I was just a teenager when Russian officials kidnapped me and my 11-year-old brother Serhiy from our home in Ukraine. What came next were the worst 9 months of my life.   

Serhiy and I are orphans from Kharkiv but when Russia launched its war, we relocated to Vovchansk, a nearby city, to live in a foster family. We hid in a basement for months, until Russian authorities occupied our town and took custody of my brother and me.  

We wanted to stay with our foster parents, but the Russians put us on a bus with other children. I was sent to Shebekino, a town near Belgorod, and my brother to Gelendzhik in Krasnodar Krai across the Russian border. 

We were told that this trip would last three weeks. But we were separated by 900 miles for nine months. Serhiy and I didn’t realize it at the time, but we had just been abducted by Russia.   

What does this have to do with Americans, or the support Ukraine so desperately needs?  

Legislation that will provide critical assistance to Ukraine has passed through Congress and has been signed by President Joe Biden. Speaker Mike Johnson has said ‘tyrants’ like Russian President Vladimir Putin are ‘watching to see if America will stand up for its allies and our own interests around the globe.’  

The assistance package sends a clear message to Putin: the U.S. is not backing down. Ukrainians are grateful for this message, and we are asking the U.S. and all Americans to continue to stand by us as we continue to fight Putin and try to preserve our national identity. 

Ukrainians are counting on the U.S. to overcome the internal divisions that have delayed this desperately needed assistance and emboldened Russia. We know it is hard to support a small country thousands of miles away when there are so many other priorities at home. I am hopeful that my story will show Americans why it is so important to stand with Ukraine to ensure the survival of our people, our values, and our culture.  

When the Russians took me, I was sent to a technical school where I was subjected to daily false stories about Ukrainians and sometimes even insults. One day, I was called to the principal’s office and when I got there, she had citizenship documents ready for me to sign. I was stunned and disgusted. I had never been more afraid, but I refused to become a Russian citizen.   

The principal glowered at me with hatred in her eyes. She berated me for being ‘stupid.’ Moments later, I was expelled and sent packing, in a country that I did not know, and that hated who I was.   

After being expelled, I moved in with a friend. I was desperate to return home. That is when I learned about Save Ukraine, an organization rescuing kidnapped children and supporting their recovery. Over the next three weeks, a secret network guided me to safety. I cannot provide details without putting these brave volunteers in danger, as Russia is actively seeking to prevent more kidnapped children from leaving and sharing their stories.   

After Save Ukraine helped me return home, I needed to get my brother out too.  

I found him in a new foster family, but he was not the boy I knew. He had been subjected to months of Russian propaganda and manipulation. He was like a puppet, saying things that I knew he did not believe – that Ukraine was run by Nazis, that nobody in Ukraine cared about him and that he had no future unless he became a Russian citizen.    

When I begged him to return home with me, he refused.    

Hour after hour ticked by as we argued. As I was about to lose hope, he came to his senses and agreed to come home with me.   

We were lucky. But there are 19,000 kidnapped Ukrainian children still in Russia. The Russian government bombards them with propaganda and abuse to weaken their Ukrainian identity. Many are punished for speaking Ukrainian.  

The assistance package sends a clear message to Putin: the U.S. is not backing down. Ukrainians are grateful for this message, and we are asking the U.S. and all Americans to continue to stand by us as we continue to fight Putin and try to preserve our national identity. 

Most alarmingly, many of the young men are forced to join the military when they turn 18. They are trained to fight against their own people and brainwashed into hating the United States, the enemy of the Russian nation. Some of them are then deployed to the front lines of the war.   

In January of this year, I shared my story with Members of Congress. I am sharing my story again to ensure that no more children experience the same abduction, brainwashing and trauma.   

Ukraine’s democracy will not survive without U.S. assistance, both to fight off Russia’s unprovoked aggression and to rebuild the future Russia is trying to steal from Ukraine’s children.   

