Top House Republicans are leading a bill to reverse the Biden administration’s decision to lift sanctions on a Chinese entity linked to the persecution of Uyghurs.

The legislation targeting the Ministry of Public Security’s (MPS) Institute of Forensic Science of China was introduced Wednesday by Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., and is co-led by House China select committee Chairman John Moolenaar, R-Mich., and House GOP Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y.

‘It’s past time for the U.S. to confront the [Chinese Communist Party’s] human rights abusers, and Congress will have to lead in the absence of a strong commander in chief,’ Ogles told Fox News Digital.

He accused China’s authoritarian government of ‘a long and sordid history of human rights abuses.’

‘Joe Biden has unacceptably chosen to reward a Communist Chinese company despite their genocidal crimes and human rights abuses against the Uyghur population and other ethnic minorities. This legislation to relist China’s Institute of Forensic Science on our Entity List will return us to President Trump’s peace through strength strategy and ensure no U.S. technology is benefiting Communist China’s human rights abuses,’ Stefanik said.

The bill has 10 more House GOP co-sponsors and is backed by conservative groups Heritage Action and America First Policy Institute.

The CCP agency was one of nine entities sanctioned by the Trump administration in May 2020.

A press release at the time accused it of being ‘complicit in human rights violations and abuses committed in China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, forced labor and high-technology surveillance against Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR).’

The sanctions were lifted in November 2023 while the U.S. was working to persuade China to take a more active role in cracking down on the flow of synthetic drugs and fentanyl precursors from within its borders into the U.S.

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters at the time that the sanctions were ‘a barrier to achieving cooperation’ on the flow of drugs.

‘When we evaluated the issue and looked at all the merits of de-listing the IFS, ultimately we decided that given the steps China was willing to take to cut down on precursor trafficking, it was an appropriate step,’ he said.

Americans recognize the Chinese Communist Party as a serious threat to our country. But many corners of the federal government do not want to talk about Communist China. 

When they do acknowledge it, they censor themselves by relying on neutral (or ‘country agnostic’) strategies to avoid the elephant in the room: China is our most dangerous adversary and will use every tactic at its disposal to weaken America. 

The House Oversight Committee is demanding answers from federal agencies that do not – or will not – address the CCP threat head-on, sometimes because agencies themselves have succumbed to CCP influence methods. 

For decades, the CCP has waged an aggressive campaign intended to hobble America through political warfare, an insidious strategy to weaken our way of life without firing a shot. The committee’s government-wide investigation has brought federal agencies in to answer for their tepid responses and has found too much of the Washington bureaucracy is incapable or unwilling to address the CCP threat.

For example, the NASA administrator recently congratulated the CCP for obtaining the first samples of lunar rocks from the far side of the moon, gushing that the discovery was ‘an important step in humanity’s work to understand and explore the lunar surface.’ 

This statement demonstrates a profound naivety regarding China’s goals in space, which are inextricably intertwined with the CCP’s militaristic ambitions.  

Much of the American government seems to have forgotten that its purpose is to promote the interests of Americans. Indeed, the Space Race that prompted the creation of NASA would not have been a much of a race at all if American leaders at the time had heaped laurels upon an adversary that has named America its ‘chief enemy.’ 

America would not have won the first Cold War if our leaders refused to openly identify Soviet efforts to infiltrate and destroy America. 

Certain agencies have shown signs of life. The National Science Foundation (NSF) warned the committee that 90% of research security concerns involving all U.S. federally funded research originates in China. This kind of honest recognition of CCP political warfare should be emulated across the federal government. 

But even NSF continues to use ‘neutral’ approaches to counter this threat, hamstringing themselves from valuable China expertise in an attempt to not ruffle CCP feathers.

Similarly, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) told the committee that of 75% of the shipments it identified as high-risk last year, 83% had China as the country of origin. Yet CPSC rejected the committee’s suggestion the agency should warn American consumers about the unique dangers of Chinese-made products. 

CPSC should urge and help Americans discern when it is prudent to purchase goods manufactured in China. That is, after all, consistent with the entire purpose of its existence.

Federal agencies’ willful blindness to CCP political warfare – evident in leaders’ messaging about it and strategy to counter it – may be a function of CCP influence itself. The Department of Justice’s shuttering of the China Initiative in 2022 – after DOJ found no merit to charges that cases brought under the initiative were racially motivated – is an embarrassment to the sole agency responsible for enforcing our country’s national security laws. 

DOJ refuses to say whether it has investigated the origins of what it found to be unsubstantiated claims of racial bias in China Initiative cases. DOJ’s evasiveness is significant. 

DOJ acknowledges the CCP uses ‘wedge narratives’ that push racially divisive agendas intended to divide Americans from all backgrounds. But DOJ itself appears to have been influenced to stop prioritizing cases against the CCP.

There will be no ‘shot heard round the world’ in a war against the CCP. The creeping political warfare has already begun, and federal agencies must first acknowledge that we are in a new Cold War. 

The enemy is an authoritarian regime that, among other atrocities, enslaves its own people and has killed tens of thousands of Americans each year indirectly through its central role in the fentanyl crisis corroding our country, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. 

The DEA is one of the few agencies that seems willing to confront the CCP threat directly as it messages candidly about deadly fentanyl precursors originating in China, the role Chinese transnational criminal organizations play in trafficking, and China’s surpassing the Mexican cartels in money laundering.

Federal agencies must wake up to the CCP threat by engaging with and inspiring Americans to push back against infiltration and influence. 

The good news is that, in many ways, the American people are better prepared for the confrontation than their own government, because they have maintained what seems to have been lost in Washington, D.C.: pride in themselves and their country. The Oversight Committee expects no less from the American government.

