As he aims to close his fundraising gap with President Biden in their 2024 election rematch, former President Trump is likely to get an assist from his former top rival for the 2024 GOP nomination.

‘I am very happy to have the full and enthusiastic support of Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida,’ Trump proclaimed in a social media post Monday.

As a result of a meeting over the weekend between the two GOP leaders, expect to see top dollar Republican contributors from the formidable DeSantis donor network show up in the coming days at a major Trump world donor summit in Palm Beach, Florida.

Trump called his Sunday morning breakfast with DeSantis at a Hollywood, Florida, golf course ‘a great meeting’ that aimed to thaw relations between the one-time bitter rivals on the presidential primary campaign trail.

‘The conversation mostly concerned how we would work closely together to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,’ Trump detailed.

The meeting appears to be the first time DeSantis and Trump have spoken, let alone met in person, since the governor ended his White House bid in January after a disappointing second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses that was far behind Trump.

The former president and his allies spent nearly a year repeatedly attacking DeSantis, who was viewed as the top threat to Trump in a presidential nomination field that last summer grew to over a dozen GOP White House contenders.

DeSantis endorsed Trump as he suspended his presidential campaign just two days ahead of the New Hampshire primary. But, to date, DeSantis hasn’t campaigned on Trump’s behalf.

During a February call with supporters, the governor took aim at Trump and his top political advisers.

‘I think he’s got people in his inner circle who were part of our orbit years ago that we fired, and I think some of that is they just have an ax to grind,’ DeSantis said at the time.

In response, top Trump campaign aide Chris LaCivita called DeSantis a ‘sad little man.’

While many on Trump’s team and his wider political orbit detest DeSantis, the former president may be more forgiving if it benefits him.

In his read-out of their meeting, Trump said ‘I greatly appreciate Ron’s support’ and appeared to praise the two-term conservative governor’s performance steering the Sunshine State, noting that ‘also discussed was the future of Florida, which is FANTASTIC!’

While DeSantis was unsuccessful in dethroning Trump for the Republican nomination, he has been successful in assembling a wide network of wealthy donors who helped fund his convincing 2022 gubernatorial re-election and his 2024 White House bid.

DeSantis said at a recent donor retreat with his contributors that he would raise money for the entire Republican field, from Trump to school board races, sources confirmed to Fox News.

‘He’s going to fulfill his pledge to help the party,’ said Dan Eberhart, an oil drilling CEO and a prominent Republican donor and bundler who raised big bucks for Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign but who backed DeSantis in the 2024 nomination race.

Eberhart, who is back supporting Trump and attended a major fundraiser earlier this month for the former president, said DeSantis is ‘absolutely still a formidable machine. Who in the party has raised more money than DeSantis except for Trump?

‘I absolutely think Gov. DeSantis can help put together some decent money for Trump, and Trump needs the money.’

According to sources in Trump’s political orbit, the meeting between the former president and the Florida governor was proposed by DeSantis and his allies a couple of weeks ago and was orchestrated by Steve Witkoff, a Florida real estate broker Trump referred to as a ‘mutual friend.’

Those familiar with the meeting told Fox News that Trump and DeSantis met for a couple of hours at Witkoff’s Shell Bay golf club ‘and ended with Gov. DeSantis committing to do whatever would be helpful.’

While the meeting between Trump and DeSantis will likely pay short-term dividends for the former president as his general election showdown with Biden heats up, it may also benefit DeSantis down the road.

DeSantis enjoyed nationwide support among conservatives as the Florida governor highlighted his battles the past couple of years against what he called ‘woke’ culture in politics, business and education. But his brand took a major hit after the onslaught from Trump, which resulted in the governor dropping his White House bid.

As DeSantis eyes his political future after his term-limited tenure as Florida governor comes to a close, which potentially may include another presidential run, sources in his political orbit say it would be difficult for him to succeed if he continued to have strained relations with Trump.

Members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus and their allies are signaling that the push by some GOP rebels to oust Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is not gaining traction within the Republican base.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., has for weeks insisted that the GOP voter base is infuriated with Johnson and is behind her push for his removal. 

