Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., in the midst of determining whether to seek the presidency in 2024, is putting forth a message of positivity when it comes to the United States, while accusing leftists of doing the opposite.

Scott recent appeared in the key state of Iowa for a school choice event. The Republican is a staunch supporter of giving families greater opportunities to send their children to schools other than local public schools, which vary in quality depending on where they are.

‘My focus is still on the mission of making sure that every single American believes that the American dream is achievable for them,’ Scott told ‘Fox News Sunday.’

Scott’s message is one of fostering hope and possibility for Americans, which he contrasted with what he called a ‘grievance culture’ that he said progressives push based on past racial injustices.

‘Our original sin should never define us because a story of redemption is what we’ve been living for more than 50-plus years,’ Scott said. ‘The greatest story of progress in the world is American progress in the last 50 years. I wish we’d spend more time talking about the goodness of this nation, and stop the cancel culture.’

Scott added: ‘A world without America is a very dark place. America without faith is a nation without hope.’

The South Carolina Republican presented his position as being sharply different from the message of Democrats.

‘The fact is that the left is trying to sell a drug of victimhood and the narcotic of despair,’ Scott said. ‘The truth is that we have so much to celebrate, and yet today in many parts of the country you feel like you’re in quicksand.’

According to Scott, school choice gives young people a way out of the quicksand. He stated that the U.S. ‘should not allow the zip code of a child to determine the quality of their life, because education is the most powerful tool to equalize opportunity in this nation., but there are poor zip codes where that’s not possible.’

Scott did not specify when he would officially decide whether to run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

The founders of Rewiring America, an environmental advocacy dark money group behind the push to regulate and ban natural gas-powered stoves, have a significant financial stake in the green energy push.

Alex Laskey, Saul Griffith and Ari Matusiak – who together founded Rewiring America in 2020 – have all pursued various wind, solar, electrification and energy efficiency ventures, some of which have netted them millions of dollars in buyouts or received significant federal funding. The three co-founders have simultaneously advocated for policies benefiting those ventures through the nonprofit. 

‘It’s a shocking amount of money that they’re hauling in with this scheme of theirs,’ Tom Pyle, the president of the Institute for Energy Research, told Fox News Digital in an interview. ‘I call it Big Green Inc. It is literally a business for these guys and they cloak themselves in the mantra of trying to save the planet. But, really, this is just very sophisticated self-dealing.’

‘Congress needs to be an aggressive watchdog precisely because of organizations like Rewiring America.’

A spokesperson for Rewiring America pushed back on the notion that it was a conflict of interest for its co-founders and leaders to be involved in for-profit green energy companies.

‘There is no conflict between founding a nonprofit – one that promotes cutting energy costs for families, improving indoor air quality, and lowering emissions – and working with for-profit businesses that do the same. That’s called mission alignment,’ the spokesperson told Fox News Digital.

Although Rewiring America has an increasingly more prominent role guiding policies at the state and federal level – it notably had a presence at a Dec. 14 electrification summit and at an event celebrating the Inflation Reduction Act, both at the White House – the group’s donors are shielded from public view. The group doesn’t file federal tax forms since it is sponsored by the Windward Fund, a nonprofit that is part of the billion-dollar dark money network managed by the Washington, D.C.-based Arabella Advisors.

The only public contribution to Rewiring America is a 2020 grant worth $300,000 from the left-wing nonprofit Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

Among its key objectives, Rewiring America has maintained that Americans must broadly electrify their homes in an effort to combat climate change and has advocated for massive-spending climate programs that rival those introduced during the Great Depression and World War II. Activists have long argued in favor of electrification to reduce consumer dependence on natural gas and to ensure power across sectors is supplied by renewable sources like wind and solar.

The group was at the center of a recent move to restrict gas stove usage. Rewiring America research associate Talor Gruenwald was listed as the lead author on a study published in December linking childhood asthma to gas stoves. The study was promoted by Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and used to justify greater restrictions on the appliance.

‘Just to talk quickly about the benefits of electrification – from our count, 42% of all emissions come from decisions that are made at kitchen tables. That is the cars we drive as well as how we heat our homes, heat the water in our homes, cook our food and dry our clothing,’ Laskey, who in addition to co-founding Rewiring America serves as its executive chairman, said during the White House electrification event in December.

