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Arrest of Chinese nationals in swing state, Israel’s fight with Iran are ‘wake up’ call on CCP threat: experts
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Recent arrests of Chinese nationals at the University of Michigan have resurrected concerns about CCP-owned farmland and property in the United States, particularly in Michigan, and caused some to draw parallels with the current conflict between Iran and Israel.
Earlier this month, two Chinese nationals were charged with allegedly smuggling a «dangerous biological pathogen» into the U.S. to study at the University of Michigan in an incident that FBI Director Kash Patel described as a «sobering reminder that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to deploy operatives and researchers to infiltrate our institutions and target our food supply, an act that could cripple our economy and endanger American lives.»
Later, a third Chinese national with connections to the university was arrested, renewing questions about China’s efforts to infiltrate and influence various sectors in the United States, including buying up farmland, which has been a growing concern nationwide.
A 2023 report from the United States Department of Agriculture found that «foreign persons held an interest in nearly 45 million acres of U.S. agricultural land,» which represents 3.5% of all privately held agricultural land and 2% of all land in the country.
NEW LEGISLATION AIMS TO TELL CHINA ‘NO’ ON BUYING UP AMERICAN FARMLAND
Experts are warning that recent current events symbolize a «wake-up» call to the threat China poses to the United States. (Getty)
While China is not at the top of the list of countries in that report, the arrests in Michigan have prompted calls from Congress to ensure that the CCP, viewed by many as the nation’s top geopolitical adversary, is not buying up farmland in the United States.
Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts exclusively told Fox News Digital this week that China has been aggressively buying American agriculture, «which is why we need to have a heightened sense of vigilance around protecting our homeland.»
Ricketts, along with Democratic Sen. John Fetterman, introduced the bipartisan Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure (AFIDA) Improvements Act that seeks to implement recommendations published by the Government Accountability Office in January 2024, which found the AFIDA was ill-equipped to combat foreign ownership of American agricultural land.
«China’s land purchases aren’t just about acreage—they’re about access,» Michigan GOP Rep. John Moolenaar, chairman of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the CCP, told Fox News Digital.
«Even small parcels near military bases or critical infrastructure pose serious national security risks. In my home state, we’ve seen concerning cases like Gotion’s site near Camp Grayling. We need full transparency into who’s buying land and where—because the Chinese Communist Party shouldn’t be allowed to hide behind shell companies to gain a foothold in our country.»
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Chinese President Xi Jinping adjusts his jacket as he stands to sing the national anthem at the closing session of the National People’s Congress held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
China’s encroachment into Michigan’s agriculture was enough of a concern for Republican state Rep. Gina Johnsen to introduce legislation earlier this year banning foreign adversaries from buying up farmland.
«Our state’s agricultural industry is a pillar of our economy. My community is an agricultural community,» Johnsen said. Our farms provide food security, jobs, and economic stability for countless residents. However, there is growing concern about losing our farmland to countries of concern.»
Additionally, Chinese farmland has become a topic of conversation in the wake of revelations that Israel’s attack on Iran’s nuclear capabilities was aided by years of covert planning, surveillance and infiltration by Israeli intelligence.
Code-named «Am Kelavi» (Rising Lion), the preemptive operation was the product of unprecedented coordination between the Israeli air force, the Military Intelligence Directorate, the Mossad and the country’s defense industries. For years, they worked «shoulder to shoulder» to gather the intelligence files needed to eliminate Iran’s most sensitive military and nuclear assets.
As part of that operation, Israel was able to establish a drone base inside Iran, where Mossad operatives retrieved them from hiding spots to use against Iranian sites.
Bryan Cunningham, president of Liberty Defense and former CIA intelligence officer, told Fox News Digital that the Israeli operation is a «wake-up call» for the United States about what a foreign adversary like China could potentially carry out in the United States.
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Smoke rises from the building of Iran’s state-run television after an Israeli strike in Tehran, Iran, on Monday. (AP Photo)
«As an intelligence officer, part of me says, I wish that the sources and methods of building these drone factories inside the target countries hadn’t been revealed,» Cunningham said. «But on the other hand, it does serve as a wake-up call, hopefully for our policymakers, and it also ties in, and if I were the administration, I would make this tie in immediately and loudly with the Trump administration’s border strategy.»
Cunningham continued, «Our borders are where you’re most likely to actually intercept these kinds of toxins, explosives, flares, 3D-printed weapons, ceramic weapons, whatever it is. So if it were me and I were the Secretary of Homeland Security, I would be tying this all together. You know, it is important to get people out of the country that have committed violent or other serious crimes in the country, but it’s also really important to prevent people like these guys from bringing in those kinds of materials.»
The FBI is increasing its surveillance of Iranian-backed operatives inside the United States as Trump weighs strikes, a senior law enforcement official told Fox News on Friday.
Fox News Digital’s Deirdre Heavey, Lucas Tomlinson and Efrat Lachter contributed to this report.
