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Dem Governor Welcomes Close Ties with CCP Official, Expresses Gratitude for Meeting.

PULSE POINTS:

❓What Happened: Governor of Massachusetts Maura Healey (D) posted photos with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) diplomat Chen Li, expressing gratitude for the meeting.

👥 Who’s Involved: Gov. Maura Healey, Chinese Consul General Chen Li, and former Massachusetts Secretary of Economic Development Yvonne Hao.


📍 Where & When: Massachusetts State House, Wednesday evening, May 7, 2025.

💬 Key Quote: “Grateful for the opportunity to discuss future collaboration!” Gov. Maura Healey wrote regarding her meeting with the CCP official.

⚠️ Impact: Concerns over Chinese influence in the U.S., especially among Democratic politicians.
IN FULL:

Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey (D) recently hosted Chinese Consul General Chen Li at the State House, sharing the occasion with a series of photos and remarks on social media. The Democratic governor expressed her appreciation for the meeting, emphasizing the importance of Massachusetts’ economic ties with China. The meeting also included Yvonne Hao, the former Massachusetts Secretary of Economic Development, who continues to advise the Healey administration.

“Massachusetts is home to a vibrant Chinese-American community, and China is one of our largest trading partners,” Gov. Healey wrote in a post on X. She added: “Glad to welcome Ambassador H.E. Chen Li of the People’s Republic to China to the State House, and grateful for the opportunity to discuss future collaboration!”

Governor Healey highlighted the state’s significant trade relations with China, its third-largest trading partner, with over $7.2 billion in goods exchanged in 2024. She noted the state’s imports from China include toys, apparel, and sports equipment, while exports to China comprise industrial machinery and medical devices.

Chen Li, whose jurisdiction as consul general spans nearly a dozen states, has been known for echoing Chinese Communist Party (CCP) narratives, particularly in denying allegations of genocide against Uyghurs. He expressed his pleasure at the meeting with the Democrat governor.

The meeting has raised eyebrows, given the history of Chinese diplomats engaging with U.S. politicians and institutions. Chen’s predecessor, Huang Ping, was involved in an indictment related to violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), visa fraud, and other charges.

Notably, The National Pulse has previously reported that another major Massachusetts political figure, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, received significant campaign contributions from a CCP-linked cultural association. Even more troubling, the head of the Chinese cultural group has demonstrable ties to the United Front Work Department (UFWD), an internal intelligence and propaganda organ within the CCP.

https://thenationalpulse.com/2025/05/09/dem-governor-welcomes-close-ties-with-ccp-official-expresses-gratitude-for-meeting/

Report: India Offers Major Tariff Cut to Complete Trade Deal with Trump

Indian officials have reportedly offered a dramatic reduction in tariffs across the board in exchange for relief from President Donald Trump’s tariffs in order to complete a bilateral trade agreement.

Indian sources told Reuters the proposal would reduce the average tariff differential between Indian and U.S. exports from 13 percent to four percent. As of 2023, the World Trade Organization (WTO) calculated India’s average tariff as 17 percent, while the average U.S. tariff was only 3.3 percent.

India plans to achieve this by reducing duties on U.S. imports to zero on some goods and giving “preferential access” to almost 90 percent of imports from the United States. Aircraft, cars, telecommunications equipment, medical equipment, wines, and animal feed would be among the American products that would enjoy looser import restrictions under the deal.

India, in turn, wants preferential access for its most important exports to America, including jewelry, apparel, textiles, chemicals, and produce. New Delhi also desires more access to advanced U.S. technology, especially computer chips, artificial intelligence (A.I.), and pharmaceuticals.

India currently runs a $45.7 billion trade surplus with the United States, its largest trading partner. The Trump administration has criticized such large trade differentials as evidence of unfair treatment by other countries. In India’s case, Trump announced a 26 percent tariff to resolve the trade deficit, piled on top of a ten percent “base tariff” applied to most other countries.

