The Senate voted to proceed to debate on a bill to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) on Thursday, clearing an important procedural hurdle before the previous version expires on Friday. 

A cloture motion to begin voting on the bill passed by a vote of 67-32, with senators of both parties supporting and opposing it. The chamber was able to avoid a potential filibuster by breaking the necessary 60-vote threshold. 

‘We obviously don’t have a lot of time left before FISA authorities expire. In fact, less than two days,’ Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the floor ahead of the vote to begin debate. 

The renewal has the support of both Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. The Kentucky Republican warned his Senate colleagues against pushing for an amendment to require warrants, as Republicans in the House did unsuccessfully. 

‘Misguided efforts to require a criminal-law warrant to sort and organize those data on U.S. persons would end the ability of the FBI to keep America and Americans safe,’ McConnell said earlier this week. 

‘Frankly, they would forget the lessons of 9/11,’ he claimed. ‘So I’ll oppose any such efforts and urge my colleagues to do the same.’

He noted that senators should expect votes on Friday if FISA is not reauthorized on Thursday. 

Some of the prominent senators voicing their opposition to the FISA bill are Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Rand Paul, R-Ky. Lee has made his objections to the lack of a provision requiring a warrant known. ‘The documented abuses under FISA should provoke outrage from anyone who values the Fourth Amendment Rights of American citizens,’ he said in a March statement while introducing a bipartisan bill to amend FISA. 

Paul has further claimed the bill allows ‘spying on Americans through FISA, the way they spied on Trump.’

On the other side, Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., also came out against the renewal. ‘I do not support reauthorizing FISA Section 702 in its current form and call on the Senate to take action to stop warrantless searches by the government and law enforcement agencies to protect Montanans’ freedom and privacy,’ he said in a statement. 

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., claimed the measure would ‘dramatically’ expand the powers given to the government under FISA. 

‘The government can force you to help it spy,’ he said in a statement. ‘That means anyone with access to a server, a wire, a cable box, a Wi-Fi router, a phone, or a computer.’ 

However, a much larger bipartisan coalition have underscored why they think renewing FISA is so important. ‘In this dangerous climate, it is clear that shutting down FISA would be the biggest national security mistake in the history of America,’ Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said in a statement last week.

FBI Director Christopher Wray also recently pleaded with Congress to reauthorize the security tool, telling a House committee that ‘failing to reauthorize 702 or gutting it with some kind of warrant requirement would be dangerous and put American lives at risk.’ 

While many push for a quick renewal, several senators have expressed their desire to see changes to the legislation, putting passage before the Friday deadline in doubt.

Members of the iconic Kennedy family, a longtime staple in American politics, announced a major endorsement in the 2024 presidential race on Thursday — a move that came as a snub to one of their own seeking the White House.

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.

Kerry Kennedy went on to praise what she described as Biden’s accomplishments during his first term, and claimed that Americans’ quality of life had improved under his presidency. She then blasted Trump, claiming he would be a ‘dictator’ if elected.

She then introduced Biden despite reports that former Rep. Joe Kennedy III, D-Mass., who ran a failed campaign for U.S. Senate in 2020, and currently serves as Biden’s special envoy to Northern Ireland, was expected to make the introduction. He did not appear on the stage alongside his family members.

Reports also said the family members were expected to put in some work on behalf of the Biden campaign in Pennsylvania, a major swing state, following the event, including making calls and knocking on doors.

When reached for comment, Kennedy’s campaign pointed Fox News Digital to a statement the candidate made on social media just ahead of the event.

‘I hear some of my family will be endorsing President Biden today. I am pleased they are politically active — it’s a family tradition. We are divided in our opinions but united in our love for each other,’ RFK, Jr. wrote. ‘I hold this as a possibility for America too. Can we disagree without hating our opponents? Can we restore civility and respect to public discourse? I think we can.’ 

‘My campaign, which many of my family members are working on and supportive of, is about healing America — healing our economy, our chronic disease crisis, our middle class, our environment, and our standing in the world as a peaceful nation. But this will only happen if we heal our national conversation, and move from rage and fear into love and respect,’ he added.

