Israel is preparing to launch what is expected to be a massive ground operation inside Rafah, a city in southern Gaza where some 1.5 million Palestinians have taken shelter. The Israeli army has begun ordering tens of thousands of Palestinians living in the city to evacuate.

On Monday, Israel’s Defense Forces ordered an evacuation of Rafah, signaling that a long-promised ground operation could be imminent. The Israeli army has described Rafah as the last significant Hamas stronghold after seven months of war, and its leaders have repeatedly said clearing Rafah is necessary to defeat the Islamic militant group.

Overnight, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin that Israel was left with no choice but to act in Rafah after Hamas terrorists carried out a deadly rocket attack from Rafah earlier in the day that left four Israeli soldiers dead.

A potential ground operation comes as last-ditch efforts by international mediators, including the CIA, to broker a cease-fire have failed to produce a deal.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to carry out a military operation in Rafah. According to Israel’s army, forces are beginning with a ‘limited scope operation.’

Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an army spokesman, said some 100,000 people were being ordered to move to a nearby Israel-declared humanitarian zone called Muwasi. He said Israel published a map of the evacuation area.

These orders have been issued through air-dropped leaflets, text messages and radio broadcasts so that Palestinians could get the information.

‘Anyone found near (militant) organizations endangers themselves and their family members. For your safety, the (army) urges you to evacuate immediately to the expanded humanitarian area,’ one flyer read.

He said Israel has expanded humanitarian aid into Muwasi, including field hospitals, tents, food and water.

Israel’s army said on the social media platform X that it would act with ‘extreme force’ against Hamas terrorists, and urged the population to evacuate immediately for their safety.

The move also comes as the Biden administration reportedly put a hold on a shipment of U.S.-manufactured ammunition to Israel for the first time since the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack.

Two Israeli officials told Axios that the weapons shipment was stopped last week, leaving officials within the Israeli government scrambling to understand why.

About 1.5 million Palestinians – more than half of Gaza’s population – are sheltering in Rafah, as they have been forced to evacuate other areas in the Gaza Strip, amid Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), under Chairwoman Lina Khan, shows no signs of relenting in its global campaign to suppress American tech companies in favor of their international competitors. The FTC’s radical policies, which include colluding with foreign governments to impose harsh regulations and penalties on American businesses, have considerable detrimental impacts on U.S. economic and national security. 

Recently, Khan defended the FTC’s policies by citing various federal regulatory actions in past decades. In short, she asserts that because government intervention worked then, it must be the right answer now. However, there is a glaring problem with this thinking; the test cases Khan relies upon are from a pre-digital world and ignore the fact that digital technology innovation is an outlier among other competitive industries. 

Khan rightly recognizes innovation as the key factor that propels America’s economic competitiveness that must be protected. But innovation is not being trampled on by leading American businesses, it is being trampled on by Khan’s FTC.  

For starters, it is outrageously inappropriate for the FTC to use American taxpayer dollars to send its employees on a trip to Europe to help the European Union implement EU legislation that disproportionately targets American tech companies, and by extension, American jobs and economic activity. 

Furthermore, Khan attempts to discredit American tech companies by claiming that large companies only ‘deliver marginal innovations’ while breakthrough innovations more often come from outsiders.  

This is a gross departure from reality for two reasons. Firstly, data shows that out of the top five companies in the world that spend the most on research and development, four of them are American tech companies that Khan’s FTC has targeted.  

Second, Khan ignores the fact that tech leaders do not suppress innovation but instead help set and enforce safety and privacy standards for the entire digital ecosystem, which are critical for smaller firms to have a competitive chance. One such example is the app store model used by various tech companies which protects users from inadvertently downloading malicious malware onto their phones via third party apps.  

Unsurprisingly, eager antitrust regulators have taken issue with these business practices as well, despite clear evidence that they have enabled smaller digital developers to thrive and give consumers more choices, and without them, private data and emerging software developers would face multiplying cyber threats. 

Finally, Khan has failed to credibly address any of the national security concerns regarding the FTC’s actions. Instead, she has dismissed these concerns and suggested that the U.S. tech sector is not aligned with America’s geopolitical priorities, citing a red herring in which she claims enabling tech leaders would negatively impact supply chain resilience. Certainly, the U.S. has supply chain vulnerabilities that should be addressed, but the nature of these challenges is profoundly different for the digital economy. 