The president put the tariff increases on hold for 90 days last month. India was one of the countries that appeared most eager to work out a major trade agreement before the 90-day exemption expires.

The Indian officials who spoke to Reuters said India and Japan are jockeying to be next in line for a deal behind the United Kingdom, which announced the first post-tariff trade deal with the United States this week.

Bloomberg News reported last week that the bilateral deal could include “zero-for-zero” tariffs up to a certain limit on steel, auto components, and pharmaceuticals. The U.S. also wants India to lift some quality control standards on imported medical devices and chemicals that American manufacturers consider opaque and unfair.

CNBC quoted analysts who said India still tends to have a protective mindset toward domestic businesses, but it wants to strike a bilateral deal quickly and resolve the tariff dispute so it can secure American market access for its goods and begin attracting the kind of global investment it needs to reach its ambitious growth targets.

CNBC’s analysts found the rumored “zero-for-zero” proposal remarkable because India has been very reluctant to slash its tariffs so dramatically.

Some of them found the specific goods mentioned in Bloomberg’s report to be unlikely candidates for zero-tariff swaps, since the transportation costs for importing American steel are very high, and top-of-the-line U.S. pharmaceuticals are too expensive for the average Indian consumer, even with tariffs eliminated.

Meanwhile, American auto manufacturers have difficulty penetrating the Indian market because low-end consumers prefer what Matthews Asia portfolio manager Peeyush Mittal described as “cheap Indian vehicles” made by companies like Tata Motors, while buyers in the upper income brackets prefer luxury vehicles from BMW and Mercedes.

https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2025/05/09/report-india-offers-major-tariff-cut-complete-trade-deal-with-trump/

Filing: Smartmatic Hid Meeting With Dem Megadonor Who Financed Its Suit Against 2020 Election Reporting

Smartmatic, the electronic tabulator company suing Fox News for alleged defamation following the 2020 election, failed in a February court hearing to disclose a meeting with Democrat megadonor Reid Hoffman, newly unsealed court documents allege.

Following the 2020 election, both Fox News and Newsmax “hosted commentators who aired concerns that tabulators were not secure, were vulnerable to voter fraud, and had possibly changed Trump votes to Biden votes,” as described in these pages by Logan Washburn. Smartmatic sued, arguing the comments amounted to defamation. Fox previously settled a suit with Dominion Voting over similar allegations while Newsmax recently settled with Smartmatic for $40 million, according to NBC.

As Washburn reported, Fox had previously expressed concerns about a “deep-pocketed ‘third party’ behind the suit” — allegations that Smartmatic denied in 2023, according to Reuters. But reporting from The Washington Post revealed Hoffman invested millions in Smartmatic, as the company sued news outlets for their reporting about the 2020 election. In July 2024, the Post reported that Hoffman had “connected with Smartmatic chief executive Antonio Mugica through friends of friends” and was “boosting” its lawsuit against Fox.

According to a newly unsealed filing, Smartmatic CEO Antonio Mugica met with “politically-motivated investors … to discuss the company’s financials and investment prospects.” That’s “a fact that Smartmatic withheld from this Court on February 5, 2025,” says the document, which was initially filed under seal with the New York State Supreme Court in April before being unsealed this week.

“After that meeting, Hoffman and [his adviser Dmitri] Mehlhorn infused Smartmatic with $25,000,000 to fund its litigation against Fox and publicly declared that Smartmatic could be a ‘$400 million’ company but for the alleged defamation,” the filing continues.

A “deposition transcript from the Newsmax case confirms that Hoffman and Smartmatic CEO Antonio Mugica had a private meeting,” according to the document. But “Smartmatic did not tell the Court at that [Feb. 5, 2025] hearing … that Antonio Mugica, Smartmatic’s CEO, had met with Hoffman and Mehlhorn via videoconference about Smartmatic’s finances, this lawsuit,” and Hoffman’s funding, it says.

