Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., gave a harsh rebuke to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the onset of Wednesday’s highly anticipated Big Tech hearing on child exploitation online.

‘Mr. Zuckerberg, you and the companies before us. I know you don’t mean it to be so, but you have blood on your hands,’ Graham, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said, garnering applause from the audience. ‘You have a product that’s killing people.’ 

Graham referenced South Carolina state Rep. Brandon Guffey, who is suing Instagram after his 17-year-old son Gavin died by suicide after falling victim to an extortion group from Nigeria operating through the Meta-owned app. 

‘They threatened the young man that if you don’t give us money, we’re going to expose these photos. He gave them money, but it wasn’t enough. They kept threatening, and he killed himself. They threatened Mr. Guffey and a son. These are bastards. By any known definition,’ Graham said. 

Graham noted that Congress has taken action to regulate cigarettes and tobacco and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives regulates guns, yet social media companies are largely shielded from being held liable in court under Section 230 of Title 47 of the United States Code that was enacted as part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. 

‘The bottom line is you can’t be sued. You should be. And these emails would be great for punitive damages,’ Graham said, referencing Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., whom he dubbed the ‘dynamic duo’ for recently releasing 90 pages of internal emails from fall 2021 showing top Meta officials weighing the addition of dozens of engineers and other employees to focus on children’s well-being and safety. The emails show that one proposal to Zuckerberg for 45 new staff members was declined.

‘But the courtroom’s closed to every American abused by all the companies in front of me. Of all the people in America we could give blanket liability protection to, this would be the last group I would pick. It is now time to repeal Section 230,’ Graham said. 

‘We live in an America in 2024 where there is no regulatory body dealing with the most profitable, biggest companies in the history of the world,’ Graham said. ‘They can’t be sued. And there’s not one law on the books that’s meaningful in protecting the American consumer.’ 

Zuckerberg did not address Graham’s ‘blood on your hands comment’ directly in his own opening statement. 

‘Over the last eight years, we’ve built more than 30 different tools, resources and features that parents can set time limits for their teens using our apps, see who they’re following, or if they report someone for bullying,’ Zuckerberg said in part. 

‘Mental health is a complex issue and the existing body of scientific work has not shown a causal link between using social media and young people having worse mental health outcomes. A recent National Academies of Science report evaluated over 300 studies and found that research, quote, ‘did not support the conclusion that social media causes changes in adolescent mental health and also suggested that social media can provide significant positive benefits when young people use it to express themselves, explore and connect with others.’’ he said. 

‘Still, we’re going to continue to monitor the research and use it to inform our roadmap. Keeping people safe has been a challenge since the internet began. As criminals evolve their tactics, we have to evolve our defenses to comply with law enforcement to find bad actors and help bring them to justice. But the difficult reality is that no matter how much we invest or how effective our tools are, there are always more. There’s always more to learn and more improvements to make.’ 

‘We have around 40,000 people overall working on safety and security. We’ve invested more than $20 billion in this since 2016, including around $5 billion in the last year alone. We have many teams dedicated to child safety in all three and a lot of areas,’ Zuckerberg said. ‘Parents should have the final say on what apps are appropriate for their children and shouldn’t have to upload their ID every time. That’s what app stores are for.’ 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday called for ‘Squad’ member Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., to be expelled from Congress, have her citizenship revoked, and deported from the country over a speech she gave which critics alleged Omar put the interests of Somalis over Americans. 

The clip of Omar’s Jan. 27 speech, which went viral this week, appeared to show the Somali-born congresswoman assuring her constituents that she would use her influence to ensure the breakaway Republic of Somaliland would not enter a sea-access deal with Ethiopia. 

A translation of the clip DeSantis re-shared shows Omar telling the crowd: ‘The U.S. is a country where one of your daughters is in Congress to represent your interest.’ 

‘For as long as I am in the U.S. Congress, Somalia will never be in danger, its waters will not be stolen by Ethiopia or others … Sleep in comfort, knowing I am here to protect the interests of Somalia from inside the U.S. system.’ 

