Jury selection is expected to wrap up Wednesday in the federal trial of Ryan Routh, the 59-year-old North Carolina man accused of attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump last year. 

The court is working through its third and final panel of prospective jurors, aiming to seat 12 jurors and four alternates before opening statements begin Thursday morning.

By the end of Tuesday, the court had already dismissed more than 70 of the initial 180 prospective jurors, many citing strong opinions about Trump, connections to law enforcement, or concerns about impartiality in a highly politicized case. 

All eyes will be on how quickly the court can seat a full panel and whether Routh continues to test the boundaries of self-representation. Trump-appointee Judge Aileen Cannon, who is presiding over the case, repeatedly clashed with the defendant as she struck down a list of off-topic and politically charged questions Routh posed to prospective jurors during selection.

Routh inquired how potential jurors felt about Ukraine and the war in Gaza and threw in an oddball question about how they might react to finding a turtle in the road, prompting Cannon to remind him that ‘pro se’ status does not excuse him from courtroom procedure. His adult children were present in court, with one son, Oran, listed as a character witness despite currently being jailed on unrelated charges.

Routh also attempted to strike a potential juror who revealed he had once had breakfast with the president and first lady while interviewing for a golf course superintendent job 25 years ago. The man told the court he respected Trump and found him ‘very nice,’ but insisted he could still be fair. Cannon denied Routh’s request, noting the decades-old interaction did not disqualify him.

Tuesday also saw Cannon remove 23 jurors from a third pool of 60, leaving a pool of roughly 110 prospective jurors still under consideration. Among those dismissed earlier were a man who said he was present at Routh’s arrest, another who received a voicemail from him two days before, and a woman who stood up during questioning to declare, ‘I am MAGA… This is our president,’ before admitting she could not presume Routh’s innocence.

Routh himself moved to have a juror excused for racist comments in a questionnaire, which the court granted.

Routh has pleaded not guilty to federal charges of attempting to assassinate a major presidential candidate and assaulting a federal officer. Prosecutors say he was armed with an AK-style rifle when Secret Service agents stopped him near Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach in September 2024.

Opening statements are tentatively scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 11, if the panel is seated on time.

The trial is expected to last several weeks, but Cannon urged both sides to keep proceedings efficient.

President Donald Trump called for Decarlos Brown Jr. to face the death penalty for the alleged murder of Iryna Zarutska on Wednesday.

Trump made the statement on social media, saying the trial for suspect Decarlos Brown Jr. should be ‘quick.’ 

‘The ANIMAL who so violently killed the beautiful young lady from Ukraine, who came to America searching for peace and safety, should be given a ‘Quick’ (there is no doubt!) Trial, and only awarded THE DEATH PENALTY,’ Trump posted on Truth Social. ‘There can be no other option!’

Zarutska’s slaying has brought about heavy criticism of Democrats, who critics accuse of adopting soft-on-crime laws that allow violent criminals to roam the streets. Trump argued Monday that the victim’s ‘blood is on the hands of the Democrats who refuse to put bad people in jail.’

Trump also placed blame for Zarutska’s killing on former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who is now running for the Senate in battleground North Carolina in a crucial 2026 showdown that may determine if Republicans keep control of the chamber.

The Charlotte killing came amid Trump’s focus this summer on spotlighting horrific crimes in Democrat-controlled cities as he moves federal law enforcement into urban areas.

Brown, who is Black, was arrested soon after the stabbing and charged with first-degree murder. On Tuesday, the Department of Justice charged Brown with one count of committing an act causing death on a mass transportation system.

Records obtained by Fox News Digital showed that Brown has a history of arrests going back more than a decade, including convictions for felony larceny and felony breaking and entering in 2013, and a 2015 conviction for robbery with a dangerous weapon that sent him to prison for more than six years. He was released in 2020 but remained on parole until 2021, and subsequent charges against him included communicating threats and misuse of the 911 system earlier this year.

On Monday, Trump noted other recent killings in the U.S., saying that actions, like his administration’s push to end cashless bail, must be taken.

‘This cashless bail started a wave in our country where a killer kills somebody and is out on the street by the afternoon and, in many cases, going out and killing again, cashless bail,’ Trump said.

