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World’s first ovarian cancer vaccine being developed in UK ‘could wipe out the disease’

The world’s first ovarian cancer vaccine could wipe the disease out, researchers have said.

OvarianVax is a vaccine that teaches the immune system to recognise and attack the earliest stages of ovarian cancer.

It’s being developed by scientists at the University of Oxford.

The hope is that women could receive the jab preventatively on the NHS with the goal of eradicating the disease.

Experts have suggested it could work in a similar way to the human papillomavirus (HPV) jab, which is on track to stamp out cervical cancer.

Professor Ahmed Ahmed and his team at the ovarian cancer cell laboratory at MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine at the university are working to identify cellular targets for the vaccine.

They will establish which proteins on the surface of early-stage ovarian cancer cells are best recognised by the immune system and how effectively the vaccine kills models of the disease in a lab.

Then they can take it to human clinical trials with people who have BRCA gene mutations – which massively increase the risk of ovarian cancer – and healthy women too.

Cancer Research UK is funding the study with up to £600,000 over the next three years.

Asked if ovarian cancer could be wiped out with the new jab, Professor Ahmed said: “Absolutely – that would be the aim.

“We still have a long way to go but it is a really exciting time. I’m very optimistic myself.”

Presently, there is no screening test for ovarian cancer, which is often diagnosed late because symptoms like bloating and no appetite can be vague.

Women with BRCA mutations, such as actress Angelina Jolie, are known to be at high risk.

Almost 45% of people with an altered BRCA1 gene and almost 20% with an altered BRCA2 gene will develop ovarian cancer by the age of 80, compared with just 2% in the general population.

Currently, women with BRCA1/2 mutations are recommended to have their ovaries removed by the age of 35, which means they go through early menopause and cannot have children in the future.

There are around 7,500 new ovarian cancer cases every year in the UK, with BRCA mutations accounting for around 5-15% of these.

Professor Ahmed said BRCA mutation carriers could benefit greatly from the new vaccine because “they wouldn’t then have to have their ovaries removed”.

He added: “I am optimistic because we are talking about preventing the very first few cancer cells that develop – and not trying to cure or treat or prevent the tumour coming back.

“I’m hoping that, because the number of cells that we will be targeting is quite small, we will have success.

“We’ve seen success with the HPV vaccine – it’s really, really incredibly effective.”

While the “full-blown timeline” for the vaccine being approved “might be many years away” the visible impact could be sooner.

Professor Ahmed added that, through clinical trials, he would hope to start seeing the vaccine’s impact “in four or five years on the healthy population”.

This post appeared first on sky.com

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MORNING GLORY: The VP debate is an example of Kamala Harris’s horrible judgment when it comes to picking staff

The debate between the candidates for vice president — GOP nominee Ohio Senator JD Vance and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz — was dominated by Vance, and all but a handful of hardened partisan pundits agree on that conclusion. 

Walz wobbled and panicked from the first question — which everyone in the world knew would be about Iran’s ballistic missile attack on Israel earlier in the day. Yet Walz still fumbled his response, and it got worse from there until the CBS moderators invoked the unwritten mercy rule for left-wing moderators watching the Democrat melt and tossed Walz some softballs on J6 at the debate’s close, by which time the internet was howling and laughing at the Minnesota governor. 

There were three important takeaways:  

First, Vance is a superb and calm debater and a reassuring figure on the national stage. 

Second, Walz is not, and he represents the one big decision Vice President Kamala Harris has had to make since President Joe Biden dropped out. It was a terrible decision. Imagine her Cabinet and White House staff if somehow, she wins.  

Third, legacy media is irretrievably broken and cannot be reclaimed from its lurch into rote leftism and extreme partisanship, or even pulled back to a minimum level of seriousness on big occasions.  

Do executives at these networks — ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC— not see what has happened? Americans don’t trust the news divisions at the legacy networks. It’s as if those divisions are run by a combination of fresh-from-campus-demonstration interns and hardened partisans from the Obama years.  

The CBS debate was not, however, as overtly biased against Vance as ABC’s earlier debate was against Trump, but it was still very, very biased against the center-right and conservative audience. Viewers saw the question set veer quickly from a world crisis and the border crisis to get to the left’s favorite issue of abortion.  

With the world tuning in only hours after Iran launched 180 ballistic missiles at Israel, the moderators Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan did open with an obligatory round of questions on that crisis. But, after 10 minutes, they plowed on to a quick exchange on immigration and the Biden-Harris massive fail on the relief efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene’s savaging of North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and Virginia in order to get to … abortion, which had been discussed at length in the ABC debate and about which there are zero mysteries.  

Three rounds of questions on abortion, really? And three rounds marked by the rote framing favored by the hard left? Predictable but still shocking.  

