J.D. Vance supports notion of investigating media bias

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) said Sunday that there’s a need to “look seriously” at “collusion” between the press, tech companies and America’s national security apparatus, after an aide to former President Donald Trump promised to “come after” members of the media he claimed helped President Joe Biden “rig” elections.

“We will go out and find the conspirators not just in government but in the media — Yes, we're going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections — we're going to come after you,” the aide, Kash Patel, said on Steve Bannon’s podcast last week.

When asked about those comments Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union," Vance pointed to theories often trumpeted by the those on the right about a laptop from Hunter Biden that, among other things, held emails detailing Hunter Biden’s business dealings, which a New York Post report claimed showed corruption by Joe Biden.

“We know, in 2020 that there were massive pieces of evidence that were suppressed by collusion between the national security state in this country,” Vance said, referencing reports that stories about the laptop were blocked from Twitter, now X.

To date, no concrete evidence has emerged showing that Joe Biden made policy decisions as vice president to help his son’s business interests. A Politifact analysis concluded that “nothing from the laptop has revealed illegal or unethical behavior by Joe Biden as vice president with regard to his son’s tenure as a director for Burisma, a Ukraine-based natural gas company.”

But on Sunday, Vance pushed for a deeper dive into why the story was buried by Twitter.

“[We] need to look seriously at how there was collusion between members of the press and big technology companies and members of national security state,” Vance told CNN’s Jake Tapper.

“It is not journalism to take your security clearance, lie to the American people, and then persuade the big technology companies to censor anti-Joe Biden stories," Vance said. "That's not journalism. That is cooperation between the government and journalism.”

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US, South Korea and Japan urge stronger push to curb North Korea’s nuclear program

SEOUL, South Korea — The national security advisers of the United States, South Korea and Japan on Saturday called for a stronger international push to suppress North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons and missiles, its cybertheft activities and alleged arms transfers to Russia.

The meeting in Seoul came as tensions on the Korean Peninsula are at their highest in years, with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un accelerating the expansion of his nuclear and missile program and flaunting an escalatory nuclear doctrine that authorizes the preemptive use of nuclear weapons.

The United States and its Asian allies have responded by increasing the visibility of their trilateral partnership in the region and strengthening their combined military exercises, which Kim condemns as invasion rehearsals.

Washington, Seoul and Tokyo have also expressed concerns about a potential arms alignment between North Korea and Russia. They worry Kim is providing badly needed munitions to help Russian President Vladimir Putin wage war in Ukraine in exchange for Russian technology assistance to upgrade his nuclear-armed military.

Speaking after the meeting, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Washington is working with Seoul and Tokyo to strengthen defense cooperation and improve its response to North Korean missile testing and space-launch activities, including a real-time information sharing arrangement on North Korean missile launches that the countries plan to start at an unspecified date in December.

He also said the countries have agreed to new initiatives to more effectively respond to North Korean efforts to bypass U.S.-led international sanctions that aim to choke off funds for its nuclear weapons and missile program.

“This will be a new effort with respect to cryptocurrency and money laundering and how we disrupt North Korea’s capacity to gain revenue from the hacking and stealing of cryptocurrency and then laundering it through exchanges,” he said.

Sullivan declined to share detailed U.S. assessments on the types and volume of North Korean arms being shipped to Russia and didn’t comment on the specifics of his discussions with South Korean and Japanese officials over the issue, but insisted that “there’s no daylight among us in terms of the types of weapons transfers that we are seeing. And those continue and they represent a grave concern for us.”

South Korean intelligence and military officials have said North Korea may have shipped more than a million artillery shells to Russia beginning in August, weeks before Kim traveled to Russia’s Far East for a rare summit with Putin that sparked international concerns about a potential arms deal. Both Moscow and Pyongyang have denied U.S. and South Korean claims.

In a joint news conference after Saturday’s trilateral meeting, Cho Tae-yong, South Korea’s national security office director, said the three security advisers reaffirmed North Korea’s obligations under multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions that call for its denuclearization and ban any weapons trade with other countries, and agreed to strengthen coordination to ensure that is implemented.

Takeo Akiba, Japan’s national security secretariat secretary general, said the “unprecedented frequency and patterns” of North Korean ballistic missile launches necessitate a deeper and more effective partnership between Washington, Seoul and Tokyo.

South Korea, the U.S., Japan and Australia have also announced their own sanctions on North Korea over its spy satellite launch last month. North Korea argues it the right to launch spy satellites to monitor U.S. and South Korean military activities and enhance the threat of its nuclear-capable missiles.

