Liz Cheney teamed up with Vice President Kamala Harris Monday in a last-minute effort to appeal to moderate Republicans who the former congresswoman believes might be uneasy about voting for Donald Trump but are afraid to say so publicly. 

Harris and Cheney visited three counties: Chester County in Pennsylvania, Oakland County in Michigan and Waukesha County in Wisconsin. Each were won by Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who ran against Trump for the Republican nomination. 

During a townhall in Michigan, Cheney framed the November election as a choice between ‘right and wrong.’

‘I certainly have many Republicans who will say to me, I can’t be public. They do worry about a whole range of things, including violence. But they’ll do the right thing,’ Cheney said. 

The daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney then predicted that ‘millions’ of moderate Republicans who are too afraid to go against Trump publicly will vote for Harris. 

‘And I would just remind people, if you’re at all concerned, you can vote your conscience and not ever have to say a word to anybody. And there will be millions of Republicans who do that on November 5th, vote for Vice President Harris,’ Cheney said, eliciting applause from the audience. 

Cheney was essentially exiled from the Republican Party for participating in a congressional investigation of Trump’s involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, events at the U.S. Capitol. 

She lost her congressional seat in a primary battle two years ago.

South Korea demanded on Monday that the Russian ambassador protest military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow, calling for the immediate pullout of North Korean troops rumored to have been deployed to help Russia.

The Associated Press reported Friday that South Korea’s spy agency confirmed North Korea sent 1,500 special operations troops to help Russia in October in support of its war against Ukraine.

Ukrainian intelligence suggests North Korea was preparing to send 10,000 soldiers to join Russian forces, according to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The South Korean Foreign Ministry said Russian Ambassador Georgy Zinoviev met with Vice South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Hong-kyun, when the latter ‘condemned in the strongest terms’ the North’s sending of troops to help Russia, which Kim said poses ‘a grave security threat’ to South Korea and the international community.

Kim also said South Korea and the international community will mobilize all available means to deal with the act, which threatens its vital national security interests, the foreign ministry added.

Zinoviev was quoted by the Russian Embassy as saying the cooperation between Russia and North Korea is not aimed at South Korea’s security interests.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte spoke to South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol over the phone on Monday, who said Seoul will not sit idly by as the ‘reckless’ military cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang continues. 

Yoon also said South Korea plans to send a delegation to NATO to speak about Russian-North Korean cooperation, according to his office.

In a post on X, Rutte said North Korea’s decision to send troops to fight alongside Russia ‘would mark a significant escalation.’

Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters last week that the U.S. could not confirm or corroborate media reports on the North Korean troop dispatch to Russia.

Russia has previously denied using North Korean troops in the war, with presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov describing the claims as ‘another piece of fake news’ during a news conference last week. North Korea’s state media hasn’t commented on the issue.

North Korea and Russia, locked in separate confrontations with the West, have sharply boosted their cooperation in the past two years. The U.S., South Korea and their partners have accused North Korea of supplying artillery shells, missiles and other conventional arms to Russia to help fuel its war against Ukraine in return for economic and military assistance. In June, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a pact stipulating mutual military assistance if either country is attacked.

Many experts question how much the North Korean troop dispatch would help Russia, citing North Korea’s outdated equipment and shortages of battle experience. They say North Korea likely received Russian promises to provide it with high-tech weapons technology associated with its nuclear and missile programs, a move that will complicate U.S. and South Korean efforts to neutralize North Korean nuclear threats.

Ukrainian media reported this month that six North Koreans were among those killed after a Ukrainian missile strike in the partially occupied eastern Donetsk region on Oct. 3.

Many experts were previously skeptical of possible North Korean troop deployments to Russian-Ukraine battlefields because North Korea is preoccupied with its nuclear standoff with the U.S. and South Korea.

North Korea sent pilots to fight for North Vietnam during the Vietnam War and for Egypt during the Yom Kippur War in 1973, but there has been no known large-scale dispatch of its ground troops overseas.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Monday that the United States is monitoring reports that North Korean soldiers are ‘deploying to Russia’ to fight in Ukraine. 

