By Frank Fang Published April 25, 2026 A group of lawmakers expressed solidarity with Falun Gong practitioners on April 25, the 27th anniversary of a peaceful protest in China whose effects still reverberate today. The peaceful gathering, now known as the April 25 appeal, took place in 1999. It was one of the largest protests in communist China’s recent history, as about 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners gathered in Beijing, seeking to secure the release of detained adherents and the right to prac... Read more

By Gabrielle M. Etzel Published April 24, 2026 at 6:00am ET A coalition of anti-abortion legislators is calling for an end to human embryonic stem cell research at the National Institutes of Health, reviving a debate on the ethical use of aborted fetal materials in research after nearly two decades of inaction on the controversy. Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), along with 16 other House members and five other senators, sent a letter on Friday to NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattac... Read more

By Virginia Grace McKinnon Published April 24, 2026 Congress is putting parties aside to extend the bipartisan protection and prevention of human trafficking in the United States. The Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act has been stalled in the House since February 2025. But Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., and Rep. Kwesi Mfume, D-Md., are now calling for more education to prevent human trafficking, increased funding to support victims, and stronger guard... Read more

Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), Co-Chair of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), and 21 other Republican members of Congress sent a letter to National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, urging him to permanently end the agency’s funding of human embryo-destroying stem cell (hESC) research and terminate the NIH Human Embryonic Stem Cell Registry (Registry). The letter, first obtained by the Washington Examiner, asserts that hESC research—which the NIH has ... Read more

Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) speaks at his Capitol Hill press conference on H.R. 1144 on Thursday, April 23, 2026. At a widely attended press conference on Capitol Hill, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), author of landmark anti-human trafficking legislation, and Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-MD) called upon Congress to pass their new, comprehensive bill, the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act (FD TVPRA) (H.R. 1144). The press conference gathered human trafficking surv... Read more

On Tuesday, April 28th, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), Co-Chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission (TLHRC), will chair a congressional hearing on the human rights situation in North Korea. The human rights situation in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) remains among the most severe and closed in the world. The government continues to maintain pervasive political control, including strict limits on expression, movement, and access to outside information, enforced through an exten... Read more

By Jim Lonergan Published April 24, 2026 at 12:41 PM SPRING LAKE, NJ - As Spring Lake and Belmar continue their legal battle with Verizon over wireless infrastructure, a controversial federal bill that could have further limited local control has been pulled from consideration in the U.S. House of Representatives—marking a temporary win for communities pushing back against expanding telecom development. The bill, H.R. 2289 — the American Broadband Deployment Act, was designed to accelerate the r... Read more

Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) delivers remarks at his press conference on HR 1144 on Thursday, April 23, 2026 on Capitol Hill. The following are excerpts of remarks delivered by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) at today’s Capitol Hill press conference on HR 1144, the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act of 2025: Special thanks to my good friend and colleague, Congressman Kwesi Mfume of Maryland, for his steadfast leadership and co-sponsorship of the Frederick Do... Read more

By Susan Carpenter Published April 23, 2026 at 5:25 PM ET WASHINGTON — A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers rallied at the Capitol on Thursday in support of a bill to prevent sex trafficking and protect victims. The Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act will reauthorize and add to a 25-year-old law that was used to prosecute the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and to convict his longtime enabler, Ghislaine Maxwell. “This is about nameless... Read more

By Ana Swanson, Sapna Maheshwari, and Meaghan Tobin Published April 23, 2026 Over the past two years, a furry monster with bunny ears and a vicious line of serrated teeth became the subject of a global craze, as shoppers waited hours in line or paid hundreds or thousands of dollars for the most coveted Labubus. The boom turned Pop Mart, the Chinese company that sells Labubus, into a global brand. But a test of the doll — the results of which The New York Times has independently confirmed — showe... Read more