During his conversation with reporters, Sullivan said the allies are preparing for the possibility that North Korea will up the ante of its weapons demonstrations and threats in 2024, possibly including the country’s seventh nuclear test.

Direct military action is also a concern after the North recently announced it was abandoning a 2018 inter-Korean military agreement on reducing border tensions after the South partially suspended the agreement, which had established border buffers and no-fly zones. Some experts say that has raised the risk of border-area shootings or clashes.

“Look, when a country announces its intent to walk away from a set of measures that are designed to help reduce risk and increase stability, our concern for potential incidents, provocations has to go up,” Sullivan said, though he said the full implications of the North’s announcement is not immediately clear.

Sullivan held separate bilateral talks Friday with Cho and Akiba and also met with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol.

The U.S., South Korean and Japanese national security advisers last held a trilateral meeting in June in Tokyo.

South Korean intelligence officials have said the Russians likely provided technology support for North Korea’s successful satellite launch in November, which followed two failed launches.

North Korea has said its spy satellite transmitted imagery with space views of key sites in the U.S. and South Korea, including the White House and the Pentagon. But it hasn’t released any of those satellite photos. Many outside experts question whether the North’s satellite is sophisticated enough to send militarily useful high-resolution imagery.

Kim has vowed to launch more satellites, saying his military needs to acquire space-based reconnaissance capabilities.

South Korean officials have also said North Korea-made rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons could have been used by Hamas during its Oct. 7 assault on Israel and that the North could be considering selling weapons to militant groups in the Middle East.

Sullivan said that the United States has not seen any specific evidence of that, but remains vigilant about the possibility.

“I think given North Korea’s history of proliferation activities, including to reprehensible actors in other contexts across history, it’s a legitimate concern,” he said.

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‘Shadows of children’: For the youngest hostages, life moves forward in whispers

HERZLIYA, Israel — After seven weeks held hostage in the tunnels of Gaza, they are finally free to laugh and chat and play. But some of the children who have come back from captivity are still reluctant to raise their voices above a whisper.

In theory, they can eat what they want, sleep as much as they choose and set aside their fears. In practice, some have had to be convinced there’s no longer a need to save a cherished bit of food in case there is none later.

At last, the 86 Israelis released during a short-lived truce between their government and Hamas are home. But the Oct. 7 attack by Palestinian militants on roughly 20 towns and villages left many of the children among them without permanent homes to go back to. Some of their parents are dead and others are still held hostage, foreshadowing the difficulty of days ahead.

And so, step by step, these children, the mothers and grandmothers who were held alongside them, and their families are testing the ground for a path to recovery. No one, including the physicians and psychologists who have been treating them, is sure how to get there or how long it might take.

“It’s not easy in any way. I mean, they’re back. They’re free. But you can definitely see what they went through,” said Yuval Haran, whose family is celebrating the reunion with his two nieces, their mother and grandmother, while yearning for the return of the girls’ father, who remains a captive.

“We’re trying to give them love, to give them hugs, to give them control back of their life,” said Haran, visibly exhausted by the stress of the past two months, but every bit as busy now as he rushes to fix bicycles and set up bank accounts for those who have returned. “I think that’s the most important thing, to give them the sense that they can decide now.”

It was clear as soon as the youngest were helped from helicopters that captivity had been brutal.

“They looked like shadows of children,” said Dr. Efrat Bron-Harlev of Schneider Children’s Medical Center in suburban Tel Aviv, who helped treat more than two dozen former captives, most of them youngsters.

Some had not been allowed to bathe during the entirety of their captivity. Many had lost up to 15 percent of their total weight, but were reluctant to eat the food they were served.

Asked why, the answer came in whispers: “’Because we have to keep it for later.’”

One 13-year-old girl recounted how she’d spent the entirety of captivity believing that her family had abandoned her, a message reinforced by her kidnappers, Bron-Harlev said.

“They told me that nobody cares for you anymore. Nobody’s looking for you. Nobody wants you back. You can hear the bombs all around. All they want to do is kill you and us together,” the girl told her doctors.

After enduring such an experience, “I don’t think it’s something that will leave you,” said Dr. Yael Mozer-Glassberg, who treated 19 of the children released. “It’s part of your life story from now on.”

In the days since the hostages were freed, nearly all have been released from hospitals and rejoined their families, including some welcomed back by thousands of well-wishers.

