House lawmakers are prepping a bipartisan resolution to condemn China after the U.S. shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon over the weekend, which ratcheted up tensions between Washington and Beijing.

Though Republicans have sharply criticized the Biden administration for waiting for days as the balloon traveled across the continental U.S. to South Carolina before shooting it down, the resolution is not expected to focus blame on President Biden.

“We want it to be a bipartisan resolution about China, not about us fighting each other,” Rep. Mike McCaul, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, told reporters Monday night. “Because it’s too important of an issue, you know. We want to stand strong together against China instead of having our internal fights.”

McCaul said he sent a draft resolution to Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), the ranking member of the panel, who has “made his comments.” The two were set to meet Monday evening to “hash it out,” according to McCaul.

He said the resolution could be released as soon as this week.

“Clearly, we’re focused on condemning China for sending a spy balloon into United States territory. Obviously, we have a lot more questions about what happened, and when the administration knew it,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said Monday.

“Those are separate questions going on, and we need to have a briefing on it. But in the meantime, we’re trying to get an agreement with” the committees working on the proposal, he added.

Talk of a resolution comes the same week Biden is set to deliver the State of the Union address. McCaul said that event factored into his thinking about whether to write the resolution with a partisan edge.

“My strong recommendation was to make it bipartisan because with the State of the Union, I just think it’s important that we focus on our adversary China, rather than our internal politics or divisions,” he said.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said he will get a “gang of eight” intelligence briefing — alongside bipartisan congressional leaders as well as the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Intelligence committees — on the Chinese balloon sometime this week. He is pushing for a briefing open to all House members.

McCarthy said his questions will include why the U.S. did not shoot down the balloon earlier, when it was detected, and inquiries about other balloons detected in the past that were only assessed to be balloons later.

Gen. Glen VanHerck, the head of U.S. Northern Command, said Monday that the Defense Department assessed the presence of previous balloons in or near U.S. airspace during the Trump administration after the fact through other means of information collection.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that Biden had authorized the military to take down the balloon last Wednesday, and officials waited to shoot it down over water so the debris would not harm any Americans.

McCarthy was not convinced that there was not a safe way to take down the balloon earlier.

“If you allow them to enter a sovereign nation of America in the airspace, what does that say? I would send a very clear message that you're never going to enter,” McCarthy said.

“You could do it over Alaska without any problem. You could have done it over northern Idaho. You could have done it in Montana. These are not high populated areas that gave you a lot of opportunity.”

China last week denied that the balloon was spying on the U.S., claiming it was a weather balloon that went off course.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) defended using the debt ceiling as a bargaining chip to secure spending cuts in remarks Monday night, just ahead of President Biden’s State of the Union address to Congress on Tuesday.

“Debt limit debates have been used for nearly every successful attempt to reform federal spending in living history. Why? Because the problem only gets solved when both parties come to the table,” McCarthy said in the roughly 10-minute address on Monday evening.

He pointed out that Biden had opposed debt limit increases when he was a senator during debt ceiling fights two decades ago.

Biden and McCarthy met in the White House last week, after which the Speaker said it was possible to find “common ground” on the debt limit issue. But there has been no movement toward a deal yet, as the White House has called for a “clean” debt limit increase not tied to any other spending stipulations. 

White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement ahead of McCarthy’s speech that Biden will in his State of the Union address to highlight deficit-reduction measures included in legislation he has signed into law, like increasing taxes on big corporations, and dinged Republicans for passing Trump-era tax cuts that added to the debt.

“House Republicans are threatening to actively throw our economy into a tailspin with a default – which they have a non-negotiable, Constitutional duty to prevent – unless they can further cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. It’s utterly backwards,” Bates said.

McCarthy refuted that line of messaging from the White House, saying that Republicans want a “responsible debt limit increase” and batting down worries about slashes to entitlement spending.

“We will preserve our ability to defend this nation [from] threats abroad,” McCarthy said. “Cuts to Medicare and Social Security – they are off the table.”

“Defaulting on our debt is not an option. But neither is a future of higher taxes, higher interest rates and an economy that doesn't work for working Americans,” McCarthy said.

McCarthy said he will commit to continue negotiating with Biden and to work toward finding “common ground” with a different approach.

“No drawing lines in the sand or saying it's my way or the highway. No policy gimmicks or political games,” McCarthy. “But most of all, no blank checks for runaway spending."

After his address, however, McCarthy did draw one line in the sand: No tax increases.

“We're not raising any taxes. I want to be very clear with that,” McCarthy told reporters.

Brett Samuels and Mychael Schnell contributed.

Lawmakers are planning to probe the Biden administration for what they are calling a failure to protect national security as a Chinese spy balloon flew over the U.S. for several days before it was shot down Saturday. 

While there has been no official announcement of an investigation yet, House Republicans are itching to grill the Biden administration for allowing a foreign adversary’s surveillance device to breach U.S. airspace, and letting it stay there for days. 

President Biden reportedly decided to shoot down the balloon on Wednesday, but the military waited to carry out those orders until it had floated over the ocean. It’s unclear why the U.S. was confident it did not pose a safety or security threat in those intervening days. 

The incident has inflamed already fraught tensions with China, and GOP lawmakers have said it’s another sign of U.S. weakness in the face of rising threats from Beijing. 

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), said he was “deeply concerned by the Biden administration’s decision to allow the spy balloon to traverse the United States.”

“The White House must provide answers about why they decided to allow a [Chinese Communist Party] spy balloon to cross the United States and what damage to our national security occurred from this decision,” he said in a Saturday statement. “The United States must project strength to deter China — this failure is another example of weakness by the Biden administration.”

The HASC has already scheduled a hearing on Tuesday morning to hear from non-governmental witnesses on the “pressing threat of the Chinese Communist Party to U.S. national defense.”

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs committee, also expressed concerns the Biden administration did not “take care” of the balloon before it became a “national security threat.”

“I will be demanding answers and will hold the admin accountable for this embarrassing display of weakness,” McCaul said in a statement.

