Hunter Biden reportedly sought assistance from the U.S. government for a lucrative energy project in Italy when President Biden was serving as vice president, highlighting allegations that he used his father’s political standing as leverage for his foreign business interests. 

The younger Biden wrote at least one letter to the U.S. ambassador to Italy in 2016 seeking assistance for the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, where he was a board member, according to newly released records and interviews cited by the New York Times.

The response was lukewarm, as officials were somewhat hesitant to help with a request from the son of a sitting vice president on behalf of a foreign company. 

‘This is a Ukrainian company and, purely to protect ourselves, U.S.G. should not be actively advocating with the government of Italy without the company going through the D.O.C. Advocacy Center,’ an official wrote. 

The acronyms refer to the United States government and a Department of Commerce program that supports American companies that seek business with foreign governments.

‘I want to be careful about promising too much,’ wrote a Commerce Department official based in the U.S. Embassy in Rome who responded. 

Hunter Biden asked several people if they could arrange an introduction between Burisma and the president of the Tuscany region of Italy, where Burisma was pursuing a geothermal project, Abbe Lowell, Biden’s lawyer, said. 

He said no meeting had occurred.  

‘No meeting occurred, no project materialized, no request for anything in the U.S. was ever sought and only an introduction in Italy was requested,’ 

In a statement to the Times, Lowell said the outreach by Biden was a ‘proper request.’

President Biden wasn’t aware that his son reached out to the U.S. Embassy in Italy on behalf of Burisma when he was vice president, the White House said. 

Hunter Biden has not been charged with violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, which requires people to disclose when they lobby the U.S. government on behalf of foreign interests.

Fox News Digital has reached out to the State Department and the White House. 

President Biden repeated a claim he had been fact-checked for in the past, telling an audience on Tuesday that he traveled 17,000 miles with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

‘I spent a lot of time with Xi Jinping,’ he said during his remarks at an event touting the Biden ‘Cancer Moonshot’ initiative in New Orleans, Louisiana.

‘I spent over 80 hours with him alone. Over 17,000 miles in China, anywhere in Tibet, near Tibet.’ 

He described telling the Chinese president that ‘possibility’ is the one word that can define America, tying his analogy to the Cancer Moonshot initiative. 

Biden’s claim that he has traveled more than 17,000 miles with Xi has previously been fact-checked and considered primarily inaccurate, however. 

He has made the claim many times over several years and was fact-checked by the Washington Post in 2021. ‘Try as we could, however, we still could not get the travel to add up to 17,000 miles,’ wrote the publication. 

Biden was given three pinocchios for his claim. 

According to the Post, this number of pinocchios means there is ‘significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions.’ It is comparable to a rating of ‘mostly false.’

The White House did not immediately respond to inquiries from Fox News Digital. 

Biden announced $150 million in ARPA-H awards to develop technologies that will allow surgeons to provide more successful tumor-removal surgeries for people facing cancer at the event in New Orleans.

After having dropped out of the 2024 presidential race last month and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed him, Biden is now reportedly focusing on the causes that are most personal for him in his remaining months as president. 

Cancer research is of ‘immense importance’ to the president, an aide told CNN.

Vice President Harris appears to be singing a different tune when it comes to ensuring ‘Medicare-for-all,’ compared to when she ran for president in 2019.

A campaign official told Fox News senior White House correspondent Peter Doocy that Harris will not push the subject of single-payer or ‘Medicare-for-all’ this go around, as she seeks her first term as commander-in-chief.

In 2019, Fox News spoke to Harris in the hallways of Capitol Hill, asking about her plans for providing health care.

‘How important is it to your health care plan to get rid of private insurance companies? Because there is some confusion about that,’ Doocy asked Harris on Jan. 30, 2019.

‘I’m glad you asked. Yeah. So, the bottom line and the most important is that everyone have access to health care,’ Harris said. ‘That is the goal. That is the purpose for me supporting the policy of ‘Medicare-for-all.’

‘If Congress votes in a way that reflects the values and desires of the American people, then Congress will vote for a policy that gives everyone access to health care,’ she later said.

On July 29, 2019, Harris published a piece on her campaign website about her plan to provide ‘Medicare-for-all.’

She wrote, ‘There is perhaps no more complicated or more personal issue for Americans than health care.’ Harris also wrote that the American health care system is ‘a patchwork of plans, providers and costs’ that frustrates people and leaves them powerless against the insurance companies in charge.

