Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., is slamming electric vehicle mandates in her bid for a swing state Senate seat, despite recently voting against a bill aiming to block them.

The Democratic congresswoman, who is running for Michigan’s open Senate seat this cycle, released a new ad against mandating electric vehicle sales.

“No one should tell us what to buy, and no one is gonna mandate anything,” Slotkin says in the ad, while “no electric car mandates” is seen written on the screen.

Slotkin also revealed that there are no EV charging stations near where she lives in Michigan, and that she does not own an electric car herself.

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“I live on a dirt road, nowhere near a charging station, so I don’t own an electric car,” Slotkin says in the new ad. “What you drive is your call, no one else’s.”

Despite speaking out against EV mandates, Slotkin recently voted against legislation to block Biden administration mandates on new car sales.

THE BIDEN-HARRIS EV MANDATES WILL HURT WORKERS IN STATES LIKE MICHIGAN: TUDOR DIXON

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a final rule in March under the Clean Air Act to set new emissions standards that would require up to two-thirds of new cars sold to be electric vehicles by 2032.

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers passed the Congressional Review Act, introduced by GOP Michigan Rep. John James, in September to block the new rule from being enacted. 

The campaign for Slotkin’s Republican opponent, Rep. Mike Rogers, responded to the recent ad.

“Slotkin voted three times, including last month, to let the EPA and liberal states ban gas cars that are made in Michigan, she signed a secret agreement to help a Chinese corporation take Michigan auto jobs, and fully backs Harris’ job-destroying EV mandates,” Rogers for Senate Communications Director Chris Gustafson, told Fox. “Just like an EV, no one is buying her lies.” 

Slotkin, however, voted against its passing – breaking with eight Democrats who voted in favor of the bill.

“Elissa Slotkin is a pathological liar who has lied to Michigan voters about where she lives, being a small business owner and a farmer,” NRSC Spokeswoman Maggie Abboud said in a statement. “Now, Slotkin is trying to claim she doesn’t support EV mandates after repeatedly voting to ban gas cars.”

Fox News Digital reached out to Slotkin for comment but did not hear back by press time. 

ATLANTA – Georgia GOP Chairman Josh McKoon is “cautiously optimistic” that Republicans can win back the Peach State after it emerged as a critical battleground in the previous presidential race.

The path to victory lies in two key blocs – early voters, and those who lean Republican but are largely apathetic to the process overall – McKoon indicated in an interview with Fox News Digital.

“We feel good about things here in Georgia,” the former state senator said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do over the next month or so, but we feel like we’re in position to win.”

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He pointed to some recent surveys that show former President Trump with a slight edge over Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as early figures on absentee voting.

Early and absentee voters were key to President Biden’s victory nationwide in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic largely forced Americans to stay home. 

In Georgia, parts of which were ravaged by Hurricane Helene just over a week ago, early and absentee voters may prove just as critical this year. Biden beat Trump in the Peach State by roughly 12,000 votes in 2020.

“One very important lesson is the importance of early voting. We have three weeks of in-person early voting here in Georgia. Republicans traditionally have not done a whole lot to target our voters to get them out early – to make a plan and go ahead and bank those votes,” McKoon said.

“As a result, we had to spend an enormous amount of time and resources trying to move the vast majority of our voters to the polls on Election Day.”

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Motivating many of those likely voters to turn out early, McKoon explained, frees up state party resources “to focus on low-propensity voters who are likely to vote for President Trump, if we just get them to the polls.”

“But of course, those voters need to be touched multiple times. And so, early voting plays a huge role in our overall strategy,” McKoon said.

When asked how low-propensity voters could be reached, the Republican official explained it’s more a matter of outreach than identification.

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“Of course, all of that requires resources. That requires money – put mail in the mailbox, ads on television, telephone calls to their home, knocking on their door. We’re trying to do all of those things,” McKoon said.

Another factor of the Trump campaign’s nationwide outreach – and in Georgia, in particular – is convincing Black male voters to vote Republican.

Trump allies have said that securing roughly 20% of support from Black men across the U.S. could be critical to swaying the election in his favor.

A recent Howard University public opinion poll found that roughly one in five Black men under age 50 who are living in battleground states support Trump.

“You see the work that’s being done, you know, Black Voices for Trump, a lot of the other movements, grassroots movements, around the state. Direct voter contact, again, is really king in this area. But no one’s better at that than President Trump himself,” McKoon said.

“That’s really about economic anxiety and the feeling that this administration, with its open borders policies, are making it even more difficult for Black voters to get ahead in this country.” 

Georgia’s early voting period runs from Oct. 15 through Nov. 1.

Anti-Israel protesters set up an encampment outside the home of a Jewish Democratic House member on the eve of the anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks, the congressman revealed on social media.

Rep. Greg Landsman, D-Ohio, posted on X throughout the evening of Oct. 6, announcing that a group of people with their faces covered congregated outside his house, prompting his family to get police escorts in order to exit and enter their home.

“A group of masked anti-Israel protesters assembled outside my home early Sunday morning and remained through the evening, forcing police to escort my family in and out of our house for safety,” the lawmaker declared in a post that included a photo of the group. “The protesters refuse to leave, setting up tents, cots, and sleeping bags in their encampment in the road, and are spending the night harassing my family outside our home. It’s not clear if or when they will leave,” he added in another tweet.

