FIRST ON FOX: Freshman GOP Congressman Abe Hamadeh has introduced his first piece of legislation as a lawmaker aimed at combating the Chinese communist government’s influence in the halls of Congress.
Hamadeh, who was sworn in to represent Arizona’s 8th Congressional District in Congress last month, introduced a bill that would prohibit China Daily and other CCP-backed publications from House facilities and spoke to Fox News Digital about his reasoning for the move.
“The first day I came into my office, I looked and I had a bunch of newspapers on my desk from the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and included in it was The China Daily,” Hamadeh told Fox News Digital. “And, you know, I’m looking at it like, ‘Why do we get the China Daily?’ And after researching it, we discovered that this was a Chinese communist owned newspaper that’s a registered foreign agent.”
“And I just find it unacceptable that it’s being passed around the halls of Congress for free, using our internal mail system, using third parties to pass out the propaganda. So, honestly, it was my first welcome to Congress and that’s kind of why I think I honed in on it to be my first piece of legislation because I don’t think we should have foreign propaganda in the halls of Congress.”
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The legislation would call on the Chief Administrative Officer of the House to immediately cease the distribution of CCP state-run media material and restrict the spread of the materials on House email while still allowing members to maintain private access if they wish.
Hamadeh told Fox News Digital that the “reason why the Chinese are doing it is because they know that they can influence members of Congress, they can influence their staff.”
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“You see on Capitol Hill, it’s filled with a lot of young staffers who are energetic, but they may not know that this publication is owned by a foreign adversary of ours,” Hamadeh said. “
So, you know, the communist Chinese, it’s information warfare that they’re conducting on us, psychological operations and there’s a reason why they’re passing it out for free. They’re trying to influence the highest echelons of the United States government and it’s unacceptable.”
China Daily has drawn the ire of conservatives over the last few years, including criticism from then GO Sen. Marco Rubio, who is now Trump’s Secretary of State, who last year called on mainstream media CEOs to sever ties with the English-language newspaper owned by the CCP.
Rubio said China Daily’s goal is to “subvert U.S. news media by amplifying the goals and ambitions of the party.” The outlet has published several articles claiming the U.S.’s “anti-China” reporting on the persecution of Xinjiang Uyghurs is an “outright lie.”
“I want to get a vote on the record to see what other members of Congress, how they feel about a foreign publication like the China Daily being passed to their offices,” Hamadeh told Fox News Digital. “Nobody is saying that they don’t have to read the China Daily if they want to read it on their own privately, if they want to pay for a subscription, that’s fine. But to have it passed around through taxpayer dollars is unacceptable and to have them pass it around using our resources is unacceptable.”
Hamadeh told Fox News Digital he hopes to have bipartisan support for his bill to rid Congress of “foreign propaganda.”
“Remember what Joe Biden was so focused on, he got rid of the New York Post at the White House, one of the oldest newspapers in existence in the United States,” Hamadeh said. “He got rid of The New York Post. And yet here we are allowing the China Daily to freely operate in the halls of Congress. It’s unacceptable.”
“We understand that communist China is a threat. I understand it very well in Arizona. My district has all the Taiwanese companies moving into the district away from the sphere of China’s influence for a reason. So, you know, this is a start. There is obviously legislation out there that people are doing at a state level and even at the federal level. Some of them are trying to ban the ability for the communist Chinese to buy our farmlands and to buy land near our key assets like military bases. This is common sense, and that’s why I’m introducing it, because it should be an easy it should be an easy resolution to pass.”
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