A new report from an Iranian resistance group alleges that the Islamist regime has attempted to dodge U.S. sanctions on its nuclear programs by shifting personnel and resources to a university closely associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

‘Ever since The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) exposed the Iranian regime’s previously undisclosed nuclear program in 2002 … the regime has persistently thwarted the IAEA’s efforts to uncover the full scope of its nuclear weapons ambitions,’ Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director of the Washington office of the NCRI told Fox News Digital.

‘Our revelations have shown that Tehran’s nuclear program has always been about building the nuclear bomb, and it is run by the IRGC,’ he argued. ‘The weaponization part of the nuclear program has not only remained intact but has expanded and enhanced with no meaningful scrutiny.’ Jafarzadeh first revealed the details of Iran’s nuclear program in 2002.

The NCRI issued a report in which it discussed how Iran shifted its nuclear program personnel and resources placed on U.S. sanctions to the Islamic Azad University. The U.S. listed the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (SPND) on the international sanctions list, and university personnel asked researchers to ‘present their activities as being in service of front companies.’

The NCRI claimed to have gathered its information through a network of the People’s Mojahedin Organization, known as the MEK, from inside Iran, including reports from inside ‘the regime entities.’ 

‘In order to preserve SPND, the Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL) has attempted to create a new and better cover to continue its operations, ostensibly making it work on a series of advanced military cases in order to divert attention and lessen focus on its primary goal of making nuclear weapons,’ the report says. 

Shortly before his sudden death, former Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi passed the SPND Act in April, ordering the Ministry of Defense to implement the plan within a month and make the SPND ‘an independent legal entity with the nature of a public institution and has financial, transactional and administrative independence.’

The law also empowers the organization to act without needing to comply with the law of public accounting in Iran. According to the report, the Islamic Azad Universityystem is located throughout the country and is one of the largest systems of universities in the world, counting over 1 million students and over 50,000 academic staff. The university was founded with the blessing of the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayotallah Ruhollah Khomenei

‘Use of Islamic Azad University for nuclear research is consistent with the regime’s previous actions,’ the NCRI wrote. 

The NCRI report ties several major figures at Islamic Azad University with the SPND, such as Mohammad Medhi Tehranchi, currently president of the university and formerly a professor of physics at Beheshti University with ‘close connections with SPND.’ Tehranchi was reportedly involved in the regime’s nuclear warhead project and worked directly with Mohsen Fakhrizadeh who was seen as the father of the regime’s nuclear weapons program.

The group also identified Jamshid Sabbaghzadeh, head of the university’s Science and Research Center, which is ‘the largest university research center in Iran.’ Previously, he worked on laser research and joined the Atomic Energy Organization and worked on nuclear enrichment. 

Jafarzadeh lamented the ‘Western powers’ policy of ‘appeasement,’ arguing that Iran has faced little punishment for its actions to avoid sanctions. 

‘In many ways, the Iranian regime leverages its nuclear program as a tool to blackmail the international community, demanding further concessions while simultaneously intensifying its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons,’ Jafarzadeh said. 

‘Tehran’s strategy has prevented decisive action against other aspects of its malevolent behavior, such as egregious human rights violations, terrorism, and hostage-taking, and belligerent interference throughout the Middle East,’ he added, insisting that at this stage the only way to create real change will come from within with regime change ‘led by the Iranian people and their organized resistance.’ 

The U.S. National Security Council did not respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment by time of publication.

Two of former President Trump’s top allies in the House of Representatives are in Atlanta on Wednesday to mobilize Black voters ahead of his November rematch with President Biden.

Reps. Wesley Hunt, R-Texas, and Byron Donalds, R-Fla., are hosting an event called ‘Congress, Cognac, and Cigars’ at a cigar lounge in the Peach State alongside former ESPN host Sage Steele.

An invitation to the event obtained by Fox News Digital billed it in all capital letters as ‘a real conversation about the Black male vote, leadership, and how they will impact the 2024 election.’

Hunt told Fox News Digital in an interview that Black voters, particularly in a state like Georgia, are going to be ‘paramount’ in deciding the winner of the next presidential race.

‘The thing is, in the past, the Republican Party has not done a very good job of going to these communities, articulating why our policies are in the best interest of the Black community,’ Hunt said. ‘Black issues are American issues. We just need voices to go articulate that.’

‘You don’t have to vote for Democrats anymore because your mama and your grandmother and your parents told you to do it. The Republican Party right now is in your best interest. If you hate what’s going on at the border, if you hate what’s happening with inflation, if you hate crime, I’m telling you that … electing [Trump] and getting him back in office is definitely going to be in your best interest.’

It’s part of a wider strategy for Trump to win 25% to 35% of the Black male vote, Hunt said. Black voters were critical to Biden’s 2020 Democrat primary and general election victories and will likely play a critical role in the fall race.

Multiple exit polls show Trump having won 19% of Black male voters in 2020, though the vast majority of Black voters still went for Biden.

‘That’s the highest that we’ve ever seen in modern history for a Republican president,’ Hunt said. ‘We need to add about five or six percentage points and grow from what we did four years ago. And given the environment that we’re in right now, we think we can accomplish that.’

Their first ‘Congress, Cognac, and Cigars’ event took place in Philadelphia. Hunt said the next one would be in Milwaukee, the site of next month’s Republican National Convention.

Hunt said the previous event showed him that Republicans could potentially make some headway with Black women, who overwhelmingly voted for Biden in 2020 as well.

‘The biggest takeaway from that event is – again, Byron and I have been really focused on Black men, but there were Black women in that room that raised their hand and stood up and said, ‘Don’t forget about us. I’m a Black woman, I’m voting for President Trump, and I’m fed up with this, too. And I’m not saying you’re going to get as many of us as you are men, but what I am saying is, don’t just cater these events to Black men; cater them to the Black community,’’ the lawmaker said.