But her resolution, known as a motion to vacate, has sat untouched for nearly 40 days. And after a weeklong recess, even Johnson’s conservative critics returned to Washington on Monday saying they heard little to none from their constituents about the matter.

‘I think the GOP base wants Republicans to live up to what they ran on,’ Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., told Fox News Digital. ‘Look, if you could go down any street in America and say, ‘What’s your top 10 priorities?’ Would [motion to vacate] come up? No. Will what they’re paying? Yes.’

Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., conceded that all lawmakers must answer to their individual districts, but when speaking for his own, he said voters are far more concerned about the border than about House GOP party politics.

‘You’ve got terrorists on known watch-lists coming from the north and south borders. And meanwhile, we’re talking about inner squabbling,’ Mills said. ‘I’m sorry, but like, my constituents are less concerned about who’s sitting as speaker right now and are more concerned about securing the border and being able to afford how to live.’

Another conservative Freedom Caucus ally, Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, similarly said he has heard little from Republicans in his Texas district on the motion to vacate.

‘I don’t think the average citizen … is concerned about who the speaker of the House is. They’re concerned about what I’m doing, and they’re concerned about the nation as a whole, but the speaker doesn’t impact them day to day,’ Self said. ‘There are people who are very energized about it, don’t get me wrong, but the bulk are not.’

One GOP lawmaker granted anonymity to speak freely said their constituents outright rejected Greene’s effort when they spoke with them back home. 

‘Nobody is pushing it except [Greene],’ the GOP lawmaker said. ‘At home, no one wants it.’

House Freedom Caucus member Rep. Josh Brecheen, R-Okla., suggested that toppling Johnson could lead to a worse result for the GOP in the end.

‘I think what the base wants is just the opportunity for the things that we all believe in to start coming to fruition. That’s what the base cares about,’ he said. ‘When you have the makeup of our conference like we do, I don’t know how we come out of a motion to vacate with a more conservative solution.’

Greene filed her resolution in late March in protest of Johnson’s bipartisan work on government spending and foreign aid. 

Her resolution earned two co-sponsors in Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., after the House passed a $61 billion aid package for Ukraine this month, but for the most part, it has fallen flat within the GOP.

Even Johnson’s critics in the House Freedom Caucus have distanced themselves from the push to oust Johnson, signaling little appetite for the three weeks of chaos that followed the ouster of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., last fall.

Greene told Steve Bannon on his ‘War Room’ podcast last week that Johnson ‘betrayed’ Republican voters and suggested they were as angry – if not angrier – than when former President Trump lost re-election.

‘This is different,’ she said. ‘They’re angry on a whole other level. And here’s what really worries me: They’re done with Republican leadership like Mike Johnson, who totally sold us out to the Democrats.’

Trump spoke out in support of Johnson last week.

Fox News Digital reached out to Greene’s office for comment.

The Biden administration’s decision to pause its plan to use the Leahy Law has averted a potentially messy problem for the White House, but willingness to use such a drastic tool underscores the uncertainty of U.S.-Israel relations. 

‘The Biden administration’s politicization of vital security assistance to a democratic ally like Israel is an irresponsible move that sets a dangerous precedent,’ Nick Stewart, senior director of government relations at FDD Action, told Fox News Digital. 

‘It ignores a crucial set of basic facts and feeds a false and damaging misrepresentation of Israel’s conduct that emboldens our terrorist adversaries,’ Stewart added. 

‘If the Biden administration had legitimate concerns, it should have addressed them in a much more professional manner through official channels directly with the Israelis, as befits our alliance,’ he argued. ‘Instead, the very public threat of sanctions was followed by constant and seemingly coordinated leaks from the State Department.’

‘This raises concerns that the objective from the start was far less substantive and much more political,’ Stewart alleged. ‘Congress should consider probing the administration’s handling of this incident to ensure U.S. laws are not being weaponized against an ally for partisan reasons in this political season.’

The Leahy Law is a set of two provisions that prohibit the U.S. government from providing funds to foreign security forces where ‘there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights,’ according to a State Department packet on the policy. 

