World

House Republicans are urging the Government Accountability Office, Congress's nonpartisan watchdog, to investigate what safeguards the National Institutes of Health has in place to ensure China does not use research funds to bolster its military or unethically use humans in research studies. "Recent reports have raised concerns about the NIH’s ability to screen for national security issues," the Republicans, led by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Wa., wrote in a letter Tuesday to Government Accountability Office Comptroller Gene Dodaro.

The number of Chinese nationals illegally entering the U.S. – primarily single, military age men – has skyrocketed under the Biden administration. Of the more than 140,000 Chinese who’ve illegally entered the country since fiscal 2021, one recently was apprehended at a Marine Corps base at the southwest border.

Agents arrested 23 people in relation to a cartel-linked drug operation in Texas that dealt in cocaine, fentanyl, heroin and meth.  The arrests came after a five-year investigation that started in 2019. Prosecutors said the drug ring operated in the Houston and Galveston areas and was under the control of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).

New testimony from those who witnessed firsthand the confusion and chaos of the Afghanistan withdrawal further contradicts President Biden’s assertion that the hurried and violent end to the longest war in American history was an "extraordinary success." In a transcribed interview before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, former Foreign Service officer Samuel Aronson said the very opposite in living, harrowing color. "Let me be clear," he told lawmakers behind closed doors, "I cannot call this evacuation a success."

One provision of the $1.2 trillion spending package passed by Congress and signed into law by Joe Biden last month will see at least $380 million spent on securing the borders of several Middle Eastern countries, while the American border remains wide open. According to Fox News, the appropriation of $380 million will be available until September 2025, and will fund "enhanced border security" measures in the countries of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, and Tunisia. Jordan will be receiving the most out of the five, at $150 million.

In a recent 60 Minutes interview, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador—who prefers to be known as AMLO for short—issued to the Biden administration blackmail demands that sounded more like existential threats. AMLO warned the U.S. that the current influx of some 10 million illegal aliens through the southern border will most certainly continue—unless America agrees to his ultimatums.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said he expects the House to move forward with an aid package that would provide support for Ukraine with "some important innovations," which may include loans for the war-torn Eastern European nation and using seized assets from Russian oligarchs. On Fox News' "Sunday Night In America" Johnson appeared receptive to a plan that would offer Ukraine a loan rather than aid, as Congress has already approved $113 billion in response to Russia's invasion since February 2022, per the Government Accountability Office.

President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) refuses to publicly identify the dozens of U.S. international airports for which it has approved direct flights from abroad for certain inadmissible aliens. At least 386,000 migrants through February have been allowed to fly to interior U.S. airports as part of a legally dubious admissions program the administration launched in October 2022. The rationale for the program is to “reduce the number of individuals crossing unlawfully” over the southern border — by flying them over it directly into the interior and then releasing them on parole.

Former President Donald Trump on Monday officially posted a $175 million bond in his New York civil fraud case, preventing state Attorney General Letitia James from seizing his assets while he appeals the verdict.

President Joe Biden is quietly shifting strategy on the Israel-Hamas war amid a looming threat from activist groups and his voters ahead of the 2024 election. For the first time since the war began on Oct. 7, the U.S. failed to veto a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution calling for a six-week “immediate” ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, tied to the release of the hostages in Gaza. The Biden administration’s decision comes after pressure from his voting bloc, outcry from protestors and unrest in the White House.

Immigration into the U.S. has risen so rapidly that it beat out federal projections by decades, according to a report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) released on Thursday. The total number of immigrants in the U.S. rose to a record high of 51.4 million as of February 2024, representing 15.5 percent of the total population,according to CIS. The U.S. Census Bureau published projections in November which estimated that the share of foreign-born nationals in the U.S. would not reach 15.5 percent until at least 2039, making the projections "obsolete," CIS authors Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler wrote.

The company in charge of operating and staffing the doomed vessel that destroyed the Francis Scott Key Bridge in a major crash earlier this week was heavily focused on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives.  The Dali, the 948-foot vessel was managed by the Singapore-based Synergy Marine Group.

State and local officials are working to prevent property owners from having their residences taken over by squatters as a social media influencer from Venezuela encouraged illegal immigrants to "invade" homes in the U.S. The issue of squatting has arisen in both Florida and Georgia, states fighting against squatting, while a New York City resident was arrested for trying to prevent a squatter from reentering her home. Squatting has become a concern with the influx of illegal immigrants as a Venezuelan national encouraged others to squat in Americans’ homes.

Students at Vanderbilt University staged a sit-in that led to arrests on Tuesday amid unrest over the institution's refusal to allow the Student Government Senate to consider joining the anti-Zionist Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement that seeks to isolate Israel. Vanderbilt University graduate assistant Amar Latif Qazi told The Tennessee Star that the First Amendment rights of the university's students were infringed after Vanderbilt refused to allow a vote following a petition, reportedly signed by 600 students, which sought to amend the Vanderbilt Student Government Constitution in order to join the BDS movement.

The Kansas House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday preventing foreign adversaries from buying up land near sensitive military sites following a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation. In an 84-39 vote, the Kansas House passed SB172, which prevents firms and entities linked to China and other countries identified as foreign adversaries from purchasing agricultural land within 150 miles of a military installation. The bill’s passage follows on the heels of a DCNF investigation that discovered the parent company of a firm that planned to buy land in Kansas is extensively tied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The DCNF's investigation was based on research conducted by The Heritage Foundation Oversight Project and Heritage Action.