As the U.S. mulls over a plan to withdraw troops from Iraq, its Kurdish allies have a message: Don’t forget us. 

‘This is not the time to reduce coalition forces in Iraq,’ Treefa Aziz, the Kurdistan Regional Government’s special representative to the U.S., told Fox News Digital. 

‘Extremist groups like ISIS and armed militias continue to pose a serious threat to the people of Iraq and the Kurdistan Region.’

The U.S. announced plans to shrink the U.S. ‘footprint’ in Iraq and end the current mission of coalition forces – including the Kurds – to fight ISIS, but declined to say how many of the 2,500 troops currently stationed there would remain. 

‘A decade ago, Kurdish Peshmerga forces worked alongside U.S. troops to defeat ISIS and continue to actively combat ISIS remnants to prevent a resurgence of terror today,’ Aziz said. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) ‘has been a reliable security partner for the United States and remains ready to enhance cooperation.’

But now, if Baghdad is pushing the U.S. out of Iraq, the U.S. could feel it must honor that request or risk making another enemy in the Middle East. The KRG says it would be ‘willing and able’ to host U.S. coalition forces in its territory. 

The current mission is now set to end by September 2025, with a plan to keep the number of forces on the Iraqi side to back up the 900 U.S. troops in Syria until at least 2026. 

News of a plan that could amount to a significant drawdown of U.S. forces called to mind 2019, when former President Donald Trump announced plans to pull out of Syria and the Kurds felt abandoned by a partner they had fought alongside for years – leaving them open to an attack by Turkish forces.  

Trump, at the time, left the Kurds with a warning to their longtime enemies: ‘I have told Turkey that if they do anything outside of what we would think is humane . . . they could suffer the wrath of an extremely decimated economy.’

The U.S. relationship with the Kurds – an indigenous group of daring fighters whose quest for their own formal state has been unsuccessful – spans back decades. 

When the Turks denied the U.S. passage into Iraq for the invasion in 2003, Iraqi Kurds helped the U.S. overthrow Saddam Hussein. 

The Kurds have fought with U.S. coalition forces since they reentered Iraq in 2014 to fight ISIS, and the U.S. pledged arms support and humanitarian aid. 

The group faces attacks from terror groups on all sides. And as Iran increasingly encroaches on the Iraqi government, Baghdad has the KRG in a choke-hold, officials say. 

‘There is growing concern regarding efforts to weaken the federal system in Iraq. The constitutional framework, which is designed to ensure shared governance, is disregarded,’ one Kurdish official said.

‘The continued suspension of oil exports from the Kurdistan region has placed significant economic strain. More than a year and half later, we have yet to see the resumption of these exports.’ 

The KRG has been trying to work with the Iraqis on a power-sharing agreement with no real results.

‘Some of these actions appear to align with external influences rather than the broader national interest,’ the official said, referring to Iranian influence. ‘With the assistance of our allies, we believe these issues can be resolvable through constructive dialogue and cooperation.’

The KRG is also asking the U.S. government to ‘honor its commitment’ included in the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to ‘provide the KRG with a comprehensive air defense system. 

The law required the Department of Defense to submit and implement a plan for providing the Iraqi security forces and  Kurdistan Region with air defenses by July 2024. 

‘As a steadfast U.S. ally that is regularly targeted by extremist violence, the KRG requires assurances that it will be protected from all threats, both internal and external,’ said Aziz. 

Gen. Michael Kurilla, the commander of U.S. Central Command, told the House Armed Services Committee in March that ISIS-K, which launched a horrific attack in Moscow earlier this year, ‘retains the capability and the will to attack U.S. and Western interests abroad in as little as six months with little to no warning.’

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is criticizing the Biden administration’s response to Hurricane Helene while warning the price tag for its recovery could be ‘one of the most expensive’ the U.S. has seen.

