Fighting For Faith, Family & Freedom

Tuesday, February 28, 2023

To: Friends & Supporters

From: Gary Bauer

Defending Communist China

The reaction from Beijing to the latest U.S. intelligence assessment that COVID-19 emerged from the Wuhan lab was predictable communist bluster.

A spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry huffed and puffed about the World Health Organization (WHO) report that dismissed the lab-leak theory, and said, “Certain parties should stop rehashing the ‘lab leak’ narrative, stop smearing China and stop politicizing origins-tracing.”

For the record, the WHO is totally compromised by communist China (here and here), and its report isn’t worth the paper it was printed on. (Here and here.) 

Sadly, the response from the Biden White House was just as predictable and equally pathetic. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said yesterday, “There is not a consensus right now in the U.S. government about exactly how COVID started. We’re just not there yet.”

Meanwhile, Politico reported yesterday that the Biden White House was “scaling back a planned executive order to oversee American investments in China.” Why would he do that, given everything we know about communist China? Because that’s what Biden’s big business buddies are telling him to do.

American corporations like McDonalds, Starbucks and Tyson’s Foods are rushing to get back into Beijing’s good graces, and are planning major expansions into various Chinese markets.

Once again, we’re seeing how certain Americans act like lawyers and lobbyists for the Chinese Communist Party. 

We saw it during the Trump Administration. When the Chinese communists had to come to Washington, D.C., to sign renegotiated trade deals, they usually went to New York City first. They had a message to deliver to Wall Street firms and corporate CEOs, “Get Trump off our backs!” And many of those corporate executives did just that.

The Chamber of Commerce actually resisted Donald Trump’s efforts to bring U.S. jobs back home in spite of the many ways that the pandemic demonstrated our overdependence on communist China for essential products.

This “fifth column” may well be the greatest national security threat we face.  We expect our enemies to spy on us. But what is so infuriating and unnerving is that the first instinct of many influential and powerful Americans is to defend communist China!

We’re still mourning our dead from the communist Chinese coronavirus. But communist China is flying spy balloons over our country. 

They’re harassing our ships and planes in the Pacific.  

They’re making aggressive moves in the Arctic Circle. 

They’re increasing the persecution of Chinese Christians. 

They are preparing for war.

What would Beijing have to do for some American “capitalist” CEOs to feel guilty about making money in communist China? And when hostilities break out, will they support us or will they once again defend communist China? 

Must See TV

House Republicans launched a series of hearings today aimed at confronting the threat from communist China. Their efforts will continue this evening with a special hearing tonight at 7:00 PM by the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.

The committee will hear from two former Trump Administration officials: Matthew Pottinger, a former National Security Council official for Asia policy, and former National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster. 

Tong Yi, a Chinese human rights activist, and Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, will also testify before the committee.

Speaking to Fox News this morning, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), chairman of the committee, appropriately framed tonight’s hearings, saying:

“We have an opportunity to explain to the American people . . . that this isn’t a distant threat.  This isn’t an over-there threat; this isn’t a matter of some obscure territorial claim in the East and South China Sea.  

“This is a right-here-at-home threat. This is a threat to American sovereignty. The Chinese Communist Party is the greatest threat we face in the world today. . .

“We’re hoping to communicate the stakes of this competition tonight.  We call it a ‘strategic competition,’ but it’s not a tennis match. It is an existential struggle about what kind of world we want to live in."

I have spent the past 30 years fighting against communist China’s growing influence in the United States. The work of this important committee is long overdue! 

But, as a reminder, dozens of House progressives voted against forming this committee to confront the threats from communist China. 

Supremes Skeptical Of Biden Scheme

The Supreme Court heard three hours of oral arguments today in two cases challenging President Biden’s student debt payoff scheme. It didn’t go well for the White House.

As you may recall, Biden announced a plan to payoff as much as $20,000 in student loan debt just weeks before the 2022 midterm elections. It was a craven attempt to buy votes and motivate core constituencies. And it probably worked. 

Younger voters, who generally don’t turnout in midterm elections, did show up at the polls last November. Unfortunately, Biden made suckers out of them all. 

The legal justification for his college debt scheme was virtually non-existent. In fact, even former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said Biden didn’t have the authority to forgive debt through executive action. But that didn’t stop Biden from exploiting the COVID crisis. 

He claimed that the pandemic national emergency and the 2003 Heroes Act, meant to help soldiers in combat after 9/11, somehow allowed him to modify existing federal student loan programs.

The court’s conservative majority wasn’t having it. 

Chief Justice Roberts blasted Biden’s power grab, saying, “We’re talking about half-a-trillion dollars and 43 million Americans. How does that fit under the normal understanding of modify?” 

Roberts also noted that this case presented “serious issues about the role of Congress and the courts,” adding that the Supreme Court had blocked Donald Trump’s efforts to terminate the DACA program for illegal aliens, which did not involve tens of millions of people or hundreds of billions of dollars. 

Justice Brett Kavanaugh echoed Roberts, saying:

“Some of the biggest mistakes in the court’s history were deferring to assertions of executive emergency power. Some of the finest moments in the court’s history were pushing back against presidential assertions of emergency power.”

Justice Neil Gorsuch turned the “fairness” argument against the left. Referring to those who worked extra jobs or made hard sacrifices to pay off their loans or those who didn’t go into debt at all, Gorsuch noted that “half a trillion dollars is being diverted to one group of favored persons over others.”

Think about this for a moment: If the president can make student loan debt disappear, why not car loan debt or mortgage loan debt? Where does it end?

Donald Trump had to fight tooth-and-nail to reallocate already appropriated funds to build the border wall. That was just a few billion dollars that Congress approved for defense construction projects and drug interdiction efforts. The money Trump reallocated for the border wall fit those purposes.

Congress has not appropriated a dime for college loan debt forgiveness, and Biden is seizing $500 billion out of thin air. If a president can spend $500 billion on his own, then Congress may as well be abolished.

There were other critical issues before the justices today, such as whether the plaintiffs in the case even had a legal right (standing) to challenge the Biden Administration’s plan.  I won’t bore you with all the details. 

But here’s another point we should keep in mind. 

When the Biden Administration loses this case, the left will do what it always does: It will go on the attack. 

Far-left politicians will demagogue the issue, telling struggling students and their families that if it wasn’t for those “right-wing fascists on the court, you’d have a decent life!”  And they will claim, “That’s why we need to fundamentally transform the court by packing it with more liberal judges!”

Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and members of the socialist Squad were already making that argument in front of the Supreme Court this morning.

So, while I expect the Supreme Court’s decision to be a win for the rule of law, we must be ready to defend the court for doing its job, which is not reading polls or appeasing the mob, but interpreting the Constitution.