Rep. Chris Smith, R-New Jersey, introduced a bill to combat the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) organ-harvesting industry, which is used in a prolific and profitable transplant business.

Experts say China uses incarcerated prisoners of conscience as an organ donor pool to provide compatible transplants for patients. These prisoners are reportedly executed, and their organs are harvested against their will.

Smith told Fox News Digital that he has raised the issue of forced organ harvesting for years. While trafficking in human body parts happens around the world, ‘no one does it more egregiously than [China does with] up to 100,000 victims every year who are murdered to get their organs,’ Smith said. 

‘They’re mostly from the Falun Gong practitioners, Christians, Uyghurs, and Muslims. It is a barbaric practice that is reminiscent of the Nazis in terms of using medicine in an absolutely unethical way. ‘

USA Today reported that an estimated 25,000 to 50,000 inmates are allegedly murdered each year to harvest 50,000 to 150,000 organs.

‘Our bill will not only require the State Department to do robust reporting on this egregious practice, but even it has sanctions in it so that any part of that supply chain, anybody who’s a part of it, is barred entry to the United States, and they can’t do business here in any way, shape or form,’ said Smith, who co-chairs the Congressional-Executive Commission on China.

The Foreign Affairs Committee voted unanimously on Wednesday to advance the bill to the House Floor.

Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute, says China had a rapid increase in the transplant medical sector starting in the late 1990s, and transplants can be given out on demand.

‘The reason why they target Falun Gong practitioners and Uyghurs is that they were rounded up in very large numbers and detained. And when you’re detained in China, it’s open-ended. There’s no due process whatsoever. Huge numbers of [religious minorities] were detained. Nobody knows [how many] because there are no records and there was no human rights group documenting it, because it’s such a closed society,’ she said.

Shea says there must be a record on the state of the organs and blood types, but it’s difficult to ascertain the source of organs beyond testimony from doctors and prison guards.

‘The surgeons don’t know, the nurses and the guards don’t necessarily know where these people are coming from, and they’re killed at some point. I’ve heard that they’re killed sometimes in prisons. I’ve heard that they’re killed sometimes in the hospitals’ she added.

The World Health Organization (WHO) created a Task Force on Donation and Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues in 2018. 

‘Path-breaking researchers on this issue told me that the WHO Task Force dismissed their evidence out of hand. It gave cover for the WHO to ignore these grave concerns about China’s transplant sector,’ said Shea.

The WHO told Fox Digital that the task force is no longer active.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said on Friday that the success of a strict new asylum restriction proposed by the Biden administration will depend on its political will to ‘defy their open borders base,’ just as the administration faces a furious backlash from the left over the proposal.

Cornyn led a delegation of six Republican senators to the south Texas border and was asked about the new rule introduced last month by the Biden administration, which when implemented will automatically make migrants ineligible for asylum if they have crossed illegally and failed to claim asylum in another country through which they have passed.

While left-wing critics have painted the move as similar to the Trump-era transit ban — a comparison the administration has rejected — Republicans have been cautious in offering support, with some immigration hawks expressing concern about the loopholes through which that ineligibility can be challenged.

GOP SENATORS TOUR SOUTHERN BORDER IN TEXAS, SAY MIGRANT CRISIS IS ‘SELF-INFLICTED WOUND’ 

Cornyn was dismissive of any need for any new policies to fix the ongoing border crisis that has led to more than 2.3 million migrant encounters in FY 2022 and an FY 2023 that is on track to top that number.

‘We don’t necessarily need any more laws or any more rules. What we need is the Biden administration’s will to enforce the laws that are already on the books,’ he said.

As for the new asylum ineligibility rule itself, Cornyn is taking a wait-and-see approach, and noted the political pressure the administration is taking from its left flank.

‘The Biden administration has made some proposed rule changes, but the burden is on them to prove that they actually will work,’ he said. ‘And that they actually have the political will to defy some of their open borders base in order to fix that catch-and-release system that’s responsible for a lot of the asylum-seekers simply melting into the landscape, never to be heard from again.’