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The Justice Department on Monday accused U.S. District Judge James Boasberg of misconduct, escalating the Trump administration’s long-running feud against federal judges who have blocked or paused some of the president’s most sweeping policy priorities.
The complaint, reviewed by Fox News Digital, centers on remarks Boasberg allegedly made during a March 11 meeting of the Judicial Conference of the United States — the national policymaking body for the federal courts, which meets twice per year and is headed up by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
During that meeting, the complaint says, Boasberg «attempted to improperly influence Chief Justice Roberts» and the roughly two dozen other federal judges at the conference by suggesting that the Trump administration could «disregard rulings of federal courts,» and trigger «a constitutional crisis.»
The complaint was sent at the direction of U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and signed by her chief of staff, Chad Mizelle.
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U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks alongside President Donald Trump on recent Supreme Court rulings in the briefing room at the White House on June 27, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Fox News Digital could not independently verify Boasberg’s reported remarks at the March 11 meeting, and his office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Officials have argued the reported remarks were an attempt to improperly prejudice or influence Roberts and said they «undermined the integrity and impartiality of the federal judiciary.»
The complaint asked, not for the first time, that Boasberg be removed from presiding over J.G.G. v. Trump, a lawsuit filed in March by lawyers for the ACLU and others on behalf of the hundreds of immigrants who were summarily deported to El Salvador’s CECOT prison under the auspices of a wartime immigration law.
The complaint — and its request to remove Boasberg from the most consequential immigration case of President Donald Trump’s second term — is certain to test the already fraught relationship between the administration and the courts.
Since Trump’s inauguration in January, senior administration officials have excoriated dozens of so-called «activist» judges who have blocked or paused some of Trump’s sweeping executive orders from taking force.
Notably, the pro-Trump legal group founded by White House aide Stephen Miller attempted to sue Roberts earlier this year for his role overseeing the U.S. Judicial Conference, arguing in a long-shot legal bid that the group’s actions went beyond the scope of what they allege are the «core functions» of the judiciary.
Boasberg, in particular, has emerged as one of Trump’s biggest public foes. On March 15, several days after he allegedly made the remarks included in the DOJ complaint, Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order seeking to block Trump’s use of a 1798 wartime-era immigration law, the Alien Enemies Act, to summarily deport hundreds of Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador.
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White House adviser Stephen Miller, left, and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. (Getty Images)
Boasberg ordered all planes bound for El Salvador to be «immediately» returned to U.S. soil, which did not happen, and later, ordered a new investigation to determine whether the Trump administration had complied with his orders. In April, he ruled that the court had grounds to move on possible contempt proceedings, though that ruling was stayed by a higher appeals court, which has yet to consider the matter.
His March 15 order touched off a complex legal saga that ultimately spawned dozens of deportation-related court challenges across the country — though the one brought before Boasberg was the very first — and later prompted the Supreme Court to rule, on two separate occasions, that the hurried removals had violated migrants’ due process protections under the U.S. Constitution.
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However, it also placed Boasberg squarely in the crosshairs of Trump officials — including the president — as the administration moved to unleash a blitz of executive orders and target judges who tried to block them.
Their attacks have centered closely on the behavior of several judges — but no one more so than Boasberg, an Obama appointee who was originally tapped by then-President George W. Bush in 2002 to be an associate judge of the District of Columbia Superior Court.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has repeatedly used her podium this year to rail against «radical left-wing judges,» accusing them of overstepping their authority and undermining presidential powers.
Trump suggested earlier this year that Boasberg could be impeached for his actions, describing the judge as a «troublemaker and agitator»— and prompting a rare public rebuke from Justice Roberts.
For some, the complaint seems to be well-timed: Boasberg ordered the Justice Department and the ACLU to court for a status hearing last week to determine the status of the 252 CECOT plaintiffs who were deported to Venezuela from El Salvador as part of a prisoner exchange with Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro.
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Judge James Boasberg’s March 15 order prompted a complex legal saga that has spawned dozens of deportation-related lawsuits nationwide. (Getty Images)
Boasberg ended the hearing by ordering the administration and the ACLU lawyers to submit a joint status update to the court on Thursday, Aug. 7, and to continue to do so every two weeks thereafter, as he weighs what options the court has to order relief.
When asked at a status hearing in court last week whether the Justice Department would comply with the court’s orders, DOJ lawyer Tiberius Davis said they would, «if it was a lawful order.»
Davis added that DOJ would likely seek an appeal from a higher court.
Notably, it’s not the first time the Trump administration has tried to have Boasberg removed from overseeing the case.
The Justice Department in March asked the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to remove Judge Boasberg from presiding over the Alien Enemies Act case and have it reassigned to another federal judge. The appeals court never took action in response to the request.
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White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks to reporters at a press briefing. (Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The White House has repeatedly argued that lower court judges like Boasberg should not have the power to block what it calls the president’s lawful agenda — though the judges say Trump’s actions violate the law.
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Still, the first six months of Trump’s second term have been marked by repeated court clashes, as the administration pushes ahead with its agenda and targets those standing in its way.
