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Republicans Critical of Biden’s Stance During Meeting with Xi

Congressional Republicans mostly condemned President Joe Biden for saying that there “need not be a new Cold War” between the U.S. and China, following a three-hour summit meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Indonesia.

A few Republicans, however, joined members of Biden’s Democratic Party in cautiously welcoming signs that the meeting may have helped to head off misunderstandings that could lead to unnecessary conflict.

Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas tweeted, “Joe Biden has again failed to address or even acknowledge China’s Cold War against the United States. His naive return to a policy of appeasement will hurt the United States, endanger Taiwan, and further embolden Xi Jinping.”

Biden also said, “I don’t think there’s any imminent attempt by China to invade Taiwan,” despite escalating military moves by Beijing in the Taiwan Strait.

Before the meeting, Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu told VOA that “if the senior leaders or the president, the vice president of the United States are able to speak with the Chinese leaders to address the concerns about the peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait or China’s violation of the status quo, I think it’s going to be very helpful to regional peace.”

Biden’s remarks drew a backlash from several Republican lawmakers.

Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn, also a Republican, tweeted, “Xi Jinping is focused on global domination, not working with the Biden administration on climate change.”

Meetings described as ‘candid and constructive’

The leaders of the world’s two largest economies met this week on the eve of the G-20 summit in Bali. Each of the men had scored recent political victories at home — Xi starting an unprecedented third term and Biden riding on what is seen as a win for his Democratic Party after a strong showing in the U.S. midterm elections.

The two engaged in a frank conversation about their respective priorities and intentions on a range of issues, according to minutes of the meeting released by the White House.

Biden emphasized the necessity for the U.S. and China to work together on transnational challenges, including climate change, global macroeconomic stability including debt relief, health security, and global food security, according to the readout.

China’s Foreign Ministry said, “Both presidents viewed the meeting as in-depth, candid and constructive. They instructed their teams to promptly follow up and implement the important common understandings reached between them, and take concrete actions to put China-U.S. relations back on the track of steady development.”

Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who is vice chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence and a senior member of the Committee on Foreign Relations, said the Bali meeting was not a turning point in U.S.-China relations.

Rubio told VOA Mandarin during an interview on Monday that “no meeting is going to solve the deep issues between the U.S. and China … which will remain the challenge of the centuries.”

In a written statement issued on Monday before Xi and Biden met, Rubio criticized Biden for “dangerously” misunderstanding “the CCP [Chinese Communist Party], which openly pushes for conflict with the United States and its allies.”

“This meeting should have held the CCP accountable for its rampant human rights abuses, ongoing theft of American intellectual property, and its refusal to investigate the origins of COVID-19,” Rubio said. “Instead, President Biden demonstrated that he is willing to sacrifice everything — including our national security and the security of our allies — for the sake of pursuing ill-fated climate talks with our nation’s greatest adversary.”

‘It’s good that we’re talking’

Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, however, thinks the long meeting indicated a positive development.

“Three hours isn’t necessarily a good sign, but I think it’s positive, because there’re so many issues, and that tells me that both went into the meeting understanding how important U.S.-China communication is at a minimum,” he told VOA Mandarin on Monday. “So I was happy to hear that.”

Republican Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota told VOA Mandarin on Monday that it’s important to maintain good relations with China.

“The Chinese Communist Party may have different points of view about how to get there,” he said. “We want to make clear our positions, but we also want them to understand that you would much rather have peace than to have conflict.

“I am always hopeful that communications and diplomacy can win out,” he added. “Time will tell whether or not we had a successful meeting. But it’s good that we’re talking.”

Democratic Representative Gregory Meeks of New York and Republican Representative Ami Bera of California said in a statement that “candid dialogue and sustained diplomacy are necessary to ensure that this competition is healthy, constructive, and does not devolve into conflict.”

But, they added, engagement with China “will continue to be based on the principle of strategic competition … as long as Beijing continues to ignore international rules and norms — whether it’s China’s aggression in the Taiwan Strait, its genocide in Xinjiang, its oppression in Hong Kong and Tibet, or its support for Russia’s and North Korea’s destabilizing actions.”

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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US Senate Advances Protection for Same-Sex, Interracial Marriages at Federal Level  

U.S. senators took a key step toward protecting same-sex and interracial marriages Wednesday as they advanced the Respect for Marriage Act, 62-37, to a final vote.

Twelve Republicans voted to advance the legislation, which will head to President Joe Biden’s desk to be signed into law after final passage in the U.S. House.

The legislation would repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act that defines marriage as between a man and a woman under federal law. It would also require states to recognize same-sex and interracial marriages performed in other states, although it would not prevent states from passing laws banning those marriages.

“This legislation unites Americans,” Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin, one of the act’s co-sponsors and the first openly gay woman elected to the U.S. Senate, said Wednesday. “With the Respect for Marriage Act, we can ease the fear that millions of same-sex and interracial couples have – that their freedoms and their rights could be stripped away – by passing this bill. We are guaranteeing same-sex and interracial couples, regardless of where they live, that their marriage is legal, and that they will continue to enjoy the rights and responsibilities that all other marriages are afforded.”

