A program is being rolled out and overseen by the House of Representatives this week that is aimed at boosting transparency in the high-profile fight for control of Congress.

‘We’re excited to really ramp the program up, roll it out, as we come into the final eight weeks before the election,’ House Committee on Administration Chair Bryan Steil, R-Wis., told Fox News Digital in an interview about the program, which has been used in several election cycles.

More than a dozen House races are expected to come down to razor-thin margins in November. Democrats are fighting to win back control from the House GOP and the fight is likely to be close either way.

The House Committee on Administration is moving to boost accountability efforts at the polls for such races through the Election Observer Program.

Congressional staffers are eligible to volunteer for a training program that would set them up to be poll watchers in the upcoming election. 

They would then be sent out to districts, not including their own, if requested by a congressional candidate in a close race.

‘I think uniquely this Congress, we can raise awareness, engagement and participation in the program,’ Steil said. ‘This is a program that’s been around for some time, and it’s been a successful program. My staff has participated in it, and I think it’s an important piece of the puzzle as we work to enhance the integrity and Americans’ confidence in our elections.’

He said it is imperative to boost the program’s visibility so that candidates and incumbents running across the political spectrum in November know it is available to them.

Asked if he had any particular security concerns about this year’s elections, Steil said he was ‘frustrated’ by a lack of answers from the Biden administration in response to his probing of a June executive order aimed at using federal resources to bolster voter access.

‘The administration continues to hide the ball on the work they’re doing as it relates to President Biden’s executive order, and I think there’s areas in particular as it relates to noncitizen voting that we should work to continue to get in place,’ Steil said.

The House’s Election Observer Program is one of several election security measures Steil has used his committee gavel to focus on.

Democrats, meanwhile, have panned several key GOP-led election efforts as voter suppression. 

Congressional Democrat leaders are also opposing a short-term government funding bill that is attached to legislation mandating proof of citizenship in the voter registration process. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., called the Republican plan ‘extreme.’

Steil said he hopes Democrats utilize the program as they had before, though he conceded that election integrity issues have become highly political.

‘A lot of things that did not used to be viewed as partisan in nature, in particular as it relates to election integrity, have become an attempt by the left to try to weaponize the efforts in the other direction,’ he said. ‘We’ll see how our Democratic colleagues respond to a program they participated in the past.’

‘But I am of the view that we have an opportunity to take this program and move it up to the next level, both in visibility and in participation.’

Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 campaign hired a new climate director who has frequently said the effects of climate change are part of what’s stopping her from having children.

Camila Thorndike, who previously worked in the Senate managing the climate portfolio of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was given the title of climate engagement director for the Harris for President campaign in September 2024, according to her LinkedIn page. 

Prior to joining the Harris campaign, Thorndike said on several occasions that she considers climate change a factor when deciding whether to have kids.

‘I was 15 when I first saw the climate ‘hockey stick’ graph. I realized that this skyrocketing arrow of temperature would take place in my lifetime. All of the big milestones of life that I was looking forward to would be in the context of this big global crisis. It led to the question of whether or not to have kids – which is still a big question for me – where I would put down roots, what my family would do,’ Thorndike said in 2018 when she was the D.C. campaign director for the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

Again in November 2019, Thorndike described it as an ‘ethical question that keeps me up at night.’

‘I have always been someone who enjoys children and loves the idea of a family, and that’s why I have wrestled with this, because my logical mind and the facts of the future I can see bearing down on us are not supportive of the life I would want for them,’ she told Yahoo News at the time. 

During an appearance on the ‘My Climate Journey’ podcast in August 2022, a show hosted by Jason Jacobs and Cody Simms for people seeking to better understand climate change, Thorndike again made a connection between the decision to have children and what it might look like in the future amid climate change. 

‘I plotted my own lifetime against that and realized that around the time that I would, especially, be considering having kids or whatever, in around my 30s, we would start to see the escalation of this crisis. And so that was when I realized that, at the time, the grownups were not coming to save us and my generation would have to fight to take the wheel.’

Featured in a Washington Post article about whether people should not have kids due to climate change, the new Harris campaign official said she worried about her potential kids ‘suffering’ from climate-related issues.  