‘The benefits are tremendous here,’ he continued. ‘The reality is that, with clean electric machines, we don’t need to sacrifice. These machines are better, they’re better performing, they’re less expensive and more reliable to own, and they will improve the quality of people’s lives.’

While Laskey was introduced at the White House event as the chair of Rewiring America, he is also involved in several green ventures and has made millions of dollars of the sale of another.

In 2018, he joined the board of Arcadia Power, an online utility company that aims to increase access to green energy. The company, which has received millions of dollars in seed funding, says its mission is to ‘stop climate change by breaking the fossil fuel monopoly.’

Laskey was also listed in 2021 as an investor in green energy workforce training firm Greenwork. And he is identified as a strategic adviser for Voltus, a company that markets itself as ‘a leading provider of cash-generating energy products.’

Opower, an energy efficiency firm Laskey co-founded in 2007, was sold for $532 million to Oracle in 2016, the Washington Business Journal reported at the time. Laskey earned about $65.7 million from the sale.

‘We’re going to have to aggregate demand. There’s a lot that’s been done nationally, but this is ultimately also a local problem because there’s local building code, permitting,’ Laskey said at the December event. ‘We have government-owned housing, we have weatherization programs. These need to become electrification programs as well, as well as military housing, to aggregate demand.’

Meanwhile, Griffith, who is Rewiring America’s chief scientist, is the founder and chief scientist of green energy research firm Otherlab. The firm has raised at least $100 million in funding from investors, The Washington Post reported in 2021, and has received millions of dollars more in federal funding.

For example, an energy efficiency project Otherlab was involved in received $5.4 million in federal funding, an Otherlab solar project received $4.3 million and a wind turbine project received another $2.9 million.

Otherlab’s energy efficiency project Stow Energy has spun off into a company and lists Griffith as its sole board member and ‘energy guru.’ The company works to electrify the residential sector.

Griffith also founded and remains on the board of directors for Sunfolding, a solar energy company that received $32 million in additional funding in 2019. And Makani Power, a wind energy company Griffith founded in 2006, was purchased by Google in 2013 for an undisclosed amount.

Like Laskey, Griffith has advocated for policies which would seemingly benefit his business ventures through Rewiring America.

‘Rewiring America is a new non-profit I founded with Alex Laskey, a clean energy entrepreneur, to help mobilize America to address climate change and jump-start the economy by electrifying everything,’ Griffith wrote in a blog post in 2020.

‘We have to rewrite the federal, state, and local rules and regulations that were created for the fossil-fueled world and are preventing the U.S. from having the cheapest electricity ever,’ he added. ‘Then, we have to finance our transition to a zero-carbon energy system with a low-interest ‘climate loan.”

Matusiak, the CEO of Rewiring America, is a co-founder and managing partner of Purpose Venture Group, a climate-focused consulting firm. The firm mainly advises and guides nonprofits that are focused on environmental and climate change issues.

According to its website, Purpose Venture Group ‘incubated Rewiring America into the leading voice and a national authority on electrification, with over $20mm in funding commitments to date’ and provided consulting work for Arcadia Power, the company Laskey serves on the board of.

The firm has also provided consulting services for solar company Posigen and energy efficiency company Dvele which recently announced it had received $15 million in seed funding. Matusiak serves as an advisor for Dvele.

‘Dvele is leveraging its expertise and platform to produce hyper-efficient, self-powered, healthy homes that are leading society’s energy transition to decentralized power generation and storage capabilities,’ the company states on its website. 

‘The full electrification of Dvele homes has energy efficiency advantages but also contributes to the increased health and safety of the homes,’ it adds. ‘Without natural gas combustion in a home, there is no risk of carbon monoxide inside a Dvele home. In addition, having an induction cooktop versus a gas stove helps reduce harmful ultrafine particulates and gasses.’

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan refused to say Sunday whether the United States would support Ukraine in trying to retake Crimea, the peninsula that was invaded and annexed by Russia in 2014.

During an appearance on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press,’ Sullivan repeatedly argued that Ukraine itself would have to define victory against Russia. Anchor Chuck Todd then reminded Sullivan that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy defined victory last year when he said, ‘This Russian war … began with Crimea and must end with Crimea – with its liberation.’