Landsman’s communications director told Fox News Digital via email that as of Monday morning, the individuals were still outside the congressman’s home in Cincinnati.

NEW DEMS ARE LASER-FOCUSED ON FIGHTING CRIME

Landsman noted that Monday marks the grim anniversary of the heinous Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack against Israel in which Hamas committed atrocities.

“On the eve of the one-year anniversary of the October 7th terror attacks, when Jews were brutally murdered and kidnapped, these people came to the home of a Jewish family at night, dressed in all black and fully masked,” the congressman said in a statement.

GOP HOUSE CANDIDATE FIRES BACK AFTER DEM OPPONENT ECHOES ‘WEIRD’ ATTACK LINE AGAINST JD VANCE

“Today, my daughter and I will be attending a service to bear witness to the atrocious terror attacks of October 7th. Meanwhile, these people will be outside of my house, in an attempt to intimidate my Jewish family every time we try to leave our home,” he continued. 

“They’ve done this to my staff and me for nearly a year, and now they’re doing it to my family and neighbors. I don’t think they have any boundaries at this point. Our family hopes they leave soon and protest in a more appropriate and less intrusive manner. We’re grateful to the Cincinnati Police Department for their ongoing efforts and work to keep us all safe,” the lawmaker said in the statement.

DEM REP ‘CLOSER AND CLOSER’ TO URGING BIDEN TO DROP OUT, WOULD BACK HARRIS NOMINATION OR OPEN CONVENTION

Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., decried the protest and urged his colleagues to do the same.

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“On the anniversary of the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust, this is unacceptable intimidation of a Jewish member of Congress and his family,” Goldman wrote on X. “I call on all of my colleagues to condemn this conduct. This has no place in America,”

As U.S. support for aiding Ukraine continues to fracture Americans, Kersti Kaljulaid, the former president of Estonia, wants to remind Americans what’s at stake.

Estonia, a country in Northern Europe bordered by the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland, is slightly larger than Denmark and has a coastline with 1,521 islands.

Kaljulaid described what’s happening across the world as a “tectonic shift,” during a recent interview with Fox News Digital at her nation’s embassy in Washington, D.C. “There is the freedom-loving world. And then there are the others – the new Axis of Evil – China, Iran, North Korea, Russia. China is leading that coalition.”

“Ukraine, with its brave action, has offered us the opportunity to score the first victory in this battle, and I think we should not miss it,” she said. 

And the cost of securing the so-called “freedom-loving world” is relatively little, she argues. 

“It’s very important to understand that Ukrainians are dying, but we, the West, have not spent anything close to what normally needs to be spent to win war. We are spending at the rate of 0.1% of GDP. And frankly speaking, if we could spend 0.5, then Ukraine will win, and it would be first time in history where a major conflict can be actually be won with so little resources.”

Her visit came just after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the U.S., causing a stir among Republicans after he visited Pennsylvania – swing state – with only Democratic lawmakers and called Sen. JD Vance “too radical.” 

UKRAINIAN STRONGHOLD VUHLEDAR FALLS TO RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE

He was here to beg for the U.S.’s blessing to use the long-range missiles it provides to strike deep inside Russian territory. So far, his pleas have gone unanswered. The Biden administration fears provoking nuclear-armed Russia and furthering U.S. involvement in the war. 

“I think the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk Oblast has demonstrated to us that the Russian threats [of escalation], they carry no value,” Kaljulaid said.

In August, Ukrainian troops made a risky move, invading Kursk Oblast and taking over the Russian territory, using their best tanks in the offensive, which left several key villages and towns along the southern and eastern front lines for Russia’s taking. 

Kaljulaid said she supports Zelenskyy’s request to lift restrictions on the ATACMs, pointing out that Ukraine already uses these weapons to strike in Crimea, which Russia views as its territory. 

LITHUANIAN FM WARNS RUSSIA CAN DO ‘SO MUCH DAMAGE TO ITS NEIGHBORS’

“You could say, I mean, paradoxically, there is nothing new.”

“Putin is not playing the old Cold War game where one side escalated, then the other side did, and then everybody sat down and negotiated the levels down again. I mean, Putin’s regime is a terrorist regime.”

She went on: “It doesn’t abide by any rules. All the bridges are burned. So when they decide it’s worth escalating, they will decide anyway, but we should do the right thing and not worry about escalation.”

A University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll conducted in July and August found 48% of Americans say the U.S. should support Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s incursion “as long as it takes.” Thirty-nine percent said support should last 1-2 years and another 11% thought it should last 2-5 years. 

The U.S. has spent around $175 billion aiding the war in Ukraine, $106 billion of which went directly to the government of Ukraine. The rest funded U.S. activities associated with the war and other affected nations in the region. 

“This is about a third of the money which is considered waste in the COVID pandemic spending [in the U.S.]”

“If we compare it to our economic might of the free world, then we haven’t done that much,” said Kaljulaid. 

“Europeans are doing even more. And this is a common error as well, to think that Europe is not doing its part. Europe’s doing even more than us right now, and I would really like to have a healthy competition. Who does more?”

The U.S. has given more money to Ukraine since the outbreak of war, followed by Germany, the U.K., Japan, and Canada. As a percentage of their GDP, Denmark, Estonia and Lithuania topped the ranking, with 1.8, 1.7, and 1.4%, respectively.

Kaljulaid declined to say whether relations would become more difficult under a second Trump presidency – Trump has spoken out against aiding Ukraine and claimed he could negotiate peace with Zelenskyy and Putin. 