Abortion ruling

The U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage at the federal level in the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision. But the court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision in June overturning a right to abortion at the federal level raised concerns about federal protections for other rights.

In his concurring opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the court should reconsider other decisions based on the right to privacy, such as guarantees for the right to marry or the right to use birth control, arguing the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee those rights. Thomas’ opinion led to widespread concern the court would next move to overturn the right to same-sex marriage. A bipartisan group of senators worked on the Respect for Marriage Act to address this possibility.

A version of the legislation passed the U.S. House of Representatives earlier this year with support from 47 Republicans.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio, who was reelected last week to represent the Southeastern state of Florida, told cable news network CNN earlier this year the bill was “a stupid waste of time.”

The Liberty Counsel, a nonprofit organization advancing religious freedom, said in a statement Tuesday that the Respect for Marriage Act was unconstitutional and did not provide “any protection for religious individuals or organizations, and the subsequent amendments to the bill exclude a large percentage of constitutionally and statutorily protected religious organizations.”

But Republican Senator Susan Collins, another co-sponsor of the legislation, said on the Senate floor Wednesday that concerns about religious liberty were a false argument.

“This legislation would make clear in federal law that nonprofit religious organizations and religious educational institutions cannot be compelled to participate in or support the solicitation or celebration of marriages that are contrary to their religious beliefs,” she said.

In a May 2022 Gallup poll, 71% of Americans said they supported same-sex marriage. Only 27% supported it when the poll was first taken in 1996.

 
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Republicans Win Slim Majority in US House of Representatives

Republicans won control of the U.S. House on Wednesday, returning the party to power in Washington and giving conservatives leverage to blunt President Joe Biden’s agenda and spur a flurry of investigations. But a threadbare majority will pose immediate challenges for Republican leaders and complicate the party’s ability to govern.

More than a week after Election Day, Republicans secured the 218th seat needed to flip the House from Democratic control. The full scope of the party’s majority may not be clear for several more days — or weeks — as votes in competitive races are still being counted.

But they are on track to cobble together what could be the party’s narrowest majority of the 21st century, rivaling 2001, when Republicans had just a nine-seat majority, 221-212 with two independents. That’s far short of the sweeping victory Republicans predicted going into this year’s midterm elections, when the party hoped to reset the agenda on Capitol Hill by capitalizing on economic challenges and Biden’s lagging popularity.

Instead, Democrats showed surprising resilience, holding on to moderate, suburban districts from Virginia to Minnesota to Kansas. The results could complicate House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy’s plans to become speaker as some conservative members have questioned whether to back him or have imposed conditions for their support.

Despite the Republicans’ underwhelming showing, the party will still have notable power. Republicans will take control of key committees, giving them the ability to shape legislation and launch investigations of Biden, his family and his administration. There’s particular interest in investigating the overseas business dealings of the president’s son, Hunter Biden. Some of the most conservative lawmakers have raised the prospect of impeaching Biden, though that will be much harder for the party to accomplish with a tight majority.

Any legislation that emerges from the House could face steep odds in the Senate, where Democrats won the barest of majorities Saturday. Both parties are looking to a December 6 Senate runoff in Georgia as a last chance to pad their ranks.

Potential for legislative chaos

With such a slim majority in the House, there’s also a potential for legislative chaos. The dynamic essentially gives an individual member enormous sway over shaping what happens in the chamber. That could lead to particularly tricky circumstances for Republican leaders as they try to win support for must-pass measures that keep the government funded or raise the debt ceiling.

The Republicans’ failure to notch more wins — they needed a net gain of five seats to take the majority — was especially surprising because the party went into the election benefiting from congressional maps that were redrawn by Republican legislatures. History was also on Republicans’ side: The party that holds the White House had lost congressional seats during virtually every new president’s first midterm of the modern era.

New leadership

The new majority will usher in a new group of leaders in Washington. If elected to succeed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the top post, McCarthy would lead what will likely be a rowdy conference of House Republicans, most of whom are aligned with former President Donald Trump’s bare-knuckle brand of politics. Many Republicans in the incoming Congress rejected the results of the 2020 presidential election, even though claims of widespread fraud were refuted by courts, elections officials and Trump’s own attorney general.

Republican candidates pledged on the campaign trail to cut taxes and tighten border security. Republican lawmakers also could withhold aid to Ukraine as it fights a war with Russia or use the threat of defaulting on the nation’s debt as leverage to extract cuts from social spending and entitlements — though all such pursuits will be tougher given how small the Republican majority may end up being.

As a senator and then vice president, Biden spent a career crafting legislative compromises with Republicans. But as president, he was clear about what he viewed as the threats posed by the current Republican Party.

Biden said the midterms showed voters want Democrats and Republicans to find ways to cooperate and govern in a bipartisan manner, but also noted that Republicans didn’t achieve the electoral surge they’d been betting on and vowed, “I’m not going to change anything in any fundamental way.”
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