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. responded to former President Trump’s allegations he is a ‘Democrat plant’ and would be a ‘wasted protest vote,’ challenging the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to a debate. 

‘When frightened men take to social media they risk descending into vitriol, which makes them sound unhinged,’ Kennedy wrote in an X post on Saturday afternoon. ‘President Trump’s rant against me is a barely coherent barrage of wild and inaccurate claims that should best be resolved in the American tradition of presidential debate. President Trump, who has proven himself the most adept debater in modern American political history, should not be panicked to meet me on that stage.’ 

RFK Jr. said he will prove Trump ‘betrayed the hopes of his most sincere followers,’ arguing the former president ‘promised to end the Ukraine war and then colluded with Speaker Johnson and President Biden to fund it.’ Kennedy Jr. also said Trump ‘let Big Pharma and his corrupt bureaucrats run roughshod over him as President,’ and ‘promised to cut the deficit and ran up the biggest debt in history.’

‘He promised to run the government like a business and then closed down our businesses. He promised to drain the swamp and then filled his administration with swamp creatures,’ RFK Jr. said. ‘He promised to protect our rights and then torpedoed the Constitution.’

‘Instead of lobbing poisonous bombs from the safety of his bunker, let’s hear President Trump defend his record to me mano-a-mano by respectful, congenial debate,’ Kennedy concluded.

Trump’s 2020 campaign notably called out Biden’s ‘bunker’ strategy, condemning how the Democrat largely stayed away from the campaign trail and ducked the public eye while running for president. 

Kennedy’s challenge came after Trump blasted the independent presidential candidate on TRUTH Social.

‘RFK Jr. is a Democrat ‘Plant,’ a Radical Left Liberal who’s been put in place in order to help Crooked Joe Biden, the Worst President in the History of the United States, get Re-Elected,’ Trump wrote in a series of posts earlier Saturday. ‘A Vote for Junior’ would essentially be a WASTED PROTEST VOTE, that could swing either way, but would only swing against the Democrats if Republicans knew the true story about him.’

Trump charged that RFK Jr. ‘is totally Anti-Gun, an Extreme Environmentalist who makes the Green New Scammers look Conservative, a Big Time Taxer and Open Border Advocate, and Anti-Military/Vet.’ 

‘His Radicalized Family will never allow him to be a Republican, and his Chief ‘Funder’ is the V.P. Candidate that nobody ever heard of, except her ex-husband, who’s been stripped of a big chunk of cash,’ Trump continued, taking a swipe at Kennedy’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan. 

Trump said that while living in New York at the same time as Kennedy, he watched the former Democrat convince former Gov. Andrew Cuomo ‘to make environmental moves that were outright NASTY,’ noting that upstate New York ‘was not allowed to drill or frack as Ohio, Pennsylvania, and others ripped off New York Energy,’ causing energy costs in upstate New York and New England to skyrocket. 

‘His Views on Vaccines are FAKE, as is everything else about his Candidacy. Let the Democrats have RFK Jr. They deserve him!’ Trump said. 

Democrats are not seeing eye to eye on whether the party has a problem with antisemitism ahead of the November general election. 

‘It’s easy to call out people with Tiki torches saying ‘Jews will not replace us’ or the former president saying ‘very fine people on both sides,’ Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., said in a statement to Fox News Digital, referencing a rally with White supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. 

‘However, when Democrats look inward and see ‘go back to Poland’ or ‘kill the Zionists,’ they pretend the antisemitic rhetoric on the left isn’t happening, or they are silent,’ he added. ‘And as it turns out, the left and the right have something in common.’

As the war between Israel and terrorist group Hamas has gone on, initially spurred by the latter’s surprise attack on innocent civilians on Oct. 7, acts of antisemitism have been observed more often in the U.S. 

The Anti-Defamation League reported that U.S. antisemitic assaults in the three months following the October attack in Israel shot up, surpassing the totals for entire years in the past. 