Khan fails to recognize this and the role of the U.S. sector in supporting U.S. national security goals, especially in terms of security risks related to competition with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). American tech companies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon have taken the initiative to retreat from the PRC. They have been doing so for more than a decade considering the U.S.-China relationship has become increasingly characterized by strategic rivalry. 

Khan’s comments also overlook Silicon Valley’s contributions to America’s geopolitical interests in Europe. Innovative tech firms like Google, Maxar Technologies, Palantir and Scale AI have strongly supported Ukraine in their fight against Russian aggression.  

Their contributions range from countering cyber offensives and documenting war crimes to debunking Russian propaganda. Over-regulation could stifle innovation and the ability of the U.S. tech sector to contribute to American global interests, therefore harming U.S. security. 

Khan rightly recognizes innovation as the key factor that propels America’s economic competitiveness that must be protected. But innovation is not being trampled on by leading American businesses, it is being trampled on by Khan’s FTC.  

Under Khan, the FTC is also positioning itself to be the chief regulator of artificial intelligence (AI), overstepping the scope of its regulatory authority. AI will be a force multiplier and key driver of both economic and national security. It is also a critical domain for the strategic competition with China that Beijing has prioritized to exploit.  

The FTC actions demonstrate a lack of understanding about the national security implications of over-regulating AI. Without national security competencies, the FTC’s regulatory approach to AI will likely harm U.S. AI providers, thereby allowing the PRC to catch up or, even worse, overtake the U.S. in the AI race. This would be detrimental to industries and economic sectors far beyond the tech innovation space and would put wider U.S. economic and national power at risk. 

The FTC is supposed to be a force that ensures a fair, competitive and innovative market that protects consumers and America’s interests. Under Chairwoman Khan, the FTC has taken its authority to an extreme and focused its efforts on imposing interventionist government regulations without regard to the consequences to U.S. economic and national security. These policies are hamstringing tech innovation, eroding U.S. economic leadership and subverting America’s geopolitical interests. 

The Biden administration has put a hold on a shipment of U.S.-manufactured ammunition to Israel for the first time since the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack, according to a report.

Two Israeli officials told Axios that the weapons shipment was stopped last week, leaving officials within the Israeli government scrambling to understand why.

When asked about the report, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council told Fox News Digital that it has supported Israel’s defense since the Oct. 7 attack.

‘The United States has surged billions of dollars in security assistance to Israel since the October 7 attacks, passed the largest ever supplemental appropriation for emergency assistance to Israel, led an unprecedented coalition to defend Israel against Iranian attacks, and will continue to do what is necessary to ensure Israel can defend itself from the threats it faces,’ the statement said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to carry out a military operation in Rafah, a city in southern Gaza where some 1.5 million Palestinians have taken shelter, and where Hamas maintains its last remaining stronghold.

The potential Rafah operation to root out Hamas terrorists comes despite warnings from President Biden and other Western officials that doing so would result in more civilian deaths and worsen an already dire humanitarian crisis.

The Biden administration has said there could be consequences for Israel should it move forward with the operation without a credible plan to safeguard civilians.

Biden has also faced criticism from Americans who are against his support of Israel, most recently seen in protests that have erupted across college campuses nationwide. 

The current war in Gaza began after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, in which the terrorist organization killed 1,200 people, and took about 250 people hostage.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Mike Pompeo, when he was U.S. secretary of state, shared intel with the United Kingdom during the COVID-19 pandemic suggesting a ‘high likelihood’ that the deadly coronavirus leaked from a Chinese lab, according to The Telegraph.

An intelligence alliance known as ‘Five Eyes’ reportedly met in January 2021 to discuss the lab-leak theory, the outlet reported. Around the same time, Pompeo is said to have shared information from classified American reports put together by the State Department to then-U.K. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, as well as representatives from New Zealand, Canada and Australia. 

The British newspaper says two former Trump administration officials believe Raab – and the U.K. government as a whole – ignored the lab leak theory due to pressure from government scientists who leaned toward the theory that the illness had been transferred from animals to humans. 

‘We saw several pieces of information and thought that they were, frankly, gobsmacking,’ one former official who worked on the intelligence in Pompeo’s report told The Telegraph. ‘They obviously pointed to the high likelihood that this was indeed a lab leak.’