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), a member of the HASC, took the issue a step further, calling on Biden and Vice President Harris to resign.

“When the domestic attack occurs, Biden and Harris will not be able to adequately respond,” Wilson tweeted.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) first detected the balloon north of the Aleutian Islands in Alaska on Jan. 28. The U.S. military did not shoot it down then, as “it wasn’t time,” NORAD commander Gen. Glen VanHerck told reporters Monday. 

The Pentagon informed reporters about the balloon five days later, on Feb. 2, after reports of sightings over Montana, home to one of the nation’s three nuclear missile fields, sparking concerns that China may have collected potentially compromising national security information.

While Democrats have largely defended the Pentagon’s response, Montana’s Democratic Sen. Jon Tester said he was “demanding answers” from the Biden administration and announced he would hold a hearing as chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. 

“I will be pulling people before my committee to get real answers on how this happened, and how we can prevent it from ever happening again,” Tester said in a Friday statement.

Ian Johnson, a senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said there should be a “cooling off period” before any investigations, arguing the incident is a national security issue that shouldn’t be used for scoring political points.

Johnson added the Biden administration was in a “bind”: either wait, or shoot the balloon down over land and potentially injure people or damage structures on the ground, which would have caused its own scandal.

“I don’t think there are traitors in the Pentagon,” he said. “These allegations of an outrageous breach of our national security doesn’t make sense to me unless you’re accusing the Pentagon of gross incompetence, which I don’t think is the case.”

The Pentagon tracked the balloon, reportedly about 200 pounds and the size of three school buses, as it floated undisturbed all the way toward the Atlantic Ocean, where it was shot down by a fighter jet on Saturday off the coast of South Carolina. Recovery operations to salvage the equipment attached to the balloon are underway.

China is calling the balloon a civilian weather research airship and has expressed anger about the U.S. shooting it out of the sky. 

But the Pentagon is confident that it was a surveillance device, noting they have seen the spy balloons before, including in the Pacific near Hawaii and in other countries. A second spy balloon has been sighted in Latin America.

The Biden administration has said it brought the surveillance device down as as soon as it was safe to do so.

"Today's deliberate and lawful action demonstrates that President Biden and his national security team will always put the safety and security of the American people first,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a Sunday statement, “while responding effectively to the [People’s Republic of China’s] unacceptable violation of our sovereignty.”

A senior defense official also said on Sunday there was value in tracking the balloon and they "took all necessary steps to protect against” the collection of sensitive information.

"We were able to study and scrutinize the balloon and its equipment, which has been valuable,"  the official said, according to a Pentagon release. 

Several Republican senators have also called for investigations, including Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-S.D.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the vice chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, on Sunday called Biden's response a "dereliction of duty" for his delay in acknowledging the spy balloon in an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

But the questions now go beyond just the Pentagon’s response to the Chinese spy balloon that made headlines in recent days. 

On Sunday, U.S. officials confirmed the Trump administration was apparently unaware of three previous incidents in which Chinese balloons flew over the continental U.S. under its watch.

Vanherck told reporters on Monday that intelligence analysts learned of those three balloon incursions only after the fact, which he called a “domain awareness gap that we have to figure out.”

Johnson, from the Council on Foreign Relations, said the bigger question right now should be why the Chinese are deploying surveillance balloons — and lawmakers should set aside politics to figure it out. 

“There’s so many question marks that need to be answered, there’s so many holes in the story, we just lack a lot of facts,” Johnson said. “In the Cold War, there was more bipartisan effort at solving and treating [threats] as a national security issue, rather than as a way to score points politically. The spirit of bipartisanship is lacking.”

As House Republicans aim to use their majority to divide Democrats on toxic political issues, they found early success this month making new hay out of an old idea: the "horrors" of socialism.  

House GOP leaders staged a vote Thursday on a resolution condemning socialism as a fundamental threat to American prosperity and independence — a proposal that split Democrats and provided a potentially potent new attack line for GOP candidates heading into the 2024 elections. 

While a majority of Democrats voted in favor of the measure, 100 of the 212-member caucus declined to endorse it. And GOP leaders wasted no time pouncing when the tally was in.

“That wasn't a college vote on a college campus. That was a vote in the U.S. Congress that 100 Democrats couldn't say socialism was wrong,” Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told reporters in the Capitol. “That's a scary point of view.”

As a logical argument, Republican attacks on socialism have been undermined by their support for social-welfare programs, including McCarthy’s recent vow to protect federal benefits under Social Security and Medicare — programs that are run exclusively by the government and funded collectively by taxpayers, who are required to contribute. 

Republicans have, for decades, castigated those entitlements as socialist initiatives that trample on free enterprise and individual liberties, and Democrats are warning that, despite the rhetoric, GOP leaders are still eyeing cuts. 

“We’re not fooled by Speaker McCarthy’s promises, by the way,” Rep. Jim McGovern (Mass.), the top Democrat on the Rules Committee, said. “We know what he means when he says he wants to ‘protect these programs,’ it’s code for cuts. We’ve seen this movie before.”

From a political vantage, however, the GOP's efforts to link Democrats to "socialism" as an abstract concept have historically been effective, resonating with broad swaths of conservative voters and helping Republicans gain vast ground in states like Florida, which has shifted squarely in recent years from a purple battleground to a red stronghold. 

Among outside political experts, there's some disagreement about just how effective the GOP's strategy will be. 

Tobe Berkovitz, associate professor of advertising emeritus at Boston University, noted that each party has, for years, sought to characterize the other as “radical” and “out of step with most Americans.” He pointed to former President Reagan’s effort to portray Democrats as soft on defense, and George H.W. Bush’s campaign to depict Democrats as weak on crime.  

“This has been going on forever,” he said.

Both of those strategies proved successful, and Berkovitz predicted that vulnerable Democrats may have a tough time explaining why so many in their party voted against the Republicans’ anti-socialism resolution. 