The announcement marks the latest and most forceful rebuke of RFK, Jr. by members of his family after they described his candidacy as ‘perilous for our country’ last October following his decision to run as an independent instead of a Democrat.

They’ve also been critics of his past comments concerning the COVID-19 pandemic, which he once suggested was engineered to target certain ethical groups.

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.

Earlier this month, the DNC accused RFK, Jr’s campaign of acknowledging its role as a ‘spoiler’ after a woman associated with the campaign was captured on video discussing campaign strategy and how Trump could win the state of New York with the independent candidate on the ballot in November.

‘The only way that Trump can even, remote possibility of taking New York is if Bobby is on the ballot,’ a self identified Kennedy campaign staffer, told a room of Republicans in New York in a video reviewed by Fox News Digital.

‘If it’s Trump vs. Biden, Biden wins. Biden wins six days, seven days a week. With Bobby in the mix, anything can happen.’

Fox News’ Andrew Mark Miller contributed to this report.

A new well publicized poll from Harvard University is the latest to indicate rising support for former President Trump among the nation’s youngest voters, who traditionally are a key part of the Democratic Party’s base.

President Biden leads his Republican challenger 45%-37% among people ages 18 to 29 in a Harvard Youth Poll released early Thursday by the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics. Sixteen percent of those questioned were undecided.

However, Biden’s 8-point advantage over the former president is much smaller than his 23-point lead over Trump at the same point four years ago in the 2020 election cycle.

The president’s lead over Trump widens to 50%-37% among registered voters under age 30, and to 56%-37% among those likely to cast a ballot in the November election. 

However, even Biden’s 19-point margin among likely voters under age 30 is much smaller than his 30-point lead over Trump four years ago.

Additionally, the poll indicates that the president’s 19-point lead over Trump among likely voters shrinks to 13-points when third party and independent candidates are added to the mix.

According to the survey, Biden stands at 43%, Trump 30%, Democrat turned independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at 8%, Green Party candidate Jill Stein at 4% and independent Cornel West at 2%.

The poll suggests Trump’s made major gains among young male voters.

‘Democrats have lost significant ground with young men,’ the poll’s release highlighted.

The president leads among women by 33 points in the poll, but his advantage among men is just six points. While Biden’s lead among women is nearly identical to four years ago, his advantage among men has plummeted 20 points from this point in the 2020 election cycle.

‘The gap between young men’s and young women’s political preferences is pronounced,’ polling director for the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics John Della Volpe emphasized.

He also cautioned to ‘make no mistake, this is a different youth electorate than we saw in 2020 and 2022.’

The poll also indicated that younger voters supporting Trump are much more enthusiastic about the former president than Biden voters are about the current president. More than three-quarters of those backing Trump said they were enthusiastic about their support, compared to just 44% of Biden backers who said the same thing.

The poll is the latest to indicate an erosion in support for Biden among younger voters. Also alarming for the president is his approval rating among those under 30, standing at just 31% in the new survey.

The Harvard Youth poll of 2,010 Americans ages 18-29 was conducted March 14-21, with an overall sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

More than a dozen House Democrats voted against a resolution condemning Iran’s airstrikes on Israel Thursday.

The resolution, which also affirms U.S. support for Israel responding to the attack however it deems necessary, overwhelmingly passed 404 to 14. Just one House Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., voted against the bill. 

Fox News Digital reached out to Massie for comment.

Massie was joined by 13 Democrats, including ‘Squad’ member Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.; Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.; Cori Bush, D-Mo.; Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.; Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y.; and Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass. Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., was also among those opposing the bill.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., the No. 3 House GOP leader, tore into the Democrats who voted against condemning Iran in a statement to Fox News Digital after the vote. 

‘House Democrats’ hatred for Israel runs so deep they would rather defend terrorists than support our strongest ally in the Middle East. Vote after vote, the Democrat Party continues to cement their position as the pro-terrorist party,’ Emmer said.