The reports, consisting of information collected in the early days of the pandemic, were also shared with the U.K. via Five Eyes between October and December 2020. Five Eyes consists of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Information in one document obtained by The Telegraph states U.S. officials accused Chinese officials of ‘stonewalling,’ as well as ‘gross corruption and ineptitude.’ The information also reportedly showed that the Chinese military had been working with the Wuhan Institute of Virology for years before the pandemic, and that lab researchers got sick soon before COVID-19 was first reported in the area. 

On May 1, the U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic called for a criminal probe into the origins of the COVID-19 virus.

The demands for an investigation come after the release of an interim staff report accusing EcoHealth Alliance President Dr. Peter Daszak of funding ‘dangerous gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China, without sufficient oversight.’

EcoHealth Alliance is a non-governmental organization based in the United States and focused on researching pandemic prevention.

According to congressional lawmakers, EcoHealth used taxpayer dollars ‘to fund dangerous gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)’ in China. 

The NGO disputes that claim.

Fox News Digital previously reported that EcoHealth Alliance received millions of dollars in grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and that U.S. taxpayer funds flowed to Chinese entities conducting coronavirus research through EcoHealth Alliance.

Fox News’ Timothy H.J. Nerozzi and Brooke Singman contributed to this report. 

Former President Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee (RNC) are showcasing that they hauled in over $76 million last month, as the presumptive GOP nominee works to reduce his fundraising deficit to President Biden in their 2024 election rematch.

The announcement came as Trump this weekend headlines the RNC’s spring donor retreat, which is being held in Palm Beach, Florida. 

The haul by Trump and the RNC is up from $65.6 million in March. But Biden and the Democratic National Committee combined raked in roughly $90 million in March. And according to campaign disclosures, the president had more than twice as much money in his campaign coffers as the Republican challenger and predecessor in the White House as of the beginning of April.

But Trump and the RNC’s fundraising has soared since the former president clinched the 2024 GOP nomination in March, and his top political advisers repeatedly insist they’ll have enough campaign cash to compete with Biden.

‘President Donald J. Trump is not only winning across every battleground state, but we are raising the resources necessary to deliver a victory in November,’ Trump campaign senior advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles said in a statement Saturday that announced the April haul.

 ‘With half of funds raised coming from small dollar donors, it is clear that our base is energized. The Republican Party is united, and voters nationwide are ready to FIRE Joe Biden and elect President Donald J. Trump,’ they added.

‘Our team will continue working every day to exceed expectations, raise the funds we need, and build an unmatched party infrastructure to prove that President Trump’s momentum is unstoppable,’ RNC chair Michael Whatley and co-chair Lara Trump added in the statement.

Whatley, the former North Carolina GOP chair, and Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, were installed as the new RNC leadership by Trump in early March as he effectively took over control of the party after clinching the nomination.

The fundraising figures were first revealed earlier on Saturday as Trump campaign officials gave a one-hour presentation to donors at the closed-door retreat, Republican sources confirmed to Fox News. The weekend confab is being held at the Four Seasons oceanfront resort in Palm Beach and at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, which is located a few miles north.

During the presentation, which was first reported Saturday by the New York Times, Trump campaign officials emphasized that the former president is ahead in the key battleground states of Georgia, Nevada and Arizona, and competitive in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Biden narrowly carried all six of those states in 2020 to defeat Trump and win the White House.

Trump’s advisers also said they aimed to expand the map in Minnesota and Virginia, where they said their polling shows Trump competitive in states Biden comfortably won four years ago.

The RNC spring retreat provided a brief break for Trump from his criminal trial in New York City. The former president is being tried on nearly three-dozen state felony charges for allegedly falsifying business records in relation to hush-money payments during the 2016 election he made to Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about his alleged affair with the adult film actress.

Trump has repeatedly denied falsifying business records as well as the alleged sexual encounter with Daniels.

A newly formed nonprofit organization aims to promote election integrity by compensating whistleblowers at the ground level who witness corruption first hand during the election process.

The Fair Election Fund will focus its efforts on election organizers and concerned citizens who witness the inner workings of elections first hand and will vet and pay whistleblowers who witness irregularities in the process. 

‘The bulk of the group’s budget will be devoted to paying whistleblowers like election workers, organizers, and concerned citizens who have witnessed this corruption firsthand for sharing their stories,’ FEF said in a press release. 

‘All claims will be vetted by Fair Election Fund’s team of experienced election law attorneys. The group will highlight these cases through aggressive paid and earned media campaigns, the first of which will begin immediately.’

In a new ad released on Saturday, the group explains that ‘elections are the bedrock of our American experiment. 

