White House national security spokesman John Kirby said the Biden administration is ‘perplexed’ by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to cancel a high-level delegation’s planned visit to Washington after the U.S. decided not to veto a U.N. Security Council vote demanding a cease-fire in Gaza. 

Monday’s resolution, which passed 14-0, called for an immediate cease-fire during the ongoing Muslim holy month of Ramadan. It also demanded the release of all hostages taken captive during Hamas’ Oct. 7 surprise attack in southern Israel. However, the measure does not link that demand to its call for a cease-fire. 

Rather than use its veto power, the U.S. abstained from voting. The U.S. has previously vetoed three resolutions calling for a Gaza cease-fire.

Kirby noted that the resolution is ‘nonbinding,’ meaning that there will be no impact on Israel or its ability to continue waging war on Hamas. 

Kirby said the abstention did not represent a change in U.S. policy despite public statements from the prime minister’s office. 

‘We get to decide what our policy is. It seems like the Prime Minister’s office is choosing to create a perception of daylight here when they don’t need to do that,’ Kirby said.  

Kirby said the U.S. had vetoed other resolutions in the past, and chose not to support this one, because it did not condemn Hamas. 

‘We didn’t veto [Monday’s resolution] because, in general, unlike previous resolutions, this one did fairly capture what has been our consistent policy, which is linking a hostage deal and the release of those men and women with a temporary ceasefire,’ Kirby said. 

Monday’s resolution demands the release of hostages but does not make it a condition for the cease-fire for the month of Ramadan, which ends in April. Hamas welcomed the U.N.’s move but said the cease-fire needed to be permanent. 

Netanyahu accused the U.S. of ‘retreating’ from a ‘principled position’ by allowing the vote to pass without conditioning the cease-fire on the release of the hostages held by Hamas. 

Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant was set to meet with U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and others Monday in Washington where discussions would continue. 

The U.S. abstention comes amid growing tensions between President Joe Biden’s administration and Netanyahu over Israel’s prosecution of the war, the high number of civilian casualties and the limited amounts of humanitarian assistance reaching Gaza. 

In addition, the well-known antagonism between Netanyahu and Biden deepened after Biden questioned Israel’s strategy in combating Hamas.

The situation was made worse after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Biden ally, suggested in a speech last week that Netanyahu was not operating in Israel’s best interests and called for Israel to hold new elections. Biden signaled his approval of Schumer’s remarks, prompting a rebuke from Netanyahu.

During its U.S. visit, the Israeli delegation was to present White House officials with its plans for a possible ground invasion of Rafah, a city on the Egyptian border in southern Gaza where over 1 million Palestinian civilians have sought shelter from the war.

Since the start of the war, the Security Council has adopted two resolutions on the worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza, but none has called for a cease-fire.

Israeli Energy Minister said Israel ‘will continue to fight until the safe return of the hostages and the eradication of Hamas.’ 

‘Any proposal for a ceasefire lacking these stipulations serves as a propellant for terrorist organizations around the world, inevitably ushering terrorism into the West,’ he said. 

Anne Bayefsky, Director of the Touro’s Institute of Human Rights and the Holocaust, said the Biden administration’s ‘failure to veto this resolution should send shock waves around the United States.’ 

‘Last week they ‘demanded’ the UN Security Council finally condemn Hamas for the October 7th atrocities – which the Council has never done. The Arab group of states, the Russians and Chinese said no. Two days later the moral backbone of the administration collapses and it allows the third Council resolution since October 7th that fails to condemn its perpetrators,’ Bayefsky said.

She argued that U.S. ‘strength and credibility has taken a tremendous hit – to the detriment of Israel and the Jewish people of America.’ 

More than 32,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed during the fighting, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry, though Israel has disputed these figures. The agency does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count, but says women and children make up two-thirds of the dead.

The United States has vetoed three resolutions demanding a cease-fire in Gaza, the most recent an Arab-backed measure on Feb. 20. That resolution was supported by 13 council members with one abstention, reflecting the overwhelming support for a cease-fire.

A House Republican is openly criticizing former President Trump for urging a primary challenger to step up against another GOP lawmaker.

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., accused Trump of ‘bullying’ his colleague, Rep. Laurel Lee, R-Fla., in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday.

‘This is unhelpful and unwarranted,’ the libertarian firebrand wrote.

Massie praised Lee, a first-term House member, as ‘a conservative thoughtful member’ of the House Judiciary Committee.

