By Philip Lenczycki | Daily Caller
Republican lawmakers introduced legislation on Friday to resurrect a program combatting Chinese Communist Party (CCP) espionage that was terminated by the Biden administration.
If adopted, the Protect America’s Innovation and Economic Security from CCP Act will establish a “CCP Initiative” in the Department of Justice’s National Security Division to “curb spying” from Beijing on U.S. “intellectual property and academic institutions,” according to the bill first obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The CCP Initiative draws heavily from a similarly-named Trump administration program called the “China Initiative,” which the Biden administration ended in February 2022 after critics claimed it “fueled a narrative of intolerance and bias,” the DCNF previously reported.
One of the legislation’s sponsors, Texas Republican Rep. Lance Gooden, told the DCNF that the bill will “ensure the U.S. government has the resources to expose, investigate, and prosecute those who seek to weaken America.”