Category: USA Politics

Americans’ opinions regarding Israel have dramatically soured in recent years, fueled by a surge in negative views among Democrats and independents, according to a new national poll.

The results of the survey, by NBC News, come amid sharp political debates among Democrats over support for Israel two and a half years after the start of the war between Israelis and Hamas in Gaza.

Just 32% of Americans view Israel positively, with 39% seeing the Jewish state in a negative light, according to the poll, which was conducted Feb. 27-March 2. That’s a sea change from three years ago, when Americans held a positive view of Israel by a 47%-34% margin.

Much of that decline in positive views is due to Democrats and independents, according to the survey.

HEAD HERE FOR LATEST POLLS FROM FOX NEWS 

Democrats were divided in 2023, with 34% viewing Israel positively and 35% negatively. Now, the poll indicates just 13% of Democrats hold a positive view of Israel, with 57% seeing it in a negative light.

And independents went from 40%-22% positive-negative to 21%-48%.

But according to the NBC News poll, Republican views of Israel have only declined slightly, from 63%-12% positive-negative in 2023 to 54%-18% now.

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The survey, which was conducted as the U.S. and Israel began their strikes on Iran, also indicates Americans are now split on whether they are more sympathetic to Israel or the Palestinians.

Americans, who by a 45%-13% margin were more sympathetic to Israel in 2013, are now divided, with 40% more sympathetic to Israel and 39% more sympathetic to the Palestinians.

There’s been a massive switch among Democrats, from more sympathetic to Israel 34%-18% margin in 2013 to more sympathetic to Palestinians by a 67%-17% margin now.

SHARP PARTISAN DIVIDE EMERGES OVER IRAN STRIKE, TRUMP’S STRATEGY: POLLS

Independents went from more sympathetic to Israel by a 37%-10% margin 13 years ago to more sympathetic to Palestinians by a 37%-27% margin now.

But Republicans, according to the poll, stayed much more sympathetic to Israel, from a 67%-8% margin in 2013 to a 69%-13% margin now.

The poll also spotlights a generational divide, with a greater deterioration of positive views and sympathies for Israel among younger Americans.

Roughly 1,200 people were killed during the October 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel, with 251 captured.

Israel’s ensuing military campaign in Gaza over the past two and a half years has resulted in more than 72,000 people being killed, according to health officials in the Palestinian territory.

While most Republicans remain supportive of Israel, the war in Gaza has sparked sharp debates among Democrats which are currently playing out in the party’s 2026 primaries.

White House chief of staff Susie Wiles has been diagnosed with early stage breast cancer, President Donald Trump said Monday.

Trump said Wiles has an “excellent” prognosis and plans to continue working at the White House while undergoing treatment.

“Susie Wiles is an incredible Chief of Staff, a great person, and one of the strongest people I know but, unfortunately, she has been diagnosed with early stage breast cancer, and has decided to take on this challenge, IMMEDIATELY, as opposed to waiting. She has a fantastic medical team, and her prognosis is excellent! During the treatment period, she will be spending virtually full time at the White House, which makes me, as President, very happy!” the president said in a Truth Social post.

“Her Strength and her Commitment to continue doing the job she loves, and does so well, while undergoing treatment, tells you everything you need to know about her. Susie, as one of my closest and most important advisors, is tough and deeply committed to serving the American People,” the president continued.

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“She will soon be better than ever! Melania and I are with her in every way, and we look forward to working with Susie on the many big and wonderful things that are happening for the benefit of our Country!” Trump added.

The president also addressed the issue while sitting alongside of Wiles on Monday, calling her “fantastic,” and describing her as “an amazing person, an amazing fighter.” 

Trump said Wiles will “take care of it immediately as opposed to waiting,” and that “she just started actually.”

Wiles has also issued a statement about the cancer diagnosis.

