Lawmakers question Pentagon civilian harm program

President Trump and a delegation of U.S. officials left Beijing on Friday after two days of high-level talks with the Chinese government, led by President Xi Jinping.

Before boarding Air Force One, White House staffers and reporters surrendered items collected during the trip, including staff burner phones, credential badges, and lapel pins issued by China. Travelers tossed those items into a bin at the bottom of the plane’s stairs, according to a journalist in the White House press pool.

Photos from the trip showed several people in the U.S. delegation wearing pins on their coat lapels, including Trump, White House communications director Steven Cheung, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook, Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang, and Secret Service agents.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday rejected a request by Virginia Democrats to revive a voter-approved congressional map that they said could help their party gain four Republican-held U.S. House seats in November’s midterm elections.

The justices declined to halt a May 8 ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court that blocked the map. In a 4-3 decision, the state court ruled for Republicans who had challenged it, finding that Democratic lawmakers did not follow proper procedures last year when they moved to approve the referendum in time to place it before voters ahead of the midterms.

They cited a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling stating that state courts “may not transgress the ordinary bounds of judicial review such that they arrogate to themselves the power vested in state legislatures to regulate federal elections.”

The Virginia case is part of a broader mid-decade redistricting fight. Earlier this week, the Supreme Court allowed Alabama Republicans to pursue a congressional map they viewed as more favorable to their party ahead of the midterms.

Control of Congress is at stake in November. Republicans hold narrow majorities in the House and Senate, and Virginia has 11 seats in the 435-member House.

At Trump’s urging, Republican-led Texas redrew its map last year in an effort to flip five Democratic-held House seats. That prompted Democratic-led California to redraw its congressional map to target five Republican-held seats. Other states also have taken up mid-decade redistricting.

In April, the Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority curtailed a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a ruling that could allow Republican-led Southern states to redraw Democratic-held majority-Black and majority-Latino districts before the November elections.

Virginia voters approved the Democratic-backed map in an April 21 special election by a 51.7% to 48.3% margin, with about 3.1 million votes cast. The referendum was the final step in an effort to bypass a 2020 constitutional amendment that placed redistricting in the hands of a bipartisan commission. Democratic- and Republican-aligned groups spent nearly $100 million on the referendum campaign.

New York City Councilwoman Inna Vernikov said the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism lacked public-facing resources, including a website, phone number, or clear point of contact.

“Mayor Mamdani continues to gaslight the Jewish community in New York City by creating a black hole of an office — the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism — an office that has no website, no phone number, no resources,” Vernikov, a Republican who represents District 48, told Fox News Digital. “There’s nobody to reach out to, there’s nobody to talk to. The public has no sense of how this office can help Jewish New Yorkers.”

Vernikov said that after a recent hearing, she felt that “the office does nothing to combat antisemitism.” She also said that people who contact the mayor’s office “really don’t get a response that makes them feel safer or their children feel safer.”

Vernikov, who is Jewish, serves as co-chair of a bipartisan task force on antisemitism with Councilman Eric Dinowitz, a Democrat who represents District 11. The task force, formed earlier this year, is separate from the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism.

An online search for the office led to a page on the city’s website with a press release announcing it, a description of its goals, and a list of recent events and services. Those included a listening tour whose findings would be used to inform a report and strategy on antisemitism in New York City, as well as Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s visit to the Jewish Children’s Museum in Crown Heights, Passover seders, food distribution with Chasdei Lev, and an Orthodox community leaders roundtable.

In recent weeks, New York City has seen antisemitic incidents, including swastika graffiti in Queens and protests outside a Manhattan synagogue and in a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. After a protest outside Park East Synagogue in Manhattan, Mamdani said his administration was committed to ensuring New Yorkers could safely enter or exit a house of worship.

However, he said he “firmly” disagreed with the event inside the synagogue.

Vernikov said protests near Jewish institutions were meant to intimidate. “This has nothing to do with the First Amendment. It has everything to do with trying to intimidate and harass Jews, and that’s all these protesters are fighting for,” she said.

A cryptocurrency regulation bill cleared the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday, advancing on a 15-9 vote with support from Sens. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., and Angela Alsobrooks, D-Md.

The bill, known as the Clarity Act, would set guidelines for federal regulators overseeing the crypto industry. Its approval in committee sent it to the Senate floor, where it will need additional Democratic support to pass.

The committee vote followed months of negotiations between Senate Republicans and several Democrats who support crypto legislation. Talks continued into Thursday morning.

During the markup, Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott, R-S.C., added several amendments at the request of Democrats, saying he wanted “to make this a bipartisan outcome.”

The move highlighted divisions among committee Democrats. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who has criticized the bill, objected after Scott ruled several other amendments ineligible.