The debate ended in a morass of childcare questions and then the obligatory ‘Wasn’t January 6th terrible?’ questions.  

What a farce. Not one question on China’s vast military build-up and its threat against Taiwan and the Philippines. Not one question on the Chinese Communist Party spies shot through our country, including the office of New York’s current and past governor.  Not one question on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  

Yes, there was a quick dash through the consequences of more than 10 million illegal immigrants flowing across the southern border under the Biden-Harris regime, but also a quick cut-off when Vance began what was an obviously embarrassing factcheck of the CBS factcheck on the ‘legal status’ of the Haitians in Springfield, Ohio. ‘We have a lot to get to,’ was the trigger for cutting off anything uncomfortable.  

Walz was asked about his lying about his trips to China — sort of. It was left hanging. A knuckleheaded answer for a knuckleheaded team of debate organizers. Chinese President Xi Jinping is a sort of Voldemort for the networks — never to be named — perhaps because ABC and CBS all have corporate ties to companies that must do business there?  

Look, whatever votes were moved by the debate moved toward the GOP because Vance hammered that the costs of everything from food to gas skyrocketed under Biden-Harris, gave a quick tutorial on why construction costs have soared and thus the price of houses, and repeatedly reminded the audience of Harris’s failure in her job as ‘border czar,’ while also stressing the need for more domestic energy production. Tim Walz provided comic relief.  

The loser wasn’t just Walz though. It was also CBS, which joined ABC in a legacy media hall of shame. When we get back to debates in four years, the good news is the ‘debate commission’ is already dead and that, by 2028, the idea of the big networks hosting debates unchecked by center-right moderators will be as well. The candidates will call on C-SPAN and find some fair moderators. Siri could have done a better job in our past two debates this year.  

What has to be dawning in the C Suites of networks — if they are at all self-aware — is that their product and their talent are awful, and their audiences have already left or will soon leave. Tuesday night was just the most recent example of why. 

Hugh Hewitt is host of ‘The Hugh Hewitt Show,’ heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990.  Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS

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Iran warns of ‘decisive response’ if Israel crosses ‘red lines’

Iran has finished its largest-ever barrage of missiles fired at Israel, but warns that a retaliatory strike could warrant further ballistic response.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said during the Asia Cooperation Dialogue summit this week that Israel must not believe it can act with ‘impunity,’ according to Reuters.

‘Any type of military attack, terrorist act or crossing our red lines will be met with a decisive response by our armed forces,’ said Pezeshkian.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with the heads of the country’s security establishment on Wednesday following Iran’s firing of 181 missiles into Israel amid fears that a lethal regional war is around the corner.

Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani of Qatar was also in attendance at the summit in Doha, where he called the ongoing violence in the Middle East a ‘collective genocide’ perpetuated by Israel, according to Reuters.

‘It has become crystal clear that what is happening is genocide, in addition to turning the Gaza Strip into an area unfit for human habitation, in preparation for displacement,’ the Qatari monarch said.

Iran’s strikes on Israel forced nearly 10 million people to find safety in bomb shelters on Tuesday. 

The barrage of aerial warfare was the first time in Israeli history that the country’s densely populated cities – Tel Aviv and Jerusalem – in the center of the biblical nation, faced such devastating attacks.

The only fatality from the Iranian barrage was the murder of a Palestinian man in the West Bank (known in Israel by its biblical regional name of Judea and Samaria).

President Biden said Wednesday that he would not support an attack by Israel on Iranian nuclear sites in retaliation for Iran’s firing of 181 missiles at Israel amid fears that a lethal regional war is around the corner.

‘We’ll be discussing with the Israelis what they’re going to do, but all seven of us [G7 nations] agree that they have a right to respond, but they should respond proportionally,’ he said.

But when asked whether he would back Israel striking Iranian nuclear sites as it has long threatened, Biden told reporters, ‘The answer is no.’

Fox News Digital’s Sarah Rumpf-Whitten and Benjamin Weinthal contributed to this report.

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Here’s the speech Biden should have given to a troubled United Nations

In his speech before the United Nations General Assembly last week, President Biden proposed building a ‘more effective and more inclusive U.N.’ by ‘bringing in new voices and new perspectives.’ 

What he should have said instead is that the U.N. has lost its way, and it will need to be seriously reimagined if it is to remain relevant.

To be sure, the creation of the U.N. system to reconstruct global order after World War II was inspired, and its specialized agencies, such as the Food and Agricultural Organization, have done important work for decades.

Today, however, the U.N. suffers from a fundamental flaw: it gives too much power to revisionist autocracies like China and Russia that want to tear down the U.S.-led global system. Beijing, Moscow and other revisionist authoritarians use their influence in the U.N. to turn the institution against its founding mission.

The list of abuses is long. 

