Critics took to social media demanding that the New York Times apologize for an opinion piece accusing former President Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, of pushing “blood-and-soil nationalism.” 

The piece by New York Times opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie was initially published on Saturday with the headline: “JD Vance’s Blood-and-Soil Nationalism Finds Its Target.” 

After outcry on social media, however, the Times changed the headline to “Shouldn’t JD Vance Represent All of Ohio?” Bouie’s message, however, accusing Vance of espousing “blood-and-soil nationalism” and suggesting he would progress past simply a “rhetorical war” against immigrants if elected vice president, remained. 

Critics online accused the Times piece of inciting violence against Vance and essentially calling him a Nazi just two months after the assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. Vance’s wife, Usha, is the daughter of Indian immigrants. Other X users and the Vance campaign pointed to how the couple share three biracial children. 

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“‘Blood and soil’ The @nytimes has now stooped to essentially calling @JDVance a Nazi,” Republican strategist Andrew Surabian wrote, sharing a screenshot of the original headline. “Truly vile stuff from the supposed paper of record – If they had any ethics at all they would retract this and apologize.” 

“Just months after a psychopath tried to assassinate my father, the @nytimes is now openly trying to incite violence against @JDVance,” Donald Trump Jr. wrote on X. 

“PS: JD is the father of 3 biracial kids, which makes this smear even more disgusting!” the Republican presidential nominee’s eldest son added. 

“With an assassination attempt on President Trump’s life only two months ago, it’s abhorrent the New York Times would spew such disgusting bile – against a father of three biracial children nonetheless,” Vance’s national press secretary Taylor Van Kirk said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “With headlines like these, it’s no wonder why countless people are asking if the purpose was to incite violence against Senator Vance. We sincerely hope that isn’t the case and that the Times will come to their senses and retract this disgusting headline.”

“So now the Times is directly calling JD Vance a Nazi,” Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk wrote to his 3.4 million followers. “This is the kind of regime propaganda that nearly got President Trump assassinated.”

Fox News Digital reached out to the Times for comment, but they did not immediately respond.

In the Times piece, the columnist took issue with Vance’s comments about Springfield, Ohio, where residents have been pointing to an uptick in crime, mayhem and car crashes due to the massive influx of roughly 20,000 Haitian immigrants into what was a small town of approximately 58,000 people since the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Residents at city council meetings have alleged that Haitians are killing and eating ducks in parks and pet cats and dogs, allegations which Vance and Trump repeated on social media and at the debate. Local officials said they had not received reports of such incidents.

“What matters to Vance is who they are, where they come from and what they look like,” Bouie wrote of Haitian immigrants. “They don’t belong to this soil, he might say, and therefore they don’t belong. Right now, the most Vance can do to wage this war is use his words. I shudder to think what might be possible if he had the authority of the state to wield as well.”

Former State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus slammed the Times’ piece for attacking Vance despite rising antisemitism under the Biden-Harris administration since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel.

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“Under the Biden-Harris Administration, Jewish Americans can’t safely wear religious symbols in many places in America; Jewish students are harassed, intimidated, and calls for their genocide, which are eerily reminiscent to the holocaust, [permeate] our educational Institutions. Israel faces existential threats while Harris ‘both-sides’ the argument everytime [sic] she speaks,” Ortagus wrote. “Our generation of Jews have known levels of antisemitism that we haven’t experienced since WW2. But the legacy media tries to somehow paint my friend @JDVance as the problem for American Jews. I can tell you from my public and private conversations with him, that he is ardently pro-Israel. Further, he refuses to tolerate the open season on Jewish Americans that has flourished under the Biden-Harris Administration.” 

“I look forward to the Oct 1st VP debate, where JD will absolutely expose Walz and Harris on these issues,” she added. 

“It’s disgusting that the media is now pushing these ridiculous, violence inciting claims about @JDVance just two months after @realDonaldTrump was nearly assassinated,” Trump campaign adviser Alex Bruesewitz wrote on X. “Also friendly reminder to the media & the left that JD is the father of 3 biracial kids. They should immediately retract and apologize to JD.” 

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., painted a grim picture of the world stage and predicted a 9/11-style attack on the U.S. if President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris continue to control U.S. policy.

Graham made the statement during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday” with host Shannon Bream. He pointed to Iran’s escalating belligerence in the Middle East as well as the administration’s failure to navigate an end to the war in Ukraine.