Doctors and others charged with treating the former hostages spent weeks preparing for their return. But the realities of caring for so many who endured such extremes have stunned physicians, starting with the reluctance of many children to speak.

“Most of them talk about needing to be very quiet. At all times. Not to stand up. Not to talk. Of course, not to cry. Not to laugh. Just to be very, very quiet,” said Bron-Harlev, the physician.

“What these children have gone through is simply unimaginable.”

Despite that, at times now some appear to be thriving.

Noam Avigdori, 12, who was released with her mother, has spent the past week trading jokes with her father, meeting with friends, and has even ventured out to a store.

“When I say, ‘Noam, do this, go do that,’ she says, ‘Dad, you know what happened to me.’ And she knows that she can squeeze that lemon and … she’s enjoying it,” her father, Hen Avigdori, said in an interview.

But there are also nights when his daughter wakes up screaming, Avigdori said this week at a separate news conference.

Nearly all those who have been freed have said little publicly about the conditions of their captivity. Their families say officials have told them not to disclose details of their individual treatment, for fear of putting those still being held in further jeopardy.

But interviews with their families, doctors and mental health professionals, and statements released by officials and others make clear that while all the hostages suffered, their experiences in captivity varied significantly.

Some were isolated from their fellow hostages. Others, like Noam Avigdori and her mother, Sharon, were held together with relatives, making it possible for the 12-year-old to act as something like an older sibling to the young cousins who were held with her.

“Everyone who was with a family member or with friends was in much better condition” when they were released, said Dani Lotan, a clinical psychologist at Scheider who treated some of the former hostages.

That varies, though, even within families.

In the weeks they were imprisoned, Danielle Aloni and her 5-year-old daughter, Emilia, established a close friendship with one of the imprisoned Thai farm workers, Nutthawaree Munkan. Last week, after all were released, the girl sang to a delighted Munkan when they were reunited in a video call, reciting the numbers she learned in Thai during captivity.

But Emilia’s cousins, 3-year-old twins, are having a difficult time since their return.

In captivity, Sharon Aloni was held with her husband and one of the twin girls in a small room, together with eight or so others. The couple spent “10 agonizing days” believing their other daughter had been killed, when she was snatched away shortly after they were taken into Gaza, Aloni’s brother, Moran Aloni told reporters.

That lasted until the day Sharon insisted to her husband that she could hear the cries of their missing daughter, Emma. Minutes later, a woman appeared without explanation to bring them the child, a joyous reunion that allowed mother and daughters to stay together throughout the remainder of their captivity. But a couple of days before they were released, the girls’ father was taken away and his whereabouts remain unknown.

Now free, the girls wake up crying in the middle of the night, Moran Aloni said. Emma won’t allow anyone to leave her side. They have gotten used to speaking up again, but their mother still whispers.

Many former hostages have recounted being given meager amounts of food. But the rations seemed to vary from group to group with little explanation, said Mozer-Glassberg, a senior physician at Schneider.

One family told doctors they were each given a biscuit with tea at 10 every morning and, from time to time, a single dried date. At 5 p.m. they were served rice. It wasn’t enough, but day after day of worry left their appetites to wither.

One 15-year-old girl recounted not eating for days so she could give her share of the food to her 8-year-old sister.

Some of the 23 Thai hostages released recently told caregivers they were each given roughly a half liter (17 ounces) of water and then had to make it last for three days. Sometimes, they said, it was saltwater.

One group of former captives reported being allowed to bathe three times over seven weeks with buckets of cold water. But one child never bathed at all, doctors say.

“Many of them talk about feeling very hungry. Very, very hungry. Many of them talk about feeling very dirty, not being able to clean, not being able to go to the bathroom,” Bron-Harlev said.

The process of recuperation from such prolonged trauma will be slow and piecemeal, doctors say. And while the adults may be better able to process what they have experienced, their recovery poses its own challenges.

Many, particularly the older and infirm, remain weak after losing nine kilos (20 pounds) or more because of the meager rations provided by their captors. When they speak, their families hear notes of resilience, but also of fragility.

Margalit Moses, a 78-year-old cancer survivor who has long struggled with multiple health problems, is back on the medications she was deprived of as a captive. But she remains too weak to walk more than a few steps.

“I think two months was up to the very, very last limit of her body hanging in there,” her niece, Efrat Machikawa, said.

In the days since Moses returned, she has been savoring pleasures that once seemed trivial, like peeling a fresh orange and lingering over crossword puzzles, her niece said.