‘It’s coming partly from a place of love for my hypothetical child,’ she said. ‘I want to protect them from suffering. Not that life is ever free from suffering, but what of the joys and peace and goodness that make me happiest to be alive will be accessible in 20, 30, 40 years?’

Harris acknowledged this idea during a discussion at the ‘Fight for Our Freedoms’ event in September 2023.

‘I’ve heard young leaders talk with me about a term they’ve coined called ‘climate anxiety,’ which is fear of the future and the unknown of whether it makes sense for you to even think about having children, whether it makes sense for you to think about aspiring to buy a home,’ Harris said in a clip that has resurfaced since she became the 2024 Democratic nominee.

A clip of the comment, shared by Donald Trump Jr. in July, prompted backlash from critics of Harris.

Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, who is now former President Trump’s running mate, wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter: ‘It’s almost like these people don’t want young people starting families or something. Really weird stuff.’

‘Shamala is an extinctionist. The natural extension of her philosophy would be a de facto holocaust for all of humanity!’ wrote billionaire and X owner Elon Musk on his platform. 

House Republicans’ plan to avert a partial government shutdown and crack down on election security surpassed a key hurdle Monday evening, though it’s headed for an uncertain fate in a chamber-wide vote this week.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is aiming to pass legislation combining a six-month extension of fiscal year 2024’s federal funding levels, called a continuing resolution (CR), and a House GOP bill to mandate proof of citizenship in the voter registration process.

The plan passed the House Rules Committee, 9-4, late Monday, bundled with unrelated bills – the final step for legislation before a House floor vote. 

House lawmakers are expected to hold a procedural vote allowing for debate on the bill Tuesday, with final passage teed up for Wednesday.

But it’s not clear yet whether the bill will survive a chamber-wide vote, with at least five House Republicans publicly opposing it as of Monday evening.

Johnson only holds a majority of four votes, meaning he will likely need Democratic support for it to pass.

Both Republicans and Democrats agree a CR is needed to give congressional appropriators more time to negotiate fiscal year 2025 federal spending and to avoid a partial government shutdown weeks before Election Day. The House has passed four of 12 GOP-led appropriations bills so far, while the Democrat-led Senate has not passed any. 

House GOP leaders are hoping to use the fiscal pressure to force Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., into holding a vote on the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, a bill authored by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and backed by former President Trump. 

But Democratic leaders generally see the SAVE Act as a nonstarter. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., called it ‘partisan and extreme’ in a letter to House Democrats on Monday, and the White House issued a veto threat.

Schumer wrote to colleagues on Sunday, ‘As I have said before, the only way to get things done is in a bipartisan way. Despite Republican bluster, that is how we’ve handled every funding bill in the past, and this time should be no exception. We will not let poison pills or Republican extremism put funding for critical programs at risk.’

Congressional leaders have until Sept. 30 to find a path forward or risk nonessential government programs being paused and potentially thousands of federal employees furloughed.

Meanwhile, Johnson has little room for error in his own conference.

The speaker could get some help from Democratic defectors, however. Five House Democrats broke from their party to vote for the SAVE Act earlier this year.

A CR through March would mean the government funding debate will be taken up by a new White House – run by either Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris – and a new Congress.

House GOP leaders’ plan to avert a partial government shutdown at the end of this month could be derailed by mounting opposition from fiscal hawks within their own party.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., rolled out legislation late last week to extend the current year’s government funding levels through March via a continuing resolution (CR) to give congressional negotiators more time to work out the next fiscal year’s spending priorities.

It’s attached to a Republican-led bill for a proof of citizenship requirement in the voter registration process.

At least five House Republicans have come out against the plan as of Monday evening, meaning Johnson almost certainly needs Democratic votes to get it passed.

Despite former President Donald Trump blessing the plan, Johnson can afford little room for error with a razor-thin House majority of just four votes.

Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., told reporters on Monday that he and Reps. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., are all opposed.

‘I’ve made it clear…that I’ll be a no on the CR,’ Mills said. ‘As far as I’m concerned, this is nothing more than messaging.’

Fox News Digital reached out to Burchett to confirm his stance.