“I’ve never been more worried about a nuclear breakout by Iran than I am right now. I’ve never been more worried about another 9/11 against America than I am right now,” Graham said. 

“The withdrawal from Afghanistan put every jihadist on steroids. We have a broken border. There are more terrorists in our country than any time I can remember associated with terrorism. So 9/11 – We’re just living on borrowed time here at home,” he added.

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Graham went on to encourage Israel to “do what you need to do” to prevent Iran from breaking out as a nuclear power.

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) claims Iran could have a nuclear bomb before the next president’s inauguration in January.

GRAHAM WARNS IRAN COULD ‘SPRINT TO A NUCLEAR WEAPON’

The group warned that while most U.S. officials are monitoring Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium to 90%, the regime is taking other, covert steps toward a nuclear weapon, like taking measures toward building a nuclear explosive device that would make quick work of putting a bomb together.

Graham also condemned the administration’s handling of Ukraine, saying the U.S. has been “slow” to deliver missiles and jets to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

WHITE HOUSE DISMISSES QUESTIONS ABOUT KAMALA HARRIS’ NEW ‘SOUTHERN ACCENT:’ ‘JUST INSANE’

“Biden has no plan to end this war that is effective. I am listening to Zelenskyy. He has a plan coming out in about a week. What we need here is an American president that can get Putin and Zelensky in a room to end this war to make sure we don’t have another war,” Graham said.

“The entire world is on fire and Harris’s fingerprints are all over this,” he added.

Biden met with U.K. Prime Minister Kier Starmer last week to discuss whether the West should allow Ukraine to use long-range missiles against targets within Russia’s borders.

Russian President Vladimir Putin says such approval would constitute a declaration of war by NATO, the U.S. and the U.K.

A campaign speech by Minnesota first lady Gwen Walz, in which she used a sweeping hand gesture to say “bye bye” and “turn the page” on former President Trump energized a Wisconsin audience, but induced cringes elsewhere.

Gwen Walz was slammed as the “living embodiment of Trump Derangement Syndrome” for a stump speech for her husband, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and Vice President Kamala Harris in Wisconsin on Saturday. 

In the speech, Gwen Walz cited Harris’ debate performance last week and how she repeatedly said the election is the time to “turn the page” on the current political climate. 

“Now you probably saw that debate the other night. Yeah, that was great. And what Kamala Harris told us we had to do, was we had to turn the page. Yeah, because we have something really exciting headed in our direction,” Gwen Walz said. 

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“But I kinda like when she did this,” Minnesota’s first lady continued, imitating someone turning the page of a book. “Turn the page.”

Gwen Walz then asked the audience to join her in pantomiming turning the page, while declaring the Democratic Party has “52 days to turn the page” on Trump’s run for the White House. 

“You know what else that looks like?” Walz asked as she continued moving her arms around. “Bye, bye. Bye bye, Donald Trump,” she exclaimed. 

“We are turning the page,” she added. 

MINNESOTA RIOTS CONTINUED AFTER WALZ TOOK ‘RESPONSIBILITY TO ENSURE’ THERE WOULDN’T BE CHAOS

Critics quickly slammed Gwen Walz and her speech as “cringe” and “1000x worse than Hillary Clinton.” 

Gwen Walz is a Minnesota teacher who met her husband when they both worked as educators in the 1990s. She has served as the Gopher State’s first lady since 2019, when Tim Walz was sworn in as governor. 

Gwen Walz previously set social media ablaze this election cycle after an unearthed clip went viral of her describing how she handled the 2020 Minnesota riots.

TIM WALZ’S CLAIMS ABOUT USING IVF TO HAVE FAMILY AREN’T EXACTLY TRUE

“Again we had more sleepless nights during the riots,” Walz’s wife told KSTP in July 2020. “I could smell the burning tires, and that was a very real thing. And I kept the windows open as long as I could because I felt like that was such a touchstone of what was happening.”

Critics and conservatives at the time slammed the remarks as “bizarre” on social media.

“What might you call this? Bizarre? Abnormal? Peculiar? Eccentric? Offbeat? Quirky?” wrote Noah Rothman, a senior writer at the National Review Online. “Gotta be a word that describes reveling in the catharsis represented by the torching of other people’s property.”

Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk described the comments as “weird.”

The Harris-Walz campaign did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment. 

Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.

EXCLUSIVE: A bipartisan pair of senators is introducing a new bill on the fourth anniversary of the Abraham Accords to deepen cooperation between U.S. and Middle East partners. 