Fox News’ Paul Steinhauser and Stephen Sorace contributed to this report

Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., is traveling to Israel following the Jewish state’s strike in Qatar, a strike he argued was part of Israel’s ‘singular purpose’ to eradicate Hamas.

The Israel Defense Force (IDF) announced the strike, which was intended to target senior-level leadership in Hamas, on Tuesday. However, the attack took place over 1,300 miles away in Doha, Qatar.

The Qatari government has been a key player at the negotiation table in the quest for a ceasefire and return of hostages in the ongoing conflict between Israel and the terrorist organization Hamas following the group’s brutal attack on Oct. 7, 2023. Israel’s targets were top negotiators in Hamas’ political bureau, who were mulling the latest U.S. ceasefire proposal.

So far, Qatari officials have condemned the strike, and the White House has taken a rare step against Israel in the aftermath.

Daines, who is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, likened Hamas to ‘a cancer’ that Israel needed to eradicate. He put the Jewish state’s situation into perspective of, if the U.S. were in Israel’s position and ‘1,200 innocent Americans [were] slaughtered by terrorists 40 miles from Washington, D.C.,’ then the ‘United States would do everything within its power to eradicate the threat.’

‘The Israelis, as we’ve seen, whether it’s with Iran or Hezbollah, sometimes doesn’t matter where these leaders are,’ he told Fox News Digital. ‘They’re going to come after them, not unlike the United States did when we went after Usama bin Laden in Pakistan. We didn’t ask Pakistan for permission.’

Following the attack, President Donald Trump told reporters that he was ‘not thrilled’ about the situation.

‘I was very unhappy about it, very unhappy about every aspect. And we got to get the hostages back, but I was very unhappy about the way that went down,’ Trump said.

The Qatari Foreign Ministry condemned the attack and panned Israel’s move as a ‘criminal attack’ that constituted ‘a flagrant violation of all international laws and norms and a serious threat to the security and safety of Qataris and residents of Qatar.’

Daines’ plan to head to the Jewish state came before the strike and was initially meant to celebrate the excavation of ancient stone steps and a pathway, known as the Pilgrimage Road, which Jesus is believed to have walked, leading from the Pool of Siloam to the Temple Mount.

The lawmaker previously went to Israel to commemorate progress of the ongoing archaeological dig in 2023, a couple of months before Hamas’ blitz on Israel.

Now, his planned trip, where Secretary of State Marco Rubio and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee are expected to attend, is likely to take a different tenor.

Daines said he had just spoken with the Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. on Monday and hoped that his schedule could line up for a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He also noted that he had yet to see an assessment of the strike, which hit a residential complex in Doha.

When asked if he was worried that the strike could derail ceasefire talks, Daines noted that he had appreciated Qatar’s cooperation and pointed out the U.S. has its largest military base in the Middle East there. But, he added that ‘Hamas, clearly, is trying to evade the reach of the Israeli government.’

‘And as we say, ‘Sometimes you can run, but you can’t hide,’ and Israel had to make a decision, knowing that, like they did with Iran, where they took out military leadership, they took out their nuclear scientists, because they could not allow Iran to get into their bomb,’ Daines said.

‘Similarly, with Hamas, they would have to take out their command and control structure, leadership. And they have a singular mission, and Israel will do what it needs to do to protect herself,’ he continued.

Fox News Digital reached out to the State Department for comment but did not immediately hear back. 

Fox News’ Greg Norman contributed to this report. 

It was reckless to allow former President Joe Biden to run for re-election last year, former Vice President Kamala Harris admitted in her new book, ‘107 Days.’

This time last year, Harris was in the thick of her short-lived presidential campaign. With some distance from Washington, D.C., and in retrospect, Harris doesn’t hold back in the first preview of her new book that is set to hit shelves later this month. 

”It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.’ We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized. Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness. The stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition. It should have been more than a personal decision,’ Harris said in the excerpt released by The Atlantic on Wednesday morning. 

While Harris publicly defended Biden throughout his presidency, in the first excerpt of Harris’ highly anticipated account of the shortest presidential campaign in history, the former vice president described how she was often scapegoated by the Biden administration. And for the first time, she admitted that, ‘perhaps,’ she should have told Biden to ‘consider not running.’