“This past week, I was diagnosed with breast cancer,” Wiles said in a statement obtained by Fox News. “Nearly one in eight women in the United States will face this diagnosis. Every day, these women continue to raise their families, go to work, and serve their communities with strength and determination. I now join their ranks.

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“I am grateful to have an outstanding team of doctors who detected the cancer early and are guiding my care, and I am encouraged by a strong prognosis. I am also deeply thankful for the support and encouragement of President Trump as I undergo treatment and continue serving in my role as White House Chief of Staff,” she added.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt praised Wiles in a post on X.

“Susie Wiles epitomizes what it means to be a strong leader. She is also one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. Susie led President Trump’s historic 2024 comeback campaign and is now spearheading the most successful administration in history. I know I speak for the President and the entire White House when I say that we are all praying for Susie and rallying behind her as she prepares to fight this battle against breast cancer,” Leavitt wrote.

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White House Deputy chief of staff James Blair wrote in a post on X that Wiles has “led President Trump’s team through illegitimate indictments, domestic spying by the former administration, rigged federal prosecutions, illegal law enforcement raids, general lawfare, assassination attempts, & more. As with the rest, she will win this battle with grace.”

Lawmakers have expressed well-wishes for Wiles.

GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said in a post on X, “Barbara and I are praying for Susie Wiles as she fights early stage breast cancer Barbara and I are strong supporters of regular screenings & early detection based on Barbara’s experience 39yrs ago.” Grassley added, “Susie will be an inspiration to many in this fight.”

Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania expressed his sympathy: “I’ve just heard the news about White House Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles. My deep sympathies are with her as she navigates kicking breast cancer’s a–. Keeping her and her family in my thoughts,” Fetterman noted in a post on X.

Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida wrote, “Susie Wiles is an incredible person. She’s been a friend since 2010, when she ran my first Governor’s race. She has always been a true leader and an impressive tactician. She is one of the hardest-working people I know, and continues to be as President Trump’s Chief of Staff. Ann and I are praying for a quick and speedy recovery. Susie is a fighter. She will get through this stronger than ever!”

Fox News’ Jessica Loker contributed to this report

FIRST ON FOX: A key conservative group is accusing Democrat-run states of launching frivolous lawsuits against the Trump administration with no actual cause, and is calling on Congress to intervene.

America First Legal, a nonprofit founded by Trump advisor Stephen Miller, is urging House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, to open a probe into “lawfare” conducted by blue states that it says is part of a larger effort to block President Donald Trump’s goals.

“America First Legal Foundation (‘AFL’) has uncovered a nationwide pattern to subvert the agenda of the Trump administration: Democrat-controlled states have filed lawsuits against the Trump administration, yet in many cases, the states are unable to show any support for their alleged injuries,” the group’s legal counsel Will Scolinos wrote.

DEMOCRAT AGS SUE TRUMP FOR ‘UNCONSCIONABLE’ FREEZE ON $6.8B IN K-12 SPENDING

There are over 200 active cases challenging various Trump administration policies right now, according to Lawfare Media’s litigation tracker. Dozens of those have been launched by states like California, Colorado, Minnesota and New York.

Scolinos said AFL launched a probe into various blue states’ lawsuits — and allegedly found many of them have been filed without concrete evidence to back up the claims they make.

“AFL’s investigation reveals that these Democrat-controlled states are pleading allegations of harm for which there is no corresponding evidence to support their claims,” the letter said.

“The fundamental problem is not merely that courts are failing to rigorously enforce standing requirements, but that state attorneys general are filing complaints premised on speculative injuries that their own client agencies cannot substantiate.”

TRUMP ADMIN SEEKS TO OVERTURN FEDERAL RESTRAINING ORDER LIMITING ICE OPERATIONS IN LOS ANGELES

The letter said it “raises serious questions about whether these lawsuits are being filed in good faith or are instead designed to obstruct the lawful policies of the Trump Administration through judicial intervention.”

