Longtime Democratic consultant James Carville says Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker could potentially be his party’s best choice to lead Democrats to victory in the 2028 presidential election.

And Carville, who first gained national attention over three decades ago as the chief strategist for former President Bill Clinton’s 1992 White House victory, argues that former Vice President Kamala Harris doesn’t have a shot at winning the next Democratic presidential nomination.

The 2028 Democratic nomination battle in the race to succeed term-limited President Donald Trump is expected to draw a crowded and competitive field.

“If I had to say one guy… I’d take JD Pritzker,” Carville said this week in a sit-down interview with Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo on his ‘Arroyo Grande’ podcast. Carville was asked which Democrat he could see carrying the flag into 2028.

WE’RE JUST A MONTH INTO 2026, BUT THE 2028 WHITE HOUSE RACE IS WELL UNDER WAY

The billionaire governor, a member of the Pritzker family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain and who has started several of his own venture capital and investment startups, is running this year for a third term to steer Illinois.

And Pritzker, who has become a leading voice in the Democrats’ opposition to Trump and has taken steps to Trump-proof his solidly blue state, has made a handful of trips in recent years to the key early voting states in the race for the White House.

Carville noted that Pritzker “campaigns hard.”

DEMOCRATIC HEAVYWEIGHTS TURN HEADS, SPARK 2028 SPECULATION

Asked about whether he could see Harris as the party’s standard-bearer in 2028, Carville responded, “She has no chance.”

Harris replaced then-President Joe Biden as the Democrats’ 2024 presidential nominee after Biden dropped his bid in July of that year, a month after a disastrous debate performance against Trump. Harris ended up losing the general election to Trump, who narrowly swept all seven key battleground states.

“No Democrat wants anything to do with anybody that had anything to do with 2024,” Carville emphasized, as he reasoned why Harris couldn’t win the 2028 nomination. He also questioned whether Harris, the nation’s first female and first Black vice president, had the ability to energize the Black community if she launched another White House run.

Carville said that the Democrats’ mantra heading into 2028 is “just win,” and argued that “if we nominate two white males, nobody’s going to give a s—.”

VANCE AMPLIFIES HIS 2026 MESSAGE WHILE LANDING KEY 2028 BACKING

He also doubted whether Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York would be a good 2028 nominee for the party.

Carville said the progressive champion and rising Democratic Party star “has talent, and she’s very smart.”

But he said that “the reason she is not going to work” is because “there’s a large part of the Democratic Party that like to feel smug.” Carville argued that Ocasio-Cortez and others on the progressive left of the party have alienated male voters.

“Democratic culture became very feminized and very judgmental and that’s why we pushed so many of the males away,” Carville said.

Asked by Fox News Digital if there’s anyone else he thinks is worth watching as a potential 2028 Democratic presidential contender, Carville mentioned former Louisiana Lt. Gov. and former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu.

Landrieu mulled but ultimately decided against a 2020 White House and later served in the Biden administration.

Carville, pointing to “two huge mistakes that the Democratic Party made,” also blamed former President Barack Obama and Biden for Trump’s 2016 and 2024 White House wins.

Obama continued and implemented the unprecedented $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, known as TARP, which was initiated by then-President George W. Bush at the very end of his White House tenure to stabilize the nation’s financial system after the 2008-2009 crisis.

The program prevented a total economic collapse, but was widely unpopular with voters.

“The mistake they made was not going after these bankers,” Carville said in the podcast, as he pointed to moves by Obama and his administration. “We bailed them out.”

And Carville emphasized that “there is one person who is responsible for the election of Donald Trump in 2024, and it’s not Donald Trump, it’s Joe Biden.”

Carville argued that if Biden “would have gotten out in September of 2023, it wouldn’t have been close.”

A federal criminal charge has been filed against the suspect accused of spraying a liquid on Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., during a town hall event this week.

Anthony James Kazmierczak, 55, “forcibly assaulted, opposed, impeded, intimidated, and interfered with United States Representative Ilhan Omar,” says a criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota and obtained by Fox News. The charge was filed by the Justice Department in Minnesota and assigned to Magistrate Judge Dulce J. Foster.