‘There were some pretty ominous projections, and so Congress acted appropriately,’ Johnson told Fox News Digital Friday evening, noting lawmakers freed up roughly $20 billion in immediate funding for FEMA in last month’s short-term federal funding bill. ‘But, so far, [President Biden, Vice President Harris and Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas] have failed in that response.’

Johnson said he was ‘alarmed and disappointed’ by Biden officials’ comments immediately after the storm suggesting FEMA was too low on funds to deal with Helene’s wrath. 

Mayorkas said ‘we are meeting the immediate needs’ of the hurricane earlier this week but said ‘FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season.’

Biden suggested earlier this week he may want Congress to return for an emergency session to pass a supplemental disaster aid bill.

‘They are scrambling to cover their egregious errors and mistakes. And there’s an effort to blame others or blame circumstances when this is just purely a lack of leadership and response,’ the speaker said. He noted Mayorkas said in July that FEMA was ‘tremendously prepared’ for weather crises this year. Fox News Digital reached out to the White House and DHS for comment.

Johnson also argued lawmakers could not act until an assessment by state and local authorities produced projections of how much needs to be allocated.

‘I don’t think those estimates could conceivably be completed until at least 30 days — until after the election, and that’s when Congress will be back in session again,’ he said.

The Republican leader is no stranger to hurricanes. He noted his native Louisiana is still dealing with the damage from Hurricane Katrina today, but his prediction was dire when asked about the cost of recovery after Helene ravaged the Southeast, killing more than 200 people.

He said it could be ‘one of the most expensive storms that the country has ever encountered.’

‘It affects at least six states — a broad swath of destruction across many, many areas — and I think that’s why it’s going to take a while to assess,’ Johnson said.

‘As soon as those numbers are ready, Congress will be prepared to act,’ Johnson vowed at another point.

‘I certainly hope the administration is working overtime right now to … help get them prepared.’

As part of immediate response efforts, Johnson has toured areas in Georgia and Florida pummeled by the storm and is poised to visit hard-hit North Carolina in the coming days, he said.

Criticism over FEMA’s response has prompted some conservatives to accuse the Biden administration of diverting disaster aid funds toward supporting illegal immigrants at the border through the Shelter and Services Program (SSP), which was allocated roughly $650 million in the last fiscal year.

Both the White House and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have vigorously denied any link between disaster aid and SSP beyond both being administered by FEMA and have said claims of any disaster relief dollars being used to support migrant housing services are false.

‘No disaster relief funding at all was used to support migrants’ housing and services. None. At. All,’ White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates said in a memo on Friday. ‘In fact, the funding for communities to support migrants is directly appropriated by Congress to CBP, and is merely administered by FEMA. The funding is in no way related to FEMA’s response and recovery efforts.’

Johnson did not give a definitive answer when asked about the concerns echoed on the right, but he accused Mayorkas of mismanaging DHS.

‘There is a lot of controversy about the nonsense that the Mayorkas Department of Homeland Security has engaged in. With their … dangerous open-borders policy and then the relocation efforts of taking illegal aliens and transporting them around the country,’ Johnson said. ‘We have been working every day, House Republicans, to stop the madness.

‘And, so, what happened is that FEMA, because it’s a division of DHS, it’s very clear that they should be focused on helping Americans recover from disasters and not straining resources that go to other programs that are catering to illegals.’

When pressed on whether DHS was able to divert congressionally appropriated funding for disaster aid into SSP, Johnson said, ‘There are different programs that have different funding.’

He pointed out that House Republicans are seeking to defund the SSP program in the current federal funding discussions for fiscal year 2025.

‘We are doing everything within our power to prevent these abuses of the law and abuses of taxpayer dollars from the White House and the Democratic Party,’ Johnson said.

Fox News Digital’s Adam Shaw contributed to this report

Saturday marks one month to go until Election Day on November 5.

As the presidential campaign enters the home stretch, it remains a margin-of-error race nationally and in the seven key battleground states likely to determine the winner of the election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump.

Both national party chairs are confident of their chances.