Russia chaired a U.N. Security Council meeting on the situation in Ukraine as it was launching an invasion of that country. China continues to prevent the World Health Organization from investigating COVID-19’s origins, making a future outbreak more likely. 

Russia and China also use their seats in the U.N. Security Council to weaken sanctions efforts against the illegal nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran. The U.N. Human Rights Council includes repressive regimes – such as China – ensuring that these countries escape scrutiny for their barbaric human rights records. 

And employees of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) participated in the Oct. 7 attacks against Israel. 

These are only the most prominent examples.

Nevertheless, the proceedings last week demonstrate that many still believe the U.N. remains the best possible forum to bring countries together to address shared global challenges.

This is wishful thinking.

Biden is right when he says we are at an inflection point in history, but we will only rise to this challenge if the United States and its allies can revitalize and adapt multilateral institutions to reflect new realities.

Instead of Biden’s platitudes about global cooperation, the next U.S. administration should acknowledge that America’s adversaries have transformed the U.N. into another arena for competition between free nations and an axis of revisionist autocracies. 

They should use speeches at the General Assembly to call out the bad behavior of U.S. adversaries, such as China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela, and encourage close allies to join in the condemnation. They should be unrelenting in opposing this axis’ threats to their neighbors, their unfair trade practices and their abhorrent human rights abuses.

They should unrelentingly defend U.S. allies, like Israel, from unfair attacks, and acknowledge that the U.N. is becoming even more obsessively antisemitic. 

In both 2022 and 2023, the number of U.N. General Assembly resolutions condemning Israel exceeded the combined total of those condemning all other countries. Yet, the body refrained from condemning Hamas after the abhorrent Oct. 7 attack – even after it fired nine UNRWA employees for likely involvement in an act of war.

To counter the U.N.’s capture by cynical autocracies, Washington and its allies should use their diplomatic weight to place U.S. and allied officials in leadership institutions in key U.N. bodies, including the Human Rights Council.

The United States provides one-third of U.N. funding, giving it enormous potential influence if it is willing to use it. But the U.S. should move from mandatory assessments to voluntary contributions in order to prioritize programs that advance U.S. interests and defund others.

In addition, Washington should advance multilateralism by selectively routing around the U.N. system in favor of institutions that include America’s democratic allies and exclude authoritarian regimes such Russia and China. These groupings, like the G-7 and NATO, are often the only places where genuine international cooperation happens today. 

Finally, there is no need to cling to the preexisting system. After WWII, there was an explosion of creativity as Washington and its allies invented new bodies from scratch. The world needs a new burst of such innovative thinking now to design the multilateral frameworks necessary to meet contemporary challenges. 

Priority should be given to frameworks that bring together U.S. allies in North America, Europe and the Indo-Pacific. NATO, the Quad, AUKUS, IP4 (Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea), and the American–Japanese–Korean trilateral pact are promising steps in this direction.

Last week’s U.N. proceedings show that hope for multilateral cooperation remains alive. But to transform that spirit into effective governance, Washington will need to reimagine the U.N. and other global institutions to return them to their founding mission of promoting peace, prosperity and freedom.

Matthew Kroenig is vice president of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center, a professor at Georgetown, and a former Pentagon strategist. Dan Negrea is a former State Department special representative for commercial and business affairs and an Atlantic Council distinguished fellow. The authors write only in their personal capacity and not on behalf of any person or organization.

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5 key details in special counsel Jack Smith’s Trump election case filing

A federal judge on Wednesday unsealed a key filing from special counsel Jack Smith’s updated election interference case against former President Donald Trump.

U.S. District Judge for the District of Columbia Tanya Chutkan unsealed Smith’s 165-page filing, in which Smith argues that Trump is not immune from prosecution for his alleged criminal scheme to overturn the 2020 election results. Smith submitted the document after the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year ruled that a president is immune from prosecution for official acts. 

‘Although the defendant was the incumbent President during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one,’ Smith wrote. ‘Working with a team of private co-conspirators, the defendant acted as a candidate when he pursued multiple criminal means to disrupt, through fraud and deceit, the government function by which votes are collected and counted — a function in which the defendant, as President, had no official role.’ 

The Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States held that Smith could not prosecute Trump for the president’s alleged use of the Justice Department to look into unproven claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. In response, Smith filed an updated indictment that revised the allegations against Trump to fit within the scope of the Supreme Court’s decision. 

In the unsealed filing, Smith told the court that Trump is not immune from the remaining allegations against him and laid out his case for why Trump ‘must stand trial for his private crimes.’ 

Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges brought against him by Smith.

Here are five key details from the special counsel’s new filing, which is partially redacted: 

1. Smith’s ‘factual proffer’ 

In the filing unsealed Wednesday, Smith outlined a ‘factual proffer,’ alleging Trump ‘resorted to crimes to try to stay in office’ after losing the 2020 presidential election.