Right before the attack, Omar called for the resignation or impeachment of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem, following multiple fatal shootings involving federal immigration enforcement agents in Minneapolis.

Kazmierczak, who was previously convicted of two DUIs, was charged at the state level with third-degree assault and was booked into the Hennepin County Jail.

Witnesses could be heard commenting on the foul odor of the substance, which was later identified by a hazmat team as apple cider vinegar, Alpha News reported.

Omar’s office issued a statement after the attack, noting the substance was sprayed with a syringe.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Fox News’ Jessica Sonkin and Alexandra Koch contributed to this report.

Senate Democrats stayed true to their threat by blocking a behemoth funding package, but in a surprising turn of events, they were joined by several Senate Republicans to derail the legislation.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and his caucus made it no secret that they would obstruct the government funding process over the last several days, demanding that Republicans strip the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill from the six-bill package. 

But the defection of seven GOP lawmakers – Sens. Ted Budd, R-N.C., Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Mike Lee, R- Utah, Ashley Moody, R-Fla., Rand Paul, R-Ky., Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala. – was an unexpected development on Thursday. 

Senate Democrats are willing to support the five other bills in the package, however, and have reiterated that bundle would easily pass if given the chance. 

SENATE REPUBLICANS WEIGH DEM DEMAND TO SPLIT DHS BILL, TURN TO SHORT-TERM EXTENSION TO AVOID SHUTDOWN

“Democrats are ready to avert a shutdown,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

“We have five bills we all agree on. About 95% of the remaining budget. It is ready to go,” she continued. “We can pass those five bills, no problem. All Leader Thune has to do is tee them up for a vote.”

But Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., sought to call their bluff and barreled forward with the key test vote, which would have opened up several hours of debate and eventually a final vote to send the package to President Donald Trump’s desk.

Ahead of the vote, Thune said he hoped that conversations between the White House and Senate Democrats would produce the “the votes that are necessary to get it passed.”

Thune threw cold water on Senate Democrats’ several demands for reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) making their way into the current package, too. 

“That’s not going to happen in this bill, but there are, I mean, there’s a path to consider some of those things and negotiate that out between Republicans, Democrats, House, Senate, White House,” Thune said. “But that’s not gonna happen in this bill.” 

With the six-bill package, which included major funding bills for the Pentagon and other agencies, now scuttled, Senate Republicans and the White House are looking for a plan B to keep the government open or to at least minimize the damage from a partial shutdown. 

SCHUMER ROLLS OUT LIST OF ICE DEMANDS AS WHITE HOUSE SAYS DEMS ‘BLOCKED’ DEAL-MAKING SESSION

One option gaining momentum among Republicans would be to strip the DHS funding bill from the broader package, advance the smaller, five-bill bundle and then turn to a short-term funding extension, known as a continuing resolution (CR), for just Homeland Security. 

And there are ongoing negotiations among Senate Democrats and the White House on that particular idea. 

A White House official told Fox News Digital in a statement, “President Trump has been consistent — he wants the government to remain open, and the Administration has been working with both parties to ensure the American people don’t have to endure another shutdown.” 

“A shutdown would risk disaster response funding and more vital resources for the American people,” the official said. 

But taking that route presents several hurdles and challenges, particularly with the House out until next week.

That’s because any modification to the current six-bill package would require the lower chamber to agree to it. The same is true for any CR that the Senate produces for DHS. 

SENATE REPUBLICANS TEE UP KEY SHUTDOWN TEST VOTE AS DEMOCRATS DIG IN ON DHS FUNDING

Schumer pinned the possibility of a shutdown on Thune, arguing that if he just put the five-bill package on the floor, Senate Democrats would support it. 

“Well, let me tell you first, if funding lapses, it’s all because of Leader Thune,” Schumer said. “It’s on his back.”

House Republicans have already signaled their unwillingness to support a modified funding package, and turning to a CR is a simmering taboo that many Republicans in the lower chamber aren’t likely to be happy with.

