For a year now, freeing the hostages taken by Hamas has been a top goal for Israel, but 101 still remain unaccounted for. Hope of a deal to get them homein the foreseeable future is waning quickly. 

Of the 240 people taken hostage from Israel by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, 117 have either been freed during temporary truces or rescued during Israel Defense Forces (IDF) missions. Dozens of the 101 who have not been freed are believed to be dead. 

Four Americans – Keith Siegel, 65, Sagui Dekel-Chen, 36, Omer Neutra, 22, and Edan Alexander, 21 – remain trapped among them.  

Many hostage families have lost faith in the U.S. and Israeli governments. ‘We don’t believe that Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu’s priority is to bring home the hostages,’ Hannaha Siegel, Keith Siegel’s niece, told CNN on Monday. 

‘The ability to negotiate with [Hamas Leader Yaya] Sinwar to try to get the hostages that remain alive out is extremely unlikely,’ said Mark Schwartz, a retired Army general and former U.S. security coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

‘There’s no strategic benefit at all for Hamas. The hostages are useful human shields and getting several hundred Palestinians out of prisons, big deal,’ he said, referring to a potential prisoner exchange. ‘That’s not going to extend the life of Hamas leadership that resides inside Gaza.’ 

President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have for months implored Netanyahu to agree to a cease-fire deal that would see the hostages returned home. 

However, as war spread from Gaza to Lebanon to Tel Aviv – and with Israel considering an aggressive response to Iran’s most recent missile attack – U.S. calls for a cease-fire increasingly rattle around an empty echo chamber. 

‘The mood is poor right now,’ said Michael Makovsky, president of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America.

‘What’s in Sinwar’s interest to make a deal? Hamas’ military capability is pretty much destroyed. I don’t think he thinks he’s ever going to get out alive. I don’t think he necessarily wants to leave Gaza alive anyway.’

Sinwar, Hamas’ shadowy leader and the architect of the Oct. 7 attacks, is believed to be alive and still committed to the destruction of Israel. 

On the eve of the anniversary of the attacks, Netanyahu held his first meeting on the plight of the hostages in a month. According to The Times of Israel, his officials warned him intel on the hostages was quickly drying up. They reportedly told him they believed half of the hostages remained alive and were subject to increasingly squalid conditions. They also warned that Hamas militants were under orders to execute them if they felt the IDF was closing in on their position. 

Hamas executed six hostages in a tunnel in Rafah in August as the IDF drew near. 

‘You want to hold out hope for someone to be rescued, but for a hostage deal, it’s not looking good,’ said Makovsky. 

‘I think Netanyahu should have demonstrated more sympathy towards the hostages early on, and then it became kind of entrenched that half the Israeli electorate didn’t like him anyway, so he didn’t care.

‘In fairness to him, he was the prime minister that cut what turned out to be a terrible deal – which they released over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners – for one Israeli hostage in Gaza,’ added Makovsky. ‘One of those prisoners was Sinwar.’

In 2011, Israel agreed to an exchange where it released 1,027 Palestinian prisoners – including Sinwar – for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Sinwar was 22 years into four life sentences he received in Israel for orchestrating the killing of two Israeli soldiers and four Palestinians he believed to be collaborators in 1989. 

Gershon Baskin, who led negotiations on that deal, said he believes Hamas is ready to strike an agreement – and it is not the one U.S. officials have worked on for months. 

‘It would end the war in three weeks with an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. They would release and return all the hostages, military, civilian, alive and dead, and there would be an agreed-upon release of Palestinian prisoners. Hamas has agreed to me in writing that they would transfer the governance in Gaza to a civilian, technocratic, professional government, which they will not be part of.’ 

Critics of such ideas say they fall short of eliminating Hamas, which could rebuild itself and once again threaten Israel.

Baskin does not work on behalf of Israel or Hamas in any official capacity, but he said U.S. officials are aware of the offer and need to pressure Netanyahu and Hamas to work it out between themselves. 

In May, Biden unveiled a three-phase deal that would see Hamas return 18–32 hostages in exchange for 800 Palestinian prisoners and a six-week pause in fighting. 

‘It’s a bad deal, and I know that the American leadership – [CIA Director Bill] Burns and [White House Middle East coordinator Brett] McGurk and others have invested themselves deeply in these negotiations, but they need to simply recognize that it’s not going anywhere,’ Baskin said. ‘It’s a dead deal, and they need to pick up another deal that might actually work.’ 

Efforts to reach the White House and the Israeli government for comment for purposes of this story were unsuccessful at press time. 

New polling shows former President Trump has a 9-point lead over Vice President Kamala Harris when it comes to handling the economy, the single most important issue for voters going into the 2024 presidential election.

