Taiwan
<p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no notes 12/16</font></p>
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<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">truly a Fox tump con?</font></div><div>
</div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/foxconn-wisconsin/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/foxconn-wisconsin/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 820</font></p><h3 class="magcat-titlte entry-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; letter-spacing: 1px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/why-taiwan-is-at-the-heart-of-a-geopolitical-struggle/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Why Taiwan is at the heart of a geopolitical struggle</font></a><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/why-taiwan-is-at-the-heart-of-a-geopolitical-struggle/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">
</font></a><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/why-taiwan-is-at-the-heart-of-a-geopolitical-struggle/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000" /></a><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/marshall-auerback/" title="Posts by Marshall Auerback" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="text-align: right; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Marshall Auerback</a><span style="text-align: right;"> </span><span style="text-align: right;">/</span><span style="text-align: right;"> </span><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/independent-media-institute/" title="Posts by Independent Media Institute" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="text-align: right; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Independent Media Institu</a></font></font></h3><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/06/25/environmental-activists-charged-terrorizing-louisiana-formosa/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://theintercept.com/2020/06/25/environmental-activists-charged-terrorizing-louisiana-formosa/</font></a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">T<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold; letter-spacing: 0.1em; box-shadow: white 0px 1px 0px, rgb(17, 17, 17) 0px 4px 0px; text-transform: uppercase;">WO LEADERS OF</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;">the long-running fight for environmental justice in Louisiana turned themselves in to police in Baton Rouge Thursday morning. <b>The activists, who work in a part of the state known as “Cancer Alley,” faced charges of “terrorizing” related to a nonviolent protest action.</b> Civil liberties attorneys are calling the charges a dramatic escalation of a yearslong effort by the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries to</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;"> </span><a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/09/27/pipeline-safety-legislation/" style="letter-spacing: 0.01em; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">criminalize efforts</a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;">to halt the expansion of polluting facilities in the state — part of a nationwide trend of</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;"> </span><a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/06/07/pipeline-petrochemical-lobbying-group-anti-protest-law/" style="letter-spacing: 0.01em; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">cracking down</a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;">on dissent around climate change issues.</span></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;">
</span></font></font></div><div data-reactid="216" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The accusations against the activists, Anne Rolfes and Kate McIntosh, stem from a seemingly innocuous activist stunt carried out in December, the day after a festival designed to draw attention to the environmental misdeeds of Formosa Plastics. The Taiwanese petrochemical company plans to build a massive plastics manufacturing complex in a largely Black Louisiana community that has already suffered health problems linked to local industry. In October, Formosa agreed to a $50 million settlement for dumping pollutants, including the small pellets that form the building blocks for plastic products known as nurdles, into Texas’s Lavaca Bay — the <a href="https://coast.noaa.gov/states/stories/historic-pollution-settlement-to-nurdle-patrol.html#::text=Formosa%20Plastics%20Corporation%20USA%20has,the%20federal%20Clean%20Water%20Act." style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">largest</a> settlement of a Clean Water Act lawsuit filed by private citizens.</font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">with a key environmental permit still pending for Formosa in Louisiana, the action — dubbed “Nurdlefest” — was meant to pressure the state’s Department of Environmental Quality to scrutinize the company’s record. Boxes of the plastic pellets, used as evidence in the Texas case, were carted to the front of the agency, where around 75 people gathered in the rain.</font></span></font></p></div><div data-reactid="227" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What apparently terrorized community members, however, was a container of the pellets that appeared on the porch of an oil and gas lobbyist, with a detailed note attached, explaining what they were and their Texas origin. “We have delivered this package of nurdles as a reminder – Louisiana does not need anymore pollution, plastics or otherwise,” the letter said. “We demand that LDEQ DENY Formosa’s air emissions permit application.”