‘We’re playing offense right now,’ Republican National Committee chair Michael Whatley said in a Fox News Digital interview earlier this week. ‘We feel very, very good about the map.’

His counterpart, Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison told reporters on Friday that ‘the enthusiasm is palatable in our party.’

But Harrison emphasized that ‘we know that this election will come down to the margins, and we’re not taking any vote for granted.’

Since replacing President Biden atop the Democrats’ 2024 ticket in mid-July, Harris has enjoyed a wave of momentum and enjoyed a surge in fundraising. In the all-important cash dash, Harris and the DNC appear to hold a large advantage over Trump and the RNC.

And that’s helped bolster what was already a very impressive ground game organizational advantage the Democrats held over the Republicans.

‘We started laying the foundation well before 2024 by investing in our ground game,’ Harrison highlighted. ‘We have been on the ground since the earliest days of this campaign getting our message out.’

The DNC chair touted that there are ‘more than 312 coordinated offices across the battleground states,’ with ‘over 2,000 coordinated staff…doing the hard work on the ground.’

But Whatley wasn’t phased.

‘The Democrats have a ton of money. The Democrats always have a ton of money,’ Whatley said, noting that Trump was outraised in both the 2016 and 2020 elections.

The RNC chair emphasized that ‘we have the resources we need to get our message out to our voters and to every voter. I feel very, very comfortable about the campaign plan.’

And while the Harris campaign and allied groups have outspent Trump and his aligned groups in the ad wars, Whatley pointed to the former president’s ability to capture free media.

‘Donald Trump is out there talking every single day to the voters in a way that only he can. He can generate news. He can go out there and generate social media hits. He can communicate directly with the American voters like no other politician of our generation, so it’s a huge advantage for us,’ he said.

Veteran Democratic pollster Chris Anderson, who conducted the Fox News Poll along with longtime Republican pollster Daron Shaw, said with four weeks to go, ‘my expectations of plausible outcomes range from a narrow Electoral College victory for Trump to a modestly more comfortable victory for Harris.’

But while Harris holds a slight two-point edge in an average of the national surveys, Shaw noted that ‘the issue profile of this election continues to favor Trump.’

Veteran political scientist and New England College president Wayne Lesperance said that ‘this presidential contest is shaping up to be one of the closest in history, with the results likely to be slow-coming.’

And longtime Republican consultant Matt Gorman, a veteran of numerous GOP presidential campaigns, highlighted that ‘we’re slated for the tightest race since 2000.’

‘There are no more debates. There’s going to be a vacuum of news,’ he said. ‘It’s integral the Trump campaign fill that vacuum with a message that puts Harris on the defensive.’

Trump, like Biden, is a well-known commodity. 

But Harris, even after being in the spotlight for nearly two months, is still less well-defined.

‘The more voters get to know Vice President Harris, the more they like her,’ Democratic strategist and communicator Chris Moyer argued. 

‘It’s imperative that she continues to get in front of swing state voters, and she could afford to do more in the final weeks,’ he offered. ‘She should barnstorm the key states, filling up her schedule with rallies and local interviews and off-the-record stops that produce shareable clips that bounce around social media. They’ve run a nearly perfect race to this point, but many voters still want to know more about who she is, what she believes, and what she will do as president.’

With one month to go, there’s always the possibility of an October surprise that could rock the White House race.

The dockworkers strike earlier this week – which closed major ports – could have wreaked havoc on the nation’s supply chain. It could have turned into an October surprise, but the strike was suspended after just two days.

Hurricane Helene, which tore a path of destruction through the southeast, also made an impact on the presidential contest – and there were memories of how Superstorm Sandy rocked the 2012 White House race between then-President Obama and GOP nominee Mitt Romney.

And the strife in the Middle East – between Israel, Iran, and Hezbollah, also threatens to upend the election.

It’s important to note that while Election Day is a month away, in over two-dozen states, early in-person voting, absentee balloting, and voting by mail, are already underway.

