WASHINGTON, D.C. – Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley blamed former President Trump Friday for recent Republican losses in critical electoral races, including those for seats in the Senate, while expressing hope the GOP’s new leader in the upper chamber is focused on setting a tone rather than courting Trump. 

‘You’re seeing the wave of what Congress thinks they need to do to win,’ Haley told reporters during a briefing at the Fairmont Hotel in Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood.

Haley was likely referencing Trump’s dominance over the House and Senate relative to endorsements and influence. 

But Haley suggested lawmakers who cater to the former president are misguided because Republicans have lost pivotal matchups since his presidency. 

‘All of these losses happened after Donald Trump became president in 2016,’ she said, noting gubernatorial, federal and statewide losses in Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia. 

Haley claimed the only reason Gov. Glenn Youngkin, R-Va., was elected in 2021 was because ‘he distanced himself’ from Trump. 

Youngkin’s political team declined to comment to Fox News Digital. 

‘It’s not an accurate statement,’ according to Zack Roday, a former Youngkin adviser and partner at Ascent Media.

‘Glenn Youngkin won because he built a movement and coalition of Republicans, independents and even Democrats who wanted a new direction for Virginia.’ 

Despite the losses, Haley claimed members of the House and Senate are now ‘falling all over themselves to show that they’re more Trump than everybody else.’ 

Haley weighed in on what the next Senate Republican leader should bring to the table after Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s surprise announcement Wednesday that he’s stepping down. She didn’t suggest any specific senators for the role but explained she wants a leader focused on the people and ‘not rewarding people for peacocking on TV.’

‘I want to see somebody inspirational. I want to see somebody that says, ‘You know what, we can do things differently,” Haley said. ‘My hope is that we will. But we’ll have to see.’

Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told Fox News Digital the campaign’s focus is now on Biden and the general election.

‘Republican voters have delivered resounding wins for President Trump in every single primary contest, and this race is over,’ she said. 

So far, only Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, has announced a bid for the leadership position in the Republican conference. But several other senators are rumored to be considering their own bids for the coveted role. Senators John Barrasso, R-Wyo.; John Thune, R-S.D.; Rick Scott, R-Fla.; Steve Daines, R-Mont.; and Tom Cotton, R-Ark., have all also been suggested as potential successors to McConnell. 

The House Foreign Affairs Committee is demanding that the head of a global Palestinian refugee agency testify before Congress over the ‘many troubling allegations’ leveled against it amid Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza.

Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, sent a letter to United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini insisting that he sit for a public hearing.

‘I remain extremely concerned over UNRWA’s widespread allegations of corruption and the millions of taxpayer dollars already sent to UNRWA this fiscal year. A full accounting of UNRWA’s complicity in the October 7th attack – as with all instances of terrorism – is urgently needed,’ McCaul told Fox News Digital.

He said his committee has already heard testimony ‘that directly contradicts UNRWA’s claims’ and ‘it is now more important than ever that the American people hear directly from Mr. Lazzarini in a public setting.’

Lazzarini had agreed to come before the committee in late January in a ‘closed, members-only setting,’ according to the letter, citing ‘UN privileges and immunities’ that prevented him from appearing in the open.

‘With regard to your letter, we must first point out that UN privileges and immunities do not forbear voluntary testimony,’ the lawmakers responded. ‘Second, many members of this Committee are gravely concerned, but sadly, unsurprised by allegations that employees of UNRWA participated in the horrendous October 7th attack and that thousands of employees have familial or direct ties to Hamas and other terrorist organizations.’

‘Furthermore, we are outraged by recent reporting that a Hamas military installation and server room is located directly beneath UNRWA’s Gaza headquarters. To make matters worse, Hamas operated this installation by siphoning electricity from UNRWA.’

McCaul pointed out that Lazzarini had appeared before European lawmakers in 2021 and 2022 for ‘an Exchange of Views in the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET).’

‘If you are willing to appear before the AFET, you surely can and would be willing to appear before the House Foreign Affairs Committee especially given the United States’ long term and considerable financial support to UNRWA,’ he said.

The letter is co-led by Reps. Brian Mast, R-Fla., Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Chris Smith, R-N.J., subcommittee chairs on Foreign Affairs.

The U.N. is conducting an internal, but independent investigation after Israel accused 12 UNRWA staffers of taking part in Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack last year that killed more than 1,200 people – mostly civilians.

The Biden administration has paused funding for the agency, which provides aid to Palestinian refugees, after the allegations were leveled. The U.S. had designated $51 million toward UNRWA for fiscal year 2024.

Last month, Lazzarini condemned Israel for allegedly striking an UNRWA facility in Gaza and killing nine people. Israel has denied responsibility for the attack.