The filing also alleges that Smartmatic had previously “failed to disclose to Fox that … it entered into a litigation-funding agreement with … an entity controlled by Reid Hoffman,” a fact that Fox learned “from public media reports” in July 2024, “just seven days before the then-scheduled close of fact discovery.”

In a statement to The Federalist, a Fox News representative said it’s unsurprising that Hoffman would be involved.

“As a report prepared by our financial expert shows, Smartmatic’s damages claims against Fox News are highly implausible, disconnected from reality and on their face intended to chill First Amendment freedoms, so their cozy alliance with a high-profile liberal activist and donor of President Biden to fund their lawsuit is entirely predictable,” the representative said.

The Federalist asked Smartmatic why it apparently hid the meeting with a Democrat billionaire megadonor and whether there were any other meetings with Hoffman or other financiers that Smartmatic failed to disclose to the court. Erik Connolly, legal counsel for Smartmatic, said: “Fox’s only strategy appears to be to pile lie upon lie in an effort to smear a victim it can no longer deny defaming. The Court never found that any information was withheld, the claim is nonsense.”

After Fox sought to depose Hoffman and Mehlhorn, a judicial hearing officer said in March that depositions were “warranted,” according to the filing. But last month, a judge ruled Fox could depose Mehlhorn but not Hoffman.

“Having inserted themselves into this suit by taking that meeting and funding Smartmatic, [Hoffman and Mehlhorn] should not now be permitted to withhold material and necessary information they possess,” the filing states.

Mehlhorn previously indicated to The Washington Post that both he and Hoffman viewed “the court system” as an “important part of the battle to protect America from MAGA.”

Notably, a federal grand jury indicted Smartmatic executives in August of 2024 for allegedly participating in a “bribery and money laundering scheme,” as Washburn previously reported. The indictment targeted “three executives” of an “election voting machine” company and listed Roger Piñate and Jorge Vásquez, although the Department of Justice did not mention Smartmatic by name. Piñate was president and co-founder of Smartmatic, while Vásquez worked there as an executive.

https://thefederalist.com/2025/05/08/filing-smartmatic-hid-meeting-with-dem-megadonor-who-financed-its-suit-against-2020-election-reporting/

House Passes Falun Gong Protection Act to Counter CCP’s Forced Organ Harvesting

‘Sanctioning perpetrators of forced organ harvesting is a moral imperative,’ a co-sponsor of the bill said.

The U.S Capitol building in Washington on May 5, 2025.

The House of Representatives, by voice vote with no objections, passed a bill on May 5 aimed at ending Beijing’s persecution of the spiritual group Falun Gong.

The bill, the Falun Gong Protection Act (HR 1540), passed with broad bipartisan support and includes provisions to sanction individuals implicated in the forced harvesting of organs of Falun Gong practitioners.

The sanctions would apply to a list of foreign nationals “who the President determines to have knowingly and directly engaged in or facilitated the involuntary harvesting of organs within the People’s Republic of China,” the bill states.

Sanction penalties include blocking an offender from entering the United States, invalidating the offender’s visa, and imposing criminal punishment of fines of up to $1 million and 20 years in prison, among others.

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), lead sponsor of the Falun Gong Protection Act, said “there has to be some consequence to this barbaric and horrific behavior.”

“The United States should be a leader and show the world the way,” he told The Epoch Times. “We must do it and force the rest of the world to acknowledge it.”

Falun Gong, a spiritual practice involving meditative exercises and teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, has faced harsh repression in China since 1999. The Chinese regime views Falun Gong’s popularity as a threat and has subjected its 70 million to 100 million practitioners to arrests, prolonged jailing, forced labor, and various other kinds of torture.

The Falun Gong Protection Act directs the United States to work with allies and multilateral institutions to raise awareness about the persecution and coordinate targeted sanctions and visa restrictions with the international community.

It instructs the United States to make it a policy to avoid cooperating with China on transplantation while the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is in power.