‘She endorsed [Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis] for President but then endorsed Trump when DeSantis got out of the race. More of my colleagues should call out these ridiculous bullying tactics,’ Massie finished.

What followed was a post by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who has been critical of Trump in the past. He added his support by commenting: ‘Co-sponsor.’

Trump called for a primary challenger to Lee in a post on his Truth Social app on Sunday night, writing, ‘Any great MAGA Republicans looking to run against Laurel Lee in Florida’s 15th Congressional District? IF SO, PLEASE STEP FORWARD!’

Fox News Digital reached out to spokespeople for the former president and for Lee’s re-election campaign for a response.

Prior to running for the House of Representatives, Lee had served in the DeSantis administration as Florida Secretary of State from 2019 through part of 2022.

She was the Sunshine State’s top election official in 2021 when DeSantis announced Florida would not audit the 2020 presidential election, despite urging from Trump allies. Trump won Florida over now-President Biden by roughly 3%.

Lee was the only member of Florida’s House delegation to back the state’s governor against Trump. Massie and Roy also endorsed DeSantis when he was running in the Republican primary, but only Lee switched her endorsement to Trump in late January when DeSantis dropped out of the race.

Trump called for a primary challenger against Roy late last year.

The Justice Department unsealed an indictment on Monday charging seven Chinese nationals with working under the guise of a Wuhan tech company to coordinate cyber-attacks targeting politicians and American companies on behalf of the Chinese government for over a decade. 

The defendants — Ni Gaobin, Weng Ming, Cheng Feng, Peng Yaowen, Sun Xiaohui. Xiong Wang, and Zhao Guangzong — are charged in connection to China’s vast hacking operation that allegedly targeted sensitive data from U.S. elected and government officials, journalists and academics; valuable information from American companies; and political dissidents in America and abroad. The ‘prolific global hacking operation’ was said to have involved over 10,000 malicious emails, impacting thousands of victims across multiple continents. 

The announcement from the Biden administration comes as Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden said on Monday that a Chinese government-affiliated group also hacked into the United Kingdom’s electoral registry to steal the personal information of tens of millions of voters. 

‘The Justice Department will not tolerate efforts by the Chinese government to intimidate Americans who serve the public, silence the dissidents who are protected by American laws, or steal from American businesses,’ U.S. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement. ‘This case serves as a reminder of the ends to which the Chinese government is willing to go to target and intimidate its critics, including launching malicious cyber operations aimed at threatening the national security of the United States and our allies.’

The U.S. Treasury Department also sanctioned Wuhan Xiaoruizhi Science and Technology Company, Limited (Wuhan XRZ), which American authorities say is a Wuhan, China-based Ministry of State Security (MSS) front company that has served as cover for multiple malicious cyber operations.

Between June and September 2018, the seven defendants sent more than 10,000 malicious email messages to professional and personal email addresses belonging to ‘high-ranking U.S. government officials and their advisors, including officials involved in international policy and foreign trade issues,’ the indictment filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York says. 

‘Since at least 2015, the Conspirators sent thousands of malicious tracking email messages to the personal and professional email accounts of government and political officials in the U.S. and elsewhere, including targets’ family members and contacts,’ the indictment alleges. ‘The malicious email messages generally purported to be from prominent American journalists, contained email subject headers purporting to contain legitimate news articles, and the body of the messages purported to include excerpts from news articles from news outlets, such as CNN and Vox.’ 

Prosecutors go went on to say the messages contained an embedded hyperlink that served as a tracking link. 

‘If the recipient activated the tracking link by opening the email, information about the recipient, including the recipient’s location, IP addresses, network schematics and specific devices used to access the pertinent email accounts, was transmitted to a server controlled by the Conspirators,’ the indictment says. ‘The Conspirators used this method to enable more direct and sophisticated targeting of recipients’ home routers and other electronic devices, including those of highranking U.S. government officials and politicians and election campaign staff from both major U.S. political parties.’

The targets allegedly included individuals at the White House; the Departments of Justice, Commerce, Treasury and State; members of Congress, including both Democratic and Republican U.S. senators from more than ten states; government officials in the Eastern District of New York; and the spouses of a high-ranking Department of Justice official, high-ranking White House officials and multiple U.S. senators. 

