President Donald Trump indicated Wednesday that he would meet with the top congressional Democrats ahead of the looming government funding deadline, but said he didn’t believe it would go well.

Lawmakers in the House and Senate are currently away from Washington, D.C., in their respective districts and states, but the Sept. 30 deadline to prevent a partial government shutdown will be just a handful of weeks away when they return after Labor Day.

And there is a brewing tension between Republicans and Democrats over just how the looming government funding fight will shake out.

Trump, during a press conference where he announced a slate of Kennedy Center honorees, said he would meet with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., before the deadline.  

‘But it’s almost a waste of time to meet, because they never approve anything,’ Trump added.

‘I don’t believe anybody is capable of making a deal with these people,’ he continued. ‘They have gone crazy.’

Fox News Digital reached out to Schumer and Jeffries for comment but did not immediately hear back.

Lawmakers must pass the dozen spending bills needed to fund the government to avert a partial shutdown, but that process, known as regular order, has not happened in decades.

While Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has made clear he wants to pass spending bills, and the Senate did indeed pass a trio of funding measures before leaving town, Congress will likely again turn to a short-term government funding extension, known as a continuing resolution (CR).

However, any CR must pass muster with Senate Democrats, given that the legislation has to pass through the upper chamber’s 60-vote threshold.

And congressional Democrats have a bitter taste left in their mouths after Republicans rammed through Trump’s $9 billion clawback package, which included deep cuts to NPR, PBS and foreign aid. They warned that any more attempts to claw back congressionally approved funding on a partisan basis could doom government funding negotiations.

Ahead of the vote to pass three spending bills in the Senate, which included funding for military construction and Veterans Affairs, agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the legislative branch, congressional Democrats vowed that they would play ball – as long as the appropriations process was bipartisan.

‘We all want to pursue a bipartisan, bicameral appropriations process,’ Schumer said at the time. ‘That’s how it’s always been done, successfully, and we believe that, however, the Republicans are making it extremely difficult to do that.’

Earlier this year, Schumer briefly flirted with a government shutdown. However, he eventually relented and voted with Republicans to keep the lights on in Washington, and in the process ignited a firestorm within his own party over his ability as leader of the Senate Democratic caucus.

The Democratic National Committee slammed Vice President JD Vance for fishing on a private lake with British Foreign Secretary David Lammy during Vance’s official trip to the United Kingdom. 

Republicans were quick to respond to what appears to be the latest in a series of attacks by Democrats against the vice president over outdoor activities and family outings Vance mixes in during his rigorous official travel schedule. 

The DNC War Room issued a press release Wednesday titled ‘VACATION VANCE AT IT AGAIN: Vance Fished ‘Illegally’ With UK Foreign Secretary While Americans Drown in Sky-High Costs.’ 

Vance and Lammy met at the foreign secretary’s official country residence, known as Chevening House, located south of London, on Friday for talks centered on the Israel-Hamas conflict and Russia’s war in Ukraine. 

They went fishing on the estate grounds before their scheduled meeting. Vance briefly joked to reporters that the ‘one strain on the special relationship’ he has with Lammy ‘is that all of my kids caught a fish, but the foreign secretary did not.’ The vice president soon delved into more serious topics, including telling reporters that, unlike the U.K., the United States has ‘no plans to recognize a Palestinian state’ given the ‘lack of a functional government’ in Gaza. 

Their meeting came a week before President Donald Trump’s upcoming high-stakes meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska. 

In its release on Wednesday, the DNC charged, ‘Vance is living it up on his summer holiday — on the taxpayers’ dime — all while working families face sky-high inflation and the largest cuts to health care and food assistance in American history.’ 

Kiersten Pels, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, said in a statement to Fox News Digital, ‘The DNC’s donors are OK with funding press releases on a fishing rod license? They might want to pull their money out now before the last of it vanishes down the drain.’ 