Her proposed solution was to provide ‘Medicare-for-all’ because ‘Medicare works’ and ‘it’s popular.’

”Medicare-for-all’ will cover all medically necessary services, including emergency room visits, doctor visits, vision, dental, hearing aids, mental health, and substance-use disorder treatment, and comprehensive reproductive health care services,’ Harris wrote. ‘It will also allow the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate for lower prescription drug prices.’

But her plan in July was different from what she proposed in January that year, because it would allow private insurers to offer Medicare plans to their clients.

In an interview with The Hill in October 2019, Harris said she knew she would be called ‘a flip-flopper’ after she backed away from her initial support of ‘Medicare-for-all,’ and developed her own health care plan.

Her plan in January 2019 called on eliminating private insurance. Then in July 2019, she chose to include a role for private insurance companies to privately administer Medicare plans, though under strict rules.

Even in 2017, Harris backed a single-payer plan proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

Harris told constituents at a town hall in Oakland on Aug. 30, 2017, that she planned to co-sponsor Sanders’ forthcoming ‘Medicare-for-all’ bill, explaining that it was ‘just the right thing to do.’

‘It’s not just about what is morally and ethically right. It also makes sense from a fiscal standpoint,’ Harris said at the time.

Harris had previously stated that she supported the single-payer system as a ‘concept,’ but that lawmakers needed to ‘work out the details.’ Her announcement to co-sponsor Sanders’ bill was the first time she had publicly supported a single-payer plan.

Under this European-style health care system, the government is solely responsible for covering health care costs. Sanders rolled out an earlier version of his proposal during the Democratic presidential primaries in 2016.

The plan was first estimated to cost $13.8 trillion over the first 10 years, but that ballooned to $32 trillion and required an average annual tax increase of $24,000 per household.

Fox News’ Brooke Singman contributed to this report.

Critics have claimed President Biden’s seemingly light schedule and infrequent public appearances since dropping out of the presidential race will harm America’s image abroad, even as the White House stresses recent policy wins. 

‘Biden has disappeared from view, Harris is campaigning full-time, and won’t meet with the press,’ former national security adviser K.T. McFarland told Fox News Digital. 

‘This sends a signal to the world that there is no one in charge in the White House,’ McFarland explained. ‘Our allies wonder whether they can trust us.  Our adversaries see this as a wide open window of opportunity, when they can exploit us without risk of consequences.’

‘They know this window of opportunity will slam shut if Donald Trump is elected,’ McFarland argued. ‘We’re in a period of maximum vulnerability.’

Biden has made few public appearances and his schedule appears lighter than it had been prior to his decision not to seek a second term. 

When Fox News correspondent David Spunt last week asked White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre why the American people have not heard from the president, she replied that the White House had put out two readouts that day. 

Jean-Pierre also stressed that the administration is now in a ‘different time’ and that Americans would ‘get to see the president… it is certainly the president’s priority, to make sure that we do everything that we can, to protect our national security, right?’ 

The press secretary highlighted the push for a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas as well as the administration’s response to Tropical Storm Debby as important issues that have taken Biden’s attention in recent weeks. 

But concerns about mounting tensions in the Middle East grew more severe this week as Israel revealed intelligence that indicated Iran would launch a significant attack, which would serve as retaliation for the death of Hamas commander Ismail Haniyeh. 

Top U.S. national security leaders said last week that they and allies are directly pressing Israel, Iran and others to avoid escalating the conflict, even as the U.S. moved more troops to the region and threatened retaliation if American forces are attacked.

The White House continued to stress Biden’s focus on a range of issues as proof that he’s not hiding from the public: Biden and the first lady will visit New Orleans this week to highlight the Biden Cancer Moonshot initiative to reduce the cancer death rate by at least half before 2047, NOLA reported. 

‘President Biden is working hard and building on the most successful record of any modern administration by delivering more results for the American people,’ White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates told Fox News Digital. 

Bates cited ‘an historic return of unjustly detained Americans from Russia, perpetuating the Biden-Harris manufacturing boom, lowering the costs of prescription drugs, and bringing unlawful border crossings to the lowest level in years’ as major recent wins for the administration. 

