After President Trump told the nation Wednesday night that China had stolen the voter registration data of 220 million Americans — and that our own intelligence agencies knew and said nothing — Governor Ron DeSantis didn't wait for a commission.
"Time to yank CCP student visas, which are hundreds of thousands a year," DeSantis posted.
That's not an overreaction. That's a direct response to a direct threat.
The United States has been extending goodwill to hundreds of thousands of Chinese nationals through student visas every year — access to our universities, our research labs, our campuses — while the Chinese Communist Party was running a multi-state voter data theft operation against us. The CIA's own declassified files show the Chinese government had an explicit anti-Trump policy by 2018 and had shifted its strategy to undermining the American president's confidence ahead of the next election. They weren't sending students here out of academic goodwill.
DeSantis isn't alone.
Senator Ashley Moody of Florida had an immediate answer too: "It's why I introduced the Stop CCP VISAs Act. It would directly address this problem." Moody's bill specifically targets visas issued to Chinese nationals connected to the CCP apparatus — the same apparatus that, per the now-declassified intelligence, was running active election interference operations against the United States while our agencies looked the other way and our universities handed out student IDs.
The FBI had standing documented concerns about Chinese nationals conducting classified research at American universities. Those concerns, like so much of the China intelligence from this period, were filed and quietly forgotten. We knew. We documented it. And we kept the welcome mat out anyway.
DeSantis' proposal draws a line Washington has been unwilling to draw: access to American institutions is a privilege, not a right. A government that wages active information warfare against the United States doesn't get to keep sending students to our research universities as if nothing happened.
China played offense on American elections for at least six years. Congress has legislation ready in the Stop CCP VISAs Act. The only question is whether Washington will act — or wait until the number is bigger than 220 million.