The indictment says the targets also included political strategists and commentators and political and special interest advocates, as well as U.S. government contractors, including cleared defense contractors, to obtain U.S. government information. In May 2020, the DOJ says, the defendants began targeting email accounts belonging to several senior campaign staff members for a presidential campaign. By November 2020, they allegedly sent emails containing tracking links to targets associated with additional political campaigns, including a retired senior U.S. government national security official.

‘In or about March 2022, the Conspirators sent emails containing tracking links to various government officials in the U.S. Senate, the State Department and the Departments of Commerce, Labor and Transportation,’ the indictment says. DOJ prosecutors say the seven Chinese nationals also targeted other government officials around the world who expressed criticism of the PRC government, including members of the Inter Parliamentary Alliance on China (‘IPAC’), a group founded in 2020 on the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests whose stated purpose was to counter the threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party to the international order and democratic principles. 

The Hubei State Security Department (‘HSSD’), the provincial foreign intelligence arm of the MSS located in the city of Wuhan, first created Wuhan XRZ in 2010 to carry out its computer intrusion activities, according to the indictment. 

‘A PRC government business license issued by the PRC Administration for Market Regulation described Wuhan XRZ as a company involved with research and experimental development, technology development, technology consultation and technology transfer,’ it says.

The Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) also announced it was designating Zhao Guangzong and Ni Gaobin, two of the defendants believed to be affiliated with Wuhan XRZ, ‘for their roles in malicious cyber operations targeting U.S. entities that operate within U.S. critical infrastructure sectors, directly endangering U.S. national security.’

The U.S. Department of State announced a Rewards for Justice offer for information on the seven Chinese nationals, their organization or any associated individuals or entities, and the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office implemented matching sanctions.

‘The United States is focused on both disrupting the dangerous and irresponsible actions of malicious cyber actors, as well as protecting our citizens and our critical infrastructure,’ Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian E. Nelson said in a statement. ‘Through our whole-of-government approach and in close coordination with our British partners, Treasury will continue to leverage our tools to expose these networks and protect against these threats.’

A group of House Democrats is suggesting President Biden weigh cutting off military assistance to Israel over accusations it is restricting aid to Gaza, something the Middle Eastern U.S. ally has denied.

The six lawmakers, led by Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, called the situation in Gaza a ‘humanitarian catastrophe’ in a weekend letter to Biden.

They urged him to ‘make clear’ to Israel that it is in violation of long-standing U.S. law that blocks foreign aid to countries that are preventing the U.S. from getting humanitarian aid somewhere else.

‘For months following Hamas’ horrific October 7th attacks, which you and the U.S. Congress have rightly condemned, you have urged the Israeli government to exercise its right to self-defense judiciously while prioritizing the protection of innocent lives. Instead, the Israeli government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has restricted the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza by placing onerous burdens on the oversight of aid, severely limiting entry points for aid delivery, and arbitrarily preventing food, medicine, and other supplies from entering Gaza,’ the letter said.

‘Given the catastrophic and devolving humanitarian situation in Gaza, we urge you to enforce the Humanitarian Aid Corridor Act… and, as required by that law, make clear to the Israeli government that so long as Israel continues to restrict the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza, the continued provision of U.S. security assistance to Israel would constitute a violation of existing U.S. law and must be restricted.’

The Humanitarian Aid Corridor Act prohibits U.S. foreign aid from going to a country whose government is restricting or blocking U.S. humanitarian aid.

‘While dialogue between allies is a key part of diplomacy, words are no longer enough to meet the humanitarian crisis of Gaza’s scale nor to protect the hundreds of thousands of innocent Palestinians seeking shelter in the war zone,’ the Democrats wrote. ‘We urge you to act on the law and demonstrate to Prime Minister Netanyahu that U.S. support has firm limits and does not include enabling conditions that will lead to famine in Gaza.’

Arguments over the U.S. role in Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas have splintered the Democratic Party. Biden has taken heat from progressives for not doing enough to curb Israel’s retaliation, while more moderate Democrats have continued to stand by the Middle Eastern nation.

The Palestinian refugee-centered United Nations agency UNRWA said over the weekend that Israel is no longer allowing its food convoys in northern Gaza. UNRWA itself has been under scrutiny over allegations its workers and people associated with it played a role in the brutal Oct. 7 Hamas attack in southern Israel. 

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for a response to the letter.

Retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer said he’d be ‘amazed’ if a fellow justice leaked the court’s draft decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, which effectively ended the recognition of a constitutional right to abortion. 