President Joe Biden held the floor for an impromptu Q&A session Friday afternoon during the White House press briefing, where he claimed Vice President Kamala Harris is ‘in constant contact.’ His comments may not come across as music to the Harris campaign’s ears.

In the president’s surprise appearance, he remarked on the port strike, the latest jobs numbers, and briefly on Hurricane Helene. No reporters asked about the administration’s response to the storm, but one asked Biden to assess whether Harris has been deeply involved in policy.

‘Well, she’s, I’m in constant contact with her. She’s aware we all, we’re singing from the same song sheet. We, she helped pass all the laws that are being employed,’ said Biden.

‘Now, she was a major player in everything we’ve done, including passage of legislation which we were told we could never pass. And so she’s been, and her, her staff is interlocked with mine in terms of all the things we’re doing,’ Biden continued.

The president strongly linked Vice President Harris to the Biden administration’s record over the past 3 ½ years, despite the Harris campaign’s attempts to distance her from everything from ‘Bidenomics’ to inflation to the border crisis, since Biden announced he was ending his reelection campaign, and Harris assumed the mantle of nominee. 

Harris recently changed the Biden fiscal year 2025 plan from a capital gains tax rate of 39.6% on a salary of $1M or more to her own 28%, for example. As illegal migration across the border surged to historic levels, Harris has also insisted she was never in charge of Biden’s border policy, despite Biden personally handing her the reins at the White House in March 2021.

Axios reported that Harris would begin creating some daylight between herself and Biden in August in order to defeat Trump, as inflation raged, wars in Ukraine and the Middle East heated up, the border crisis continued, crime lingered as a concern, and other factors, including Harris’ own weak approval rating, weighed her campaign down. Other outlets and pundits on the left soon followed suit. 

But Biden has reportedly bristled about his vice president distancing herself from him behind the scenes. He has also hinted that he believes he could have won the election had he not dropped out.

During an appearance on The View last week, Biden said, ‘I never fully believed the assertions that somehow there was this overwhelming reluctance to my running again. The fact of the matter is, my polling was always in range of beating [Trump].’ Biden even joked about jumping back into the race during Friday’s surprise appearance at the White House.

He also began his first White House briefing appearance of his presidency at the same Harris was taking the stage at a campaign event, raising questions over whether it was a communications issue between him and the campaign, or he was trying to upstage her. 

Biden sparked questions on the topic before, on the anniversary of September 11, by wearing a Trump hat momentarily. The White House referred it to as a ‘unity gesture’ – after Biden spent years casting Trump as a ‘threat to democracy.’

Taiwan’s de facto U.S. ambassador is warning that China, Iran and Russia are forming an ‘alliance’ that the rest of the world should be ready for.

It comes days after Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the three autocratic countries were working together but not an ‘axis,’ as they have so often recently been called.

‘They’re working together, that’s for sure, whether that’s an axis or an alliance’ Alexander Yui, Taiwan’s representative to the U.S., told Fox News this week.

‘And as you know, it’s up to anyone to define it. But there were certainly there are symptoms, signs that they’re working together.’

During the interview, Yui also suggested that Taiwan’s government was in touch with both Vice President Harris and former President Trump’s circles to be prepared for whatever comes next in U.S. relations.

‘The whole world is watching, and I’m sure the diplomatic community here in Washington, D.C., is also watching closely and [trying] to reach out to both candidates or to the people around the candidates,’ Yui said.

Blinken penned an op-ed in Foreign Affairs Magazine on Oct. 1 that said world powers were in competition to set the stage for a ‘new age’ of international relations.

‘A small number of countries — principally Russia, with the partnership of Iran and North Korea, as well as China — are determined to alter the foundational principles of the international system. While their forms of governance, ideologies, interests, and capabilities differ, these revisionist powers all want to entrench autocratic rule at home and assert spheres of influence abroad,’ the Biden administration official wrote.