The new poll from Gallup found that 54% of Americans say Trump is more capable of handling the economy, compared to 45% for Harris. The economy ranked as the most important issue for Republicans and for all Americans, but it didn’t rate in the top five for Democrats.

Veteran Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf says Democrats are simply confident in Harris’ plan to handle the economy.

‘Independents are looking for a reason to vote for a candidate, but they just haven’t found it yet,’ Sheinkopf told Fox News Digital in an interview. ‘Americans focus on the issue most important to them in every election. This time it’s their pockets. And they are still feeling pain no matter what candidates say. Time is running out for Harris to prove she can make it better.’

He went on to argue that the economy is no less politicized an issue as immigration or abortion, suggesting polarization has an outsized impact on voter’s opinions on the economy. 

For Republicans, the top issues after the economy are immigration, terrorism and national security, crime and taxes.

For Democrats, the top issue is democracy in the U.S., followed by the type of Supreme Court justices a candidate would pick, abortion, health care and education.

Trump also holds leads over Harris on immigration (54%-45%) and foreign affairs (52%-47%). Harris holds her own leads on the top issues for Democrats, however, including health care (54%-44%), abortion (56%-40%) and climate change (61%-35%).

Climate change ranks as the least important issue for Republicans, with just 5% saying it is a priority. The least important issues for Democrats are the federal budget deficit and trade with other nations, both tied at 16%.

Gallup conducted the poll from Sept. 16-28, surveying 941 registered voters via telephone interviews on cellphones and landlines. The poll advertises a margin of error of 4%.

A New York Times/Siena College survey released on Tuesday found that Harris has a slight lead over Trump in a national poll. The survey found that Harris stands at 49% support among likely voters nationwide, with the former president and GOP nominee at 46%.

According to the poll, Harris stands at 47% and Trump at 44% in a multi-candidate field. Green Party candidate Jill Stein and Libertarian Chase Oliver each grabbed 1%, with roughly 7% supporting another candidate or undecided.

Harris’ edge – which is within the survey’s sampling error – is up from the New York Times/Siena poll from last month, when the two major party nominees were deadlocked at 47%.

Fox News’ Paul Steinhauser and Ashley Papa contributed to this report

In a five-year span, thousands of minors had gender reassignment surgeries, puberty blockers or hormone treatments at a number of children’s hospitals and medical facilities across the country, a medical watchdog is reporting via their new national database.

Do No Harm, a national advocacy group of medical professionals against ‘woke’ hospital agendas, shared the database, called ‘Does My Hospital Transition Kids?’, with Fox News Digital this week. In total, the group conservatively identified 5,747 minor patients who received sex-change surgery, and 13,994 received some sort of gender reassignment treatment between 2019 and 2023.

The data, de-identified to meet HIPAA compliance rules, shows nearly $120 million total in charges for treatments like sex change surgeries and hormone blockers. 

‘This is a very, very important issue, and it’s a very important issue to get right,’ Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, Do No Harm’s chairman, said in a press conference this week. 

‘And I think, as you’ll hear, we’ve really been meticulous in trying to make sure that the data are as clear as possible and are as accurate as possible. And because of that, you’re going to find that, if anything, we’re showing the lower limits of what’s going on in this whole arena,’ he said.

‘And to be certain that we’re not overstating it one iota, we’re probably, and almost certainly, understating the nature of the problem,’ he added.

Researchers analyzed insurance claims from private insurance companies, Medicaid and Medicare, excluding data from Kaiser, self-pay and charity care. They also profiled 68 children’s hospitals across the country and identified what they called the ‘Dirty Dozen’ institutions, which is a ‘list of the 12 worst-offending children’s hospitals promoting sex change treatments for minors,’ according to the new website.

The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) was identified as number one, followed by the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, Children’s Minnesota, Seattle Children’s, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Boston Children’s Hospital, Rady Children’s Hospital, Children’s National Medical Center, UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland, Children’s Hospital Colorado, UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

According to the data, there are massive differences state by state, particularly in more liberal areas.

In California, charges exceeded $28 million from over 2,000 minor patients, while Massachusetts saw around $10 million in expenses from 671 minor patients. New York also had one of the highest rates of transgender treatments for young people, with 1,154 minor patients undergoing sex changes between 2019 and 2023.

California, one of the first states to declare itself a ‘sanctuary state’ for transgender procedures, also had the most irreversible surgeries, with 1,359 minors undergoing surgical procedures, followed by Oregon with 357, Washington with 330, Pennsylvania with 316 and Massachusetts with 300.