Massie told Fox News Digital last week that he believed it was a mistake for Johnson not to push for a longer CR. Under a bipartisan deal passed last year, a CR extending past April 30 would automatically trigger a 1% government funding cut.

‘Speaker Johnson has this teed up in front of him. The 1% cut is in law. All we need is a one-year CR to queue it up. When the April 30 deadline arrives, he could even trade the cut for something. But he’s afraid to even create a spending cut deadline,’ Massie said.

Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., who is retiring at the end of this year, also told Fox News Digital last week that he is against the bill.

Meanwhile, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., told Punchbowl News he was against the CR over concerns within the defense community about the impact of an extension into the new year. 

It has spurred concern and confusion among House Republicans just hours after they returned from a six-week recess.

‘I think we ought to have some conversation with those five,’ Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., a conservative Republican, told Fox News Digital of the plan’s opponents. ‘And I think those five ought to bear responsibility for blowing some opportunities that are right at hand.’

Meanwhile, Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Calif., a national security hawk in a swing district, said he wanted to hear whether Johnson had a backup plan.

‘I think it’s a good first position. I think, you know, the question is, [what is] position two? Position three look like?’ Garcia told reporters. ‘We don’t need to share that with you guys in the media right now. But we should internally [have an] understanding of the strategy. And I think… hopefully we get more clarity on that.’

Lawmakers anticipate a Wednesday vote on the plan, but enough opposition could force House GOP leaders to scuttle the vote.

It’s possible that some Democrats will vote for the bill. Five House Democrats voted with Republicans to pass the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act earlier this year.

But Democratic leaders in the House and Senate have both come out in opposition to the plan. The White House also announced Monday that President Biden would veto the bill if it got to his desk.

Johnson told reporters earlier in the day that he did not have a fallback plan in case of failure.

‘There is no fallback position. This is a righteous fight. This is what the American people demand and deserve,’ Johnson said.

It’s a position that is likely to worry moderates who worry the political fallout from a government shutdown weeks before Election Day could cost them their seats.

‘If we shut down, we lose,’ one Republican told Fox News Digital last week.

Fox News Digital reached out to Johnson for comment on the ‘no’ votes.

Fox News’ Tyler Olson contributed to this report.

Foreign Affairs Chairman Rep. Mike McCaul said he still intends to haul in Antony Blinken on the Afghanistan withdrawal even after his sprawling report was completed, and will hold him in contempt of Congress if he does not comply. 

‘This was a catastrophic failure of epic proportions,’ the Texas Republican told reporters on Monday. ‘This is a disgrace. I will hold him in contempt if that’s what it takes to bring him before the American people.’

‘Secretary Blinken refuses to take one day out of this month to come before the [Gold Star] families.’ 

McCaul’s comments came on the heels of a 350-page report he released Monday on the withdrawal that the committee worked on for much of the past nearly two years of the Republican majority. 

It laid much blame on the State Department and detailed how State officials had no plan for getting Americans and allies out while there were still troops there to protect them.  

McCaul subpoenaed Blinken last week, saying he must appear before the committee by Sept. 19. 

State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel shrugged off the committee’s threats. 

‘The majority isn’t truly interested in legislating on Afghanistan policy. If they were, they would have sought to speak to the secretary long ago,’ he told reporters Monday. 

‘They would have sought to speak to him to get his input as they make this report,’ he said. ‘Instead they waited until the report was completely finished to come back to us.’ 

In May, McCaul asked Blinken to appear at a hearing in September on the committee’s report on its investigation of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. The State Department failed on several occasions to provide a date for Blinken to appear before lawmakers, McCaul said.

But the State Department said Monday Blinken had testified before House and Senate committees 14 times on the withdrawal, including four times before the Foreign Affairs Committee. 

McCaul also hinted that he believes there should still be a small contingency of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

‘We cannot see now into Afghanistan except through over the horizon, which doesn’t work. We can’t see Russia, China and Iran, either, because of this tragic failure of foreign policy,’ he told reporters.

‘We can’t see all of ISIS gathering in the Korazhan region of Tajikistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, making their way to the United States of America. That is what they did to us,’ the chairman went on. 

‘They embolden the unholy alliance of Putin, Xi, the Ayatollah and Kim Jong Un,’ he said, referring to the leaders of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. 