Yaffa Adar, 85, a Holocaust survivor who was seized from her kibbutz and hustled into Gaza on golf cart, talks at length with her family about her time in captivity. But the days since have become more difficult as she grapples with what happened to her and the community she cherished, granddaughter Adva Adar said.

“She’s incredibly mentally strong, but you can see how the hell got into her soul,” the younger Adar said. “It’s in the way she looks at the world, the way she looks at people.”

In the hospitals, doctors, social workers and psychologists were careful about how they talked with the former hostages, not wanting to magnify their trauma. But as they settle in, both children and adults are confronting the toll of the October attack that captivity kept hidden from them.

Throughout the seven weeks she was held, Shoshan Haran, her daughters and grandchildren had to wonder what had happened to her husband.

“We had to tell them my father was murdered,” Yuval Haran said.

In the days ahead, he and others acknowledge, they will face questions about how to move forward without those who were killed or remain missing. But for most, it is far too soon.

When Hen Avigdori was called to a Tel Aviv hospital at 4 a.m. to reunite with his wife and daughter he said his heart filled with joy akin to the feeling of becoming a parent for the first time, but multiplied tenfold.

Hearing his daughter’s laughter again and talking for hours with his wife over coffee and cigarettes, it feels like his family has been reborn and they are treasuring the moment, he said.

Staying with family in southern Israel, Moses acknowledges that the kibbutz she loved no longer exists. But questions about where she wants to live will have to wait.

“It’s not time yet. You take it day by day. That’s part of the listening, part of the waiting, part of being here and now while everything else is going on,” said Machikawa, her niece.

And in Yuval Haran’s household — settled in quarters loaned to the family and shared with his mother, his sister, and his nieces, all recently freed — worries about the future are overwhelmed by the concerns of now.

In captivity, his mother made it her job to look after the girls, 4 and 8, and their mother. After more than a week of freedom, she still sleeps alongside them. Now, Haran says, the rest of the family will become their caregivers.

They will do whatever they can to help the girls and the women feel safe again. To reassure them that they can put their trust in others. To let them know that, at last, they are home.

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Israel presses on with bombarding Gaza

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Israeli warplanes struck parts of the Gaza Strip in relentless bombardment Saturday, hitting some of the dwindling bits of land that Israel had described as safe zones when telling Palestinians in the south to evacuate.

Frustration was growing with the United States after it vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire, despite wide support, and approved the emergency sale of tank ammunition worth more than $100 million to Israel.

Gaza residents “are being told to move like human pinballs — ricocheting between ever-smaller slivers of the south, without any of the basics for survival,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the council before the vote.

Gaza’s borders with Israel and Egypt are effectively sealed, leaving 2.3 million Palestinians with no option other than to seek refuge within the territory 25 miles long by about 7 miles wide.

A day after Israel confirmed it was rounding up Palestinian men for interrogation, some told The Associated Press they had been badly treated.

Osama Oula, one of a group of 10 boys and men dropped off at a hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah after being freed, said Israeli forces bound him and others with zip ties, beat them for several days and gave them little water to drink. Some were not allowed out to use the toilet. Once freed, barefoot and in their underwear, they were told to walk south, he said.

Another man, Ahmad Nimr Salman, showed his marked and swollen hands from the zip ties. He said his 17-year-old son, Amjad, was still held. “They used to ask us, ‘Are you with Hamas?’ We say ‘no,’ then they would slap us or kick us,” he said. The Israeli military had no immediate comment when asked about the alleged abuse.

With the war now in its third month, the Palestinian death toll in Gaza has surpassed 17,700, the majority women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths.

Two hospitals in central and southern Gaza received the bodies of 133 people from Israeli bombings over the past 24 hours, the Health Ministry said midday Saturday.

Israel holds the Hamas militants responsible for civilian casualties, accusing them of using civilians as human shields, and says it has made considerable efforts with evacuation orders to get civilians out of harm’s way. It says 97 Israeli soldiers have died in the ground offensive after Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 raid in Israel that killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians. About 240 hostages were taken.

Hamas said Saturday that it continued its rocket fire into Israel.

In Gaza, residents reported airstrikes and shelling, including in the southern city of Rafah near the Egyptian border — one area the Israeli army had told civilians to go. In a colorful classroom there, knee-high children’s tables were strewn with rubble.

“We now live in the Gaza Strip and are governed by the American law of the jungle. America has killed human rights,” said Rafah resident Abu Yasser al-Khatib.