The clip ignited a firestorm of angry responses from critics who accused the Democratic lawmaker of prioritizing her loyalty to her country of birth rather than the U.S. 

‘Expel from Congress, denaturalize and deport!’ DeSantis tweeted on Tuesday. 

Omar left her homeland with her family near the start of the Somali Civil War in 1991 and spent four years at a Kenyan refugee camp before immigrating to the U.S. in 1995. 

Omar has criticized the translation of her remarks from Saturday, calling them ‘not only slanted but completely off.’ 

‘[B]ut I wouldn’t expect more from these propagandists. I pray for them and for their sanity,’ she tweeted. 

‘No nation state can survive if its states start to get involved in land lease negotiations with other countries without the consent of the federal government. Somalis in Somalia and in the diaspora are united in that effort and I stand in solidarity with them. No amount of harassment and lies will ever change that.’ 

Later Tuesday, Omar appeared to throw shade at DeSantis. While not directly addressing his tweet attacking her, she ridiculed his unsuccessful 2024 presidential campaign. 

‘Moving from 2024 failure and preparing for 2028 failure,’ she tweeted in response to an article suggesting the Republican governor had his eyes set on the next election. 

Fox News Digital has reached out to Omar’s campaign for further comment. 

– The Republican National Committee (RNC) appears to be coming quickly out of the gate when it comes to 2024 fundraising.

The RNC reports hauling in $12 million in January, which it highlights was over $2 million higher than any monthly fundraising total during 2023. 

The national party committee, which shared its figures first with Fox News on Tuesday, also noted that its digital grassroots and major donor fundraising hauls were higher in January than any other month over the past year.

The RNC also spotlighted that it is also on track to have a strong fundraising month in February, ‘dispelling mainstream media narratives and proving that we will have the necessary resources to strengthen our infrastructure and investments to win in the fall.’

The national party committee faced a slew of stories last autumn – after its cash on hand dropped to just over $9 million – that questioned the RNC’s fundraising and overall finances.

But longtime RNC chair Ronna McDaniel emphasized in a statement that ‘we’re 10 months out from Election Day, and the RNC is not only raising the necessary resources, but we’re continuing our strategic investments in battlegrounds across the country to take back the Senate and White House, and grow our majority in the House in the fall.’

‘While Democrats have no ground game nor any issues to run on, Republicans are firing on all cylinders to get-out-the-vote and grow our Party to Beat Biden,’ McDaniel argued.

The RNC didn’t share its latest cash on hand figures, as the filing of its fundraising report wasn’t due until the end of business on Wednesday.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC), which has yet to release its January fundraising, enjoys a joint fundraising agreement with President Biden’s re-election campaign. And the DNC outpaced the RNC for much of the past year. But Republicans note that even with an incumbent president in the White House, the DNC is barely outraising the RNC in direct fundraising cycle-to-date. 

The RNC, touting its strategic investments, notes that it has hired political and election integrity directors and support staff in 15 battleground states, including important House and Senate states such as New York, California, and Montana. It also highlights that its invested in recent years in community centers in states including California, New York and Texas.

And the RNC also spotlights its Bank Your Vote Initiative – an early in-person voting and ballot harvesting push to improve the GOP’s vote totals heading into Election Day in November.

Nikki Haley says she’s staying in the presidential race at least until Super Tuesday, though most of the media now deem the primary over and done with.

While Donald Trump’s media detractors have found new lines of attack, they can’t deny that his big wins in Iowa and New Hampshire have practically given him a headlock on the nomination.

But the biggest roadblock in her path is her own home state.

How is it that a former two-term governor is trailing Trump by 20 to 30 points?

The Trump juggernaut seems close to unstoppable. This Saturday’s Democratic primary in South Carolina (bold prediction: Joe Biden will win) will draw any potential party-switchers away from the GOP contest. 