But it’s an option that could be gaining steam with Schumer and the White House, despite Trump administration officials blaming the top Senate Democrat for canning a meeting among rank-and-file Senate Democrats and the administration on Wednesday. 

Turning to a CR would be an about-face for Senate Democrats, too. Last week they argued that a short-term extension for DHS would amount to a “slush fund” for Trump and the administration to use in their immigration operations with no guardrails.

A gold-standard guide used by judges nationwide to address subjects they are not particularly versed in is drawing criticism over the latest edition’s inclusion of purported ideological bias focused on its climate section.

Critics have said the fourth edition of the Federal Judicial Center’s Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence – which includes a foreword by Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan – appears to blur the line between neutrally educating judges and indoctrinating them with left-wing advocates’ prose.

The approximately 1,600-page guide was released at the beginning of the year and includes several citations and footnotes to climate change activists and proponents, including climatologist Michael Mann and environmental law expert Jessica Wentz.

CLIMATE DEADLINES COLLIDE WITH POLITICS AS DEM-LED STATES CHASE BIG OIL IN COURT BUT SPARE LOCAL REFINERS

Wentz is the topline expert at the Climate Judiciary Project at the Environmental Law Institute — an entity currently under federal investigation, as Fox News Digital recently reported.

“The Committee on the Judiciary is investigating allegations of improper attempts by the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) and its Climate Judiciary Project (CJP) to influence federal judges,” read a statement from House Judiciary Committee members Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

Jordan and Issa found evidence of efforts to “influence judges who potentially may be presiding over lawsuits related to alleged climate change claims… [which] appear to have the underlying goal of predisposing federal judges in favor of plaintiffs alleging injuries from the manufacturing, marketing, use, or sale of fossil-fuel products.”

SCOOP: WHITE HOUSE BACKS IMPEACHING ‘ROGUE’ JUDGES ACCUSED OF PARTISAN RULINGS

A spokesperson for the institute told Fox News Digital at the time that CJP’s curriculum is “fact-based and science-first, grounded in consensus reports and developed with a robust peer review process” and that suggestions otherwise are “without merit.”

Wentz, who is also a senior fellow at Columbia’s Sabin Center for Climate Law, is listed as chief author of the section, along with fellow university faculty Radley Horton, on page 1561.

She served as a witness for the plaintiffs in Juliana v. U.S., where youth activists accused the U.S. government of violating their constitutional rights by failing to implement their preferred climate change policies.

She also signed an amicus brief supporting the Obama administration’s environmental regulations after multiple states filed lawsuits against the EPA in 2016.  

Nonetheless, legal experts warned of the potential repercussions down the line of having such prominent contributors in what is supposed to be an apolitical anthology.

“It is alarming to see how far the Left has gone in its blatant effort to capture the judiciary. Its feeding of trial lawyers’ climate ‘science’ to sitting judges who will decide contentious litigation in this area short-circuits our system of justice,” said Carrie Severino, a former law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and president of the Judicial Crisis Network.

“When they can’t pass their extreme policies into law, they are attempting to use the courts as an end run around the legislative process,” said Severino, whose organization has helped vet judicial nominees, including Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Michael Fragoso of Torridon Law, former chief counsel to Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., agreed that there is rank bias throughout the climate section of the anthology.

SUPREME COURT MUST FREEZE THE CLIMATE EXTORTION OF OUR ENERGY INDUSTRY

“The whole section of the guide is shockingly inappropriate—and if you look at the organizational meeting at the National Academies, intentionally so,” Fragoso said.

“But when you dig into it, it only gets worse. The section on attribution ‘science,’ for example, was lifted in large part by a previous article written by the two authors and Michael Burger, who is himself a climate-plaintiff lawyer.”

“Given that attribution is at the heart of these lawsuits, it’s shocking that the Judicial Center would let a plaintiff lawyer ‘explain’ it to judges. It’s even worse that it’s hidden in a random footnote,” said Fragoso, who recently analyzed a key energy-related suit in Louisiana.

The House Judiciary Committee previously alleged CJP’s efforts appear to have the underlying goal of predisposing federal judges in favor of plaintiffs involved in climate litigation.

