A group of U.S. lawmakers is meeting this week with Latin American counterparts to form a new multinational congress to tackle thorny cross-border issues such as climate change and migration throughout the Western Hemisphere.

Organizers say the newly formed Panamerican Congress will differ from the European Union Parliament because it won’t make laws for the region. Nor, they say, is it to be seen as an alternative to the Organization of American States, the largest regional body that is often criticized for supposedly being dominated by Washington.

Instead organizers hope the new body will create a fresh forum to brainstorm ideas and come up with policies to address persistent regional problems.

“Instead of the old model of the United States trying to dominate Latin America, we should be working with Latin America to survive climate change and address joint economic needs,” among other issues, Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) said in an interview.

“We need new models to replace the Monroe Doctrine,” he added, referring to the 19th century U.S. policy that discouraged European interference in Latin America but was also used at times to assert U.S. dominance over the hemisphere.

In addition to the United States, seven other countries from around the hemisphere will be represented at the gathering in the Colombian capital of Bogota.

Casar is one of three Democratic U.S. Congress members — along with the chief of staff for a fourth — forming the delegation from here.

Besides Colombia, the other nations participating are Brazil, Canada, Chile, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico. Most are led by progressive governments, and their representatives at the congress are primarily from left-leaning political parties.

The three-day meeting will begin Saturday. Host country Colombia, governed by the first leftist president in its history, Gustavo Petro, will open the congress with Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo.

It is being organized from Washington by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a progressive think tank, which invited a limited group of Democratic lawmakers who are focused on Latin America.

“The challenges plaguing our hemisphere — democratic backsliding, climate crisis, deep poverty, political violence, family displacement — are too urgent, too significant for any one nation to address alone,” Rep. Delia Ramirez of Illinois, another member of the U.S. delegation, said in a statement. “The Panamerican Congress convenes the legislators and leaders from across the Americas committed to realizing a future of justice, peace, and stability throughout the continent — together.”

As an example of what the congress has the potential to do, Casar pointed to discussions he had with counterparts on the Amazon rainforest and the vast devastation the region is suffering. As a result, he lobbied in support of a Biden commitment of $100 million a year for five years for the Amazon Fund, a Brazilian investment initiative dedicated to the preservation and restoration of the Amazon basin. (About $50 million was delivered to the fund, but ultimately the GOP-controlled House blocked additional money, Casar’s office said.)

“It is encouraging to see U.S. legislators, who have been largely absent from regional dialogue efforts historically, engaging in extensive discussions with their regional peers in a spirit of mutual respect and equality,” said Alex Main, who heads international policy for the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Casar said that the Biden administration has made progress in some areas, such as addressing the root causes of illegal immigration to the U.S. and taking steps to reduce the use of fossil fuels that are heating up the planet. But there’s still a long way to go, he added.

“We started to see a real shift, but in [the U.S.] Congress we are way behind,” he said. “We have to pick up the pace.”

It is unclear how much influence the Panamerican Congress ultimately can have. It will be seen as a progressive effort, which means there is little chance for bipartisan support in the U.S. There will probably be similar reluctance to participate in more conservative-led governments of Latin America and the Caribbean.

It took six weeks to determine, but House Freedom Caucus chair Rep. Bob Good of Virginia was defeated in his bid for renomination by a challenger supported by former President Trump.

John McGuire, a Virginia state senator and former Navy SEAL backed by Trump, will win the Republican primary in Virginia’s reliably red 5th Congressional District, in the southern part of the Commonwealth. ‘

McGuire came out on top in a recount conducted Tuesday. Election officials certified that McGuire won the June primary election by 374 votes out of nearly 63,000 ballots cast, or six-tenths of a percentage point. 

But because McGuire’s victory margin in the primary was less than one percent, Good was able to seek a recount. But he had to pay for the recount, because the margin was greater than half a percent.

FOX NEWS POLL: BIDEN, TRUMP IN A DEAD HEAT IN VIRGINIA

Good becomes the first House Republican incumbent this election cycle to be ousted by a primary challenger, in a contentious intra-party primary battle that pitted conservatives versus conservatives and Trump against some of his biggest allies in the House of Representatives. 

Good incurred Trump’s wrath for being one of just a handful of House Republicans to endorse Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the GOP presidential primaries.

Even though the two-term congressman avoided criticizing Turmp and quickly endorsed the former president after DeSantis ended his White House bid in January, Trump wrote on this Truth Social platform that “the damage has been done!”

The former president in May endorsed McGuire, who also had the backing of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a conservative firebrand and major Trump ally who is a vocal critic of Good who last year broke with the House Freedom Caucus. The group is considered the most far-right organization of lawmakers in the chamber.

Then-Rep. Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California, at the US Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2023, as he was ousted as House Speaker. (Nathan Howard/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

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Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy also targeted Good, who was one of eight Republicans last autumn who joined with Democrats to vote to oust McCarthy from his leadership position.

However, Good had the support of Reps. Matt Gaetz and Byron Donalds of Florida, two conservatives who are also strong backers of Trump.