U.K. outlets reported that Lammy did not buy a valid fishing license before the outing with Vance. In a statement to Sky News, the British Foreign Office said the secretary ‘has written to the Environment Agency over an administrative oversight that meant the appropriate licences had not been acquired for fishing on a private lake as part of a diplomatic engagement at Chevening House last week.’ 

The agency reportedly requires rod licenses for fishing of freshwater species in England and Wales for people 13 or above. 

During his visit to the U.K. last week, Vance also gave a brief address to U.S. troops stationed at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire. 

The DNC claimed Vance spoke to troops ‘for only six minutes before returning to his $10,000 per week luxury Cotswolds manor.’

The release also took issue with Vance allegedly ‘using public resources’ earlier this month ‘so he could do boating on his birthday.’ 

‘Vance fished ‘illegally’ in the United Kingdom, potentially costing the foreign secretary a £2,000 fine. Vance even had former Chancellor George Osborne plan his vacation’s social agenda, including relaxing in the ‘Hamptons of the UK,’’ the release said.

The DNC further charged that Trump and Vance ‘ripped away health care from 17 million Americans, slashed food assistance for over 22 million families, and unleashed economic chaos on the American people —  all to give their billionaire friends and donors another round of massive tax handouts.’ 

‘While working families struggle to get by, it’s clear where Vance’s loyalties lie — and it’s not with them,’ the DNC wrote. 

The latest attack comes after Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential contender, bemoaned Vance’s recent visit to Disneyland with his children. 

‘Hope you enjoy your family time,’ Newsom wrote on social media. ‘The families you’re tearing apart certainly won’t.’

In response, Vance wrote, ‘Had a great time, thanks.’ 

Critics also attempted to paint Vance as entitled after the vice president’s security detail had an Ohio river’s water levels raised to accommodate a kayaking trip he and his family took to celebrate his 41st birthday. The U.S. Secret Service made the request to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers so that motorized watercraft and emergency personnel could operate safely.

Before his political career, Vance notably penned an autobiography, ‘Hillbilly Elegy,’ which describes how he was raised by an opioid-addicted mother in Appalachia, joined the Marines and found success at Yale Law School. 

In a recent interview on ‘The Katie Miller Podcast,’ Vance revealed that reserving ‘sacred time’ with family allows him to balance his official duties with the duties of being a husband and father.  

‘It’s possible to do it even in my job,’ he said. ‘Yes, if like a war breaks out, then sometimes you have to cancel even the sacred time. But we’ve been pretty good about making sure that I have at least a couple of hours with my family every single day.’ 

President Donald Trump has pledged to protect and preserve Social Security, and I am honored to lead the agency as Commissioner at such a pivotal moment. My vision is straightforward: a Social Security Administration that is easier to access, faster to respond, and better prepared to meet the challenges of tomorrow. That vision is rooted in our commitment to public service and grounded in the belief that government can and should work for everyone.

Since taking office, I have focused on modernizing operations; investing in our workforce; eliminating fraud, waste, and abuse; and improving how we serve the public, whether online, over the phone, or in person. 

Social Security is not a program of the past; it is a promise to future generations. 

We have expanded our digital tools to provide more services from the convenience of people’s homes. We have taken steps to reduce wait times, enhance security, and make it easier to navigate our programs. All the while ensuring we pay benefits accurately to those who are eligible to receive them.

We have also added support and removed roadblocks for our frontline employees with updated tools, technology, and processes, so they can deliver efficient, accurate, and compassionate service to the American people every day.

In my first 100 days as Commissioner, SSA has made significant progress, improving customer experience: reducing the average wait time on the national 800 number from 30 minutes last year to single digits last month; implementing new phone systems to enable 90% of calls to be handled via self-service or convenient callbacks; shortening field office wait times by 30%; eliminating 29 hours of weekly downtime for my Social Security to allow 24/7 online management of benefits; decreasing Disability hearing wait times by 60 days, reaching historic lows; and, sending over 3.1 million payments totaling $17 billion to eligible beneficiaries five months ahead of schedule under the Social Security Fairness Act.