Mann, a climate change academic in Pennsylvania, authored a book called “The New Climate War,” and the judges’ guide cites the book to claim the energy industry has sought to deceive the public.

He resigned from a role at the University of Pennsylvania in 2025 after disparaging social media comments about Charlie Kirk that invoked the Hitler Youth movement, and previously successfully sued conservative commentator Mark Steyn for $1 million over aggressive criticism of his famous “hockey stick graph” that resulted from his study of human influence on global warming over the centuries.

When asked about criticisms of her role in crafting the guide, Wentz told Fox News Digital, “no comment.” Mann did not respond to a request for comment.

Fox News Digital’s Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.

The search warrant that FBI agents executed Wednesday at an election hub in Fulton County, Georgia, authorized the seizure of election records, voting rolls and other data tied to the 2020 election, according to a copy of the warrant reviewed by Fox News.

The FBI’s search of the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center in Union City, Georgia, appears to be the most public indication to date that the bureau could be pursuing an investigation into complaints of voter fraud in the 2020 election. 

Fulton County is the most populous county in Georgia and includes the capital city of Atlanta. It most notably emerged as ground zero for voter fraud complaints in the wake of the 2020 election, though the claims did not survive court scrutiny. 

Fox News Digital reported yesterday that FBI agents were seen entering the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center, a new facility that state officials opened in 2023 that was designed to streamline their election processes.

JUDGE DISMISSES 2020 ELECTION INTERFERENCE CASE AGAINST TRUMP 

According to a copy of the warrant, FBI personnel in Fulton County were authorized to seize all physical ballots, tabulator tapes, electronic ballot images and voter rolls obtained during the 2020 election from the county’s main election facility.

The FBI said in a statement that agents were executing a “court-authorized law enforcement action” at the facility. “Our investigation into this matter is ongoing so there are no details that we can provide at the moment,” they said.

News of the search comes years after Fulton County emerged at the center of concerns and complaints about voter fraud in the wake of the 2020 elections, including from President Donald Trump, who lost the state to former President Joe Biden by a razor-thin margin. 

Despite a machine count and two recounts that confirmed the results, Trump continued to feud for years with Georgia officials and claimed that various instances of fraud had tainted the results.

Most recently, Trump reiterated those complaints earlier this month during a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He said then that “people will soon be prosecuted for what they did,” though he declined to elaborate.

The Justice Department sued Fulton County in December seeking access to ballots related to the 2020 lawsuit, though the FBI’s search appears unrelated. 

Fulton County is fighting the lawsuit and says the Justice Department has not made a valid argument for accessing the records.

EXCLUSIVE: Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst is introducing legislation Thursday targeting fraud in federal programs — a proposal that would set early-warning tripwires to flag suspected scams and push agencies to claw back taxpayer dollars, Fox News Digital has learned.

“It’s absolutely unacceptable that the fraud running rampant in Minnesota could end up costing taxpayers more than $9 billion,” Ernst told Fox News Digital. “My Putting an N to Learing about Fraud Act will ensure this never happens again by putting more safeguards in place to detect scams early and require the recovery of any money ripped off from taxpayers.”

Ernst’s office said the bill is designed to hit fraud on two fronts: tightening rules around childcare payments and creating new spike alerts in healthcare programs to flag suspicious surges early, while also pushing the federal government to recover improper payments.

If passed, the bill would force state plans tied to federal childcare dollars to pay providers based on documented attendance — not just enrollment — to prevent taxpayer money from going out for care that never happened.

MINNESOTA FRAUD CASE IS ‘CANARY IN THE COAL MINE’ FOR GOVERNMENT SYSTEMS — INCLUDING ELECTIONS, LAWYER WARS

It also underlines that states can reimburse providers after services are delivered rather than paying upfront. Providers taking federal funds would have to track attendance and keep those records for seven years, making them available for audits by the Department of Health and Human Services, the attorney general and the comptroller general.

On the healthcare front, the legislation would create new notification requirements tied to abrupt jumps in health billings and costs. States would be required to notify Health and Human Services when the amount being paid for a service increases by more than 100% in a year, or if the number of providers seeking payment increases by 100% in a year. 