The ADL said 3,291 assaults happened between Oct. 7 and Jan. 7. In 2022, 3,697 assaults occurred over the course of the entire year. The totals for each of the last 10 years, except for 2022, were less than that three-month period following the beginning of Israel’s war with Hamas. 

This month, anti-Israel and antisemitic demonstrations rapidly expanded at top-tier universities, with a Gaza solidarity encampment that is persisting at Columbia University inspiring many of its higher education counterparts to take over their respective campuses, disrupt school activity, and intimidate Jewish students. 

A rabbi at the New York school ultimately reccommended Columbia Jewish students return home to ensure their own safety.

While many Republican lawmakers have been quick to call out the demonstrations, Democrats have more often been quiet, and they have also been measured in their responses and calls for action from schools and police. 

Some Democrats have even supported the encampment at Columbia, such as Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who recently visited students involved in the protest. 

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has additionally discouraged the use of police enforcement against such demonstrations. 

Rachel Rosen, the chief communications officer for the group Democratic Majority for Israel, told Fox News Digital, ‘Antisemitism is emanating from the far left and the far right.’

However, she said, ‘President Biden has forcefully condemned antisemitism and defended Israel.’

She added, ‘We’re still waiting for GOP leaders to condemn Marjorie Taylor Greene’s ‘Jewish space lasers,’ the Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina’s Holocaust denialism and Donald Trump’s disgraceful trafficking in antisemitic tropes and dining with an actual Nazi.’ 

‘Donald Trump regularly demeans Jewish Americans, dines with White nationalists, and said Adolf Hitler ‘did some good things,” agreed Eric Schultz, senior advisor to former President Barack Obama. ‘Most Jewish voters support President Biden and that is because he has shown steadfast support for the Jewish people, especially with antisemitism on the rise.’

The White House didn’t provide comment on whether the Democratic Party has a problem with antisemitism to Fox News Digital in time for publication. 

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Penn., who has emerged as a vocal advocate of Israel, was quick to say the party does have such a problem: ‘The far left, clearly. And that seems to manifest itself especially on the college campuses,’ he said. 

According to Fetterman, the Democrats can grapple with the issue ‘by calling it out,’ which he noted he has been doing. However, he said he wasn’t going to give his colleagues advice on how to do so.

‘I’m not aware of it,’ Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., said when asked by Fox News Digital if the Democrats had an issue with antisemitism within the party. ‘But if there is, I’d be concerned.’

Tester is campaigning for re-election in Montana, which is poised to be one of the most competitive races in the country, rating as a ‘Toss Up’ by non-partisan political handicapper the Cook Political Report. 

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told Fox News Digital that he doesn’t believe there is an issue among Democrats with antisemitism. ‘I don’t believe there are antisemites among Democrats in the United States Congress,’ he said, noting that he couldn’t possibly know the beliefs of every individual Democratic voter. 

‘People often say things that may be misconstrued,’ he explained. ‘And sometimes they say things that are offensive. But I don’t believe deep in their hearts people in the United States Congress hate Jews.’

Several Democrats, prompted as to whether there is specifically an issue on the left, avoided answering, instead condemning antisemitism in general. 

‘As the co-founder of the Senate Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism, I’ve been working across the aisle to fight the scourge of antisemitism wherever it rears its ugly head, regardless of political party or ideology,’ Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., said in a statement to Fox News Digital. Rosen is the only Jewish woman in the Senate. 

Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., similarly emphasized in a statement, ‘Antisemitism has no place in our country and I condemn this hate in no uncertain terms.’ 

The women each face their own competitive re-election battles in Nevada and Wisconsin in November. 

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., didn’t answer whether there was a problem within the party, but noted he felt badly for students across the country who are having school and graduation ceremonies potentially interrupted amid the hysteria of the demonstrations. 

The question was also sidestepped by Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., whose office directed Fox News Digital instead to recent legislation he introduced to address antisemitism on college campuses. 

Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., pointed to his statement denouncing ‘hateful, antisemitic harassment and intimidation’ at Columbia, without commenting on the party’s potential antisemitism concern. 

Robert Shapiro, a political science professor at Columbia University explained that ‘The problem for the Democrats – Biden in particular, is not antisemitism.’

Instead, the issue they face is ‘how to deal with Israel and how to deal with the protests, especially in terms of the general disruption to society for which Biden and the Democrats may be held accountable, ultimately, in the 2024 election.’

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the highest ranking Jewish elected official in the U.S., did not provide comment in time for publication.  

Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio and Bob Casey, D-Penn., who face tough re-election contests in November, also didn’t provide comments.

Sens. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., and Mark Warner, and Reps. Jake Auchincloss, D-Mass., Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., and Jamie Raskin, D-Md., were additionally reached out to by Fox News Digital. 

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas raised a question Thursday that goes to the heart of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s charges against former President Donald Trump.

The high court was considering Trump’s argument that he is immune from prosecution for actions he took while president, but another issue is whether Smith and the Office of Special Counsel have the authority to bring charges at all.

‘Did you, in this litigation, challenge the appointment of special counsel?’ Thomas asked Trump attorney John Sauer on Thursday during a nearly three-hour session at the Supreme Court.

Sauer replied that Trump’s attorneys had not raised that concern ‘directly’ in the current Supreme Court case — in which justices are considering Trump’s arguments that presidential immunity precludes the prosecution of charges that the former president illegally sought to overturn the 2020 election.

Sauer told Thomas that, ‘we totally agree with the analysis provided by Attorney General Meese [III] and Attorney General Mukasey.’ 

‘It points to a very important issue here because one of [the special counsel’s] arguments is, of course, that we should have this presumption of regularity. That runs into the reality that we have here an extraordinary prosecutorial power being exercised by someone who was never nominated by the president or confirmed by the Senate at any time. So we agree with that position. We hadn’t raised it yet in this case when this case went up on appeal,’ Sauer said.

In a 42-page amicus brief presented to the high court in March, Meese and Mukasey questioned whether ‘Jack Smith has lawful authority to undertake the ‘criminal prosecution” of Trump. Mukasey and Meese — both former U.S. attorneys general — said Smith and the Office of Special Counsel itself have no authority to prosecute, in part because he was never confirmed by the Senate to any position.

Federal prosecutions, ‘can be taken only by persons properly appointed as federal officers to properly created federal offices,’ Meese and Mukasey argued. ‘But neither Smith nor the position of special counsel under which he purportedly acts meets those criteria. He wields tremendous power, effectively answerable to no one, by design. And that is a serious problem for the rule of law — whatever one may think of former President Trump or the conduct on January 6, 2021, that Smith challenges in the underlying case.’

The crux of the problem, according to Meese, is that Smith was never confirmed by the Senate as a U.S. attorney, and no other statute allows the U.S. attorney general to name merely anyone as special counsel. Smith was acting U.S. attorney for a federal district in Tennessee in 2017, but he was never nominated to the position. He resigned from the private sector after then-President Trump nominated a different prosecutor as U.S. attorney for the middle district of Tennessee.

Meese and Mukasey argued that because the special counsel exercises broad authority to convene grand juries and make prosecutorial decisions, independent of the White House or the attorney general, he is far more powerful than any government officer who has not been confirmed by the Senate. 

Sauer and Trump’s other attorneys objected to the legitimacy of Smith’s appointment in the charges against Trump in the classified documents case, also brought by Smith, before a Florida federal court. 