Four states that sued the Trump administration over its transgender policies, for example, said “they lacked records” necessary to respond to AFL’s inquiries over the basis of those lawsuits, the letter said.

Five of 20 states that joined a lawsuit over the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) getting access to federal Medicaid data to probe whether illegal immigrants were getting health benefits similarly told AFL that it could not provide records it requested, the letter said.

“Such conduct not only undermines the integrity of the federal court system but also abuses the judicial process to obstruct the lawful policies of the Trump Administration—policies that the American people voted for,” AFL said.

“Given the Committee’s jurisdiction over Title 28 and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, we request that you investigate this pattern of conduct and consider whether legislative action is warranted.”

A spokesperson for the House Judiciary Committee told Fox News Digital when reached for comment, “We appreciate this tremendous work from America First Legal. We are evaluating the report and everything is on the table.”

Libertarian-minded Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is leaving the door wide open to a possible 2028 White House run.

“We’ll decide after 2026,” Paul said in an interview that posted this weekend.

Paul ran for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, but dropped out after a distant fifth-place finish in Iowa’s Republican caucuses. He won re-election later that year in the Senate, and was re-elected again in 2022.

The senator, who for years has been a leading voice inside the GOP for fiscal conservatism, civil liberties and a non-interventionist foreign policy for America, has lamented the declining number of Republicans embracing such an agenda in a party dominated by President Donald Trump. And he’s pledged to try and bring such an agenda back.

EARLY MOVES IN 2028 WHITE HOUSE RACE ALREADY UNDERWAY 

“The most important thing to me isn’t necessarily me or what my role is, but that there is someone who’s advocating that international trade is good and makes us rich. That big is not bad,” Paul said in an interview on “Sunday Night with Chuck Todd.“

Paul argued that “the populists also want to break up big business. They want to break up Google because they’re liberal or Meta because it’s liberal. I’m not one of those people, but that is sort of the Trump-Vance populist wing.”

VANCE AMPLIFIES HIS 2026 MESSAGE WHILE LANDING KEY 2028 BACKING

Pointing to Trump and Vice President JD Vance, who is perceived as the GOP frontrunner in the race to succeed the term-limited Trump, Paul emphasized that “there needs to be a free-market wing of the Republican Party. And I want to be part of trying to ensure that still exists.”

Paul, who is a vocal GOP critic of Trump’s unprecedented use of tariffs and who voted last year against the president’s massive domestic policy measure because it added to the national debt, has been leaving the door open to a potential 2028 run in interviews since last summer.

“I think in the Republican Party, though, there needs to be someone representing that international trade is good for America, that we get richer and more prosperous in the world we trade,” he told Kentucky’s Courier Journal newspaper last July. He added that it was “too early to tell” if he would run again for the White House.

SUCCEEDING TRUMP IN 2028: SIX REPUBLICANS TO KEEP YOUR EYES ON

In a September interview with Spectrum News, he said, “We’ll see over time what happens,” regarding another presidential bid.

And Paul, in a December interview on ABC’s “This Week,” said he didn’t see Vance as the hypothetical heir to Trump and the 2028 GOP frontrunner.

While any decision from Paul regarding a 2028 White House run won’t come until after this year’s midterm elections, the senator did generate some buzz last year by making stops in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, three crucial early voting states in the Republican Party’s presidential nominating calendar.

“He’s keeping options open and looking at the landscape,” a strategist in the senator’s political orbit who asked to remain anonymous to speak more freely, told Fox News Digital.

Rhode Island Democrats have introduced a bill that would bar police departments from hiring ICE agents brought on during President Donald Trump’s second term, escalating the state’s pushback against federal immigration enforcement.

Immigration enforcement agents, including those within ICE, have come under fire in recent months from Democratic lawmakers and governors opposed to the tactics involved in Trump’s mass deportation agenda, which the president has said are necessary due to the open-border effects of the Biden era.