‘With private co-conspirators, the defendant launched a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate election results in seven states that he had lost—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin,’ Smith wrote. 

‘His efforts included lying to state officials in order to induce them to ignore true vote counts; manufacturing fraudulent electoral votes in the targeted states; attempting to enlist Vice President Michael R. Pence, in his role as President of the Senate, to obstruct Congress’s certification of the election by using the defendant’s fraudulent electoral votes; and when all else had failed, on January 6, 2021, directing an angry crowd of supporters to the United States Capitol to obstruct the congressional certification.’ 

Smith claims that the ‘throughline of these efforts was deceit,’ alleging Trump and co-conspirators engaged in a conspiracy to interfere with the federal government function by which the nation collects and counts election results, which is set forth in the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act (ECA); a conspiracy to obstruct the official proceeding in which Congress certifies the legitimate results of the presidential election; and a conspiracy against the rights of millions of Americans to vote and have their votes counted.’ 

2. Smith claims Trump’s personal attorney told POTUS election fraud claims were ‘bulls—’ 

Smith claims that several people close to Trump had told the former president his claims of election fraud were ‘bulls—.’ 

According to Smith, in one conversation, an unnamed Trump attorney had told Trump that the campaign was ‘looking into his fraud claims and had even hired external experts to do so, but could find no support for them.’ 

‘He told the defendant that if the Campaign took these claims to court, they would get slaughtered because the claims are all ‘bulls—,’’ the filing states, with Smith claiming that a lawyer discussed with Trump the investigations and ‘debunkings on all major claims.’ 

For example, the attorney allegedly told Trump that Georgia’s audit disproved claims that votes had been altered. 

Smith also claims a senior campaign adviser who spoke with Trump on a ‘daily basis’ and had ‘informed him on multiple occasions that various fraud claims were false’ had complained that Trump was losing his election lawsuits because his lawyers could not back up false claims about the election.

‘When our research and campaign legal team can’t back up any of the claims made by our Elite Strike Force Legal Team, you can see why we’re 0-32 on our cases,’ the campaign adviser allegedly wrote.

‘I’ll obviously hustle to help on all fronts, but it’s tough to own any of this when it’s all just conspiracy s— beamed down from the mothership.’  

3. New details on Trump’s interactions with Vice President Mike Pence

The filing details several alleged interactions between Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence in the days following the election.

Smith details a Nov. 7, 2020, call between Pence and Trump in which Pence allegedly ‘tried to encourage’ Trump ‘as a friend’ by reminding him that he ‘took a dying political party and gave it a new lease on life.’ 

Smith also details a private lunch between Trump and Pence on Nov. 12, 2020, when Pence allegedly gave Trump a ‘face-saving option.’ That option, according to the filing, was ‘don’t concede but recognize the process is over.’ 

In another private lunch between Trump and Pence on Nov. 16, 2020, Pence allegedly tried to encourage Trump to accept the results of the election and run again in 2024. Trump is alleged to have responded, ‘I don’t know, 2024 is so far off.’ 

In yet another private lunch on Dec. 21, Pence allegedly ‘encouraged’ Trump ‘not to look at the election ‘as a loss – just an intermission.” Later that day in the Oval Office, Trump allegedly asked Pence for advice on what he should do. According to Smith, Pence said, ‘after we have exhausted every legal process in the courts and Congress, if we still came up short, Trump should ‘take a bow.’’ 

Additionally, Smith reveals that Trump allegedly showed little regard for Pence’s safety during the Jan. 6, 2023 riot at the U.S. Capitol after it became clear that Pence would not support his attempt to stop the certification of the election. 

Smith alleges that an unnamed Trump aide, ‘upon receiving a phone call alerting him that Pence had been taken to a secure location… rushed to the dining room to inform the defendant [Trump] in hopes that the defendant would take action to ensure Pence’s safety.’ 

Smith writes that instead, after the aide delivered the news, Trump ‘looked at him and said only, ‘So what?” 

4. White House staffer allegedly overhears Trump say, ‘It doesn’t matter if you won or lost’ 

Smith alleges that Trump at multiple times showed complete disregard for those who informed him his claims of voter fraud were false, including Republican elections officials in states where Trump had claimed the election was stolen. 

‘Election officials, for instance, issued press releases and other public statements to combat the disinformation that the defendant and his allies were spreading,’ Smith wrote. ‘At one point long after the defendant had begun spreading false fraud claims, [REDACTED], a White House staffer traveling with the defendant, overheard him tell family members that ‘it doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.’ 

Smith goes on to assert that Trump and his legal team ‘repeatedly changed the numbers in their baseless fraud allegations from day to day,’ and even ‘made up figures from whole cloth.’ 

