Washington, D.C. – The United States’ foreign policy and national security concerns for Republicans focus on slowing the influx of deadly drugs and criminals by clamping down on the open Mexican border, beefing up border patrol instead of adding more IRS agents, dealing with a geopolitical archrival, and navigating through the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.
Local Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-11th District) of Henderson County calls it “time to focus on delivering to the American people the House Republicans’ Commitment to America — from strengthening our borders to restoring our economy.” He said the objective is to “ensure a strong, safe and prosperous nation for current and future generations… to improve lives and opportunities of our citizens.”
Newly-chosen House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) pledged in his acceptance speech Jan. 7 that the U.S. House will stand up to Biden Administration foreign and domestic policies, and try to reverse them. Democrats still narrowly control the Senate, but now Republicans have a slight edge in the House.
Backlash vs. Beijing
Bipartisan prospects rose with a monumental breakthrough on Jan. 10 as 146 House Democrats (about two-thirds of them) joined Republicans, to vote 365-65 to set up a select committee to investigate Chinese influence and tactics. The focus is on the Chinese Communist Party’s economic, technological and security gains and improving U.S. economic and strategic competition with China. Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) heads the committee of seven Republicans and five Democrats.
Speaker McCarthy calls China concerns an “issue that transcends political parties.” In contrast, a vote narrowly passed along party lines on Jan. 10 to set up a special committee investigating FBI tactics and other “weaponization” of the federal government.
China’s alleged unethical practices include producing much of the deadly, cheap fentanyl coming into the U.S. from Mexico, stealing American industrial secrets (“intellectual property”), training Chinese nationals to spy as U.S. college students then as U.S. tech workers, buying land near U.S. military facilities, and carelessly releasing COVID-19 from its laboratory.
Speaker McCarthy spoke about China in his acceptance speech. He criticized the “rise of the Chinese Communist Party” in global influence. He prophetically said, “We will create a bipartisan Select Committee on China, to investigate how to bring back the hundreds of thousands of jobs that went to China. And then we will win this economic competition.”
In a televised panel of GOP House leaders, McCarthy said that the U.S. must “stop allowing them (the Chinese) to steal from us, from taking our intellectual property, from trying to buy their way through America.”
Banning video social media platform TikTok or at least severely regulating its usage in this country looms on the horizon. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) told Fox News that he hopes for bipartisan support to stifle TikTok in the U.S.. TikTok is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, which is reportedly very closely allied with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
TikTok shares data with the CCP, and is “spreading Communist propaganda” to American youth, Sen. Cotton said. TikTok allegedly collects much sensitive personal data from its users’ accounts such as financial and medical histories, which critics warn could be used for hacking or blackmail.
TikTok was recently banned from use on work computers and mobile phones of both government and state employees. Gov. Roy Cooper also banned WeChat on state-issued devices.
The World Economic Forum met in Switzerland last week. Former Vice-Pres. Al Gore and former Sec. of State John Kerry spoke. A WEF statement surprisingly called China among “largest green finance markets” with “transparent” information.
Yet, China and India are exempt from global directives to severely slash carbon emissions. This exemption is under the ludicrous guise of their being mislabeled as third world nations. That is despite China rivaling the United States as the world’s premier economic power, and having many more people.
An alarming chart from the French-based International Energy Agency chart shows that China went from having slightly more carbon emissions than the U.S. had in 2008 to nearly doubting the American carbon output today. In 2019, China had about one-third of the worldwide carbon output compared to 13 percent for the U.S, a British BBC television report further reveals.
A further concern of many lawmakers is how the World Health Organization went with China’s claim that the COVID 19 virus came from wild animals instead of in its lab in its Wuhan Province, as many reports by now indicate was the source in late 2019. Critics thus call such groups overly pro-China and dangerously deceptive.
Porous Border
Millions of immigrants have come through the border in Biden’s two years as president. Some conservatives estimate that nearly 5 million immigrants entered the country from Mexico in that time. The government’s official tally is that there were nearly 2.4 millin arrests for illegal border crossings in fiscal 2022 that ended Sept. 30, followed by record monthly totals since then.
Border patrols reported a record 251,487 migrant encounters for last month. Nearly one-fifth of them (49,405) migrants were returned to Mexico under the Title 42 law that Democrats do not want extended.
Lawmakers note that many others slipped by undetected including terrorist suspects. Terror watchlist arrests at the border totaled 38 in the first three weeks of this month. That rate far exceeds 98 such arrests FY 2021-22, and 53 total for five prior years.
More plentiful among those entering the U.S. are Mexican drug cartel members, drug “mules,” “coyotes” who charge migrants hefty protection fees, and young women promised a better life who instead get enslaved in sex trafficking in the U.S.
Rep. Edwards stated, “The one-party Democrat rule the past couple of years has created a weakened border, allowing drug cartels to take advantage of this open border policy and devastate American communities. It is clear that the Biden administration does not have a plan to address this national security and public health crisis. House Republicans, on the other hand, have talked about the need for stronger border security as a priority for a while now as part of our Commitment to America. We will be laser focused on delivering on these priorities for the American people.”
Speaker McCarthy called for adding more border patrol agents instead of 87,000 more IRS agents, as the administration is on track to do.
There is slight bipartisan support for boosting border security. U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, a ninth-term Democrat whose district goes from San Antonio to the border, said border patrol agents he spoke with feel overwhelmed by trying to track hundreds and even thousands of people at a time. Rep. Cuellar favors deportation and deploying the National Guard and military to support border patrols, as has been done before.