The Biden administration has long claimed the president’s hands were tied by the Doha agreement negotiated under President Trump that laid out a deadline for U.S. troops to withdraw from Afghanistan. But the new report detailed how the Taliban had failed to hold up their end of the deal, absolving the U.S. of any obligation to adhere to it. 

‘​Biden, for his part, faced a stark choice when he came to office, abide by the flawed agreement and end America’s longest war, or blow up the deal, extend the war, and see a much smaller contingent of American troops back in combat with the Taliban,’ White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Monday. 

‘He chose the former and was able to buy additional time to prepare for that withdrawal all the way into the summer. And we, as a nation are safer for it. Any and every discussion about what happened in Afghanistan has to start right there. Sadly, the report does not dwell on it.’

The damning report claims that while US military personnel were drawing down their footprint in the nation, the State Department was growing theirs. 

And according to the report, U.S. Ambassador Ross Wilson was on vacation the last week of July and the first week of August 2021. He promptly hightailed it out of the country on a flight ahead of his staff in mid-August. He allegedly had COVID-19 at the time and forced a foreign service officer to take his COVID test so he could get on the plane.

Patel defended Wilson, but did not deny the allegations. 

‘I’m just not going to get into a tit-for-tat with the House Foreign Affairs Committee, but what I can say is that it is not my understanding that he was on vacation at the beginning of August. Beyond that, I will just echo what I said previously about Ambassador Wilson, that this is an esteemed individual, a decorated Foreign Service officer.’ 

He claimed the GOP-led report chose ‘scandal over substance’ and called it a ‘collection of cherry-picked comments… designed to paint an inaccurate picture of this administration’s efforts. 

He claimed the withdrawal was carried out in a way that was consistent with department policy. ‘The drawdown in Kabul was conducted in a manner which is consistent with our departments and our country’s standards and protocols when faced in those circumstances.’ 

He said he did not have a headcount on how many Americans are still in Afghanistan, but touted the more than 18,000 Afghan special immigrant visas (SIVs) for the U.S.’s Afghan allies, such as interpreters, that were processed in 2023.

A new ad from the Harris campaign slamming Donald Trump as ‘dangerous’ will feature comments from several former top Trump officials, including former Vice President Mike Pence.

The ad, titled, ‘The Best People,’ seeks to bring old criticisms targeted at Trump — from former top officials he once hired — back into the spotlight. It will be aired the same day as ABC’s presidential debate Tuesday, and is scheduled to play on multiple Fox affiliates across the country.

‘Anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be President of the United States,’ Pence said in August 2023. It came after an indictment was handed down against former president Trump for allegedly interfering with the 2020 election results. The Harris campaign utilized the remark in its new ad, as well as a second remark made by Pence on Fox News roughly six months ago, saying he would not be endorsing Trump for president. 

‘Take it from the people who knew him best,’ a narrator says in the advertisement.

But despite the former vice president’s cameo appearance slamming Trump in the new ad, his decision not to endorse Trump does not equate to an endorsement for Kamala Harris, a spokesperson for Advancing American Freedom, a nonprofit recently founded by Pence, suggested. The spokesperson pointed Fox News Digital to a particular comment from Pence made last month in Atlanta, Georgia, during which Pence stated adamantly: ‘I could never vote for Kamala Harris as President of the United States, or Tim Walz her running mate.’

The new Harris campaign advertisement also included year-old remarks from the former defense secretary under Trump, Mark Esper.

Esper’s comments utilized in the ad came from a June 2023 CNN interview, during which he was asked whether Trump ‘can be trusted’ with the nation’s secrets in light of scrutiny over how he handled classified documents after leaving the White House. ‘No,’ Esper says. ‘It’s just irresponsible action that places our service members at risk, places our national security at risk.’

Fox News Digital reached out to representatives for Esper to see if he was aware of his appearance in the ad, but did not hear back.   

Meanwhile, Trump former national security adviser John Bolton and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff under Trump, Gen. Mark Milley, also appeared in the new ad from the Harris campaign. Bolton and Milley both have a track record of being outspoken critics of Trump.