The special counsel claimed Trump ‘was on notice that there was no evidence of widespread election fraud in Arizona within a week of the election’ and claimed Trump also ‘had early notice that his claims of election fraud in Georgia were false.’ 

By the time Trump spoke at his rally on Jan. 6, after Pence had refused to stop the certification of the election, Smith said the former president knew his ‘last hope’ to overturn the results was ‘the large and angry crowd standing in front of him.’ 

‘So for more than an hour, the defendant delivered a speech designed to inflame his supports and motivate them to march to the Capitol. The defendant told the crowd many of the same lies he had been telling for months—privately and publicly, including to the officials in the targeted states—and that he knew were not true.’

5. Smith presents case against presidential immunity

Smith argues that based on a ‘factbound analysis’ of Trump’s conduct, the court should determine that the former president was not acting in his official capacity when he challenged the election results and is therefore not immune from prosecution. 

‘None of the allegations or evidence is protected by presidential immunity,’ Smith wrote, asserting Trump’s ‘scheme was a private one.’ 

‘He extensively used private actors and his campaign infrastructure to attempt to overturn the election results and operated in a private capacity as a candidate for office,’ Smith claimed. ‘To the limited extent that the superseding indictment and proffered evidence reflect official conduct, however, the Government can rebut the presumption of immunity because relying on that conduct in this prosecution will not pose a danger of intrusion on the authority or functions of the Executive Branch.’ 

Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman and Fox News’ Jake Gibson contributed to this report.

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MORNING GLORY: The VP debate is an example of Kamala Harris’ horrible judgment when it comes to picking staff

The debate between the candidates for vice president — GOP nominee Ohio Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz — was dominated by Vance, and all but a handful of hardened partisan pundits agree on that conclusion. 

Walz wobbled and panicked from the first question — which everyone in the world knew would be about Iran’s ballistic missile attack on Israel earlier in the day. Yet Walz still fumbled his response, and it got worse from there until the CBS moderators invoked the unwritten mercy rule for left-wing moderators watching the Democrat melt and tossed Walz some softballs on J6 at the debate’s close, by which time the internet was howling and laughing at the Minnesota governor. 

There were three important takeaways:  

First, Vance is a superb and calm debater and a reassuring figure on the national stage. 

Second, Walz is not, and he represents the one big decision Vice President Kamala Harris has had to make since President Joe Biden dropped out. It was a terrible decision. Imagine her Cabinet and White House staff if somehow, she wins.  

Third, legacy media is irretrievably broken and cannot be reclaimed from its lurch into rote leftism and extreme partisanship, or even pulled back to a minimum level of seriousness on big occasions.  

Do executives at these networks — ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC— not see what has happened? Americans don’t trust the news divisions at the legacy networks. It’s as if those divisions are run by a combination of fresh-from-campus-demonstration interns and hardened partisans from the Obama years.  

The CBS debate was not, however, as overtly biased against Vance as ABC’s earlier debate was against Trump, but it was still very, very biased against the center-right and conservative audience. Viewers saw the question set veer quickly from a world crisis and the border crisis to get to the left’s favorite issue of abortion.  

With the world tuning in only hours after Iran launched 180 ballistic missiles at Israel, the moderators Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan did open with an obligatory round of questions on that crisis. But, after 10 minutes, they plowed on to a quick exchange on immigration and the Biden-Harris massive fail on the relief efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene’s savaging of North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and Virginia in order to get to … abortion, which had been discussed at length in the ABC debate and about which there are zero mysteries.  

Three rounds of questions on abortion, really? And three rounds marked by the rote framing favored by the hard left? Predictable but still shocking.  

The debate ended in a morass of childcare questions and then the obligatory ‘Wasn’t January 6th terrible?’ questions.  

What a farce. Not one question on China’s vast military build-up and its threat against Taiwan and the Philippines. Not one question on the Chinese Communist Party spies shot through our country, including the office of New York’s current and past governor.  Not one question on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  

Yes, there was a quick dash through the consequences of more than 10 million illegal immigrants flowing across the southern border under the Biden-Harris regime, but also a quick cut-off when Vance began what was an obviously embarrassing factcheck of the CBS factcheck on the ‘legal status’ of the Haitians in Springfield, Ohio. ‘We have a lot to get to,’ was the trigger for cutting off anything uncomfortable.  

Walz was asked about his lying about his trips to China — sort of. It was left hanging. A knuckleheaded answer for a knuckleheaded team of debate organizers. Chinese President Xi Jinping is a sort of Voldemort for the networks — never to be named — perhaps because ABC and CBS all have corporate ties to companies that must do business there?  

