Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is telling Republicans who are going after sitting GOP lawmakers in contentious primaries to ‘knock it off,’ in order to tamp down on divisions within the party, according to a report. 

Johnson, R-La., attended the House Republicans’ annual member retreat at the Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, last week to unify the often-fractious conference as at least four sitting Republicans in South Carolina, Illinois, Texas and Virginia are going to battle against Republican challengers.

‘I’ve asked them all to cool it,’ Johnson told CNN during the retreat. ‘I am vehemently opposed to member-on-member action in primaries because it’s not productive. And it causes division for obvious reasons, and we should not be engaging in that.’

Johnson is trying to figure out how to guide his razor-thin majority through a series of legislative hurdles that divide Republicans, including how to provide military aid for Ukraine, finish government funding and reauthorize a federal surveillance program – all while trying to make a case that voters should re-elect a GOP House majority.

‘So I’m telling everyone who’s doing that to knock it off,’ Johnson told the outlet, referring to challenging incumbents within the GOP. ‘And both sides, they’ll say, ‘Well, we didn’t start it, they started it.’’

Johnson took the speaker’s gavel late last year after former Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted from office in a historic move that left Republicans deeply divided and mired in dysfunction.

Johnson told Fox News Digital last week that he is aiming to stay at the helm of the House GOP next year regardless of whether they keep the House majority.

‘I have not given a lot of thought about the next Congress, because I’m so busy with my responsibility right now,’ Johnson said. ‘My intention is to stay as speaker, stay in leadership, because we’re laying a lot of important groundwork right now for the big work that we’ll be doing.’

Fox News’ Elizabeth Elkind and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

White House national security communications adviser John Kirby brushed off questioning Sunday regarding whether President Biden believes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is an ‘impediment to peace,’ saying the two world leaders have ‘known each other a long time’ and have an open line of communication. 

‘Does the president think that Benjamin Netanyahu is a bigot? That he’s an impediment to peace? That he should be lumped in with Hamas?’ Fox News’ Shannon Bream asked Kirby on ‘Fox News Sunday.’

Kirby did not explicitly answer, instead highlighting that the two world leaders have long known each other and that the U.S. respects Israel’s sovereignty. 

‘These are two men, leaders that have known each other a long time, Shannon, and they don’t agree on everything – haven’t over 40 years. And there are certain aspects to the prosecution of operations in Gaza, where we obviously don’t agree with everything that Israel has done. But they have a relationship where they can talk to one another, and they do, and they will again. He is the prime minister of Israel. We respect the sovereignty of the Israeli people,’ he responded.

The question comes after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who is Jewish, delivered a speech last week calling for Netanyahu’s ouster and labeling him an ‘obstacle to peace’ as war rages in Israel and Gaza since October. 

Along with Netanyahu, Schumer added that ‘Hamas and the Palestinians who support and tolerate their evil ways; the radical right-wing Israelis in government and society; [and] Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ are the other obstacles preventing peace. 

Biden later described Schumer’s remarks as a ‘good speech.’

‘He made a good speech, and I think he expressed serious concern shared not only by him, but by many Americans,’ Biden said Friday. 

Bream pressed Kirby on whether Biden agrees with Schumer that there needs to be an election in Israel and that Netanyahu should no longer serve as prime minister. 

‘The president believes it’s up to the Israeli people and the Israeli government to determine if and when there’s going to be new elections. But he does, as he said shortly after Leader Schumer’s very passionate speech, he recognizes that the leader was speaking for a lot of Americans who feel the same way about the way the war is going. We also have concerns about some of the operations and how they’re being conducted. We need to make sure that civilians are protected and secure, that civilian casualties come down, that more trucks and assistance get in and, of course, we’re still working on that temporary cease-fire to get all those hostages out,’ Kirby responded. 

Kirby’s remarks follow another interview last week on MSNBC, where host Andrea Mitchell repeatedly asked the White House official if Biden believes Netanyahu is an ‘obstacle to peace.’ Kirby dodged the question three times, which Mitchell pointed out on air before moving on with the interview. 

‘The president knows that the Israeli people get to determine who their elected government representatives are. That’s what democracy is all about, and he respects that,’ Kirby responded after one of Mitchell’s questions regarding if Netanyahu is an ‘obstacle to peace.’ ‘And he has been nothing but candid and forthright with the prime minister about ways in which we think things can be done differently, things can be done better, things can be done a little bit more stridently to get more assistance into the people of Gaza to and to reduce the number of civilian casualties. I mean, my goodness, these are two guys that have no problem being honest with one another, and I can assure you that the president has done that.’