</font></span></font></p></div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a class="DocumentPreview" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6956444-Letter-Included-in-Nurdles-Package-Sent.html" target="blank" data-reactid="228" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none; display: block; margin-bottom: 20px; max-height: 400px; overflow: hidden; position: relative; width: 680px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">[ltr doc </font></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">Letter Included in "Nurdles" Package Sent by Louisiana Activists</span></a><a class="DocumentPreview" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6956444-Letter-Included-in-Nurdles-Package-Sent.html" target="blank" data-reactid="228" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none; margin-bottom: 20px; max-height: 400px; overflow: hidden; position: relative; width: 680px; display: inline !important;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">]</font></span></a><a class="DocumentPreview" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6956444-Letter-Included-in-Nurdles-Package-Sent.html" target="blank" data-reactid="228" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none; display: block; margin-bottom: 20px; max-height: 400px; overflow: hidden; position: relative; width: 680px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">
</font></span></a></font></p><div class="DocumentPreview-meta" data-reactid="230" style="box-sizing: border-box; position: absolute; bottom: 20px; left: 20px; max-width: 350px; right: 20px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a class="DocumentPreview" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6956444-Letter-Included-in-Nurdles-Package-Sent.html" target="blank" data-reactid="228" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none; display: block; margin-bottom: 20px; max-height: 400px; overflow: hidden; position: relative; width: 680px;" /></font><div class="DocumentPreview-iconBlock" data-reactid="231" style="box-sizing: border-box; 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background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none; display: block; margin-bottom: 20px; max-height: 400px; overflow: hidden; position: relative; width: 680px;"><span class="Icon Icon--Eye icon-TI_Eye" data-reactid="232" style="box-sizing: border-box; speak: none; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; line-height: 1; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; position: absolute; top: 44.5px; left: 45px; margin-left: -11px; margin-top: -11px;" /></a></font></div><div class="DocumentPreview-textBlock" data-reactid="233" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 90px; padding: 11px 13px 10px; line-height: 1.27273;"><span class="DocumentPreview-title" data-reactid="234" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 0px;">
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</span></div></div><div data-reactid="277" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The letter was signed by Concerned Citizens of Louisiana and included the phone number of Bill Quigley, the activists’ pro bono attorney.</font></span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Baton Rouge Police Department apparently agreed that the plastic particles were threatening. “A note was observed on the top of the package indicating not to open the container as the contents could be hazardous. Police requested Hazmat to be contacted,” spokesperson Don Coppola told The Intercept. Although the note discouraged against removing the nurdles or leaving them around children or pets, it did not describe them as “hazardous.” It included a Formosa phone number for safely recycling the material.</font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rolfes and McIntosh, who are respectively the director of and a program assistant at the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, which provides support to groups of community members living near polluting facilities, face a maximum of 15 years in prison and $15,000 in fines for so-called terrorizing — defined as “the intentional communication of information that the commission of a crime of violence is imminent or in progress or that a circumstance dangerous to human life exists or is about to exist” — with the intention of causing members of the public to fear for their safety.</font></font></p></div><div data-reactid="281" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This is an unwarranted escalation because they are using the term ‘terrorizing,’” said Pam Spees, senior attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, who is representing McIntosh and Rolfes. “It is imposing unfairly and inappropriately a label on people that have been peacefully working for years to raise awareness of the impact of industry on frontline communities. To use that word in a context like this is potentially damaging and chilling to others.”</font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold; letter-spacing: 0.1em; box-shadow: white 0px 1px 0px, rgb(17, 17, 17) 0px 4px 0px; text-transform: uppercase;">THE CHARGES AGAINST</span> Rolfes and McIntosh come on the heels of a series of incidents where environmental activists have been dealt hefty charges for actions challenging the petrochemical, oil, and gas industries in Louisiana.</font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In August 2018, Louisiana legislators passed a law <a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/08/22/recent-arrests-under-new-anti-protest-law-spotlight-risks-that-off-duty-cops-pose-to-pipeline-opponents/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">establishing a new felony charge</a> for anyone who trespasses on critical infrastructure facilities, including chemical manufacturing facilities and oil and gas pipeline construction sites. Over the following couple months, police used the new law to charge 14 people protesting the oil company Energy Transfer’s Bayou Bridge pipeline, as well as a journalist. Local prosecutors have not yet acted on the charges.</font></font></p></div><div class="img-wrap align-center width-fixed" data-reactid="282" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 2em 0px 2.25em; line-height: 1; max-width: none; width: 1024px;"><div data-reactid="283" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></font><p class="caption" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; letter-spacing: 0.01em; word-spacing: -0.25em; display: inline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[pix Taiwanese petrochemical company Formosa agreed to a $50 million settlement for dumping small pellets that make up the building blocks for plastic products, known as “nurdles,” into Texas’s Lavaca Bay.</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font>
