As the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Iran continues, the Jewish State’s leader said that he would be open to having access to some of America’s most powerful military equipment.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a stop on Capitol Hill Tuesday afternoon to meet with House Speaker Mike Johnson before a later confab with the Senate. It’s his first trip to Washington since the 12-day war between Israel and Iran erupted, and comes on the heels of a stoppage in fighting between the two countries.

When asked if he would be open to Israel gaining access to B-2 stealth bombers and bunker-busting bombs — the same U.S. military equipment used to cripple Iran’s nuclear program — Netanyahu appeared to relish the thought.

‘Would I like to see Israel have the capacities that the United States has? Of course we’d like it. Who wouldn’t want it?’ he said.

‘But we are appreciative of what assistance we’ve received, and I think it’s served not only the interest of Israel’s security but America’s security and the security of the free world,’ Netanyahu continued.

Netanyahu’s sentiment comes as a bipartisan duo in the House, Reps. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., and Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., are pushing to allow President Donald Trump the capability to send Israel the stealth bomber and powerful, 30,000-pound bombs capable of burrowing 200-feet into the ground before exploding, if Iran is found to still be marching forward with its nuclear program.

Their bill currently has three other Democratic co-sponsors, including Reps. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., and Juan Vargas, D-Calif.

The same aircraft and munitions were used in Operation Midnight Hammer, the secretive strike authorized by Trump last month to hit some of Iran’s key nuclear facilities, including Fordow, a facility buried below layers of rock that previous Israeli strikes couldn’t crack. Currently, the U.S. does not loan out any of its fleet of B-2s to allies.

Netanyahu’s remarks also came after he met with Trump on Monday, and he lauded his work with the president since his return to the White House.

‘I have to say that the coordination between our two countries, the coordination between an American president and Israel Prime Minister has been unmatched,’ he said. ‘It offers great promise for Israel, for America, for our region and for the world.’

He also hinted that ‘it may be very likely’ the pair may meet again before he leaves Washington. 

Morgan Phillips contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump disclosed he and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley clashed over leaving equipment in Afghanistan as the U.S. withdrew troops in 2021. 

Trump, who historically has pushed to recover billions of dollars’ worth of equipment U.S. troops left in Afghanistan, said Milley argued at the time it was cheaper to leave the equipment there. 

‘That’s when I knew he was an idiot,’ Trump said during a Cabinet meeting Tuesday. ‘Didn’t take long to figure that one out. But they left all that equipment. But they left their dignity behind. It was the most embarrassing moment, in my opinion, in the history of our country. Not that we got out. We should have not been there, but that we got out the way we got out with great embarrassment and death.’ 

Milley, who is now retired, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital. 

The Taliban seized nearly all of the more than $7 billion worth of equipment U.S. troops left in Afghanistan during the withdrawal process, according to a 2022 Department of Defense report.

While U.S. troops removed or destroyed most of the major equipment, aircraft, ground vehicles and other weapons were left in Afghanistan. The condition of these items remains unknown, but the Pentagon said in the report the equipment likely would fail operationally without maintenance from U.S. contractors. 

In 2021, President Joe Biden signed off on pulling U.S. troops from Afghanistan, following up on existing plans from the first Trump administration in 2020 with Taliban leaders to end the conflict. 

However, Biden bore the brunt of criticism for the withdrawal after the Taliban rapidly took over Afghanistan again, and more than a dozen U.S. service members died supporting evacuation efforts. 

Thirteen U.S. service members were killed during the withdrawal process due to a suicide bombing at Abbey Gate, outside the then-Hamid Karzai International Airport, as the Taliban gained control of Kabul.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced in May that he had instructed the Pentagon to launch a comprehensive review of the U.S. withdrawal to provide a more comprehensive evaluation of the event and to hold those responsible accountable. 

‘The Department of Defense has an obligation, both to the American people and to the warfighters who sacrificed their youth in Afghanistan, to get to the facts,’ Hegseth said in a memo in May. ‘This remains an important step toward regaining faith and trust with the American people and all those who wear the uniform and is prudent based on the number of casualties and equipment lost during the execution of this withdrawal operation.’ 