The LINK Act, brought forth by Sens. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, and Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., co-chairs of the Abraham Accords Caucus, would establish a “military subject matter exchange program” to deepen cultural ties and strategic cooperation between American troops and allies in the Middle East. 

“In the face of emboldened Iranian aggression, I’m deepening the historic partnerships created through the Abraham Accords four years ago today,” said Ernst.

“More cooperation among our Middle East partners is what Tehran fears. The LINK Act accomplishes this by coordinating military planning and creating a permanent and effective defense alliance. By working hand-in-hand with our partners, the strength and security of our nations grows.”

The pair of senators had three of their previous Middle East-related bills signed into law. 

The Gulf States of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain signed a normalization deal with Israel in 2020, brokered by the U.S., known as the Abraham Accords.

As part of the agreements, UAE and Bahrain recognized Israel’s sovereignty and established full diplomatic relations. It was the first time Israel had established peace with an Arab country since 1994 with the Israel-Jordan peace treaty. 

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In the months that followed, Sudan and Morocco signed deals to normalize relations with Israel. 

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The bill comes at a time of sky-high tensions between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Israel and Saudi Arabia had been nearing a deal that included the U.S. and would have normalized relations when Hamas launched its Oct. 7 attack on Israel. 

The U.S. has been bolstering its relations with nations in the Middle East to counter the growing threat of a potential nuclear Iran – even ones with mixed human rights records like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. 

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The Biden administration recently lifted a hold on $320 million in military aid to Egypt that it had frozen in response to human rights concerns, bringing the total amount up to $1.3 billion transferred from Washington to Cairo this year. 

Egypt is playing a central role in the talks between Hamas and Israel about a cease-fire agreement.

A spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, responding to VOA’s request for comments on recent reports of the Islamic Republic’s delivery of ballistic missiles to Russia, warned that such actions would have consequences for the Iranian government.

In a statement sent to VOA Friday, spokesperson Sean Savett wrote, “We are aware of these concerning reports, and the transfer would represent a dramatic escalation in Iran’s support for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.”

On Monday, Bloomberg News first reported that, according to its unnamed sources, European officials believed the Iranian government is poised to provide ballistic missiles to Russia.

According to the American news agency, the officials did not specify the type or range of the missiles or the exact timing of their delivery to Moscow. However, one official suggested that the delivery might begin within the next few days.

However, on Friday, The Wall Street Journal newspaper, citing American and European officials, reported that Tehran has delivered short-range ballistic missiles to Moscow. According to Western officials, the shipment includes hundreds of missiles.

The report also indicated that the Islamic Republic is anticipating sending additional weapons to Russia.

Savett said that the United States has been warning about the “deepening security partnership between Moscow and Tehran” since the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

He added, “As we and our allies made clear at both the G7 summit and the NATO meeting this summer, we are prepared to deliver a swift and severe response if Iran were to move forward with such transfers.”

Savett, commenting on Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian’s claims about efforts to improve Iran’s relations with the West, said, “Despite these claims, the missile transfer program demonstrates that the Islamic Republic continues to alienate itself from the international community and contribute to threats against European security. Therefore, we assess the leadership of the Islamic Republic based on their actions, not their statements.”

In late August, Reuters news agency reported first that dozens of Russian military personnel were being trained in Iran to operate the Fath-360 close-range ballistic missile system. The report also indicated that hundreds of the satellite-guided missiles are expected to be delivered to Russia shortly for use in the conflict with Ukraine.

At that time, Vedant Patel, deputy spokesperson for the U.S. State Department, expressed Washington’s deep concern, saying, “We remain in close contact with our European partners and allies about potential actions we may take.”

The White House had previously said in a statement “the U.S. has consistently warned about the deepening security cooperation between Russia and Iran since the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. That cooperation poses a threat to European security and highlights that Iran’s destabilizing influence has expanded beyond the Middle East to a global scale.”

However, on Friday, the Islamic Republic’s mission to the United Nations, responding to CNN, denied reports of sending ballistic missiles to Russia. It said, “The Islamic Republic considers the provision of military assistance to the parties engaged in the conflict — which leads to increased human casualties, destruction of infrastructure, and a distancing from cease-fire negotiations — to be inhumane.”

Increasing cooperation between the Islamic Republic and Russia in recent years has led Western countries to impose several extensive sanction packages on Iranian individuals and institutions.