Cornyn’s remarks suggest that Republicans are unlikely to come to the Biden administration’s rescue amid what has been a battering from its typical allies on the left. Democrats in both chambers have declared themselves ‘deeply disappointed’ by the policy.

That criticism was on display this week when members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus highlighted their concerns with the rule, including noting restrictions on a parole program announced in January, and ongoing tech issues with the CBP One app used to schedule appointments.

‘Not all asylum seekers can count on having a sponsor. You also have to apply via the [CBP One] app, which is complicated to begin with and collapses on many occasions. And so and in addition to that, of course, and if you don’t seek refuge in other countries, and you cannot prove that you seek refuge in other countries, you cannot opt for parole. So these are trouble policies,’ Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., said in a press conference.

Immigration groups have called the move ‘reprehensible and unacceptable,’ while the American Civil Liberties Union has promised to sue.

The administration has pushed back against the criticism, noting that the asylum regulation comes as the administration is making access to asylum easier via the app, and also is expanding legal pathways and working with countries in the hemisphere. It has also pointed to indications in January that the introduction of the parole program led to decreased illegal crossings at the border.

‘We are a nation of immigrants, and we are a nation of laws. We are strengthening the availability of legal, orderly pathways for migrants to come to the United States, at the same time proposing new consequences on those who fail to use processes made available to them by the United States and its regional partners,’ Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement announcing the rule.

Multiple outlets have reported that the rule has also divided administration officials. This week, CBS News reported that administration officials had considered the rule back in 2021, but rejected it because it was likely to get struck down in the courts.

In response to that report, an administration official told Fox News Digital: ‘As a matter of good governance, we take all legal considerations into account before putting any policy forward, and the recent proposed rule reflects those considerations.’

PALM BEACH, Fla. – Nikki Haley blamed President Biden and Democrats as well as also her one-time boss and current rival for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, former President Donald Trump, over massive government spending.

In a speech Saturday to more than 100 top GOP donors huddled at an economic retreat hosted by the fiscally conservative group Club for Growth at a luxury beachside resort, the former two-term South Carolina governor who later served as ambassador to the United Nations during the Trump administration spotlighted the nation’s exploding national debt.

‘When I was elected governor, the national debt stood at $13 trillion. Thirteen years later, we’re at more than $31 trillion,’ Haley said.

And she charged that ‘because of Joe Biden, we’ll add $20 trillion more to the national debt in the next 10 years. Our children will never forgive us for this.’

But Haley, who launched her 2024 GOP presidential nomination campaign last month, argued that while ‘obviously, the socialist left hates economic freedom… so do some of our fellow Republicans. They bad-mouth capitalism almost as much as [Sen.] Elizabeth Warren. You’ll never hear that from me.’

‘It’s insane that Joe Biden has gotten a free pass for this socialist spending spree. But a big part of the reason is that Republicans haven’t held the line — or even upheld the conservative market principles they claim to support,’ she charged. 

And without mentioning him by name, Haley then targeted Trump.

‘Here’s the truth. Lots of Republican politicians love spending and wasting taxpayer money almost as much as Democrats. The last two Republican presidents added more than $10 trillion to the national debt. Think about that. A third of our debt happened under just two Republicans.’

In another dig at the former president, Haley told the crowd: ‘I know there’s a Republican candidate out there that who you didn’t invite to the conference. So I appreciate that you did invite me.’

She also took aim at Republicans in Congress, claiming they ‘got the ball rolling on the trillion-dollar pandemic blowouts, with all the bailouts and fraud and abuse that followed,’ as she pointed towards the massive bipartisan spending bills passed by Congress in 2020 during the heights of the coronavirus pandemic.

‘Don’t let the media tell you Republicans and Democrats can’t work together. They always seem to work just fine when they’re spending your money,’ she argued.