Look, whatever votes were moved by the debate moved toward the GOP because Vance hammered that the costs of everything from food to gas skyrocketed under Biden-Harris, gave a quick tutorial on why construction costs have soared and thus the price of houses, and repeatedly reminded the audience of Harris’s failure in her job as ‘border czar,’ while also stressing the need for more domestic energy production. Tim Walz provided comic relief.  

The loser wasn’t just Walz though. It was also CBS, which joined ABC in a legacy media hall of shame. When we get back to debates in four years, the good news is the ‘debate commission’ is already dead and that, by 2028, the idea of the big networks hosting debates unchecked by center-right moderators will be as well. The candidates will call on C-SPAN and find some fair moderators. Siri could have done a better job in our past two debates this year.  

What has to be dawning in the C Suites of networks — if they are at all self-aware — is that their product and their talent are awful, and their audiences have already left or will soon leave. Tuesday night was just the most recent example of why. 

Hugh Hewitt is host of ‘The Hugh Hewitt Show,’ heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990.  Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.

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8 House Dems demand to know how social platforms are preparing to combat ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff issued a letter to major social media executives this week demanding they reveal how they will combat ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ in the 2024 election. 

The letter, co-signed by seven other members of Congress, accuses social media platforms such as X, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok of failing to properly prepare for malicious info-hazards in November. 

‘We write to your platforms as concerned Members of Congress, seeking further information about your preparation for and response to the spread of misinformation and disinformation, or the potential incitement of violence on your platforms leading up to the 2024 elections,’ the California congressman wrote. ‘We have already seen how posts with disinformation have spread on the major social media platforms both in the United States and across the globe during election cycles.’

The letter continued, ‘We continue to be concerned with each of your companies’ ability to react efficiently and effectively to misinformation and disinformation, or to any potential incitement of violence occurring on your platforms.’

In the letter, the signers accused social platforms Meta, Discord, and Snap specifically of ‘[reducing] their elections team dramatically’ following the 2022 elections.

X, Meta, and TikTok were singled out and scolded for having ‘not increased their transparency for external groups who can aid in monitoring election information.’

READ THE FULL LETTER — APP USERS CLICK HERE

‘While the impetus of this letter is the 2024 election, political and election-related mis- and disinformation persists even between elections, so we are also urging your companies to commit to taking action on election and political misinformation year-round, not just in the leadup to elections.’

A series of specific questions are offered at the end of the letter, including ‘Will your company be changing your election integrity policies between now and the 2024 U.S. general election?’ and ‘How will your company be more transparent in enforcement of its community guidelines regarding election integrity and transparent with the public about actions it has taken?’

‘Will your company commit to sharing data and metrics on the effectiveness of your enforcement systems in relation to US elections and political speech?’ the Democratic congress members asked. ‘How will your company address mis- and disinformation made by political actors or verified accounts, and how will they be treated differently, if at all, compared to ordinary users?’

The letter was co-signed by Democratic Representatives Julia Brownley of California, Andre Carson of Indiana, Dan Goldman of New York, Robert Garcia of California, Raúl M. Grijalva of Arizona, Hank Johnson of Georgia and Doris Matsui of California.

It was addressed to the following executives: Mark Zuckerberg, Meta; Linda Yaccarino, X; Shou Zi Chew, TikTok; Sundar Pichai, Google; Adam Mosseri, Instagram; Evan Spiegel, Snap; Neal Mohan, YouTube; Satya Nadella, Microsoft.

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Melania Trump’s abortion views in new memoir spur outrage from pro-lifers: ‘She is wrong’

Former first lady Melania Trump is drawing heat from pro-life advocates over an excerpt in her memoir where she suggests a woman’s right to choose an abortion is a ‘fundamental right of individual liberty,’ according to a report Wednesday.

Melania Trump wife of Republican presidential candidate and former President Trump, wrote the memoir entitled ‘Melania’ that is scheduled to come out on Oct. 8, per the Amazon release date. In the book, according to a preview by The Guardian, Melania expresses a viewpoint that has historically been at odds with the Republican Party’s platform. 

‘It is imperative to guarantee that women have autonomy in deciding their preference of having children, based on their own convictions, free from any intervention or pressure from the government,’ Melania reportedly wrote.

‘Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body? A woman’s fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes.

‘Restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body. I have carried this belief with me throughout my entire adult life.’

The excerpts quickly drew the ire of pro-life advocates who have already been disgruntled by some of Trump’s seemingly ambiguous comments regarding abortion. 

‘Melania Trump’s support of abortion is anti-feminist and clearly outside the teaching of our Catholic faith. She is wrong,’ wrote Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America advocacy group. 

Lila Rose, founder of leading pro-life advocacy group Live Action, also responded to a promotional video Melania posted for her memoir in which she states, ‘Individual freedom is a fundamental principle that I safeguard… what does my body my choice really mean?’

‘Who is this Melania Trump, or Kamala Harris? Functionally the same exact position on abortion,’ Rose wrote on X. 