Bates also leveled criticism at the Republicans for ‘blocking tough, bipartisan border legislation on behalf of Donald Trump.’

Politico reported that Biden will use his final half-year in office to focus on ‘legacy items’ and give Vice President Kamala Harris the lion’s share of the limelight as she seeks to become the first female president of the United States: The White House, for example, will unveil Medicare price negotiation savings this week, which the Biden campaign – and now the Harris campaign – had aimed to focus on as part of the push for votes in November. 

But the White House is still in the early days of a tumultuous economic situation. The president claimed to have ‘cured the economy’ last week just before the stock market stumbled and raised concerns about the economic health of the country throughout the rest of the year. 

‘The July jobs report is being viewed as a recession warning, and the markets are responding accordingly,’ Bill Adams, chief economist at the Dallas-based Comerica Bank, said after the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped over 1,000 points, marking a 2.6% shift and the worst day since September 2022. 

Fox News Digital’s Danielle Wallace and Fox News Correspondent David Spunt contributed to this report.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has reportedly postponed a trip to the Middle East over heightened security concerns in the region and a possible retaliatory strike from Iran against Israel. 

Blinken’s trip, originally scheduled for Tuesday, was delayed over ‘uncertainty about the situation,’ Axios reported, citing two unnamed sources. 

The delayed trip comes ahead of planned cease-fire talks later this week after more than 10 months of fighting between Israel and Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip. 

Hamas fired two rockets aimed at Tel Aviv on Tuesday while Israel launched separate deadly airstrikes in Gaza. 

Despite the ongoing violence, U.S. officials said Monday they expected the talks to resume Thursday as planned. 

The leaders of Britain, France and Germany on Monday urged Iran and its allies to refrain from retaliatory attacks against Israel in response to the assassination of a top Hamas commander in Tehran last month. 

Israel was immediately blamed for the assassination after pledging to kill Ismail Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders over the terrorist group’s Oct. 7 attack on the Jewish state, which killed 1,200 people and saw hundreds more taken hostage. 

The Palestinian death toll is nearing 40,000 people, per figures from Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry. 

European leaders have also backed a push by mediators from the U.S., Qatar and Egypt to broker an agreement to end the Israel-Hamas war. 

Mediators have spent months trying to get both sides to agree to a three-phase plan in which Hamas would release the remaining hostages captured in its Oct. 7 attack in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, and Israel would withdraw from Gaza. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

As Israel continues to brace itself under the threat of an imminent attack from Iran or its proxy forces, including Hamas and Hezbollah, security experts are sounding the alarm that Tehran has its sites set on Jordan as its next great ‘terror front.’

‘Jordan is the last holdout,’ Behnam Ben Taleblu, Iran expert and senior fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) told Fox News Digital. ‘It’s the last bastion of the pro-Western or status quo order in the heartland of the northern part of the Middle East.’

The security expert pointed to Iran’s growing influence and support for proxy fighters not only in Gaza, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, but further out across the Arabian Peninsula, including Yemen and Oman, where anti-Israel sentiment is on the rise. 

‘Increasingly, the regime has benefited from the rise in anti-Israel sentiment to cause instability in Jordan,’ Ben Taleblu said.

Growing concern over how Tehran will use anti-Israeli sentiment in the Middle East coincided with a warning issued Monday by Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz, who said Iran was working ‘to establish a new eastern terror front against Israel’s major population centers.’

The Israeli official said the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is coordinating with ‘Hamas operatives in Lebanon to smuggle weapons and funds into Jordan’ with the apparent aim of destabilizing the Israeli neighbor. 

Katz said smuggled arms are transported across Jordan’s western border into the West Bank, known as Judea and Samaria, with a particular focus on refugee camps and the goal of establishing pro-Iranian sentiment as it has done in areas like Gaza and southern Lebanon. 

‘The Iranian axis of evil today effectively controls refugee camps in Judea and Samaria through its proxies, leaving the Palestinian Authority powerless to act,’ Katz added. 

Jordan’s border with Israel is the Jewish state’s longest shared border, reportedly stretching some 300 miles from the contested Golan Heights in the north, through the Palestinian West Bank and the Dead Sea, before ending at the Gulf of Aqaba.

Though Katz’s warnings come as tensions between Israel and Iran have reached a historic peak, local reporting shows that Iranian-led smuggling efforts have plagued Jordanian security efforts for years.