We have a clear path to achieving operational excellence and providing best-in-class service. Under President Trump’s leadership, I have charted a new course that strengthens service delivery and secures the integrity and efficiency of our systems. We are modernizing the underlying infrastructure that supports our work so that the agency is not only keeping up with the pace of change but leading the way in service innovation.

As we celebrate this 90th anniversary, we must also keep our eyes firmly on the future. Social Security is not a program of the past; it is a promise to future generations. 

Young Americans entering the workforce today deserve the same sense of security their parents and grandparents had. Maintaining that trust will require thoughtful innovation and a shared commitment to protecting the integrity and solvency of the program.

As we look to the century ahead, President Trump remains committed to ensuring that Social Security is as strong, effective, and enduring for our children and grandchildren as it has been for the generations before them.

The Trump administration is announcing the launch of a new tool it says will be instrumental in enabling agencies across the federal government to efficiently implement artificial intelligence at scale and take a major step forward rolling out the president’s ‘AI Action Plan.’

Trump’s U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) said on Thursday it has launched USAi, a tool the agency describes as a ‘secure generative artificial intelligence evaluation suite that enables federal agencies to experiment with and adopt artificial intelligence at scale—faster, safer, and at no cost to them.’

The agency says that the platform, available starting Thursday at 10 a.m. through USAi.gov, gives government users access to ‘powerful’ tools like chat-based AI, code generation and document summarization with the goal of ‘supercharging employee productivity.’

‘USAi isn’t just another tool, it’s infrastructure for America’s AI future,’ GSA Chief Information Officer David Shive explained. ‘USAi helps the government cut costs, improve efficiency, and deliver better services to the public, while maintaining the trust and security the American people expect.’

GSA Deputy Administrator Stephen Ehikian told Fox News Digital that this latest application is an ‘on ramp’ to A.I. that will be the ‘tip of the spear’ on the A.I. front similar to the way GSA previously implemented the cloud. 

The Trump administration rolled out its A.I. Action Plan in July after Trump ordered the federal government in January to develop a plan of action for artificial intelligence in order to ‘solidify our position as the global leader in AI and secure a brighter future for all Americans.’ 

Trump has made U.S. A.I. growth a cornerstone of his administration, such as notching multi-billion deals with high-tech firms such as Oracle and OpenAI for the Stargate project, which is an effort to launch large data centers in the U.S, as well as a $90 billion energy and tech investment deal specifically for the state of Pennsylvania to make it the U.S. hub for AI. 

‘USAi means more than access—it’s about delivering a competitive advantage to the American people,’ GSA Deputy Administrator Stephen Ehikian said in press release.

‘The launch of USAi shows how GSA is translating President Trump’s AI strategy into action and accelerating AI adoption across government. USAi will put mission-ready tools directly into the hands of agencies to modernize faster, boost security, and lead globally.’

The A.I. Action Plan includes a three-pillar approach focused on American workers, free speech and protecting U.S.-built technologies. 

‘We want to center America’s workers, and make sure they benefit from AI,’ A.I. and crypto czar David Sacks told the media in July when details of the A.I. plan were made public. 

‘The second is that we believe that AI systems should be free of ideological bias and not be designed to pursue socially engineered agendas,’ Sacks said. ‘And so we have a number of proposals there on how to make sure that AI remains truth-seeking and trustworthy. And then the third principle that cuts across the pillars is that we believe we have to prevent our advanced technologies from being misused or stolen by malicious actors. And we also have to monitor for emerging and unforeseen risks from AI.’

Advancing the federal government’s use of A.I. and expanding employee access are core to the GSA’s efforts to fulfill Trump’s directive to preserve U.S. leadership in the global technology race, GSA Commissioner Josh Gruenbaum explained to Fox Digital in an interview earlier this month. 