In fact, she had an optimistic outlook that Trump could come to support Eastern Europe if elected to a second term, just as she said he did in his first term.

“Eastern Europe had quite a big presence. Trump visited Poland, [former Vice President] Mike Pence visited Talinn [Estonia’s capital].” 

She noted Trump’s work on the Three Seas Initiative and actions to end Syria’s chemical weapons attacks on its civilians. 

“That was not a simple thing. It was a quite courageous thing, and it was exactly what you expect from Republican foreign policy of the United States – to defend the free world.” 

The Supreme Court begins its new term today amid lingering internal strife over several recent rulings, with details of its thorny internal deliberations selectively leaked to certain media outlets.

All of this as the nine justices have come under increasing public scrutiny and criticism over perceived blatant partisanship on hot-button issues, ethics controversies and its own wilting reputation as a body remaining above politics.

“The Supreme Court, in a sense, is on the ballot this election, or at least the future of the Supreme Court,” said Thomas Dupree, an appellate attorney and former top Justice Department official. “So any time the court wades into political waters, it’s going to be upsetting people, people who are on the side that loses. And they’ll say the court shouldn’t have got involved in the political fray. The court recognizes that it’s not something that it wants to do, but in some cases, it has no choice.”

JUSTICE KETANJI BROWN JACKSON SAYS SHE WOULD SUPPORT AN ‘ENFORCEABLE CODE’ OF ETHICS FOR THE SUPREME COURT

Here are five questions confronting the Supreme Court:

Directly or indirectly, the nine members of the Supreme Court could again play an outsized role in determining who will be the next president.

There is no indication yet of another Bush v. Gore, the case in which the justices in 2000 ended ongoing litigation over the Florida election results, essentially handing the presidency to George W. Bush.

But the high court four years ago summarily refused to consider a series of lawsuits from Trump and other Republicans in five states President Biden won: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Former President Trump has again promised court challenges if he loses, and in a recent social media post, he said this election “will be under the closest professional scrutiny” and “people that cheated will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law.”

Trump has proceeded with his campaign without the imminent cloud of legal jeopardy hanging over his head. His criminal sentencing in the New York business fraud conviction has been postponed until November at least.

And his two separate federal cases involving document mishandling and 2020 election interference have been deferred indefinitely. Those prosecutions could disappear entirely if Trump is elected and dismisses the Justice Department’s special counsel.

All this after the Supreme Court in July ruled former presidents enjoy a substantial amount of immunity for “official acts” committed in office. Trump has used that ruling to demand both of his federal cases be dismissed.

Two justices took the unusual step of commenting publicly on its effect.

“You gave us a very hard question,” Justice Neil Grouch exclusively told Fox News’ “America Reports” co-anchor Sandra Smith. “It’s the first time in American history that one presidential administration was seeking to bring criminal charges against a predecessor. We had to go back and look at what sources were available to us.”

The Trump appointee said the Supreme Court ruled in Nixon v. Fitzgerald (1982) that civil claims cannot be brought against a president “presumptively, in his official capacity, after he leaves office. Why? Because that would chill him from exercising the powers and duties of a president while he is president,” Gorsuch said. “He would be overwhelmed. His political enemies would simply bring suits against him forevermore.”

But Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was on the losing side of the 6-3 opinion, has taken another approach.

“I was concerned about a system that appeared to provide immunity for one individual under one set of circumstances, when we have a criminal justice system that had ordinarily treated everyone the same,” she told CBS News while promoting her new book, “Lovely One: A Memoir.”

The Supreme Court has already gotten involved in several pre-election challenges: allowing some redistricting maps for congressional seats to go into effect and blocking others.

And the justices last month allowed Arizona to temporarily enforce its law requiring proof of citizenship on state voter registration forms.

‘STOP PRETENDING’: CONSERVATIVE ACTIVIST WANTS DEMS BEHIND SCOTUS ETHICS RULES TO TAKE THEIR OWN MEDICINE

Five days before President Biden withdrew as a candidate for re-election, he made the Supreme Court a major political issue. 

Word leaked from the White House on July 16 that Biden was seriously considering proposals to establish term limits for the justices, and an ethics code that would be enforceable under law, amid growing concerns they were not being held accountable.

The proposal was made public days later, including a congressional law limiting justices to 18-year terms despite the Constitution’s guarantee of life tenure for all federal judges.

Biden framed it as an effort to address “recent extreme opinions the Supreme Court has handed down [that] have undermined long-established civil rights principles and protections.”

Public calls for changes came after revelations of previously undisclosed free trips and gifts by the justices and lucrative book deals. Recent public polls support greater ethics reform.

Other federal judges are bound by an enforceable code of conduct, but the high court had long resisted being included. 

Under Chief Justice John Roberts’ leadership, he and his colleagues adopted a revised code last year, but it still lacks any enforcement mechanism, which critics say makes it feckless and ineffective.

Fox News previously reported that the court had been privately meeting for months on how to structure a new ethics code, one that would address public concerns over its behavior without abdicating what Roberts in particular had said was the court’s independence on such matters from congressional oversight.

So, the justices have near-total discretion to decide whether to abide by the new code.

But growing and very public calls for more have come from some justices in recent days.

“A binding code of ethics is pretty standard for judges,” said Jackson, “and so I guess the question is: Is the Supreme Court any different? I guess I have not seen a persuasive reason as to why the court is different.”