‘We’re obviously continuing to look into those reports,’ Kirby said. ‘We’re talking to our allies and partners about what they’re saying on this as well. If it’s true that the DPRK soldiers are going there to join the war against Ukraine, it would certainly mark a dangerous and highly concerning development.’ 

Kirby said the development signaled ‘another demonstration of Putin’s growing desperation and his growing isolation that he’s got to reach out to North Korea for potential – potential, as I said, we’re looking into the reports – potential infantry support, to his ground operations.’ 

‘There’s no question about it, that his forces continue to suffer an extraordinary amount of casualties on the battlefield,’ Kirby said, referencing figures of Russia losing more than 1,200 soldiers per day.

‘That is a truly historic amount of soldiers killed and wounded in this fight, all to accomplish but a warped and twisted idea of his about Ukraine’s ability to exist as a sovereign state,’ Kirby said. ‘I think all of this is and proves the point that Mr. Putin is increasingly desperate and increasingly isolated on the world stage.’ 

The U.S. and NATO have not confirmed that North Korean troops were sent to Russia. But the reports of their presence have already stoked concerns in South Korea that Russia might provide North Korea with sophisticated technologies that can sharply enhance the North’s nuclear and missile programs in return for its troop dispatch.

South Korea on Monday summoned the Russian ambassador to protest deepening military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow and demand the immediate pullout of the North Korean troops. 

South Korea’s spy agency said Friday it had confirmed that North Korea sent 1,500 special operation forces to Russia this month to support Moscow’s war against Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier said his government had intelligence that 10,000 North Korean soldiers were being prepared to join invading Russian forces.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, will be shaking hands this week with multiple world leaders, including China’s Xi Jinping, India’s Narendra Modi, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iran’s Masoud Pezeshkian. They will convene in the Russian city of Kazan on Tuesday for a meeting of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, defying predictions that the war in Ukraine and an international arrest warrant against Putin would turn him into a pariah.

The alliance, which aims to counterbalance the Western-led world order, initially included Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa but started to rapidly expand this year. Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia joined in January; Turkey, Azerbaijan and Malaysia formally applied, and a number of others expressed a desire to be members.

‘These countries can decide for themselves who they want to associate with and, especially how they want to be economically linked with one another. Russia is increasingly isolated on the world stage,’ Kirby said Monday. ‘There’s no question about that. Mr. Putin is still having to take radical steps to prop up his, currency, and to keep his war economy going.’ 

Putin is expected to end the BRICS conference with a press conference on Thursday, Reuters reported.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

New reporting about over a dozen unidentified drones that were allowed to fly over Langley Air Force Base has prompted fresh calls for change to a threat that experts say will only become more prevalent. 

For more than two weeks in December 2023, the mystery drones traipsed into restricted airspace over the installation, home to key national security facilities and the F-22 Raptor stealth fighters. 

Experts say the incident is likely one of many that U.S. authorities are underprepared to tackle in an evolving threat environment. 

Lack of a standard protocol for such incursions left Langley officials unsure of what to do – other than allow the 20-foot-long drones to hover near their classified facilities. 

The Pentagon has said little about the incidents other than to confirm they occurred after a Wall Street Journal report this month. Whether it knows where the drones came from or what they were doing is unclear.

‘I think they don’t know,’ one congressional source familiar with defense operations told Fox News Digital. 

As defense-minded lawmakers sought more answers, Langley officials referred them to the FBI, who referred them to Northern Command, who referred them to local law enforcement, the source said. 

‘They should easily be able to know exactly what they are,’ said Brett Velicovich, an advisor to drone tech company Red Cat Holdings and a Fox News contributor.

‘There are all kinds of radar systems out there. Each drone has its own fingerprint.’

‘Saying we don’t know what it is, and if we’re taking them for their word that they don’t know what it is, that speaks to a larger issue that the administration really just got caught with its pants down, and they’ve failed.’ 

If the drones were a foreign adversary testing the limits of U.S. defenses, the message they took home is that encroaching on restricted airspace is easy enough, according to Velicovich. 