Photo: Courtesy of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade</p></div></div><div data-reactid="284" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Last October, police charged Gregory Manning, the legally blind pastor of Broadmoor Community Church and a member of the Coalition Against Death Alley, with a felony for allegedly inciting a riot. Authorities said Manning failed to immediately leave a hallway outside the office of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry during a protest against the association’s influence over state politics. A prosecutor later <a href="https://www.nola.com/news/courts/article_e12df864-00b6-11ea-ae2d-1b817afd4a1e.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">dropped</a> all charges.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This spring, legislators passed an enhanced version of the critical infrastructure law, which would have ramped up charges for trespass during a state of emergency. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/12062020/louisiana-governor-veto-protest-activism-pipeline-infrastructure" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">vetoed</a> the bill.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To Rolfes and McIntosh’s attorneys, the timing of the latest charges is particularly suspect. At 9:30 a.m. on Juneteenth, the June 19 holiday celebrating the emancipation of slaves in the U.S., Quigley — Rolfes and McIntosh’s pro bono lawyer, who is also a professor at Loyola University New Orleans — received a phone call from a Baton Rouge Police Department detective, notifying him that a warrant was out for the pair’s arrest. (Formosa and the Baton Rouge Police Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)</font></p></div><blockquote class="Pullquote Pullquote--right" data-reactid="285" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold; margin: 2em -170px 2em 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 2em; box-shadow: none; line-height: 1.125; float: right; max-width: 75%;"><span class="Pullquote-line" data-reactid="286" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; position: relative; bottom: -4px; width: 2em; height: 0.7em; margin-right: 0.3em; float: left; background-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);"><div data-reactid="287" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It seems more than a little suspicious that this long dormant warrant was activated 12 hours after Formosa lost in court. It seems like it’s clearly retaliation.”</font></div></span></blockquote><div data-reactid="288" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Both the activists were en route to a ceremony at a burial site for enslaved people, located in a field <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/12/18/formosa-plastics-louisiana-slave-burial-ground/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">where Formosa plans to build one of its facilities</a>. The right to carry out the ceremony had been hard-won: Formosa had fought in court for the past week to prevent community members from holding the gathering. A judge denied the company’s final appeal only the night before.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The detective told Quigley that the charges had been filed in April, but they’d held off on issuing the warrant because of risks associated with the coronavirus pandemic. “It seems more than a little suspicious that this long dormant warrant was activated 12 hours after Formosa lost in court,” said Quigley. “It seems like it’s clearly retaliation.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Spees, the Center for Constitutional Rights attorney, said, “If there’s such a danger, why wait seven months and pick the day of a community celebration of its liberation from slavery to send that message?”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In response to the latest charges, local organizers are launching the Alliance to Defend Democracy to push back on the increasing criminalization.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Five years ago — maybe three years ago — this kind of charge against an activist would have had an isolating effect. The movements are stronger now,” said Spees. “It’s an overreach, and it’s going to backfire.”</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Jim Hightower: Can ‘powerless nobodies’ fight the corporate powers?</b></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Written by Jim Hightower December 21, 2019</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The many sparkling bays along the Texas coastline of the Gulf of Mexico have long provided both a working-class living and a valued lifestyle for generations of shrimpers, oysterers and other fishing families. People and seafood, however, are not the only creatures here, for such wildlife as alligators and snakes also call many of these interconnected waterways home. Yet, by necessity and experience, the hardy people of the water have figured out how to share the bays so all creatures can get along.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But in the 1980s, a strange and invasive new critter entered Lavaca Bay, near the town of Port Comfort. Far from getting along, this species proceeded over the years to devour whole harvests of seafood, along with the livelihoods of local Gulf communities. This marauder was not some monster from the deep but a massive, 45,000-acre factory looming over Lavaca Bay.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 102);"> It is the Formosa Plastics Corporation, founded by the richest man in Taiwan.</span></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">As its name implies, Formosa is not here for seafood. It is the <b>world’s second largest fabricator of polyvinyl chloride, </b>the tiny, highly toxic pebbles and powders used to make the gabillions of plastic bags, pipes, bottles, etc. that are choking the Earth. For decades, the Formosa plant has cavalierly been dumping trillions of these poisonous pebbles and tons of the polyvinyl powders into its wastewater — which end up in Lavaca Bay.