GOP SENATORS LAUNCH TASK FORCE TO CRACK DOWN ON FRAUD TIED TO MINNESOTA SCANDAL

Beyond early detection, the bill aims to force agencies to claw back funds either swindled from taxpayers or received in error.

It would direct the Office of Management and Budget to issue guidance to federal agencies to ensure improper payments are recovered and require inspectors general to report annually the amount of improper payments recovered by each agency.

MINNESOTA FRAUD WHISTLEBLOWER SAYS ‘LACK OF GUARDRAILS WAS PRETTY SHOCKING’

The legislation follows the sweeping fraud scandal that continues to plague Minnesota. Dozens of arrests have been made, most of whom are from the state’s large Somali population, as investigators uncover hundreds of millions of dollars in alleged fraud swindled from taxpayers through welfare and social services programs. 

Federal prosecutors have said the fraud could total $9 billion. 

“The swindlers in Minnesota and everywhere else soon are going to ‘lear’ the hard way that in the era of DOGE, crime no longer pays,” Ernst added in a comment to Fox News Digital, referring to the viral “Quality Learing Center.” 

The misspelled Quality “Learing” Center daycare sign became a focal point of the fraud scandal after YouTube journalist Nick Shirley dug into alleged fraud in Minnesota. 

Fox News Digital learned that Ernst will also name Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as the January recipient of her office’s “Squeal Award” for “failing to stop the runaway fraud in his own backyard.” Ernst awards various lawmakers and government fraud scandals themselves the Squeal Award each month to spotlight “out of control waste.”

The governor dropped out of his re-election effort earlier in January amid the fallout of the fraud scandal. Walz, who has served as governor since 2019, took ownership of the fraud as it occurred under his watch, but argued multibillion-dollar figures were “sensationalized” by Republicans. 

“Whoever is in charge. Unlike the president, I’m governor now (and) whether these programs happen before we got here or afterwards, it doesn’t matter. We’re here now. We’re the ones fixing it. You have my guarantee on this, that I certainly will have this thing fixed,” Walz said earlier in January. 

Fox News Digital reached out to his office on Thursday morning for additional comment. 

Ernst has long positioned herself as a leading Senate watchdog on waste and fraud, working with both Congress and the Trump administration to flag questionable spending. 

She launched and leads the Senate Department of Government Efficiency caucus as President Donald Trump readied to reclaim the Oval Office, which works to snuff out government spending, reduce bureaucracy and enforce transparency, producing more than $15.1 billion in real savings.

A Los Angeles city council member will stand trial on felony public corruption charges after a judge ruled that prosecutors presented sufficient evidence to proceed, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said Wednesday.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Shelly Torrealba ordered Curren Price, a Democrat representing the city’s 9th District, to answer to all 12 felony counts, including embezzlement of government funds, conflict of interest and perjury, following a six-day preliminary hearing.

“This is a significant step toward holding L.A. Councilmember Curren Price accountable for years of alleged corruption,” Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said in a statement. 

“Our Public Integrity Division has been prepared to go to trial since the charges were originally filed. The rules are clear: elected officials cannot enrich themselves at the expense of their constituents, cannot lie on disclosure forms and cannot vote on matters in which they have a conflict of interest,” he added.

CALIFORNIA MAN ARRESTED FOR ALLEGEDLY STEALING MILLIONS IN HOMELESS FUNDS

Price’s office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Prosecutors allege the councilman improperly voted on city projects that financially benefited his wife and failed to disclose those conflicts on required state forms.

They also say he embezzled approximately $33,800 in city funds from 2013 to 2017 and used his position in city government to award city lease agreements and more than $2 million in federal COVID-19 grants to the nonprofit Home at Last, a paying tenant of Urban Healthcare Project, where Price served as CEO at the time of the votes.

FORMER GAVIN NEWSOM CHIEF OF STAFF CHARGED IN $225K FRAUD AND CORRUPTION SCHEME, DOJ SAYS

Price has denied any wrongdoing, and his arraignment is scheduled for March 13.