U.S. capabilities offer many different ways to take down a drone, including shooting them, zapping them with heat lasers and jamming the frequencies.

Whether Congress needs to change the laws is a point of contention, but one thing that is clear is incursions like the one at Langley prompt confusion over legal authority. 

When drones encroach near bases overseas, the rules of engagement give service members more leeway to engage with them. 

However, U.S. law does not allow the military to shoot down drones near its bases unless they pose an imminent threat. While Langley has the authority to protect its coastal base, the Coast Guard has the authority to protect the waters, the Federal Aviation Administration has authority over U.S. airspace – some of the most congested with commercial airliners in the world. 

‘After 9/11, we invested all this money in homeland security to deal with exactly the kind of things that we’re seeing today,’ said James Carafano, defense expert at the Heritage Foundation. ‘We built this whole infrastructure to deal with that. And it just seems, where is it today? We’ve been very lackadaisical about this.’ 

‘We’re going to have a terrorist attack here at some point. It’s just going to happen.’

Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., chair of the House Armed Services Committee, argued that the Defense Department needs to use the authority it has been given. 

‘Drone incursions at DOD facilities are alarming. The Department needs to focus on deploying real, effective capabilities across critical installations using existing authorities given to them by Congress. I will continue to conduct oversight of the department’s response to these drone incursions,’ he said in a statement. 

Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, promised to introduce legislation to give the Pentagon greater authority to shoot down drones. 

‘Military leaders currently lack the authority to engage until there is an imminent threat posed to our men and women in uniform. I am working on legislation to provide the Department of Defense with the necessary authorities to engage drones or unidentified aircrafts that breach our military airspace before it is too late to respond.’ 

Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, called for Congress to pass laws laying out counter-drone procedures.

‘Adversaries like China, Russia and Iran are improving their drone capabilities every month. Our defenses are not catching up,’ he said. 

‘Congress needs to develop and execute a comprehensive set of plans to strengthen our counter-drone protocol and technological development right away. There is no time to waste. The lives of service members and all Americans are at risk.’

This month, Chinese national Fengyun Shi was sentenced to six months in prison for capturing drone footage over Huntington Ingalls Industries Shipbuilding in Newport News, Virginia, 10 miles from Langley Air Force Base.

Two months prior to Langley, in October 2023, five drones flew over the Energy Department’s Nevada National Security Site, used for nuclear weapons experiments. U.S. authorities were not sure who was behind those drones either. 

A Chinese surveillance balloon traversed over the U.S. for a week last year before the Air Force shot it down off the coast. 

U.S. Air Force’s Plant 42 in California, home to highly classified aerospace development, has also seen a slew of unidentified drone incursions in 2024, prompting flight restrictions around the facility. 

‘There are a lot of regulations on terms of what the DoD is allowed to do in the U.S. homeland that make this a really difficult problem,’ said Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the defense program at the Center for a New American Security. 

Even jamming the GPS systems, so drones freeze up and fall out of the sky, risks collateral damage. It could interfere with nearby air traffic.

‘Unlike when you’re in Iraq or somewhere and there are drones flying overhead, you can fire off a missile and intercept them without as much worry, because you’re in the middle of the desert,’ he continuted. ‘We’re going to see more of this in the future, and I think it’s something that the U.S. is grossly underprepared for.’

Even abroad, experts warn U.S. forces are unequipped to handle the threat of advancing drone warfare. 

Three U.S. service members were killed in a drone strike in January in Jordan. 

‘The response time for [counter-drone measures] is really small, and the U.S. doesn’t have a lot of systems that are optimized for this, and they’re quite expensive,’ said Pettyjohn. ‘We’re going to see more of these, probably larger groups operating together. Right now, they’re all remotely piloted. Eventually, they’ll be autonomous and really truly swarm.’

Former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are neck and neck in recent polling as they enter the final leg of the presidential race, as the Democratic nominee appears to be losing ground among Latino and Black voters. 

A new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll places Harris at 45% and Trump at 44%. 