Spotlighting those spending bills, Haley promised if elected president, she would ‘veto every single one of those items… I will stop the trillion-dollar spending sprees and halt our sprint toward socialism.’ 

She touted that ‘I’m not afraid to call BS on all the bailouts and handouts that are bankrupting America. And I’m not afraid to call out my fellow Republicans.’

Speaking with Fox News Digital minutes after her address, Haley emphasized ‘we’ve got to end earmarks. We’ve got to start balancing our budget. We need to understand that we need to quit borrowing, and we’ve got to make sure that we have the economy back on track. That’s what I’ll do as president.’

Haley was the first major Republican to join Trump in the race for the 2024 nomination. And to date no other major potential contenders have launched campaigns.

Speaking to the major donors in the audience, Haley said ‘don’t wait around for the guys who are sitting on the sidelines who haven’t made up their minds. I’m ready now — and you are, too.’

Asked about that comment, Haley told Fox News ‘they need to put their big boy pants on. I think you need a decisive person to be president. I have always been decisive. I know what I’m doing….I don’t need to wait to see who else is going to get in or who’s going to say this or who’s going to say that.’

Three of those potential contenders — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, addressed the donors at the Club for Growth retreat on Thursday and Friday. Another likely candidate — Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina — will speak on Saturday night.

Pence, in his address to the group, also highlighted the nation’s out-of-control spending. Pointing to nation’s exploding national debt in light of the recent birth of two of his granddaughters, the former vice president stressed, ‘I can’t walk by the debt crisis our nation’s facing, and neither can you.’

In an exclusive interview with Fox News, the former vice president said that ‘if I’m a candidate for president, I’ll use that platform to make it clear to the American people that we are headed to an unprecedented debt crisis in this country but that if we have leadership today, we can apply commonsense principles to it that would never touch anyone in retirement or anyone near retirement but would give younger Americans better choices than they have under these New Deal programs and try to light a pathway towards restoring fiscal integrity to our national government.’

EXCLUSIVE: Casey DeSantis, wife of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and their two children were all smiles at the rodeo on Friday ahead of the governor’s speech in Houston.

The governor spoke at the annual Harris County Lincoln Reagan Dinner at the George R. Brown Convention Center on Friday night. His team told Fox News Digital that the sold-out event was the highest raising, and most attended in the dinner’s history.

According to reports, the event was met with limited protests outside by progressives demonstrating against DeSantis’ education policies.

Before the speech, the Florida first lady and her two children, 6-year-old Madison DeSantis and 4-year-old Mason DeSantis, spent the afternoon at the annual Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo — which bills itself as the largest livestock show in the world — meeting with rodeo officials and enjoying the animals.

Photos exclusively provided to Fox News Digital showed the family riding and feeding the horses at the rodeo, which started Tuesday and continues until March 19.

Casey DeSantis is a three-time national champion equestrian, the governor’s team said.

On Thursday, she unveiled the Cancer Connect Collaborative, an initiative that will ‘assemble a team of medical professionals to analyze and rethink Florida’s approach to combating cancer,’ according to a press release.

The new program is an expansion of Cancer Collect, an initiative started by DeSantis in August 2022 that seeks to educate cancer patients and survivors on research, treatments, and initiatives.

‘Thanks to Governor DeSantis, government in Florida is working for people in practical, meaningful ways,’ said Casey DeSantis during a roundtable Thursday. ‘Today, that continues in the battle against cancer. 

Ron DeSantis is considered one of the leading potential contenders in the 2024 presidential race, though he has not yet announced whether he will run.

The DeSantises will hold a joint fireside chat at a Republican dinner in Dallas on Saturday, and the governor will give a speech at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California, on Sunday. 

Fox News’ Aubrie Spady contributed to this report.

Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State told a crowd on Saturday that he is ‘actively’ considering a run for U.S. Senate against Democrat incumbent Sherrod Brown in 2024.