While Trump tapped Milley to serve as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2019, the relationship between the two unraveled after Milley issued an apology for appearing beside Trump in uniform during a photo-op outside the White House during the 2020 protests following the death of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer.

Milley said in his apology that his appearance ‘created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.’

‘As a commissioned uniformed officer, it was a mistake that I have learned from, and I sincerely hope we all can learn from it,’ Milley said in the apology. 

Since then, Trump has issued various threats toward Milley, such as appearing to suggest Milley deserved to face execution for actions, including speaking to Chinese officials. Prior to departing office, Biden issued a preemptive pardon to Milley to safeguard the retired general from retributive actions by Trump. 

Hegseth yanked Milley’s security clearance in January. 

Milley told lawmakers on the House Foreign Affairs Committee in March 2024 that he and the commander of U.S. Central Command at the time of the withdrawal, Marine Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., both advised Biden to keep some U.S. troops in Afghanistan after pulling most forces. 

‘The outcome in Afghanistan was the result of many decisions from many years of war,’ Milley told lawmakers. ‘Like any complex phenomena, there was no single causal factor that determined the outcome.’

Even amid a fragile ceasefire, Iran continues to warn the United States and Israel that it retains the ability to inflict serious damage if provoked. 

Iranian officials have declared the country can sustain daily missile strikes for two years — a claim drawing increasing scrutiny from military experts and Western intelligence analysts.

‘Our armed forces are at the height of their readiness,’ said Major General Ebrahim Jabbari of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), speaking to the semi-official Mehr News Agency. ‘The warehouses, underground missile bases, and facilities we have are so enormous that we have yet to demonstrate the majority of our defense capabilities and effective missiles.’

‘In case of a war with Israel and the U.S., our facilities will not run out even if we launch missiles at them every day for two years,’ he added.

Maj. Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, senior military advisor to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, echoed that warning: ‘The Zionists know that some of our forces, such as the Navy and the Quds Force, have not yet entered into battle,’ he said. ‘So far, we have produced several thousand missiles and drones, and their place is secure.’

But intelligence analysis suggests Iran’s claims mask serious losses.

Tehran began the conflict with an arsenal of about 3,000 missiles and 500 missile launchers to 600 missile launchers, according to open-source intelligence. By the end of the so-called ’12-Day War’ — a series of attacks by Israel on its military storage warehouses and production facilities followed by U.S. attacks on nuclear sites and Iran’s counterattacks — it was down to between 1,000 missiles and 1,500 missiles and only 150 launchers to 200 launchers. 

‘The regime has increasingly been forced to choose between using or losing these projectiles as Israel targeted missile launchers,’ said Behnam Ben Taleblu, Iran expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. 

Replacing the missile launchers after Israel degraded their production capabilities will be extremely difficult, according to Danny Citrinowicz, Iran expert at the Institute for National Security Studies. 

‘Israel attacked every place that the Iranians manufacture missiles,’ he told Fox News Digital. 

Iran may have the capacity to attack Israel with its missiles, but ‘not in the hundreds.’ 

Could Iran strike the US homeland?

Iranian rhetoric occasionally has floated the idea of striking the U.S. directly, but analysts agree that the threat is far more limited.

‘The theoretical way they can strike the U.S. is just using their capacity in Venezuela,’ Citrinowicz said, referring to Iran’s growing military cooperation with its capital of Caracas. ‘Strategically, it was one of the main goals that they had — to build their presence in Venezuela. But it’s a long shot. It would be very hard to do so, and I’m not sure the Venezuelan government would like that to happen.’

Instead, any retaliatory strike would likely focus on U.S. assets and personnel in the Middle East.

Can Kasapoglu, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and Middle East military affairs expert, said Israel’s war aims went beyond missile factories, targeting Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and advanced weapons development.