Experts indicate that Russia’s current ballistic missile arsenal includes domestically produced missiles and those manufactured in North Korea, which are known for their low accuracy.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on Saturday he is being investigated over a decades-old story that he decapitated a dead whale and transported its skull across state lines.

Kennedy made the admission during a campaign event for former President Trump, saying he had received a letter last week. The report comes weeks after a left-wing environmental group resurfaced the whale story and called for an investigation.

“I received a letter from the National Marine Fisheries Institute saying that they were investigating me for collecting a whale specimen 20 years ago,” Kennedy said Saturday.

“This is all about the weaponization of our government against political opponents,” he added.

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Kennedy did not offer details about the incident, but it first became public thanks to a 2012 interview with Kennedy’s daughter, Kick Kennedy, with Town and Country Magazine.

In the interview, Kick describes her father cutting the head off of a dead whale and strapping it to the roof of their vehicle, before driving from a beach in Massachusetts to Mount Kisco, New York.

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The left-wing group, the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund, had argued the dead animal was protected by the Marine Mammal Protection and Endangered Species, making it illegal to possess any part of it.

They further claimed that it was likely a felony violation of the 1900 Lacey Act, “which prohibits the transportation of any wildlife, dead or alive, that was reduced to possession in violation of any state, federal or international regulation or law.”

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“Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car, and it was the rankest thing on the planet,” Kick told the magazine, saying the incident happened sometime around 1994.

“We all had plastic bags over our heads with mouth holes cut out, and people on the highway were giving us the finger, but that was just normal day-to-day stuff for us,” she added.

The Center for Biological Diversity resurfaced the story just days after Kennedy withdrew from the 2024 presidential race and endorsed Trump.

The whale incident is not the only recent controversy involving Kennedy and dead animals. He also admitted to dumping the body of a dead bear in New York City’s Central Park over a decade ago.

Vice President Harris was mocked online for debuting another “new accent” during a Congressional Black Caucus event Saturday night. 

“Hello to all of my Divine Nine brothers and sisters,” Harris said at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Phoenix Awards Dinner in Washington, D.C. “And to all my HBCU brothers and sisters.” 

The account End Wokeness shared the clip on X, writing: “BREAKING: Kamala Harris unveils a new accent at the Black Caucus Dinner.” 

“New? Or is it her old fake black accent?” X user Paul A. Szypula, who has more than 232,700 followers, responded. “Either way, it’s incredibly insulting to black people. Shame on Kamala.” 

“NEW: Kamala Harris brings out her new accent at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s 2024 Phoenix Awards Dinner in Washington D.C.,” Collin Rugg wrote to his 1.4 million followers, sharing the clip to X. “‘Hello to all my divine… brothas and sistas… am my soro…’ Kamala has brought out this new accent throughout the campaign at different times.” 

“Kamala Harris accent du jor,” columnist James Hirsen wrote to his 270,500 followers on X. 

KAMALA HARRIS RALLIES ACROSS THE COUNTRY REPEATING SAME SPEECH IN DIFFERENT ACCENTS

Other X users pointed to how Harris was raised in Canada but has broken out varying accents from around the United States depending on where she was campaigning. 

Harris’ “Divine Nine” comment referenced how she was a member of a historically Black sorority while attending Howard University. 

Fox News Digital reached out to the Harris campaign for comment Sunday. 

The vice president was panned earlier this month when side by side clips showed her seemingly using different accents while campaigning in Detroit and Pittsburgh, hours apart. 

Fox News’ Peter Doocy confronted White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre about the issue, asking, “Since when does the vice president have what sounds like a southern accent?” 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jean-Pierre said from the White House podium earlier this month. 

“Well she was talking about unions in Detroit using one tone of voice,” Doocy said. “She used the same line in Pittsburgh, and it sounded like she at least had some kind of a southern drawl.”

WHITE HOUSE DISMISSES QUESTIONS ABOUT KAMALA HARRIS’ NEW ‘SOUTHERN ACCENT:’ ‘JUST INSANE’

“I mean do you hear the question … I mean do you think Americans seriously think that this is an important question?” Jean-Pierre retorted. “They care – you know what they care about? They care about the economy. They care about lowering costs. They care about healthcare. That’s what Americans care about…”

Harris is attempting to court Black voters in the coming days. Speaking to the Congressional Black Caucus dinner right before her, President Biden talked about Harris as the first Black and South Asian woman vice president, and said, “God willing, she will become the first woman president of the United States of America.” 