And the Republican Party, transformed by Trump, is much more conservative in her state than when Haley left office in 2017.

Even Haley, Trump’s former U.N. ambassador, isn’t predicting victory. She says she simply needs to do better than the 43 percent she won in New Hampshire’s open primary. That’s a tall order.

But there’s an even deeper reality hurting Haley, according to some digging in South Carolina by two veteran New York Times reporters. All this came out during her years as governor, but is new to a national audience.

There’s a reason, says the piece, that the governor, Henry McMaster, who had been her lieutenant governor, has endorsed Trump. And the House backbencher who she picked for senator, Tim Scott, has endorsed Trump. And the congresswoman whose career was threatened in 2022 until Haley endorsed her, Nancy Mace, has endorsed Trump.

Haley said last week that South Carolina lawmakers had ‘no love for me’ because she tried to make state government more transparent and vetoed pork-barrel projects.

Longtime GOP consultant Chip Feikel told the paper ‘she was good on economic development but not great on cultivating relationships. She forgot who helped her get here.’

Perhaps the classic case involved former governor Mark Sanford, whose tenure was ruined by the ‘Appalachian Trail’ extramarital affair, who agreed to her request for a $400,000 ad blitz to salvage her campaign. 

‘And then she cut me off,’ Sanford told Politico. ‘This is systematic with Nikki: She cuts off people who have contributed to her success. It’s almost like there’s some weird psychological thing where she needs to pretend it’s self-made.’

Ouch.

There’s another way to look at this: ‘Haley and her supporters attribute the hard feelings she left in her wake to jealousy, sexism and the sense that a young woman of color had simply not waited her turn.’

But clearly, the accumulation of complaints reflects a pattern of burning bridges and alienating allies, even if it also depicts her as a fighter.

While Haley has sharpened her rhetoric against the former president, regularly calling him ‘unhinged,’ she is still pulling her punches.

On Sunday’s ‘Meet the Press,’ when host Kristen Welker asked whether the $83-million verdict in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case was ‘disqualifying,’ Haley answered in process terms:

‘I absolutely trust the jury. And I think that they made their decision based on the evidence. I just don’t think that should take him off the ballot.’ 

On the third try, Welker asked: ‘Why give him a pass on this issue, where a jury has found him liable for sexual abuse?’

‘I’m not giving him a pass on anything,’ Haley said before pivoting to Trump’s supposed decline as a 77-year-old. Everyone supports juries. What she did not do was address the substance of the accusations, which Trump continues to vehemently deny.

Welker moved on: ‘He has mocked your birth name. He has suggested you’re not eligible to be president because your parents weren’t born here. Of course, you are eligible. You were born here…What do you make of him bringing back this birther playbook against you? Do you think it will work in South Carolina and win over voters there?’

‘I mean, honestly, Kristen, I laugh every time I see one of his tweets, every time I see him throw a temper tantrum, because I know Donald Trump very well. When he feels insecure, he starts to rail. He starts to rant.’ She completely ducked the question.

Welker, again: ‘Would you go so far as to call those attacks racist, Ambassador?’

‘I think that’s for everybody else to decide.’

Haley has obviously made a calculated decision not to criticize Trump too harshly on personal matters. She undoubtedly believes that could turn off MAGA voters who might defect to her. But with less than a month to go before her home state primary, the try-not-to-offend-anyone strategy isn’t working.

This is outrageous and unacceptable. The feds must step up efforts to trace those making these reckless calls and make sure they get significant jail time. 

American servicemembers are dead, Iran’s proxies killed them, and President Joe Biden’s weak policies are to blame.

Iranian-backed militants operating out of Syria or Iraq finally hit their mark over the weekend, using drones to kill three U.S. servicemembers in Jordan while wounding 25 more. The American military presence, some 350 U.S. Army and Air Force personnel, are on the Jordanian border to prevent a resurgence of the deadly and virulent ISIS Sunni Islamist terror network while safeguarding Syrian refugees. And the attacks on U.S. forces in the region continue.

