Latest news with #Investigations
Fox News
11-02-2025
- Business
- Fox News
China expands influence near wealthy Florida enclave as migrants from communist country flood into US
China's growing presence in America's backyard could grant the communist country access to Florida's coast, coinciding with a dramatic rise in Chinese national border encounters. The Caribbean region, also known as "America's third border" due to its proximity to the U.S., has been financially backed by China in maritime logistics and infrastructure projects in recent years. "I think the Chinese are trying to gain influence in a region which is very close to the American homeland," Gordon G. Chang, an author and expert on U.S.-China relations told Fox News Digital. Chang pointed to the $3.4-billion Freeport Container port project in the Bahamas, just 87 miles east of Palm Beach, Florida. A report from the House Foreign Affairs Committee found that China invested over $10 billion in six Caribbean countries between 2005 and 2022. During his inauguration speech, President Donald Trump repeated his desire to retake control of the Panama Canal, the vital strategic waterway that connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. "Above all, China is operating the Panama Canal. And we didn't give it to China. We gave it to Panama, and we're taking it back," Trump said in his inaugural address. The U.S. controlled it from its 1914 completion until 1999, when it was handed over to Panama under the 1977 Torrijos-Carter Treaties. The treaties permit the U.S. military to preserve the canal's neutrality, allowing the U.S. to perpetually use the canal. Chinese companies have invested heavily in ports and terminals near the canal. A Hong Kong-based company runs two of the five ports close to its entrances. "This is going to take some time because China didn't take over the Canal Zone with soldiers, they took it over with people in business attire with large checkbooks and suitcases of cash," he said. "And the United States needs to come in with cash of its own to drive the Chinese out of the Canal Zone and Panama." The U.S. has for decades turned a blind eye to the Western Hemisphere when it comes to national security, Chang said. But the Trump administration has sought to change that in its first few weeks in office. As evidence, Chang pointed to Secretary of State Rubio's trip to Panama as his first foreign trip as America's top diplomat. "I think that that shows that President Trump's foreign policy, at least initially, will be focused on North and South America," he said. "This is the first time in more than a century that an American president has given his primary principle focus to countries closest to the United States." The increase of China's influence in the west correlates with the rising number of Chinese migrants apprehended at both the northern and southern borders. The number of Chinese nationals has increased enormously since 2021. There were 1,970 encounters in FY 2022, more than 24,000 in FY 2023, and 24,376 in the first half of FY 2024, according to a May 2024 report by the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability. Chang noted that the border initially saw an influx of family groups fleeing to the U.S. from China, and now two thirds of Chinese migrants coming into the U.S. are single men of military age, traveling alone, and claiming they don't speak any English. "And Border Patrol has noticed that in some of these packs, they're coming across in packs between 4 and 15, that everybody in the pack has an identical kit," he said. "That is an ominous sign." Chang noted that the border initially saw an influx of family groups fleeing to the U.S. from China, but now two thirds of Chinese migrants coming into the U.S. are single men of military age, traveling alone, and claiming they don't speak any English. "Border Patrol has noticed that in some of these packs, they're coming across in packs between 4 and 15, that everybody in the pack has an identical kit," he said. "That is an ominous sign." Fox News Digital has reached out to the U.S. State Department for comment.
Washington Post
07-02-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
David Fallis named Investigations Editor
I'm pleased to share that David Fallis, one of The Post's most accomplished and experienced journalists and a well-known champion and exemplar of investigative journalism across the field, has agreed to become our new Investigations Editor, reporting to me. A 26-year veteran of The Post, David has been deputy for the team for the past decade and has been centrally involved in much of our most ambitious and significant work. His range has been wide, and he has been a consistent innovator when it comes to story formats. He has partnered with virtually every team at The Post as Investigations has grown from a small team with a handful of journalists to a newsroom-wide investigative engine. He helped launch the quick strike team currently headed by Eric Rich, establish and run the program that embedded American University students with journalists, and hired The Post's first FOIA director, who has force-multiplied our ability to pry loose critical public records. Last year David oversaw The Post's investigation into Indian Boarding schools, revealing the consequences of the 150-year attempt by the federal government to force assimilation on Native Americans. In 2023, he led and co-edited The Collection, an investigation that began with a pitch from former Post copy aide Claire Healy revealing more than 250 human brains stored in a Smithsonian storage unit. One of the stories, 'Searching for Maura,' was told as an illustration and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Illustrated Reporting and Commentary. In 2022, he led and co-edited the investigation on Broken Doors, a six-part podcast that exposed the lack of accountability for no-knock warrants and police abuse of the tactic. The project was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Audio. In 2020 he co-edited The Post's first investigative podcast, Canary, a seven-part series which revealed the intertwining stories of two women who suffered sexual assaults decades apart. The podcast won Edward R. Murrow and Robert F. Kennedy awards. In 2019, David edited The Afghanistan Papers project, a six-part investigation from Craig Whitlock based on a secret trove of documents that revealed senior officials in three administrations lied about the 18-year military campaign. The project won a George Polk Award for Military Reporting, the Scripps Howard Award for Investigative Reporting and the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for International Reporting. That same year he was co-editor on The Opioid Files, an investigation that obtained and analyzed a confidential government database to reveal that drug companies flooded the country with 76 billion pills as overdose deaths climbed. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Public Service Award. He has also led a multi-part series that mapped 52,000 homicides in 50 of America's major cities and revealed clusters of unsolved killings disproportionately in communities of color, which was a 2018 Pulitzer Prize finalist for Explanatory Reporting, and with Lori Montgomery ran a team of journalists tracking fatal shootings by police. The 2015 investigation of police shootings won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. Please join me in congratulating David as he steps into this important job.