‘As we kind of examined the President’s AI action plan, heard the call to action of, ‘Hey, this is a race, and we are going to win this race.’ From our perspective, all that meant, synonymously, was widespread adoption,’ he told Fox Digital of delivering AI to federal employees. 

The rollout of the USAi tool follows GSA announcing earlier in August that OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise is now available to all federal agencies to incorporate into their workflow at $1 per agency. The deal with OpenAI, the tech company behind ChatGPT, is part of GSA’s OneGov Strategy that aims to modernize ‘how the federal government purchases goods and services’ under the Trump administration. 

GSA also notched another deal with A.I. company Anthropic this month providing all three branches of government access to large language model Claude. 

Gruenbaum told Fox News Digital that Thursday’s announcement will be critical for agencies for creating efficiencies to help turn the federal workforce into ‘the most nimble, smart, efficient, agile, and agentically tech-forward workforce out there so that this country can continue to compete and win the AI race.’

The White House criticized a judge’s decision not to unseal grand jury materials related to the sex trafficking case against Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, calling the ruling ‘unfortunate.’ 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt made the remark after U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer on Monday shot down the motion filed by the Justice Department, finding the documents do not contain ‘significant, undisclosed information about [their] crimes, or the investigation into them.’ 

‘We think that decision is unfortunate. Of course, we moved to unseal that information because the president has said he wants to see credible evidence released. As for the appeal process, I would defer you to the Department of Justice for that,’ Leavitt told reporters on Tuesday. 

Last month, President Donald Trump said he supported Attorney General Pam Bondi releasing ‘credible’ files from Epstein’s sex trafficking case, noting that ‘She’s handled it very well, and it’s going to be up to her, whatever she thinks is credible she should release.’ 

Engelmayer wrote in his 31-page opinion that only two ‘features’ of the grand jury evidence were noteworthy, summarizing them in his decision: 

‘First, the grand juries in this case were not used for investigative purposes,’ he wrote. ‘They did not hear testimony from any firsthand witness to any event at issue. They did not hear testimony from any victim, eyewitness, suspect, or even a records custodian. The grand juries met instead for the quotidian purpose of returning an indictment.’ 

The only witnesses were members of law enforcement, and each grand jury heard evidence only for one day, he wrote. 

‘Second, the evidence put before the Maxwell grand juries is today, with only very minor exceptions, a matter of public record,’ Engelmayer continued. ‘The Government admitted as much.’ 

In addition to transcripts of grand jury testimony, the Justice Department also wanted to unseal additional evidence presented as exhibits to the grand jurors. They were expected to include more names than have been publicly associated with the latter in criminal and civil court proceedings. 

But Engelmayer denied the government’s request for the exhibits, too. 

Fox News’ Ashley Oliver contributed to this report.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been sidelined from peace talks between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin Friday because the Russian leader extended the invitation to meet, according to the White House. 

‘The president is agreeing to this meeting, at the request of President Putin,’ White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday. ‘And the goal of this meeting for the president is to walk away with a better understanding of how we can end this war.’ 

‘I think the president of the United States getting in the room with the president of Russia ,sitting face-to-face rather than speaking over the telephone will give this president the best indication of how to end this war and where this is headed,’ Leavitt said. 

Meanwhile Zelenskyy has remained firm that any decisions to end the war made without Ukraine will prove futile. 

‘Any decisions made against us, any decisions made without Ukraine — they are simultaneously decisions against peace,’ Zelenskyy said in a Saturday statement. ‘These are dead decisions; they will never work. And what we all need is a real, living peace, one that people will respect.’

Other European allies have Ukraine’s back. A group of European leaders issued a statement Saturday claiming that the ‘path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine.’

Trump told reporters Monday that he predicted he’d know within minutes whether Putin was serious about hashing out a deal or not. He also acknowledged that Russia and Ukraine would have to navigate some ‘land swapping’ issues as part of an agreement. 