On Tuesday, Harris will sit with members of the National Association of Black Journalists in Philadelphia. On Thursday, she’ll attend a live streamed rally headlined by Oprah Winfrey and involving groups such as “Win with Black Women,” “White Women: Answer the Call,” and “South Asians for Harris,” according to the Associated Press. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

FIRST ON FOX: The mother of Jocelyn Nungaray, a 12-year-old girl allegedly murdered by illegal immigrants, is weighing in on the Texas Senate race as she blames Democratic policies for the loss of her daughter.

Jocelyn Nungaray from Texas was strangled and thrown off a bridge by two illegal immigrants in June, according to authorities. Two Venezuelans have since been charged with capital murder in connection with Nungaray’s death.

In a new campaign ad, shared first with Fox News Digital, Alexis Nungaray details the tragic killing of her young daughter by Venezuelan nationals who illegally crossed the southern border.

Nungaray said that her “heart would break again” if Democratic Texas Senate candidate Rep. Colin Allred, who is running against Sen. Ted Cruz, wins the election in November.

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According to police, Jocelyn Nungaray was strangled and thrown off a bridge by two illegal immigrants in June. 

BIDEN-HARRIS OPEN BORDER POLICY FREED ILLEGAL 3 WEEKS BEFORE JOCELYN NUNGARAY MURDER, MOTHER SAYS

“Jocelyn was murdered by two illegal migrants, each released on the same days they were detained. Not even 30 days later, she was found down there in the bayou. She had no pants on. They bounded her feet, and they just left her, like nothing. All because of that policy, catch and release,” she said in the new campaign ad, which was released by the Win It Back PAC, a Club for Growth-affiliated fundraising group.

Nungaray pointed to Allred’s policies for the implications of the ongoing migrant crisis.

“And Colin Allred pushing that policy ultimately took my daughter’s life. Her going away from her graduation, her having kids. If Colin Allred is elected, my heart would break again. It really would. Allred didn’t kill my daughter, but his policies are why she’s dead.”

Allred previously addressed Nungaray’s murder by calling it a “tragedy” and then attempted to deflect blame by accusing Cruz of using the murder as a “political attack.”

Nungaray testified before the House Judiciary Committee earlier this month regarding her daughter’s death where she slammed the Biden-Harris administration’s border policy. 

“Because of the Biden-Harris administration open border policies, catch and release, they were enrolled in the Alternatives to Detention program,” Nungaray told lawmakers. “This meant that they were released into the United States. It was not even a full three weeks later that they would take my daughter Jocelyn Nungaray’s life.”

“They saw a young girl, my daughter Jocelyn, and placed a target on her without her even knowing,” she said, referring to the murder suspects. “They were seen on video at 12:57 a.m. on June 17th, walking across the street down by the bayou under the bridge, at 3:04, for only the two illegal immigrants emerged. They were down there for two whole hours. I can’t even fathom what was going through Jocelyn’s mind, the amount of fear she was feeling in the last moments of her life.

The House of Representatives is expected to vote early this week on a roughly $3 billion veterans supplemental funding bill, Fox News Digital has learned.

It comes as Congress is barreling toward an Oct. 1 partial government shutdown deadline with no agreement between Republicans and Democrats on federal spending in the next fiscal year. 

Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Calif., who is spearheading the veterans bill, is hopeful that his legislation has enough critical support to keep it free from the political quagmire of fiscal year 2025 funding.

“In the fray and chaos of all the election drama and all the [funding] drama…there are still members, you know, in a bipartisan fashion, making sure that our veterans are taken care of,” Garcia told Fox News Digital.

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“And we just need the Senate and the president to understand that value as well, and when they do that, we’ll fix the problem.”

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) warned Congress in July that it was about $3 billion short of the funding it needed for the current fiscal year, ending Sept. 30, and about $12 billion short of its projected needs in the following one. 

The VA is warning that a failure to pass the added funds by Sept. 20 could mean that 7 million veterans could be left without benefits by Oct. 1.

“I would never just write a blank check to a federal agency that’s underperforming and, you know, effectively overrunning their accounts,” Garcia explained. “It is something that affects not just the 7 million veterans, but also the families and everyone around depending on those checks.”

And those 7 million veterans, he said, “would lose their pension benefits, they would lose their GI bill benefits, the college tuition assistance.”