‘Let me just say that answer – that question was not answered three times. That’s all right. That was your answer,’ Mitchell ultimately said. 

Netanyahu responded to Schumer’s speech this weekend, calling it ‘inappropriate’ and detailing that a potential election is up to Israel and its voters.

‘I think what he said is totally inappropriate. It’s inappropriate to go to a sister democracy and try to replace the elected leadership there,’ Netanyahu said in a CNN interview.

JERUSALEM Having seen his lowest levels of support in months, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s popularity has gotten a bounce in the polls, which some say is partly due to the Biden administration and Democrats’ growing criticism against the Jewish state.  

Criticism grew this week from across the political spectrum after New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer’s speech calling for new elections.  

‘As a lifelong supporter of Israel, it has become clear to me: The Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after Oct. 7,’ Schumer said Thursday on the floor of the Senate. ‘The world has changed, radically, since then, and the Israeli people are being stifled right now by a governing vision that is stuck in the past.’ 

Israel’s Channel 14 published a survey Wednesday, a day before Schumer’s broadside against the Jewish state, noting the chance Netanyahu’s conservative bloc could garner an additional six seats in the parliament after Minister-without-Portfolio Gideon Sa’ar ended his partnership with Benny Gantz’s National Unity Party.  

Polling shows Netanyahu would secure 56 seats in the Israeli Knesset to form a new government. A bloc of parties needs 62 mandates.  

Mideast expert Caroline Glick told Fox News Digital this dynamic is playing out. 

‘Schumer spoke about Netanyahu, but Netanyahu is simply acting in accordance with the demands of the public. As a result, calls from Schumer and the White House for Netanyahu’s ouster only strengthen him politically,’ Glick said. 

The law of unintended consequences also might help Netanyahu. The Israeli Prime Minister’s support could solidify and he could gain new followers due to Schumer’s efforts to dislodge a sitting head of state.  

The New York senator is the highest-ranking Jewish politician in Congress.  

Schumer’s anti-Netanyahu speech sent shock waves throughout the Jewish state as it aims to root out the last vestiges of the Hamas terrorist organization in Rafah, Gaza, as part of its ongoing self-defense war. 

‘Charles Schumer, like the Biden administration, fundamentally misunderstands the war, and, as a result, cannot understand Israel’s behavior,’ said Glick,  a former adviser to Netanyahu. ‘This is not a counterterror operation. This is a conventional war. Hamas did not carry out a terrorist attack on Oct. 7. 

‘Hamas invaded Israel with the strength of a division. That division of terror soldiers seized villages, bases and kibbutzim as Hamas carried out a massive cyberattack against Israeli critical infrastructure and first response team and pummeled Israel with thousands of rockets.

‘This is not a tactical battle. This is a strategic contest for survival. Either Israel survives or Hamas survives. Israelis overwhelmingly understand this, which is why 75% of Israelis demand the conquest of Rafah and oppose Palestinian statehood.’ 

Israelis fired back at Schumer’s call to oust Netanyahu.  

‘Regardless of my opinion of Netanyahu and his fitness to serve, Senator Schumer’s call for new Israeli elections is deeply disrespectful of our democracy and sovereignty,’ Michael Oren, the former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. during the Netanyahu administration, wrote on X. 

‘Israel is an ally, not a vassal state. Along with the U.S., we’re one of the few countries never to have known a second of non-democratic government, and the only democracy never to have known a moment of peace. We certainly deserve that respect.’

On the streets of Jerusalem, Israelis had mixed views. Seated outside with his family at the Aroma café in the German Colony neighborhood, Dov Fox told Fox News Digital, ‘I don’t think foreign politicians should be dictating how foreign countries should vote.’ 

He recognized that Schumer ‘has done a lot for Israel’ but described his speech an ‘overstepping of boundaries.’ 

‘Due to the [Israel] special relationship with the United States, Chuck Schumer is a very central actor there,’ Avi Kay told Fox News Digital. ‘We need to pay attention to what is being said. Whether one agrees or disagrees with Chuck Schumer, I believe he has the best interests of Israel at heart.’ 

Kay, who used Netanyahu’s nickname Bibi, taken from his full name Benjamin, said, ‘Bibi is more interested in staying in power and that is not advantageous.’ 

Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, is facing the ultimate test of his leadership after the Hamas massacre of 1,200 people Oct. 7. His legacy and his very political survival are on the line.

A new report has sharply criticized the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, writing that lockdowns, school closures and vaccine mandates were ‘catastrophic errors’ resulting in many Americans losing faith in public health institutions. 

The report, published this week by the non-profit Committee to Unleash Prosperity (CTUP), paints a damning indictment of the government’s role in the crisis and offers ten lessons that must be learned, to avoid the same mistakes from being repeated.

