progress and who isn't. two other points to make. a big study out of cornell is looking at body and brain aging to be able to predict it. another big study just came out that shows that women who take estrogen replacement therapy post menopausal decrease risk of alzheimer's dramatically. we're looking deeply at alzheimer's now. how do we prevent it and treat it and the new thing today, can we diagnose it by a simple blood test before you ever get it? that's a big advance. we need a bigger study. >> martha: always good to see you. thank you very much. >> bill: the u.s. embassy breaking news, u.s. embassy in baghdad, iraq attacked for the first time since israel started the war in hamas. a rocket hit baghdad's heavily fortified green zone that houses a number of iraqi government buildings. getting from jen griffin at the pentagon. senior u.s. defense official describing seven rockets landing inside the compound causing minimal damage, no injuries. it is not clear if the u.s. intercepted this swarm of rockets. there were between eight and nine fired at the embassy compound. that's breaking news from the pentagon by way of baghdad and we'll be back on that story in a moment as we start a new hour right now. not once, but twice, hunter biden hit with a second indictment charged with evading millions of dollars in taxes in order to pay for a lavish lifestyle. you have to be paying for a lot of thing to get to the millions of dollars. dana has the day off today. i'm bill hemmer. >> martha:. the justice department indicting hunter biden on nine counts this time. these are california charges. you saw the delaware charges back a couple of months ago. now three of these new charges from california are felonies. so if he were to be convicted he could face 19 years in prison. >> bill: as the legal problems continue to mount the front page of the "new york post" sums it up this way. wild child. now hunter is facing a lot of tough questions as his legal problems pile up. here is turley on that. >> the second issue that is going to become more of a problem next week is whether hunter biden uses the indictment to invoke the fifth amendment to refuse to testify, to say well, now i'm charged with tax charges and i don't want to go into a particularly a closed session where you ask me these questions. >> bill: andy mccarthy will tell us what it means in a moment. to the news and jonathan hunt outside federal court in los angeles with the latest on this. good morning. >> good morning to you, bill and martha. this, of course, is the federal court building where hunter biden will possibly today but more likely we understand next week make his first court appearance to face those nine tax-related charges, including three felonies. now the bottom line according to special prosecutor david weiss is that hunter biden spent millions of dollars on an extravagant lifestyle rather than paying his tax bills and where that money was going makes for fascinating reading in the indictment. quote, between 2016 and october 15, 2020, the defendant spent this money on drugs, escort us and girlfriends. exotic cars and clothing, every but his taxes. one fascinating payment detail. a $1500 venmo payment to an exotic dancer at a strip club. the defendant described the payment as for artwork. the exotic dancer had not sold him any artwork. hunter biden's attorneys have dismissed the entire case as pretty much adieu about nothing saying it should have been wrapped up with the previous misdemeanor deal charges that collapsed and that if hunter's last name was not biden, they say, there would be no case adding, quote, now after five years of investigating with no new evidence and two years after hunter paid his taxes in full, the u.s. attorney has piled on nine new charges when he had agreed just months ago to resolve this matter with a pair of misdemeanors. it is important to point out, bill and martha, that nowhere in this 56-page indictment is president biden mentioned and certainly he is not accused of having any involvement here in this indictment. but it will obviously have ramifications on the presidential campaign trail. president biden happens to be here in l.a. later today. no word on whether he will meet with his now-indicted son. >> bill: that's the news, jonathan hunt, thank you for that. martha with more now. >> martha: the legal saga of hunter biden is unfolding today and getting more news all the time. let's bring in former assistant u.s. attorney andy mccarthy, fox news contributor and posted a national review article what it means for the white house. welcome. always good to have you with us. your headline the hunter biden tax indictment is a disaster for the white house. explain what you mean there. >> well, i think, martha, especially after listening to jonathan's report, what i would stress it is something of a diversion the way this is being put out and spun because the concentration is on how hunter booked or didn't book the money that he was making and whether he paid his taxes on it. what that obscures is how the money was generated in the first place, which from a national security perspective and national interest perspective is a lot more important than the hunter biden case. and in this instance this is millions and millions of dollars that were generated basically by the bidens and hunter in particular reeling in money from corrupt and anti-american regimes that were purchasing access to joe biden. that runs through the indictment. it runs through the narrative of this 56 pages and nine counts. so while the words president biden don't appear anyplace in the indictment, the schemes that generated the income are the ones that we've been hearing about for months and he runs through those like a thread. >> martha: it is very interesting and you make a great point, as usual, about -- so after this period, he stopped getting money from these foreign companies and this is right around when the president -- now president starts running for the office. >> right. >> martha: so is it in the indictment or is there a suggestion that he didn't file his taxes during that period 16 to 19 because he didn't want the government to understand where his money was coming from because