"If you are running in a contested seat, it positions you very badly because your party is advocating for something that is probably out of step with voters in these swingier districts or states. And then it just provides grist for your opponent. 'See, the congresswoman is lining up with the socialists,'" said Berkovitz, who has worked for roughly five decades advising candidates of both parties on their media strategies. 

"So it is pretty effective, because really both parties have been pandering to their base, and yet it's not always the base that's going to win in a contested election." 

Others aren't so sure. Karlyn Bowman, an elections expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said the attacks on socialism "probably could be effective" in "a few" pockets of the country. She singled out Florida, with its relatively high concentration of Cuban and Venezuelan Americans. 

But nationally, Bowman suggested the issue will pale in comparison to lingering concerns about the volatile economy. 

"It could make life tougher for some Dems in some battleground districts," Bowman said in an email, "but would it rank above something such as inflation or the economy and jobs? I doubt it." 

Democrats who opted against supporting the resolution voiced various reservations, but the largest was the potential threat to entitlement programs. Despite agreeing with the overt goal of the resolution — to denounce socialist leaders and atrocities committed under such regimes — some Democrats saw the effort as a veiled step in the GOP crusade against Social Security and Medicare.

They sought to separate the two issues with an amendment — proposed by Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) — that would have added language to say “any opposition to ‘socialist’ policy implementation in the United States does not include existing Federal programs” like Social Security and Medicare. But Republicans on the Rules Committee rejected the addition in a 4-9 vote, a decision that moved the needle for some Democrats.

“I was prepared to vote for this resolution,” Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) said. “Socialism is clearly not the best path for America, and who wants to be associated with Stalin and the others that this resolution denounces, really thugs that were masquerading as socialists?"

“But when the promoters of this worthless resolution rejected the Takano amendment to protect Social Security and Medicare, their goal became clear,” he added. “This resolution is the foundation for continued attacks on better Medicare for more Americans, and their attempt to cut Social Security benefits.”

Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) said the resolution was meant to “provide cover” for Republicans “to try to undermine an agenda that is designed to lift up the health, safety and well-being of the American people.”

“The American people should not be fooled by anything that takes place on the floor today with respect to the so-called resolution on socialism,” he added.

Republicans, however, argued the resolution was strictly about denouncing socialism.

“To be clear, this resolution is not about Social Security or Medicare, two programs with broad bipartisan support,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) said last week. “It is about a sick ideology that has destroyed nations, ruined lives, and resulted in death and destruction around the world.”

The GOP's vocal defense of the entitlements marks a sharp break from the party's historic position, which held that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are fundamentally socialist initiatives that undermine free markets and individual freedoms.

Even before Medicare’s creation in 1965, Reagan warned of the fundamental dangers of “socialized medicine.” Former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) hoped for Medicare “to wither on the vine.” Former President George W. Bush privatized parts of Medicare, and sought to do the same with Social Security. And former Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), as chair of the Budget Committee, had proposed annual budgets that ended traditional Medicare and privatized Social Security.

With the ascent of former President Trump — who vowed from the first day of his 2016 campaign to “save Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, without cuts” — Republicans have largely toned down those attacks. And GOP leaders are now treading delicately around the issue heading into a series of budget debates, where some conservatives are already urging entitlement "reforms" in the name of keeping the programs solvent.

Recent polls hint at the pressure they're facing. 

A January Economist-YouGov survey found that only 17 percent of respondents supported cuts to Medicare and Social Security, versus 70 percent who oppose such action. 

Older polls reveal another factor driving the debate: Republican voters are far more likely to oppose "socialism" broadly, but are less likely to consider the entitlement programs to fall into that category.

“Social Security and Medicare are very important to many older average Americans. And the last thing that the Republicans need to do is say, basically, 'We're going to screw you,’” said Berkovitz. 

"It just depends whose ox is being gored, and who is getting a benefit from any of these programs."

Two progressive Democratic House freshmen from Florida and Texas will host parents of two victims of school shootings as their guests for President Biden's State of the Union Address address on Tuesday.

Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) will host Brett Cross, whose son Uziyah García was one of the 19 schoolchildren who died at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas on May 24, 2022; Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) will host Manuel Oliver, the father of Joaquín Oliver, one of 17 victims of the 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Fla.

"I think there's power in that we're both from the South, we're both Latinos, we're both from states that are controlled by Republican legislatures and governors, who have not acted on gun violence – in fact, not just not acted, they're actively passing legislation that will cause more gun violence," Frost told The Hill. 

"And we're taking two fathers who have lost children at school, and we're bringing them to the Capitol to hear from the president and we're going to talk about ending gun violence and what we think needs to happen."

Frost, 26, currently the youngest member of Congress, and Casar, 33, both grew up and attended school in an era when school shootings proliferated in the United States.

In a joint statement, the two lawmakers said they chose their guests to highlight "the continued need for gun reform and gun violence prevention."

As candidates, both were endorsed by the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a nonprofit organization that was renamed in honor of former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Az.), a victim of gun violence.

Frost's political career started as a teenager, as an organizer focused on gun violence prevention at March For Our Lives in the wake of Parkland and the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting.

"I'm a survivor of gun violence and gun violence was the reason I got involved in politics in the first place 10 years ago when I was 15 years old, because I didn't want to get shot at school," said Frost, a gun violence survivor.

"Before I even launched my campaign, I promised Manuel Oliver that I would bring him to my first State of the Union. He supported me a lot, not just in the campaign but just in general."

Oliver, a vocal advocate for gun safety, was escorted out of the White House last July after interrupting Biden's speech on the issue.

Frost said he didn't expect any interruptions if Biden addresses the issue, but repeated his plea for the executive to act more aggressively on gun violence.

"I do believe that the administration needs to do more in way of ending gun violence and using executive action to do so. But I think that the president has a great opportunity to lay that out tomorrow night," said Frost.

Casar and Frost first met as candidates in early 2022, and have remained in touch since, but the joint statement on their State of the Union guests is their first official collaboration.

Both lawmakers are members of a record-breaking freshman class of nine that joined the Congressional Hispanic Caucus this year.