‘President Zelenskyy did define victory, what he thought victory looked like in August of last year,’ Todd told Sullivan on Sunday. ‘There’s always been a hesitancy among U.S. officials, Jake, and I know you’re included here, about Crimea specifically. And it’s always been, ‘Well, it’s up to Ukraine.’ Well, President Zelenskyy said it – victory is all of the territory back. Why don’t we say the same thing now?’

Sullivan sidestepped the question, saying the U.S. would support Ukraine’s efforts to take back its ‘internationally recognized borders.’

‘Well, we have repeatedly talked about Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders,’ Sullivan said. ‘The question for us is how do we put Ukraine in the best position on the battlefield so that they are ultimately in the best position at the negotiating table. And President Zelenskyy as recently as this week has said we’re going to have to ultimately get to a diplomatic phase of this conflict.’

‘So from our perspective, our goal is to strengthen the hands of the Ukrainians on the battlefield so that they are in the strongest position with the most leverage when they get to the negotiating table to ultimately achieve an outcome that restores Ukraine’s full sovereignty and territorial integrity,’ he said.

‘If they want to take Crimea militarily, will the United States help Ukraine do that?’ Todd pressed again, to no avail.

‘Chuck, the critical thing right now is that they need to take back the territory in the south and the east that they are currently focused on, and we need to give them the tools to be able to do that,’ Sullivan responded.

‘The question of Crimea, and the question of what happens down the road is something that we will come to,’ he said. ‘Where we are right now, is that we need to be focused on the immediate term, because it is critical that we move fast and we move decisively to help them take back the territory across that line of contact that Russian troops are currently occupying.’

Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, appeared later on the show and criticized Jake Sullivan for not being more definitive on Crimea. 

‘I think they should be more clear,’ he said. ‘I think it should be all the territorial integrity of the entire country, which includes Crimea. And so yes, I think they need more clarity on that, and the national security adviser didn’t demonstrate it in his interview with you today.’

Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., on Sunday lambasted the United Nations after its human rights office thanked China for giving an $800,000 donation, saying American tax dollars shouldn’t be funding the U.N. if the international organization ‘wants to continue shilling’ for the Chinese government.

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the self-described ‘leading U.N. entity on human rights,’ thanked China on Twitter for donating money and invited others to financially support its human rights work as well.

Banks, a member of the newly established House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), slammed the U.N. for its tweet.

‘Pathetic!’ he wrote. ‘If the [U.N.] wants to continue shilling for the #CCP, American tax dollars shouldn’t pay for it.’

The U.S. is the single largest financial contributor to the U.N. system, contributing more than $12.5 billion – or roughly a quarter of funding for the body’s collective budget – in 2021, the most recent year with full available data.

As for 2023, the U.N.’s regular budget, which funds just the core administrative costs of the organization (including human rights entities), is $3.4 billion. The U.S. is assessed to pay 22% of that amount, the highest of any U.N. member, followed by China (15.25%) and Japan (8.03%).

Rebeccah Heinrichs, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, responded to the tweet by saying, ‘Imaging thinking this org is of value to Americans.’

Julie Millsap, the government affairs manager for the Uyghur Human Rights Project, was left speechless by the tweet.

‘Seriously?’ tweeted Michael Sobolik, a fellow in Indo-Pacific Studies at the American Foreign Policy Council.

Despite such strong U.S. financial support, experts in recent years have noted China’s influence in the U.N. has increased significantly.

‘Across the U.N. system, China is punching above its weight. Until recently, a Chinese national led more U.N. specialized agencies than any other nation,’ Brett Schaefer and Michael Cunningham of the Heritage Foundation wrote last September. ‘China is routinely elected to a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council, and that body – the most prestigious human rights organization in the U.N. system – has never passed a condemnatory resolution on China’s well-documented human rights violations.’

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the State Department under both the Trump and Biden administrations have assessed China is committing genocide against the Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority, in the Chinese region of Xinjiang.

Since 2017, the Chinese government has reportedly imprisoned more than a million Uyghurs in concentration camps, where, according to leaked documents from inside China, detainees are subjected to rape, torture, forced labor, brainwashing and forced sterilization.