‘The compound is a clearly marked UN facility & its coordinates were shared with Israeli Authorities as we do for all our facilities. Once again a blatant disregard of basic rules of war,’ Lazzarini wrote on X.

Fox News Digital reached out to UNRWA for comment on the letter but did not immediately hear back.

The Biden administration has unveiled a radical proposal to reshape the underpinnings of America’s innovation economy. 
 
Through the lure of federal research dollars and a sweeping reinterpretation of a 44-year-old bipartisan law, the forces of the ideological left within the administration seek to impose price controls throughout the American economy, effectively holding private industry hostage to its demands. 
 
At the center of this power grab is a provision of the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, pioneering legislation widely credited with launching the modern American innovation economy. Bayh-Dole ingeniously aligned the private-sector profit motive with the public good by allowing universities and small businesses to own and license patents emerging from federally funded research. 

 
The act’s design trusted decentralized markets — not central planners — to transform patented discoveries into beneficial products. This incentive-based structure catalyzed America’s scientific leadership and directly sparked bold innovations in fields as disparate as computing and agriculture to medicine and transportation. 

The provision of Bayh-Dole that progressive activists have long sought to wield as a cudgel against private industry is known as ‘march-in’ authority, which allows the government to take over a patented product if one of four narrow triggers is met. Legislators included it as a stopgap to deter anyone from acting on the hypothetical impulse of acquiring a patent in order to prevent it from being developed into a product. 
 
This hypothetical has never materialized, so the government has never once marched in. 
 
This is not surprising. Companies will commercialize patented products or license other companies to do so if there is money to be made. This fundamental principle of capitalism is somehow lost on the Biden administration, which now wants to seize patents if the price of a product is ‘unreasonable,’ whatever that means. 
 
But Bayh-Dole has no trigger that is even remotely related to a product’s price. Nor has any administration, Democrat or Republican, since the statute passed 44 years ago ever interpreted it to include a bureaucrat’s judgment that a product costs too much. 

Until now. 
 
In a bizarre and lawless document that seems to reflect the far-left’s capture of the Biden administration, the White House unveiled in December a proposal to use the threat of march-in to dictate prices on any product derived from federally funded research.  

The door would be open for bureaucrats to seize patents and ruin entire businesses if they disagree with the market price of anything, from microchips and surgical devices to implantable biomaterial and agricultural technologies. 
 
By proposing something so radical, the Biden White House has gone public with a road map allowing de facto nationalization of all discoveries arising from federally funded research institutions, many of which emerge from the nation’s leading universities. The administration envisions scrutinizing licensing agreements through a political lens, micromanaging the economy under the guise of assessing the ‘fairness’ of prices. 

No field escapes unscathed. In one scenario within the guidance, administrators suggest that insufficient market availability of vehicle safety communication devices warrants seizing patents and taking over the business. The guidance has no limiting principle and would apply even if the government invested a dollar while private industry invested millions on an invention. 
 
In defending the draft guidance, Biden’s Federal Trade Commission egregiously mischaracterizes the Bayh-Dole Act as a ‘statute designed to safeguard public health needs against patent holders’ private interests.’ This distortion wrongly implies that private interests are inherently contrary to public ones. 

 
Government takeover of private industry, in the name of protecting public need, is un-American and strains far from our founding principles: the Federalist Papers recognized that for both patents and copyrights, ‘The public good fully coincides in both cases with the claims of individuals.’  

Americans have always known that private incentive aligns with public good. The administration would upend this fundamental principle. 

The door would be open for bureaucrats to seize patents and ruin entire businesses if they disagree with the market price of anything, from microchips and surgical devices to implantable biomaterial and agricultural technologies. 

The true scope of the administration’s gambit goes beyond even economics. Property rights become a pawn the progressive left is happy to sacrifice to advance its sweeping agenda. One group writing in support of the proposal urges that in assessing a march-in petition, bureaucrats analyze a company’s commitment to collective bargaining and diversity quotas. 

House Republican hardliners are frustrated at Speaker Mike Johnson for once again passing a ‘clean’ short-term federal funding bill to avert a partial government shutdown this week.

‘It’s just the usual c–p. Swamp is going to swamp, nothing’s changing, we’re spending more money. We’re not changing the bureaucracy,’ Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, told Fox News Digital. ‘We’re afraid to shut down, we won’t use the power of the purse, and the result is a demonstrably weaker America.’

Members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus and their allies have been pushing House GOP leaders to leverage a shutdown to force the Democrat-dominated Senate and White House to agree to conservative policies on the U.S. border and elsewhere.

The House passed a short-term extension of fiscal 2023’s government funding, known as a continuing resolution (CR), on Thursday along bipartisan lines. It’s the fourth such extension passed since Sept. 30. While a majority of both parties supported the measure, the bill received significantly more votes from Democrats than from Republicans.