In August, the same poll found that Harris was ahead of Trump 48% to 43% on the heels of the Democratic National Convention. The new survey released Monday questioned 1,000 likely voters by landline and cell phone from Oct. 14-18. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Harris has fallen back in support among Latino and Black voters in the seven weeks between surveys. The new poll found Latino voters now back Trump by 49% to 38%. Black voters prefer Harris by 72% to 17%, but that 55-point edge is significantly less than the advantage Democrats traditionally enjoy. 

For the subsamples of Latino and Black voters, the survey’s margins of error are plus or minus 9 points, signaling possible repositioning of up to 18 points in one direction or the other. 

President Biden benefited from staggering support from Black and Latino voters four years ago. A Pew Research Center analysis found 92% of Black voters and 59% of Latino voters supported Biden in the 2020 race. 

Trump has made inroads among Black and Latino voters in the 2024 race by courting men, as he campaigns on the economy and crime. 

Observing the shift in Democrats’ traditional edge, the Harris campaign unveiled an economic agenda for Black men last week. It promised small business loans and the legalization of recreational marijuana. 

Her campaign also ramped up events targeting Latino and Black voters in battleground states, and former President Barack Obama chastised Black men, claiming they could be hesitant to vote for a woman as president. 

In a separate poll conducted across seven battleground states, 47% of respondents said they would definitely or probably back Harris, while 47% said they would definitely or probably support Trump. According to the Washington Post-Schar School survey, 49% of likely voters support Harris, while 48% support Trump. 

Among swing states, Trump is performing well in Arizona, while Harris fares best in Georgia.

The poll also surveyed a portion of the electorate in the swing states dubbed ‘deciders’ – people who have not fully committed to a candidate. About 74% of voters in the swing states said they would definitely vote for Harris or Trump – an increase from the 58% who said they had already decided in the spring. 

Over a five-month period, uncommitted voters narrowed from 42% to 26%. The latest survey showed 21% of likely voters across the seven states were not fully committed to either Harris or Trump. 

According to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research (AP-NORC) poll released on Monday, most registered voters are divided on whether Trump or Harris are better equipped to handle specific economic issues, including unemployment, the cost of groceries and housing, or tariffs.

The survey found only 38% of registered voters say the national economy is doing well, while 62% of respondents expressed believing the economy is in poor condition.

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., is calling for ‘radically’ altering the U.S. Supreme Court by increasing the number of justices on the bench, and more.

‘We need to radically reform the broken Supreme Court,’ the congresswoman declared in social media posts, calling for ‘expanding the number of Justices,’ ‘a binding, enforceable code of ethics,’ and ‘imposing term limits.’

‘SCOTUS reform is on the ballot in November,’ the lawmaker asserted.

While there are currently nine slots on the high court, some lawmakers advocate for increasing the number of seats, a proposal referred to by critics as court packing.

Omar, who took office in 2019 and is currently seeking re-election, has been an outspoken advocate of the policy.

‘Expand the court,’ she tweeted in 2020 after the Senate confirmed Amy Coney Barrett to serve on the Supreme Court.

Omar and dozens of other Democrats have supported proposed legislation that would add four seats to the Supreme Court, expanding it from nine to 13, but the Judiciary Act of 2023 has not been brought up for a vote.

Three of the nine justices currently sitting on the Supreme Court were nominated by then-President Donald Trump during his White House tenure: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. 

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, nominated by President Joe Biden in 2022 and confirmed by the Senate the same year, was the latest member seated on the Supreme Court.

Unlike presidents and members of Congress, Supreme Court justices do not face term limits. ‘Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour,’ the Constitution states.

The deadly shooting at former President Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania on July 13 was a ‘preventable’ incident stemming from a lack of proper planning and communication between law enforcement agencies, according to a new report.

The House Task Force investigating the attempts on Trump’s life is releasing their interim findings on Monday, with a final report expected by Dec. 13.

‘Although the findings in this report are preliminary, the information obtained during the first phase of the Task Force’s investigation clearly shows a lack of planning and coordination between the Secret Service and its law enforcement partners before the rally,’ the report said.