‘Do you have a sense of what the motive of the leaker was?’ NBC’s Kristen Welker asked Breyer in an interview aired Sunday on ‘Meet the Press.’ 

Breyer shied away from answering directly, saying he does have theories, but that he was not willing to discuss them at length. Breyer, who retired in 2022, did say who he thought did not leak the draft opinion. 

‘I’d be amazed if it was a judge,’ he said. 

Breyer’s comments came amid an interview on his new book, ‘Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism,’ which is critical of conservative justices for their decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. 

The Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in June 2022 to uphold a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The decision came just weeks after an unprecedented draft leak published by Politico showed Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion outlining the decision to effectively end the recognition of a constitutional right to abortion. 

Following the leak, churches and pro-life groups saw violent and destructive attacks, including a pro-life center in New York getting ‘firebombed’ by protesters, menacing graffiti on church properties across the nation, and a letter from a radical abortion group called ‘Jane’s Revenge’ declaring ‘open season’ on pro-lifers. Conservative justices also saw repeated protests outside their homes in response to the leak and ultimate decision. 

In previously aired portions of the interview, Breyer had described the leak as ‘unfortunate.’ 

‘It’s unfortunate,’ he said, with Welker following up and asking, ‘Were you angry?’

‘You try to avoid getting angry or that – you try in the job – you try to remain as calm, reasonable and serious as possible,’ he said.

‘I think it was unfortunate,’ he repeated. Supreme Court justices, as Breyer noted in his interview, are extremely careful about publicly speaking on issues that could land before them in court. Breyer appeared to continue with this tradition in his retirement, choosing his words carefully as Welker peppered him with questions on the leak and landmark decision. 

Breyer joined Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor in writing the dissent to the decision, and said in the interview he did not believe Roe should have been overturned. 

Welker continued asking if Breyer was hopeful the justices could reach a compromise regarding allowing abortion at 15 weeks ahead of the decision. 

‘Did you think that a compromise was possible before the leak around 15 weeks?’ Welker asked. 

‘I usually hope for compromise,’ Breyer responded. 

‘So you were hopeful there could be a compromise?’ she continued. 

‘You want to put words in my mouth,’ Breyer responded lightheartedly. ‘I’m careful what I say on this. Because I say our interests are different. I don’t want to make news. I’ve written what I thought. If you think there’s news in here or in the dissent, go right ahead. But, I don’t want to say something in addition.’

Breyer added that he ‘always’ thinks compromise is possible. 

The retired justice also shied away from answering whether he was ‘surprised’ an internal investigation into the leak did not identify a person as responsible. 

‘You want to ask that question to somebody who knows something about it. Ask the people who do internal investigations like that. They’re the people to ask and that they occur all over the government,’ he responded, adding that he was simply ‘disappointed, I was sorry about the leak.’

When asked if he foresees the Dobbs case one day being overturned, Breyer said, ‘It’s possible.’

‘Don’t know… It’s possible,’ he said. ‘But who knows?’

Breyer was nominated to the nation’s highest court by President Bill Clinton to fill former Justice Harry Blackmun’s seat in 1994. Blackmun wrote the court’s opinion on Roe v. Wade in 1973. 

Breyer resigned in 2022, with President Biden nominating Ketanji Brown Jackson as the successor. She was confirmed the same year. 

Fox News Digital’s Gabriel Hays contributed to this report. 

Spending hawks in Congress are growing antsy about starting discussions on how to fund the government in fiscal year 2025.

Congress only recently completed the appropriations process for fiscal year 2024, roughly six months after it began Sept. 30. And, in that time, disagreements over federal funding prompted conservative lawmakers to tank their own party’s bills in protest of leadership’s decisions. 

Spending disagreements also led to the ouster of Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., as speaker and led to a motion to vacate being filed against Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., Friday.

A significant share of Republicans also broke from their own party to oppose nearly every bipartisan spending agreement crafted between the House GOP majority and Senate Democrats, demonstrating the party’s deep fiscal fractures.

‘Am I confident? No,’ one GOP lawmaker told Fox News Digital when asked if the appropriations process will improve for fiscal year 2025. ‘I hope it does. But, I mean, there’s been no indication for the last 30 years, 25 years, that it’s going to [improve].’

Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., a former House Freedom Caucus chairman who opposed each of the bipartisan spending deals, suggested he’s concerned his faction of the House GOP will be disappointed again in the next round.

‘Yes, of course we’re behind,’ Perry said. ‘We’re halfway into the year.’