‘I’m getting a lot of encouragement. I have not made an announcement. It is something I’m actively thinking about,’ Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose told The Hill in a Saturday interview during the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland. 

LaRose explained that he has received support from conservatives gathered at the conference as he has walked around the halls and believes that Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, who has held a seat in the Senate since 2007, is a ‘national embarrassment.’

Brown has served in elected office in the Buckeye State since 1975 and is popular with Democrat voters but Ohio is a state where former President Donald Trump won by 8 points in 2020. Additionally, newly elected Republican Senator J.D. Vance won the state by 6 points last year.

LaRose acknowledged that Brown is a ‘talented politician’ but pointed out that he is ‘one of the most liberal members’ of the United States Senate.

According to FiveThirtyEight, Sen. Brown votes with President Biden 98% of the time.

‘His values are misaligned from Ohio,’ LaRose told The Hill. ‘For many years he has been portraying himself as this working-class hero, man of the people. It’s not true.’

Ohio Republican State Senator Matt Dolan, who finished third in the Senate primary against Vance last year, has announced his candidacy for Brown’s seat and several other elected officials in the state are believed to be considering a run including Attorney General Dave Yost.

‘A good candidate can beat him,’ LaRose said of Sen. Brown. ‘We need a battle-tested candidate that’s ready to go and that’s why I’m exploring it.’ 

The Texas Republican Party on Saturday censured Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, for his votes on issues including same-sex marriage, gun restrictions and border security, deciding the votes violated the priorities and principles of the party.

Gonzales, who represents Texas’ 23rd Congressional District stretching from western San Antonio to El Paso, was censured by the Medina County Republican Party last month for taking actions ‘in opposition to the core principles of the Republican Party of Texas.’ 

On Saturday, the 64-member State Republican Executive Committee voted in favor of the resolution, 57-5, with one abstention, at its quarterly meeting in Austin.

The resolution accused Gonzales of engaging in a ‘pattern of action demonstrably opposed’ to the state party’s principles and legislative priorities. 

It cited his votes in favor of the Respect for Marriage Act, which established federal protections for same-sex and interracial marriage and was signed by President Biden in December, as violating principles preserving ‘self-sufficient families, founded on the traditional marriage of a natural man and a natural woman.’

Separately, the resolution took aim at Gonzales, who represents a border district, for having failed to support a key Republican border security bill in the House that would block migrants from entering the U.S. if they could not be detained or placed in a remain-in-Mexico-type program. Gonzales had blasted the bill as ‘un-American’ and argued it would essentially prevent asylum claims at the border. He said it would worsen the ongoing border crisis and incentivize human smuggling.

‘Instead of messaging on a bill that has 0.00% chance of passing into law, we should fix the root problems of our broken immigration system,’ he said last month.

The resolution said the vote violated the priority to ‘secure the border and protect Texans.’

The resolution also calls out Gonzales for voting against a House GOP rules package and for voting in favor of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, a bipartisan gun control law written in response to the mass shootings in Uvalde, which is located in Gonzales’ district, and in Buffalo, New York. 

The bill’s support of red flag laws, restrictions on firearm owners and expansion of background checks ‘violates our Second Amendment rights,’ according to the Texas GOP.

Gonzales could now face disciplinary action ranging from lifting the restriction on state GOP officials campaigning against him to cutting off financial support for his next re-election campaign, according to party rules. 

On Saturday, Gonzales fired back at the censure.

‘Today, like every day, Congressman Tony Gonzales went to work on behalf of the people of TX-23,’ a spokesperson said in a statement to Fox News Digital. ‘He talked to veterans, visited with Border Patrol agents and met constituents in a county he flipped from blue to red. The Republican Party of Texas would be wise to follow his lead and do some actual work.’

Earlier this week, Gonzales defended his voting record.

‘The reality is I’ve taken almost 1,400 votes, and the bulk of those have been with the Republican Party,’ Gonzales said, according to The Texas Tribune. He also said he did not regret his votes, including the gun safety bill.

