On Balance | With China in US Congress’ cross hairs, brace for more anti-Asian hate

With the 118th US Congress now in full swing, representatives Judy Chu and Ted Lieu – along with countless others fighting anti-Asian hate – will need to put in more overtime.

We know from the first days of the new House session that hostage taking has replaced horse trading to get work done, as the Republican Party’s Freedom Caucus managed to undermine the authority of incoming speaker Kevin McCarthy. This manoeuvre was not supported by most Republicans in the chamber, but their knives were no match for the guns of their far-right colleagues.

The triumph of the far-right flank, led by Ukraine-aid critics like Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, in devolving the power of the House speaker before allowing McCarthy to pick up his gavel, occurred just before former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s supporters ransacked his country’s seat of government.

Imagine how delighted Greene and Gaetz must have been to see their ideological brethren run amok in South America’s most populous and economically powerful country, as their Freedom Caucus prepared to investigate those who investigated America’s January 6 insurrection.

After the spectacle of the Republican Party’s internal disarray and the attack in Brasilia, the House established a select committee on US-China strategic competition as one of its first items of business.