Casar represents San Antonio, the closest major city to Uvalde.

Cross, Casar's guest, has also become a voice for the families of victims of gun violence following the Robb Elementary shooting.

“Brett Cross has been such a powerful voice for his son and for all Americans” said Casar. 

“No child, no parent, no community should have to go through what Texans suffered in Uvalde. I’m joining with Brett to honor his son, Uziyah Garcia – and to call for ending assault weapon sales, passing red flag laws and universal background checks, and ending permitless carry.”

Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.) said she will skip President Biden's State of the Union on Tuesday, saying she does not want to "show up to and listen to him continue to lie."

In an interview with Breitbart News over the weekend, Miller said she would boycott Biden's State of the Union address, adding that his “entire presidency has been filled with lie after lie.”

“And I’m not going to sit there and listen to him lie and then watch the media and other members of Congress applaud his lies," she said.

Miller accused Biden of lying about the southern border being secure and the impact of his policies on energy prices. "I mean, I could go on and on with his lies,” she added.

The Hill has reached out to Miller's office for comment.

Miller will likely not be alone in her decision, as many lawmakers in the past have also skipped a president's State of the Union to project partisan disgust.

In 1999, several GOP lawmakers boycotted then-President Clinton's address while the Senate was still conducting an impeachment trial over his affair with a White House intern. More recently, during former President Trump’s time in office, several Democratic lawmakers chose to boycott his State of the Union addresses, as well as his inauguration.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Monday called for a probe into why former President Trump was apparently not informed of previous Chinese surveillance balloons that Biden officials are saying crossed over the U.S. at least three times during the previous administration.

“If it’s true the Pentagon purposely did NOT tell President Trump of Chinese Spy Balloons during his administration then we had a serious breach in command during the Trump admin,” Greene said on Twitter. 

“The POTUS is the Commander in Chief. We must investigate and hold accountable those who broke rank,” the longtime Trump ally said. 

President Biden ordered the U.S. military on Saturday to shoot down a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that had spent days floating over the country in what defense officials later said was a clear effort to spy on sensitive sites. 

A Pentagon official revealed on Sunday that similar aircraft had been spotted at least three additional times under Trump, but the former president swiftly denied that balloons had entered U.S. airspace on his watch. 

Former Trump national security adviser John Bolton said he was not aware of any such incidents during his tenure — and other Trump administration officials have chimed in with the same. 

Bloomberg reported Sunday, citing a senior administration official, that the U.S. didn’t learn about the previous balloon flights until after Biden had replaced Trump in the Oval Office — though it remains unclear how the Biden officials eventually learned about the past instances.

The defense official noted that previous flights — including an additional sighting at the beginning of the Biden administration — had not transited U.S. airspace for as long as the balloon recently shot down. 

It was downed off the coast of the Carolinas, and the administration is working to recover its parts.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Monday that recovering the balloon will take time but "we can then exploit what we recover and learn even more than we have learned.”

Rep. Jim Himes (Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, agreed on Monday that the U.S. will "learn a lot" about China’s surveillance operations from the recovered materials.

Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) has invited Michael Brown Sr., the father of a teenager who was shot and killed by a police officer in Missouri in 2014, to the State of the Union, Politico Playbook reported on Monday.

Brown's son, Michael Brown, was a Black teenager who was fatally shot in an incident with police in Ferguson, Mo. The incident sparked national outrage and protests across the country, including the Black Lives Matter Movement.

The ex-police officer who shot Brown was not charged for the incident.

"The police killing of Michael Brown in 2014 is what propelled me and many others into lives dedicated to building a world where Mike would still be here with us — a world where his life could not be taken from him," Bush told Playbook, before mentioning the recent police killing of Tyre Nichols in Memphis. "A world where Tyre Nichols and the thousands of other Black people killed by police could live long, healthy lives full of joy."

Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, died last month as a result of his injuries from being beaten by a group of police officers. His death has pushed many lawmakers and officials to re-up the calls for police reform as thousands of protesters took to the streets in Memphis to advocate for racial justice.

Nichols's parents will also be in attendance at President Biden's State of the Union on Tuesday at the invitation of Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.), the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Biden met with members of the Congressional Black Caucus last week and has called on Congress to pass a police reform bill, which may be echoed in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday.

Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on Monday that the U.S. will “learn a lot” from the Chinese surveillance balloon shot down by the military over the weekend. 

“There's a lot of value in observing an asset like this. What did we learn by watching this thing over a period of time? When were the decisions taken? And most interestingly, what are we going to learn about the equipment, right? Who made the semiconductors that are on this thing? What are its capabilities?” Himes said on “CNN This Morning.” 

“That's one of the elements that is being lost in this whole conversation, you know, being able to capture, hopefully undamaged… what should be their cutting edge surveillance technology is just a huge intelligence win,” Himes said.

President Biden ordered the military to down the balloon on Saturday after the aircraft spent days traveling through U.S. airspace. 

China has said the aircraft was a civilian weather balloon blown off course, but a top U.S. defense official said Sunday that the balloon was “clearly crossing over sensitive sites” during the flyover, particularly looking to monitor sensitive military areas. 

The balloon crashed down from 60,000 feet off the coast of the Carolinas. Authorities recovered some of the wreckage and have warned civilians not to touch any additional debris that may wash ashore. 

Defense officials say the material recovered from the balloon refutes China’s claim that it was civilian tech and is “of intelligence value” to the U.S. in learning more about Beijing and its surveillance ops. 

"We have learned technical things about this balloon and its surveillance capabilities.  And I suspect if we are successful in recovering aspects of the debris, we will learn even more," a defense official said.

The Gang of Eight — a group of House and Senate leadership plus top lawmakers from the Intel committees in either chamber — is set to receive a briefing on the balloon from the Biden administration as soon as Tuesday. 

Senators are set to be briefed on the downed balloon next week.

President Biden is set to deliver his second State of the Union address this week to a divided Congress, as the new House GOP majority seeks to stymie his agenda and investigate his family and administration.