“I am considering supporting it as a general matter,” she said. “I’m not going to get into commenting on particular policy proposals, but from my perspective, I don’t have any problem with an enforceable code.”

And Justice Elena Kagan, perhaps the most vocal advocate for an enforcement provision, said this month, “It seems like a good idea in terms of ensuring that people have confidence that we’re doing exactly that. So, it seems like a salutary thing for the court.”

Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin, D-Ill., recently told the chief justice that the unilateral ethics code adopted by the justices falls short and needs an enforcement trigger.

In a closed-door meeting with federal judges attending a semiannual policymaking conference at the high court, Durbin was seated next to Roberts and made clear that failure by the justices to strengthen their judicial code of conduct could prompt congressional intervention.

Sources say Roberts made no commitments but thanked Durbin for the ongoing dialogue on the issue.

But Justice Neil Gorsuch urged caution, telling “Fox News Sunday” host Shannon Bream last month that he did not want to get into “what is now a political issue during a presidential election year.” 

He added about the role of an independent judiciary, “It’s there for the moments when the spotlight’s on you, when the government’s coming after you. And don’t you want a ferociously independent judge and a jury of your peers to make those decisions? Isn’t that your right as an American? And so I just say be careful.”

TOP DEM PLOTS TYING SCOTUS FUNDING TO ‘ENFORCEABLE’ ETHICS CODE AMID THOMAS, ALITO CONTROVERSIES

Following the contentious conclusion of the court’s term in July, much was written about the “Barrett Factor” and the supposedly evolving jurisprudence of Justice Amy Coney Barrett. 

She has become something of a recent lightning rod on the right and left over her occasional willingness to depart from her fellow conservatives, especially in cases involving the man who appointed her in 2020.

The 52-year-old Barrett took issue with some conclusions in the former president’s historic immunity ruling and criticized parts of the majority ruling keeping him on the ballot in Colorado. 

And breaking with conservatives, she separately authored pointed dissents on an obstruction case dealing with a 2021 U.S. Capitol riot suspect as well as an environmental case on federal rules to manage downwind air pollution.

Many court watchers on the left characterized her “burgeoning” legal reasoning as an “independent streak,” increasingly ready to “skewer” her right-leaning colleagues and a “principled voice in the middle” with a strong set of principles that present a “different world view” from other conservative justices.

But other legal observers say it is too early to dub Barrett the new deciding vote on hot-button cases who would resist walking lockstep with any ideological bloc.

“I don’t think she’s really trying to become the ‘swing’ justice or auditioning for that role. She’s calling these cases as she sees them, and she’s, generally speaking, a conservative justice,” said Dupree. “But what we’ve seen over the last term is Justice Barrett really coming into her own. She has the confidence to write separately and in some cases to break from the other conservatives when she sees the law a little differently. I suspect that will continue.”

And it remains clear Barrett’s conservative credentials in most cases are solid: She has ruled to strike down Roe v. Wade, expand gun rights and scale back affirmative action in higher education.

SCOTUS GIVES PARTIAL VICTORY TO GOP TRYING TO ENFORCE PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP TO VOTE IN ARIZONA

We recently highlighted potential Supreme Court nominees in another Biden or Trump administration, based on what sources in both camps exclusively told Fox News.

Now the dynamic has shifted, with Vice President Harris heading the Democrat ticket. 

Campaign sources say the whirlwind of taking over the nomination from her boss in recent weeks has left Harris, her legal advisers and campaign team little time to focus on the what-ifs of choosing justices or broader legal policy. 

But it is a topic of particular interest to the former prosecutor, state attorney general and member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. 

Administration sources say that since taking office, she has been part of the inner circle cultivating an informal White House list of high court possibles. And Harris was deeply involved in spearheading Jackson’s selection and confirmation in 2022, Biden’s only Supreme Court nominee.

As a senator, her 2018 questioning at the confirmation hearings for now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh were especially contentious, and she later called for his impeachment after unproven allegations of past sexual misconduct.

Harris herself was under serious consideration for a Supreme Court seat during the Obama years, but sources say her percolating ambitions at the time were directed to elected office.

As for Trump, sources close to him tell Fox News he is expected to soon release his own preemptive list of candidates, as the Republican nominee did in 2016. That evolving list of two dozen or so names became a centerpiece of his successful campaign and later presidency.

This time, the former president will rely on those he has already named to the federal bench for the top names he would choose from to fill any Supreme Court vacancy.

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The Constitution’s framers viewed the judiciary as the “least dangerous branch,” but to hear some politicians and pundits on both the left and right, the Supreme Court is prepared to lead the country into imminent ruin.

Such attacks on the justices are nothing new, but the tenor of the criticism, especially in a presidential year, coupled with self-inflicted missteps on ethics and docket discretion, have combined to put its nine members on the defensive.

And the public seems to have noticed.

A Gallup poll this summer found 43% approve of how the Supreme Court handles its job, with 52% disapproval. That is a drop of 15 points since 2020 (58%-38%). In 2000, 62% approved of the institution.

Especially concerning the court are continued leaks to the media of its internal, mostly secretive, operations.

A draft opinion of the 2022 “Dobbs” abortion case, published two months before the final ruling that struck down nationwide access to the procedure, sent shock waves in Washington in a massive breach of protocol.