The Biden administration had indicated its intent to invoke the act as a means of sanctioning Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) battalions, including Netzah Yehuda battalion, for alleged human rights violations in the West Bank before the Oct. 7 attack. The move would mark the first time in the decadeslong partnership between the two countries that a U.S. administration would have invoked the 27-year-old congressional act. 

The sanctions would have triggered an automatic cut-off for the battalion and its members, preventing them from receiving any type of training or assistance from the U.S. military and any sort of foreign aid. 

However, the U.S. announced over the weekend that it would not invoke the Leahy Law after receiving ‘new information’ from the Israeli government and guarantees from the government that would handle the issue. 

State Department principal deputy spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters on Monday that four of the units in question had ‘effectively remediated’ and the U.S. remains ‘in consultations and engagements with the government of Israel’ on the remaining unit. He also noted that ‘the remediation standard is consistent and it is the same for all countries.’ 

‘They have submitted additional information as it pertains to that unit. And we’re continuing to have those conversations consistent with the memorandum of understanding that we have with the government of Israel that was entered into in 2021,’ Patel said. 

‘When conclusions are made under actions that fall under the auspices of the Foreign Assistance Act, we are required to consult with officials from the government of Israel, and that is ongoing,’ Patel continued. ‘We are engaging with them in a process, and we will make an ultimate decision when it comes to that unit when that process is complete.’

‘When we’re talking about the Leahy Law, what we are talking about our unit and component restrictions, when they are found in violation, it is not have bearing on the broader security relationship that we may have with a country, especially a country like Israel, in which we have a longstanding security relationship. The provision of bulk assistance that’s gone back many, many years,’ Patel added. 

A senior State Department official told Fox News that Secretary of State Antony Blinken has raised the matter with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. 

Former Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy had championed legislation that became the Leahy Law in the 1990s, saying the U.S. needed a tool to block American military aid and training to foreign security units guilty of extrajudicial killings, rapes, torture and other flagrant human rights abuses.

Rights groups long have accused U.S. administrations, including Biden’s, of shirking rigorous investigations of allegations of Israeli military killings and other abuses against Palestinians to avoid invoking such laws aimed at conditioning military aid to lawful behavior by foreign forces, according to The Associated Press.  

The development comes as Israeli officials are growing concerned that the International Criminal Court could soon issue arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top officials over charges related to the war in Gaza, reports say. 

The court may accuse senior government figures of pursuing an excessively harsh military response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and preventing the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, the New York Times is reporting, citing Israeli and foreign officials.   

Fox News correspondent Gillian Turner, Fox News Digital’s Danielle Wallace and Greg Norman and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is preparing to announce a wide-ranging investigation into antisemitism on college campuses that spans multiple House committees.

Multiple sources told Fox News Digital that at least six committees would be involved in the probe: the committees on Education & the Workforce, Energy & Commerce, Oversight, the Judiciary, Ways & Means and the committee on Science, Space & Technology. 

The probe is a widening of the ongoing investigation into antisemitism on college campuses that is being led by the Education & Workforce Committee.

Two sources familiar with planning stressed to Fox News Digital that the committee’s roles are still mostly fluid and that the investigation is necessarily broad because each have some kind of jurisdiction in the matter.

Johnson is expected to hold a press conference with those committee chairs on Tuesday afternoon to unveil the probe. He spoke out forcefully against the demonstrations last week during a visit to Columbia University, where he also privately met with Jewish students who have said they feel unsafe on campus.

It comes as college campuses around the country are seeing a wave of anti-Israel demonstrations that sparked when Columbia University students and those at their sister school, Barnard College, were arrested for setting up an encampment on the Manhattan Ivy League’s grounds. The protests, done in opposition to Columbia’s investments in companies with Israeli ties, have continued since then.

The two sources who spoke with Fox News Digital said Columbia is likely to play a significant role, but they stressed the investigation would look into any universities getting federal funds. 

While the committees’ roles are fluid, the sources explained that there are some aspects broadly tailored to different panels’ jurisdictions – the Judiciary Committee’s portion, for example, would include looking at existing anti-discrimination laws, they said.