‘It’s part of our core, but we can only have confidence in the results if there is trust in the process. Across the country there are real cases and abuses in the system that have eroded our trust.’

The ad cites efforts from the Biden administration to register voters that some have warned could end up registering illegal immigrants and non-eligible voters as well as cities across the country who have pushed to allow non-citizens to vote.

The ad also expresses concerns about the lack of voter ID in some places in the United States, efforts to curtail voter ID, concerns about drop boxes, mail-in ballots, and other potential vulnerabilities in the election system. 

‘The reason why our elections still lack the integrity Americans deserve is because those on the front lines fear they will lose their livelihoods for speaking out against those in power – Not anymore,’ an official familiar with the effort said in the press release.

‘This initiative will ensure those who come forward to expose fraud and abuse in our elections system will be compensated and protected. This $5 million fund will shine a light on the corruption, stop it, and restore trust with the American public.’

A Heritage Foundation database has documented roughly 1,500 cases of confirmed voter fraud and almost 1,300 criminal convictions.

‘Safe-and-secure elections matter, because as can be seen by some of the documented cases in Heritage’s Voter Fraud Database, even a single ineligible or illegally cast ballot can make the difference in an election–especially those at the local level,’ Zack Smith, a Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow, posted on X last month.

The anti-Israel protests that have erupted on college campuses across the country in recent weeks over Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza are fueling new political attacks by Republicans on vulnerable Democrats running in this year’s Senate elections.

‘Death to America. Threatening Jews. Attacking Police. Antisemitic mobs are taking over our universities. Students radicalized by the far left acting like terrorists,’ the narrator says in a new series of ads by the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), the campaign arm of the Senate GOP.

The spots target four Democrats — senators Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Jon Tester of Montana — as well as Rep. Elissa Slotkin, the likely Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan. All five are being heavily targeted by the NRSC as the GOP aims to regain the Senate majority in November’s elections.

The narrator argues that President Biden and Democratic lawmakers ‘want you to pay off their student loans using your tax dollars to fund this mayhem.’ 

The ads end with the narrator urging viewers to tell Democrats to ‘stop caving to the woke mobs and put America first.’

The NRSC is spending a minuscule five figures to run the spots, but a bigger ad blitz with a similar theme is expected in the near future.

‘This is the most toxic issue for Democrats since they tried to defund the police,’ NRSC communications director Mike Berg claimed.

‘You can bet it will be in television ads if Democrats on college campuses continue these antisemitic riots.’

The protests, some of which have turned violent this week, have grabbed plenty of attention on the cable news networks and online. And they seem to be giving Republicans plenty of ammunition to use in this year’s ballot box showdowns.

It’s not just the NRSC.

In battleground Pennsylvania’s high-profile Senate contest, which may decide the chamber’s majority, presumptive GOP nominee Dave McCormick on Friday attacked Casey in an email titled ‘As Antisemitism Runs Rampant on Campuses Across the Country, Bob Casey Fails to Stand Up for What’s Right.’

Casey, who earlier this month teamed up with GOP Sen. Tim Scott to introduce the Senate’s version of the Antisemitism Awareness Act, has emphasized that ‘on the campuses, they’ve got to enforce the law.’

As the House GOP works to hold onto its fragile majority, the National Republican Congressional Committee this past week launched a similar spot against 37 swing district Democrats it is targeting.

‘Tell House Democrats it is time to stand up for Israel. It is time to stand up for what is right,’ the narrator in the ad urges.

The NRSC ad buy is also modest but may be an appetizer for more to come.

Republicans are mostly unified in reacting to the protests, framing them as antisemitic and anti-American, while Democrats have struggled to find a consistent message when it comes to the demonstrations.

Brian Walsh, a veteran Republican consultant who served for years as a top communications strategist for both House and Senate Republicans, argued that the protests are ‘problematic for Democrats on several fronts.’

‘First, they need the youth vote to turn out for them in November, and it’s clear they’re very unhappy with President Biden, which will have a negative down-ballot effect. Second, it’s motivating conservatives because it reminds them of the woke ideology that’s become a hallmark of this administration,’ Walsh said. ‘And it’s coming at the same time the president is telling working-class Americans they need to pay for the student loans of these same college students. 

‘You should expect Republican candidates around the country to pose a very simple question to their Democratic opponents: Do they stand with the protesters who’ve sided with Hamas or do they stand for law and order and in support of one of America’s closest allies, Israel? It’s a problem for many Democrats because they’re caught between their liberal base and where most Americans are who are disgusted by the scenes at Columbia, UCLA and elsewhere.’

