Former President Obama will make appearances on TikTok to push for voter registration, a report says. 

As part of a broader Democratic initiative to reach approximately 30 million potential voters through non-traditional means on National Voter Registration Day, Obama conducted a series of interviews with 25-year-old TikTok influencer and non-profit director Carlos Espina for TikTok, Axios reported. 

Espina, who has 10.5 million followers on the Chinese-owned platform, has made appearances with President Biden and Vice President Harris on the app in recent months. Playing into the traditional Democratic advantage among young Americans under 30, Obama is trying to move the dial for Harris in encouraging TikTok viewers to visit IWillVote.com, register and make a plan for Election Day. 

The Harris-Walz campaign is also planning to target young Americans with voter registration initiatives online and on campuses in key battleground states for National Voter Registration Day, Axios reported. 

The Biden campaign and the Harris campaign afterward have called on Obama in the past to help raise money among wealthy donors and small-donor party activists. The Harris campaign also pulled a portion of Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention during which he used a suggestive hand gesture while discussing former President Trump’s ‘crowd sizes’ to use in a recent campaign video. 

The voter registration push comes a day after attorneys for TikTok faced off with the U.S. government in federal court in Washington, D.C., arguing a law that could ban the platform in a few short months is unconstitutional, while the Justice Department said the app needed to eliminate a national security risk. 

Attorneys for both sides – and content creators – were pressed on their best arguments for and against the law that forces TikTok and its China-based parent company ByteDance to break ties by mid-January or lose one of their biggest markets in the world. 

Biden signed the measure in April as the culmination of a years-long saga in Washington over the short-form video-sharing app, which the U.S. government has said is collecting vast swaths of user data, including sensitive information on viewing habits, that could fall into the hands of the Chinese government. 

Officials have also warned the proprietary algorithm that fuels what users see on the app is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who can use it to shape content in a way that is difficult to detect.

Trump, who first raised national security concerns about TikTok in 2020, warned allies in March that now banning the platform would benefit Meta-owned Facebook, which Trump has claimed hampered his 2020 re-election bid.

Biden’s campaign joined TikTok in February with a Superbowl-themed video. After Biden discontinued his re-election campaign in July, Harris took to TikTok stating, ‘Thought I would get on here myself.’ 

Trump joined TikTok in June with a video showing him waving to fans at an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fight in Newark, New Jersey. UFC CEO Dana White declared ‘the president is now on TikTok,’ to which Trump replied, ‘It’s my honor,’ as the song ‘American Bad A–‘ by Kid Rock played. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

China slapped new export controls on a batch of minerals such as antimony – vital for the U.S. defense industry as a flame-retardant component used in machine bearings – in a move that could send prices in the defense sector soaring. 

The little-known metal antimony is used in ammunition, infrared missiles, nuclear weapons and night vision goggles, as well as batteries and photovoltaic equipment. China produced nearly half of the world’s antimony last year.

The limits, which kicked in on Sunday, apply to six antimony-related products, including antimony ore, antimony metals and antimony oxide.

The U.S. consumed some 22,000 tons of antimony last year. China accounted for 63% of U.S. imports of antimony metal and oxide last year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The next largest supplier, Belgium, offered some 8%. 

The material is being restricted ‘in order to safeguard national security and interests, and fulfill international obligations such as non-proliferation,’ the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said in a statement.

The U.S. and other nations have been scrambling to scale back their reliance on China for key materials for the defense and energy sectors. Yet still, China is the leading import source for 25 essential minerals, including tungsten, germanium, magnesium, barite, antimony, most rare earths, indium, graphite, gallium, and arsenic. 

It’s just the latest in a set of curbs on exports introduced over the past year.

In December, China banned the export of technology to make rare earth magnets, which followed another ban on exporting technology to extract and separate critical materials. 

Last year, it slapped export controls on gallium, germanium and graphite in part of a retaliatory trade war after the U.S. limited exports on advanced semiconductor chips to China. 

‘In the first Cold War against the Soviet Union, we were aligned against the Soviet Union with not importing national security-sensitive things,’ said Rob Greenway, a former National Security Council (NSC) official. ‘We were a net exporter across the board. Since we’ve become a net importer across the board, we have massive vulnerabilities, and our regulatory structures have not in any way kept pace with that.’

‘Our partners – Japan, South Korea, Scandinavian countries, Central American countries – they’re enormously frustrated, because not only do they have the same problem, but we’re not making it easier for them,’ Greenway, now a director at the Allison Center for National Security, went on. ‘In some cases, we’re making it easier for China. We’re taxing Taiwan’s exports, including semiconductors, more than we are Chinese exports.’

Antimony prices have nearly doubled to a record $22,750 per ton this year and export controls are expected to drive them even higher. 

The new rules require sellers to apply for a sign-off from the Chinese government through a license to sell any related dual-use civilian and military materials and technology, a process which typically takes close to three months. 