Iran fired a barrage of rockets at Israel over the weekend, 99% of which were intercepted, in retaliation for an Israeli attack on an Iranian diplomatic facility in Syria. It was a marked escalation of tensions in the region as the first attack on Israel directly from Iranian soil.

The 13 progressives who voted against the measure are among a growing faction of the Democratic Party who are critical of the U.S.’s strong ties to Israel, particularly in the wake of Israel’s invasion of Gaza. 

Israel’s war on Hamas began after militants from the pro-Palestinian terror group invaded southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 and killed more than 1,000 people. The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between fighters and civilians, has said over 30,000 Palestinians have died in the months since.

House Republicans have seized on the Democratic divides over Israel, distancing themselves from that fight by standing firm with the long-standing relationship. In response to the Iran attack, House GOP leadership lined up 17 bills for a vote this week affirming U.S. support for Israel and against Iran.

Ocasio-Cortez criticized that effort earlier this week in a statement, saying ‘Following last weekend’s unprecedented response by Iran to Israel’s attack on its consulate, the Republican Majority is explicitly leveraging a series of bills to further escalate tensions in the Middle East.’

‘This is a blatant attempt to distract from their own incompetence. The country and the world need real leadership from the House of Representatives in this moment, not resolutions designed purposefully to increase the likelihood of a deadly regional war or worse. I will oppose any cynical effort to further inflame tensions, destroy a path to peace in the region, and further divide the American people,’ she said.

A meeting to advance Speaker Mike Johnson’s latest border security bill abruptly ended on Wednesday night without a vote on whether the measure will hit the House floor.

‘Sorry, not sorry, for opposing a cr—y rule that is a show vote / cover vote for funding Ukraine instead of border security,’ Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, wrote on X after the meeting imploded.

He’s one of three Republican foreign aid hawks on the House Rules Committee, which is the final barrier before a piece of legislation hits the House floor.

It comes as conservative rebels in the House GOP conference criticize the speaker’s decision not to link border security measures to his $95 billion foreign aid plan. 

Johnson told lawmakers on Wednesday that the House would consider separate foreign aid bills on Ukraine, Israel, the Indo-Pacific and a fourth bill including various foreign policy provisions. If passed, they would be sent to the Senate in a combined package.

To appease Republicans concerned about not using it as an opportunity to crack down on the border crisis, he also unveiled a separate bill similar to H.R.2, the comprehensive immigration and border enforcement bill House Republicans passed last year but which the Democrat-controlled Senate refused to take up. He said that bill would go through procedural hurdles parallel to the foreign aid bills, rather than alongside them.

In a remarkable moment toward the end of the meeting, Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., the top Democrat on the committee, acknowledged that the bill has no support from Democrats and likely no future in Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s Senate. He also pointed out that the three conservative rebels on the panel would likely vote against the bill as well – meaning it would not even survive their committee.

‘We’ve been here. We’ve done this already. We know what the Senate is going to do. And my three colleagues, who I know have been expressing some discontent about what’s going on here, I mean, maybe we can end this hearing. I mean, I think if the three of you vote ‘no’ on this rule, we’re done,’ McGovern said.

He pointed out that Roy called it a ‘watered-down, dangerous cover vote’ and asked him, along with Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Ralph Norman, R-S.C., if they planned to vote in favor of advancing the bill. 

Massie and Roy would not say, with Roy adding, ‘I think I’m pretty well publicly not in favor of what’s going here.’ Norman said he would oppose the bill.

The hearing soon recessed without a conclusion.

Foreign aid and aid to Ukraine, specifically, have proven to be politically fraught topics for Johnson as he navigates a historically slim House majority and new threats from fellow Republicans to trigger a vote on his ouster.

Johnson has argued that tying U.S. border measures to foreign aid, especially Ukraine, would kill its chances of passing .’We want the border to be part of every single thing we do here,’ he told reporters on Thursday morning, adding, ‘We don’t have the votes. If you put Ukraine in any package, you can’t also do the border because I lose Republican votes on that rule. My friends don’t get it.’

He was initially aiming for a Saturday vote on the foreign aid bills as well as the measure on border security. It’s not clear how the Wednesday evening chaos will affect that schedule.

