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Daily Caller

‘Explore Every Action Necessary’: Here’s How Trump Admin, GOP May Change Fight Against Mexican Cartels

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Jason Hopkins

“When I am back in the White House, the drug kingpins and vicious traffickers will never sleep soundly again.”

The Trump transition team and congressional Republicans have promised an unprecedented immigration crackdown, which could also include a novel approach to combating drug cartels.

President-elect Donald Trump’s immigration platform includes a number of hardline measures, such as resuming construction on the U.S.-Mexico border wall, reviving the Remain in Mexico program for asylum seekers, conducting the largest deportation operation in U.S. history and a number of other hawkish proposals. Trump allies and upcoming administration officials have also called on the U.S. to officially designate key drug cartels as terrorist organizations, which would open more resources to combating the crime syndicates that have long sowed chaos at the southern border.

“The drug cartels are waging war on America — and it’s now time for America to wage war on the cartels,” then-candidate Trump said in December 2023, and declared that his plan to fight the cartels included designating them as foreign terrorist organizations.

“Millions and millions of families and people are being destroyed,” he continued. “When I am back in the White House, the drug kingpins and vicious traffickers will never sleep soundly again.”

Nearly a year after that announcement was made, Trump is now due to return to the White House for a non-consecutive second term, bringing his proposal for cartels far closer to reality.

Former Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director Tom Homan — who Trump recently tapped to serve as his immigration czar — declared that he’d like to see cartels be given the terrorist designation, having said in a news interview in November that they have “killed more Americans than every terrorist organization in the world combined.”

A foreign terrorist organization (FTO) designation by the State Department — which has so far been mostly applied to Islamic terrorist groups that pose a significant threat to American security — would trigger U.S. authorization to freeze financial assets, prohibit entry into the country and prosecute members for supporting terrorism. The proposal itself is not new, as it’s been championed by border hawks over the years.

“What we need to do is make sure that legally we are approaching cartels as the dangerous organizations that they are, and I think an FTO designation is appropriate,” Texas Rep. Chip Roy said to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Roy was an early proponent in the House of Representatives for this action, having introduced legislation in 2019 that called on then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to designate cartels as terrorists. The Texas lawmaker introduced a bill in 2023 that called for the Gulf Cartel, Cartel Del Noreste, Cartel de Sinaloa, and Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion to be given the FTO designation.

While the incoming Trump administration appears to be fully on board with this approach, it remains to be seen if it can be done. Trump himself explicitly called for drug cartels to be labeled as terrorists in November 2019 — largely in reaction to the massacre of American Mormons living south of the border by drug lords earlier that month — but those plans never came to fruition in his first term.

The Mexican government has also long opposed the idea of FTO designation for drug cartels, believing the approach to largely be an affront to their national sovereignty.

In a statement to the DCNF, Todd Bensman, who serves as a senior national security fellow for the Center for Immigration Studies, said he doesn’t “outright oppose the idea” of an FTO designation, but noted that a cartel organization can employ tens of thousands of individuals. For this reason, careful scope would be needed so U.S. officials are not overwhelmed as they carry out their counterterrorism mission.

Roy argued that a specific FTO designation isn’t completely necessary, but some sort of formal action is needed in order to fully take on the threat of these drug cartels.

“We can get hung up with words and designations and whatever,” the Texas lawmaker said. “Alright, if you want to come up with a special designation that’s the equivalent, then so be it.”

“But the bottom line is that we need to designate them as the dangers that they are and then be able to take action with the full tools at our disposal,” Roy continued. “We need to explore every action necessary to stop them.”

On Election Day, Republicans won control of not only the White House and the Senate, but also maintained their majority in the House of Representatives, which will allow the Trump administration to more freely foment its agenda to control illegal immigration and tackle crime emanating south of the U.S.-Mexico border. Roy urged lawmakers to get behind the White House to push these goals over the finish line.

“What we need is the executive branch to act and we need the legislature to give the executive branch the tools necessary to act,” Roy said. “We can’t blink. We need to move now.”

Business

Ted Cruz, Jim Jordan Ramp Up Pressure On Google Parent Company To Deal With ‘Censorship’

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Andi Shae Napier

Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Republican Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan are turning their attention to Google over concerns that the tech giant is censoring users and infringing on Americans’ free speech rights.

Google’s parent company Alphabet, which also owns YouTube, appears to be the GOP’s next Big Tech target. Lawmakers seem to be turning their attention to Alphabet after Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta ended its controversial fact-checking program in favor of a Community Notes system similar to the one used by Elon Musk’s X.

Cruz recently informed reporters of his and fellow senators’ plans to protect free speech. 

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“Stopping online censorship is a major priority for the Commerce Committee,” Cruz said, as reported by Politico. “And we are going to utilize every point of leverage we have to protect free speech online.”

Following his meeting with Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai last month, Cruz told the outlet, “Big Tech censorship was the single most important topic.”