The speech — before a joint session of Congress in the House chamber — is scheduled for Tuesday at 9 p.m. eastern time. It will offer a preview of how Biden will seek to push forward his legislative priorities given the new power dynamics, and whether he will try to find common cause with Republicans in some areas.

The GOP majority will press ahead this week on some of its hot-button issues, with two House committees slated to hold hearings on the southern border, alleged “Weaponization of the Federal Government” and Twitter’s decision to limit the spread of a New York Post story in 2020 pertaining to President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.

Fallout from the downing of a Chinese spy balloon will also be on full display this week, as lawmakers gear up for a classified briefing later in the month.

Biden to deliver State of the Union

With a GOP majority in the House, Biden is unlikely to see significant legislative success in the second half of his term. House Republicans have vowed to investigate the president, his family and members of his administration, seeking to put him on the defensive amid an uphill legislative push.

Those two dynamics will be on full display when the president delivers his State of the Union address on Tuesday, putting him face-to-face with the lawmakers staunchly opposed to his agenda, and the GOP investigators probing his administration.

This week’s speech — Biden’s second State of the Union and third address before a joint session of Congress — will mark the first time Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is seated behind him, taking the spot Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) held the past two years.

The speech comes at a particularly important time for relations between the White House and Capitol Hill, as Washington works to create a path forward on raising the debt ceiling.

The U.S. hit its debt ceiling last month, prompting the Treasury Department to implement extraordinary measures. Those measures are expected to keep the U.S. from defaulting on its debt until June 5, giving lawmakers about four months to come to a consensus on the borrowing limit.

Biden is likely to re-up his call for a clean debt ceiling increase during his speech on Tuesday, using his time on the dais to directly address House Republicans who are pushing for spending cuts tied to their support for raising the borrowing limit.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg sought to highlight the differences between Democrats and Republicans when previewing Biden’s speech on Sunday, noting that wages were up at the same time that unemployment was at record lows — the U.S. added 517,000 jobs last month.

“And part of what I think you're going to see on Tuesday, when you see the president's addressing the nation and the Congress in the State of the Union is a reminder that this successful approach stands in stark contrast to a strategy that — that would focus on things like preserving tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, looking at cutting Social Security and Medicare, which we're hearing about from a lot of House Republicans,” Buttigieg said during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week.”

Biden on Tuesday will also likely discuss police reform, following the death of Tyre Nichols in Memphis. Nicholas’ parents will be at the speech after accepting an invitation from Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.), the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.

House hearings on Hunter Biden, Twitter, the border

The House is set to hold a trio of high-profile hearings this week, zeroing in on the situation at the southern border, Twitter’s role in suppressing the New York Post story about Hunter Biden in 2020 and alleged “Weaponization of the Federal Government,” as the newly minted Republican majority wields its investigative powers.

The House Oversight and Accountability Committee is slated to hold a hearing on Tuesday titled “On The Front Lines of the Border Crisis: A Hearing with Chief Patrol Agents.” Gloria Chavez, the chief patrol agent for the Rio Grande Valley Sector, and John Modlin, the chief patrol agent in the Tucson Sector, are slated to appear as witnesses.

The hearing marks the second in two weeks focused on the situation at the border.

On Wednesday, the Oversight Committee will come together for a hearing on Twitter’s decision to limit the spread of a New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election. Republicans have accused the social media platform of censoring the story for political purposes.

The hearing is titled “Protecting Speech from Government Interference and Social Media Bias, Part 1: Twitter’s Role in Suppressing the Biden Laptop Story.” Three former Twitter employees are slated to testify: Vijaya Gadde, who served as chief legal officer, James Baker, who was the company’s deputy general counsel, and Yoel Roth, the ex-global head of trust and safety.

Finally on Thursday, the newly created Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government will hold its first hearing. The House passed a resolution in a party-line vote last month to create the panel, which is chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who also leads the Judiciary Committee.

The select subcommittee is expected to probe investigations underway at the Justice Department and FBI that focus on former President Trump. It was created in response to calls from some Republicans for a “Church-style” investigation into the FBI, based on the 1970s probe into civil liberties violations by the intelligence community that was led by former Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho).

Fallout from downing of Chinese spy balloon

The U.S. shot down a Chinese spy balloon off the Carolina coast on Saturday, capping off a days-long saga regarding the balloon that had been floating over the country. A recovery effort began shortly after to gather the remnants of the balloon.

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced on Sunday that the full Senate will receive a classified briefing on China on Feb. 15, and a spokesperson for Schumer told The Hill that the Biden administration will brief the Gang of 8 next week on the balloon.

Democrats largely commended the Biden administration over the weekend for its efforts in shooting down the balloon, while some Republicans argued that it acted too slowly — a situation that will likely continue this week.

“As usual when it comes to national defense and foreign policy, the Biden Administration reacted at first too indecisively and then too late,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a member of the Gang of 8, wrote in a statement Sunday. “We should not have let the People’s Republic of China make a mockery of our airspace.”

“This was a reminder of the [People’s Republic of China’s] brazenness and President Biden missed the opportunity to defend our sovereignty, send a message of strength, and bolster deterrence,” he added.

Alex Bolton contributed.

A man who briefly worked in Rep. George Santos' (R-N.Y.) office has accused the embattled New York Republican of sexual harassment in a letter sent to the House Ethics Committee on Friday.

In a letter that he posted to Twitter, Derek Myers said that he worked in Santos' office for a few days as a "volunteer" before a job offer to work as a congressional staffer was rescinded on Feb. 1. In the letter, Myers said he was alone in Santos' office on Jan. 25 and was discussing mail received by constituents when the congressman asked him if he had a Grindr account, which is a popular gay dating app. Santos then told him that he had a Grindr profile, according to the letter.

Myers said Santos then asked him to sit next to Santos on a small couch where he placed his hand on Myers knee, interrupting the conversation about the mail. Santos asked Myers to go out to karoke that night, which Myers declined. Santos said that his husband was out of town and that Myers should "come over," according to the letter, and proceeded to move his hand up Myers' leg "into my inner-thigh and proceeded to touch my groin."