On the Senate side, Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., led a letter to GOP Conference Chair Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., requesting an urgent meeting on the spending process.

‘As we rush to finalize the 2024 FY budget — months after the fiscal year has started — we are already behind on the 2025 budget deadlines set in statute. Reform is needed, and it is vital that we as a Conference debate how to get our budget process on track,’ Marshall wrote.

Both House Republicans and the White House initiated their sides of the process by submitting budget proposals, each predictably panning the other’s plans. 

Republican Study Committee Chairman Rep. Kevin Hern, R-Okla., whose large House GOP group unveiled its own budget proposal, called for a House vote on each of the plans, though he did not say if he was concerned about the current pace.

‘Go ahead and get it done. Get the vote done and see where it lies and where the outcome is. And then let’s get the budget done and get the appropriators working on the FY25 budget,’ Hern said.

However, another GOP lawmaker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, expressed optimism colleagues learned from prior mistakes.

‘We’re a little bit behind from a schedule, like a calendar perspective, from where we want to be,’ the GOP lawmaker said. ‘We have a real clarity of mind right now of what went wrong, and so, you know, in some respects, the best way to stay on task. We just got done with appropriations, so now we know exactly what we need to do the next time.’

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., doubled down Sunday on claiming Israel is carrying out ‘genocide’ in Gaza and implementing a ‘forced famine’ by blocking humanitarian aid to Palestinians. 

Appearing on CNN’s ‘State of the Union,’ Ocasio-Cortez defended her speech on the House floor on Friday in which the progressive ‘Squad’ member called on President Biden to stop U.S. military aid to Israel. 

‘If you want to see what an unfolding genocide looks like, open your eyes. It looks like the forced famine of 1.1 million innocents,’ she told the House floor. ‘We must write our story in this moment of what it means and who we are as Americans. And our story must be not that we were good men who did nothing.’ 

CNN’s Jake Tapper challenged that ‘genocide’ is a word that has ‘serious and specific connotations and allegations,’ that is defined by ‘the intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnic, race or religious group.’ He asked the congresswoman coined AOC whether she believed that the Israeli government or the Israeli military ‘are actively trying, or actively intend to destroy the Palestinian people – and not that what’s happening if horrible, but it’s happening because Israel’s going after the terrorists of Hamas who attacked them on October 7, and Hamas imbeds within the civilian population.’ 

‘This word is extremely serious, that’s taken with extraordinary gravity. And to me, the threshold of intent is a high one, it is a serious one, and is not one that is made lightly,’ Ocasio-Cortez responded.

‘However, when we look at the precipice of what is happening with a forced famine of 1.1 million Gazans, where multiple governments, NGOs and even officials within the United States State Department have stated themselves plainly that the Israeli government and leaders within the Israeli government are intentionally denying, blocking and slow-walking this aid – and are precipitating a mass famine – I believe we have crossed the threshold of intent. It is horrific,’ she said. 

The congresswoman added that there is a ‘difference between a people and their governments,’ including Israelis from Israeli government and Palestinians from Hamas. ‘But what we’re seeing here with a forced famine is, I believe, beyond our ability to deny or explain away. There is no targeting of Hamas in precipitating a mass famine of one million people, half of whom are children,’ she said.

Tapper noted how Israeli officials say they are allowing hundreds of aid trucks into Gaza per day, which they need to inspect to ensure that the shipments do not include weapons, and claim the war could stop ‘tomorrow’ if Hamas were to release the hostages and put down their weapons. Tapper asked whether AOC disagreed. 

‘I do disagree, because when we are talking about famine, the actions of Hamas should not be tied to whether a three-year-old can eat. The actions of Hamas do not justify forcing thousands, hundreds of thousands of people to eat grass as their bodies consume themselves,’ she said. ‘And the Israeli government has a right to go after Hamas, but we are talking about a population of millions of innocent Palestinians. We are talking about collective punishment, which is unjustifiable, and the excuses that the Israeli government is giving about what they are and are not allowing simply do not square with what the U.K. government has stated, with what international aid organizations are stating and even what our own State Department officials are stating, which is that they are not allowing aid to go through.’ 

‘To operate as allies,’ AOC said that the U.S. ‘must operate in good faith to uphold the principles of democracy, which includes respect for human rights and also proving the value of our democracy, which is that we are different than authoritarian, and we are different from other types of regimes with no regard for innocent people.’