In Rhode Island, companion bills in the House and Senate dubbed the ICE OUT Act would amend the Law Enforcement Officers’ Due Process Accountability and Transparency Act to add a section denoting the new restriction.

CALIFORNIA DEMOCRATS PROPOSE LEGISLATION PROHIBITING CAR RENTAL COMPANIES FROM SERVING ICE AGENTS

“A law enforcement agency… shall not employ any individual who was hired as a sworn officer of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency on or after January 20, 2025,” the bill reads.

The policy would take effect in October 2026 and would not affect any officers already hired out of ICE’s ranks.

The bill’s top sponsor in the House, Democratic state Rep. Karen Alzate of Pawtucket, said during a recent hearing that the policy would help bolster public-police relationships in Rhode Island, according to the Providence Journal.

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An official with the Rhode Island Women’s Bar Association, which supports the bill, also told the paper that the alleged “relaxed hiring standards” of Trump-era DHS would not suffice in the Ocean State.

Meanwhile, Rhode Island police officials warned in recent state legislative testimony on a broader group of Democratic-led police reform bills, which include the ICE OUT Act, that officer recruitment will take a hit, according to the Fall River Reporter.

Another such bill from state Rep. Joshua Giraldo, D-Central Falls, would ban ICE from being within 200 feet of a polling place. During the session, Giraldo said that when conjecture about stationing federal immigration enforcement near polls arises, “particularly in the current climate; immigrant communities hear a message that is aimed at intimidation.”

DHS officers on duty are already banned from the city proper in the state capital under a January executive order from Providence Mayor Brett Smiley that makes parking lots, schools, parks and government buildings restricted areas.

“[Providence] has the responsibility to manage such property in a manner that ensures public trust, access and delivery of essential city services for all residents,” the mayor’s order read in part.

Fox News Digital reached out to Gov. Dan McKee for indications as to whether he would sign the ICE OUT Act if it reaches his desk, and to DHS for comment.

President Donald Trump lambasted federal Judge James Boasberg in a Sunday night Truth Social post, accusing him of exhibiting bias against the GOP and his administration, and asserting that he should be yanked from working on any cases pertaining to them.

In the post, the president described Boasberg as “a Wacky, Nasty, Crooked, and totally Out of Control Judge … who suffers from the highest level of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), and has been ‘after’ my people, and me, for years.”

“In case after case, Boasberg has displayed open, flagrant, and extreme partisan bias and contempt against Republicans and the Trump Administration,” the president claimed.

BOASBERG BLOCKS SUBPOENAS AGAINST FED CHAIR JEROME POWELL

“To preserve the integrity of the Judiciary, he should be removed from all cases pertaining to us, and suffer serious disciplinary action, as should numerous other Corrupt Judges that, unfortunately, our Country has had to endure!” the president said in the post.

“What Boasberg has done on the ‘Too Late’ Powell case, and many others, has little to do with the Law, and everything to do with Politics,” the president said, referring to Jerome Powell, the chair of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System.

Boasberg is the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

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“He is exactly what Judges should not be! Boasberg would do better to focus on Justice and Fairness, not his own, and the Democrats’, Political Agenda, which has become LEGENDARY!” Trump asserted.

Fox News Digital reached out to Boasberg’s chambers but was told that the judge had no comment.

The president has been a repeated and vociferous Boasberg critic.

He launched the Sunday broadside against Boasberg after the judge’s move last week in a case regarding subpoenas that the government served on the Federal Reserve Board.

“The case thus asks: Did prosecutors issue those subpoenas for a proper purpose? The Court finds that they did not. There is abundant evidence that the subpoenas’ dominant (if not sole) purpose is to harass and pressure Powell either to yield to the President or to resign and make way for a Fed Chair who will,” the opinion declared.

