The Washington Post Editorial Board agrees with Congressman Chris Smith (NJ-04), author of the Sean and David Goldman International Child Abduction Prevention and Return Act: the State Department must do more to help bring abducted American children home. This editorial was printed in the August 13, 2015 edition of the Washington Post and can be viewed here Read more

All the Members of the New Jersey Congressional Delegation sent a letter today to Secretary Julián Castro of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) urging him to exercise his authority to prevent further delays in the distribution of federal disaster assistance to victims of Superstorm Sandy. Without such action, payouts received from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Sandy Claims Review and grants that are awarded with Community Development Block Grant-Disaste... Read more

Despite issuing new data relating to the number of American children kidnapped and held in Japan every day, the Obama administration is refusing to properly use the new law enacted to help bring the children back home. First they didn’t get the numbers right. But, after unrelenting pressure from Congress—including two nearly back-to-back hearings and passionate urging by left behind parents—the State Department last week quietly posted an amendment to their 2015 international child abduction rep... Read more

After 20 years of planning, negotiations and construction, Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst officially opened the New Jersey National Guard's state-of-the-art Army Aviation Support Facility with a ribbon cutting ceremony attended by Congressman Chris Smith (NJ-04), Brigadier General Michael Cunniff, the N.J. National Guard Adjutant General, and other officials from Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst. “At a cost of just over $43 million dollars, this new, well equipped state-of-the art facility wil... Read more

BY REUTERS WRITERS JASON SZEP AND MATT SPETALNICK- In the weeks leading up to a critical annual U.S. report on human trafficking that publicly shames the world’s worst offenders, human rights experts at the State Department concluded that trafficking conditions hadn’t improved in Malaysia and Cuba. And in China, they found, things had grown worse. The State Department’s senior political staff saw it differently — and they prevailed. A Reuters examination, based on interviews with more than a doz... Read more

Vital legislation to reauthorize America’s bone marrow and cord blood donor registry cleared a major hurdle today as the full Energy and Commerce Committee unanimously approved the measure just before adjourning for the August district work period. Sponsored by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) with lead co-sponsor Rep. Doris Matsui (D-CA), the Stem Cell Therapeutic and Research Reauthorization Act of 2015,H.R. 2820, ensures that two collaborative programs that support treatment and therapies derived from... Read more

U.S. Representatives Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), with a group of bipartisan co-sponsors, introduced legislation this week to provide the Medicare Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) with additional flexibility to use their successful model to meet the needs of new populations. The PACE Innovation Act of 2015, H.R. 3243, would expand the PACE program—an effective, integrated and community-based program that supports independence and works to raise quality of li... Read more

“For political reasons alone, President Obama has done a grave disservice to victims of human trafficking in Cuba and Malaysia by upgrading the human trafficking tier rankings in those countries in the annual Trafficking in Persons report,” said Rep. Chris Smith (NJ-04), author of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA), which mandates the annual world-wide trafficking assessment and ranking report. Smith also noted that the Trafficking in Persons (TIP) office—50+ expert analysts—... Read more

Reps. Carolyn B. Maloney (NY-12) and Chris Smith (NJ-04) today introduced the Business Supply Chain Transparency on Trafficking and Slavery Act of 2015. The bill requires public companies with over $100 million in global gross receipts to publicly disclose any measures to prevent human trafficking, slavery and child labor in their supply chains as part of their annual reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The introduction follows today’s publication of the State Department’s 2... Read more

With the 2015 country-by-country analysis and rankings on human trafficking set to be released Monday morning by Secretary of State John Kerry, Rep. Chris Smith (NJ-04), the author of the law which created the annual report, called on the Administration to produce an honest and accurate accounting and not allow non-human trafficking related factors to come into play in determining rankings. Smith, who wrote the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) which mandates the report, fears th... Read more