That was followed by selective leaks in the past year over how the court decided hot-button issues like affirmative action and election redistricting.

And in recent weeks, the New York Times received leaked internal memos from the chief justice over his leading role in the Trump immunity opinion.

Court sources say the leakers, who have never been publicly identified, have further eroded institutional camaraderie and trust among the justices, long seen as essential to doing their jobs. It has led to outside partisan finger-pointing.

Roberts, who will gavel in his 20th term next week as chief justice, has not publicly responded to the latest controversies or calls for ethics reform, declining repeated invitations from the Senate to testify.

It reflects his “less is best” approach to explaining and promoting his own court’s resolution of thorny legal and political issues.  

In September 2022, after the abortion ruling was issued, he said, “Simply because people disagree with opinions is not a basis for questioning the legitimacy of the court. I think just moving forward from things that were unfortunate is the best way to respond,” he said.

And he has carefully glided over his role to force internal change and to defend his court’s reputation all while being unable to stop the continuing leaks over their deliberations.

“It seems like at times they’re [leakers] motivated to be able to potentially lead to mistrust in the [judicial] branch, attacks on what the branch is doing,” said Jennifer Mascott, a former law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas and then-Judge Kavanaugh and now a Catholic University law professor.

Added Dupree, “You can’t have a court deliberate and perform its constitutionally assigned function if it can’t be ensured of the sanctity of its deliberations, if it thinks that anything that one justice says to another colleague or any memo that they write internally is going to appear on the front page of the newspapers the next day. That’s a very, very worrisome trend. It may be the new normal.”

After a three-month recess, the justices met together for the first time this week to reset their docket and discuss appeals that have been filed over the summer.

Sources say the chief justice, who leads the closed-door meeting, had sent a memo to his colleagues indicating some of the controversies surrounding the court, like the leaks and ethics reform, would be privately and candidly discussed.

The Supreme Court in its new term will confront issues like gun rights and transgender care for minors, with pending appeals over the Affordable Care Act, religious freedom, immigration and abortion access.

It is a unique, fast-moving time of change and challenge at an institution used to being slow and deliberate.

“I did learn early on that when you are holding the reins of leadership, you should be careful not to tug on them too much,” said Roberts in 2016. “You will find out they aren’t connected to anything.”

New Jersey Senate candidate Curtis Bashaw, a Republican, appeared to freeze on Sunday during his debate against Democrat Rep. Andy Kim.

Bashaw, 63, and Kim, 42, are each looking to fill the Senate seat vacated by Democrat Bob Menendez, who resigned earlier this year following his indictment in a political corruption case.

The GOP candidate stopped speaking mid-sentence during his comments about affordability and appeared to look off into space.

Kim, a two-term U.S. Congressman who defeated Democrat Gov. Phil Murphy’s wife to secure the party’s nomination, was the first to rush over and check on Bashaw after noticing something was wrong.

NEW JERSEY DEM HOUSE CANDIDATE SAYS SHE IS ‘NOT SUPER WORRIED’ ABOUT BIOLOGICAL MEN IN WOMEN’S LOCKER ROOMS

Bashaw told Kim he was alright, and the Democrat returned to his podium.

The debate then took a commercial break, so Bashaw could be checked on. He left the room for about 10 minutes.

“I think maybe we need to take a commercial break and address some issues here on the stage,” the moderator told the audience.

Bashaw addressed the issue when he returned to the stage.

“I got so worked up about this affordability issue that I realized I hadn’t eaten so much food today,” Bashaw said. “So I appreciate your indulgence.”

He wrote on social media after the debate: “Thank you all for the well wishes! I was out campaigning all day, and I never stopped to get a bite to eat. Excited to eat pizza with my fantastic volunteers at the post-debate party tonight!”

In a follow-up post on the social media platform X, Bashaw said the pizza was secured. “Thanks for your support, everyone!” he wrote.

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Bashaw’s campaign also told Fox News Digital that the Republican candidate was okay and just needed some food.

“Curtis is fine! He was on the campaign trail all day and didn’t get a chance to eat,” a campaign spokesperson said. “He stepped off-stage and had a protein bar and some Coke and came back to debate five minutes later. Even having not eaten all day, Curtis was still able to eat Andy Kim’s lunch tonight!”

Arizona GOP Senate candidate Kari Lake told Fox News Digital that illegal immigration has disproportionately hammered residents of her state which she says has created a “double whammy” that will result in GOP wins in the state in November.

“I think most Americans think that they have driven us right over the edge, over the cliff,” Lake told Fox News Digital about the policies of the Biden-Harris administration. “And we’re hoping that we can pull this back come November and that’s what we plan to do. But our polling shows that the economy is really affecting everybody. The border is affecting everybody.”

Lake explained to Fox News Digital that the current administration’s border policies have disproportionately hurt Arizona particularly when it comes to housing costs.

“It’s basic supply and demand,” Lake said. “21 million people coming in, even if you take the estimate that Joe Biden and Kamala are giving, which is 10 million, they’ve got to live somewhere. They’re living in homes and apartments and hotels and these are taking away housing opportunities for Americans and also jacking up the prices as well. Because right now, when you have a very limited supply of housing, which we do, we have not built enough homes and apartments in the past 20 years to keep up with the demand. So now all of a sudden, you add 21 million people, you’ve got a supply and demand issue. You got you don’t have enough supply and you have a lot of demand.”

