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The first auction of offshore leases for wind power development in the Gulf of Mexico will take place Aug. 29 for tracts off the Louisiana and Texas coasts, the Biden administration announced Thursday. The Department of the Interior said the lease sale will involve more than 300,000 acres. That includes a 102,480-acre area off the southwest Louisiana coast, and areas covering 102,480 acres and 96,786 acres off Galveston, Texas.

Dozens of Senate Democrats are calling for the Biden administration to extend deportation protections for nationals from Venezuela and Nicaragua, part of a push to expand the use of the authority to even more people. In a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, 26 Democrats call for the redesignation of Venezuela and Nicaragua for Temporary Protected Status.

A prominent Democrat and Jewish leader who served for decades as a New York lawmaker and now leads a group committed to fighting antisemitism announced Thursday he’s leaving his lifelong political party and becoming a Republican, arguing Democrats have become “radicalized” and “turned their back” on the Jewish people.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Thursday said that the Chinese communist regime “bears responsibility” for helping tackle the fentanyl crisis in the U.S. – pointing to areas in which China can assist the U.S. in stopping the drug getting into the country. Mayorkas was asked at the Aspen Security Forum about whether China bears some responsibility for the U.S. fentanyl crisis, given that the precursor chemicals originate there.

Senators left a classified briefing on artificial intelligence Tuesday with a deeper understanding of how AI is already being used to bolster U.S. national security and the looming threat China poses as it deploys its own AI capabilities. “I think, from a military perspective, it’s very existential because China’s playing for keeps,” Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., told Fox News Digital after the closed-door session.

President Biden skipped Tuesday’s NATO dinner, with the White House saying it was because the president had four full workdays and needs to prepare for a speech tomorrow. Biden RSVP’d “no” to tonight’s NATO summit dinner with other world leaders as the 2023 summit kicks off. This is the third time the president has skipped a dinner with world leaders while on an international trip.

The D.C. Council on Tuesday passed an emergency crime bill aimed at giving judges more leeway as the city grapples with a sharp rise in violent crimes. Ahead of the vote, Council of the District of Columbia Chair Phil Mendelson said, “You can get away with murder in this city.” The statement was a notable pivot from comments he made in March, when he suggested that the “perception” of high crime was overshadowing the reality on the ground.

A partisan dispute about funding for three of Pennsylvania’s state-related universities may mean higher tuition for in-state students as a budget impasse continues further into the summer. The state government approached two weeks without full spending authority on Tuesday, while loose ends remained untied. Snarled in limbo is funding for three Pennsylvania universities that receive state subsidies — Penn State, the University of Pittsburgh and Temple. Gov.

A gun-rights advocacy group issued a “travel advisory” for Massachusetts after a Democrat lawmaker filed a bill that would put more restrictions on firearms. The National Association for Gun Rights issued the advisory on Tuesday and said the law would be among the most restrictive in the U.S.

The possibility that an artificial intelligence system might launch a nuclear attack on its own has prompted House lawmakers to propose legislative language that would ensure America’s nuclear arsenal remains under human control. Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., has proposed a bipartisan amendment to the 2024 defense policy bill that requires the Pentagon to put in place a system that ensures “meaningful human control is required to launch any nuclear weapon.

FIRST ON FOX — Former Republican gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey is launching his bid for Congress in Illinois’ 12th District against five-term Republican incumbent Mike Bost, R-Ill. “It’s time for a change,” Bailey told Fox News Digital. “We need more people to stand up and stop the compromise that’s destroying our values.

A U.S. District Court judge is temporarily preventing White House officials from meeting with tech companies about social media censorship, arguing that such actions in the past were likely First Amendment violations. The Tuesday injunction by Louisiana Judge Terry A. Doughty was in response to recent lawsuits from Louisiana and Missouri attorneys general.

Sen. James Lankford, Oklahoma’s senior senator, is making religious liberty a pillar of his political agenda and claims the White House is failing to enforce basic protections on the issue. The senator made the remarks in an interview with the Daily Mail published Tuesday. “My passion for religious liberty really draws from my personal faith, that I have the ability to be able to live my faith, practice my faith and speak about my faith,” Lankford told the outlet.

It’s a July 4th tradition every four years in Iowa and New Hampshire – White House hopefuls marching in Independence Day parades in the year before the presidential caucuses and primaries. Iowa and New Hampshire have led off both major parties’ presidential nominating calendars for half a century, and while the Democrats are upending their schedule, the two states will once again kick off the GOP lineup in 2024.

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom took time during a weekend trip to deep-red Idaho to celebrate a bookstore claiming it sells “banned” books. “Book bans are at a record high – there have been over 1,200 challenges in the last year, nearly double the (then-record) total from 2021,” Newsom tweeted on Sunday, including a video of his visit to Rediscovered Books in Boise. “Couldn’t leave Boise without dropping by this incredible bookstore.

A new Gallup poll released one day ahead of Independence Day shows confidence in the U.S. government to be the lowest across all countries in the G7. According to the poll, just 31% of American adults “have confidence” in the U.S. government, down from 56%, the highest in the G7, in 2006. A whopping 69% of Americans said they did not have confidence in the government. The U.S. was followed closely by the U.K., with just 33% of British adults having confidence in its government.

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Monday named state Republican Party chairman and former federal prosecutor Cody Hiland to the Arkansas Supreme Court, giving it a conservative majority as justices prepare to take up a challenge to her education overhaul. Hiland was appointed to fill the vacancy created by the death of Justice Robin Wynne last month and will hold the seat until 2025 when a newly elected justice takes office.

The University System of Georgia spent millions on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts prior to cuts from the state budget approved earlier this year, according to a Monday report by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC). The report detailed a nearly 200-page response from system Chancellor Sonny Perdue to Georgia Republican Lt. Gov.

The swanky, celebrity-studded city of West Hollywood officially has the highest minimum wage of any U.S. city after pay zoomed to $19.08 an hour Saturday. Workers in West Hollywood welcomed the increase amid rising rent, gas and food prices, although employers grumbled about growing labor costs that they say could drive them out of business. Lucian Tudor, chief executive of upscale restaurant La Boheme, told the Los Angeles Times he has cut staff from 120 to 80 to trim costs.

Former President Donald Trump packed the house at his South Carolina rally on Saturday, drawing a massive crowd that was significantly larger than the population of the town which hosted it. The leading Republican presidential candidate barnstormed in Pickens, a town of about 3,400 residents, on Saturday, speaking to more than 50,000 people who gathered at the downtown venue and lined the surrounding streets, according to Pickens police chief Randal Beach.