Myers said on Twitter that he also filed a police report with the U.S. Capitol Police about the incident.

In the letter, Myers also alleges that Santos' office violated House Ethics procedures by allowing him to work as a volunteer for several days under the "promise of future employment."

"I have learned that such volunteer work within a Congressional office without the correct procedures being followed is in violation of the House Ethics and I am requesting this serve as an official request for an investigation into the violation of allowing a volunteer to work in the workplace and offload work from paid stat members onto the volunteer with the promise of future employment," Myers wrote.

Last year, Myers was charged with wiretapping in Ohio after publishing audio of courtroom testimony that was obtained by a source in the Scioto Valley Guardian, where he was the editor-in-chief. Santos told Semafor that Myers also secretly recorded a conversation he had with Santos.

Santos told Semafor that Myers "violated the trust we had in him" by recording the conversations. Santos cited the wiretapping charges as reason for rescinding the job offer.

Santos office did not respond to a request for comment.

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) said on Sunday that he is working across the aisle on a bipartisan solution on the debt ceiling as lawmakers brace for bitter negations in coming months over nation's finances.

Fitzpatrick, who heads the Problem Solvers Caucus with Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), said the pair are working on a backup plan if the White House and House Republicans can't reach an agreement on raising the debt ceiling should it come with conditions that involve certain spending cuts.

"We're going to let them do their work," Fitzpatrick told anchor Jake Tapper on CNN's "State of the Union." referring to President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Cali.). "We don't want to undermine anybody. But what Josh and our group do together is, we don't negotiate in public. We work everything out. We have a fail-safe option in the backdrop that will be ready to go to make sure that we get this job done."

Biden and McCarthy met last week to kick off discussions about the debt ceiling, which the Biden administration wants Congress to raise to avoid a default. Some conservative Republicans have signaled they want spending cut agreements in return but the administration has been cool to that idea.

Fitzpatrick said his proposal would convert the debt ceiling to a debt-to GDP ratio, which would be a "number that could be agreed to" and would have a cure period, which is time a borrower, in this case the U.S., has to remedy a default. He said if the cure doesn't occur, "certain guardrails go up on discretionary spending."

"We have two problems right now," he said. "We have a risk of default. We cannot allow our country to default under any circumstances. We also have a debt-to-GDP ratio that exceeds 100 percent."

"And that threatens the valuation of our currency and risks our competitiveness with China, and we see how big of a threat that is. So, that's the solution that I would like to advance. As Josh mentioned, we have a group that's working day and night on this right now," Fitzpatrick added.

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) on Sunday called it "unacceptable" for the United States to get to a point where it is unable to pay its bills if the debt ceiling is not raised.

"The worst thing that could happen is we get to a point this summer where, suddenly, we can't raise the debt ceiling and the full faith and credit of the United States is at risk and we don't pay our debts," Gottheimer told Jake Tapper on CNN's "State of the Union." "That's unacceptable. You can't not pay your bills."

Gottheimer said he hopes the White House and congressional leadership will be able to work out a deal on the debt ceiling, but added that he and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), who both head the Problem Solvers Caucus, are working to come up with a backup plan.

President Biden met with Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Wednesday to discuss the matter after Republicans suggested that the ceiling could be raised but only if it comes with promises on certain spending cuts. McCarthy signaled that he was optimistic on debt ceiling talks after leaving the meeting on Wednesday but lawmakers still have a long way to go before an agreement is reached.

Gottheimer said that the U.S. needs to take action on then debt ceiling because "people's 401(k)s and the full faith and credit of the United States and our standing of the world at risk is unacceptable."

"I think it's irresponsible not to have the conversation, just like it's irresponsible to default on our responsibilities as a country and put the full faith and credit of the United States at risk, which is exactly why Brian [Fitzpatrick] and I and the Problem Solvers Caucus are working on this," he said.

Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said on Sunday that he expects a briefing on the classified documents found in the possession of President Biden, former President Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence this week.

Turner during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” also accused the Biden administration of trying to “change the news” with the briefing from the suspected Chinese spy balloon that was shot down this weekend after flying over the middle of the U.S. 

“The moment this balloon became public, I got a notice not from the administration that I’m going to get a briefing on this balloon, but they have to rush to Congress now to talk to us about Donald Trump’s documents,” Turner said.

“You can see they want to change the news.” 

Turner said the Trump documents, Biden and Pence documents would be included in the briefing. Turner added that there is no briefing scheduled on the balloon.

Congressional leaders for weeks have been calling on the Biden administration and law enforcement officials to provide more information about the documents to Congress. Figures like Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) have chastised the Biden administration for what they say is opaqueness on the documents.

Turner argued on Sunday that a briefing on the balloon should happen first, saying the Biden administration needs to understand the urgency of the issue.

“This administration needs to understand that we do have national security urgent matters,” Turner said.

More than 100 House Republicans signed an amicus brief arguing against the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness plan as the Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on the case later this month. 

Reps. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), the chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, and Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) led 126 Republicans in filing the brief on Friday, according to a release from the committee. 

In the brief, they criticized the administration’s citing of the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students (HEROES) Act as granting it the legal authority to issue broad cancellation to student loan borrowers. 

The administration’s policy offers up to $10,000 in forgiveness for federal student loans for people making less than $125,000 per year. It offers up to $20,000 for those who received Pell Grants while in school. 

Six states have filed a lawsuit against the policy, arguing that they will lose tax revenue as a result of the plan. The administration has argued that the states do not have standing to sue, and it has the authority through the HEROES Act, which allows the federal government to forgive student loan debt in times of national emergency. 

Foxx said in a release announcing the brief that “abusing” the HEROES Act is “shameful,” and the administration’s action is a “political gambit” crafted by special interests. 

“Moreover, this administration is bypassing Congress, which is elected by the American people to protect their interests,” she said. “Congress is the only body with the authority to enact sweeping and fundamental changes of this nature, and it is ludicrous for President Biden to assume he can simply bypass the will of the American people.” 