Some of the guidance includes halting all binding agreements or pledges to the World Health Organization (WHO), term limits for all senior health agency positions as well as limiting the powers of health agencies to make sure they are strictly advisory and do not have the power to set laws or mandates.

The paper, titled ‘COVID Lessons Learned A Retrospective After Four Years,’ states that granting unprecedented powers to public health agencies, many of which imposed strict limits on basic civil liberties, had little positive benefit and instead helped stoke fear among the public. 

‘Conventional wisdom pre-COVID was that communities respond best to pandemics when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted,’ the authors wrote. ‘During COVID, the public health establishment followed the opposite principle: they intentionally stoked and amplified fear, which overlaid enormous economic, social, educational and health harms on top of the harms of the virus itself.’

The report was written by Scott Atlas, M.D., a senior fellow in health policy at the Hoover Institution and a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, Steve Hanke, Ph.D., a professor of applied economics at the Johns Hopkins University, Philip Kerpen, the president of the Committee to Unleash and Casey B. Mulligan, Ph.D., a professor in economics at the University of Chicago. It draws on various reports and research papers that studied the pandemic. 

‘SARS-CoV2 was a dangerous virus, but a calm, proportionate response would have applied the lessons from past influenza pandemics and used existing pandemic response plans. Instead, from the moment the virus was detected in America, the public health community and politicians spread an outsized message of fear and doom,’ the paper reads.

The group wrote that lockdowns did not work to substantially reduce deaths or stop viral circulation, and although they were timed to claim credit for declining waves of the virus, they ‘rarely had any discernable casual impact.’ 

In reality, one of the results was that people’s health was negatively impacted as medical procedures were canceled, stoking fear, they wrote.

For instance, from April 2020 through the end of 2021, there were 171,000 non-COVID excess deaths, whereas there were none in Sweden, a country that did not lock down despite being heavily pressured to do so.

‘A much wiser strategy than issuing lockdown orders would have been to tell the American people the truth, stick to the facts, educate citizens about the balance of risks, and let individuals make their own decisions about whether to keep their businesses open, whether to socially isolate, attend church, send their children to school, and so on,’ the authors wrote.

School shutdowns caused dramatic and irrefutable damage to children, they wrote, with reports of poor learning, school dropouts, social isolation, mental illness, drug abuse, suicidal ideation and 300,000 cases of child abuse unreported in the spring of 2020.

Masks also had little or no value and were possibly harmful, they wrote, ‘amplifying fears by creating the irrational belief that an unmasked face presented a threat, causing conflict and division among citizens, and giving high-risk people the mistaken impression that masks were protective, potentially resulting in some people risking exposure who otherwise may not have.’

They blasted the CDC for continuing to advise mask wearing ‘contrary to evidence . . . [and] undermining its credibility.’

On an economic level, the lockdowns put over 49 million Americans out of work, citing Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) survey data. Unemployment benefits approved by Congress prolonged unemployment and associated economic underperformance, too.

The report also criticized the media, Big Tech, the academic science and public health community for stifling debate.

‘Anthony Fauci, the head of the largest federal grantmaking entity, created an environment in which it was very difficult for most medical experts to break with the dominant narratives on lockdowns, masks, or overwhelmed hospitals,’ the report states. 

‘The National Institutes of Health (NIH) became the principal advocate of lockdown policies, but failed to run high-quality trials of repurposed drugs and non-pharmaceutical interventions.’

Elsewhere, the report praised the Project Warp Speed for getting effective monoclonal antibody treatments and vaccines in record time, but it failed to assess their safety. The authors wrote that the mandates and associated pressure campaign were wrong and undermined informed consent.

The authors recommend that Congress and the states define by law ‘public health emergency’ with strict limitations on powers conferred to the executives and time limits that require legislation to be extended. 

‘Crises are when checks and balances and well-functioning institutions are most needed – not when they should be discarded and decision-making outsourced to alleged experts like Francis Collins, who casually confessed to a completely incorrect decision calculus years later,’ they wrote.

Some Russian voters have done more than vote to express their displeasure with sitting President Vladimir Putin, going so far as to commit acts of vandalism caught on camera that include setting fire to ballot boxes. 

Russian authorities arrested at least nine people on the first day of voting in an election that analysts and observers around the world have no doubt will hand Putin another term as leader, making him the longest-serving leader since Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. 

Several people, caught on camera, set polling stations and voting booths on fire in protest. In other locations, one woman poured green dye into a ballot box, a man set off fireworks in a polling station and in Russian-occupied Ukraine someone set off an explosive device, French outlet Le Monde reported. 