‘Donald Trump will cause a lot of damage,’ remarks from Bolton in the ad. ‘The only thing he cares about is Donald Trump.’ 

Bolton’s remarks highlighted in the advertisement came from an interview on CNN in October 2023 and last week, respectively.

The ad concluded with remarks from Milley made during his final address as the nation’s top military general in September 2023. ‘We don’t take an oath to a king, or a queen, or a tyrant, or a dictator,’ Milley says in the ad. ‘And we don’t take an oath to a wannabee dictator.’

Fox News Digital reached out for comment to representatives for Bolton and Milley, but did not receive a response by publication time.  

Trump campaign National Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, meanwhile, slammed the new ad as an attempt to ‘distract’ from how ‘dangerously liberal [Harris] is.’ 

‘The Kamala campaign is using the words of a few disgruntled losers because they are losing in the polls and trying to distract from the fact that Kamala is losing support from moderate Democrats who realize how dangerously liberal she is,’ Leavitt said on Monday.

The White House pushed back on a report released Sunday by Republican lawmakers criticizing President Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, calling the report partisan and offering ‘little or nothing new.’

Texas Rep. Mike McCaul, the Republican chair of the committee, released a GOP-led report disputing Biden’s claims that his hands were tied to the agreement former President Trump had made with the Taliban establishing a deadline for U.S. withdrawal for the summer of 2021. It also said State Department officials had no plan for helping Americans and allies out while there were still troops in the region to protect them.

McCaul’s report also noted the failure to adequately respond to terror threats ahead of the ISIS-K bombing at Abbey Gate at the Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. service members and more than 150 Afghan civilians, and that the Taliban likely had access after the withdrawal to $7 billion in abandoned U.S. weapons, and up to $57 million in U.S. funds that were initially given to the Afghan government.

On Monday, White House National Security Council communications adviser John Kirby defended Biden’s handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan during a White House briefing.

Kirby told reporters the GOP report comes two years after their first report, adding, ‘This one says little or nothing new.’

He then provided a rundown of what he called ‘actual facts’ that he considered important.

‘First, on the very day this administration took office, the Taliban was in the strongest position it had been in years. The Afghan government, the weakest,’ Kirby said. ‘The Trump administration cut a deal called the Doha Agreement that mandated a complete U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and yes, that included Bagram Air Base, by the end of May 2021.’

Part of the deal was that 5,000 Taliban fighters would be released from prison, and in return, the Taliban agreed not to attack U.S. troops, he explained.

Kirby referred to testimony from former commander of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Frank McKenzie, who said the Doha deal had a really pernicious effect on the Afghan government, and it demoralized them.

‘They knew right then and there that America was on its way out,’ Kirby said. ‘Indeed, in October of 2020, then-President Trump ordered his military to rush the exit from Afghanistan and have everybody leave by Christmas of that year.

‘President Biden, for his part, faced a stark choice when he came to office: Abide by the flawed agreement and end America’s longest war, or blow up the deal, extend the war, and see a much smaller contingent of American troops back in combat with the Taliban,’ Kirby added. ‘He chose the former and was able to buy additional time to prepare for that withdrawal all the way into summer, and we, as a nation, are safer for it.’

Kirby then brought up what he called ‘falsehoods’ from the report. The first issue he found was that there was in fact planning for evacuations beginning in the spring of 2021.

Kirby said the Department of Defense proposed additional military units in the region so when a decision was reached to evacuate, they would be poised to respond.

He also said there was no point in securing Bagram Air Base during the evacuation because it would have required thousands of additional U.S. troops. It would also have required a ‘dangerous trek by evacuees’ across Taliban territory, making the evacuation even more difficult.

Kirby also mentioned that there was no handover of U.S. equipment to the Taliban.

‘That equipment had been provided to Afghan security forces appropriately and with congressional approval over the course of two decades of war,’ he said. ‘That equipment was left by those Afghan forces when they surrendered or stopped fighting.’

Finally, Kirby told reporters the Biden administration did not deceive, lie or fail to be transparent during, or after the withdrawal.

‘We did the best we could every day to keep the American people informed of what was happening,’ he said. ‘We conducted our own after-action reports and shared those, too, with the public.’

Fox News Digital’s Landon Mion contributed to this report.