Republican Senators Marsha Blackburn and Martha McSally have introduced legislation that would allow U.S. citizens to file lawsuits against the Chinese Communist Party over the COVID-19 pandemic.
The senators are calling it the Stop COVID Act, with "COVID" standing for "China-Originated Viral Infectious Diseases."
"This would allow the insertion of COVID-19 as a 'biological agent,'" Blackburn said, adding the change would be made to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.
As precedent, Blackburn pointed out that the law allowed families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia for its suspected role in those attacks.
"What we are doing is giving the individual citizen the right to hold the Chinese Communist Party legally responsible for the act that they have committed," Blackburn said.
During the interview Tuesday, the senator would not rule out speculation the coronavirus that has spread across the globe was a man-made biological weapon, despite a lack of evidence.
"We're going to leave it to the intel community and Five Eyes to say exactly what happened here," the Tennessee senator said. "[China] had 3,000 cases on their hands before they said anything about this."
The theory that the coronavirus emerged from a lab in China has pitted medical experts, like Dr. Anthony Fauci, against senior Trump administration officials. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said there was "enormous evidence" to support the theory in an interview on ABC News earlier this month, though he also said he had "no reason to disbelieve" the Office of the Director of National Intelligence assessment that "the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified."
Blackburn, who has publically shared Pompeo's view, says that whether the coronavirus was manmade, the Chinese government failed to protect its citizens and the rest of the world.
"They eliminated travel between Wuhan and the rest of China, but they allowed international flights from Wuhan to other parts of the globe," Blackburn said. "They knew about this for weeks. They didn't do anything to stop it."
As fears of a national debt default rise, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told NBC's "Meet the Press" that he isn't ruling out a short-term bill to raise the debt ceiling. At the same time, he said he doesn't think "the responsible thing is to kick the can down the road."
North Carolina lawmakers on Thursday approved and sent to the governor a ban on nearly all abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy, down from the current 20 weeks, in response to last year’s overturning of Roe v. Wade at the U.S. Supreme Court.
Associate Justice Clarence Thomas joins other members of the Supreme Court as they pose for a new group portrait, at the Supreme Court building in Washington, Oct. 7, 2022. A Republican megadonor paid two years of private school tuition for a child raised by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who did not disclose the payments, a lawyer who has represented Thomas and his wife acknowledged Thursday. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and three other members of the far-right extremist group were convicted Thursday of a plot to attack the U.S. Capitol.
Florida Republicans on Wednesday approved bills to ban diversity programs in colleges and prevent students and teachers from being required to use pronouns that don't correspond to someone's sex, building on top priorities of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Authorities in the U.S. and Europe arrested nearly 300 people, confiscated over $53 million, and seized a dark web marketplace as part of an international crackdown on drug trafficking that officials say was the largest operation of its kind.
Oregon Secretary of State Shemia Fagan has stepped down shortly after apologizing for accepting a payment of $10,000 per month from a consultancy firm for a marijuana company.