Fox News’ Chad Pergram contributed to this report

As of this writing Israel has not responded to Iran’s massive attack against it Saturday night. British Foreign Secretary David Cameron relayed, after meeting with Israeli officials on Wednesday that it was ‘clear the Israelis are making a decision to act.’

‘We hope they do so in a way that does as little to escalate this as possible,’ Cameron added in his best impersonation of Lord Halifax in 1938, and that Israel is ‘smart as well as tough.’

Rear Admiral (USN, Ret.) Mark Montgomery reviewed with me on Wednesday morning all the ways the Jewish State could strike directly at Iran They are many and varied. Israel possesses ballistic missiles just as Iran does. It has a fleet of F-35 fighter planes which are not only stealth aircraft but may also be able to reach the known nuclear facilities and which may possibly be fitted to carry payloads robust enough to damage significantly those nuclear facilities. (Admiral Montgomery added that it is widely believed that Israel also possesses submarines with the capability to launch cruise missiles.)

The target list is long, from those nuclear sites both known to the public and those only known to intelligence agencies and to every system that could be crippled by Israel’s robust cyber warfare capacities. There are the headquarters and barracks of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, and of course oil refineries and power grid facilities. Montgomery’s 30 minute Q-and-A explains that what Israel strikes depends entirely on what goal it wants to achieve. There are different sorts of deterrence the long-time grand strategist opined. We don’t yet know which if any Prime Minister Netanyahu and his colleagues have settled on, or if they have settled on any at all. The weather and the phase of the moon, Montgomery added, are more variables to figure into this incredibly complex calculation.

Very few media professionals have any serious idea what even is possible or what Iran might do in response. The leaks and counter-leaks to the media in Israel and the United States have created the proverbial ‘wilderness of mirrors.’ For a civilian, much less anyone not in the Israeli War Cabinet meetings, to predict anything is absurd.

But long time observers of the undeclared (until Saturday) Israel-Iran War can say with some certainty that it hard to imagine any circumstance in which Israel would strike directly at the nuclear program if not now. Certainly not after Iran achieves nuclear weapon ‘break out.’

The mullahs escalated Saturday night to a massive direct attack on Israel. They intended savage harm. Some of the attack was directed at Israel’s nuclear site at Dimona. Some asset at the Knesset was targeted too. The comprehensive defense of the Jewish State mounted by it and its allies frustrated every projectile, and prevented terrible destruction and casualties but if Iran had developed a nuke, would they have used it? Can Israel ever tolerate even the near approach to ‘break out’ after Iran dashed all the illusions of the ‘Iran just wants to be acknowledged as a leader in the region’ crowd?

Iran is a theocracy led by fanatics. That it did not unleash Hezbollah’s 150,000 rockets and missiles on Israel could mean that Iran wanted the message to be clear that the state actor with the upper hand when it came to escalation was in fact Iran, and it was confident of its superiority to Israel if escalation occurred. Alternatively Iran could have acted as it did to prevent the ground invasion of Lebanon for which Israel has been preparing for the six months since 10/7. It is hard to ‘think like a religious fanatic.’ We don’t know. And no American safe within our country can fully judge what Israel’s leaders must weigh in their deliberations and do so with their country’s long term interests in mind.

The ‘clarity window’ for the West is, however, wide open right now. Israel has absolute justice on its side —now and for a few more days or perhaps a couple of weeks (at best) because the world moves on quickly and forgets even faster. Once ‘stability’ returns the pressure on Israel to de-escalate will grow and grow by actors who just want to get ‘back to normal,’ as though that is actually possible.

If Israel does not strike back now, it seems very likely it won’t strike back until it is either too late to do so or at least do so confident that a large portion of its friends in the West will applaud and, if not applaud, at least grudgingly acknowledge that it was obliged to do so.

The other new factor: The faith in the ability of high-tech intelligence capabilities to warn Israel of deadly attacks and thus to allow it to preempt those attacks is gone after the surprise of 10/7. Yes, warning was given this past weekend. Will it be the next time? Could Iran achieve strategic surprise in the way Hamas achieved tactical surprise on 10/7?