LA CITY COUNCIL PRESIDENT NURY MARTINEZ FACES CALLS TO RESIGN AFTER RACIST REMARKS EMERGE IN LEAKED AUDIO

The city council member was initially charged in 2023 with five felony counts of embezzlement of government funds, two felony counts of conflict of interest and three felony counts of perjury.

An amended complaint filed in August 2025 added two more felony conflict of interest counts, alleging that the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles and LA Metro paid Price’s wife more than $800,000 while he voted to award the agencies multimillion-dollar contracts.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said if convicted, Price faces a maximum sentence of 11 years and four months, including up to nine years and four months in state prison and up to two years in county jail.

Ecuador’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it submitted a “note of protest” to the U.S. government after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent allegedly tried to enter its consulate in Minnesota this week. 

In a post on X about the “attempted incursion” in Minneapolis on Tuesday, the ministry said, “Immediately, consular officials prevented the ICE officer from entering the consular headquarters, thereby guaranteeing the protection of the Ecuadorians who were at the consular headquarters at that time and activating the emergency protocols issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Human Mobility,” according to a translation. 

“In light of the above, the Chancellor of the Republic immediately presented a note of protest to the United States Embassy in Ecuador to ensure that acts of this nature are not repeated in any of the consular offices of Ecuador in the United States,” the Ministry added. 

The Department of Homeland Security, ICE and the State Department did not immediately respond Thursday to requests for comment from Fox News Digital.

VIDEO APPEARS TO SHOW ALEX PRETTI SPITTING AT FEDERAL AGENTS, VIOLENTLY DAMAGE SUV DAYS BEFORE FATAL CBP SHOOTING

“I saw the officers going after two people in the street, and then those people went into the consulate, and the officers tried to go in after them,” a witness told Reuters. 

ICE ENDED MAINE ENFORCEMENT SURGE, GOP SENATOR SAYS, CITING NOEM

A video of the alleged attempt shows a man inside the facility rushing to the door, saying, “This is the consulate of Ecuador, you are not allowed to enter.”

“Relax, I did not enter. . . . If you touch me, I will grab you,” another voice is then heard saying.

The man inside the facility then closes the door.

Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., said the “attempt by ICE agents to force their way into the Ecuadorian Consulate represents yet another outrageous and unacceptable disregard for the rule of law by the Trump Administration’s Department of Homeland Security.”

“Diplomatic facilities are protected for a reason. Any effort by U.S. law enforcement officials to enter another country’s diplomatic facility without permission is not only unlawful, it risks setting a profoundly dangerous precedent that could put American diplomats, servicemembers, and their families abroad at risk,” he added.

EXCLUSIVE: The electric grid kept the lights on for much of the country hit by the weekend’s massive snowstorm chiefly because the Trump administration broke from Biden-era plans, keeping five major coal-fired power plants online and allowing grid providers to draw in more fossil fuel-based energy in vulnerable areas.

The Energy Department made the claims in exclusive comments to Fox News Digital, as officials said multiple megawatts of power were made additionally available from otherwise taboo hydrocarbons.

Secretary Chris Wright issued several emergency orders over the weekend and through Tuesday that permitted power plants to operate beyond levels set by EPA regulations and considered the ceiling prior to President Donald Trump’s second term, a source familiar with the situation told Fox News Digital.

LIZ PEEK: TRUMP WHITE HOUSE FIRED UP ABOUT KING COAL’S RETURN TO POWER

Five such plants were on track to be closed under the Biden-era push to pivot from fossil fuels to green energy, the official said, adding that the Trump administration was prepared to give energy producers leeway to push more power online to reduce risks of blackouts. The Trump administration saved 17 gigawatts of coal power that were going to be forcibly shut down as well, Fox News has learned.

“We told grid providers: if your energy demand reaches a critical level… let us know,” the official said, adding that there is a direct correlation between the power being saved up and what was needed to keep the lights on as states from Alabama to Vermont were hammered with wintry weather and deep freezes.

As the storm approached, Wright informed grid operators to be prepared to use more than 35 gigawatts of unused backup generation nationwide, sourced from anywhere from data centers to big-box stores, bypassing prior environmental regulations by emergency order.