Trump also said he would be in contact with Zelenskyy and other European leaders following the meeting with Putin. 

‘If it’s a fair deal, I will reveal it to the European Union leaders and the NATO leaders and also to President Zelenskyy,’ Trump said. ‘I may say, ‘lots of luck, keep fighting,’ or I may say we can make a deal.’

When asked if the meeting would pave the way for a peace deal, or whether the meeting would simply serve as an opportunity for Trump to feel out if a deal was even possible, Leavitt said the administration wasn’t ruling out either option.

‘I think both can be true, right?’ Leavitt said. ‘The president has always said he wants a peace deal. He wants to see this war come to an end. But this bilateral meeting is a bilateral meeting between one party in this two party war. Right. You need both countries to agree to a deal. The president is accepting this bilateral meeting with Putin on Friday, and I will let him speak further to it after it concludes about how he felt it went.’ 

Trump and Putin are scheduled to meet in Anchorage, Alaska, Friday — despite the president’s comments in recent days that the two would meet in Russia. 

‘There were many sites discussed, but of course, Alaska is a state within the United States of America,’ Leavitt said. ‘So the president is very honored and looks forward to hosting President Putin on American soil.’ 

The U.S. State Department found that the human rights situation in South Africa has ‘significantly worsened’ over the past year, citing reports of ‘extrajudicial killings’ and repression against racial minorities.

The State Department conducts an annual review of the human rights situations in countries across the globe, and it targeted South Africa with new criticism in the 2025 report released Tuesday. The report, scheduled to be sent to Congress on Tuesday, pointed to the U.S. receiving several reports of the South African ‘government or its agents’ carrying out extrajudicial or arbitrary killings, as well as repression of Afrikaner minorities.

‘In July the provincial police commissioner confirmed that as of April, police shot and killed at least 40 criminal suspects in shoot-outs. On September 2, police reported six suspects wanted for homicide and extortion were shot and killed by Durban police in a shoot-out. According to Reuters, eight of the police officers involved were placed on administrative leave with full pay pending investigation,’ the report said.

‘Watchdog groups noted deaths in custody often resulted from physical abuse combined with a lack of subsequent medical treatment or neglect,’ it continued.

‘According to data compiled by Agence France-Presse, there were 447 murders on farms and smallholdings between October 2023 and September 2024. In recent years, extremist political party the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) encouraged attacks on Afrikaner farmers, reviving the use of the song ‘Kill the Boer [Farmer]’ at its rallies and otherwise inciting violence,’ the report added.

The State Department went on to criticize wider repression tactics against Afrikaners, citing The Expropriation Bill of 2024, in particular. The legislation allows the government to seize land without compensation in some circumstances.

‘This act could enable the government to seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation, following countless government policies designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education, and business, and extreme rhetoric and government actions fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners,’ the report said.

President Donald Trump confronted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House during a state visit in May.

Trump has claimed that White Afrikaner South African farmers are being slaughtered and forced off their land. The Afrikaners are descendants of mostly Dutch settlers who first arrived in South Africa in 1652.

‘Now this is very bad. These are burial sites right here. Burial sites — over a thousand — of White farmers. And those cars are lined up to pay love on a Sunday morning. Each one of those white things you see is a cross. And there is approximately a thousand of them,’ Trump said at the time. ‘They’re all White farmers. The family of White farmers. And those cars aren’t, driving, they are stopped there to pay respects to their family member who was killed. And it’s a terrible sight. I’ve never seen anything like it. On both sides of the road, you have crosses. Those people are all killed.’

South Africa denies claims of genocide and harassment, as does its president.

‘I’m not going to be repeating what I’ve been saying,’ Ramaphosa said at the May visit. ‘I would say if there was Afrikaner farmer genocide, I can bet you these three gentlemen would not be here, including my Minister of Agriculture. He would not be with me.’

An environmental advocacy group accused of trying to manipulate judges has removed and anonymized the names of jurists who worked with the activist network and praised its activities, following a Fox News Digital report exposing an online forum promoting climate litigation updates.

