It's Not Just Strategic U.S. Land China Is Trying To Buy, They're Buying Judges, Too

<![CDATA[About three weeks ago, the country was understandably preoccupied. We were in the final phase of the battle to get the One Big Beautiful Bill passed, still reveling in the aftermath of taking Iran off the board as a potential nuclear power, and we were celebrating a bunch of late-term Supreme Court decisions confirming that the elected head of the Article II branch of government actually gets to manage the employees of Article II agencies. But during that time, Texas Senator Ted Cruz chaired a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on creeping Chinese influence on U.S. energy policy, using climate change as the vehicle with which to hamper the Trump goals of becoming a dominant energy producer once again. Cruz' opening statement as chair of the subcommittee ran about 13 minutes. It's worth watching once if you have the time, but there was two and a half minutes in there that were eyebrow raising.  So it's not just the CCP is using Confucius Institutes to permeate American academia, and they're not content flying spy balloons and other reconnaissance aircraft over the country to map out sensitive locations. And he's not even talking about Communist Chinese shell companies attempting to buy land next to military or other critical infrastructure sites. They're apparently now in the business of educating and influencing judges. The ranking member of the committee, Sheldon Whitehouse, looks absolutely disinterested in what Cruz is outlining, because he's too busy reading and reviewing some document a staffer handed him. Perhaps it's a proposed member list at the whites-only club in Rhode Island of which he holds so dear and he's helping advise the membership committee. Whitehouse does have to maintain his standards, you know. So why does a three-week-old Senate subcommittee matter? Fox News' Emma Colton and Breanne Deppisch have an update that are the receipts to what Cruz was alleging. There's now evidence of emails and group chats of over a dozen judges engaged with CCP-backed climate groups to bone up on possible creative legislation to hamper the Trump administration's energy proposals.  ]]>