‘We are not 100% sure about the damage to centrifuges, so we cannot say the nuclear program is annihilated,’ Kasapoglu said. ‘But we can safely assume the nuclear program had a setback for years.’

He added that Israel focused heavily on Iran’s solid-propellant, medium-range ballistic missiles — many of which have ‘very high terminal velocity, close to Mach 10,’ and are capable of evasive maneuvers. 

‘That makes them even more dangerous,’ he said.

Still, despite the setbacks, Iran ‘is still the largest ballistic missile power in the Middle East,’ he emphasized. ‘We saw that during the war, as Iran was able to penetrate Israeli airspace — even when Israeli and American interceptors were firing interceptor after interceptor to stop a single ballistic missile.’

Comparing ‘magazine depth,’ Kasapoglu noted Iran still maintains a deeper stockpile of missiles than Israel, even with U.S. assistance, and has interceptors.

Proxy forces and Chinese involvement

The regional threat isn’t limited to Iran’s mainland arsenal. Iran’s proxies, particularly the Houthis in Yemen, remain a potent force.

‘The Houthis are the one Iranian proxy I am really concerned about.’ 

Kasapoglu pointed to new intelligence accusing Chinese satellite companies of providing real-time targeting data to the Houthis, who have resumed maritime attacks in the Red Sea. 

‘Two days ago, they attacked a Liberian-flagged Greek merchant vessel,’ he said.

With advanced Chinese satellite support and hardened anti-ship cruise missiles, the Houthis could destabilize shipping lanes and widen the conflict beyond the Israel-Iran front.

‘Iran still has significant asymmetric capabilities in the maritime domain and transnational terrorist apparatus, but it’s hard to see how deploying these assets would not invite further ruin,’ said Taleblu. ‘Bluster and hyperbole have long been elements of Iran’s deterrence strategy.’ 

The so-called ’12-Day War’ ended in a U.S.-brokered ceasefire, but the region remains on edge. Iran’s leaders continue to boast about untapped military capabilities, but battlefield losses, manufacturing disruptions and previous counter-attack measures have limited its options. 

While Tehran retains the power to project force and threaten both Israel and U.S. regional assets, experts agree that its ability to launch sustained, high-volume attacks has been meaningfully curtailed.

Iran may still be dangerous, but its bark, for now, may be louder than its bite.

President Joe Biden’s former chief of staff and a fixture of his re-election campaign, Ron Klain, privately announced during Biden’s disastrous debate performance: ‘We’re f—ed.’

‘2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America,’ a new book released Tuesday by journalists Josh Dawsey of The Wall Street Journal, Tyler Pager of The New York Times and Isaac Arnsdor of The Washington Post, is the latest analysis of how Biden lost the White House. 

The authors described how, during the June 2024 debate, ‘Biden’s aides winced as the president started answering the first question about the economy and voters who felt they were worse off under his presidency.’ 

And backstage, as Biden stumbled over an answer that questionably ended with, ‘We finally beat Medicare,’ back in the holding room, Klain stood up and announced, ‘We’re f—ed,’ according to the authors. 

Mike Donilon, Bruce Reed and Klain were among those leading Biden’s final prep ahead of the debate, according to the book. 

Despite Klain expressing doubt internally, Klain continued to defend the president amid calls from donors and politicians for Biden to step down. 

On June 30, 2024, Klain reshared an X post that urged Americans to ignore the ‘news reports’ with ‘anonymous sources about Dem donors calling for Biden to withdraw.’

‘We are the Democratic Party! These people don’t get to decide to oust a pro-labor pro-people President,’ Klain said on July 4, 2024, in response to The New York Times reporting about the Democrats’ pressure campaign against Biden. 

According to the book, after the debate, Klain called Jeff Zients, his successor as Biden’s chief of staff, to say he was ‘disturbed that Biden was planning to spend the weekend at Camp David.’

‘We have an emergency,’ Klain told Zients, according to the book. ‘We have a crisis on Capitol Hill, and the crisis is going to accelerate.’