In a March court filing in Florida, Trump’s attorneys claimed that the special counsel’s office argues in federal court that Smith is wholly independent of the White House and Garland — contradicting Trump’s arguments that the federal charges against him are politically motivated. But at the same time, the special counsel’s attorneys insist that Smith is subordinate to the attorney general, and therefore not subject to Senate confirmation under the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

‘There is significant tension between the Office’s assurances to that court that Smith is independent, and not prosecuting the Republican nominee for President at the direction of the Biden Administration, and the Office’s assurance here that Smith is not independent and is instead so thoroughly supervised and accountable to President Biden and Attorney General Garland that this Court should not be concerned about such tremendous power being exercised to alter the trajectory of the ongoing presidential election,’ Trump’s attorneys wrote in the filing.

The special counsel’s office, responding to Trump’s claims in the Florida case, argued that the attorney general ‘has the statutory authority to appoint a Special Prosecutor’ and that the Supreme Court even upheld that authority ‘in closely analogous circumstances nearly 50 years ago’ — in a 1974 case that challenged the prosecutor investigating the late President Richard Nixon. 

Meese and Mukasey wrote in their brief that the Nixon case was irrelevant because it ‘concerned the relationship between the President and DOJ as an institution, not between the President and any specific actor purportedly appointed by DOJ.’ 

The pair also said special counsel investigations are necessary and often lawful, but stated that ‘the Attorney General cannot appoint someone never confirmed by the Senate, as a substitute United States Attorney under the title ‘Special Counsel.’ Smith’s appointment was thus unlawful, as are all actions flowing from it, including his prosecution of former President Trump.’

Smith was a private citizen when Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed him as special counsel to investigate Trump in 2022. 

Other recent special counsels — including John Durham’s Trump-Russia probe; David Weiss of the Hunter Biden investigation; and Robert Hur, who investigated Biden’s mishandling of classified documents — were all confirmed by the Senate to various positions before being named as special counsels. 

The Florida court has yet to rule on Trump’s motion to dismiss the classified documents case due to claims that Smith was improperly appointed. 

The Supreme Court is expected to rule on Trump’s immunity arguments before its term ends in June.

President Biden faced a wave of criticism on Friday — from media outlets and commentators — for stretching the truth during a rare live interview with radio host Howard Stern.

During his interview with Stern, Biden spoke about an array of subjects, including a debate with former President Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 election and the time he ‘got arrested’ as a teenager at a Delaware desegregation protest.

Some of the claims made by the president during the hour-long interview, however, faced scrutiny from the national media and certain individuals in the political realm who have become accustomed to Biden’s habit of straying from the truth.

As he has done in the past, Biden recounted during his interview with Stern what his mother had supposedly told him about accepting then-Sen. Barack Obama’s invitation to serve as his running mate in the 2008 presidential election.

Biden recounted: ‘She said, ‘Remember when they were desegregating Lynnfield, the neighborhood … suburbia — and I told you — and there was a Black family moving in and there was — people were down there protesting; I told you not to go down there, and you went down, remember that? And you got arrested standing on the porch with a Black family? And they brought you back, the police?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, Mom, I remember that.’’

The New York Times, which took aim at President Biden on Thursday for ‘actively and effectively’ avoiding journalists’ questions during his first term in office, reported Friday that Biden ‘appeared to once again stretch the truth about being arrested at a Delaware desegregation protest as a teenager.’

‘There is no evidence that he was ever arrested at a civil-rights protest,’ the Times added.

CNN also piled on Biden’s claim, noting in a fact check that there is ‘no evidence Biden ever got arrested during a civil rights protest, as the Washington Post and PolitiFact found when they looked into this claim in 2022 – and Biden has at least twice told the story of his supposed presence at this particular Delaware protest without mentioning any arrest, instead claiming that the police merely took him home that day.’

Biden also faced criticism from CNN earlier this week after he ‘revived a debunked tale about his past — his fictional claim that he used to drive an 18-wheeler truck,’ during a campaign event in Florida this week.

Fact-checking the president’s claim, CNN wrote: ‘Biden has repeatedly embellished or invented biographical tidbits. In 2021, he claimed during a tour of a Mack Trucks facility: ‘I used to drive an 18-wheeler, man,’ then added, ‘I got to.’ At a separate 2021 event, he told college students studying truck technology, ‘I used to drive a tractor-trailer,’ adding, ‘I only did it for part of a summer, but I got my license anyway.”