The Climate Judiciary Project (CJP), founded in 2018 by the left-wing Environmental Law Institute, describes itself as providing judges with ‘authoritative, objective, and trusted education on climate science, the impacts of climate change, and the ways climate science is arising in the law,’ according to its website.

The group has been accused by Republican lawmakers, such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, of working to ‘train judges’ and ‘make them agreeable to creative climate litigation tactics.’ In July, Fox News Digital reported on CJP’s yearslong, nationwide forum where jurists privately exchanged climate-related legal updates and information alongside CJP leadership — a forum that was abruptly made private in May 2024.

CJP’s testimonial page boasting praise from jurists who participated in the program was overhauled this summer, including obliterating testimony from a judge identified in Fox News Digital’s July report. Fox Digital reviewed archived links to CJP’s testimonial page and found Judge Sam Scheele’s comments were still public on the site in May but were removed by the end of July following Fox Digital’s report. 

‘It’s been truly a privilege. I am welcomely absorbing everything that has been brought to us and I look forward to carrying that forward and paying it forward,’ read a quote from Scheele when he served on Indiana’s Lake Superior Court’s Civil Division, according to an archived link of the website’s page from May. 

At the end of July, another archived link showed that Scheele’s quote and name had been removed from CJP’s testimonial page, while four other quotes were attributed to anonymous ‘participating judges.’ One remaining quote was still attributed to the former president of the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, a nonprofit that funds progressive causes in the U.S. It is unclear the exact day the changes were made to the testimonial page. 

A spokesperson for the Environmental Law Institute told Fox Digital when asked about changes to the testimonial page that updates were made out of an effort to ‘protect privacy and prevent baseless criticism and harassment.’ 

‘Judges are encouraged, and many required, to participate in continuing education on topics relevant to emerging trends in the law – including those related to science. Recent changes to CJP’s website were made to protect privacy and prevent baseless criticism and harassment,’ the spokesperson said. 

Scheele was among a handful of judges who communicated on CJP’s online forum that ran from September 2022 and maintained until May 2024, according to documents previously reviewed by Fox News Digital. While Scheele’s testimony was obliterated from the website’s testimonial page, two other favorable quotes from judges were anonymized and attributed to a ‘participating judge,’ while two other quotes remained unchanged and were both attributed to a ‘participating judge,’ Fox News Digital found. 

Fox News Digital obtained the archived chat history of the now-defunct chat forum between CJP and jurists last month, which detailed numerous messages between at least five judges and CJP employees trading links on climate studies, congratulating one another on hosting recent environmental events, sharing updates on recent climate cases that were remanded to state courts, and encouraging each other to participate in other CJP meet-ups. 

One message posted by Delaware Judge Travis Laster, vice chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery, features a YouTube video of a 2022 climate presentation delivered by a Delaware official and a Columbia University professor that focused on the onslaught of climate lawsuits since the mid-2000s. 

It also included claims that such lawsuits could one day bankrupt the fuel industry. 

Laster shared the video in the group with a disclaimer to others: ‘Because the link is of a judicial event that is otherwise not public, please do not forward or use without checking with me. I suspect that goes without saying, but the powers that be will be happier that I said it.’

Scheele was among a handful of other judges who responded to Laster’s video and message, praising it as ‘great work.’

‘This is great work/great stuff, Travis; congrats on a job well-done, & thank you so much for sharing this!,’ Scheele responded, according to documents obtained by Fox News Digital. 

Scheele’s office did not respond to Fox Digital’s request for comment regarding why his name and testimony were removed from the website. 

Scheele’s office did respond to Fox News Digital’s inquiry last month regarding his past participation in the forum, saying he first joined the 2022 National Judicial Conference on Climate Science more than two years before his appointment to the Indiana Court of Appeals. 