JOHNSON UNVEILS TRUMP-BACKED HOUSE GOP PLAN TO AVOID GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN, SETS UP BATTLE WITH SCHUMER

Garcia’s bill also includes a mandate for the VA to issue a report on the shortfall to Congress, and future accountability reporting guardrails to ensure continuing funds are managed properly. It would also force the VA secretary to report to lawmakers on any future budget estimate changes. 

He ascribed the budget shortfall to “mismanagement and bad budgeting from the VA and probably, you know, not managing other accounts correctly that have affected these VA benefits.”

For its part, the VA pointed to increased demand for its health care and passage of the PACT Act as reasons for the shortfall.

The House vote is expected early this week. Lawmakers return to Washington, D.C., on Tuesday afternoon, when they will have less than 10 working days to solve the broader government funding issue before the partial shutdown deadline.

JOHNSON UNVEILS TRUMP-BACKED HOUSE GOP PLAN TO AVOID GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN, SETS UP BATTLE WITH SCHUMER

Government funding has been a political lightning rod that has caused some of the largest political upheavals of the 118th Congress.

A planned vote on a short-term fiscal year 2024 funding extension, called a continuing resolution (CR), was delayed in the face of intra-GOP strife last week and is expected to possibly get a vote this week as well.

Garcia maintained that his veterans supplemental funding bill and the wider federal spending fight were on parallel legislative tracks, but admitted he did worry about the former effort getting sandbagged by the latter.

“Because this turns into a pumpkin on Sept. 20, we don’t really have time to tie this to a CR package. And I would suggest to leadership, which I have, that we shouldn’t use our veterans as political leverage for other legislative initiatives,” he said.

The House bill is co-led by senior GOP lawmakers House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., and House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Mike Bost, R-Ill.

It comes after a similar legislative push was mounted in the Senate in August.

Democratic congressional candidate Monica Tranel appears to be changing her tune on the fentanyl crisis this cycle after previously suggesting that the deadly drug was not coming from the southern border.

Tranel, the Democratic candidate running in Montana’s First Congressional District against Republican incumbent Rep. Ryan Zinke, recently released a campaign ad appearing tough on the border.

However, during her first congressional bid in 2022, Tranel claimed that the border crisis is unrelated to fentanyl trafficking while debating Zinke at the City Club Missoula.

“It is a significant issue where we are, but where it is coming from is not the southern border,” Tranel said of fentanyl during the debate. “It’s being made in China, and how it’s getting here is a complex series of things that are happening, and shutting down the border is not going to reduce the fentanyl crisis.”

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Shortly after Tranel’s remarks at the debate, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that 36 million lethal doses of fentanyl had been removed from American communities between May to September 2022, with 35 cases linking directly to Mexican cartels.

As she makes another bid for the Republican-held seat in 2024, Tranel is appearing to shift her stance on the issue.

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“We have a real crisis at the border,” Tranel said in a new campaign ad posted on X in September. “We need to secure the border, hire more border patrol agents, and go after the drug cartels to stop the flow of illegal drugs like fentanyl.”

“Trainwreck Tranel is talking tough on the border now that it’s an election year, but Montanans know she will work directly under the Harris-Walz banner to unleash more crime and border chaos on Montanans while also supporting boys to play in girls sports,” Madison Atkinson, Montana GOP spokesperson, told Fox News Digital in a statement.

In fiscal year 2023 alone, Border Patrol agents reported seizing enough fentanyl to kill the entire U.S. population.

Asked about the previous comment regarding fentanyl, Tranel told Fox News Digital that “we need to secure our border and solve the fentanyl crisis.”

“We need to increase resources for border patrol and go after the cartels trafficking fentanyl, both in China and at the border,” she told Fox. “The border bill would have increased resources for detection and stopping fentanyl from coming in. I support that bill and would have voted for it. Stopping the supply side of fentanyl is critical, and keeping it from coming in across any border is also critical. As a member of Congress, I would have voted to get that done. Ryan Zinke could have voted for that bill but did not, in order to play games and campaign on the issue rather than solve it.”

“The border isn’t secure, and no one – including Rep. Zinke – has actually gotten the job done to fix it,” Tranel said. “I’ll stand up to any Democrat or Republican who gets in the way. While Zinke cozies up to special interests and China, I’m focused on protecting our communities and stopping the flow of illegal drugs. Keeping Montana safe is more important than politics.”