‘Biden’s claim remains untrue. There is no evidence he ever drove an 18-wheeler,’ the outlet added of his Tuesday remarks.

Biden also faced backlash for embellishing the truth from individuals on social media, including Greg Price, a popular conservative X user and the communications director for the State Freedom Caucus Network.

Price noted a number of questionable remarks made by Biden during his interview with Stern that he believes are ‘lies,’ including a tale he told about saving ‘half a dozen’ lives during his past tenure as a lifeguard and the arrest he suffered amid civil rights protests when he was a teenager.

Another suspected ‘lie’ was Biden’s claim that he was ‘runner-up in state scoring’ in football during his high school years.

Price’s post on social media also referenced a claim made by Biden about receiving ‘salacious pictures’ from women in the 1970s during his time as a senator, which he gave to the Secret Service.

‘I got put in that ten most eligible bachelors list … and a lot of lovely women… would send very salacious pictures, and I’d just give them to the Secret Service. I thought somebody would think I was —,’ Biden told Stern before shifting topics.

It’s unclear how the Secret Service would have been involved. Senators do not receive Secret Service protection, and Biden didn’t receive Secret Service protection until 2008, when he was elected vice president.

Others also took aim at the president for his remarks on Stern’s show.

‘Another day, another Biden lie … at least no one got eaten by cannibals in this one,’ conservative commentator Rita Panahi wrote in a post on X.

Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro, co-host of ‘The Five,’ also weighed in on Biden’s ‘lies,’ questioning Friday how Biden can debate if ‘he can’t even keep his lies straight.’

Earlier this month, during a visit to a war memorial near his hometown in Pennsylvania, Biden faced criticism for appearing to imply that his uncle was eaten by cannibals after his plane was shot down during World War II.

‘He flew single-engine planes, reconnaissance flights over New Guinea. He had volunteered because someone couldn’t make it. He got shot down in an area where there were a lot of cannibals in New Guinea at the time,’ Biden said at the time. ‘They never recovered his body.’

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre later acknowledged that Biden’s maternal uncle, Ambrose Finnegan, whom he refers to as ‘Uncle Bosie,’ did die in WWII when his plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean, but confirmed he was not eaten by cannibals, as Biden seemed to suggest on two separate occasions during his visit to the state.

Former President Donald Trump is speaking out aggressively against independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who he claims is a Democratic Party ‘plant.’

Trump made the accusations on Friday night via his proprietary social media platform, Truth Social.

‘RFK Jr. is a Democrat ‘Plant,’ a Radical Left Liberal who’s been put in place in order to help Crooked Joe Biden, the Worst President in the History of the United States, get Re-Elected,’ Trump wrote.

He continued, ‘A Vote for Junior’ would essentially be a WASTED PROTEST VOTE, that could swing either way, but would only swing against the Democrats if Republicans knew the true story about him.’

Trump hammered Kennedy on his record regarding Second Amendment rights, border security, and more in the rant.

‘Junior’ is totally Anti-Gun, an Extreme Environmentalist who makes the Green New Scammers look Conservative, a Big Time Taxer and Open Border Advocate, and Anti-Military/Vet[.]’

Democratic leaders have expressed parallel concerns that RFK Jr’s campaign may siphon voters from their own camp, making the independent candidate unpopular with both parties’ establishment.

Half a dozen Kennedy family members appeared alongside President Biden at an event in Philadelphia to publicly back him over Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is driving Democrats to panic that his independent White House bid could lead to a victory for former President Donald Trump.

‘President Biden has been a champion for all the rights and freedoms that my father and uncles stood for,’ RFK Jr’s sister, Kerry Kennedy, said during the event, referencing the late former President John F. Kennedy, the late former U.S. Attorney General and New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and the late former Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Last month, the Democratic National Committee launched an effort to silence the threat to Biden’s re-election from third-party candidates, namely Kennedy, in the form of a team that is expected to actively combat them with legal challenges and opposition research.