GOP lawmakers opposed to passing ‘clean’ CRs – meaning without Republican policy riders and at current spending levels – have argued that it extends the previous Democrat-controlled Congress’ priorities. Differences over government funding have led to a political civil war within the House Republican Conference – ex-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., was ousted by Republican hardliners after putting the first ‘clean’ CR on the floor late last year.

House Freedom Caucus Chair Bob Good, R-Va., told Fox News Digital that Thursday’s measure will only lead to fiscal 2024 spending bills that his group will also oppose.

‘We got no wins for the American people. We’re just further exacerbating the debt situation by continuing the [Democrat] spending levels, the [Democrat] policies that are destroying the country,’ Good said. ‘We’re doing nothing for the border. We’re doing nothing to demonstrate we really care about the spending, and all this was was a bridge to a bill that will be even worse.’

Asked whether Johnson could face pushback from GOP rebels, Good said, ‘Everything’s on the table to try to figure out what to do, but it’s unfortunate the direction that we’ve chosen to go.’

A partial government shutdown, even a short one, has the potential to significantly disrupt federal programs and potentially furlough hundreds of government employees. Johnson was also under added pressure to avoid a shutdown ahead of President Biden’s planned March 7 State of the Union address.

Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., accused Congress of failing to do its duty by not leveraging a shutdown.

‘We just keep spending money, and we keep the policies that are in place, and that means the border remains open,’ Biggs said on the House floor. ‘This country is in danger because of this administration, but not just [the] administration, but because this body does not use what the founders gave us as the ultimate tool, and that is the purse strings.’

The CR overwhelmingly passed the House, 320-99, with 113 GOP lawmakers voting for it, while 97 voted against. Two hundred and seven Democrats voted for it, versus just two who were opposed. In a modest win for Johnson, however, this CR got more GOP votes than the extension he put on the House floor in January, which got 107 Republicans’ support.

A former U.S. ambassador to Bolivia and a National Security Council member was charged after working against the U.S. government for decades for communist Cuba in ‘clandestine intelligence-gathering missions.’

‘This action exposes one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the United States government by a foreign agent,’ Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said.

‘We allege that for over 40 years, Victor Manuel Rocha served as an agent of the Cuban government and sought out and obtained positions within the United States government that would provide him with access to non-public information and the ability to affect U.S. foreign policy,’ Garland said. ‘Those who have the privilege of serving in the government of the United States are given an enormous amount of trust by the public we serve. To betray that trust by falsely pledging loyalty to the United States while serving a foreign power is a crime that will be met with the full force of the Justice Department.’

Victor Manuel Rocha’s career in covert work began in 1980, before his stunning fall from grace in 2012.

According to a release from the Department of Justice, Rocha is a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Colombia.

The 73-year-old allegedly secretly supported Cuba and its ‘clandestine intelligence-gathering mission’ against the United States by working as a covert agent for Cuba’s General Directorate of Intelligence.

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

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

The complaint alleges that Rocha kept his status as a Cuban agent secret in order to protect himself and others and to allow himself the opportunity to engage in additional ‘clandestine activity.’

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.

According to the complaint, Rocha made a series of recorded admissions to an undercover FBI agent who posed as a Cuban intelligence operative who reached out to Rocha on WhatsApp, saying that he had a message, ‘from your friends in Havana.’

Rocha praised the late communist leader Fidel Castro, calling him ‘comandante,’ branded the U.S. the ‘enemy’ and bragged about his service for more than 40 years as a Cuban mole in the heart of U.S. foreign policy circles.

Rocha also described his work as a Cuban agent as ‘a grand slam.’

Rocha was charged with conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government without prior notification to the Attorney General; acting as an agent of a foreign government without prior notification to the Attorney General; and with using a passport obtained by false statement.

During a hearing in federal court in Miami on Thursday, Rocha said he had agreed to plead guilty to two charges of conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government, according to The Associated Press.

Prosecutors agreed to dismiss more than a dozen other charges in exchange for his guilty plea, the AP said.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) says it fired ‘warning shots’ at a mob of Palestinians who rushed a humanitarian aid convoy early Thursday, resulting in more than 100 killed in the chaos. 

IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said a convoy of 38 trucks came from Egypt and entered Gaza to distribute humanitarian supplies to Gazans in need. He said ‘thousands’ descended on the trucks, with some violent pushing and trampling other Gazans to death, ‘looting the humanitarian supplies.’ 

‘The unfortunate incident resulted in dozens of Gazans killed or injured,’ he said, adding that the tank commander decided to retreat when ‘things got out of hand.’ 

Hagari insisted that ‘no IDF strike was conducted towards the aid convoy.’ 

‘On the contrary, the IDF was there conducting a humanitarian operation to secure the humanitarian corridor and allow the aid convoy to reach its designated distribution point.’ 