‘Adults can do as they wish, but we feel very strongly that the science behind using these treatments in children is extraordinarily flawed and suggests that children are being harmed in that sense. One of the important issues is to develop some quantitative notion of what’s really happening in this arena,’ Goldfarb said. ‘And there are lots of myths that are out there, lots of ideas that this is a rare event, lots of ideas that this is localized to just a few places.’

Activist and detransitioner Chloe Cole, who underwent a double mastectomy at 15 years old and put on puberty blockers and testosterone at age 13, said the new database ‘proves the lies from the medical establishment and radical politicians who argue that cases like mine are rare.’

‘The stats in this database represent thousands of kids who are being treated like Guinea pigs for unproven, and sometimes dangerous, medical experiments. I hope politicians and parents alike use this database to see where these treatments are happening and protect their children from being rushed into irreversible, life-altering treatments,’ Cole said in a statement provided to Fox News Digital.

Some of the listed hospitals’ board members have openly advocated for transgender youth care over the years. CHOP also has a specific Gender and Sexuality Development Program department, which ‘supports children and teens up to age 21 who are gender nonconforming, gender expansive and transgender,’ according to its website.

Madeline Bell, president and chief operating officer of CHOP, affirmed at the time of the department’s launch in 2014 the hospital’s commitment to providing ‘culturally competent and affirming healthcare’ to LGBT patients and their families.

‘This is a tremendous honor that reflects CHOP’s dedication to provide culturally competent and affirming healthcare to our LGBT patients and families,’ Bell stated.

In June 2019, president of the American Board of Pediatrics, Dr. David Nichols, emphasized the increasing need for ‘specialized healthcare’ for the growing transgender youth population during the release of the 30th edition of the ‘KIDS COUNT Data Book,’ published by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. This annual report provides a comprehensive review of child well-being in the U.S.

‘We have a growing transgender youth population that is receiving healthcare, and the pediatric community has had to adapt to that with clinics and programs to care for these kids. This was not something that existed 30 years ago when ‘KIDS COUNT’ first started,’ Nichols said. 

Pressure from conservative politicians and activists has been mounting in recent years against medical providers who conduct transgender surgical procedures on children. Last month, a group of attorneys general across the country demanded that the American Academy of Pediatrics rescind its support for transgender procedures – such as puberty blockers and surgeries – on children. 

The database is just another tool to ‘expose the dangers of experimental pediatric gender medicine and bring the practice to an end,’ Do No Harm stated in a news release. 

Republican Utah Sen. Mitt Romney won’t endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president despite his outspoken criticisms of former President Trump. 

‘I’ve made it very clear that I don’t want Donald Trump to be the next president of the United States,’ Romney said Tuesday at the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah, The New York Times reported.  

‘I want to continue to have a voice in the Republican Party following this election. I think there’s a good chance that the Republican Party is going to need to be rebuilt or reoriented,’ he later added during the political forum. 

Romney announced last year that he would not seek re-election as a senator representing the Beehive State, and will leave office in January. The Republican has long criticized Trump, and indicated in June that he was unlikely to support the 45th president’s re-election. 

‘With President Trump, it’s a matter of personal character,’ Romney told CNN at the time. ‘I draw a line and say when someone has been actually found to have been sexually assaulted, that’s something I just won’t cross over in the person I wouldn’t want to have as president of the United States.’ Romney’s comments referred to a federal jury’s decision in New York City last year, which ruled Trump was not liable for the rape of E. Jean Carroll, though the former president was liable for sexual abuse and defamation.

Romney has also slammed Trump for Jan. 6, 2021, when supporters of the then-president breached the U.S. Capitol, arguing Trump incited an insurrection due to his ‘injured pride’ over the 2020 election. Romney subsequently was one of seven Republican members of the Senate who voted to impeach Trump over Jan. 6. 

Romney was also the only Republican who voted to impeach Trump in 2020 over abuse of power and obstruction of Congress charges. Trump was acquitted in both impeachment cases, and is the only president in history who was impeached twice and acquitted twice. 

Trump has also hit back at Romney, saying in 2020 that the Utah senator ‘can’t stand the fact that he ran one of the worst campaigns in the history of the presidency,’ referring to his 2012 bid for the White House, and calling him a ‘disgrace’ that same year for voting to impeach. 

While Romney has previously broken with the GOP on other key issues, he indicated Tuesday that he will not offer his endorsement to Harris despite other Republicans recently throwing their support behind the vice president. Former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney officially endorsed Harris last week and joined her on the campaign trail in Wisconsin, while former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger and former Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake also endorsed Harris. 

Fox News Digital reached out to Romney’s office for additional comment on the matter, but did not immediately receive a reply. 

Fox News Digital’s Greg Wehner contributed to this report.