Since its inception, members of the team post near constant criticism of RFK Jr. on social media, and have frequently referred to him as a ‘spoiler’ candidate. They have also claimed Kennedy is in cahoots with Trump in order to help him win.

Fox News Digital’s Paul Steinhauser and Brandon Gillespie contributed to this report.

When word first broke that Joe Biden would be sitting down with Howard Stern for a live interview Friday on his SiriusXM show, it was an absolute guarantee that it would be an embarrassing T-Ball session without anything resembling a challenging question nor anything relating to the major issues that have Biden polling lower than any president since Jimmy Carter. 

And on that front, Stern delivered and then some. 

In what can only be described as the best PR any person in power could possibly ask for, the host went out of his way to repeatedly praise Biden for things like ‘getting the vaccine out’ after COVID hit (that was Trump). Stern also claimed that Biden has ‘cut emissions in half’ (no, he hasn’t). The former shock jock-turned-Democratic activist also falsely accused Republicans of being ‘pro-Putin’ simply because some wanted U.S. border funding to accompany Ukraine aid. And when Biden (again) claimed he was arrested standing alongside a Black family on their porch when he was a youth, a claim that had been thoroughly debunked, Stern stayed silent. 

But that doesn’t mean there weren’t several laugh-out-loud moments, albeit of the unintentional variety: Just take the time about halfway through the hour-long interview when Biden claimed that women used to send him ‘very salacious pictures’ after he was elected to the Senate back in the 1970s. The president claimed he gave the photos to the Secret Service. Any host of a community access station knows that senators don’t have Secret Service protection, and it’s very difficult to believe Biden, a freshman Delaware senator, was some kind of sex symbol. Anyway, that part of the interview was absolutely hilarious, as was Biden’s claim he was once the David Hasselhoff of the Elvis era when he says he saved SIX lives while lifeguarding at his local community pool. 

And what would a Joe Biden interview be without sharing the amount of miles he had flown with another person? Usually in these situations, Biden trots out the line that he had flown more than 17,000 miles with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Numerous fact-checks refute this claim. So instead, for the Stern interview, Biden upped the ante when reminiscing about John McCain during the late Arizona senator’s time as a senate aide. 

‘We flew 100,000 miles together,’ Biden claimed. 

To achieve that kind of distance, Biden and McCain would have had to fly around the world more than four times together. 

The only newsworthy item to come out of the interview was Biden saying he would debate Trump at some point. Until this point, neither the White House nor the president would confirm that intention.

At another point, Biden promised he would have the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade 2022 ruling, the one that sent the abortion issue back to the states, overruled if re-elected. Biden made the same pledge at the State of the Union in March by stating that if he were given a Democrat-controlled Congress, he would sign a bill making abortion legal again in all 50 states. 

My column that predicted how this interview would go almost came precisely to fruition. I wrote that Stern would focus on how horrible he believes Trump is (he did) while bringing up abortion as the only major domestic issue that would be broached during the conversation (also correct on that front). I also predicted the border crisis would be ignored (it was), as would violent crime in major cities (it was) and nothing would be mentioned about the economy by Stern (who only talked about low unemployment but didn’t touch inflation). 

Overall, both men got exactly what they wanted: Stern proved he can kiss butt on a Colbert/Kimmel/Meyers-like level while impressing his A-list celebrity friends in the Hamptons, while Biden came across as a sympathetic figure who loves his family. 

Expect more interviews like this from Biden as we head to Election Day. 

But don’t expect a solo press conference where real questions and follow-up questions would be asked by journalists who still care about holding the powerful accountable. 

Hand-picked lackeys like the once-great Howard Stern are the only people who will be getting access to this president, and that’s a true shame. 