AMERICANS MAY HAVE TO PAY TO BRING BACK ALLEGED MEMBERS OF ‘FOREIGN TERRORIST CARTEL’ TO US

“On the other side of the scale, the Government has offered no evidence whatsoever that Powell committed any crime other than displeasing the President. The Court must thus conclude that the asserted justifications for these subpoenas are mere pretexts. It will therefore grant the Board’s Motion to Quash,” the opinion noted.

EXCLUSIVE: Google’s AI chatbot Gemini flagged several Republicans — but no Democrats — when asked to identify senators who have made statements that violate its hate speech policies, author Wynton Hall told Fox News Digital. It’s just one example of what the author believes is a deeply ingrained bias against conservatives found in artificial intelligence tools. 

Hall used the “deep research” function on Google’s Gemini Pro. Fox News Digital reviewed a screen recording of Hall’s prompt and findings. Google did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

One of the Republicans flagged by Gemini in Hall’s research, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, of Tennessee, was listed for characterizing “transgender identity as a harmful cultural ‘influence’ and has used ‘woke’ as a derogatory slur against protected groups.” Another, Arkansas’ Sen. Tom Cotton, was cited for cosponsoring legislation “to exclude transgender students from sports.”

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The finding stood out against a backdrop of inflammatory rhetoric from some Democrats in recent years.

In 2023, Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., warned that then-candidate Donald Trump was “destructive to our democracy” and needed to be “eliminated.” However, he quickly apologized for his comments, claiming that it was a “poor choice of words.” 

Last year, Texas Democratic House candidate Rep. Jolanda Jones made a throat-slashing gesture while rejecting former first lady Michelle Obama’s famous mantra, “when they go low, we go high,” on CNN’s “Outfront.”

“If you hit me in my face, I’m not going to punch you back in your face. I’m going to go across your neck,” Jones said while making a slashing motion across her neck. “We can go back-and-forth, fighting each other’s faces. You’ve got to hit hard enough where they won’t come back,” she added. 

But for Hall, Gemini’s seemingly partisan answer underscored the central argument of his new book, “Code Red: The Left, The Right, China and the Race to Control AI.” In it, he argues that AI systems marketed as neutral are increasingly shaped by the ideological assumptions of the people and institutions who create them, which are far from neutral. 

His book starts out with a clear example. 

Less than 10 weeks before the 2024 election, a series of viral videos appeared to expose a strange double standard in American homes. When users asked Amazon’s Alexa why they should vote for Kamala Harris, the device delivered a polished endorsement. When asked why they should vote for Donald Trump, Alexa declined, citing a policy of neutrality.

“I cannot provide content that promotes a specific political party or a specific candidate,” Alexa said.

Hall says the concern extends beyond a single Gemini output.

“AI’s Silicon Valley architects lean left politically, and their lopsided political donations to Democrats underscore their ideological aims,” Hall told Fox News Digital.

To Hall, episodes like this show how AI can shape political perceptions while maintaining the appearance of objectivity. “Through algorithm throttling and shadow bans, Big Tech centralized control over which voices soar and sink across social networks. Now AI has put Big Tech’s consolidating control on steroids,” he writes.

WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE?

He argues that this imbalance reflects the politics of the people building the systems. The billionaires driving the AI revolution, he says, invest their money and political energy where their values lie. As PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel once put it, “Silicon Valley is a one-party state.”

The money appears to bear that out. According to Hall, 85% of political donations from employees at Apple, Meta, Amazon and Google go to Democrats. 

After Trump’s 2024 victory, major tech companies made the customary $1 million inauguration donations. But Hall argues those gestures did little to hide where Silicon Valley’s loyalties had long been. Aside from Elon Musk, he says, most of Big Tech’s leading figures remained firmly on the left.

Hall points to Democratic fundraising in 2024 as evidence of Silicon Valley’s political influence, citing major support from figures including Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates, Reid Hoffman and Laurene Powell Jobs.

But Hall argues the bigger issue is not campaign money. 

It is the growing influence of AI systems that many people assume are neutral and objective. He warns that users often trust those answers too much, even when they may be biased.