In northern Gaza, Israel has been trying to secure the military’s hold, despite heavy resistance from Hamas. The military said it found weapons inside a school in Shujaiyah, a densely populated neighborhood of Gaza City, and in a separate incident, militants shot at troops from a U.N.-run school in the northern town of Beit Hanoun.

More than 2,500 Palestinians have been killed since the Dec. 1 collapse of a weeklong truce, about two-thirds of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

The truce saw hostages and Palestinian prisoners released, but more than 130 hostages are believed to remain in Gaza.

On Saturday, a kibbutz that came under attack on Oct. 7 said 25-year-old hostage Sahar Baruch had died in captivity. His captors said Baruch was killed during a failed rescue mission by Israeli forces Friday. The Israeli military only confirmed that two soldiers were seriously wounded in an attempted rescue and no hostages were freed.

With no new cease-fire in sight and humanitarian aid reaching few parts of Gaza, residents reported severe food shortages. Nine of 10 people in northern Gaza reported spending at least one full day and night without food, according to a World Food Program assessment during the truce. Two of three people in the south said the same. The WFP called the situation “alarming.”

“I am very hungry,” said Mustafa al-Najjar, sheltering in a U.N.-run school in the devastated Jabaliya refugee camp in the north. “We are living on canned food and biscuits and this is not sufficient.”

While adults can cope, “it’s extremely difficult and painful when you see your young son or daughter crying because they are hungry,” he said.

On Saturday, 100 trucks carrying unspecified aid entered Gaza through the Rafah crossing with Egypt, said Wael Abu Omar, a spokesman for the Palestinian Crossings Authority. That is still well below the daily average before the war.

Despite growing international pressure, President Joe Biden’s administration remains opposed to an open-ended cease-fire, arguing it would enable Hamas to continue posing a threat to Israel.

The administration has approved the emergency sale to Israel of nearly 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition worth more than $106 million, the State Department said Saturday. Secretary of State Antony Blinken determined that “an emergency exists that requires the immediate sale” of the munitions in the U.S. national security interest, meaning the purchase will bypass the congressional review requirement. Such determinations are rare but not unprecedented.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has argued that “a cease-fire is handing a prize to Hamas.”

Blinken continued to speak with counterparts from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and elsewhere amid open criticism of the U.S. stance.

“From now on, humanity won’t think the U.S.A. supports the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a speech on Saturday.

Protesters at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai called for a cease-fire, despite restrictions on demonstrations.

In southern Gaza, thousands were on the run after what residents called a night of heavy gunfire and shelling.

Israel has designated a narrow patch of barren southern coastline, Muwasi, as a safe zone. But Palestinians described desperately overcrowded conditions with scant shelter and no toilets.

“I am sleeping on the sand. It’s freezing,” said Soad Qarmoot, who described herself as a cancer patient forced to leave her home in the northern town of Beit Lahiya. Now her children huddle around a fire.

Imad al-Talateeny, who fled Gaza City, said Muwasi can’t accommodate the growing number of displaced families.

“I lack everything to feel (like) a human,” he said.

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Trump hits Casey DeSantis over call for out-of-state backers to ‘be a part of the caucus’ in Iowa

Former president Donald Trump seized on an apparent blunder by Casey DeSantis, accusing Florida's first lady of attempting to "commit organized voter fraud" with her invitation to out-of-state voters to participate in next month's Iowa caucuses.

Appearing on Fox News on Friday along side her husband, Florida governor and GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, Casey DeSantis claimed that “you do not have to be a resident of Iowa to be able to participate in the caucus." She encouraged “moms and grandmoms to come, from wherever it might be — North Carolina, South Carolina — and to descend upon the state of Iowa to be a part of the caucus."

Those remarks seemingly prompted the Iowa Republican Party to post online that "you must be a legal resident of Iowa and the precinct you live in and bring photo ID with you to participate in the #iacaucus!" In her own social media post later Friday, Casey DeSantis noted the residency requirement for caucus-goers but added that "there is a way for others to participate," calling on her husband's supporters to volunteer in Iowa.

That explanation did little to stop the Trump campaign from attacking the DeSantises.

“The Trump campaign strongly condemns their dirty and illegal tactics and implores all Trump supporters to be aware of the DeSantises’ openly stated plot to rig the Caucus through fraud,” read the statement, which also called on Iowa governor Kim Reynolds to reaffirm that DeSantis had been mistaken and to clarify the caucus rules.