Last August, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, released a damning report on human rights concerns in Xinjiang. Weeks later, however, the U.N. Human Rights Council narrowly rejected holding a debate on the report.

Eventually, 50 countries released a joint statement condemning Chinese persecution and calling for U.N. action to hold China accountable.

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, reportedly ordered an ethics probe into the state’s former Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich into his handling of 2020 election fraud allegations. 

‘Recent reporting and documents released by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office has exposed what is likely unethical conduct by former Attorney General Mark Brnovich,’ Hobbs’ general counsel, Bo Dul, wrote to Chief Bar Counsel Maret Vessella in a letter Friday obtained by The Washington Post. 

‘This conduct – which is harmful to our democracy, our State, and the legal profession itself – appears to have coincided with the time in which Mr. Brnovich and other attorneys in his Office were actively negotiating and then participating in a diversion agreement with the State Bar in regard to File No. 20-2188 and related matters,’ the letter says. Dul urges the State Bar to ‘carefully review’ files published on the state attorney general’s website and ‘take any appropriate action.’ 

On Wednesday, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat who narrowly defeated Republican Abraham Hamadeh after a recount of votes in December in one of the closest elections in state history, released documents related to the investigations into the handling of the 2020 election.

‘The results of this exhaustive and extensive investigation show what we have suspected for over two years – the 2020 election in Arizona was conducted fairly and accurately by elections officials,’ Attorney Mayes said in a statement. ‘The ten thousand plus hours spent diligently investigating every conspiracy theory under the sun distracted this office from its core mission of protecting the people of Arizona from real crime and fraud.’

The Post reported that such documents showed Brnovich kept a March 2022 report stating that ‘virtually all claims of error and malfeasance were unfounded’ private. 

Then in April, while running in the GOP primary for a U.S. Senate seat, he released an interim report claiming his office discovered ‘serious vulnerabilities,’ allegedly leaving out edits from his own investigators refuting those claims. 

 ‘Katie Hobbs is wrong,’ Brnovich said in a statement, dismissing the allegations.  ‘This is another misguided attempt by her to defame and cancel a political opponent instead of addressing the serious issues facing our state.’

Mayes said despite her office spending over 10,000 hours investigating voting irregularities and ‘alleged instances of illegal voting by high-profile election deniers,’ a September 2022 summary prepared by the Arizona Attorney General Office (AAGO) Special Investigations Section stated: ‘In each instance and in each matter, the aforementioned parties did not provide any evidence to support their allegations. 

The information that was provided was speculative in many instances and when investigated by our agents and support staff, was found to be inaccurate.’

Mayes said complaints and allegations submitted to the Arizona Attorney General’s office by members of the public ‘were also largely unsupported by factual evidence or found to be mischaracterizations when researched by agents and support staff.’

‘These allegations included the counting of duplicate votes, satellites controlled by the Italian military changing votes to favor President Biden, bamboo ballots, and dead people voting in numbers that affected the outcome of the election, among others,’ her office said. ‘And while a small number of cases were submitted for prosecution review due to these investigations, these numbers align with historical trends. They do not indicate widespread fraud or conspiracy related to the 2020 election.’ 

‘Voter fraud is rare, and instances should be handled according to applicable laws when they do occur,’ Mayes added Wednesday. ‘But it is time to work together to defend American democracy and uphold the rule of law. It’s time for the divisiveness to stop, and it’s time for our country to heal.’

The Post reported that the state bar, which has the power to reprimand or disbar its lawyers, received at least eight complaints about Brnovich regarding his office’s investigation into the 2020 election. 

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan says he will miss the Republican National Convention in 2024 if former President Donald Trump wins the party’s nomination.

The RNC has scheduled the Republican convention to be in Ryan’s home state of Wisconsin, and he is already pushing for the nominee to be anyone ‘not named Trump.’

‘For the Republican convention in Milwaukee, where will you be?’ a reporter for ABC 12 asked.

‘It depends on who the nominee is,’ Ryan responded. ‘I’ll be here if it’s somebody not named Trump.’

‘You won’t show up if it’s Trump?’ the reporter pressed.