What is clear beyond any doubt that an Israel that does not respond soon with a devastating counter-strike is an Israel that will have forfeited deterrence against attacks of at least equal intensity. At a moment when the United States and the United Kingdom are both led by very weak governments beset by electoral considerations, Israel has to decide for itself: Will it be cowed?

If so, it is hard to imagine circumstances when the Israel of 10/6 can be regained.

Hugh Hewitt is one of the country’s leading journalists of the center-right. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996, where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990, and it is today syndicated to hundreds of stations and outlets across the country every Monday through Friday morning. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and this column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio show today.

Another day, another newsroom in turmoil.

And it features a familiar cast of characters: Senior executives who say they are upholding old-fashioned standards of fairness, and younger, woke rebels who want only their point of view – the liberal point of view – represented.

The balance of power has shifted in recent years. Managers at major media companies are so concerned with the anger of their rebels and the denunciations on social media that they frequently cave.

The subject of the latest eruption, and not for the first time, is the New York Times.

And the information comes to us from the Wall Street Journal, which has this tantalizing lead:

‘The New York Times is investigating itself.’

Turns out there was a potentially damaging leak, and a top Times editor, Charlotte Behrendt, has interviewed nearly 20 staffers to find out whodunit.

The subject is coverage of the war between Israel and Hamas.

It’s no secret that many younger liberals blame Israel for the war, even though it was launched by Hamas terrorists in the unspeakably brutal massacre launched on Oct. 7. Some Times employees questioned the reporting behind a story saying Hamas weaponized sexual violence during these attacks, the Journal says, and complained that the suffering of Gaza residents isn’t getting the same attention.

To his credit, Times Executive Editor Joe Kahn, the lowest-profile person to run the paper in decades, speaks on the record.

‘The idea that someone dips into that process in the middle, and finds something that they considered might be interesting or damaging to the story under way, and then provides that to people outside, felt to me and my colleagues like a breakdown in the sort of trust and collaboration that’s necessary in the editorial process,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen that happen before.’  

Kahn also nails this point: that digital workers weren’t trained in independent journalism and haven’t learned tolerance on college campuses.

‘Young adults who are coming up through the education system are less accustomed to this sort of open debate, this sort of robust exchange of views around issues they feel strongly about than may have been the case in the past,’ says Kahn.

The leak of the internal debate, to the liberal site Intercept, has sparked a backlash. Reporter Stacy Cowley, a union official who sat in on some interviews, accused the company of going after those who feel their concerns about Gaza have been ignored.

‘Instead of taking them seriously, the company is turning around and bullying that group into silence,’ Cowley says. A union grievance says the company was targeting a group of staffers of Arab and Middle Eastern descent, which the Times denies. 

Way down in the story is this CYA sentence: 

‘War coverage has also fueled tensions at the Wall Street Journal, with some reporters in meetings and internal chat groups complaining that coverage is skewed – either favoring Israel or Palestinians.’ Just in case anyone was wondering.  

A similar explosion just occurred at NPR, where award-winning senior business editor Uri Berliner resigned under pressure yesterday. He had been suspended for five days without pay for publishing a piece (without permission) in the Free Press about how the radio network has moved from merely left-leaning to blatant liberal activism, triggered by the election of Donald Trump.

Berliner, no fan of Trump, cited example after example of NPR being anti-Israel, having a pro-transgender agenda, and blowing off the Hunter Biden laptop story on grounds that it wasn’t really a story. He pointed to the hiring of CEO Katherine Maher, a former Biden campaign worker whose past tweets show a history of far-left activism and intolerance. (She says she was a private citizen then.)

‘I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR I cite in my Free Press essay,’ tweeted Berliner, who says he repeatedly complained to management to no avail.

That the Times is again being torn apart, this time over the Mideast war, just brings us full circle. It now seems that many liberal newsrooms are running the show, in practice if not on paper.

A former National Security Council member and U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, who admitted to secretly acting as an agent for the government of the Republic of Cuba, blames the radical politics pushed on him during his formative college years for turning on his country.