he was acting as a foreign agent and had not registered as one? >> i don't detect that, martha. the reason i think that's probably -- it's a sensible theory. the reason i think you would get pushback on it is hunter is not the only biden or biden associate who is involved in the scheme. but he is the only one who has these big tax problems at least that we know of for now. there were a lot of people involved in this who were declaring their income and paying their taxes, at least as far as we know. so i don't know that that was what was behind it. but whatever the reason was, and certainly the failure to pay taxes is -- prosecutors always look at that as a sign that people don't want inquiry into how they generate their income and it is very common for people involved in criminal business to do that. that's just one factor here. >> martha: what do you make of u.s. attorney weiss's behavior here. for quite a while, according to the two whistleblowers they say he said it is not up to me. i can't prosecute this case, it's coming from above. i'm paraphrasing there and that's what the whistleblowers said. now weiss has done this huge 180 and prosecuting him on all these things and hunter's attorney says this is just because he is a biden. so unravel that for us. >> it's a disgrace. he was shamed into doing this. i almost fell out of my chair here laughing listening to abbe lowell. if this defendant's name wasn't biden, then four years ago he would have been convicted on a bunch of felony counts and the case would have been handled like anybody else involved in serious firearms and tax problems. which is to say he would have been expeditiously prosecuted and sentenced. what has happened here, this prosecutor dragged his feet for five years to the point that the statute of limitations has run on some of the worst conduct from 2014 through 2016 when, by the way, joe biden was vice president. all that stuff can't be prosecuted anymore because of the way weiss handled this case. then he tried to disappear it in july with a plea deal that was so preposterous that a few basic questions by the presiding judge ended up exploding it in the courtroom and it was only after all the inquiry about that and all the whistleblower testimony that weiss was forced to go back to his office and act like a prosecutor. >> martha: andy, thank you very much. we'll see you later today. >> bill: taking notes on that. james freeman making similar points last hour. where did the money come from and where did it go? keep in mind what's been reported hunter biden did not pay taxes in 2016, 17, 18, 19. how do you do that? he paid taxes in 2020. the money came from a third party. so while the white house is saying if his name wasn't biden he wouldn't be prosecuted, maybe if his name wasn't biden he wouldn't have gotten to money to pay back the tax bill. here is the president now traveling all over the world talking about pay your fair share, folks. >> president biden: wealthy still do very well even though they don't pay their taxes. they do still they with. we also have to raise revenue and go after tax cheats and make sure everybody is paying their fair share. >> martha: added i.r.s. agents to make sure people pay their taxes. the argument becomes he paid them later. it's all paid now. and that no one would be subjective to the treatment hunter is getting. i don't think that's true. most people if they didn't pay their taxes for several years and then decided to pay it would see great penalty. >> bill: the things dragging down hunter biden. meantime back to the story. you have to watch this one. we mentioned it a moment ago. we're getting word of a new attack on american troops overseas specifically in the green zone in baghdad, iraq. iranian proxies groups in eastern syria and western iraq and gone after the remote bases. this is not remote. it is the heart of the capital city. more than half a dozen mortar rounds landed inside the u.s. embassy compound. original reports there were rockets. there were no injuries. meanwhile, while that's happening in gaza, israel is ramping up its ground invasion. now this is at the u.n. in new york city as the u.n. secretary general talks about a push for a cease-fire. don't know how that will settle with the idf and benjamin netanyahu. greg palkot has a good idea in southern israel in a town there now. >> as u.s. interests throughout a region we are now into month three of the israel/hamas war. we at this location are just a mile away from gaza and in the past couple hours we've been seeing and hearing a ferocious battle inside the northern part of gaza. we've been hearing a lot of automatic gunfire and seeing a few hamas rockets coming over from gaza overhead. luckily knocked down by the israeli defenses. israel is now saying that 450 hamas targets have been hit in gaza in the last 24 hours. that is a big jump that includes air strikes and hits from naval ships off the coast. again, there has been the steady pounding that we've been hearing of hamas by israeli artillery here. equally aggressive the massive israeli ground operation in the southern gaza hamas stronghold of khan younis, house to house dangerous fighting. two more israeli soldiers killed bringing the idf casualty toll to 94 since this phase of the war began. of course, civilians in gaza taking a battering. one-time safe areas to which residents fled now being hit. hamas-run health ministry puts the death toll at over 16,000. israel backs that up to some degree. more aid is being promised by both israel and the united states. bill, in his latest comments secretary of state blinken said the u.s. is setting no deadline for israel. it is expecting imagine or fighting to be over in early january. it is small comfort for the some 130 hostages still inside gaza right now including americans as yes this all fueling iran-backed hits against u.s. targets throughout this region. a growing problem. back to you. >> bill: heading toward the second night of hanukkah there in israel. thank you for that. >> why is the border so broken? because the policy choices of president biden are not working. mr. president, you may not know it, but you could actually fix this without any of us doing anything. >> dana: republican lawmakers holding pleat biden's feet to the fire over the border crisis. will he change course or is the migrant surge a fact of life? >> bill: potential breakthrough in the fight against fentanyl. could a vaccine do the trick against the deadly drug? >> martha: when it comes to math u.s. students are falling even further behind now compared to their peers overseas. we're at number 28 on the list. former education secretary bill bennett on how and why we must turn this around quickly. >> this 2022 assessment which focuses on mathematics show a sharp decline in math performance three times greater than any previous consecutive change. are getting harder to pay is the runaway interest rates on credit cards and car loans. credit cards can be 22% near 30% if you're late. car and truck loans- 10 to 15%. call newday. pay off your high rate credit cards and car loans with the lower rate newday 100 va cash out loan. you can save $500 a month $6,000 a year. we're travelling all across america, talking to people about their hearts. how's the heart? i feel like it's good. how do you know? let me show you something. it looks like a credit card, but it is the kardiamobile card. with kardiamobile card, you can take a medical-grade ekg in just 30 seconds, from anywhere. kardiamobile card is proven to detect atrial fibrillation, one of the leading causes of stroke. kardiamobile card is just $79 during our 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(car engine revs) (engine accelerating) (texting clicks) (tires squeal) (glass shattering) (loose gravel clanking) >> bill: we mentioned this a moment ago. u.n. secretary general pushing for a cease-fire in the israeli/palestinian/hamas war underway in gaza. you just heard greg palkot say that the idf believes the war will last another month. we're talking early part of january before they believe their work will be done. what will be left at that time who is to say. but there are still at least 2 million palestinians living in gaza as of this day. we're watching that right now. as that is happening we've got this report about drones and some sort of projectile fired at the u.s. embassy in baghdad. we're tracking down both those stories as they get under way on "america's newsroom." >> martha: as we reported at the top of the hour we get word of the new attack bill mentioned on american troops -- on the green zone in baghdad. no injuries reported as of right now. but we are in the very early stages of this. so we're learning that more than half a dozen 60 millimeter mortar rounds landed inside the u.s. embassy compound in baghdad. clearly this is continued escalation of provocation of u.s. bases and now the green zone u.s. embassy in the middle of baghdad. so coming up republican lawmakers doubling down on their demands to secure the southern border as a new surge of migrants magnifies this crisis situation. it is not just the number of illegal crossings that are concerning. lawmakers are stressing that there is a lack of deportation as well, which is the policy in many of these cases. the president of the national border council brandon judd standing by. we go to william la jeunesse in los angeles. >> you know, our immigration system was designed to process mexican males not what we're seeing the families, unaccompanied minors and migrants from around the world we can't deport because it is not just how many migrants we apprehend but where they are coming from that's overwhelming the system and causing these releases. we're seeing people from countries we can't easily deport because their own countries won't take them back. last year thousands of migrants arrived from nicaragua, brazil, india, china, ice cannot deport or has only deported a fraction. mexico will take some salvador and haitians depending on the month. ice has removal flights to central america. many faraway countries can't or won't issue the travel documents necessary to allow us to deport their people. >> countries like china is extremely difficult to get china to accept their repatriation. other countries don't have a travel system in place. they can't verify the person's identity because they don't have systems like we have here. >> outside of central and south america, many asian countries and most of africa senegal, ghana, nigeria, cameroon don't have an extradition agreement with us making our deportation more difficult. as for the volume, consider this. in 2021, the u.s. saw 57,000 migrants from the other countries in africa and asia. small ones in south america. next year 130. last year 300,000 and now on pace to exceed that. the bottom line is we get more migrants from more places and that we can't hold them by law and we can't send them home even when a judge issues a final deportation order. most are long gone and simply living here illegally. back to you. >> martha: that about sums it up. thank you very much. >> bill: brandon judd is with me now. good morning to you. there are two numbers i want our audience to look at now. we set a record on tuesday. call for number one. on tuesday we had more than 12,000 in one day encounters at the border. up for a year you're 2.5 million. the other thing william was talking about. encounters by citizenship. mexico accounts for 26%. northern triangle is 25%. that top line number in this case the bottom line number, 49% from other countries. so the word is out around the world, brandon, that america is open. give it your best shot. >> yeah, bill, i have to address this idea we can't deport these individuals. that is just simply a red herring. when you say we can't hold people in custody because of the law that's also a red herring. we could challenge the flores decision. the administration refuses to do so. have the state department work with other countries like we have in the past to except the individuals back. state department isn't doing that. the fact remains is what we're seeing on the border is simply because we have allowed this to happen. if from day one president biden wouldn't have stepped in and gotten rid of every single one of president trump's border security policies, we wouldn't be in this situation we're in. but because we're in the situation, now it requi