Trump-aligned Make America Great Again PAC weighed in as well, issuing a statement on “Casey DeSantis' Embrace of Voter Fraud.”

“Casey DeSantis’ embrace of voter fraud to salvage her husband’s failing campaign is not just wrong, it risks compromising the integrity of the Iowa Caucus,” said spokesperson Karoline Leavitt in the statement.

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RNC officially bows out of hosting primary debates — for now

The Republican National Committee is pausing its participation in 2024 GOP primary debates, the organization decided Friday.

The RNC’s decision, made by a 16-member internal body, means that any forthcoming debates will be hosted by networks independently of the committee. Two outlets — ABC and CNN — have announced plans to host future debates in Iowa and New Hampshire ahead of early state voting. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis already said he will attend CNN's planned Iowa debate before next month’s caucuses.

“We have held four successful debates across the country with the most conservative partners in the history of a Republican primary. We have no RNC debates scheduled in January and any debates currently scheduled are not affiliated with the RNC,” the RNC’s Committee on Presidential Debates said in a statement. “It is now time for Republican primary voters to decide who will be our next President and candidates are free to use any forum or format to communicate to voters as they see fit.”

The first of the committee's four Republican primary debates was televised on Fox News in August. Since the first event, the committee has raised the thresholds for fundraising and polling that candidates need to qualify.

The RNC-established benchmarks have helped to winnow the field. While eight candidates participated in the August debate, only four took the stage at Wednesday’s showdown in Tuscaloosa, Alabama: DeSantis, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

The field is considerably smaller at this point than during the last seriously contested GOP primary in 2016, when going into January of that year there were still 12 candidates appearing in debates.

Former President Donald Trump has refused to participate in any of the RNC-sponsored debates. He has aggressively pressured RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel to forgo hosting debates, arguing that he has a wide lead in the polls and that the committee should be focused on preparing for the general election.

The committee has also faced pressure from Trump’s lower-polling rivals, who argued that the party should allow candidates to participate in an array of forums and debates without penalty. The candidates each signed an RNC pledge earlier this year that they would not take part in any debate that was not sanctioned by the RNC.

Without the centralized organizing mechanism the RNC provided, media companies will now be responsible for hosting future debates. It is an arrangement that comes with pitfalls, as is already apparent.

After CNN on Thursday evening announced plans to host a Jan. 21 debate at New Hampshire’s Saint Anselm College, just three days after Saint Anselm had already announced that it will be hosting a debate with ABC News on Jan. 18. Neil Levesque, the executive director of the college’s New Hampshire Institute of Politics, on Friday morning wrote on X: “We were surprised to be included on a press release by a network about a debate which we had not planned or booked.”

Reached for comment on Friday, a CNN spokesperson stood by their plans with the college saying in a statement: “We can’t speak to any miscommunication within Saint Anselm, but we are moving forward with our plans to host a debate in New Hampshire on January 21.”

Media outlets will determine qualification thresholds, not the RNC. CNN has said that candidates must poll at 10 percent in approved national and early-state surveys. ABC News has yet to announce its benchmarks.

Trump is highly unlikely to participate in any future debates, aides say.

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Harvard president says 'I don’t know how you could feel anything but regret' after antisemitism testimony

Harvard University president Claudine Gay apologized Thursday for her comments during a House Education committee hearing, during which she said that calling for genocide of Jews may or may not violate university rules "depending on the context."

Gay is among several university presidents who have faced intense criticism of their response to antisemitism on campus following Hamas’ attack on Israel in October.

In her testimony earlier this week , Gay acknowledged an “alarming” rise in antisemitism at Harvard. But, when asked whether “calling for the genocide of Jews [violates] Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment,” she responded “It can be, depending on the context,” sparking fury inside and outside the university community.

"I am sorry," Claudine Gay told Harvard’s student newspaper in an interview on Thursday. "When words amplify distress and pain, I don’t know how you could feel anything but regret."

The House Education Committee followed its hearing with an announcement on Thursday that it will investigate Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania.

“After this week’s pathetic and morally bankrupt testimony by university presidents when answering my questions, the Education and Workforce Committee is launching an official Congressional investigation with the full force of subpoena power into Penn, MIT, & Harvard and others,” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), a member of the committee who asked especially pointed questions during the presidents' testimony, said in a statement.

Gay is among many university presidents who have faced intense criticism of their response to antisemitism following Hamas’ attack on Israel in October. Axios reported on Thursday that University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill, whose testimony this week has also been widely panned, was asked to resign by the board of Penn’s Wharton business school.

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