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House select committee hearing paints China as a strategic antagonist
CBSN
The House select committee on China came out with guns blazing in its first hearing on Tuesday, arguing that the Chinese Communist Party should not be trusted or treated with kid gloves as it seeks to undermine the U.S.
"We may call this a 'strategic competition,' but it's not a polite tennis match," Wisconsin Rep. Mike Gallagher, the committee's Republican chairman, said in a hearing that stuck to a bipartisan tone the leaders had promised. "This is an existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century — and the most fundamental freedoms are at stake."
Former President Donald Trump's national security adviser H.R. McMaster testified that China poses a greater threat to freedom than the Soviet Union ever did because it is more intertwined in the global economy.
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More employees of the Environmental Protection Agency were informed Wednesday that their jobs appear in doubt. Senior leadership at the EPA held an all-staff meeting to tell individuals that President Trump's executive order, "Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing," which was responsible for the closure of the agency's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion office, will likely lead to the shuttering of the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights as well.
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In her first hours as attorney general, Pam Bondi issued a broad slate of directives that included a Justice Department review of the prosecutions of President Trump, a reorientation of department work to focus on harsher punishments, actions punishing so-called "sanctuary" cities and an end to diversity initiatives at the department.
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The quick-fire volley of tariffs between the U.S. and China in recent days has heightened global fears of a new trade war between the world's two largest economies. Yet while experts think the battle is likely to escalate, they also say the early skirmishes offer hope for an agreement on trade and other key issues that could head off a larger conflict.