Democrats appear divided.

Some in tough races are calling for crackdowns on the campus protests. 

‘We all speak strongly that the antisemitism and hate and violence are not acceptable,’ Ohio’s Brown said.

But plenty of progressives who don’t face difficult re-election fights are strongly defending the protesters’ rights to demonstrate and oppose calls for federal intervention.

‘It is outrageous and it is disgraceful to use the charge of antisemitism to distract from the immoral and illegal war policies that Netanyahu’s extremist and racist government is pursuing,’ progressive champion Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont argued as he pointed to the longtime Israeli leader.

Veteran Democratic strategist Maria Cardona told Fox News ‘Democrats need to continue to underscore two foundational things. The first one is that we are a nation of laws, and one of those critical laws and rights is that we allow for and people have a right to peacefully protest. Underscore peaceful. 

‘President Biden and Democrats need to continue to listen to the Palestinians and those speaking for the innocent lives that are being lost in Gaza and for the need to continue and expand humanitarian aid, and that is something that President Biden and Democrats are listening to and working very hard to obtain a cease-fire.

‘The other side is to always strongly disavow and condemn hate speech, violent rhetoric, antisemitism and that harassment of Jewish students will not and should not be tolerated,’ Cardona emphasized. ‘And those two things are a huge contrast to Donald Trump, who said he would deal harshly with the protesters, even those who are doing it peacefully, wanting to call in the National Guard and clear everyone out. (He) has said before he would bash heads. That is not the way that we do things in this country. ‘

While Republican candidates and campaign committees are likely to keep up the pressure as the protests continue, it’s questionable how effective their efforts will be with voters.

An ABC News/Ipsos poll released this week indicated that few respondents said the demonstrations in the U.S. and the fighting in Gaza were critical to their vote in the autumn elections.

Internal communications of executives from Big Tech companies reveal ‘damning discoveries’ of the Biden administration’s attempt to muzzle the platforms, a new House committee report published this week revealed.

Following House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan’s (R-Ohio) subpoena last year, tech giants like Google-parent Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta and Microsoft were investigated regarding their communications with the federal government. Jordan said at the time that he wanted to ‘understand how and to what extent the Executive Branch coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech.’ 

The House Judiciary Committee’s 800-page report, titled ‘The Censorship-industrial Complex: How Top Biden White House Officials Coerced Big Tech to Censor Americans, True Information, and Critics of the Biden Administration,’ included several instances where the platforms censored information relating to COVID-19 due to top-down pressure.

The emails also revealed the Biden administration wanted to crack down on ‘vaccine misinformation,’ while some executives were unwilling to cave to the pressure. Other executives did give in, to limit bigger issues.

‘Now, having obtained and reviewed tens of thousands of emails and other relevant nonpublic documents, the Committee and Select Subcommittee can provide a more complete picture of how and the extent to which the Biden White House coerced companies to suppress free speech,’ the report noted.

Big Tech altered their content-moderation policies in 2021, the report said. Facebook, YouTube and Amazon all adjusted their policies to censor information ranging from COVID-19 ‘misinformation’ to what kinds of books were permissible on the Amazon Marketplace.

‘Indeed, both Facebook and Amazon referred to the Biden White House’s efforts as ‘pressure,” the report said.

The Biden White House’s censorship campaign also targeted true information, satire and other content not violating platform policies, according to the report. Internal emails from Facebook executives in July 2021 show that Facebook understood the Biden White House’s position as wanting ‘negative information on or opinions about the vaccine’ removed as well as ‘humorous or satirical content that suggests the vaccine isn’t safe.’

Facebook executive Nick Clegg questioned in July 2021 via email why the company censored the lab-leak theory of COVID-19. An employee replied, ‘Because we were under pressure from the [Biden] administration and others to do more…. We shouldn’t have done it.’

Another instance in July 2021 revealed Facebook executives attempting to appease the Biden administration. Clegg emailed colleagues in the company that ‘[g]iven the bigger fish we have to fry with the [Biden] Administration,’ Facebook should try to figure out ‘how we can be responsive to [the Administration’s] concerns.’

The report comes as big tech companies have been under fire by both Republicans and Democrats in recent months. The Supreme Court heard arguments in March challenging the Biden administration’s alleged coordination with Big Tech to censor certain political messages.