But Zients insisted Biden was going to Camp David to be with his family, instead of Klain’s plan to appease the progressive wing of the party with a bold second-term agenda. 

‘I have no f—ing clue why he’s going to Camp David this weekend,’ Klain said, according to the authors. ‘He needs to be working the phones, day and night.’

Even before the debate, when concerns about the first octogenarian president’s ability to lead the country through a second term came to a boiling point, Klain had concerns, as portrayed in the book. 

Klain had overseen debate prep for every Democratic presidential candidate since 2004, according to the authors. Between Biden’s cold, a shorter prep window than usual and staffers privately expressing concern, debate prep in Camp David did not quite go as planned, the authors claimed.

‘This is going to be really touch and go in Atlanta,’ Klain told Donilon and Reed ahead of the debate, according to the book. 

Fox News Digital has written extensively dating back to the 2020 presidential campaign about Biden’s cognitive decline and his inner circle’s alleged role in covering it up.

When reached for comment, Klain told Fox News Digital, ‘I have nothing to add.’

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

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) are expected to roll back the ‘shoes-off’ airport security protocol at a Tuesday press conference in Washington.

DHS sources confirmed a 5 p.m. ET announcement at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, following widespread reporting that TSA will allow more passengers going through security to remove their shoes.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said ending the protocol is ‘big news from @DHSgov’ in a post to X.

The policy was first implemented in 2006 and was prompted by ‘shoe bomber’ Richard Reid, a British citizen with ties to al-Qaeda, who attempted to detonate explosives he had hidden in his shoes on an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami in December 2001.

‘TSA and DHS are always exploring new and innovative ways to enhance the passenger experience and our strong security posture,’ a TSA spokesperson said in a statement. ‘Any potential updates to our security process will be issued through official channels.’

TSA PreCheck and partners CLEAR, IDEMIA and Telos have kept passengers from taking their shoes off in security for a number of years, but the latest change would impact everyone traveling through the main security line.

This change comes as the Trump administration’s TSA looks to alleviate some of the hassles of travel, and just last week began rolling out a new security lane exclusively for active-duty service members.

Preston Mizell is a writer with Fox News Digital covering breaking news. Story tips can be sent to Preston.Mizell@fox.com and on X @MizellPreston

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) unveiled its National Farm Security Action Plan on Tuesday morning.

The plan is specifically meant to address threats from foreign governments, like China, and how those threats impact American farmers. It presents legislative and executive reforms such as banning Chinese nationals from obtaining farmland in the U.S., as well as assessing who holds land near military bases.

‘The farm’s produce is not just a commodity, it is a way of life that underpins America itself. And that’s exactly why it is under threat from criminals, from political adversaries, and from hostile regimes that understand our way of life as a profound and existential threat to themselves,’ USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins said at a press event in Washington, D.C.

‘For them, agricultural lands and our farms, because they are a previous inheritance, are weapons to be turned against us,’ she continued. ‘We see it again and again, from Chinese communist acquisition of American farmland to criminal exploits of our system of agriculture, to the theft of operational information required to work the land and beyond. All of this takes what is profoundly good and turns it toward evil purposes.’ 

Rollins was joined by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

‘As someone who’s charged with leading the Defense Department, I want to know who owns the land around our bases and strategic bases and getting an understanding of why foreign entities, foreign companies, foreign individuals might be buying up land around those bases,’ Hegseth said.

Bondi directly referenced how agroterrorism is becoming a top concern for the administration. Two Chinese nationals were arrested in Michigan last month for allegedly smuggling what FBI Director Kash Patel described as a ‘known agroterrorism agent.’

‘A country who cannot feed itself, cannot take care of itself, and cannot provide for itself, is not secure, and we have to be able to feed ourselves to make sure that no other country ever controls us,’ Noem said.

Noem said that during her time as governor of South Dakota she signed a law that banned the governments of China, Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela and Russia and entities related to them from buying farmland in the state.