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>That poisonous content then spreads to other bays, nearby waterways, the Gulf itself … and into the shrimp, oysters, fish and other creatures living there. The result has been species vanishing from these waters, creating economic and social devastation for families and port communities that rely on nature’s bounty.</b></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Wait, isn’t this against the law? Of course, but petrochemical behemoths like Formosa have corrupted the law, turning Texas lawmakers and environmental regulators into <b>their puppets. When leaders won’t lead, The People must, and that’s exactly what’s happening in this case. A defiant, determined former fourth-generation shrimper named Diane Wilson, along with a scrappy environmental coalition on the Texas Gulf Coast,</b> have just won the largest citizen environmental lawsuit in U.S. history, forcing Formosa to stop its gross contamination of the bay, the local economy and the law.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">It’s good to have a happy-ending story for the holidays — one that’s not sugar-plum sappy but genuinely uplifting.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It “feels like justice,” said Wilson in early December when a federal district judge OK’d a $50 million pollution settlement against Formosa Plastics Corporation. Judge Kenneth Hoyt, a Ronald Reagan appointee, had previously ruled that the Taiwan plastics conglomerate was a “serial offender” whose violations of America’s Clean Water Act were “extensive, historical, and repetitive.” How the case got there is as important as his ruling.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Wilson, the indefatigable local shrimper, had been trying for some 30 years to get state and national officials to stop Formosa from dumping poisonous plastic chemicals into the Lavaca Bay ecosystem. The corporation’s deliberate contamination was destroying seasonal seafood harvests upon which she and thousands of Gulf Coast fishing families relied. She was ignored by those in power and then ridiculed and then demonized. Yet this lady of the sea wouldn’t quit. She kept speaking out, mounted hunger strikes and even tried to sink her own beloved shrimp boat in the bay as a public protest.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Nothing. But then, backed by a volunteer network of regional environmentalists and a savvy group of nonprofit legal service lawyers, Wilson filed the private citizens lawsuit in July 2017 that came to trial this spring in Judge Hoyt’s courtroom, finally producing an overdue measure of justice</b>. The $50 million settlement doesn’t go to Wilson or the other plaintiffs but to projects that will revitalize local marine ecosystems and create a shrimping and oyster cooperative for local families. It also will pay for citizen-group monitoring of Formosa’s compliance with the judge’s orders for “zero discharge” of its plastic pollutants.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Even more significant than the money that the Formosa settlement provides, this victory sets a major legal precedent to advance other citizen lawsuits against polluters, requiring that the polluters (not taxpayers) pay for their messes. Who needs Santa Clause when “We the People” can deliver such democratic gifts to ourselves? For information on the details and impact of this remarkable people’s victory, go to the Texas RioGrande Legal Aid website.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Populist author, public speaker and radio commentator Jim Hightower writes “The Hightower Lowdown,” a monthly newsletter chronicling the ongoing fights by America’s ordinary people against rule by plutocratic elites. Sign up at HightowerLowdown.org.</font></font></font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font></font></font></p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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<div style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: sans-serif; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/when-will-people-realize-theyre-being-duped-by-republicans">https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/when-will-people-realize-theyre-being-duped-by-republicans</a> MI WI swing foconn</font></div>
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<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump beat Clinton by less than a point in Wisconsin. Since then, Democrat Tony Evers squeaked out a win for governor against Republican incumbent Scott Walker. That should firmly place the state in the “swing” column.</font></div>
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<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As a resident of next-door Minnesota, the symbol that most represents Wisconsin is the ubiquitous cheesehead.</font></div>
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<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The fact that an entire state—but especially its Packer fans—have associated themselves with the dairy industry tells you just how important cows are in Wisconsin. All kidding aside, that suggests that this is really bad news.</font></div>
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<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Wisconsin is known as “America’s Dairyland,” but the milk makers who gave the state its moniker are vanishing, falling prey to a variety of impediments, including President Trump and his global trade war</b>.</font></div>
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<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Over the past two years, nearly 1,200 of the state’s dairy farms have stopped milking cows and so far this year, another 212 have disappeared, with many shifting production to beef or vegetables. The total number of herds in Wisconsin is now below 8,000 — about half as many as 15 years ago. In 2018, 49 Wisconsin farms filed for bankruptcy — the highest of any state in the country, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.</font></div>