That sentiment was echoed by former acting ICE Director and current border czar Tom Homan. ‘I don’t care what the judges think. I don’t care what the left thinks,» he said earlier this year in an interview. «We’re coming. Another fight. Every day.»
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From Gaza to Greenland, French President Emmanuel Macron appears to be taking increasingly bolder diplomatic stabs at President Donald Trump’s foreign policy even though such gestures don’t «carry weight» as Trump pointed out last week after the French leader declared his intention to recognize a Palestinian state.
«French Presidents from Charles de Gaulle onwards have reveled in the idea that they are a natural counterweight to U.S. foreign policy on the international stage,» Alan Mendoza, executive director of the U.K.-based Henry Jackson Society, told Fox News Digital Monday.
Charles de Gaulle was France’s long-serving leader in the 1950s and 1960s and was famously resistant to U.S. global dominance, withdrawing his country from NATO’s military command structure in a bid to increase its military independence and criticizing U.S. policies in Eastern Europe and Vietnam.
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Macron met with Trump in Washington on the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale military invasion of Ukraine. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
Such contrarian actions, Mendoza said, «have in many ways defined the French Fifth Republic, with larger-than-life characters thrusting their views onto the world stage.
«The difference now is that France matters far less globally than it did 60 years ago,» he said, adding that a weakening of the European country’s economy and its military might «means that where once de Gaulle could roar, now Macron whimpers.»
«What was once a sign of French strength and confidence now therefore looks more like a desperate attempt to escape irrelevance,» said Mendoza.
In a dramatic announcement last week, Macron said that at the United Nations General Assembly in September France intends to declare its recognition of a Palestinian state, even as Palestinian terror groups continue to battle Israel in the Gaza Strip.
Palestinians carry bags and boxes containing food and humanitarian aid packages delivered by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a U.S.-backed organization, in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, June 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
The statement drew condemnation from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said such a move «rewards terror.»
It was also criticized by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who called the decision «reckless» and «a slap in the face to the victims of October 7th.» He said the U.S. strongly rejected such a plan.
Trump merely dismissed Macron’s Gaza move, telling reporters at the White House Friday «what he says doesn’t matter.»
«He’s a very good guy. I like him, but that statement doesn’t carry weight,» the president said.
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This is not the first time the president has discounted Macron as inconsequential.
Last month, after the French president speculated about Trump’s reasons for leaving the G7 summit in Canada early and returning to Washington, the president wrote on his Truth Social platform, «Wrong! He has no idea why I am now on my way to Washington, but it certainly has nothing to do with a Cease Fire. Much bigger than that. Whether purposely or not, Emmanuel always gets it wrong. Stay Tuned!»
In the same post, Trump said Macron was «publicity seeking.»
French President Emmanuel Macron gestures as he stands on the glacier Mont Nunatarsuaq during a visit to Greenland June 15, 2025. (Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images)
The disparaging comments came after Macron directly contradicted Trump’s foreign policy by stopping on his way to the summit in the semi-autonomous Arctic territory of Greenland, which Trump has said he wishes to acquire.
«Greenland is not to be sold, not to be taken,» Macron declared in a diplomatic stab at Trump’s foreign policy and seemingly an attempt to rally support from other European countries to stand up to the U.S.
Asked about Trump’s ambitions for Greenland, Macron, according to Reuters, said, «I don’t think that’s what allies do. … It’s important that Denmark and the Europeans commit themselves to this territory, which has very high strategic stakes and whose territorial integrity must be respected.»
In February, the French president paid his first visit to the White House since Trump’s return to power, and while the meeting appeared to be warm, it also came amid tension over the U.S. approach to the Russia-Ukraine war.
Hours before the meeting, the U.S. voted against a United Nations resolution drafted by Ukraine and the European Union condemning Russia for its invasion.
President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron shake hands during a joint news conference in the East Room at the White House Feb. 24 in Washington, D.C. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
Tensions between Macron and Trump are not personal, said Mendoza, but they are also not totally ideological.
They stem from Macron’s «desire to be relevant and to stand for something,» he said. «The French are famous contrarians, but they do it for the sake of being contrarian.»
Reuel Marc Gerecht, a resident scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the Washington, D.C., think tank, said Macron was no «different from most European leaders. … Trump just isn’t their cup of tea.»
«Most view Trump as a convulsive, hostile force who views America’s historic relationship with Europe as transactional,» he said.
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«Macron, like most French leaders, defines himself in part against the U.S.,» Gerecht added, explaining that, traditionally, France and America «had a ‘mission civilisatrice’ or a competitive enlightenment mission.»
«The American way has been enormously appealing in Europe since World War II, but it has come in part at the expense of the French, who have culturally lost a lot of ground to the Anglophones, especially the Americans,» he said. «Consequently, many Frenchmen have a love-hate relationship with the U.S.»
On Macron, Gerecht added, «He is part of the French elite. They are a bright lot who punch way above their weight, but, educationally, temperamentally, they are nearly the opposite of Trump.»
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