An emotional Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., attempted to blame critics – and even President Donald Trump’s own off-the-cuff agility – for the backlash she received for her response to a question at the recent Munich Security Conference on American defense of Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.

‘If you think I don’t understand foreign policy, because of out of hours of discourse about international affairs, I pause to think about one of the most sensitive geopolitical issues that currently exist on earth, I’m afraid the issue is not my understanding, but perhaps the problem is you’ve gotten adjusted to a president that never thinks before he speaks,’ a raspy-voiced Ocasio-Cortez said on a late-night Instagram Live video circulating on social media.

The leftist congresswoman’s Munich stumbling on Friday, Feb. 13, started the critical firestorm and has conservatives questioning her fitness for a potential 2028 Democrat presidential primary campaign.

‘Um, you know, I think that this is such a, you know, I think that this is a um — this is, of course, a, um, very long-standing, um, policy of the United States,’ she said with pause when asked about America defending Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion to enforce its One China Policy over the island-nation.

‘And I think what we are hoping for is that we want to make sure that we never get to that point, and we want to make sure that we are moving in all of our economic, research and our global positions to avoid any such confrontation and for that question to even arise.’

Vice President JD Vance, a potential 2028 presidential campaign opponent in a prospective general election matchup, weighed in multiple times this week to Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks.

‘I think it’s a person who doesn’t know what she actually thinks, and I’ve seen this way too much in Washington with politicians: Where they’re given lines and, when you ask them to go outside the lines they were given, they completely fall apart,’ Vance told Fox News’ ‘The Story With Martha MacCallum’ in an in-studio interview earlier this week.

‘That was embarrassing,’ he continued. ‘If I had given that answer I would say, ‘You know what? Maybe you ought to go read a book about China and Taiwan before I go out on the world stage again.’ I hope that Congresswoman Cortez has the same humility. I’m skeptical.’

President Donald Trump called on Netflix to fire board member Susan Rice immediately or ‘pay the consequences.’

Trump’s comments followed remarks Rice made Thursday on the ‘Stay Tuned with Preet’ podcast, hosted by former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. 

During the interview, Rice warned that corporations she said had ‘taken a knee’ to Republican pressure should not expect forgiveness from Democrats if they return to power.

‘This is not going to be an instance of forgive and forget. The damage that these people are doing is too severe to the American people and our national interest,’ Rice said.

It was not immediately clear what specific actions the Trump administration might pursue.

Netflix did not immediately respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment.

Rice made the remarks while discussing what she described as corporate retreats from diversity and governance commitments amid pressure from Republican lawmakers.

‘If these corporations think that the Democrats, when they come back into power, are going to, you know, play by the old rules, and, you know, say, ‘Oh, never mind. We’ll forgive you for all the people you fired, all the policies and principles you’ve violated, all, you know, the laws you’ve skirted.’ I think they’ve got another thing coming,’ Rice added.

Rice, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, predicted an ‘accountability agenda’ awaited those entities, forecasting an electoral shift in the upcoming midterm elections. 

She also pointed to waning public approval for Trump’s economic and immigration policies in making her case.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has tightened control over Hezbollah in the Middle East amid looming prospects of potential U.S. strikes, according to reports.

According to the Jerusalem Post, the tactical shift comes as Hezbollah and Iran prepare for military confrontation in the region, with analysts warning that if Washington specifically strikes the regime, Hezbollah is ready to be ‘activated.’

‘If the regime in Tehran feels threatened, the likelihood of unleashing Hezbollah against Israel and U.S. regional assets increases substantially,’ Ross Harrison, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, told Fox News Digital.

‘Hezbollah would not be activated right away, unless the attack immediately targets the leadership of the Islamic Republic. But as part of a graduated response, Hezbollah will likely be seen as an asset,’ he said.

‘If it faces an existential risk, then Iran may throw caution to the wind and try to deploy Hezbollah to the maximum,’ Harrison explained.

President Donald Trump previously gave Iran a deadline of 10 to 15 days to respond to a deal, raising questions about what steps Washington could take if Tehran fails to comply.

A new round of talks is now scheduled for Thursday in Geneva and expected to focus on Iran’s nuclear program, including uranium enrichment levels and sanctions relief.

‘The decision-making circle in the White House is very small regarding Iran, with the president keeping a close hand on it all,’ Harrison explained.

