong partisan in either ideological direction’ and pointed to an op-ed he recently wrote against political polarization in favor of a Republican senator and ‘supported the 2020 Biden agenda on its economic merits and signed the recent letter for the same reasons.’

Paul Milgrom, an economist at Stanford University, also previously signed letters supporting Build Back Better and calling Trump’s 2020 campaign ‘selfish and reckless.’

Daniel McFadden, an economics professor at UC Berkeley, donated at least $4,500 to Democrats in 2020. He also signed onto a letter saying Biden’s Build Back Better plan will ‘ease’ inflation. He was also part of another letter endorsing Biden in 2020.

Roger Myerson, an economist at the University of Chicago, donated $2,350 to the Biden campaign in 2020 and $250 in 2024 on top of donating over $40,000 to Democrats between 2004 and 2024.

Myerson also previously signed a letter backing Build Back Better and Biden’s economic recovery agenda. The University of Chicago economist took to X after the letter was published, posting, ‘A dictator from day 1 would be bad for America, and we should testify to that fact as patriotic Americans.’

‘As economists we can testify that his policies would not help against inflation either,’ he added.

Economist Edmund S. Phelps wrote an article in 2020 called ‘The Economic Case for Biden’ and also said that everything Trump has stood for in the past has been a ‘disaster.’

Phelps has also donated to Democrats in the past, including a $1,500 donation to a Democratic House candidate and $25 to Pete Buttigieg.

Paul Romer, an economist at Boston College, has previously described the Trump years as ‘miserable’ and publicly supported his impeachment. Romer endorsed Biden in a 2020 letter, praised Biden’s pandemic plan, and signed a letter in support of Build Back Better.

Stanford University economist Alvin Roth also signed multiple letters opposing Trump and supported the letter that referred to him as ‘selfish and reckless’ on top of donating $1,250 to presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008.

Nobel Prize-winning economist William Sharpe donated $500 to the Biden campaign and $500 to the Biden Victory Fund in 2020. Sharpe also signed a letter to business leaders in 2020 arguing that it was time to speak out against Trump and the ‘threat’ he ‘poses to the Republic.’

Robert Shiller, a Yale University economist, donated $1,000 to the Biden Victory Fund in 2020 and over $20,000 to Democrats in total in recent years. In 2019, Shiller said he would support any candidate over Trump.

Princeton University economist Christopher Sims donated $500 to the Biden Victory Fund in 2020 and over $9,000 to various Democrats. 

Two British economists on the list, Sir Oliver Hart and Sir Angus Deaton, signed a letter in support of Build Back Better. Hart endorsed Biden in 2020 and also signed the 2020 letter calling Trump ‘selfish and reckless.’

Several Biden campaign officials pounced on the story Tuesday morning to amplify the Axios report, including the Biden campaign’s rapid response adviser, James Singer, and campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez.

White House senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates and other Biden surrogates also shared the report and quoted from it, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Tim Murtaugh, who served as Trump’s 2020 campaign spokesman, mocked the report on social media Tuesday, saying, ‘How amazing that this happens just in time for Biden to reference it in the upcoming debate (it’s a good bet that he does).’

‘It’s almost as much of a stroke of luck as the letter from 51 intelligence officers claiming that Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation,’ Murtaugh continued. ‘Amazing.’

Axios did not note the previous political activism of the economists in the story nor did it note that one of the top signatories is married to Yellen.

Axios did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Biden campaign and all 16 economists for comment.