The Jordanian regime over the last half decade has increasingly been working to stop smuggling operations to help prevent the formation of anti-Israel terrorist cells in the West Bank. 

‘Ultimately [that would] be a benefit to the Islamic Republic, because it could allow for a full encirclement of Israel,’ Ben Taleblu said.  ‘The one thing that stands in the way of all of this is the Jordanian monarchy and the strength of the Jordanian security services.’

Jordanian officials have been working to ease tensions in the region by meeting with U.S., Israeli and Iranian officials over recent weeks following Tehran’s threat to hit the Jewish state directly.

Though even as Jordan works to maintain the status quo in the region and prevent an all-out war, it has also warned it will not become a battleground state for either nation to utilize. 

‘We will not be a battlefield for Iran or Israel. We informed the Iranians and the Israelis that we will not allow anyone to violate our airspace and risk the safety of our citizens,’ Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said in a Saturday interview, according to a Reuters report. 

‘We will intercept anything that passes through our airspace or think that it constitutes a threat to us or our citizens,’ he added.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., is heckling the State Department for commemorating the anniversary of the Geneva Conventions on Tuesday, accusing the Biden administration of facilitating Israel’s alleged violations of the historic peace agreement.

‘Is this a joke?’ Tlaib wrote on X regarding a statement from Secretary of State Antony Blinken to mark the occasion. 

‘You supported sending more U.S. made bombs being used to commit war crimes. The government of Israel bombed hospitals, schools, and tents full of displaced Palestinians. How can you say you are for respecting international human rights laws?’

Blinken had said, ‘Today we commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the Geneva Conventions of 1949. The United States reaffirms our steadfast commitment to respecting international humanitarian law and mitigating suffering in armed conflict. We call on others to do the same.’

The Geneva Conventions of 1949 is a set of four peace treaties affirming standards for the treatment of civilians, prisoners of war and other noncombatants. 

Her comments come as Israel’s military readies for a possibly imminent attack by Iran in retaliation for the killing of Hamas’ political leader in Tehran.

Despite being a Democrat, Tlaib has been one of President Biden’s harshest critics in terms of Israel.

Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, is a leader in the growing faction of the progressive left who are critical of Democrats’ traditionally close ties with Israel.

Those fractures have been on full display in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas militants on southern Israel.

Twenty-two House Democrats voted with Republicans to censure Tlaib for her comments on Israel on Nov. 7 last year, a month after the attack.

During Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress last month, Tlaib mounted a silent protest by holding a sign that read ‘war criminal’ on one side and ‘guilty of genocide’ on the other.

She held the sign up for most of the speech despite appearing to be asked not to do so by House staff several times.

Fox News Digital reached out to the State Department for comment on her recent remarks. 

Elon Musk’s conversational interview with former President Trump on Monday evening pulled in a combined 1 billion views, according to the tech billionaire. 

‘Combined views of the conversation with @realDonaldTrump and subsequent discussion by other accounts now ~1 billion,’ Musk posted on his social media platform X early Tuesday morning following the interview. 

The message followed a previous post outlining that, ‘Between 7:47 PM and 10:47 PM ET, President Donald Trump’s Space post received 73 million views. During the same period, there were 4 million posts about Elon Musk and President Trump’s conversation on 𝕏, generating a total of 998 million views.’

Trump spoke with Musk on Monday evening on Twitter Space for two hours in an expansive audio-only interview that included the 45th president speaking at length about immigration woes, spiraling inflation issues, the assassination attempt against his life and policies he would implement if he wins at the polls on Nov. 5. 

​​’I believe it’s over 20 million people came into our country. Many coming from jails, from prisons, from mental institutions, or a bigger version of that is insane asylums. And many are terrorists. And I’ll tell you what, they’re coming not just from South America. They’re coming from Africa. They’re coming from all over the world. They’re coming from Asia. They’re coming from the Middle East,’ Trump told Musk, who endorsed Trump earlier this year. 

Trump said that despite Vice President Kamala Harris’ recent rhetoric to address the spiraling migrant crisis at the border if elected, she and President Biden have had years to address migration but ‘won’t do anything.’ 

​​’She had three and a half years, and by the way, they have another five months that they can do something. But they won’t do anything. It’s all talk. She’s incompetent and he’s incompetent. And frankly, I think that she’s more incompetent than he is, and that’s saying something, because he’s not too good,’ he said. 