The Biden administration abruptly announced Friday that it will delay regulations banning menthol cigarettes amid widespread opposition to the proposal.

In a statement, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra said his agency would not move to finalize the regulations and pointed to opposition from civil rights activists. Since they were first proposed by the HHS’ Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the regulations have sparked a contentious debate between health advocates and civil liberties and business groups.

‘This rule has garnered historic attention and the public comment period has yielded an immense amount of feedback, including from various elements of the civil rights and criminal justice movement,’ Becerra said in a statement. ‘It’s clear that there are still more conversations to have, and that will take significantly more time.’

Initiated 2 years ago

The announcement comes exactly two years after FDA initially proposed the regulations, paving the way for an historic ban on menthol cigarettes that the administration said would be a ‘critical’ piece of President Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative. FDA also argued at the time that the ban would broadly ‘reduce the appeal of cigarettes’ and have substantial health impacts.

FDA ultimately handed the regulations off to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for final approval months ago after a lengthy public comment period. However, officials dragged their feet in moving forward with the regulations and missed multiple self-imposed deadlines to finalize them, igniting concerns among health advocates that the administration may change course.

‘Unfortunately, the possibility of this administration making these rules a reality is shrinking with the passage of time, and ACS CAN is calling on the administration to not miss the opportunity to make a historic gain in the fight against cancer,’ American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network CEO Karen Knudsen said in a statement on Friday ahead of Becerra’s announcement.

‘Top priority’

OMB declined to comment and referred Fox News Digital back to Becerra’s statement. 

And an FDA spokesperson said the agency remains committed to issuing tobacco product standards for menthol in cigarettes and characterizing flavors in cigars.

‘As we’ve made clear, these product standards remain at the top of our priorities,’ the spokesperson said.

During the public comment period, associations representing convenience stores, police, consumers and minority groups warned the administration that a ban on menthol cigarettes could foster an illicit market for the product, while punishing small business owners and minorities who are the largest consumers of the product.

Groups representing minorities, like the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement and the nonprofit National Action Network — the latter of which was founded by civil rights leader the Rev. Al Sharpton — argued that banning menthol cigarettes while not restricting non-menthol cigarettes ‘puts a microscope on minority communities.’ 

White House meetings

The National Organization of Black Law Enforcement, National Action Network, National Newspaper Publishers Association and civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump met with Becerra, FDA Commissioner Robert Califf and White House domestic policy adviser Neera Tanden to discuss the proposal in November, according to White House records.

The White House also convened meetings with other stakeholders, including the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, the American Lung Association, and the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS). 

‘The USHBC applauds President Biden for his leadership in delaying the menthol ban, recognizing the unintended consequences it would have had on convenience store sales nationwide and the livelihoods of over 600,000 workers,’ Javier Palomarez, the president and CEO of the U.S. Hispanic Business Council, told Fox News Digital in a statement.

‘Implementing a ban would have not only been ineffective but would also risk disproportionately criminalizing people of color, the very communities where menthol cigarettes are consumed,’ Palomarez added. ‘We are delighted that the President has heard our concerns and we offer ourselves up as a resource to develop a comprehensive approach to public health.’

Dollars and cents

According to NACS, the rule would have led to a reduction of $72,285 a year in non-tobacco sundry sales and $160,107 a year in tobacco product sales for the typical convenience store nationwide. The organization projected that the convenience store industry could have collectively lost $2.16 billion in sales as a result of the regulations. 

In addition, government watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) said the administration’s actions Friday confirmed its concerns it expressed last week when it sued HHS for withholding documents related to the regulations.

‘This announcement appears to confirm the basis for our lawsuit a few weeks ago on the proposed menthol cigarette ban. Public health authorities following the polling rather than the science is not a good look. It’s also a major reason why trust in our public health officials is at an all-time low,’ PPT Director Michael Chamberlain said. ‘This only heightens the need for transparency into what’s really driving decisions at the FDA.’