Jordan, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, sent subpoenas to Alphabet and other tech giants such as RumbleTikTok and Apple in February regarding “compliance with foreign censorship laws, regulations, judicial orders, or other government-initiated efforts” with the intent to discover how foreign governments, or the Biden administration, have limited Americans’ access to free speech.

“Throughout the previous Congress, the Committee expressed concern over YouTube’s censorship of conservatives and political speech,” Jordan wrote in a letter to Pichai in March. “To develop effective legislation, such as the possible enactment of new statutory limits on the executive branch’s ability to work with Big Tech to restrict the circulation of content and deplatform users, the Committee must first understand how and to what extent the executive branch coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech.”

Jordan subpoenaed tech CEOs in 2023 as well, including Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Tim Cook of Apple and Pichai, among others.

Despite the recent action against the tech giant, the battle stretches back to President Donald Trump’s first administration. Cruz began his investigation of Google in 2019 when he questioned Karan Bhatia, the company’s Vice President for Government Affairs & Public Policy at the time, in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Cruz brought forth a presentation suggesting tech companies, including Google, were straying from free speech and leaning towards censorship.

Even during Congress’ recess, pressure on Google continues to mount as a federal court ruled Thursday that Google’s ad-tech unit violates U.S. antitrust laws and creates an illegal monopoly. This marks the second antitrust ruling against the tech giant as a different court ruled in 2024 that Google abused its dominance of the online search market.

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Daily Caller EXCLUSIVE: Trump’s Broad Ban On Risky Gain-Of-Function Research Nears Completion

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Emily Kopp

President Donald Trump could sign a sweeping executive order banning gain-of-function research — research that makes viruses more dangerous in the lab — as soon as May 6, according to a source who has worked with the National Security Council on the issue.

The executive order will take a broad strokes approach, banning research amplifying the infectivity or pathogenicity of any virulent and replicable pathogen, according to the source, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the anticipated executive action. But significant unresolved issues remain, according to the source, including whether violators will be subject to criminal penalties as bioweaponeers.

The executive order is being steered by Gerald Parker, head of the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, which has been incorporated into the NSC. Parker did not respond to requests for comment.

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In the process of drafting the executive order, Parker has frozen out the federal agencies that have for years championed gain-of-function research and staved off regulation — chiefly Anthony Fauci’s former institute, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health.

The latest policy guidance on gain-of-function research, unveiled under the Biden administration in 2024, was previously expected to go into effect May 6. According to a March 25 letter cosigned by the American Society for Microbiology, the Association for Biosafety and Biosecurity International, and Council on Governmental Relations, organizations that conduct pathogen research have not received direction from the NIH on that guidance — suggesting the executive order would supersede the May 6 deadline.

The 2024 guidance altered the scope of experiments subject to more rigorous review, but charged researchers, universities and funding agencies like NIH with its implementation, which critics say disincentivizes reporting. Many scientists say that researchers and NIH should not be the primary entities conducting cost–benefit analyses of pandemic virus studies. 

Parker previously served as the head of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), a group of outside experts that advises NIH on biosecurity matters, and in that role recommended that Congress stand up a new government agency to advise on gain-of-function research. Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield has also endorsed moving gain-of-function research decision making out of the NIH to an independent commission.

“Given the well documented lapses in the NIH review process, policymakers should … remove final approval of any gain-of function research grants from NIH,” Redfield said in a February op-ed.

It remains to be seen whether the executive order will articulate carveouts for gain-of-function research without risks of harm such as research on non-replicative pseudoviruses, which can be used to study viral evolution without generating pandemic viruses.

It also remains to be seen whether the executive order will define “gain-of-function research” tightly enough to stand up to legal scrutiny should a violator be charged with a crime.

Risky research on coronaviruses funded by the NIH at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through the U.S. nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance typifies the loopholes in NIH’s existing regulatory framework, some biosecurity experts say.

Documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act in 2023 indicated that EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak submitted a proposal to the Pentagon in 2018 called “DEFUSE” describing gain-of-function experiments on viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2 but downplayed to his intended funder the fact that many of the tests would occur in Wuhan, China.

Daszak and EcoHealth were both debarred from federal funding in January 2025 but have faced no criminal charges.

“I don’t know that criminal penalties are necessary. But we do need more sticks in biosafety as well as carrots,” said a biosecurity expert who requested anonymity to avoid retribution from his employer for weighing in on the expected policy. “For instance, biosafety should be a part of tenure review and whether you get funding for future work.”

Some experts say that it is likely that the COVID-19 crisis was a lab-generated pandemic, and that without major policy changes it might not be the last one.

“Gain-of-function research on potential pandemic pathogens caused the COVID-19 pandemic, killing 20 million and costing $25 trillion,” said Richard Ebright, a Rutgers University microbiologist and longtime critic of high-risk virology, to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “If not stopped, gain-of-function research on potential pandemic pathogens likely will cause future lab-generated pandemics.”

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