U.S. Secret Service (USSS) personnel at the event ‘did not give clear guidance’ to state and local authorities about how to manage security outside of their hard perimeter, nor was there a central meeting between USSS and the law enforcement agencies supporting them the morning of the rally – two findings presented as key failures in the 51-page report.

‘Put simply, the evidence obtained by the Task Force to date shows the tragic and shocking events of July 13 were preventable and should not have happened,’ the report said.

A would-be assassin’s bullet clipped Trump, Republicans’ 2024 nominee, in the ear while he was addressing supporters at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, over the summer. 

Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, opened fire on the rally from a rooftop just outside the event’s security perimeter, killing one attendee and injuring two others in addition to Trump.

The Monday report underscores the mountain of scrutiny that USSS has grappled with since the shooting, with lawmakers on both sides questioning how Crooks was able to fire eight shots before being killed by a single bullet to the head.

The task force found that Crooks ‘had been under scrutiny by the Secret Service’s state and local partners’ for roughly 40 minutes before ‘information about a suspicious person’ reached the USSS command post.

It said three local law enforcement officers noticed Crooks around 5 p.m. ET, each ‘independently’ deducing his ‘behavior and manner were suspicious.’

Back-and-forth ensued among local and state units, with communication made more difficult by a lack of a central command system with USSS.

The report later said that from around 5:38 p.m. to 5:51 p.m., ‘a series of calls and messages about Crooks’s description and movements reached the Secret Service.’

The document also referenced prior testimony by a witness from the Butler Township Police Department whose colleague spotted Crooks on the roof just before he opened fire.

That witness said their colleague fell from the roof – which he was tenuously gripping – while shouting ‘THERE’S AN AR! AN AR! AN AR! A GUY WITH AN AR!’

‘To date, the Task Force has not received any evidence to suggest that message reached the former President’s USSS detail prior to shots fired,’ the report said.

The report also quoted a witness from the Butler County Emergency Services United (ESU) whose account of shooting Crooks appears to undercut the USSS’s assertion that one of its snipers killed the gunman.

‘He fired a single shot from a standing position at Crooks, who was in a prone position on the roof. Butler ESU Witness 5 told the Task Force that he believes his shot hit Crooks,’ the report said.

Crooks’ autopsy suggests he was only hit by a single bullet which proved fatal, the report noted. Former USSS Director Kimberly Cheatle previously said a USSS counter-sniper killed Crooks, and the report said ‘there is no evidence to date to the contrary.’

‘The autopsy found no evidence of an entry wound from a second bullet,’ the report said.

His bloodwork was also ‘positive for antimony, selenium, and lead,’ with the latter element potentially coming from Crooks’ time spent at a firing range, according to the report.

The report also points to logistical issues – particularly on the part of USSS – in the hours before the rally took place.

For instance, there were two command centers set up for the event, with a witness testifying that no one from the Butler Police Department was invited to the USSS’ hub. 

Butler ESU Commander Edward Lenz also told Task Force staff that a sniper from his unit advised a USSS agent to pick up a radio communication device from their command center to be able to keep in contact with local and state authorities – but the agent never retrieved it.

The report said ESU snipers, who were not positioned to monitor the building Crooks fired from but were inside the complex, were also not informed of any plan to keep an eye on the facility itself.

‘Local law enforcement told the Task Force that the Secret Service did not give any guidance to Butler ESU and Beaver ESU regarding the placement, role, and responsibilities of their snipers… they understood their assignment to be overwatch of the rally venue,’ the report said.

Local and state law enforcement held two briefings on the morning of the rally, but USSS ‘did not participate in either briefing,’ the report said. 

USSS held its own briefing at 10 a.m. that day, but the report suggested local units were not invited.

Indeed, one Pennsylvania State police officer ‘was invited to the 1000 USSS briefing by one USSS agent, then subsequently asked to leave by another.’

In the conclusion of its report, the Task Force indicated it would continue its efforts to interview officials and review new details as they emerge, and reaffirmed its goal to investigate both the July 13 incident and the Sept. 15 assassination attempt against Trump at his West Palm Beach Golf Course.

The Task Force was commissioned by House leaders after a unanimous vote in the chamber.