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<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Racine, Wisconsin, located in the southeastern part of the state on the shore of Lake Michigan, isn’t known for cows.</font></div>
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<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>The Racine County area was once among the wealthiest in the state,</b><span> </span>credited with inventing products from the garbage disposal to malted milk, and home of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed headquarters of SC Johnson, maker of Pledge, Raid and Drano. The county lost major employers with the manufacturing decline. The city of Racine has one of the state’s highest poverty rates.</span></font></div>
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<div>Early in his presidency, Trump promised Racine a megadeal with the Taiwanese firm Foxconn, which was slated to bring 13,000 jobs to the area. The state of Wisconsin offered $2.85 billion in tax credits, while the city and county mortgaged their future and borrowed around $350 million to buy land and make infrastructure improvements.</div>
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<div>Contractors have bulldozed about 75 homes in Mount Pleasant and cleared hundreds of farmland acres. Crews are widening Interstate 94 from Milwaukee to the Illinois state line to accommodate driverless trucks and thousands of employees.</div>
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<div>On Foxconn’s part, here is the latest.</div>
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<div>As of Dec. 31, the Taiwanese manufacturing giant, famous as an Apple Inc. supplier, had spent only $99 million, 1% of its pledged investment, according to its latest state filings. The company projected as many as 2,080 in-state employees by the end of 2019 but had fewer than 200 at last year’s end, state filings show. The village is still awaiting factory building plans for review. Locals said Foxconn contractors have recently been scarce on the site.</div>
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<div>Lately, Foxconn representatives aren’t even showing up at town hall meetings to discuss the project.</div>
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<div>You have to wonder how much the residents of a state like Wisconsin can take from Republicans before they realize that they’ve been duped.</div>
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<div><span style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Foxconn, the biggest assembler of Apple devices, is in preliminary discussions to make an investment that would expand the company's U.S. operations. From a report on Bloomberg:</font></span><span style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0.5em; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; border-left: 3px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); display: block; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The disclosure came hours after an announcement by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and <b>SoftBank </b>Group's Masayoshi Son to <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-07/apple-s-top-assembler-foxconn-confirms-plans-for-u-s-investment" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; cursor: pointer;">invest $50 billion in the U.S. and create 50,000 jobs</a>. The money will come from SoftBank's $100 billion technology fund, which was announced in October, a person familiar with the matter said. A document that Son held up after the meeting in Trump Tower also included the words "Foxconn," "$7 billion" and "50,000 new jobs" in addition to SoftBank's numbers. "While the scope of the potential investment has not been determined, we will announce the details of any plans following the completion of direct discussions between our leadership and the relevant U.S. officials," Foxconn said in a statement. "Those plans would be made based on mutually-agreed terms."</font></span></div>
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<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bob Dole, pictured with Vice President-elect Mike Pence at the Republican National Convention, even arranged for members of Taiwan’s ruling party to take a White House tour. </font></div>
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<div>Dole lobbied Trump's team on Taiwan for months</div>
<div>Private briefings, convention delegation, tougher platform language all preceded protocol-breaking phone call.</div>
<div>By ISAAC ARNSDORF 12/06/16 03:36 PM EST Updated 12/06/16 05:42 PM EST</div>
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<div>Bob Dole’s lobbying Donald Trump on Taiwan went far beyond a congratulatory phone call from Taiwan’s president.</div>
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<div><b>Dole, the only past Republican presidential nominee to endorse Trump before the election, briefed the campaign’s policy director, set up meetings between campaign staff and Taiwanese emissaries, arranged for Taiwan’s delegation to attend the Republican National Convention, and helped tilt the party platform further in the island’s favor, a lobbying disclosure document </b>filed with the Justice Department and released to POLITICO shows. He even arranged for members of Taiwan’s ruling party to take a White House tour, according to the filing.</div>
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<div><b>Taiwan paid the 93-year-old Dole and his law firm, Alston & Bird, $140,000 between May and October, according to the new disclosure</b>. His spokeswoman declined to comment.</div>
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<div><b>The revelation of Dole’s extensive influence on Trump’s team follows reports that the president-elect has been declining the advice of State Department experts before talking with world leaders. It also contrasts with the transition’s ban on lobbyists and Trump’s campaign pledge to forbid his officials from lobbying for foreign governments and outlaw foreign lobbyists’ donating to American candidates.</b></div>