‘No I’m not interested in participating in that, no,’ Ryan said.

‘Even in Wisconsin?’ the reporter prodded.

‘Even in Wisconsin,’ Ryan finished.

Ryan has loudly opposed Trump’s 2024 campaign, saying he doesn’t care who wins the nomination so long as it isn’t the former president.

‘If we nominate Trump again, we’re going to lose. It’s just that clear,’ Ryan told Fox 6 last week. ‘We lost with him in ‘18, ’20 and ’22. We know this. He will cost us another election, so I’m just excited about somebody not named Trump.’

‘There are great people running. I know them all. They’re all pretty decent friends of mine, and so I think any one of these candidates that are thinking about getting in the race if they get in the race, would be a great candidate,’ he added. ‘I think we’re going to beat Joe Biden if we don’t run Donald Trump.’

So far, only Trump and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley have formally announced their 2024 campaigns. Several other candidates are expected to join the race, however, including former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and possibly Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Sunday warned that one year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. and its allies need to get away from the phrase ‘time is on the Ukrainian side’ because Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to believe otherwise.

Rice, who served under former President George W. Bush, made the remarks on CBS’s ‘Face the Nation’ while speaking about how the Biden administration ‘sometimes seem[ed] to be a little bit behind’ in providing Ukrainian troops with the necessary training and equipment to continue fending off Russia.

‘But to the degree that [training and equipment] can be accelerated, I think it will help because I think we have to get away from the phrase time is on the Ukrainian side. I would be careful about that,’ Rice said. 

‘Vladimir Putin seems to believe that time is not on the Ukrainian side,’ she continued. ‘He believes if he throws in the Russian way of war, mass at the problem, poor boys from Dagestan who are just kind of cannon fodder, if he engages in terrorist activities against the Ukrainian population, he’ll wear the Ukrainians down, he’ll wear us down, he’ll wear the Europeans down. I don’t think that’s right. But we have to do everything that we can to convince him that it is indeed wrong.’

Tens of thousands of Ukrainians have died since Russia invaded on Feb. 24, 2022. The toll continued to grow on the one-year anniversary on Friday, according to Ukraine’s presidential office, which said that Russian shelling killed another three civilians and wounded 19 others.

The Biden administration declared its solidarity with Ukraine on Friday, piling sweeping new sanctions on Moscow and approving a new $2 billion weapons package to re-arm Kyiv a year after Russia’s invasion.

The package includes more ammunition, electronic warfare detection equipment and other weapons to counter Russia’s unmanned systems, and several types of drones including the upgraded Switchblade 600 Kamikaze attack drone.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., warned China against sending lethal military aid to help Russia fight Ukraine, suggesting the U.S. could respond by imposing sanctions on the Chinese government.

‘China needs to know there will be consequences,’ Cardin said during a ‘Fox News Sunday’ interview. ‘We’ve isolated Russia economically. We can do the same thing in regard to sanctions against China.’

Cardin’s comments came after multiple reports said China is considering sending artillery shells to Russia as the Russian military depletes its supply of ammunition a year into its invasion of Ukraine.

‘China needs to understand that they need to be on the right side of history here,’ Cardin told Fox News host Shannon Bream. ‘China should be with us.’

The senator referenced the United Nations General Assembly approving a nonbinding resolution on Thursday, the eve of the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion, calling for Russia to end hostilities in Ukraine and withdraw its forces.

The resolution passed 141-7, with 32 abstentions. China was one of the countries that abstained from the vote.

‘China sat on the sidelines on that vote,’ said Cardin. ‘That was wrong.’

During the interview, Cardin also called China a ‘major threat,’ decrying the Chinese government for not standing with most of the world against Russia’s war in Ukraine.

‘I do think China is a major threat against the United States,’ said Cardin. ‘They’re encouraging this [Russia-Ukraine] war by working with Russia, now perhaps providing additional weapons for Russia to be able to pursue this war of aggression. This is an attack on the sovereignty of a democratic state. There is no question that Ukraine is the front line, but Russia will not stop there. And China’s assisting that.’

China expressed anger this past week after the Biden administration suggested that China was considering sending weapons and ammunition to Russia to help its war against Ukraine, saying, ‘The U.S. is in no position to tell China what to do.’