‘China’s new restrictions on antimony – which is used in everything from night vision goggles to nuclear weapons to tanks – will require exporters to apply for certain licenses that the Chinese Communist Party could delay or refuse outright,’ said Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va. Wittman leads a working group on critical minerals policy in Congress.

‘As the largest producer and processor of antimony, the CCP is using the same playbook as it did for gallium and germanium to demonstrate its market dominance and put Western economies at risk – this is why we must diversify our critical mineral supply chains away from China.’

One U.S.-based company, Perpetua Resources, is looking to produce domestic antimony with support from the Pentagon and the U.S. Export-Import Bank. It’s run into opposition from environmental groups and its first production was slated for 2028, should it obtain permits later this year. 

But China’s restrictions have prompted the company to look for ways to speed up production. 

‘We are looking at things that we can do during construction to get antimony out the door sooner for some of these strategic needs,’ Jon Cherry, Perpetua’s CEO, told Reuters.

‘The (US) Department of Defense is aware of the critical nature of antimony and the short supply available. We’ve been hearing from a lot of different sources about the lack of supply for antimony, that the market is very tight and getting tighter daily.’

In a less closely watched move, China is also limiting exports on superabrasive materials, industrial diamonds with the highest level of hardness, and the machines that make them. Such materials are used across industries in the U.S. and are essential in the defense and energy sectors. 

‘It really, truly has the ability to crater the U.S. economy. This is really terrifying,’ said Nazak Nikakthar, a former senior Commerce Department official.

‘It’s not a glamorous sector, but there is a national security obligation to alert the world to it – to build capacity in the United States [of superabrasives] to support the defense industrial base will take two to three years.’

Following revelations of private memoranda and conversations between Supreme Court justices published in the New York Times, legal experts are warning that such sensitive leaks are ‘destructive’ to the high court. 

The New York Times reported that internal memos and deliberations that they claimed showed Chief Justice Thomas as having ‘molded’ the outcomes of three major cases the court considered dealing with Jan. 6 rioters, and granting former President Donald Trump certain immunity for presidential acts. 

Roberts wrote the majority in the decisions, and the report claims that he ‘provided crucial support for hearing the historic [immunity],’ and made last minute and unexplained changes to authorship of the politically charged opinions. 

The leak follows the unprecedented leaked draft of the Dobbs opinion which overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, and a concerted effort by Democratic lawmakers and the Biden administration to make sweeping changes to the court and ethics enforcement. 

Republican lawmakers, such as Senators Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. and John Kennedy, R-La., claim those efforts are politically motivated to delegitimize one the court now sits with a majority of Republican-appointed justices.

Some legal experts say this latest leak is part of that effort to undermine the Supreme Court. 

‘I think it’s enormously destructive to the court when people inside the court disclose to the press confidential memoranda, confidential emails and what appears to even be remarks made at the justices’ conference,’ James Burnham of King Street Legal and former senior Justice Department official told Fox News Digital. 

‘It’s destructive because the justices can’t be candid with each other if they think that anything they say could end up in the New York Times. And that means they’re going to speak less to each other. It means they’re not going to be able to deliberate with the same openness that they historically have, and it ultimately undermines the court’s decision making,’ he added. 

‘It reads to me like somebody is trying to cast a negative light on the Chief Justice and the other justices in the majority for what I think was a plainly correct and brave decision,’ he said.

Carrie Seveino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, said that ‘if there is someone on the Court who deserves censure for being overly political in this case, it’s the individual who leaked’ the ‘highly confidential internal’ documents.

She added that the incident ‘is of a piece with the continued left-wing PR campaign against the Court.’

‘It’s an attempt to smear the Court as an institution, and as part of that, some justices have been targeted more than others,’ she said. 

John Shu, a constitutional attorney who served in both Bush administrations, Shu says he believes the leaks are politically motivated, and are most likely designed to keep Roberts anchored in the center or perhaps push him towards center-left in the upcoming term, especially if Trump is elected this November.

‘Because he is the Chief Justice, he gets to assign opinions when he’s in the majority, which is much of the time, and he has administrative power that the other justices do not have,’ said Shu. ‘And much like the President is the embodiment of Article 2, the Chief Justice is the embodiment of Article 3.’

‘It’s really scary that yet another norm has been shattered, violating the sacred confidentiality of deliberations and the opinion drafting process,’Shu said.

GOP Sen. Josh Hawley released a wide-ranging report Monday morning detailing the failures of the Secret Service in connection with the first assassination attempt against former President Trump in July, including new whistleblower allegations that are ‘highly damaging to the credibility’ of the agency. 

Hawley, R-Mo., shared his report with the House Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump to supplement their investigation. 

Hawley found a ‘compounding pattern of negligence, sloppiness, and gross incompetence that goes back years, all of which culminated in an assassination attempt that came inches from succeeding.’ 