With Biden’s ‘proportional response’ against the Iranian proxy Houthi rebels in Yemen having failed to deter them, or their sponsor Iran, one might be excused for asking a basic question: What’s the plan?

Biden’s policies in the region represent a restoration of Obama’s policies—namely, the appeasement of Iran’s theocratic regime in the hopes that the mullahs might be dissuaded from deploying nuclear missiles. Iran serving as a regional counterbalance to a robust Israel was also a concern of Obama’s—something that seems particularly antiquarian in the wake of Hamas’ (another Iranian proxy) Oct. 7 Bronze Age barbarities. A more pedestrian, election year, concern is to keep the flow of Middle Eastern oil uninterrupted to shield Bidenflation-weary consumers from further energy price hikes.

Strategist Edward Luttwak succinctly summarized Obama’s Law, ‘Iran can attack at will but must never be attacked.’

All Americans should expect or at least hope that the Biden administration is fully cognizant of its regional objectives and the risks for U.S. forces operating there. A major factor in ensuring the ongoing safety of American servicemembers should be the robust use of war games.

War games are employed by military planners for two main reasons: to better understand the situation and anticipate what the enemy might do.

In the leadup to the Imperial Japanese Navy’s disastrous attempt to seize Midway, senior Japanese officers war gamed the attack. It ended in failure several times, but senior officers insisted that Japan’s aircraft carriers be refloated. One month after the Japan’s tabletop exercises, the Battle of Midway ended with the sinking of all four of the Japanese aircraft carriers committed to the operation at the cost of one U.S. Navy carrier.

In March 1987, the Kuwaiti government sought protection for its oil tankers that were being targeted by Iran in an expansion of the Iran-Iraq War being played out with attacks on shipping in the Persian Gulf. America agreed to reflag some tankers, requiring the ships to include an American captain, and at least half of the crew had to be American as well, before the U.S. Navy would escort the ships in the hostile waters off the coast of Iran.

The convoy effort was code-named Operation Earnest Will. Just before it started in July 1987, two week-long war games were conducted in the basement of the Pentagon. The war games explored two contingencies, with the Green team offering a more robust military-centric response and the Blue team a more State Department-oriented ‘proportional response’ strategy. I participated in the Green team as a young Reagan appointee. By the end of the exercise, the Green team’s more aggressive reaction to Iranian attacks resulted in 50 American dead, wounded, or captured. The Blue team’s more tentative path allowed Iran to control the pace of escalation with the result being 1,500 American casualties.

When an Iranian mine nearly sunk the USS Samuel B. Roberts, a destroyer, in April 1988, the U.S. swung into action. Four days later, on April 14, the U.S. Navy unleashed its largest surface engagement since World War II, codenamed Operation Praying Mantis. The Navy sank an Iranian frigate, a gunboat, and various other vessels as well as destroyed two militarized offshore oil platforms. The Iranians suffered 56 dead. Two U.S. helicopter crew were lost to unknown causes.

The successful U.S. naval operation was one of the factors that brought Iran to the peace table and ended the Iran-Iraq War.

That the Reagan administration followed the Green team operational concept, with the resultant modest loss of American life, as compared to taking the timid Blue team path, is highly relevant to today’s situation.

There are three possibilities regarding the Biden team’s use of war gaming to anticipate Iran’s attacks by proxy. First, it’s possible no war gaming was conducted or was improperly conducted. Second, it’s possible that war games were conducted but not communicated up the chain of command as the results were understood to be unwelcome. And third, it’s possible that the war games were conducted, the results communicated, and then subsequently ignored, with the predicable loss of American servicemembers seen as a collateral price that had to be paid in furtherance of ‘Obama’s Law.’

War gaming is a serious tool of both statecraft and war. Ignoring the results of war gaming is perilous. Ignoring the results because they don’t comport with your ideology amounts to criminal malpractice.

It is no great secret that millions of Americans feel that Congress is more interested in protecting large corporations than looking out for ordinary people.