Additionally, fellow House Freedom Caucus members, Reps. Chip Roy of Texas and Andy Biggs of Arizona, joined Good in Virginia for a rally on Friday.

Even though he was targeted by Trump, Good spotlighted his support for the former president as he ran for re-election.

“Happy Birthday to the best and next president of the United States, President Trump!” Good wrote on social media on Friday, on the former president’s 78th birthday.

Good also showed up earlier this spring at Trump’s criminal trial in New York City, to show his support for the former president.

Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.

Nearly nine years, one presidential term and three campaigns later, Donald Trump’s rare honest words from early 2016 remain all too true: “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”

Trump has never literally tested his claim, of course, but he has tried to overthrow an election, been adjudicated as a sexual abuser and financial fraudster, gotten convicted for 34 felonies, swiped top-secret documents and said all manner of outrageous things that would doom any other politician. And still he retains enough voters to be a decent bet for reelection.

It turns out, however, that Trump’s Teflon superpower isn’t transferable. In the two weeks since he picked as his running mate J.D. Vance — Trump’s MAGA Mini-Me in just about every respect — Vance has been on the defensive for comments he made before and since becoming Ohio’s junior senator just 19 months ago. By now you know the ones I mean — remarks about the “childless sociopaths” of the ruling class, a.k.a. Democrats, and specifically “childless cat ladies” led by none other than Kamala Harris, now the likely Democratic presidential nominee.

It’s been a disastrous debut, polls confirm: Vance is the least liked vice presidential choice in five decades, and the first with a net-negative approval rating.

Yet here’s what’s interesting: Trump is on the defensive for Vance’s inanities, too. It’s a most unfamiliar stance for him. Had Trump made the cat lady crack, it would probably have been soon forgotten, following all his other insults, idiocies and lies into a memory hole. Trump doesn’t explain his outrages — when you explain, you’re losing, the political truism goes — and he never apologizes. (Which is likely why the sycophantic Vance has only doubled down, with smarmy asides about how he’s “got nothing against cats” that exacerbate and prolong the catty controversy.)

Yet there was Trump on prime-time Fox News Monday evening, the misogynist in chief answering to an otherwise fawning Laura Ingraham for the misogynistic bro-talk of his potential veep. “He loves family,” Trump defended and explained. Well, Ingraham asked, what do you say to women without children? “I think they understand it,” Trump replied meekly.

Yes indeedy. And so do their friends and family, men and women alike. Just not in the way Trump implies.

Perhaps Trump’s Teflon not only isn’t transferable, it’s been nicked and scratched. Perhaps, by choosing Vance as his wingman, he’s finally being held accountable, by proxy, for the outrageous discourse he’s modeled. After all, Vance only started spouting stupidities after he decided to seek political office and needed Trump’s support. To that end, the Yale Law grad, Silicon Valley investor, best-selling author and former Trump critic morphed into right-wing culture warrior and Trump lickspittle.

I met the former Vance in early 2017 when he came to the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics to promote his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” He genially fielded questions from David Axelrod, the institute’s founder, before a large audience. Afterward a few of us went to dinner. I mostly recall that Vance was no fan of the newly inaugurated Trump and that he plainly contemplated running for office as a Republican. As a fellow native of Ohio’s working class, I came away thinking that Republicans in our home state would be lucky to have such a self-made, independent-minded pragmatist return as a candidate, and an antidote to Trumpism. Ha.

Vance’s now-infamous cat-lady tirade reveals his cringey transformation — and his sweeping judgmentalism masquerading as fact and deep-thinking:

“We’re effectively run in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made. And so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too. And it’s just a basic fact,” he said. “You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC — the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”

(Buttigieg would announce just weeks afterward that he and his husband had adopted newborn twins, after repeated failed attempts at adoption.)

As it turns out, Vance’s comments, made to then-host Tucker Carlson on Fox News in 2021, were only the latest in a long line of specious societal critiques in speeches and writings dating from his book’s publication in 2016, critiques that grew increasingly nasty and partisan as Vance advanced in Republican politics. In fact, Carlson said he invited Vance on his show because the Senate candidate had made a speech the previous week assailing “the childless left.”

After the show, Vance promoted his comments in fundraising emails. “Fighting back won’t be easy — our childless opponents have a lot of free time,” he snidely wrote in one. In his attacks against the allegedly anti-family Democrats, Vance typically labeled them “sociopaths” and named Harris as the lead avatar. Fact check: Harris years ago became a stepmom to her husband’s two children, and no less than his ex-wife, their mother, attests to Harris’ co-parenting cred.

That Vance’s record of lambasting childless cat ladies is years long, not just a throwaway line to like-minded Carlson, suggests one of two things: Either Trump knew the record and saw no problems there, or his veep vetters missed it.

Whichever it is, here’s the good news: Finally Trump is having to answer for abhorrent remarks, even if they’re not his own, and potentially paying a political price. We can hope.

@jackiekcalmes