‘While these countries are not an axis, and the administration has been clear that it does not seek bloc confrontation, choices these revisionist powers are making mean we need to act decisively to prevent that outcome.’

Meanwhile, national security hawks on the right and left have warned that those four regimes were forging an unholy alliance not seen since WWII.

Both House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called them a new ‘axis of evil.’

Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., House Democrats’ former majority leader, said after President Biden’s address on Israel and Ukraine in October 2023, ‘We face a new axis of evil today. The dictators, despots, and dealers of destruction leading Russia, North Korea, Iran, and Iranian proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah stand together in their assault on democracy.’

A ‘painful’Israeli response weighs over the heads of the Iranian regime after their ballistic missile attacks on Tel Aviv on Tuesday. 

President Joe Biden has insisted that an angry Israel should not strike Iran’s nuclear sites – and should make sure its response is measured – proportional. 

‘Iran launched a war into Israel,’ said former deputy director of national intelligence Kash Patel. 

‘So to say that the Israelis who are defending themselves and our hostages shouldn’t attack sites in Iran that could kill them – especially when you’re the one who gave Iran $7 billion as a commander in chief and then allowed them to acquire nuclear materials – is wildly political.’ 

On Thursday, he revealed that he was ‘discussing’ recommending Israel target Iran’s energy facilities. 

‘That put the oil markets into a tailspin, even if we are talking to them about it. It’s not something you muse about publicly,’ said former Trump deputy national security advisor Victoria Coates. 

‘If you’ve made a decision, and you have something to announce, fine. You want to level with the American people as much as you can. These random comments are really damaging and confusing to the Iranians, because . . . they don’t have any guidelines or guardrails about what might be coming and so they might do something weird.’ 

Israel’s counterattack could come at any moment. ‘We will act. Iran will soon feel the consequences of their actions. The response will be painful,’ Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon told reporters.

Rather than its longtime goal of helping to negotiate a ceasefire, the Biden administration has now shifted its priority to containment – helping the region avoid all-out war between its two hegemonic superpowers. 

‘This is the 1930s all over again. G7 leaders – led by President Biden – are urging Israel to have a proportional and limited response against the Iranian regime,’ Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told Fox News Digital. 

‘The idea of telling Israel what targets to strike ignores reality,’ he went on. ‘Would a proportional response be launching 200 ballistic missiles from Israel into Iran, mimicking what the Iranians did to Israel?’

Former President Donald Trump has not said how Israel should respond to the attacks – which he insists never would have happened under his watch. 

Striking Iran’s nuclear facilities risks provoking all-out war on yet another front for Israel in the eyes of the Biden administration. The Trump team is caught between an anti-war mindset and a penchant for supporting Israel without conditions. It’s unclear whether they still believe the two can exist in harmony.  

Proportionality is ‘clearly not what Israel is doing,’ according to Coates. 

‘It really seems to me that after the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] left Washington in July, after that visit, some factor, or combination of factors, really changed his calculus,’ she said. 

‘He appears to have gotten home with the attitude of, ‘I want to get everything I can get done before the election.’ He’s not really listening to the White House at all, which is unfortunate.’ 

After Iranian plots to assassinate him and the hacking of his campaign, Trump did say that if he were president, he would tell Iran, ‘I’m going to blow you to smithereens’ if they harm any U.S. political figures. 

On Tuesday, Trump was asked whether he wished he had responded more forcefully after Iran fired dozens of missiles at U.S. forces stationed in Iraq in 2020, leaving many with traumatic brain injuries. 

‘So, first of all, ‘injured.’ What does ‘injured’ mean? ‘Injured’ means — you mean, because they had a headache? Because the bombs never hit the fort,’ Trump said.

‘So just so you understand, there was nobody ever tougher on Iraq,’ Trump continued, saying ‘Iraq’ instead of ‘Iran.’ ‘When you say not tough, they had no money. They had no money for Hamas. They had no money for Hezbollah. And when we hit them, they hit us. And they called us, and they said, ‘We’re going to shoot at your fort, but we’re not going to hit it.”