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<div>“It does seem very strange that Trump is ignoring the State Department while apparently allowing Bob Dole, a lobbyist for Taiwan, to make arrangements for him in what appears to be a change in U.S. policy dealing with Taiwan,” said Fred Wertheimer, the founder and president of watchdog group<b> Democracy 21. </b>“Dole’s interests here certainly involved Taiwan’s interests more than it did American interests, and the fact that he was the intermediary raises a serious issue about just how President-elect Trump is going to make U.S. foreign policy.”</div>
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<div>Dole’s work is part of Taiwan’s decades-long investment in grooming conservatives to bolster its U.S. relations at China’s expense, dispatching lobbyists to ply Capitol Hill, feting congressional staff with trips to Taipei, throwing parties at a vast D.C. estate, and funneling money to China hawks at right-leaning think tanks.</div>
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<div>“They’ve spread it around pretty widely,” said Doug Paal, a researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who was the unofficial U.S. representative to Taiwan from 2002 to 2006.</div>
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<div><span style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Earlier this year, Dole set up a meeting between Taiwan’s representative to the U.S., Stanley Kao, and Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, a key Trump adviser and later his choice for attorney general</b>. He also convened a meeting between Taiwanese diplomats and the Trump transition team.</span> The disclosure didn’t specify exactly when the meetings occurred.</div>
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<div>The filing also reveals <b>Dole’s hand in making the Republican platform the most pro-Taiwan it has ever been. The 2016 edition added language affirming the “Six Assurances” that President Ronald Reagan made to Taiwan’s security in 1982.</b></div>
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<div>The U.S. recognized Taiwan as the legitimate government of China from the 1949 Communist takeover until President Richard Nixon’s first steps to normalize relations with the mainland in 1972. Since then, deepening economic ties between the U.S. and mainland China have stoked fears in Taiwan that the U.S. might waver in its commitment to Taiwan’s defense.</div>
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<div>Dole’s role in the phone call was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. “It’s fair to say that we may have had some influence,” he told the Journal.</div>
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<div>Not all of Taiwan’s lobbyists were in on the plan, a person familiar with the matter told POLITICO. It even left out Taiwan’s pseudo-embassy, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, whose officials found out about it from media reports.</div>
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<div>“This is sudden news for us as well,” said Thalia Lin, executive officer of TECRO’s press division. “The whole office has no idea what’s going on.”</div>
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<div>The U.S. emissary from Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, Michael Fonte, said he had only a few hours’ heads-up.</div>
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<div>“Honestly, I have not had any marching orders what to do pro or con,” Fonte told POLITICO. “Nobody in Taipei has said, 'You’ve got to do XYZ.'”</div>
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<div><b>Taiwan spends more than $170,000 a month ($2 million a year) on a fleet of outside lobbyists led by former lawmakers. In addition to Alston & Bird, Taiwan pays the firms of former Democratic Senate leader Tom Daschle, former Republican Senator Don Nickles, former Florida Republican Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart, and former House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt. The law and lobbying firm Crowell & Moring is also on retainer.</b></div>
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<div>Trump’s accepting the phone call shattered decades of diplomatic protocol eschewing official relations with Taiwan, leading China to lodge a formal complaint with the White House.</div>
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<div><b>Taiwan’s ties to the Republican National Committee run especially deep. Reince Priebus, Trump’s choice for White House chief of staff, met with Taiwan’s previous president on a 2011 visit in his role as RNC chairman.</b></div>
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<div><b>The chairman of the Idaho Republican Party, Steve Yates, is a longtime advocate of strengthening the U.S. security commitment to Taiwan and also used to lobby for the country, disclosures show. </b>He told the Idaho Statesman he wasn’t involved in Trump’s phone call and didn’t return a request for comment while he is traveling — in Taiwan, according to his assistant.</div>
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<div><b>Trump’s transition is also stocked with staffers from the Heritage Foundation, which has received funding from Taiwanese companies. They include Steven Groves, who is on the team responsible for the handoff at the State Department, and Ed Feulner, the conservative think tank’s former president and an adviser to the Trump transition, who met with the Taiwanese president in Taipei in October.</b></div>
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<div><b>The Heritage Foundation has received money for 30 years from three Taiwanese companies</b>, according to Walter Lohman, who leads the organization’s Asia Studies Center. Lohman, who was also traveling, said he couldn’t recall the companies’ names but that they’re displayed on plaques in his office. Still, he said they don’t directly fund or influence the foundation’s research.</div>