A federal judge sentenced 73-year-old Victor Manuel Rocha of Miami to 15 years in prison last week for working against the U.S. government for decades for communist Cuba in ‘clandestine intelligence-gathering missions.’

Before the judge handed down the sentence, Rocha issued a statement on his guilty plea, which was shared by Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla., on X.

‘I am a 73-year-old man. During my formative years in college, I was heavily influenced by the radical politics of the day,’ Rocha said. ‘My deep commitment at that time to radical social change in the region led me to the eventual betrayal of my oath of loyalty to the United States during my two decades in the State Department.’

Rocha graduated from Yale University in 1973 before going on to earn his master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University in 1976, then a master’s degree in international relations from Georgetown University in 1978, according to the State Department’s website archives.

Fox News Digital reached out to Yale for a comment regarding Rocha’s statement. The university declined to comment.

Rocha was a former U.S. Department of State employee who served on the National Security Council from 1994 to 1995, and as U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia from 2000 to 2002.

According to a criminal complaint from the DOJ, Rocha used his employment in the State Department between 1981 and 2002 to obtain classified information and affect U.S. foreign policy.

Following his employment at the State Department, Rocha transferred in 2006 as an advisor to the Commander of the U.S. Southern Command, a joint command of the U.S. military whose area of responsibility includes Cuba.

The DOJ said that Rocha provided false and misleading information to the U.S. to maintain his secret status, traveled outside the U.S. to meet with Cuban intelligence operatives and made false and misleading statements to obtain travel documents.

After serving the foreign service, he settled in Miami as a businessman in the private sector.

‘Today, I no longer see the world through the radical eyes of my youth,’ Rocha said in his statement. ‘I left the Government 22 years ago, moved to this great city, and dedicated the rest of my life to my family and the education of my children. My long and successful transition to the private sector culminated in my becoming a top international executive in the mining sector for well over a decade.

‘The latter, however, cannot erase the damage done during my earlier career working for the Government,’ he added.

Rocha told the judge he takes full responsibility for his actions and accepts the penalty he has to pay.

‘Importantly, I am making, and will continue to make as required, significant amends through my unconditional collaboration to those I have betrayed,’ the former ambassador said. ‘I know that my actions have caused great pain to my family, former colleagues, and the closest of friends. I ask them all for their understanding and their forgiveness.’

The judge accepted Rocha’s guilty plea to counts 1 and 2 of the indictment, which charged him with conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government and conspiring to defraud the U.S. and acting as an agent of a foreign government without notice as required by law.

He was then sentenced to the statutory maximum penalty of 15 years in prison, a $500,000 fine, three years of supervised release and a special assessment. 

‘Convicted spy Victor Manuel Rocha worked as a spy for Communist #Cuba, while he served as a United States Ambassador,’ Gimenez said in a post on X in which he shared Rocha’s statement. ‘He is a traitor to our nation [and] must face the MAXIMUM sentence. No one believes his bogus Statement of Allocution!’

Under the terms of the parties’ plea agreement, Rocha must cooperate with the U.S., including assisting with any damage assessment related to his work on behalf of the Republic of Cuba. Rocha must relinquish all future retirement benefits, including pension payments, owed to him by the U.S. based upon his former State Department employment. 

He must also assign to the U.S. any profits that he may be entitled to receive in connection with any publication relating to his criminal conduct or his U.S. government service.

Fox News Digital’s Sarah Rumpf-Whitten, Danielle Wallace and Stepheny Price contributed to this report.

A nonprofit legal organization filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration on Wednesday, alleging it has deleted federal employees’ emails in violation of existing statute.

In a sweeping complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the America First Legal Foundation (AFL), the group headed by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, accused the Department of Health and Human Services of regularly deleting official emails and violating the Federal Records Act. The group also named the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which is tasked with overseeing the unlawful destruction of federal records, as a defendant. 

‘If the National Archives decides not to use the legal authorities it has regarding federal records, it certainly shouldn’t make up legal authority that it doesn’t have when it comes to presidential records,’ America First Legal Vice President Dan Epstein said in an interview.