Defense officials have said more than 100 suffered traumatic brain injuries after the January 2020 attack.

That attack came after Trump ordered the killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani due to an uncovered Iranian plot to kill American diplomats and service members. 

Trump vowed to hit 52 Iranian sites ‘very hard’ if Iran were to carry out the plot, representing the 52 Americans held hostage in Iran for 444 days after being seized at the U.S. embassy in Tehran in November 1979.

Still, in January, Iran lobbed attacks on two Iraqi bases housing U.S. troops, including the Ain al-Assad military base, and a second facility near Erbil airport.

In March, three U.S.-led coalition forces were killed when multiple rockets hit Taji military base. 

Trump, who withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions on Tehran, has insisted to reporters this week that ‘nobody [was] ever tougher on Iran’ than he was.

‘Look at the World today — Look at the missiles flying right now in the Middle East, look at what’s happening with Russia/Ukraine, look at Inflation destroying the World. NONE OF THIS HAPPENED WHILE I WAS PRESIDENT!’ he wrote on Truth Social. 

Alexander Vindman, the former Trump National Security Council Director for European Affairs for the United States, claimed that the former president was ‘fearful’ of escalation with Iran.  

‘Iran struck first and early, during Trump’s presidency, attacking US troops. Trump consistently recoiled in fear inviting further attacks,’ he wrote on X. 

‘Fact check: In 2020, Iran fired ballistic missiles at U.S. forces in retaliation for the Soleimani assassination. 110 U.S. service members sustained traumatic brain injuries. Many administration officials remain on an Iranian hit list today,’ former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said. 

But Patel argued the Biden administration’s lifting of sanctions on Iran — and the Obama administration’s 2015 nuclear deal — is what led to the attacks in the first place. 

‘The JCPOA, which was called the ‘Iran nuclear deal’ for a reason. It was never intended to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon. It literally gave them one on a timeline,’ he said. 

‘Now I believe they have one, because for four years they haven’t stopped them or slowed them down. They’ve only been successful in politicizing national security.’

Former National Institutes of Health employee Margaret Moore, accused by Republicans of helping others shield emails from the public, invoked her Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination at a deposition before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Friday.

Moore, a former FOIA public liaison for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), also declined to answer questions from Fox News in the hallway before the committee meeting. 

The committee on Monday issued a subpoena for Moore to appear.

‘Instead of using NIH’s FOIA office to provide the transparency and accountability that the American people deserve, it appears that ‘FOIA Lady’ Margaret Moore assisted efforts to evade federal recordkeeping laws,’ said Rep. Brad Wenstrup from Ohio, chairman of the subcommittee. 

He added, ‘Her alleged scheme to help NIH officials delete COVID-19 records and use their personal emails to avoid FOIA is appalling and deserves a thorough investigation.’

Moore’s legal team has defended her right to abstain from testifying, claiming that the former NIH employee has been willing to aid the investigation via alternative means.

‘Ms. Moore has cooperated with the Select Subcommittee through counsel to find an alternative to her sitting for an interview, including expediting her own FOIA request for her own documents, which she provided to the Select Subcommittee voluntarily,’ her legal team wrote.

Moore worked for NIAID for over three decades and at one point served as a special assistant to Dr. Anthony Fauci. 

She is accused of teaching ‘tricks’ to other members of NIAID to hide records and evade FOIA requests. 

‘I learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after I am foia’d but before the search starts,’ Fauci senior advisor Dr. David Morens wrote in an email sent from his personal Gmail account in Feb. 2021. ‘Plus I deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to gmail.’

The materials sought by the COVID subcommittee would provide insight into the NIH’s relationship with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, commonly believed to have been the origin of the coronavirus in 2019.

Other emails obtained from May 2021 show the NIH general counsel warning the FOIA office ‘not release anything having to do with EcoHealth Alliance/WIV,’ with ‘WIV’ referring to the Wuhan Institute.