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<div>“We’re glad to have that funding, of course, but we would be still be committed to this relationship to Taiwan if these companies gave us no funding starting tomorrow,” he said. “There’s nothing nefarious about it.”</div>
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<div>In late October, TECRO’s deputy representative spoke at a Heritage Foundation discussion on Taiwan’s foreign policy.</div>
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<div>“We work together all the time, but we don’t often have representatives come here and speak from the stage,” Lohman said at the event.</div>
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<div>Taiwan also provides funding to the American Enterprise Institute and the Center for Strategic & International Studies, which are both home to prominent pro-Taiwan voices, according to the groups’ disclosures.</div>
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<div>“I think Taiwan deserves this kind of courtesy,” Mike Green, a former National Security Council staffer now at CSIS, said of Trump’s phone call with the Taiwanese president. “It’s not a policy, it’s a gesture.”</div>
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<div>A CSIS spokesman said most of Taiwan’s money pays for executive training for its own senior officials, and Green doesn’t get any direct funding from Taiwan.</div>
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<div>Trump’s phone call was “a good first step toward rebalancing a trilateral China-Taiwan-U.S. relationship” and “higher-level engagement with Taiwan serves U.S. national interests and values,” <b>Dan Blumenthal, a former Pentagon official now at AEI, co-wrote in the National Interest yesterday. The right-leaning think tank’s 2009 donor list, which was mistakenly made public, showed a $550,000 contribution, its fourth-largest, from TECRO.</b></div>
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<div><b>An AEI spokesman said the think tank no longer accepts foreign donations.</b></div>
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<div>Think tanks also have become more careful, in response to criticism, about insulating donors from researchers. But it’s still widespread for lobbyists, foreign governments and other causes to seek out and support people who share their viewpoints.</div>
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<div>“The Taiwan lobby has been much more identified with the far right,” said Robert Torricelli, the former New Jersey senator who used to lobby for TECRO.</div>
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<div>A new think tank opened two months ago, the first dedicated solely to Taiwan. It is known as the Global Taiwan Institute. The organization is privately funded and not affiliated with the Taiwanese government, according to its director, Russell Hsiao. Its advisory board includes prominent researchers such as Gordon Chang, William Stanton and John Tkacik, who have all supported Trump’s phone call. Reps. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.) and<b> Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla</b>.) attended the group’s launch party.</div>
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<div>Taiwan was once considered one of Washington’s most fearsome lobbies, the way people talk today about the National Rifle Association and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. That stature diminished when President Jimmy Carter normalized relations with China in 1979, initiating the new U.S. posture toward the Chinese-Taiwanese dispute that Trump has now scrambled.</div>
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<div>On Capitol Hill, much of the direct lobbying comes from TECRO itself.</div>
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<div>“They made a real commitment to being a presence on the Hill,” said Lester Munson, a former Senate staffer now with the lobbying firm BGR. “Anytime their issue was on the agenda, they were there. It’s pretty impressive work by them.”</div>
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<div>Taiwan pays for congressional staff to visit the country on trips, according to a State Department list of approved programs obtained by POLITICO. Such sponsored travel would be illegal coming from corporate lobbyists, but is allowed from foreign governments under the Mutual Education and Cultural Exchange Act. Not only that, but the trips are never publicly disclosed or even centrally tracked.</div>
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<div><b>In 2012, Rep. Bill Owens (D-N.Y.) personally paid back a Taiwan university for a luxurious trip to Taiwan that was arranged by lobbying firm Park Strategies, then working for TECRO.</b></div>
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<div>Staffers, researchers and diplomats can be found mingling every October at Taiwan’s National Day celebration at its sprawling Twin Oaks estate in Washington’s Cleveland Park neighborhood. The event typically features a circus-size tent full of food and drink, according to people who have attended.</div>
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<div>Taiwanese interests also benefit from a large and vocal Taiwanese-American community, with groups such as the Formosan Association for Public Affairs. Rep. Ed Royce, the California Republican who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, employs Chinese-speaking staff and has a special Taiwan-focused biography on his website.</div>
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<div>Royce visited Taiwan on an official delegation this May and June, joined by Reps. Bill Flores (R-Texas) and Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), according to congressional records.</div>
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<div>“I don't think it's that big of an issue,” Royce said of Trump’s phone call on MSNBC’s "Morning Joe" Tuesday.</div>
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