‘On July 13, 2024, former President Donald J. Trump was nearly killed by an assassin’s bullet while hosting a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and the U.S. Secret Service failed to prevent it,’ the Hawley report states. ‘It was the most stunning breakdown in presidential security since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan.’ 

Hawley said the Secret Service, FBI and Department of Homeland Security ‘have all tried to evade real accountability.’ 

‘These agencies and their leaders have slow-walked congressional investigations, misled the American people, and shirked responsibility,’ the report states. 

After the first of two assassination attempts against Trump in just over two months, Hawley visited the Butler rally site to interview whistleblowers and opened up a whistleblower tip line, encouraging those with relevant information to share with officials. 

‘The resulting findings are highly damaging to the credibility of the Secret Service and DHS,’ the report states. ‘They reveal a compounding pattern of negligence, sloppiness, and gross incompetence that goes back years, all of which culminated in an assassination attempt that came inches from succeeding.’ 

Whistleblowers provided valuable information to Hawley, including that the Secret Service’s Counter Surveillance Division, which performs threat assessments of event sites, did not perform a typical evaluation of the Butler site and was not present on the day of the rally. 

Hawley also learned that Secret Service personnel ‘declined multiple offers from a local law enforcement partner to deploy drone technology, despite the fact that the would-be assassin used a drone to survey the rally site mere hours before the attempted assassination.’ 

Hawley also learned that the Secret Service’s Office of Protective Operations-Manpower told agents in charge of security for the rally ‘not to request additional security resources because they would be denied.’ 

The report also outlines other whistleblower allegations, including that law enforcement personnel ‘abandoned’ the rooftop where would-be assassin Thomas Crooks attempted to assassinate Trump ‘because of hot weather.’

The report also said the Secret Service agent with the responsibility of the security of the site, including ‘line-of-site concerns,’ was allegedly ‘known to be incompetent.’ 

‘That incompetence led to the placement of items like flags around the Butler stage and catwalk, impairing visibility,’ the report states. 

Whistleblowers also told Hawley that supplemental DHS personnel were used to fill in shortages of Secret Service personnel on the day of the rally. Some of those agents were allegedly pulled off of child exploitation cases. Whistleblowers said their training was ‘merely a poor-quality, two-hour webinar.’ 

Meanwhile, Hawley revealed in the report that the lead agent responsible for the Butler rally ‘failed a key examination during their federal law enforcement training to become a Secret Service agent.’ 

Hawley also was told that Secret Service intelligence units – or teams of Secret Service agents paired with state and local law enforcement to handle reports of suspicious persons – were allegedly absent from the Butler rally.

Whistleblowers also told Hawley that the hospital site where Trump received treatment after the shooting was ‘poorly secured, and the hospital site agent could not answer basic questions about site security.’ 

Kimberly Cheatle, who was the director of the Secret Service at the time of the rally, resigned from her post amid mounting pressure from congressional lawmakers on both sides of the aisle after the massive security failure. 

The Secret Service’s assistant director, Michael Plati, is also retiring. 

At least five Secret Service agents have been placed on leave since the assassination attempt in July. 

Trump was shot with Crooks’ bullet, which pierced the upper part of his right ear. As Secret Service agents led him away, with blood dripping down his cheek and his right ear, the former president raised his arm defiantly. 

Trump, just a day later, traveled to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for the 2024 Republican National Convention. He attended events each night of the convention, and on the final night, formally accepted the GOP presidential nomination. 

Hawley released his report just a day after the second assassination attempt against Trump. 

Trump was golfing at his course at Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach, Florida, Sunday when Secret Service agents spotted and began shooting at another would-be assassin – Ryan Wesley Routh – who allegedly had an AK-47 pointed at the former president on the green. 

Routh was arrested. Routh laughed and smiled ahead of his first court appearance in Florida on Monday, Fox News confirmed. 

He was charged with possession of firearm by convicted felon and possession of firearm with obliterated serial number. 

The first offense carried a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and supervised release. The second offense carried a maximum sentence of five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and supervised release. Routh responded ‘yes’ when asked if he understood the penalties. 

Fox News is told additional federal charges are possible. The initial charges announced Monday will keep Routh in custody.

The detention hearing is scheduled for Sept. 23, and the probable cause hearing is set for Sept. 30.

Routh has had at least 100 run-ins with law enforcement before his most recent arrest. 

In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, Trump said the rhetoric of President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris is causing him to be ‘shot at,’ following the second assassination attempt against him since July, while telling Fox News Digital that the suspected gunman ‘acted’ on ‘highly inflammatory language’ of Democrats.  

‘He believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it,’ Trump said of the gunman in an interview with Fox News Digital. ‘Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country – both from the inside and out.’ 

Trump pointed to Biden and Harris’ past comments casting Trump as a ‘threat to democracy,’ while telling Americans they are ‘unity’ leaders. 

‘They are the opposite,’ Trump said. ‘These are people that want to destroy our country.’ 

He added: ‘It is called the enemy from within. They are the real threat.’