Foxx told The Hill’s Bob Cusack on Thursday that the court must block the plan, which she said is “totally illegal.” 

Duncan said the White House does not have the unilateral authority to broadly forgive student loan debt, and its attempt is a “political maneuver.” 

“This exploits the original intention of the HEROES Act of 2003, oversteps the authority of Congress, undermines the will of the American people, and would send the country further into a debt spiral,” he said. 

Other signatories include House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) and House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.). 

The Biden administration stopped accepting new applications for relief in November as the policy was held up in court. 

The Supreme Court will hear this case and another from a challenge brought by two individuals in Texas toward the end of the month.

The House Judiciary Committee fired off its first subpoenas under the leadership of Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), targeting a trio of Biden administration officials including Attorney General Merrick Garland over a short-lived memo dealing with threats against school board members.

The subpoenas, sent also to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, follow a series of more than 100 letters on the 2021 memo from Judiciary Republicans.

Garland signed the memo in October of last year, noting a “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff” amid broader discussion over COVID-19 policies and how issues like race and gender are addressed at school.

Though little resulted from the memo, Republicans have remained laser-focused on it.

The subpoena, reviewed by The Hill, asks for all communications between the entities and the National School Boards Association, which first wrote to DOJ asking for help in dealing with rising threats.

Jordan has repeatedly claimed the memo is a way for the Biden administration to label parents as domestic terrorists, though the FBI never charged a single parent in connection with the directive — something the chair pointed out in a recent appearance on NBC’s "Meet The Press."

“The chilling impact on the First Amendment free speech is what we care about,” he said during the interview.

“School board writes a letter on Sept. 29th. Five days later, the Attorney General of the United States issues a memorandum to 101 U.S. attorneys offices around the country saying, ‘Set up this line that they can report on.’ ... When have you ever seen the federal government move that fast?” he asked. 

Democrats immediately pushed back on the effort, accusing Jordan of peddling conspiracy theories in attacking a short-lived DOJ effort designed to respond to violent threats.

“The conspiracy theories underpinning today’s subpoenas have been debunked with facts time and time again, but Republicans do not want to be bothered by this inconvenient truth. There is no amount of documents that will satisfy the MAGA obsession with conspiracies,” Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-V.I.), who chairs a Judiciary subcommittee established by the GOP to examine the “weaponization” of the federal government.

The Justice Department declined to comment Friday, but Garland and Wray have previously taken numerous questions on the matter during appearances before Congress — something the FBI pointed to in pushing back on claims it had been unresponsive to Jordan.

"As Director Wray and other FBI officials have stated clearly on numerous occasions before Congress and elsewhere, the FBI has never been in the business of investigating speech or policing speech at school board meetings or anywhere else, and we never will be. Our focus is and always will be on protecting people from violence and threats of violence,” the agency said in a statement.

“We are fully committed to preserving and protecting First Amendment rights including the right to free speech. Attempts to further any political narrative will not change those facts.”

The memo has been a headache for the Justice Department and the National School Boards Association since shortly after its release.

The group sent a letter to the White House the week before Garland’s memo was released, laying out a spate of incidents at recent school board meetings, noting that some threats “could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”

The ensuing political storm caused the National School Boards Association to issue a statement saying its members “regret and apologize for the letter.”

“There was no justification for some of the language included in the letter. We should have had a better process in place to allow for consultation on a communication of this significance,” the group wrote later that month.

Jordan has suggested that the Biden administration coordinated with the National School Boards Association to craft the policy, accusing them without evidence during a prior Fox News appearance of encouraging a “pretext to go after parents.”

The initial letter from the National School Boards Association references a meeting with the White House and the Department of Education, and asks for the Justice Department to review whether the threats may violate a number of different federal laws.

The Justice Department memo fell far short of what the group was asking for, however, stressing “coordination and partnership” with local law enforcement over any legal review.

“While I am disappointed that Republicans have resorted to this type of aggressive arm-twisting and performative politics, I am confident that what they have asked for will once again disprove this tired right-wing theory,” Plaskett said in her statement.

Jordan’s numerous prior letters on the school board memo come after he pledged aggressive oversight of the matter, a posture he solidified by following though just days after the committee was formally constituted.

The move was decried by Democrats, who noted that Jordan failed to respond to a subpoena he was issued by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.

“Chairman Jordan is rushing to fire off subpoenas only two days after the Judiciary Committee organized, even though agencies already responded in good faith seeking to accommodate requests he made,” Ian Sams, White House spokesperson for oversight, said in a statement.

“These subpoenas make crystal clear that extreme House Republicans have no interest in working together with the Biden Administration on behalf of the American people — and every interest in staging political stunts.”

—Updated at 5:29 p.m. Lexi Lonas contributed.

Former President Trump said Thursday that he “totally” disagrees with Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on the death of Ashli Babbitt, a Jan. 6 rioter who was shot and killed by Capitol Police.

After Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed on Tuesday that Babbitt had been murdered during the pro-Trump insurrection, McCarthy broke with the Georgia congresswoman, who has become one of his most important supporters within the Republican conference.

“I think the police officer did his job,” McCarthy told reporters when asked if he agreed with Greene’s take on Babbitt's death.

Trump fired back in a post on Truth Social, claiming that the officer “was not just ‘doing his job’ when he shot and killed Great Patriot Ashli Babbitt at point blank range.”

“He was not a hero but a COWARD, who wanted to show how tough he was,” Trump added. “ASHLI BABBITT WAS MURDERED!!!”

Babbitt was attempting to climb through a shattered window into the Speaker’s gallery just off the House floor on Jan. 6, 2021, when she was fatally shot by Lt. Michael Byrd. Lawmakers were still being evacuated from the House chamber at the time.

Byrd was formally exonerated in August 2021, after an internal investigation found his “conduct was lawful and within Department policy, which says an officer may use deadly force only when the officer reasonably believes that action is in the defense of human life.”