That is never clearer than when we talk about our broken health care system, and the outrageous price of prescription drugs in this country.

The truth is, if you ask most Americans – Democrats, Republicans, independents, progressives, conservatives – they will agree: we are getting ripped off, big time, by the pharmaceutical industry.

As a nation, we spend almost twice as much per capita as any other country on health care – over $13,000 for every man, woman and child. Even for those with insurance, costs are so high that medical bills are often the number one cause of bankruptcy in the United States.

And one of the major reasons for the high cost of health care in America is that we pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.

You tell me: why does Merck charge diabetes patients in the United States $6,900 for Januvia when the exact same product can be purchased in Canada for $900 and just $200 in France?

Why does Johnson & Johnson charge Americans with arthritis $79,000 for Stelara when it can be purchased for just $16,000 in the United Kingdom? And why does Bristol Myers Squibb charge patients in our country $7,100 for Eliquis when the same product can be purchased for just $900 in Canada and just $650 in France?

On and on it goes. Almost every prescription drug costs far more in the United States than it does in other countries. 

The good news is that we are beginning to take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry. Medicare, for the first time ever, is negotiating the price of some drugs, including Januvia, Stelara and Eliquis. 

The bad news is that the pharmaceutical industry is doing everything it can to stop these negotiations, and prevent Congress from making prescription drugs affordable for all Americans – not just those on Medicare.

The giant pharmaceutical and health insurance lobbies have spent huge amounts of money over the past decades to ensure that their profits come before the health of the American people.

Over the past 25 years, the drug companies have spent $8.5 billion on lobbying. Today, they have some 1,800 well-paid lobbyists in Washington, D.C. – including former leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties. Unbelievably, that is more than three lobbyists for every member of Congress.

During that same period, they have provided over $700 million in campaign contributions. And they are equal opportunity contributors. They contribute heavily to both Republican and Democratic candidates. 

The result of congressional inaction is that these large corporations have driven up the prices of prescription drugs to the point that one out of four Americans cannot afford the medicine their doctors prescribe.

Meanwhile, while millions of Americans suffer – and some die – because they can’t afford the prescription drugs they need, 10 of the top pharmaceutical companies in the country made over $110 billion in profits in 2022 and paid their CEOs outrageously high compensation packages.

As the chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), one of my top priorities is to substantially reduce the price of prescription drugs in America. One of the ways to do that is to hold the chief executives of some of the largest pharmaceutical companies in our country accountable for their actions.

That is why I have invited Robert Davis, the CEO of Merck; Joaquin Duato, the CEO of Johnson & Johnson; and Chris Boerner, the CEO of Bristol Myers Squibb, to a hearing to discuss what they are doing to lower drug prices in America. 

Why did we ask these CEOs to come before us? Because the American people deserve answers to some pretty simple questions.

For example: Why is it that the median price of new prescription drugs in America is now over $220,000 – including many new cancer drugs? How does it happen that while millions of Americans cannot afford the prescription drugs they need, when major drug companies in America spend more on stock buybacks and dividends than they do on research and development?

Why is there an enormous lack of transparency in how your companies set drug prices?

These very straightforward questions are on the minds of millions of Americans. These are questions that the CEOs of major pharmaceutical companies have a responsibility to answer. 

And let’s be clear: these are not struggling companies forced to charge high prices to survive. Believe me, they are not going broke. In 2022, Johnson & Johnson made nearly $18 billion in profits, paid its CEO over $27 million in compensation and spent over $17 billion on stock buybacks and dividends. 

That same year, Merck made $14.5 billion in profit, handed out over $7 billion in dividends to their wealthy stockholders and paid its CEO over $52 million in compensation. 

And Bristol Myers Squibb made $6.3 billion in profits last year, while recently spending over $12 billion on stock buybacks and dividends and giving its CEO over $41 million in compensation. 

I am proud of what the committee has already accomplished.