During her brief presidential campaign, Harris often walked a fine line in trying to defend Biden, for whom she remained his vice president, while also differentiating herself from his unflattering record. 

‘There is not a thing that comes to mind,’ Harris infamously said on ‘The View,’ when asked what she would have done differently than Biden. The clip was an instant attack ad for Republican candidates up and down the ballot to pit Biden’s shortcomings on Harris. 

Harris later told Fox News’ Bret Baier that her presidency would ‘not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency,’ as she sought to distance herself from Biden’s stances on the economy and the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. 

‘And of all the people in the White House, I was in the worst position to make the case that he should drop out,’ Harris said in the ‘107 Days’ excerpt. ‘I knew it would come off to him as incredibly self-serving if I advised him not to run. He would see it as naked ambition, perhaps as poisonous disloyalty, even if my only message was: Don’t let the other guy win.’

Harris said she rationalized her decision to stay quiet by telling herself, ‘the American people had chosen him before in the same matchup,’ and maybe he was ‘right to believe’ he could defeat President Donald Trump again. 

‘I don’t believe it was incapacity. If I believed that, I would have said so. As loyal as I am to President Biden, I am more loyal to my country,’ Harris said in the book.

But as described in ‘Original Sin,’ one of several books this year to pull back the curtain on the reality of the Biden administration, loyalty to Biden was wielded as a weapon in the White House. 

‘Because I’d gone after him over busing in the 2019 primary debate, I came into the White House with what we lawyers call a ‘rebuttable presumption.’ I had to prove my loyalty, time and time again,’ Harris said in the book. 

In the excerpt, Harris goes on to describe how the ‘White House rarely pushed back,’ when she was criticized for her ‘gaffes’ or when ‘Republicans mischaracterized my role as ‘border czar.’’

Harris explained how she often had to prove her loyalty to Biden, yet Biden’s inner circle ‘seemed glad’ to let her dominate headlines. 

‘Their thinking was zero-sum: If she’s shining, he’s dimmed. None of them grasped that if I did well, he did well. That, given the concerns about his age, my visible success as his vice president was vital. It would serve as a testament to his judgment in choosing me and reassurance that if something happened, the country was in good hands. My success was important for him,’ the former vice president argued in the ‘107 Days’ excerpt. 

‘His team didn’t get it,’ Harris said. 

Fox News Digital reached out to Biden’s office for comment but did not immediately hear back. 

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth held his first call with his Chinese counterpart, Adm. Dong Jun, on Sept. 9, in a conversation that comes as Beijing deepens ties with Moscow and Pyongyang while showcasing its own military might.

Pentagon chief spokesperson Sean Parnell said Hegseth ‘forthrightly relayed that the U.S. has vital interests in the Asia-Pacific, the priority theater, and will resolutely protect those interests.’

‘Hegseth made clear that the United States does not seek conflict with China nor is it pursuing regime change or strangulation of the PRC.’

Parnell said the call, which occurred on Tuesday but was made public Wednesday, was ‘candid and constructive,’ and the defense chiefs agreed to further discussions. 

Fox News Digital reached out to the Chinese embassy for comment on the call. 

Last week, China hosted a military parade where President Xi Jinping showcased his regional alliances in public appearances with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

Xi at the time hinted at his ambitions toward Taiwan, saying that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) would ‘resolutely safeguard national sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity.’

Xi has repeatedly set 2027, the 100th anniversary of the PLA, as a deadline for military modernization — a timeline U.S. officials warn could coincide with preparations for an invasion of Taiwan.

During the parade, China showcased its full nuclear triad, hypersonic missiles and new stealth drones. 

The show of force came two months after the U.S. hosted its own military parade to coincide with the Army’s 250th birthday. 

In recent years, Beijing has deepened its security partnerships with Pyongyang and Moscow through arms transfers and military technology exchanges.

The U.S. has accused North Korea of supplying munitions to Russia for its war in Ukraine, while Chinese firms have been sanctioned for helping Russia skirt Western export controls.

President Donald Trump, however, has suggested he may meet with Xi in the future as trade negotiations drag on.