To Hall, this bias is reinforced by the relationship between tech companies and legacy media. He argues AI systems are trained on enormous amounts of content from outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic and Reuters, while conservative outlets are largely excluded.

The result, he says, is a closed loop: AI absorbs the assumptions of legacy media and repackages them as objective truth. Hall argues conservatives must respond by demanding transparency in training data and ending taxpayer-funded contracts for vendors whose systems show political bias.

“Whoever wins the AI fairness battle,” Hall concludes, “will shape the minds and political attitudes of future generations. The time to act is now.”

President Donald Trump said Sunday the United States is “locked and loaded” to destroy Iran’s Kharg Island oil export hub, but has chosen not to do so.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump referenced previous U.S. strikes on the island, which he described as the country’s “crown jewel,” leaving only the section that handles oil pipelines intact.

“We can do that on five minutes’ notice. We have it all locked and loaded and ready to go if we want to do it,” he said. “We chose not to do it. I chose not to do it again. We’ll see what happens.”

Trump suggested the threat is intended to pressure Iran into talks, saying Tehran wants to “negotiate badly” but is not yet ready to make the concessions the United States expects.

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“I don’t think they’re ready to do what they have to do. But I think they will be at some point,” he told reporters.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in an interview with CBS News on Sunday that his country has not asked for a ceasefire or negotiations in the now three-week conflict.

“We are ready to defend ourselves as long as it takes,” Araghchi explained. “And this is what we have done so far, and we continue to do that until President Trump comes to the point that this is an illegal war with no victory.”

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U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) struck Kharg Island on Friday in a large-scale precision attack as part of Operation Epic Fury.

The strikes hit more than 90 military targets, including naval mine storage facilities and missile bunkers, while leaving the island’s oil infrastructure intact, according to CENTCOM.

Axios reported that Trump has discussed the possibility of seizing Kharg outright, which one U.S. official reportedly said would amount to “an economic knockout of the regime” by effectively cutting off a key source of Iran’s oil revenue.

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Seizing the island could require deploying U.S. troops and risk Iranian retaliatory strikes on oil infrastructure across the Gulf, especially in Saudi Arabia.

“There are big risks. There are big rewards. The president isn’t there yet and we’re not saying he will be,” the official told Axios.

Bobby Pulido, a Latin Grammy winner and music star, once said he would pursue Mexican citizenship and described himself as a “winter Texan” for spending much of the year south of the U.S. border, drawing scrutiny for his time spent internationally as he pursues a seat in Congress.

“It gets hot here, bro. Like real hot — like real hot. I’m a summer Mexican,” Pulido told interviewers in 2023.

“It sounds better: winter Texan. It sounds better to say, ‘I’m a winter Texan.’”

His comments, which Pulido says he made in jest, run counter to statements he made to NBC News earlier this month.

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“I live in Texas. We’ve always lived in Texas. Since COVID, really — that’s just not true,” Pulido said, responding to accusations that he only sometimes lived in the district he is running to represent.

Pulido is best known for his Tejano and Mexican–Spanish folk-style songs, such as “Desvelado” and “Se Murió de Amor,” and has received five nominations for a Latin Grammy Award.

He won Best Tejano Album in 2022 and 2025.

Pulido’s career still takes him south of the border on a regular basis, leading him to tell local newspapers in Mexico that he was considering dual citizenship in 2015.

“I’m going to be Mexican because I want the same Mexican passport you have,” Pulido told El Norte, a Mexican outlet.

His last five concerts have been in Mexico, according to his tour website.

Pulido made headlines last fall when he announced a congressional bid in one of the country’s most competitive districts. Shortly afterward, he also drew scrutiny for a resurfaced history of posting links to explicit websites on his personal X account — as well as for a social media post of what appeared to be him urinating on President Donald Trump’s Hollywood Walk of Fame star.