The Oversight Committee will, in part, be looking into who is funding the protests, a third source said.

A fourth source familiar with planning said the Ways & Means Committee will be examining the tax benefits these universities receive, and what they are doing to justify the tax benefits they are afforded under the current U.S. tax code.

During his visit to Columbia last week, Johnson denounced the protesters as a ‘mob’ and specifically denounced professors and other faculty who had joined the protests.

‘The college campus used to be the place for respectful debate, for the differences of opinion in the free marketplace of ideas to be discussed. That is not what is happening here,’ Johnson said. ‘You are intimidating and shouting down people you disagree with.’

In a press release announcing his Tuesday public remarks, Johnson said, ‘House Republicans, with leadership from committees of jurisdiction, will expand a wide-ranging investigation focused on holding accountable college and university administrators who fail at their core responsibility: keeping their students safe.’

The White House condemned the mob of anti-Israel protesters who violently seized a building at Columbia University late Monday, saying ‘hate speech and hate symbols have no place in America.’

On Monday night, a massive mob of anti-Israel students broke into an academic building — the iconic Hamilton Hall on the Manhattan campus — and barricaded its doors. A Columbia University facilities worker said the protesters ‘held me hostage.’ 

Outside of Hamilton Hall, the anti-Israel rebels form a human barricade by linking their arms and vowing to remain until the university meets their three demands.

The students are demanding the university divest their financial support of Israel, become more transparent with its investments, and provide blanket amnesty to the protesting students for any consequences.

President Biden did not speak publicly on the violent antisemitic protests Tuesday morning, but the White House released a statement on his behalf. 

‘President Biden has stood against repugnant, Antisemitic smears and violent rhetoric his entire life,’ White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement. ‘He condemns the use of the term ‘intifada,’ as he has the other tragic and dangerous hate speech displayed in recent days.

‘President Biden respects the right to free expression, but protests must be peaceful and lawful,’ Bates continued. ‘Forcibly taking over buildings is not peaceful — it is wrong.’ 

He added: ‘And hate speech and hate symbols have no place in America.’

Columbia University announced its indefinite closure Tuesday morning ‘until circumstances allow otherwise.’

‘Effective immediately, access to the Morningside campus has been limited to students residing in residential buildings on campus (Carman, Furnald, John Jay, Hartley, Wallach, East Campus and Wien) and employees who provide essential services to campus buildings, labs and residential student life (for example, Dining, Public Safety, and building maintenance staff). There is no additional access to the Morningside campus,’ a statement from the university said.

It added: ‘This access restriction will remain in place until circumstances allow otherwise.’

In the post, the university said that the safety of students remained ‘paramount’ and thanked the community for ‘understanding’ the current crisis.

‘The safety of every single member of this community is paramount. We thank you for your patience, cooperation and understanding,’ the statement read.

House Democratic leaders are vowing to shield House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., if Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., forces a vote on her motion to oust him from power.

‘From the very beginning of this Congress, House Democrats have put people over politics and found bipartisan common ground with traditional Republicans in order to deliver real results. At the same time, House Democrats have aggressively pushed back against MAGA extremism. We will continue to do just that,’ House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said in a joint statement with House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass., and Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar, D-Calif.

‘At this moment, upon completion of our national security work, the time has come to turn the page on this chapter of Pro-Putin Republican obstruction. We will vote to table Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Motion to Vacate the Chair. If she invokes the motion, it will not succeed.’

Their decision was announced right at the beginning of Johnson’s weekly House GOP leadership press conference, prompting a flurry of questions from reporters.

‘I have to do my job, we have to do what we believe to be the right thing. What the country needs right now is a functioning Congress,’ Johnson said when asked his reaction. ‘We need people who are serious about the job here.’

Johnson appeared unaware of Democratic leaders’ decision beforehand and said he did not discuss a motion to vacate with Jeffries earlier this month when Democratic voters were critical to passing Johnson’s $95 billion foreign aid plan.

Greene filed a measure calling for a vote to oust Johnson, known as a motion to vacate the chair, nearly 40 days ago in protest of his handling of government funding and foreign aid.