A woman who poured disinfectant into a ballot box at a Moscow polling station faces between three and five years for her act, during which she shouted pro-Ukrainian slogans, Russian outlet BAZA reported. 

Authorities have not said whether they believe the incidents may be part of a larger, coordinated effort and protest or simply random incidents, despite the repeated use of green liquid to spoil ballots. The use of green liquid may serve as a reference to late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who in 2017 was attacked by an assailant splashing green disinfectant in his face. 

Prosecutors warned that the government would punish anybody involved in mass rallies and protests. The Associated Press reported that as many as a dozen incidents had occurred on the first day, though it remains unclear if all incidents led to arrests. 

Voting will take place through Sunday, but more than a third of voters had cast their ballots by the time polls closed on Friday night. Voting has occurred both in-person and online, with online voting remaining open around the clock until 8 p.m. local time on Sunday. 

The U.N. Security Council met to protest the election being held in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine. ‘As Russia holds sham elections in the territories of Ukraine temporarily under Russia’s control, the U.K. condemns the elections as fraudulent,’ the U.K. said in a statement, with British Deputy Permanent Representative to the U.N. Ambassador James Kariuki claiming, ‘These elections are a sham because of a simple truth: you cannot hold legitimate elections in someone else’s country,’

Navalny, the strongest opponent of Putin’s government, died last month while in an arctic colony after collapsing in what prison officials claimed was a case of ‘sudden death syndrome,’ but an anonymous paramedic claiming to work for a morgue told independent news outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe that he saw bruising on the body consistent with a person being held down while having a seizure.

The Associated Press labeled the remaining opposition candidates as ‘low-level politicians from token opposition parties that support the Kremlin’s line.’ 

European Council President Charles Michel on Friday half-heartedly congratulated Putin for winning the election before polls even closed, saying Putin would have a ‘landslide victory’ with, ‘No opposition. No freedom. No choice.’ 

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

As Haiti continues to struggle with rampant gang violence and with the sudden resignation of its interim Prime Minister, Ariel Henry, this week, experts are warning about the serious consequences a failed Haitian state could have on U.S. national security.

Haiti has been in a near constant state of chaos since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, which not only brought with it unchecked corruption and poverty but also an increase in violence.

Some 70,000 Haitians flocked to the U.S. border in 2023 as gang violence surged, and American leaders like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis remain concerned there could be another influx of migrants, though experts are warning the threat to U.S. security could reach beyond migration woes. 

‘A failed state controlled by criminals, drug traffickers, mass murderers and gangs so close to U.S. soil is not in the foreign policy interests of the U.S.,’ Eddy Acevedo, chief of staff and senior adviser at the Wilson Center think tank told Fox News Digital. 

‘[The] greatest threat facing the U.S. regarding Haiti is further instability in the country, which could endanger the lives of millions of Haitians and risk a mass migration.’

While migration remains a top concern for many in the U.S., Juan Cruz, a former National Security Council senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs, told Fox News Digital the consequences of the complete collapse of Haiti cannot be overlooked. 

‘It’s not in anyone’s interest to have Haiti upside down,’ Cruz said. ‘Do we want a lawless Haiti that makes it a friendly place for drug traffickers to be that much closer to the U.S. or use it as a steppingstone to what we usually call our third border? Or do we want them to create a crisis in the Dominican Republic next door, where we have a friendly government to the U.S.?’

Haitian gangs have not only killed over 3,700 people. They have taken over 80% of the capital city of Port-au-Prince, shut down the airport and released thousands of inmates from two of the nation’s biggest prisons, prompting an international response.  

‘The utmost priority now must be to address the security situation in Haiti. Without stabilizing Haiti’s security environment, elections and a viable political solution cannot move forward,’ Acevedo explained. ‘Haiti’s National Police are trying to confront and push back the gangs, but the cavalry must arrive soon or else Haiti will fall.’ 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday spoke with Kenyan President William Ruto in a move to encourage the African nation to send in the 1,000-strong police force it pledged last year under a Multinational Security Support Mission.

The U.S., the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), Canada, France, Brazil and Mexico have also pushed for the establishment of a transitional government to thwart the gang takeover.

Cruz noted it is not only in the interest of Haitians to establish a stable government to quash the violence because it could mean a lengthy stay for any nation that becomes directly involved.

‘The problem is those countries, they’ve all been bit,’ Cruz said, referring to the U.S., France, Brazil and Canada, 

‘Everybody’s been in, and everybody’s paid the price. We’ve all been there. We’ve all seen this movie play out, and it doesn’t end well. I fear that, at some point, we’re going to see boots on the ground that are not Kenyan.’