More than 100 people were ultimately killed and more than 700 others were injured in the chaos, bringing the number of dead since the start of the Israel-Hamas war to more than 30,000 with another 70,000 wounded, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry. The agency does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its figures but says women and children make up around two-thirds of those killed.

Arab countries have condemned the violence, accusing Israel of deliberately targeting civilians in the incident. U.S. President Biden expressed concern it would make negotiating a ceasefire more difficult. 

Medics arriving at the scene of the bloodshed Thursday found ‘dozens or hundreds’ lying on the ground, according to Fares Afana, the head of the ambulance service at Kamal Adwan Hospital. He said there were not enough ambulances to collect all the dead and wounded and that some were being brought to hospitals in donkey carts.

Aid groups say it has become nearly impossible to deliver supplies in most of Gaza because of the difficulty of coordinating with the Israeli military, ongoing hostilities and the breakdown of public order, with crowds of desperate people overwhelming aid convoys. The U.N. says a quarter of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians face starvation; around 80% have fled their homes.  

The increasing alarm over hunger across Gaza has fueled international calls for a ceasefire, and the U.S., Egypt and Qatar are working to secure a deal between Israel and Hamas for a pause in fighting and the release of some of the hostages Hamas took during its Oct. 7 attack.

Mediators hope to reach an agreement before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan starts around March 10. But so far, Israel and Hamas have remained far apart in public on their demands.

The Hamas attack into southern Israel that ignited the war killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and the militants seized around 250 hostages. Hamas and other militants are still holding around 100 hostages and the remains of about 30 more, after releasing most of the other captives during a November ceasefire.

Since launching its assault on Gaza following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, Israel has barred entry of food, water, medicine and other supplies, except for a trickle of aid entering the south from Egypt at the Rafah crossing and Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing. Despite international calls to allow in more aid, the number of supply trucks is far less than the 500 that came in daily before the war.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The Chinese Communist Party’s flagship newspaper, the Global Times, touted President Biden and his campaign’s use of TikTok, and critiqued the ‘deep hypocrisy’ of America’s politicians who call the social media platform a national security threat.

The opinion article in the CCP’s state media said that Biden’s campaign use of TikTok ‘highlights the unjust suppression’ and ‘proves the hype nonsense.’

‘As a social media app that has been heavily portrayed by the US as a ‘national security threat,’ TikTok being used by Biden’s campaign highlights the unjust suppression of TikTok by American politicians and proves the hype nonsense,’ the article said.

The Global Times argued that the short-form video social media platform has become a ‘necessary means’ for American politicians to reach young voters. 

Citing a 2023 survey report by the Pew Research Center, the Global Times said that about one-third (32 percent) of young Americans aged 18 to 29 say they regularly get their news from TikTok.

The CCP newspaper said that American politicians are ‘very self-contradictory when it comes to TikTok.’

The article argued that the Biden campaign’s use of TikTok proves that the social media platform is not a national security threat and proves the ‘deep hypocrisy’ of American politicians. 

‘In the end, we are witnessing that Washington’s behavior toward TikTok is unacceptable to the public and society, so politicians have to choose to compromise for votes,’ Li Haidong, a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times.

Jake Denton, a research associate at the Heritage Foundation’s Tech Policy Center, told Fox News Digital that Biden’s ‘hunger for votes has blinded him to the national security threats’ posed by TikTok.

President Biden’s insatiable hunger for votes has blinded him to the national security threats facing America.

— Jake Denton, Research Associate at the Heritage Foundation’s Tech Policy Center

‘Once again, President Biden’s insatiable hunger for votes has blinded him to the national security threats facing America,’ Denton said. ‘By choosing to use TikTok for his reelection campaign, he is callously disregarding warnings from both parties and national security experts that this Chinese-controlled technology imperils our national security through invasive data gathering and its ties to the CCP.’

‘We cannot let one man’s thirst for social media virality and votes endanger our country,’ Denton said. ‘The President must put America before his personal electoral interests, immediately delete TikTok, and join the bipartisan efforts to ban the app from operating on American soil.’ 

The Biden campaign’s TikTok video sparked outrage after the administration banned the Chinese-owned app from federal devices over security concerns.

Last February, the administration set a 30-day deadline for government agencies to purge the app from federal devices.

The social media platform, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, is popular among younger Americans. 

Biden previously joined forces with TikTok influencers amid his re-election run, and the Democratic National Committee also joined the platform.

The president’s campaign joining the Beijing-based social media platform could present unique security risks. 

Most notably, the Chinese Communist Party’s cybersecurity law allows government authorities to access companies’ data.

TikTok and the White House did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Fox News’ Joe Schoffstall contributed to this report.