‘At the last minute, when another appointed delegate was unexpectedly unable to attend, Judge Scheele was asked by Indiana’s state court administration to fill in as Indiana’s representative, and he accepted the invitation. As is normal in conferences attended by our judges, this conference addressed emerging, hot-button issues that might come before the courts,’ Scheele’s office said. 

‘Judge Scheele does not recall any substantive communication on the ‘listserv’ mentioned. He, like all of our Court of Appeals of Indiana judges, is dedicated to the unbiased, apolitical administration of justice in the State. He, like all of our judges, educates himself on emergent topics in the law and applies his legal training to evaluate the legal issues before him,’ the office continued. 

CJP told Fox News Digital of the now-defunct email list last month that it was created in September 2022 to help members of its Judicial Leaders in Climate Science program communicate and network with one another for the duration of the program.

The one-year program, established by CJP in coordination with the National Judicial College, ‘trains state court judges on judicial leadership skills integrated with consensus climate science and how it is arising in the law,’ the group told Fox News Digital.

CJP’s educational events are done ‘in partnership with leading national judicial education institutions and state judicial authorities, in accordance with their accepted standards,’ a spokesperson for the group said in an emailed statement. ‘Its curriculum is fact-based and science-first, grounded in consensus reports and developed with a robust peer review process that meets the highest scholarly standards.’

‘CJP’s work is no different than the work of other continuing judicial education organizations that address important complex topics, including medicine, tech and neuroscience,’ the spokesperson added.

News of the program’s outreach comes as the U.S. has seen a sharp uptick in climate-related lawsuits in recent years — including cases targeting oil giants Shell, BP and ExxonMobil for allegedly using ‘deceptive’ marketing and downplaying the risks of climate change, as well as lawsuits brought against state governments and federal agencies, including the Interior Department, for allegedly failing to address pollution risks or protect against the harms of climate change, according to the plaintiffs.

Sen. Cruz has repeatedly put CJP under the public’s microscope, including in June during a Senate subcommittee hearing, called ‘Enter the Dragon – China and the Left’s Lawfare Against American Energy Dominance,’ where the Texas Republican argued there is a ‘systematic campaign’ launched by the Chinese Communist Party and American left-wing activists to weaponize the court systems to ‘undermine American energy dominance.’ 

CJP, Cruz said, is a pivotal player in the ‘lawfare’ as it works to secure ‘judicial capture.’ 

Cruz said CJP’s claims of neutrality are bluster, and the group instead allegedly promotes ‘ex parte indoctrination, pressuring judges to set aside the rule of law, and rule instead according to a predetermined political narrative.’

CJP has denied Cruz’s accusations, and describes itself as ‘neutral, objective information to the judiciary about the science of climate change as it is understood by the expert scientific community and relevant to current and future litigation.’

Judges have previously landed in hot water over climate-related issues in group forums, including in 2019, when a federal judge hit ‘reply all’ to an email chain with 45 other judges and court staff regarding an invitation to a climate seminar for judges hosted by the Environmental Law Institute. The judge was subsequently chastised by colleagues for sharing ‘this nonsense’ and suggested it was an ethics violation, while others defended that flagging the event to others was not unethical. 

Fox News Digital’s Breanne Deppisch and Andrew Mark Miller contributed to this report. 

An Israeli nongovernmental organization is working behind the scenes to provide a critical link between the Israeli military and international organizations with one goal in mind: Get humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians.

‘We really became this informal connector and facilitator between the Israeli authorities and the humanitarian community,’ IsraAID CEO Yotam Polizer said.

IsraAID has worked in 64 countries and is currently the largest humanitarian organization based out of Israel. 

Polizer says there is broad consensus now that a concerning humanitarian level was reached in Gaza with pockets of malnutrition across the strip. He notes that it isn’t only food that is needed by the civilian population, but also medicine, water and nutritional provisions.

‘When we reach severe malnutrition levels, we know that just rice and flour is not going to solve the problem,’ Polizer added. ‘We need nutritional supplements, we need people to get protein.’ 