Her resolution earned two co-sponsors in Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., after the House passed a $61 billion aid package for Ukraine earlier this month, but for the most part, it has fallen flat within the GOP.

Even Johnson’s critics in the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus have distanced themselves from the push to oust Johnson, signaling little appetite for the three weeks of chaos that followed the ouster of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., last fall.

However, with the razor-thin majority Johnson oversees, it quickly became clear that Democratic support would likely be needed to keep him in power.

That does not necessarily mean Democrats have to vote against ousting Johnson – if Greene noticed her resolution as ‘privileged,’ meaning the House would need to take it up within two days, it would first trigger a vote to table her measure, effectively killing it. Democratic leaders signaled in their Tuesday statement that they would block it in the initial vote.

Fox News Digital reached out to Greene’s office for comment.

House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., is filing an ethics complaint against special counsel Jack Smith on Tuesday, accusing him of violating Department of Justice (DOJ) standards and trying to tip the election against former President Trump.

In a letter sent to the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility, Stefanik urged the government watchdog to investigate Smith over accusations of ‘abusing the resources of the federal government to unlawfully interfere with the 2024 presidential election.’

‘Jack Smith’s multiple attempts to rush to trial the federal January 6th case against President Trump violated long-standing, explicit Justice Department policy,’ Stefanik wrote.

‘Further, Jack Smith’s repeated violations of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia’s stay of proceedings are a lawless breach of trial ethics and lawyerly conduct. Jack Smith’s actions brought disrepute to the Justice Department and the federal government as a whole, and he should face discipline appropriately.’

Smith’s case against Trump, stemming from accusations he tried to overturn the 2020 election, was supposed to go to trial in March but has been stuck in limbo as the Supreme Court weighs the ex-president’s claim he is immune to criminal prosecution for actions taken while in the White House.

The former U.S. attorney and human rights prosecutor petitioned the high court multiple times to reject Trump’s immunity claims and bid to delay his trial, including most recently on April 8.

Stefanik’s complaint accused him of first trying to influence the election in August 2023, when Smith petitioned for a Jan. 2, 2024 trial.

‘There exist approximately thirteen million pages of discovery for President Trump to review, plus thousands of hours of camera footage. Prosecutors bringing a case of this complexity — with so many consequential and novel legal issues to sort out — would normally never seek to bring it to trial within five months,’ she argued. 

‘The only reason to push for such an early trial date was to work to get the case tried before the November election, and the Justice Department Manual clearly forbids Jack Smith from taking any action on that basis.’

She also cited Smith’s petitions with the Supreme Court and used his own comments in court that no American is ‘above the law’ as further argument that he should support an investigation into his conduct.

‘If that is true, then he should be open to, and welcome, an ethics investigation into conduct that, on its face, implicates potential violations of DOJ policy and multiple rules of professional conduct,’ Stefanik said. ‘Biden special counsel Jack Smith’s highly unusual and clearly improper attempts to expedite trial, and his blatant violation of District Court orders, evidence his partisan attempt to influence the results of the 2024 presidential election.’

The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, heard arguments in Trump’s immunity case last week. A final decision is expected in June — with the likelihood of a trial before the presidential election being slim.

Fox News Digital reached out to the DOJ for comment.

It’s not just atrocious polls that suggest President Joe Biden will lose in November; it’s also the behavior of the White House. In just the past few weeks, the Biden administration has rolled out over a dozen new initiatives and rules, many of them – like banning development of Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve — likely to impact our country far into the future. It’s a startling avalanche of executive activity.

Call me crazy, but that looks like a White House panicked that its days are numbered.

Who can blame them? A new national CNN poll shows Trump leading the president by six points, one of the biggest gaps yet; more important, Fox News surveys have Trump inching ahead in several critical swing states. 