‘If the vote was today, I would vote twice on it if I could,’ he said.

The National Republican Congressional Committee gave its backing to Gonzales after the vote.

‘Congressman Gonzales is a valued member of the House majority, and we look forward to supporting his re-election,’ NRCC Regional Press Secretary Delanie Bomar said in a statement 

Critics of Gonzales’ positions cheered the move by the state party. Texans for Strong Borders, an advocacy group for border security, said it backed the censure ‘in large part for [Gonzales’] active opposition to commonsense border security legislation and his use of leftist smears to denigrate the work of members who are serious about stopping the invasion at our southern border.’

Former President Donald Trump topped the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) straw poll for the 2024 GOP nomination by a wide margin at the conservative conference Saturday.

Trump won 62% support in the poll, which was announced shortly before he was scheduled to speak to the crowd gathered at the Gaylord in Fort Washington, Maryland.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis came in as second choice with 20% support. The third-place pick at 5% support was long-shot GOP candidate Perry Johnson, a businessman who attempted to run for governor in Michigan but was blocked from participating in the Republican primary.

Kari Lake, the Republican Arizona gubernatorial nominee in 2022, received the most support for vice presidential candidate with 20%. DeSantis received 14% support for the 2024 vice presidential nominee in the CPAC poll. Over 2,000 attendees completed the poll, organizers said.

Trump easily won the 2024 GOP presidential nomination straw polls at major CPAC gatherings in Orlando, Florida and Dallas, Texas last year. The former president, who launched his 2024 bid last November and who remains the most popular and influential politician in the GOP more than two years after leaving the White House, captured 69% of ballots cast in the anonymous online straw poll last August in Dallas and 59% in Orlando last February.

The former president’s strong performances in CPAC’s unscientific survey comes as no surprise. The conference, long the largest and most influential gathering of conservative leaders and activists, has become a Trumpfest since his 2016 presidential election victory.

DeSantis was a distant second in the Dallas straw poll, at 24%, and grabbed 28% support in Orlando. Everyone else in the actual and potential field of 2024 GOP presidential candidates were in the low single digits or failed to crack one percent.

Florida’s governor, a former congressman, saw his popularity soar among conservatives across the country the past three years due to his forceful pushback against coronavirus pandemic restrictions and his aggressive actions as a conservative culture warrior going after media, corporations and teachers’ unions.

DeSantis is widely expected by political pundits to launch a Republican White House run later this year even though he currently remains on the 2024 sidelines. DeSantis last year routinely dismissed talk of a 2024 White House run, but he’s dropped plenty of hints of a possible presidential bid since his 19-point gubernatorial re-election victory last November. Sources in DeSantis’ wider orbit say any presidential campaign launch would come in the late spring or early summer, after the end of Florida’s current legislative session.

DeSantis, who addressed the CPAC crowd last February in Orlando, didn’t speak at this year’s confab. Instead, the Florida governor on Thursday night headlined the first evening of a three-day conference in Palm Beach, Florida hosted by the politically active fiscal conservative group the Club for Growth, which drew roughly 120 of the top donors in the GOP. On Friday DeSantis was at political and donor events in Texas before heading to California over the weekend.

Trump, who headlines Saturday’s final day of CPAC, wasn’t invited to the Club for Growth donor retreat. Two other declared candidates – former ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and entrepreneur and author and conservative political commentator Vivek Ramaswamy spoke at CPAC and at the donor retreat in Palm Beach. So did conservative firebrand Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who was runner up to Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential nomination race and who’s mulled a 2024 White House run but who’s currently concentrating on his Senate re-election next year.

Among the other likely 2024 GOP presidential hopefuls, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo addressed the crowed at CPAC but didn’t attend the donor retreat. And former Vice President Mike Pence and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu weren’t at CPAC but spoke at the Club for Growth retreat on Friday. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who’s also making moves towards a likely White House run, is the featured speaker in Palm Beach on Saturday night.