‘And I’ve watched for decades as evil foreign governments, including China, have come into this country, and they have stolen our intellectual property. They’ve manipulated their currency, they’ve treated us unfairly in trade deals. They’ve come in and purchased up our processing companies, stolen our genetics,’ she continued.

Numerous states have laws on the books restricting land purchases by those with ties to China and other foreign adversaries. In 2021, over 383,000 acres had ties to China, but the number has dipped in recent years, according to Agriculture Dive. 

Senate Republicans are set to consider a multibillion-dollar package of cuts from the White House, but the top Senate Democrat warned that doing so could have consequences for a later government funding showdown.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., warned on Tuesday that the Senate GOP’s plan to move forward with a $9.4 billion rescissions package would have ‘grave implications’ on Congress, particularly the forthcoming government funding fight in September.

‘Republicans’ passage of this purely partisan proposal would be an affront to the bipartisan appropriations process,’ Schumer wrote in a letter to fellow Senate Democrats.

‘That’s why a number of Senate Republicans know it is absurd for them to expect Democrats to act as business as usual and engage in a bipartisan appropriations process to fund the government, while they concurrently plot to pass a purely partisan rescissions bill to defund those same programs negotiated on a bipartisan basis behind the scenes,’ he continued.

The rescissions package, proposed by the Impoundment Control Act, allows the White House to request that Congress roll back congressionally appropriated funding. Such proposed cuts must be approved by both chambers within 45 days.

This package in particular, which narrowly squeaked through the House by a two-vote margin last month, would claw back $8.3 billion in funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and over $1 billion in cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the government-backed funding arm for NPR and PBS.

The package, informed heavily by the cuts proposed by President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, formerly helmed by tech billionaire Elon Musk, would only need to pass a simple majority in the upper chamber to pass.

Musk and DOGE made USAID a primary target of their hunt for waste, fraud and abuse within the federal government, dismantling much of the long-standing organization ahead of the rescission request. 

The impending deadline to fund the government in September will either require the passage of a dozen appropriations bills – something Congress has not done in years – or the need to work with Democrats to crest the 60-vote threshold in the Senate.

And the rescissions package is not wildly popular among Republicans.

Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, said during a hearing on the package late last month that she was concerned about proposed cuts to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the CPB, and warned that cuts to the AIDS and HIV prevention program would be ‘extraordinarily ill-advised and shortsighted.’

Schumer is no stranger to trying to leverage government funding fights to his advantage. Earlier this year, he withheld support for the House GOP-authored government funding extension before ultimately agreeing to the deal.

That same scenario could play out once more come September.

‘This is beyond a bait-and-switch – it is a bait-and-poison-to-kill,’ Schumer said. ‘Senate Republicans must reject this partisan path and instead work with Democrats on a bipartisan appropriations process.’

First lady Jill Biden’s political rise coincided with the end of her husband’s political career, according to a new book about how President Joe Biden lost the White House. 

One year after Biden’s consequential debate performance, the first octogenarian president’s age has inspired congressional investigations and books detailing his alleged cognitive decline. 

‘2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America,’ is the latest to tackle the inner workings of the Biden administration. 

The book, released Tuesday by journalists Josh Dawsey of The Wall Street Journal, Tyler Pager of The New York Times and Isaac Arnsdor of The Washington Post, details the influential role Jill Biden played in her husband’s administration.

As Jill Biden gained political influence, so did Anthony Bernal, the first lady’s chief of staff and senior advisor and an assistant to the president. 

He was subpoenaed to testify on July 16 after refusing to appear before the committee investigating the alleged cover-up of Biden’s mental decline, which argued that executive privilege did not apply to him.

According to the book, Bernal accused Anita Dunn, a veteran Democratic political strategist who served in the Biden and Obama administrations, of being disloyal for pushing for more transparency about the Biden family. 

There was a ‘near-total ban’ on discussing Hunter Biden, the journalists wrote in their new book, as Hunter’s federal trial fell in the middle of his father’s re-election campaign in June 2024. 

Jill Biden, with Bernal by her side, went to great lengths to attend Hunter Biden’s federal trial, often traveling long distances from overseas trips or campaign events. 