Trump’s interview with Musk kicked off after 8:30 p.m. Monday, following a ‘massive’ distributed denial-of-service attack on the platform that caused delays, Musk explained on X. Despite the disruption, the interview received a billion viewers, according to Musk’s tally.

Trump also addressed Biden’s exit from the 2024 race during the conversation, saying it was a Democratic ‘coup’ that pressured Biden to drop out. Biden dropped out of the running last month as concerns mounted surrounding his mental acuity and 81 years of age and Democrats and traditional allies of the party called on him to exit the race. 

‘This was a coup. This was a coup of a president of the United States. He didn’t want to leave, and they said, ‘We can do it the nice way, or we can do it the hard way,” Trump said. 

‘They just took him out back behind the shed and basically shot him,’ Musk added before Trump slammed Biden as ‘the worst president in history.’ 

The 45th president also took a shot at Harris for snubbing the media and interviews since she emerged as the Democratic Party’s 2024 nominee. Harris has avoided formal press conferences or sit-down interviews, including for a Time magazine cover story, for 23 days, as of Tuesday.  

‘It’s pretty sad when you think that somebody that does this for a living can’t answer a question or is afraid to do an interview, and in her case, with a very friendly interview. She’s got all friendly interviewers,’ Trump said.

Musk said after the interview that he is ‘happy to host Kamala’ in the same interview format. 

Trump made a return to X earlier on Monday after nearly a year of not posting on his once-favored social media platform. Before Musk bought Twitter, now X, in 2022, Trump was suspended from his Twitter account following the breach of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He seldom posted on the platform after Musk reinstated his account, only sharing his mugshot in August of last year. 

Ahead of his interview with Trump, Musk hyped the interview as one that ‘should be highly entertaining!’ as it ‘​​is unscripted with no limits on subject matter.’

Republicans have more districts in their corner in the first Fox News Power Rankings House forecast, but overall, the race for a majority is a toss-up.

Political junkies will tell you that it has been a chaotic couple of years in the House. 

With speaker battles, a debt ceiling crisis, the sixth-ever expulsion of a House lawmaker and the first ever shrinking of the ‘Squad,’ there has been plenty to talk about on television and social media.

At the same time, Americans continue to hold congress in low regard, with only 16% saying they approved of its job in July. (It has been two decades since congress had an approval rating of over 50%).

These might seem like vulnerabilities for the ruling party, but when it comes to their congressional ballot, Americans are putting drama and dissatisfaction aside.

The top issues in the race continue to be the economy, immigration and abortion, and voters are locked in to their preferred party for each of them.

Because of that, you can expect similar electoral dynamics in the House as in the Senate. A win for former President Trump will help the GOP stay in power in the lower chamber, as we saw in 2016. A win for Vice President Kamala Harris will likely give the Democrats a win in the House too, as President Biden was able to deliver in 2020.

In the meantime, the race to rule the House starts off as a toss-up.

Every House seat is up for election every two years, but only a fraction are competitive. In this forecast, 16% of the 435 districts are firmly in play.

There are 19 toss-up races, and with Republicans enjoying a razor-thin majority in the House today, the results in those districts alone will decide which party gets the gavel.

Many of the highly competitive races share key features.

The redistricting process occurs at the beginning of each decade, but a mountain of litigation over racial or partisan gerrymandering issues has left some states redrawing boundaries as recently as May.

The upshot is that several seats are likely to change hands early on election night.

each have redrawn seats with higher Black voter populations after court rulings. Both seats are represented by vacating Republicans and are Democrats’ best flip opportunities of the night. 

Meanwhile, a state Republican supermajority approved a more favorable map in North Carolina. Three seats currently represented by Democrats will now be open in November, and Republicans are favored in all of them.

Redistricting will also affect a highly competitive race in New York.

A district containing Syracuse that currently belongs to Rep. Brandon Williams will shift leftward this year, putting the first-term congressman in a much tougher fight to hold on for a second. New York’s 22nd district is rated Lean D.

One of the reasons Republicans underperformed expectations in the midterms was candidate quality. In other words, the party fielded nominees who were poor matches for their district, had baggage, or were ineffective campaigners.

This year, the party is working with a stronger bench.