‘We expect our government to act in a transparent and accountable way and exercise equanimity when it decides to investigate certain allegations. We clearly haven’t seen that in this case.’

According to Epstein, the lawsuit will have deep ramifications in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s ongoing case against former President Donald Trump. 

Smith is prosecuting Trump in connection to the former president’s handling of classified documents and other presidential records after leaving the White House in early 2021. In June 2023, the Department of Justice unsealed a federal indictment accusing Trump of 37 felony counts in connection with obstruction of justice and mishandling government records.

Epstein, though, argued that Trump is being held to a different standard than federal employees who regularly delete emails and records without any repercussions. He said potentially tens of thousands of records are deleted every year without authority.

The AFL’s case is tied to a February 2023 records request the group filed under the Freedom of Information Act with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The group particularly requested records related to the CDC’s support for ‘teacher-led indoctrination of children with radical gender ideology.’

However, shortly thereafter, a CDC officer told the AFL in an email that the agency, which is housed at HHS, deletes most employee files 30 days after said employee departs the agency.

‘That is correct,’ the officer said in an email to the AFL. ‘Unless they were a capstone director/manager etc., it is my understanding all other employees’ emails are deleted 30 days after they leave the agency.’

When the matter was brought to NARA, the AFL said the agency determined that, because the ‘CDC instructs individual email account holders to apply retention based on the email’s content value and its applicability to a NARA-approved records schedule,’ the matter was considered closed.

‘In effect, it appears that NARA entrusts individual CDC employees to decide which emails can be automatically deleted,’ the group said in a statement.

Federal law states that government agencies must ‘make and preserve records containing adequate and proper documentation of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and essential transactions of the agency and designed to furnish the information necessary to protect the legal and financial rights of the Government and of persons directly affected by the agency’s activities.’

The AFL argued that NARA’s conclusion is ‘patently inconsistent with the law.’

‘You have maybe tens of thousands of government records every year that are destroyed without authority,’ Epstein told Fox News Digital. ‘But when it comes to Donald Trump, he gets prosecuted. Everyone else who doesn’t have to stand for election gets a free pass.’

HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and Archivist of the United States Colleen Shogan were also named in the group’s lawsuit filed Wednesday.

Fox News Digital reached out to HHS and NARA for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

Western powers are urging the Israeli government to show restraint in its expected response to the Iranian missile strikes last week.

Officials from Germany, the United Kingdom and elsewhere have asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration not to escalate the situation into an active conflict — but those same officials say Israel is not listening to outside input.

‘It’s right to have made our views clear about what should happen next, but it’s clear the Israelis are making a decision to act,’ British Foreign Secretary David Cameron, a former prime minister, reported after a Wednesday trip to the Jewish nation. 

He added, ‘We hope they do so in a way that does as little to escalate this as possible.’

Iran launched hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel on Saturday in response to an apparent strike on Iran’s embassy compound in Syria on April 1 that killed 12 people, including two Iranian generals. 

The Iranian government blames Israel for the attack, although Israel has not claimed any involvement.

‘The region must not step-by-step slide into a situation with a totally unpredictable outcome,’ said German Minister of Foreign Affairs Annalena Baerbock after the same Wednesday trip to Israel. ‘Everyone must now act prudently and responsibly.’

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has vowed to completely destroy Israel should it proceed with even the ‘tiniest invasion’ of its country. 

Raisi spoke Wednesday at an annual army parade, warning Israel of a ‘massive and harsh’ response, as the country braces for potential Israeli retaliation after Iran’s missile and drone attack over the weekend.

Netanyahu left no doubt in a statement later the same day regarding what his country might do should current tensions with Iran escalate further.

‘Israel will do whatever it needs to defend itself,’ Netanyahu said in a statement.

‘They have all sorts of suggestions and advice. I appreciate that. But I want to be clear: Our decisions we will make ourselves,’ the prime minister added.

Fox News Digital’s Lawrence Richard contributed to this report.