KARI LAKE SHREDS VP HARRIS’ ‘DESPICABLE’ SOUTHERN BORDER VISIT: JUST TO MAKE THE ‘MAINSTREAM MEDIA HAPPY’

Lake continued, “We know that these people that are pouring across our country illegally, that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are bringing in hand-holding and saying, yes, please come in and we will supply you housing, federally subsidized housing, which means you and I are paying for it. And we will give you an ID card with thousands of dollars a month to pay for your food. They don’t have living expenses like the American people do. The American people are barely getting by because living expenses have gone up so they can then afford to take these jobs making less than the going rate, which takes Americans salaries and hourly wages and depresses them or pushes them down. So it’s a double whammy and it’s really affecting Arizona particularly hard.”

On inflation, Lake pointed to data showing that Phoenix was at one point the hardest hit city in the country.

“I talk to more Arizonans than anybody in the whole country,” Lake told Fox News Digital. “I have a better relationship with the people of Arizona, I think, than anybody in the country and they’re struggling. You know, it kills me to see families and people who are retiring or retirees, Arizona used to be an affordable state it’s not so much anymore, who are telling me now, Kari, I’ve never had to go to a food bank in my life. As a matter of fact, I used to donate to food banks. Now I’m finding myself there every couple of weeks just to make ends meet. I can’t even afford the basics. It breaks my heart because the people of this state are incredible, hard working people.”

FLASHBACK: ARIZONA DEM SENATE CANDIDATE CALLED TRUMP VOTERS ‘DUMB’: ‘WORST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD’

“They don’t deserve this and they don’t want to be asking for a handout, but they’re working as hard as they ever have. Some of them are doing two jobs and there’s not enough hours in the day. They can’t work any harder than they already are and they’re still not making ends meet. So it’s very distressing for the people and it’s distressing for me because I really, truly love the people of the state.”

Lake, who is running for Senate against Dem. Rep. Ruben Gallego who she says is responsible for supporting the Harris-Biden immigration and inflation record, told Fox News Digital that she believes Republicans will have success in November as a result of those policies.

“Every main issue that we’re facing as a country somehow seems to kind of come right through Arizona and this is why I feel so comfortable that we’re going to win this because, well, first of all, we’re registering voters left to right,” Lake said.  

“People are saying, yep, we’re voting, we’re going to become a Republican. People who’ve never been a Republican before are now registered Republicans…We’re calling people who haven’t voted in a number of elections, people who maybe skipped the last 4 or 5 elections. I guess they are called low propensity voters and we’re asking, are you going to vote? And they’re saying, ‘Hell, yes, I’m going to vote. Absolutely, I’m going to vote. I’m struggling right now. This is the first election I voted in a number of elections.’ But this one really matters. I think it’s our last election. If we don’t get this right as a free America.”

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment but did not receive a response.

PHOENIX, AZ – Arizona GOP Senate candidate Kari Lake is blasting her Democratic opponent Rep. Ruben Gallego and labeling him as “radical as they come” after a resurfaced interview of him disparaging Trump voters. 

“Isn’t that terrible?” Lake said in response to Fox News Digital reporting of a comment made by Gallego in 2016 where he said that Trump voters were “dumb” and the “worst people in the world.”

“He’s been lying about who he is,” Lake added. “He’s trying to paint himself as a moderate, which is it’s laughable if it wasn’t so dangerous.”

Lake told Fox News Digital that Gallego “bullied” moderate Sen. Kyrsten Sinema out of the race “because she wasn’t liberal enough.”

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“Now he is doing all these ads trying to say he’s a moderate when, in fact, he’s voted to spend our federal dollars, our tax dollars, our money, supporting sanctuary cities and states. He’s voted against securing our border every step of the way. He’s for an open border America. He’s voted to defund the police. He actually co-sponsored the George Floyd legislation, which would have defunded the police nationwide.”

Lake went on to tell Fox News Digital that Gallego has “never batted an eyelash” when it comes to spending bills and has not been strong enough defending women’s sports.

“He wants biological men to participate in women’s athletics.,” Lake said. “That means it’s an end for girls sports. Anybody out there who played sports? I did for a little bit. It’s an end. I mean, if you have to compete with biological men, what’s the purpose of having girls sports?”

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Lake added, “It’s absolutely crazy and he’s as radical as they come.”

Gallego and Lake will both be attempting to sway independent voters, especially in Maricopa County, the largest county in the state, where independents make up a third of the electorate. Lake told Fox News Digital she is optimistic she can win votes from Arizonans who aren’t Republicans.

“I do believe that independents are with me, I think we’re doing pretty well, our polling is showing that we’re building on the independent vote,” Lake said. “And I think a lot of Democrats, while he [Gallego] hates Trump voters and he hates Republicans. I don’t hate Democrats. I actually believe that disaffected Democrats are going to help us turn the corner.”

“They’re realizing, looking at Kamala Harris and Ruben Gallego, and they’re saying, wait a minute, this isn’t the Democrat Party that I signed up for years ago, the old Democrat Party used to care about the working class. The old Democrat Party wanted a strong economy for everybody. This Democrat Party is a bunch of globalists, and they are for, they want to spend more money helping people coming here illegally than they do people who are American citizens.”

While the Real Clear Politics average of polls shows Gallego leading Lake by about 7 points, Lake told Fox News Digital she is confident the race is much closer and says her internal polling shows that she is within the margin of error.