That gave a wide buffer against blackouts and hundreds of millions in emergency costs for Americans — as 1 gigawatt is enough to power Wright’s hometown Denver metro area alone.

TRUMP ADMIN RELAUNCHES KEY COUNCIL AFTER BIDEN ADMIN SHUTTERED IT: ‘IGNORANCE AND ARROGANCE’

“How power sources perform during peak electricity demand reveal their true value,” Energy Department press secretary Ben Dietderich told Fox News Digital.

“Across the country, wind and solar generation plummeted while natural gas, coal and oil plants did the majority of the work keeping the lights on during the storm. According to DOE data, the Biden administration’s support for forcibly closing reliable coal and natural gas plants had America on track to see blackouts increase 100 times over by 2030.”

“Thankfully, President Trump was elected and has already prevented the forced closure of five coal plants and more than 17 gigawatts of reliable coal power,” Dietderich added.

CONGRESS REPEALED THE GREEN NEW DEAL. CAN TRUMP FINISH THE JOB?

Dietderich said the Trump administration and Wright continue to be committed to “unleashing” affordable and reliable energy that works — “whether the wind is blowing or the sun is shining,” a common administration reference to the unreliability of those forms of green energy when those natural power sources aren’t present.

As the storm approached, Wright remarked that the Trump administration “will not stand by and allow the previous administration’s reckless energy subtraction policies and bureaucratic red tape put American lives at risk.”

The structure of the department’s emergency preparations is also meant to save American lives, he said.

TRUMP MOCKS ‘ENVIRONMENTAL INSURRECTIONISTS’ AS AMERICANS BRACE FOR MASSIVE WINTER STORMS: ‘GLOBAL WARMING?’

In that regard, wind and solar power only accounted for 10% of the energy utilized across the storm’s path.

Hydrocarbons and coal, by contrast, provided 68% of the power in those same areas, a power source often maligned on the left.

The department noted that in New England — where renewable and green energy sources are often put on the proverbial pedestal — nearly two-thirds of the energy utilized was sourced from hydrocarbon-based or coal-fired power.

American coal power itself provided enough electricity for 30 million homes across the storm’s path, the department said.

Fox News Digital reached out to President Biden’s representatives for comment.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has ceased “enhanced” activity in Maine, Republican Sen. Susan Collins said in a post on X, citing Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

“While the Department of Homeland Security does not confirm law enforcement operations, I can report that Secretary Noem has informed me that ICE has ended its enhanced activities in the State of Maine,” Collins noted in the post.

“There are currently no ongoing or planned large-scale ICE operations here. I have been urging Secretary Noem and others in the Administration to get ICE to reconsider its approach to immigration enforcement in the state. I appreciate the Secretary’s willingness to listen to and consider my recommendations and her personal attention to the situation in Maine. ICE and Customs and Border Patrol will continue their normal operations that have been ongoing here for many years,” Collins continued.

SENATE REPUBLICANS TEE UP KEY SHUTDOWN TEST VOTE AS DEMOCRATS DIG IN ON DHS FUNDING

“I will continue to work with the Secretary on efforts to end illegal immigration, drug smuggling, and other transnational criminal activity,” she added.

Fox News Digital reached out to DHS and ICE for comment but did not immediately receive responses.

ICE REVEALS ‘WORST OF THE WORST’ ARRESTS IN JUST ONE DAY AFTER ROUNDING UP ‘THUGS’ CONVICTED OF VILE CRIMES

Collins noted in a Wednesday post on X that she had spoken to Noem.

“I have spoken with the White House and with DHS Secretary Noem about the ICE operations. I asked Secretary Noem to pause the operations in both Maine and Minnesota. I believe they should be reviewed and far more targeted in their scope,” she said in the post.

TRUMP SAYS NOEM DOING ‘VERY GOOD JOB,’ WON’T STEP DOWN AS HOMELAND SECURITY CHIEF AMID MINNESOTA SHIFT

“I have also called for an independent investigation into the tragic shooting of Alex Pretti. At this time of heightened tensions, these steps are necessary to help improve trust, accountability, and safety,” she added in the Wednesday post.