For nearly five months, there was no consistent flow of aid. That has changed in recent weeks with thousands of trucks being distributed along with airdrops of supplies to civilians. Recently, the entry of commercial trucks was partially approved.

‘The declared policy of Israel for two and a half months after the ceasefire collapsed was that nothing comes in,’ Polizer said. ‘That was the policy because the plan was to pressure Hamas.’

The IsraAID CEO says the focus must be on saving lives, not on playing the ‘blame game.’ He urges the United Nations, the Israel Defense Forces, the  Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and all humanitarian organizations to work together and find solutions.

‘As a humanitarian organization, the concept of ‘do no harm’ is really our Bible,’ Polizer added.

A few months after the war started, IsraAID started to receive requests from global humanitarian organizations they had worked with in Afghanistan and Ukraine, asking for help to facilitate aid deliveries to Gaza.

These groups had issues with customs clearance and approval from the Israeli military to deliver supplies to Palestinians in Gaza. These were problems IsraAID could help solve.

Despite the political and cultural differences, Polizer said the Jewish community of the United States is stepping up to donate and support finding solutions for the hunger crisis in Gaza.

‘You can support the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but it does not mean you are anti-Israel,’ he concluded.

The U.S. State Department’s annual human rights report delivered a grim assessment of conditions in Venezuela, declaring that human rights have fallen to a new low following reports of widespread abuses and state-sanctioned repression, particularly after the July 2024 presidential election when Nicolás Maduro clung to power. 

‘The human rights situation in Venezuela significantly worsened,’ the report reads. ‘Throughout the year, and particularly after the July 28 [2024] presidential election, Nicolás Maduro and his representatives engaged in serious human rights abuses, reaching a new milestone in the degradation of the rule of law’ after the election, according to the U.N. Independent International fact-finding mission on the country in September.

According to the most recent State Department report, credible evidence indicates a dramatic escalation in arbitrary or unlawful killings, disappearances, torture and harsh prison conditions. NGOs and U.N. observers documented extensive restrictions on freedom of expression, with journalists and human rights defenders facing arrests, harassment and censorship. The judiciary remained deeply compromised — unable or unwilling to hold perpetrators accountable for abuses.

The report noted that the United Nations International Fact Finding Mission stated at least 25 people were killed in the first days following the July 2024 elections, including two children. 

Pro-Maduro leaders ‘harassed and intimidated privately-owned and democratic opposition-oriented television stations, media outlets, and journalists’ through threats, property seizures and prosecutions.

The sweeping report, which will go public Tuesday afternoon, also calls out Brazil and South America for human rights abuses. 

In a parallel diplomatic maneuver, the U.S. Department of Justice, backed by the State Department, significantly increased the reward for Maduro’s capture from $25 million to $50 million. Attorney General Pam Bondi accused Maduro of leading one of the world’s most notorious narco-trafficking operations, including associations with the Tren de Aragua, Sinaloa cartel and the infamous Cartel of the Suns. The Drug Enforcement Administration has reportedly seized 30 tons of cocaine linked to Maduro and his allies, with nearly seven tons directly tied to him.

This nullified the previous reward levels — $15 million initially set during Trump’s first term, later raised to $25 million under the Biden administration. Venezuela’s foreign ministry dismissed the bounty as a ‘political propaganda operation.’

The State Department report highlights an alarming absence of credible efforts by Venezuelan authorities to investigate or prosecute those responsible for human rights violations. Security forces, including the military, police, and colectivos — pro-Maduro armed groups — were repeatedly implicated in abuses, yet the justice system remained ineffective, allowing a culture of impunity to flourish.

Maduro was indicted in Manhattan court in 2020, during the first Trump administration, on narco-terrorism charges. 

The dictatorial Venezuelan leader held onto power after the 2024 presidential election where the U.S. and much of Europe recognized his opposition as Venezuela’s duly elected president.