He added that any decision to directly target the Iranian regime would likely rest within Trump’s inner circle of advisers.

‘Normally there is input from the National Security Council and the wider intelligence community,’ Harrison said. ‘Since the decision-making process in the White House is opaque, it is hard to know how much of this is getting through.’

‘If the U.S. is engaging with the Saudis and Emiratis, they are getting warnings about the possibility of this war spreading to the broader region, which would be deleterious to the U.S. and its allies,’ he added.

Harrirson also warned that there was ‘potential for attacks to spread across the region, to Israel through direct Iranian ballistic attacks and via Hezbollah, and to the Gulf Arab states through Iran directly and possibly via the Houthis from Yemen.’

Regional media reports also suggest Iran’s ties with Hezbollah are strengthening. Sources told Al Arabiya and Al Hadath that IRGC officers have been rebuilding Hezbollah’s military infrastructure and managing strategic war plans.

The coordination follows changes within Hezbollah’s leadership, Harrison explained.

‘Since the killing by Israel of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah last year, ties and operational coordination have to some degree been reestablished,’ he said.

‘The IRGC has supported Hezbollah in Lebanon for decades,’ he said, adding that efforts to reestablish ties appear to be occurring ‘particularly in light of the destruction of Iran’s nuclear sites last June.’

‘Iran is trying to resurrect lost assets, such as its missile program and its connections to Hezbollah,’ Harrison said.

‘Hezbollah has been seen for decades by Iran as a deterrence asset against an Israeli or American attack. Since Hezbollah has its own interests, connected to but separate from Iran, whether its leadership will go all the way for Tehran is unknown,’ he concluded.

The developments surrounding Hezbollah and the IRGC came as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has appointed close ally Ali Larijani as the country’s de facto leader, according to reports.

Fox News Digital has reached out to the White House for comment.

A government shutdown, big or small, is usually a front-and-center issue for lawmakers — but the most recent partial closure could be put on the back burner as Congress returns to several issues in Washington.

Senate Democrats and the White House are still at odds over funding the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as the shutdown dragged into its 10th day. Neither side is budging, with the most recent concrete action coming early last week.

Trump, who proved pivotal in striking a funding truce with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., in January, was not directly involved in recent negotiations. 

Trump has not had any ‘direct conversations or correspondence’ with congressional Democrats recently, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, noting that the White House and its representatives have been handling the dialogue.

‘But, of course, Democrats are the reason that the Department of Homeland Security is currently shut down,’ she said. ‘They have chosen to act against the American people for political reasons.’ 

Senate Democrats offered a counter to the White House’s own counterproposal, which quickly was rejected as ‘unserious’ by Leavitt. It’s a peculiar instance, given that this is the third shutdown during Trump’s second term, and neither side appears to be in a particular rush to end it.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told Fox News Digital that there’s ‘some room for give and take’ in the negotiations, but remained firm in the GOP’s positioning against requiring Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from getting judicial warrants, unmasking or other reforms sought by Democrats that could increase risks for agents in the field.  

‘I felt like, you know, the last offer the White House put out there was a really — it was a good faith one, and it was clear to me that they’re attempting, in every way, to try and land this thing so we can get DHS funded,’ Thune said. 

Funding the agency will be a top priority for the upper chamber, but they’ll be delayed because of winter storms descending on the East Coast. The weather has caused the Senate to delay a vote on the original DHS spending bill until Tuesday night, ahead of Trump’s State of the Union address.

There are other issues that could get in the way of hashing out a deal, including a possible conflict with Iran and Trump’s desire to move ahead with tariffs without congressional approval.

Trump told reporters Friday that he was ‘considering’ a limited military strike against Iran, which already has riled up some in Congress, who are demanding that lawmakers get a say on whether the U.S. strikes.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said in a statement that he has a war powers resolution to block an attack on Iran filed and ready, and challenged his colleagues to vote against it.

‘If some of my colleagues support war, then they should have the guts to vote for the war and to be held accountable by their constituents, rather than hiding under their desks,’ Kaine said.

On the heels of the Supreme Court’s ruling to torpedo his sweeping duties, Trump is considering bypassing Congress to move ahead with another set of global 10% tariffs.

That comes as some Republicans are quietly celebrating the end of the duties, and others are open to working with the administration on a path forward for trade policy.