Falun Gong practitioners openly practicing their faith are detained by the police in China. 

The act also requires the heads of the State Department, Department of Health and Human Services, and the National Institutes of Health to submit a report within a year that details China’s organ transplant policies and practices.

The report is expected to include how the regime’s policies apply to Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners of conscience, as well as assess the annual transplant volume, time needed to obtain the organs, and the organ source. It is also expected to list the U.S. grants provided over the previous decade that have supported Chinese research in the organ transplantation field or in collaboration between a Chinese and U.S. entity.

The report would also make a determination on whether Beijing’s persecution of Falun Gong constitutes an “atrocity” under the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act of 2018.

“HR 1540 is a historic step forward—the first binding commitment by Congress to take decisive legal action against the persecution and forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners,” Perry said in a floor speech.

“This bill paves the way for accountability, sanctions, punishment and acknowledgement—acknowledgement of those complicit in these atrocities.”

Perry said an investigation will mean that the United States will no longer be looking away.

“We know that the numbers don’t add up,” he said in the interview. “Everything points to what they’re doing, but it’s been too easy for all countries, including the United States, to just turn a blind eye to what we’re pretty confident is happening—which is horrific.”

The bill “ends that,” he said.

“This says no more ignoring it, no more just letting it go while you continue to buy communist Chinese goods and services. No more of that.”

‘Moral Imperative’

Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.), a co-sponsor of the bill and member of the House Select Committee on the CCP, said he considers the legislation “particularly important, given the CCP’s horrific human rights record and ongoing treatment of Falun Gong and other religious minorities.”

“Sanctioning perpetrators of forced organ harvesting is a moral imperative,” Bilirakis told The Epoch Times. “In doing so, we can take a powerful stand against a horrific crime that violates the sanctity of life and human dignity.”

Bilirakis said he hopes that the bill will help to “change the CCP’s abhorrent behavior and offer greater protections to those who have been oppressed and so gravely abused.”

“By holding those responsible accountable, we not only protect the most vulnerable, but also affirm the fundamental right to bodily autonomy and the shared values of humanity,” he said.

Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.), also a co-sponsor, said he is “proud to see such wide bipartisan support for this effort.”

“I’m doing everything in my power to hold organ traffickers accountable for their unspeakable crimes,” he told The Epoch Times.

“I will continue to speak out unwaveringly against the restriction of human rights and the persecution of religious groups, wherever they occur.”

Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) said it is important to hold the regime accountable.

“The CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong, including torture and forced organ harvesting, is barbaric,” he told The Epoch Times. “The U.S. must not tolerate these atrocities.”

Other lawmakers similarly spoke with horror about how much suffering the regime has inflicted.

“For 25 years, the Chinese Communist Party has waged a brutal campaign against Falun Gong practitioners—marked by torture, imprisonment, murder, and the abhorrent practice of forced organ harvesting—all for peacefully exercising their religious beliefs,” Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Texas) told The Epoch Times. “This is not only a staggering assault on religious freedom, but also one of the most pressing human rights crises of our time.”

The legislation, Gooden said, will “confront these atrocities head-on.”

“No faith group should be persecuted and treated as an organ bank for a totalitarian regime,” he said. “The United States must lead with moral clarity and stand firmly against the CCP’s crimes against humanity.”

Rep. Burgess Owens (R-Utah) called the human rights abuses targeting the faith group “horrific and truly evil.”

To co-sponsor and vote in support of the act, he told The Epoch Times, is to “stand up for religious freedom and human dignity,” which he said he is proud to do.

The bill is now heading to the Senate.

Falun Gong practitioners reenact illegal payment for human organs, during a demonstration in Washington on April 19, 2016. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

A Duty to Act

Shortly before the passage of the Falun Gong Protection Act, the House debated a related bill on forced organ harvesting abuse.

Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), the primary sponsor of the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act (HR 1503), said Chinese communist leader Xi Jinping and his regime must “bear culpability for one of the most horrifying human rights atrocities of our time—trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ harvesting and butchering and murdering them in the process.”