President of pro-life advocacy group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Marjorie Dannenfelser, wrote on X: ‘The women of America are capable of great strength and creativity. They are naturally inclined to speak for those who are powerless. Abortion is not the source of their freedom and liberation.’

In August, Trump sparked confusion among pro-life supporters about where he stood on an amendment that would upend Florida’s ban on abortions after six weeks’ gestation. Trump, after saying ‘I think the six-week is too short, there has to be more time,’ to an NBC reporter when asked how he would vote, later walked it back and said he would vote against the amendment.

Other spouses of Republican presidents, such as Pat Nixon, Betty Ford, Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush and Laura Bush, have been recorded either during or after their husbands’ tenure in office expressing pro-choice views.

Trump has also said he opposes a nationwide abortion ban and the GOP’s official platform softened its language about its abortion stances this year.

Fox News Digital has reached out to Melania Trump’s office for comment but did not hear back by publication deadline.

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Emhoff denies report he slapped ex-girlfriend outside ritzy overseas movie event

Second gentleman Doug Emhoff denied the veracity of a Daily Mail report in which three unnamed sources accused him of having slapped a former girlfriend during a 2012 trip to the Cannes Film Festival.

Fox News Digital has not been able to independently confirm the allegations.

‘This report is untrue,’ an unnamed representative for Vice President Kamala Harris’ husband told news outlet Semafor. ‘Any suggestion that he would or has ever hit a woman is false.’

The Daily Mail’s exclusive story on Tuesday quoted a trio of unidentified sources who claim Emhoff slapped his then-girlfriend while the couple waited in a valet line following an event in Nice, France, in 2012. The alleged altercation was purportedly sparked when the woman — identified only by the pseudonym ‘Jane’ and described as a successful New York attorney — flirted with a valet, according to the article.

The Harris campaign, the Office of the Vice President and a representative for Emhoff’s ex-wife, Kerstin Emhoff, did not comment despite repeated requests from Fox News. 

Several media outlets, including Semafor, noted they had been unable to match the Daily Mail’s reporting, and legacy media companies such as The New York Times have yet to report on the claims. 

The Daily Mail’s article hinged on the recollections of three people described as being Jane’s friends. The outlet said its sources requested anonymity due to fear of retaliation from Emhoff. The three friends reportedly provided the outlet with a photo of the pair when they were still a couple, as well as itineraries and correspondence between Emhoff and Jane to substantiate that they made the trip to France in May 2012.

One of the sources is described by the Daily Mail as a female New York attorney who learned about the alleged incident from Jane.

‘He hauled up and slapped her so hard she spun around,’ the source is quoted as saying. ‘She said she was in utter shock. She was so furious, she slapped him on one side, and then on the other cheek with the other hand.’

Another friend, described by the Daily Mail as a New York businessman, told the outlet Jane called him sobbing following the alleged incident. 

‘It was very clear what she was telling me,’ that source said, according to the Daily Mail. ‘She said she was with a guy, her date, she was at the Cannes Film Festival, and he hit her. She was in the car with the guy at the time.’

The male friend said he learned more details about the alleged episode after the initial phone call. 

‘It was something like 3 a.m. They were trying to get out of there and they both had been drinking. There was a gigantic line for taxis,’ he told the outlet. ‘She went up to one of the valet guys, offered him 100 euros or whatever, to get to the head of the line. She told me she put her hand on his shoulder. Doug apparently thought that she was flirting, and came over and slapped her in the face.’

A third friend, described as a female executive, told the Daily Mail that she learned of the alleged incident in 2014, and purportedly found out new details from Jane in 2018, when Harris, then a senator from California, made headlines with her questioning of a Supreme Court nominee who had been accused of sexual assault.

‘[She] is a gorgeous, strong woman and you would never expect somebody to hit her,’ the third friend told the Daily Mail. ‘When he hit her she hit him back, like, ‘Don’t you ever do that again.”

The third Daily Mail source added: ‘I asked her if he ever apologized. She said ‘no,’ but he commented about the hit she gave him. It was a tennis metaphor. But no apology at all.’

All three friends told the outlet that Jane hit Emhoff back after the alleged initial slap. They also claimed that Jane tried to leave the valet area after the alleged slap, but that Emhoff got into a cab with Jane.

Jane and Emhoff had been dating for about three months before the reported trip to France, according to the friends. Emhoff allegedly cut the trip short and returned to the U.S. for his daughter’s birthday at the end of May, and never saw Jane again, the friends told the outlet. 

Emhoff’s alleged relationship with Jane unfolded after his 2008 divorce from his first wife and before his 2014 marriage to Harris. 

The New York Post on Wednesday slammed Emhoff as ‘Worst Gentleman’ in its cover story detailing the Daily Mail’s article.