On tariffs, a Republican aide told Fox News that the GOP was ‘waiting to see what POTUS does next.’

‘The State of the Union should be interesting,’ they said.

The race to the moon is on — again. But the strategic competition playing out today is much bigger than our race with the Soviet Union in 1969. If China reaches the moon ahead of the United States and establishes a permanent, manned presence — it will not treat the lunar surface as a peaceful scientific outpost, but as an extension of its campaign to surpass America, intimidate our allies and compromise our systems that keep the American homeland secure. This is no longer something of science fiction.

President Donald Trump understands this threat, signing the Executive Order on Ensuring American Space Superiority, which made it abundantly clear that he wants the United States to lead this new space race — returning Americans back to the moon by 2028 and building a permanent manned presence on the lunar surface.

Let me be clear, the fear that China could somehow ‘claim’ the moon by arriving first misunderstands both geography and international reality. Two of the main locations for settlement are the Shackleton Crater, which stretches about the distance from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, Maryland, and the South Pole–Aitken Basin, which is roughly the distance from Washington, D.C., to Denver, Colo. The moon is vast.

The strategic concern and question for Congress is not who arrives ‘next,’ but who establishes a durable, scalable and defensible presence on the lunar surface. China understands this question and is well on their way to develop a reusable launch system to control this terrain and its abundant critical resources within a decade. The U.S. needs to recognize this threat and address it with the urgency it demands.

The Obama-Biden administration’s Space Launch System (SLS), which is currently being used for the Artemis missions, utilizes 1980s architecture developed from the shuttle missions and has been highly criticized by NASA’s former inspector general during the Biden administration who calculated the cost of a single SLS launch was $4.2 billion, with nearly $64 billion already spent despite only one operational flight since 2022. This is an enormous price tag with limited payload capacity and a launch cadence measured in years rather than months.

Seeing NASA’s struggles with the SLS, Chinese state-backed firms are now mimicking architectures that support fully reusable, self-landing heavy-lift rockets modeled on SpaceX’s Starship. As seen on Feb. 11, China’s Long March 10 booster (developed in just eight years) successfully guided itself to a powered, vertical ocean splashdown. This is an unmistakable signal that China is quickly catching up to us and recognizes that a nation that can launch more often and move more mass will dominate.

The critical national security question is this: What happens if the U.S. does not pivot quickly toward prioritizing cost, capacity and cadence, after Artemis III?

First, we will likely see the formation of a permanent Chinese, manned presence expanding Beijing’s intelligence collection and space awareness across the Earth–moon system helping China monitor U.S. and allied activity. Beijing has invested in capabilities designed to ‘degrade, damage, or destroy’ U.S. satellites — the backbone of American command-and-control and targeting. This has direct homeland security implications.

Trump is right to push a layered, space-enabled missile defense, known as the ‘Golden Dome,’ but if the Chinese control the ultimate high ground, it can build a moon-based counter-command designed to blind, spoof, disrupt or hold at risk the space layer that makes that shield possible. Put simply: you cannot defend the homeland from above if Beijing can contest the space above you. The United States should establish that capability first — call it the ‘Donald J. Trump Moon Base’ and lock in the operational advantage ahead of the Chinese.

Second, if China is left untouched on the lunar surface, it would surely increase the risk of espionage, sabotage and gray-zone interference against our own forthcoming lunar infrastructure.

Seeing NASA’s struggles with the SLS, Chinese state-backed firms are now mimicking architectures that support fully reusable, self-landing heavy-lift rockets modeled on SpaceX’s Starship.

Finally, Beijing will seek to turn its presence into control over resources on the lunar surface. It is critical for us to get ahead of the Chinese on the extraction of these critical minerals, which China already has a stronghold of on Earth. We need these critical minerals for national defense, economic prosperity, and, frankly, our sovereignty.

The moon is the ultimate high ground; we cannot afford to be first on Earth but second in space. If China gets to the moon, fine, but if it frequently returns, they will turn their presence into control — over the ‘Golden Dome,’ over our critical infrastructure on Earth and in low Earth orbit, and over the resources the moon provides — America will be permanently exposed to its greatest adversary.

To beat China, Congress should demand accountability for delays and cost overruns, stop blindly giving subsidies to outdated systems, and pivot to reusability. Our continued homeland security depends on it. Let’s put America first and prioritize cost, capacity and cadence.