‘It is the U.S. not China, that has been pouring weapons into the battlefield,’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Wang Wenbin said. ‘The U.S. is in no position to tell China what to do. We would never stand for finger-pointing, or even coercion and pressurizing from the U.S. on our relations with Russia.’

A new Fox News poll released on Sunday found that 68% of Americans think China is a ‘major threat’ to the U.S. and another 26% see the country as a ‘minor’ threat. Only 6% believe China poses no threat to the U.S.

‘I’m with the 68%,’ said Cardin.

Fox News’ Peter Kasperowicz contributed reporting.

Republican Presidential candidates will have to pledge support for the eventual nominee in order to be included on the Republican National Committee’s debate stage, RNC chair Ronna McDaniel said Sunday.

McDaniel says candidates will have to sign the pledge prior to the first primary debate, which will be held in Milwaukee. Former President Trump has expressed opposition to the pledge, however, echoing his hesitancy to make the same pledge in 2016.

‘We’re saying you’re not going to get on the debate stage unless you make this pledge,’ McDaniel said on CNN’s ‘State of the Union’ on Sunday. ‘Anyone getting on the Republican national committee debate stage should be able to say, ‘I will support the will of the voters and the eventual nominee of our party.’

‘I think they’re all going to sign it. I really do,’ McDaniel added. ‘I think President Trump would like to be on the debate stage.’

Trump himself indicated he wouldn’t support such a pledge in an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt in January.

‘It would have to depend on who the nominee was,’ Trump told Hewitt when asked about losing the nomination to someone else.

So far, only Trump and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley have formally announced their candidacy for 2024. Several others may enter the ring, however, including former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Trump himself has some staunch opponents within the Republican Party, including former Speaker Paul Ryan. Ryan pledged this weekend that he would not attend the Republican National Convention if Trump was the nominee.

‘If we nominate Trump again, we’re going to lose. It’s just that clear,’ Ryan told Fox 6 last week. ‘We lost with him in ‘18, ’20 and ’22. We know this. He will cost us another election, so I’m just excited about somebody not named Trump.’

‘There are great people running. I know them all. They’re all pretty decent friends of mine, and so I think any one of these candidates that are thinking about getting in the race if they get in the race, would be a great candidate,’ he added. ‘I think we’re going to beat Joe Biden if we don’t run Donald Trump.’

Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin said he”ll sign a bipartisan bill that will block the Chinese Communist Party from buying farmland in the state, including near military installations such as Quantico and the Pentagon.

‘China has one goal: world domination,’ Youngkin told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on ‘Sunday Morning Futures.’ ‘To do it at the expense of the United States, they’re using every avenue possible from saber-rattling with their military to surveillance with balloons and TikTok. And from trying to infiltrate our economic supply chain by using Trojan horse relationships like the one they have engineered with Ford Motor Co.’

Youngkin said that in Virginia, he and state lawmakers are ‘standing up strong’ to the CCP.

‘We’re going to make sure that our agricultural farmland is not purchased by the CCP,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a bill now through on a bipartisan basis, that I will sign, that will keep China from buying our agricultural farmland. Particularly next to our nationally strategic assets like the Pentagon and Quantico and the largest naval base in the world.’

This month, Virginia lawmakers passed a bill to ban the sale of agricultural land to ‘foreign adversaries,’ which is aimed specifically at China. Recent U.S. Department of Agriculture records show Chinese companies or private citizens own about 14,000 acres of Virginia farmland, VPM reported.

A sponsor of the bill, Republican state Sen. Richard Stuart, said foreign adversaries own about 1.6 million acres of farmland across the country, the outlet reported.

Youngkin added that he is also working to ‘fully understand what was going on between Ford and a’ Chinese supplier named CATL. Ford announced this month it is moving forward with a collaboration with CATL to build a $3.5 billion battery plant for electric cars in Michigan. 

‘We went to work to fully understand what was going on between Ford and a company called CATL, that is not just influenced but controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, and to not allow them to use a Trojan horse structure to gain access to taxpayer incentives that were put into the inflation Reduction Act. This is using taxpayer money to further and enrich a Chinese company at the expense of America,’ Youngkin said.