“Forced organ harvesting is murder masquerading as medicine,” he told The Epoch Times. “Just think what thoughts would be going through your head if you were a young Uyghur or Falun Gong practitioner strapped to a gurney, wheeled to a sterile killing chamber.

“Of all the unconscionable atrocities committed by the CCP, this has to be the vilest.”

The Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act has a broader scope to combat international organ trafficking. Its policy objectives include promoting voluntary organ donation systems with “effective enforcement mechanisms” in bilateral diplomatic talks and international health forums, as well as punishing responsible individuals—“including members of the Chinese Communist Party”—for the illicit act.

It would require U.S. authorities to assess, in each foreign country, “forced organ harvesting and trafficking in persons for purposes of the removal of organs,” a scenario that could involve coercion, abduction, deception, fraud, abuse of power or a position of vulnerability, or using money to buy consent, according to the bill.

On the House floor, Smith cited Sir Geoffrey Nice, who conducted the world’s first independent legal analysis of the abuse in China. That analysis found that forced organ harvesting had taken place “throughout China on a significant scale.”

“These crimes against humanity are unimaginably cruel and painful; between two to six internal organs per victim are extracted,” Smith said.

He noted that such victims could include Uyghurs under the ongoing genocide in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region and Falun Gong practitioners, “whose peaceful meditation and exercise practices and exceptional good health make their organs highly desirable.”

Multiple colleagues rose to support Smith’s bill on the afternoon of May 5.

“This is a billion-dollar black market built on murder,” said Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “It’s a direct assault on every principle of human dignity and decency.”

To the perpetrators in “this depraved industry,” he said, the bill sends a message: “We are coming after you.

“A human body is not a currency. It’s not a commodity. It’s never for sale.

“Forced organ harvesting is pure evil—if we don’t act, we will be considered complicit.”

Rep. Johnny Olszewski (D-Md.) urged other lawmakers to join him in support of both bills.

“Shining a spotlight on these crimes and the people that perpetrate them, while advancing accountability, is essential,” he said in a speech.

He noted that the reporting requirement in the Falun Gong Protection Act will help Congress understand “the scope of these terrible abuses” and address them more effectively.

While the two bills passed the House during the last Congress, the Senate did not take action.

Perry and Smith have been speaking out for years about forced organ harvesting, and both have found it vexing how long it has taken for the measures to get through both chambers.

“In this same period of time, it’s unknown to us how many people have been affected by this forced organ harvesting program by the Communist Party of China,” Perry said. “We will probably never know that.

“This isn’t going to be the complete answer to it, but the United States has to speak loudly about this issue, and this is a step in that direction.”

It takes time to educate people about what is happening, he said. However, each time he brings up the bill, more of his colleagues become aware of the issue.

“Your first reaction is horror, that this is actually happening,” he said. “And then, your second reaction is, why isn’t somebody doing something about this? Like, how can this be? And so it becomes your duty, I think, at some point.”

Perry and Smith urged the Senate to take up the measure immediately. ​​ ​​

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) speaks to The Epoch Times after the House unanimously passed the Falun Gong Protection Act, in Washington on May 5, 2025.

“What are you waiting for?” Perry said. “What’s the reason for being against it? Is there some good reason? If you’re worried about the relations of America with the Communist Party of China, are you then telling everybody in the world you’re OK with them killing people and taking their organs out just because they can?”

If the Senate passes his bill, Perry said, he is confident President Donald Trump will sign it and “create the environment for the discussion that it’s worthy of.”

“He’s going to understand that forcibly taking a person’s organs out is unacceptable at any level,” he said. “There’s no possible explanation that can justify it.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/china/house-unanimously-passes-falun-gong-protection-act-to-counter-ccps-forced-organ-harvesting-5852764?ea_src=frontpage&ea_cnt=a&ea_med=lead-story-0-title-1