Last year, the CEO of Moderna committed during a HELP Committee hearing that his company would set up a patient assistance program so that no one in America would have to pay for their vaccine out of pocket. In a separate HELP Committee hearing last May, the CEO of Eli Lilly committed that his company would not raise prices on existing insulin products.

The committee’s efforts are paying off, but much more needs to be done.

I look forward to the hearing on Feb. 8, with the CEOs of Johnson & Johnson, Merck, and Bristol Myers Squibb, to discuss how they will substantially lower the price of prescription drugs in America.

Iranian officials warned that Tehran would decisively respond to any U.S. attacks, as President Biden vowed unspecified action following the deaths of three American soldiers in Jordan.

‘We hear threats coming from American officials, we tell them that they have already tested us, and we now know one another, no threat will be left unanswered,’ Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ chief Hossein Salami said on Wednesday, Reuters reported, citing the semi-official Tasnim news agency.

‘We are not after war, but we have no fear of war,’ Salami, who answers only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said at an event Wednesday, according to the state-run IRNA news agency. 

Another warning came from Amir Saeid Iravani, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations in New York. 

‘The Islamic Republic would decisively respond to any attack on the country, its interests and nationals under any pretexts,’ Iravani said, according to the IRNA. He described any possible Iranian retaliation as a ‘strong response,’ without elaborating. He gave a briefing to Iranian journalists late Tuesday, according to IRNA. 

Iravani also denied that Iran and the U.S. had exchanged any messages over the last few days, either through intermediaries or directly. The pan-Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera, which is based in and funded by Qatar, reported earlier that such communication had taken place. Qatar often serves as an intermediary between Washington and Tehran.

Such messages have not been exchanged,’ Iravani said.

On Saturday, a general in charge of Iran’s air defenses described them as being at their ‘highest defensive readiness.’ That raises concerns for commercial aviation traveling through and over Iran as well. After a 2020 U.S. drone strike in Baghdad killed Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the elite Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Iranian air defenses mistakenly shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane, killing all 176 people on board. 

In response to the 2020 U.S. strike, Iranian Revolutionary Guards also targeted the Ain al-Asad U.S. base in Iraq.

Speaking to reporters as he left the White House on a campaign trip to Florida Tuesday, Biden vowed to reporters he decided how to respond after three U.S. service members were killed and more than 40 others were injured in a drone strike by Iranian-backed militants on a post in Jordan near the Syrian border crucial to the anti-ISIS mission in the region. 

The president did not elaborate. Meanwhile, attacks by the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels continue in the Red Sea, most recently targeting a U.S. warship. The missile launched Tuesday night targeted the USS Gravely, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, the U.S. military’s Central Command said in a statement.

‘There were no injuries or damage reported,’ the statement said.

A Houthi military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree, claimed the attack in a statement Wednesday morning, calling it ‘a victory for the oppression of the Palestinian people and a response to the American-British aggression against our country.’ Saree claimed the Houthis fired ‘several’ missiles, something not acknowledged by the U.S. Navy. Houthi claims have been exaggerated in the past, and their missiles sometimes crash on land and fail to reach their targets. 

The Houthis claimed without evidence on Monday to have targeted the USS Lewis B. Puller, a floating landing base used by the Navy SEALs and others. The U.S. said there had been no attack. Since November, the rebels have repeatedly targeted ships in the Red Sea over Israel’s offensive against Hamas in Gaza. But they have frequently targeted vessels with tenuous or no clear links to Israel, imperiling shipping in a key route for global trade between Asia, the Mideast and Europe.

The Houthis hit a commercial vessel with a missile on Friday, sparking a fire that burned for hours.

Five members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards have been killed following Israeli strikes in Syria since late December, according to Reuters. 

The Tasnim news agency reported Monday that another Israeli strike hit an ‘Iranian military advisory center’ in Syria, killing two. Iran’s envoy to Syria denied the details on the target and said those killed were not Iranians, according to Reuters.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.