Emhoff is fresh off of a Sunday sit-down interview on MSNBC during which host Jen Psaki celebrated him as having reshaped ‘the perception of masculinity.’

‘There is also an important, interesting part about how people have talked about your role is how your role has reshaped the perception of masculinity,’ Psaki said. ‘I’m not sure you planned on that, but you are an incredibly supportive spouse. Has that been an evolution for you? Do you think that’s part of the role you might play as first gentleman?’

Emhoff responded: ‘It’s funny. I’ve started to think a lot about this. I’ve always been like this. My dad’s always been like this. To me, it’s the right thing to do, support women. It is mutual with Kamala and I. We support each other, we have each other’s back.’

He added: ‘I’ve said many times when we lift up women, we support women, whether it’s pay equity, child care, family leave, and all of these issues in this post-Dobbs hellscape. Women should not be less than. Women should not have less rights and be treated differently. That’s not the American way.’

Clips of the exchange spread like wildfire on social media as critics noted that, in August, Emhoff admitted to having an affair with his family’s nanny during his first marriage years ago.

Emhoff’s admission came shortly after the Daily Mail published a separate report in August claiming that he got his daughter’s nanny pregnant.

The affair occurred before Emhoff’s relationship with and eventual marriage to Harris. 

‘During my first marriage, Kerstin and I went through some tough times on account of my actions. I took responsibility, and in the years since, we worked through things as a family and have come out stronger on the other side,’ Emhoff said over the summer, acknowledging the affair, but not naming the nanny. 

Emhoff and his first wife were married from 1992 to 2008 and share two adult children. Harris married Emhoff in 2014, and helped co-parent his children, who call their stepmom ‘mommala.’ 

Emhoff reportedly told Jane in 2012 about his divorce, according to her female friend who works as an executive. 

The Daily Mail’s report was published just five weeks before the election, when Harris will square off against former President Trump at the ballot box. 

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Hundreds of national security officials, ex-Cabinet members, Gold Star families endorse Trump

More than 400 national security and foreign policy officials, ex-Cabinet members, retired military officers and Gold Star families endorsed former President Trump on Thursday.

In an open letter organized by former National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien and former NSC Chief of Staff Alex Gray, the signatories condemn the ‘repeated failures’ of the Biden-Harris administration’s foreign policy and urged Americans to re-elect Trump.

‘From a world at peace under President Trump, we are closer to a third world war than ever before under the Biden-Harris Administration,’ the letter states. ‘With multiple escalating wars around the world, an open border that allows terrorists to flood into the American homeland, and malign actors like China operating unabated, U.S. national security has been profoundly damaged by the failed policies of Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.’

The endorsement was signed by several prominent officials from the Trump administration, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Attorney General Bill Barr, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and former 2024 Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, and many more.

Eleven family members of the 13 American troops killed at Abbey Gate at Kabul’s airport during the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan also signed the letter, which praised Trump’s foreign policy record in contrast to Biden’s controversial actions. 

‘When President Trump took office, the war in Afghanistan had dragged on for almost 16 years. By February 2020, a peace agreement was reached, ensuring no American soldier was killed in combat until the end of the Trump Administration. This agreement held strong because the Taliban understood President Trump’s resolve and U.S. forces were prepared to ensure their compliance,’ the letter reads.

‘The botched withdrawal from Afghanistan under the Biden-Harris Administration in 2021, led to the unnecessary deaths of thirteen brave American troops at Abbey Gate and left untold billions of dollars of high grade military equipment to the Taliban, making it the most well-armed terror organization in the world.’

Additionally, 40 retired U.S. ambassadors, 75 retired senior military officers and several hundred officials from previous Republican administrations signed the letter, praising Trump’s diplomatic efforts on cease-fire agreements between Turkey and Kurdish fighters in Syria and the Abraham Accords. The letter refers to Trump as a ‘peacemaker.’ 

‘Securing peace is in the greatest tradition of American foreign policy and the Judeo-Christian principles upon which our nation was founded,’ the letter continues before quoting from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew. ‘Jesus said, ‘blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be sons of God.’ (Matthew 5:9) Such is the legacy of the Trump Administration.’

Writing on X, O’Brien said he was ‘honored’ to join his colleagues from the Trump administration in ‘supporting a return to a ‘peace through strength’ foreign policy under President Trump.’

Another signatory, Dr. Jerry Hendrix, former director of the Secretary of the Navy’s Advisory Panel, said it ‘wasn’t a hard decision’ to attach his name to the letter.

‘Trump had 1 of the more successful foreign policy presidencies since the Cold War,’ Hendrix wrote on X. ‘He ended sequestration. He invested in the Navy. The Biden-Harris admin has been one foreign policy debacle after another.’ 

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment. 

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