Bad polls, an unpopular president, disruptive protests at home and rising threats around the world, sinking consumer confidence and resurgent inflation; all signs point to defeat in November. Hence, the whirlwind of regulations, which includes the following:

1. New FTC rules that ban non-compete agreements;

2. A re-write of Title IX;

3. EEOC charges of racism against a company because they avoided hiring criminals;

4. More federal help on student loans;

5. FTC preventing the merger of two luxury goods makers;

6. New overtime rules;

7. New regulations detailing airline refunds;

8. New decision restricting drilling in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve;

9. FTC blocking hospital group mergers;

10. New power plant emissions rules;

11. Putting on hold a ban on menthol cigarettes;

12. A revamp of school lunch mandates, reducing sugar and salt.

The Biden administration appears to be preparing for the worst, pushing through policies that could be overturned if passed later in the year. Congress has 60 days to nix rules promulgated by federal agencies with a simple majority; if there’s a red wave, Biden diktats adopted in the traditional ‘lame duck’ session would likely disappear. The Trump administration employed that tool successfully, ditching several policies rolled out late in President Obama’s second term; Biden returned the favor when he came to office.

Some decisions, like forgiving student loans or not banning menthol cigarettes which are favored by Blacks, are obviously meant to attract targeted voters. Others seem to scratch a progressive itch, like the upending of long-standing employment laws. 

Voters should wonder: Is all of this activism well-thought-out? The answer is almost surely no. After all, these are the folks that forced Detroit automakers to go all-in on EVs, sure that Americans were ready to abandon their gas-guzzling SUVs.  

Consider the FTC, led by the reckless ideologue Lina Khan. Under Khan’s guidance, the FTC has clamped down on corporate merger activity. Most recently, the agency sued to block luxury fashion firm Tapestry’s acquisition of Capri. Tapestry owns Coach, Stuart Weitzman and Kate Spade, while Capri owns the Versace, Jimmy Choo and Michael Kors labels.  

Henry Liu, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition claims, ‘This deal threatens to deprive consumers of the competition for affordable handbags…’ Forgive me, but only a man could utter such nonsense. Any woman will tell you that there are a gazillion handbag makers, and that they compete mainly on style and image, not price. And, frankly, that few of them are ‘affordable.’ 

This is one of many examples of the FTC interfering with the normal pursuit of business. Fashion is fickle; companies continually add names and brands to survive. Liu has no idea what he is talking about. 

But we cannot dismiss this FTC intervention as insignificant. The Biden White House, just like that of President Obama, is tragically lacking in business leaders, and in common sense. 

Lina Khan is a typical progressive Biden appointee, who is now compiling an impressive record of overreach and defeat. She failed to prevent Meta from acquiring the virtual reality company Within, failed to keep Microsoft from buying Activision and will probably fail in her effort to keep grocers Albertson and Kroger from combining.  She denies that mergers can create efficiencies and lower costs for consumers. As an undergraduate, she wrote a paper criticizing Amazon for being big; if Khan had been in charge, Americans would not be enjoying the obvious convenience of the world’s largest online retailer. 

It isn’t just the FTC which, by the way, is also behind the outrageous and sure to be overturned ban on non-compete agreements. Consider the new Department of Transportation demands that airlines must ‘immediately’ refund money for delayed or canceled flights and reimburse passengers for equipment issues like non-working TVs. Talks about adding headaches to an industry constantly toggling between profits and losses! What the government should be doing is investing in critical air traffic control equipment and infrastructure; let consumers punish airlines that don’t treat them fairly. 

Some of the White House’s most enduring and damaging new rules have to do with energy. Biden is desperate to shore up his bona fides with the environmental lobby, and so has added new restrictions on domestic oil and gas development. Consequently, he just banned exploration of a vast swath of Alaska’s huge National Petroleum Reserve, even though the region contains some of our country’s most promising prospects and despite support for drilling from the state’s native population. 

In addition, the president’s EPA has recently issued new power plant emissions rules that could force the closure of many coal-fired power plants, even as demand for electricity expands. It also requires by 2032 wide-spread use of carbon-capture technology that does not yet exist on a large scale.  Similar rules adopted by the Obama administration were overturned by the Supreme Court in 2016; critics claimed executive overreach. The Biden team’s approach, which could undermine the nation’s energy security, is likely to meet the same fate.  