The Capitol Police noted that Byrd’s actions “potentially saved Members and staff from serious injury and possible death from a large crowd of rioters who forced their way into the U.S. Capitol and to the House Chamber where Members and staff were steps away.”

McCarthy has sought to walk a fine line when it comes to the events of Jan. 6, distancing himself from the actions of the rioters while maintaining the favor of Trump and his base.

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, blasted President Biden for a high-altitude balloon from China that is traveling over the continental United States not being shot down before it reached U.S. territory, speculating that it could have “bioweapons.” 

Comer told Fox News’ Harris Faulkner in an interview on Friday that he is concerned that the federal government “obviously” does not know what is in the balloon. 

“Is it bioweapons in that balloon? Did that balloon take off from Wuhan?” Comer said, referring to the Chinese city where the COVID-19 virus was first discovered. “We don’t know anything about that balloon.” 

He said China is “clearly playing games” with the U.S., and the balloon should not have been allowed to cross into the airspace of the continental U.S. 

The Chinese government has confirmed that they own a balloon that has been traveling over the western part of the country. 

U.S. officials have said they believe the balloon is conducting surveillance, while the Chinese Foreign Ministry said it is a civilian airship meant primarily for meteorological research that was blown off course by wind. 

The balloon was first seen over Montana on Wednesday, and U.S. officials have not shot it down over safety concerns. 

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has said it was looking into the situation and did not intend to violate the territory or airspace of any country. 

Comer said the situation is “another sign of weakness” on the international stage from the Biden administration, arguing that the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 already hurt the reputation of the country’s military strength. 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken postponed a scheduled trip to China following what a State Department official said was a “clear violation of our sovereignty as well as international law.”

Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) on Friday announced she will not run for Congress in 2024, retiring from the House and passing on a bid for Indiana's open Senate seat.

"It’s been my honor representing Hoosiers in the Indiana State Senate and U.S. Congress and I appreciate the strong support on the ground. 2024 will mark seven years of holding elected office and over a decade in Republican politics,” Spartz, 44, said in a statement. 

“I won a lot of tough battles for the people and will work hard to win a few more in the next two years. However, being a working mom is tough and I need to spend more time with my two high school girls back home, so I will not run for any office in 2024,” she added.

Spartz, a Ukrainian-born lawmaker, has seen her profile rise over the last year over her support for the European nation against the ongoing Russian invasion. 

She has also been in the spotlight in recent weeks for voting "present" several times as Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) sought to lock down votes during a marathon, 15-ballot Speakership fight, as well as for initially vowing to vote against ousting Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the Foreign Affairs Committee, before McCarthy won over her and other holdouts.

The lawmaker will leave Congress after only two terms, having replaced former Rep. Susan Brooks (R-Ind.) in 2021. She previously served in the Indiana state Senate. 

The news means she will not join the battle to replace retiring Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) in the state’s upcoming Senate primary, which former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) also passed on. Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) is the clear favorite in the race, with both the Senate GOP campaign arm and former President Trump both endorsing him within the past week. 

The retirement also means an open race to fill the 5th Congressional District seat, in addition to one in the state’s 3rd Congressional District, which Banks is leaving. 

Former President Trump won the district in 2020 with 57 percent to only 41 percent for President Biden. Spartz won the seat by only 4.1 percentage points in 2020, 50 percent to 45.9 percent, before expanding that margin to 22.2 percentage points last year.

According to the Cook Political Report, the 5th Congressional District is R +11, meaning the district performed 11 points more Republican than the nation did overall. 

Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) on Thursday said Congress needs to decouple the issues of immigration and border security to make any progress legislatively.

Speaking on “What America's Thinking,” the moderate Democrat representing a swing district recognized the challenges of pursuing legislative solutions for polarizing issues.

“My job is to try and pull something together and deal with the elements of this complicated, difficult situation,” she said.

Spanberger added that her constituents “may not necessarily love the answer,” but being truthful about the scope of issues and proposed solutions is key to addressing these politicized issues.

“That demonstrates respect for voters, respect for our fellow Americans and, frankly, respect for the gravity of the issue that we're facing when it comes to the issue of immigration and border security, which are two separate issues that really do go hand in hand.”

Spanberger said constituents in politically diverse districts are used to disagreements, but expect results.

“In swing districts, in districts where we represent a lot of people who agree with us and who don't agree with us, what those people live every day is working with people they don't agree with, or neighbors that they might have disagreements with,” Spanberger said.

“Frankly, in my district people expect me to address tough problems,” she added.

In 2022, Spanberger and Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.) shepherded the Securing America’s Borders Against Fentanyl Act through Congress.

The bill was signed into law by President Biden in December as part of the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, enhancing scanning technology at ports of entry and providing U.S. officials with new data and metrics solutions to improve interdiction capabilities.

“We need to continue investing in additional technologies — we need to recognize that the X-ray machines of 30 years ago are just not cutting it anymore,” Spanberger said.

“I was proud that President Biden signed my legislation Securing America’s Borders Against Fentanyl Act, which is a step in the right direction, but still more needs to be done.”

Spanberger’s view of separating border security and immigration is at the center of debate on the issues in the new GOP-controlled House.

The House Judiciary Committee, a panel with jurisdiction over immigration, on Wednesday met to debate the issues, with Republicans largely in favor of merging border security, immigration and the fentanyl crisis and Democrats urging their colleagues to tackle each issue on its own.

But not all Republicans want to merge the issues.

Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), who represents a district that spans a third of the entire U.S.-Mexico border, told The Hill Thursday that fentanyl and immigration are “closely related, but they are two separate issues.”

For Spanberger, “a system that works” would allow people with asylum claims to apply for protections, while improving the visa system so foreign nationals can apply to come to the United States temporarily or permanently and U.S. authorities can have better control over who is entering the country.

“But at the same time, we can decouple the discussions of people and humanity and workers and families from the very real truth that indeed there are transnational criminal organizations that are trafficking fentanyl and making billions of dollars a year trafficking vulnerable people,” Spanberger said.