She attended the first three days of the trial, flew to France to join the president at the D-Day commemoration and then returned to Wilmington less than 24 hours later for the fifth day of the trial. 

As described in ‘2024,’ West Wing staffers were surprised when Jill Biden arrived at the trial. Most senior aides had no idea the first lady planned to attend, revealing her willingness to act independently. 

But while Jill Biden demonstrated her independence from the White House, Bernal was right there with her leading the East Wing. 

‘He quickly bonded with Jill Biden and never left her side, becoming unflinchingly loyal to her and using his proximity to her to exert power wherever he decided. It was often unclear if the opinion he was expressing was his own or the first lady’s. Sometimes, when donors or voters asked her questions, Bernal would jump in to answer,’ the authors said. 

Just as Jill jumped to Hunter’s defense during his high-profile trial, she became the president’s staunchest supporter following his disastrous debate performance against President Donald Trump.

‘Joe isn’t just the right person for the job,’ the first lady said at a fundraiser soon after the debate. ‘He’s the only person for the job.’ 

The book alleges that Jill Biden had always played the ‘role of the protective spouse, encouraging the president to eat vegetables, keeping him on time, and questioning staffers when she felt they erred.’

In one such case in January 2022, a Biden aide apologized to the first lady when she questioned why they allowed a press conference to go on for too long, according to the book. 

As Biden struggled to successfully defend his debate performance, with donors and Democratic politicians growing weary, and ‘her husband in the fight of his political life, Jill was making clear: The Democratic Party had to stick with Joe,’ the authors said. 

After the debate, the Bidens took a pre-planned family trip to Camp David.

‘The president was not entertaining the idea of dropping out of the race; he was taking stock of how bad things really were,’ the authors said of Biden’s trip to Camp David. 

The authors described how dropping out ‘was not even a consideration’ at Camp David, and how the first lady was part of those in the inner family circle who persuaded Biden to stay in the race, despite mounting pressure from party leaders and donors to step down. 

Biden huddled with his family in Camp David during the last few days of June, then appeared for debate damage-control interviews on network TV in the weeks following, referring to the debate as a bad night and blaming a cold for his off-night.

‘Biden also acknowledged he needed more sleep and said he told his staff that he should not participate in events that start after 8 p.m. But his message was clear: He was staying in the race,’ the authors said. 

Less than a month after the debate, and one week after an assassination attempt on Trump, Biden announced he was suspending his re-election campaign, and later endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee. 

Fox News Digital has written extensively dating back to the 2020 presidential campaign about Biden’s cognitive decline and his inner circle’s alleged role in covering it up.

A Biden spokesperson did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment. 

Former White House physician Kevin O’Connor, who served as doctor to former President Joe Biden, requested a delay to his upcoming testimony before the House Oversight Committee this week.

O’Connor was scheduled to testify on Wednesday, but is now in a disagreement with the committee over the scope of the questions he will be expected to answer during his testimony. The committee, led by Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., is interviewing the doctor as part of its investigation into Biden’s mental fitness and his administration’s use of an autopen.

A lawyer for O’Connor requested the testimony be delayed to July 28 or August 4 in a letter to Comer.

‘Dr. O’Connor has legal and ethical obligations that he must satisfy and for which violations carry serious consequences to him professionally and personally,’ the letter says.

‘We are unaware of any prior occasion on which a Congressional Committee has subpoenaed a physician to testify about the treatment of an individual patient.  And the notion that a Congressional Committee would do so without any regard whatsoever for the confidentiality of the physician-patient relationship is alarming.’

A spokesman for the Oversight Committee replied in a statement that O’Connor and his legal team were merely trying to ‘stonewall’ the process. The committee is planning to move forward with Wednesday’s testimony, which O’Connor faces a subpoena to attend.

The committee said O’Connor is welcome to object to individual questions during his testimony. But O’Connor is not allowed, in the committee’s view, to delay or decline a congressional subpoena due to concerns over questions about potentially privileged information.