These are not sensible policies; they are the wish-list and fantasies of a progressive White House not likely to pay the price for their damaging meddling. Here’s hoping.

A spokesperson for a Democrat mayor is defending a recent meeting with a controversial Chinese diplomat, who has repeatedly praised the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

‘Met with Philadelphia’s Mayor Parker together with Tianjin’s Executive Deputy Mayor Liu Guiping,’ Huang Ping, who’s been the consul general of China’s New York Consulate since 2018, recently posted on X.

‘Exchanges at the subnational level keeps fueling China-US relations. Let’s keep it going,’ he added.

Over the last year, Huang has appeared at several prominent universities to meet with officials despite his past statements as well as rising concerns from the American public about China’s aggressive presence in the United States.

Huang, who met with Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker, has previously called the CCP a ‘great party’ and has denied that China is targeting the Muslim Uyghur population in China.

‘There are lots of lies here, fabricated by some people with their own political agenda,’ Huang said in an August 2021 interview, denying the existence of genocide and internment camps targeting Uyghurs. ‘As I said, there’s no genocide, not a single evidence to prove that there’s a genocide or something there. It’s just a slandering.’

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the State Department under both the Trump and Biden administrations have assessed that China is committing genocide against the Uyghurs. Since 2017, the Chinese government has reportedly imprisoned more than a million Uyghurs in concentration camps where, according to leaked documents from inside China, detainees are subjected to rape, torture, forced labor, brainwashing and forced sterilization.

‘The Mayor and city officials engaged, as protocol and respect dictates, with the official representatives of China,’ a spokesperson for Mayor Parker’s office told Fox News Digital in a statement when asked if the mayor was aware of Huang’s previous statements when she met with him.

‘This meeting was about greeting and welcoming the representatives of our Sister City Tianjin and celebrate our 45th anniversary as Sister Cities – as we were amongst the first pairs of sister cities to be established following the reestablishing of diplomatic relationships between the U.S. & China,’ the spokesperson added. ‘Also the occasion to cheer the 50th anniversary of the first tour of the Philadelphia Orchestra in China.’

In addition to praising the CCP, Huang has repeatedly promoted CCP talking points on X and amplified the agenda of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Huang previously met with Democrat lawmakers in Pennsylvania as well as with a local economic council. He has also met with a long list of officials at Ivy League and other prestigious universities. 

Earlier this year, Huang joined Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Gov. Kathy Hochul, and New York City Mayor Eric Adams during the Lunar New Year Parade in Manhattan. Huang has met with New York’s elected officials several times in the past. 

Last year, he stood beside Adams at the New York China Day Celebration Parade Festival. Fox News Digital previously reported that Hochul and Huang met in April 2019 when she was the lieutenant governor to discuss cooperation between New York and China.

Huang’s visits with top officials come amid growing concerns about China’s presence in the United States in a variety of sectors, from academia to government to health care to social media.

‘The Chinese Communist Party is playing for keeps at the nuclear level and every layer below that,’ Michael Sobolik, author of ‘Countering China’s Great Game: A Strategy for American Dominance,’ told Fox News Digital. ‘And it’s not just the universities. The Chinese Communist Party is looking to infiltrate every aspect of American society.’

‘If we try to edit undo our way out of this whole list of infiltrations and threats that the CCP sends our direction that’s good policy work. We need to insulate ourselves. But good housekeeping is the bare minimum of waging a cold war and winning a cold war,’ Sobolik continued. 

‘If we’re serious about winning a cold war, it’s not enough to just address these problems that the Chinese Communist Party has created for America. American policymakers need to go on the offensive and create problems for the CCP to respond to. We need to seize the initiative of this competition.’

‘Mayor Parker cares about the many different communities and groups in our respective cities, and will engage with stakeholders who serve and may represent them,’ Parker’s office told Fox News Digital when asked about her concerns over China’s growing presence in the U.S.

‘President Biden and the Biden administration handle the foreign relations of the United States.’

Fox News Digital reached out to Huang’s office but did not receive a response.

Fox News’ Jamie Joseph contributed reporting.