“We have to go into it acting like we’re ten down, but we’re not ten down,” Lake said. “This is a very tight race. I’m proud of that, considering, as I said, he spent 75 million. He’s been outspending us massively and the fact that this is such a tight race is incredible. Chuck Schumer is in a panic about Arizona. He’s dumping 5 million bucks a week into Arizona.”

Lake told Fox News Digital that Democrats are in a “tailspin” in Arizona because their efforts to make the election about abortion have not been fruitful because most voters are focused on other issues like the economy.

Lake also criticized Gallego over his record before he entered politics, including his involvement with a bank that worked with illegal immigrants, a harassment claim against him by a 20-year-old intern while he worked at city hall, and his time working for an ambulance company that was being investigated for fraud.

“The people of Arizona know me and they trust me and I love the people of the state, Lake said. “I want to represent all of them, including people who maybe don’t even vote for me. If you choose not to vote for me, I hope I can earn your vote, but I still want to represent you and I want to do a great job for you in Washington, D.C. We need decent, honest people back to D.C. and Ruben Gallego was not honest before he got into politics.”

Fox News Digital reached out to the Gallego campaign for comment but did not receive a response.

FIRST ON FOX: Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, led the entire Senate GOP conference in introducing a resolution on Monday to condemn the Hamas terrorist attack against Israeli civilians exactly one year prior on Oct. 7, 2023. 

The full conference-backed resolution condemns the “brutal Hamas-led terrorist attack” and supports “an outcome that ensures the forever survival of Israel” as well as “the complete denial of the ability of Hamas to reconstitute in the region, and the safe release of United States hostages from the Gaza Strip.” 

“This time last year, I woke up in the Middle East to the unbearable news that Israel was under attack by Iran-backed terrorists and Americans were being killed and taken hostage,” Ernst said in a statement to Fox News Digital.

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“I immediately traveled into Israel to show that our nation’s friendship is unwavering, in good times and bad. Regardless of whether I have been in Jerusalem, Washington, or Iowa, I have worked around the clock to hold the White House accountable to its ‘ironclad’ commitment, bring our hostages home, and cut off the source of terrorism in Tehran. One year since that day, as Israel remains under attack on all fronts, Senate Republicans stand united with our greatest ally in the Middle East.”

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The 2023 attack perpetrated by Hamas terrorists saw about 1,200 die and hundreds be taken to Gaza as hostages. 

There are roughly 100 hostages reported to still remain in Gaza, and it is believed that fewer than 70 of them are alive, according to the Associated Press. 

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In the lead-up to the attack’s anniversary, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued a public service announcement warning of hate crimes or violence: “Jewish, Muslim, or Arab institutions – including synagogues, mosques/Islamic centers, and community centers – and large public gatherings, such as memorials, vigils, or other lawful demonstrations, present attractive targets for violent attacks or for hoax threats by a variety of threat actors, including violent extremists and hate crime perpetrators,” it stated.

A new report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), also released before the attack’s one-year anniversary, revealed that after Oct. 7, antisemitic incidents in the U.S. rose more than 200% from the year prior. 

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According to the ADL, there were more than 10,000 antisemitic incidents after the Hamas terrorist attack, which was more than any other year since the ADL began recording them in 1979.

The year before the Oct. 7 attack saw 3,325 incidents.

In a Hebrew message to Israeli citizens after Rosh Hashanah, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recounted the months of war on multiple fronts and touted recent military successes in taking out key Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist leaders.

“Citizens of Israel, as the New Year dawns upon us, we do not forget, and I do not forget, our 101 hostages in Gaza, to whom we are fully committed to bringing back home,” he said in a translated quote.

Life in Israel one year after the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks is far from a return to normal, as one expert explained to Fox News Digital what it’s like dealing with the psychological fallout of the massacre while living near an active war zone – and even the lasting consequences for American Jews 12 months later.

Dr. David Fox, director of crisis and trauma services for Chai Lifeline International, a Jewish nonprofit and network supporting families living with illness or loss, said he’s traveled to Israel multiple times over the last year to meet with hostages’ families and consult with survivors’ families on the ground. 

“I think Oct. 7 will remain seared into the consciousness of Jews and of Israelis,” Fox told Fox News Digital. “It’s sometimes just referred to as ‘the seventh’ or as ‘October.’ October is not an Israeli or Hebrew word, but that’s what it’s been called. So I don’t think it will ever be forgotten as an infamous day of what has become an ongoing battle for survival.”

The Los Angeles-based rabbi described to Fox News Digital how daily life in Israel remains uprooted: Tens of thousands of Israelis are internally displaced, and Israeli families must adjust as parents who were in the Army Reserves are tapped again for active duty. With a cease-fire and hostage release deal still yet to actualize, Fox also explained the lasting trauma and constant fear of another attack — especially in border areas. 

Fox said he spoke to one of the country’s most prominent infertility specialists who transitioned from his day-to-day life as a gynecologist and obstetrician back into military service.  

The doctor now spends his days crawling onto the battlefield to rescue soldiers who have been hit and carry them back to ambulances to be transported to hospitals. 

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“The families of those reservists who have now been activated and deployed, they may not see daddy for weeks or sometimes months at a time. Spouses may not see one another for a while… and there is that apprehension. Will he or will she return? So that has been a crisis for many individuals,” Fox explained. “On the other hand, those who serve in the IDF and the armed forces, they do it with a strong sense of conviction that we’re doing the right thing, and we’re doing really what God wants, but we’re doing what our families need us to be doing right now. So those unfortunate separations don’t end up fragmenting the family.” 