The debate over O’Connor’s testimony comes weeks after a former top aide to Biden, Neera Tanden, told the Oversight Committee that she was authorized to direct autopen signatures but was unaware of who in the president’s inner circle was giving her final clearance.

During Tanden’s interview before Congress last month, which lasted more than five hours, she told lawmakers that, in her role as staff secretary and senior advisor to the former president between 2021 and 2023, she was authorized to direct autopen signatures on behalf of Biden, an Oversight Committee official told Fox News.

‘Ms. Tanden testified that she had minimal interaction with President Biden, despite wielding tremendous authority,’ Comer said at the time. ‘She explained that to obtain approval for autopen signatures, she would send decision memos to members of the President’s inner circle and had no visibility of what occurred between sending the memo and receiving it back with approval. Her testimony raises serious questions about who was really calling the shots in the Biden White House amid the President’s obvious decline. We will continue to pursue the truth for the American people.’

Fox News’ Kelly Phares and Madeleine Rivera and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump on Monday said that his administration would be sending defensive weapons to Ukraine so the war-torn country could defend itself from Russia’s ongoing invasion, an apparent turnaround after the Pentagon said last week it was pausing such deliveries.

His comments came as Russian attacks on Ukraine killed at least 11 civilians and injured more than 80 others, including seven children, officials said Monday.

‘We have to,’ Trump said when questioned at the start of a dinner he was hosting at the White House for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. ‘They have to be able to defend themselves. They’re getting hit very hard now. We’re going to send some more weapons — defensive weapons primarily.’

Russia continues to advance and now currently controls just under a fifth of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, all of Luhansk, the lion’s share of three other regions and slivers of three additional regions.

Trump’s repeated efforts to broker a ceasefire have not been successful, and the president continued to vent his frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who continues to escalate military actions.

‘I’m not happy with President Putin at all,’ Trump said.

The Defense Department later said it would send additional defensive weapons to Ukraine at Trump’s direction, to ensure the Ukrainians can defend themselves while efforts continue to secure a lasting peace. 

‘Our framework for POTUS to evaluate military shipments across the globe remains in effect and is integral to our America First defense priorities,’ Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said.

Ukraine has been asking Washington to sell it more Patriot missiles and systems that it sees as key to defending its cities from intensifying Russian air strikes.

Last week the Pentagon froze some shipments of critical weapons to Ukraine, including Patriot missile interceptors and 155 mm artillery shells, at a pivotal moment in Kyiv’s war with Russia, Fox News confirmed. According to U.S. military officials tracking the shipments, the weapons were already staged in Poland before the order came down. 

It came as Russia launched its largest aerial attack of the war, nearly 500 drones and 60 missiles.

In response to Trump’s comments, the Kremlin said it would need time to clarify the specifics of U.S. weapons aid to Ukraine with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there were many contradictory statements about U.S. weapons supplies to Ukraine, though it was clear that European weapons deliveries were continuing.

‘Obviously, supplies are continuing, that’s clear. Obviously, the Europeans are actively involved in pumping Ukraine full of weapons,’ Peskov said, according to Reuters. ‘As for what kind of supplies and in what quantity Ukraine continues to receive from the United States, it will still take time to clarify this definitively,’ he added.

Peskov said that Moscow appreciated Trump’s efforts to initiate direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, and that there was significant potential for restarting Russian-U.S. trade and economic relations.

Separately, Russia’s transport minister Roman Starovoit was found dead in what authorities said was an apparent suicide — news that broke hours after the Kremlin announced he had been dismissed by Putin, per The Associated Press. Russian media have reported that his dismissal could have been linked to an investigation into the embezzlement of state funds allocated for building fortifications in the Kursk region, where he served as governor before being appointed transportation minister.

The firing of Starovoit followed a weekend of travel chaos — airports grounded hundreds of flights due to the threat of drone attacks from Ukraine. Russian officials did not give a reason for his dismissal.

Fox News’ Jasmine Baehr and Jennifer Griffin as well as The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.