*By Justin Chermol*
The newly appointed vice chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.), said he is "absolutely" concerned that Chinese telecommunication giant Huawei poses a threat to national security in an interview on Cheddar Tuesday.
"I do have that concern," Castro told Cheddar's J.D. Durkin. He noted that he helped push a bipartisan amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act last year to prevent government grants or loans being used to pay for Huawei services.
The Department of Justice unsealed two separate indictments on Monday against the company and its CFO Meng Wanzhou, who was arrested in December. The cases claim the company and its leaders attempted to steal trade secrets from rival T-Mobile, promised bonuses to employees in exchange for intel on competitors, and sought to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran.
"With China, our overarching strategy has to be to respect them when they compete, but also to stop them when they cheat," he said.
Castro is particularly disturbed by prospect of Huawei lifting T-Mobile's technology for its own gain.
"What you see with China is the outright theft of trade secrets and technology and then taking that technology, in this case from T-Mobile, and using it for the benefit of Chinese companies without ever doing any of the innovation or the hard work ー or spending the money in terms of research or development to understand it themselves," he said.
The indictments may coincide with trade talks between the U.S. and Chinese officials, but Castro said that the meetings scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday are unrelated to the charges leveled against Huawei.
"We should be able to separate out some sort of cheating or malfeasance from what we do in terms of talking about trade," he said.
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/rep-joaquin-castro-talks-mueller-probe-huawei-charges-and-more).
California Governor Gavin Newsom is facing a recall election in about two weeks. Newsom was elected governor in 2018 with nearly 62% of the vote after working as lieutenant governor for eight years. However, his popularity took a hit after his handling of Covid-19 pandemic, although the White House is refusing to cite this as the direct reason for the September 14th recall election. There are 46 candidates running to be Newsom's replacement, and some are saying that California could end up electing a republican governor.
Jeremy White, California politics reporter and co-writer of daily California Playbook Newsletter at Politico, joined Cheddar Politics to discuss more about the election and its possible outcomes.
President Joe Biden says the United States will complete it's evacuation of Americans and others from Kabul, despite the attack that killed 12 U.S. service members and many Afghan civilians.
Crypto-enthusiasts are taking to social media to urge regular Afghans to adopt bitcoin in the face of considerable economic uncertainty.
The U.S. economy grew at a 6.6% annual rate last quarter, slightly faster than previously estimated, the government said Thursday in a report that pointed to a sustained consumer-led rebound from the pandemic recession.
The operator of the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant says it plans to build an undersea tunnel so that massive amounts of treated but still radioactive water can be released into the ocean about 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) away from the plant to avoid interference with local fishing.
Two suicide bombers and gunmen have targeted crowds of Afghans flocking to Kabul’s airport, in the waning days of a massive airlift that has drawn thousands of people seeking to flee the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.
The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits rose for the first time in five weeks even though the economy and job market have been recovering briskly from the coronavirus pandemic.
Secretary of State Blinken said Wednesday that as many as 1,500 Americans may be awaiting evacuation from Afghanistan.
Kathy Hochul became the first female governor of New York on Tuesday, vowing to bring new energy and urgency to solving immense challenges as she took over an administration criticized for inaction.
U.S military troops flying round the clock have managed their biggest day of airlifts out of Afghanistan by far.