“But I believe in most situations, the children will look up to that parent who has to be away,” Fox said. “They’ll look up with love and admiration. But this has definitely been a change in what goes on on the ground, that family life has been changed.” 

A heightened threat environment is especially palpable in moshavs, which are cooperative Jewish agricultural settlements in Israel. Fox cited a recent conversation with members of one moshav, which was “surrounded by villages which were hostile,” where settlers could hear messages broadcast from prayer towers or minarets calling out for attacks against Jews. 

“Some of them are armed and many of them are not,” Fox said of the Jewish residents. “The army and security guards may not always be available at this point to shelter, to protect civilians. So there is a feeling of fluidity. The situation is changing.” 

Over the past year, Fox said Chai Lifeline worked to expand its crisis hotline to provide “around the clock” support, as well as Zoom counseling, trauma intervention and other materials to Israelis or people who had family in Israel who witnessed the horrors of Hamas terrorists slaughtering approximately 1,200 people and taking hundreds of hostages on Oct. 7, 2023. Since then, the rabbi said he observed another societal change among young Israelis “who are politically conscious” as they look at the “response or non-response of other countries, of the Red Cross or the United Nations” and are “rethinking their confidence in who we trust.” 

“An ally who’s with you in peace time, but who ignores you or turns against you in times of strife is not an ally,” Fox said. 

“The world does not expect the Jews to fight back,” he added. “The world does not expect a small country who has faced massacre and slaughter to get up and protect itself by going on the, let’s say, the avenging offense. And we do have to face the condemnation of many of the sanctions of others. But I think a groundswell of understanding from still others that we are fighting to survive, and we are doing what any other country would do. If citizens were attacked and raped and mutilated and butchered, and their homes desecrated, I think we are doing what virtually any sovereign nation would do if its people were attacked.” 

The trauma of the Oct. 7 attacks, Fox said, has remained for Israeli civilians and the families of hostages, including those who are still held in Gaza and are subjected to deprivation and torture. 

Yet, Fox said there’s also a bolstered sense of support among the Israeli people in supporting each other as the Jewish state continues its war effort. 

“We know that there is a constant punctuation of the reactive grief by an intensification of horror and feeling terrorized,” Fox told Fox News Digital. “The attitude of the Jewish people historically and of the Israeli nation since its inception has been to react to oppression by displays of resilience coming together.” 

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The rabbi told Fox News Digital that he has been directly in touch with Israeli families who’ve retreated from their homes in the north along the Lebanon border amid the Israeli military’s escalating skirmishes and exchanges of rocket fire with Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists, as well as people who have fled their homes in the south along the border with Hamas-controlled Gaza. Fox spoke to the continued need for intervention services, as people “out of familiar territory” have been finding “it’s very difficult to feel grounded emotionally and spiritually when you’re not sure what’s going to happen next, when you’re not sure where to go.” 

“There are families uprooted from their homes, nothing to go back to. All their belongings vanished,” Fox said. “But the country and its people, its blessed people, have absorbed those who have nowhere to go. And other communities have welcomed those in need of shelter. And we’re finding ways to get them into schools with their children and to give them some type of financial support or even employment if that’s needed.” 

“There’s also an upsurge in the principles that really have defined the Jewish religion in terms of loving kindness, charitable loss, compassion and caring for one another,” the rabbi added. “So there is this resounding feeling that we’re in this together. We’re going to help each other. Nonetheless, there’s traumatization.”  

“There’s the abject traumatization of those who were part of the targeted massacres, who still have the imprint of what they saw, what they heard, what they witnessed, and some of them what they endured physically and mentally themselves,” Fox explained. “So there has been a definite need for trauma intervention services. We’ve been providing some of that.” 

His work also extends to supporting Jewish Americans experiencing rising antisemitism in the United States. 

Anti-Israel protests reached a fever pitch last spring at U.S. college campuses. With the return of the fall semester and the Oct. 7 anniversary approaching, Fox said there’s a lot he unfortunately can’t control. 

“I think there’s a lot we can’t do,” Fox said. “Despite the fact that we’re offering support, we can’t get away from the fact that there is a new fear in the air, and it’s based on a credible threat. And how that will pan out in the course of time, whether the bigotry and the prejudice will skyrocket again or whether it will come down. I don’t think any of us can predict.” 

Fox also pointed to attrition, as more Jewish students opt to transfer to Jewish institutions and out of major elite American universities. He made a parallel with what happened in Germany leading up to the Second World War and noted that, in the present day, leadership at universities seem to “close their eyes” or “at times seem to condone” antisemitism, causing Jewish students and parents to no longer feel safe. 

“We saw this in Germany in the 1930s, where professors were fired from their positions if they were Jewish and students were, if they were Jewish, might not be admitted into the medical school or into the graduate school. So we’ve seen this before. That was because of the political governing of the state of Germany. What we’re seeing here is not coming from the White House,” Fox said. “It’s coming from other influences, other attractions. And the government or the police in some cases are just tolerating, and as I said earlier, at times, are condoning this. So it has some parallels, some echoes of pre-World War II.”

“There is a sea of change, I believe, in the attitudes shown toward Jewish people. We didn’t think it would happen in America,” he added.