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He has also received backlash over his past vulgar attacks against Trump, including posting the Spanish translation of “f— your mother.”

“I’d like to give you the biggest ‘f— you” you piece of s—, a–hole, d— head, son of a bit–,” Pulido said to Trump in another post. 

Despite those controversies, Pulido recently captured the Democratic nomination to run in Texas’ 15th Congressional District — a seat currently held by Rep. Monica De La Cruz, R-Texas.

De La Cruz, a two-term incumbent, needled Pulido over his time spent in Mexico through a post to X. She quipped that Pulido “only belongs at quinceañeras,” referring to the lavish, coming-of-age parties traditionally thrown for girls turning 15 in Latin cultures.

“Don’t threaten me with a good time,” Pulido shot back.

His campaign said Pulido asked local quinceañeras if he could attend them, drawing nearly 1,000 invites to parties in the district.

Pulido’s ties to Mexico extend beyond his music career.

A person familiar with Pulido’s background said his wife still lives in Mexico along with children from previous marriages. He also owns a house there and told interviewers in 2025 that he goes to Mexico for healthcare.

“We live on the border. My wife and I have a house in Mexico. So, we travel there, and we spend time over there. And I’ve had a pretty unique perspective of experiencing healthcare over there and healthcare here,” Pulido said.

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His campaign confirmed that Pulido does not have dual citizenship.

“Bobby has one citizenship — American, and he’s proud of it. And, frankly, there’s nothing wrong with people having ties to family and heritage across borders,” Pulido’s spokesperson told Fox News Digital.

Rep. Jill Tokuda, D-Hawaii, said she had no hesitations about remaining in her seat at the 2026 State of the Union when President Donald Trump challenged lawmakers to stand if they agreed the U.S. government should prioritize its citizens’ safety over that of illegal aliens.

Like every single one of her Democratic colleagues, Tokuda, a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, stayed put as Republicans stood for over a minute and a half, applauding in a show of support for the president’s statement.

A voter approached Tokuda about the moment two weeks later, pressing her on why she didn’t stand.

“The statement was: ‘The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.’ I noticed you did not stand,” a voter who identified herself as Arline said.

TRUMP SHAMES DEMOCRATS IN VIRAL STATE OF THE UNION CHALLENGE ON MIGRANT CRIME: ‘FIRST DUTY’

“I’d like to know your reasoning why you did not stand.”

After a brief smattering of applause from the audience, Tokuda thanked Arline for the question, noting that lawmakers don’t always get easy questions at town hall events.

“But that decision was easy for me,” Tokuda said.

She said her reaction was based on her interpretation of Trump’s challenge, stating that she believed the president had no intention of fielding the support for the statement.

“If it had been a genuine question, a true question — not a ploy to be able to put on some commercial later on to say ‘look at all those Democrats who don’t believe in protecting Americans’ — I absolutely would have stood,” Tokuda said.

DEMOCRAT SLAMMED FOR STAYING SEATED DURING TRUMP SPEECH HONORING VICTIMS’ FAMILIES

Tokuda did not reference the moment in her immediate reactions to the State of the Union.

Instead, on her website, she focused on Trump’s tariffs.

“If you consider tariffs and the hundreds of billions of dollars that tariffs have taxed on everyday Americans … the hundreds of billions of dollars he’s collecting in tariffs have been a tax on everyday people,” Tokuda said, highlighting comments made to a local outlet.

In the past, Tokuda has criticized Trump’s immigration crackdown efforts for hitting close to home.

“We’re all one degree of separation from knowing somebody who is right now living in fear, worried that they could be picked up off the streets, or they could be deported, even if they have no grounds to,” Tokuda told the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) last year.

DEMOCRATS’ BIG MISFIRE AT STATE OF THE UNION HAS GOP STRATEGISTS SALIVATING: ‘HUGE MOMENT’

“There [are] too many looking over their shoulder and fearing for their lives right now.”

Tokuda’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.