The most notable example is . In 2022, moderate Democrat Mary Peltola pulled off a historic upset when she beat former Governor Sarah Palin in the final round of the state’s ranked choice ballot tabulation.

This year, Republicans hope that either second-time candidate Nick Begich or Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom will retake the seat; both have been stronger campaigners.

Peltola is well-liked in her state and has been an advocate on local issues, chiefly the state’s fishing industry. This seat is rated Lean D.

Back on the mainland, Ohio’s 9th district has been in Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur’s hands since 1983. She has crafted a brand around her pro-agriculture and anti-free trade views.

But with Ohio’s rightward drift, this is a very competitive seat.

In the midterms, Republicans fielded a candidate who was in lock step with Trump but struggled to appeal to centrists. This time, state Rep. Derek Merrin will be on the ballot for the GOP, bringing conservative principles and a wealth of campaign experience along with him.

This seat is a toss-up.

Republicans still have candidate issues in some key races. Washington’s 3rd district will be a rematch between first-term Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Blue Dog Democrat who recently suggested that Biden resign from office, and Joe Kent, her Republican challenger.

Kent, a veteran and former CIA officer, was mired in controversy in 2022. That will continue to be a liability, but Republicans are hopeful that he will run a more disciplined campaign this time. This race is also a toss-up.

Trump struggled in the suburbs when he last ran for president. According to the Fox News Voter Analysis, he lagged Biden by 10 points with all suburban voters and 19 points with suburban women, leaving him with critical deficits in the battleground states.

House Republicans in city and suburban districts did not fare so poorly. Challengers like Nicole Malliotakis in New York’s 11th district, Young Kim and Michelle Steel in the California suburbs and Maria Elvira Salazar in Miami flipped Democratic districts.

This all suggests that Trump is more helpful to House Republicans than the conventional wisdom might say. He brings out core ‘MAGA’ voters who vote red down the ballot, while allowing candidates to make inroads with moderates and independents.

The best example is in Nebraska’s 2nd district, containing Omaha and its surrounding suburbs.

At the presidential level, this is a Lean D district (and unlike most, it gets an electoral vote in November). The area has a larger proportion of college-educated voters, who dislike Trump and show up to vote against him.

However, in the House, the race is rated Lean R.

That is thanks to Rep. Don Bacon, a moderate conservative, veteran and Trump critic who has won the district four times from 2016 onwards.

He has another tough battle against state lawmaker Tony Vargas this year, who is running a disciplined and well-funded campaign.

Unlike the presidential race, the Republicans have an edge here so far.

There are several departing Democrats in competitive districts, including Elissa Slotkin in Michigan’s 7th district and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia’s 7th. 

These moderate congresswomen in swingy parts of their states are running for Senate seats this year, leaving highly competitive races behind.

Republicans are hopeful that the departure of these well-known incumbents will give their challengers a boost, but with both parties fielding high-quality replacements, these races will be close (Democrats have an edge in Virginia’s 7th).

Democrats will also play defense in dozens of districts with first-term incumbents, like Rep. Yadira Caraveo in Colorado’s 8th district. This newly created district includes the northern Denver suburbs and surrounding areas, and Caraveo won it by less than a point last time. This race is a toss-up.

California and New York run deep blue at the statewide level, but just outside highly populated liberal cities, plenty of districts are in play.

In California, keep an eye on the 13th district, home of Modesto; the 27th district, north of Los Angeles; and the 41st district, which includes Palm Springs.

Republicans won all three seats by narrow margins in the midterms and are now locked in tough re-election battles with well-funded Democratic opponents. The forecast has Democrats with an edge in the 13th and 27th districts at Lean D, while the 41st is a toss-up.

Across the continent in New York, and Brandon Williams is not the only Republican fighting for his political career.

New York’s 17th, 18th and 19th districts, all in the Hudson Valley region, were hotly contested in the midterms, and two out of the three are now represented by Republicans with strong bipartisan brands. Rep. Mike Lawler is the best known but also has the bluest territory to defend of the two, with Rep. Marc Molinaro in another tight race nearby. Both these races are toss-ups.

In between them is Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan, whose race starts at Lean D.

Voters in 11 states will cast a ballot for governor this year; tomorrow’s Power Rankings takes a look at the most competitive races on the map.

Then, on Sunday, Fox News Democracy 24 special coverage for the Democratic National Convention begins with an all-new Power Rankings Issues Tracker.