Derek

🚨 The "News Outlet" Was a Front, And the FBI Just Kicked Down Its Door The reporter who hands you the news may be reading from Beijing's script. That is no longer a suspicion. This week it became a search warrant. FBI agents fanned out across Southern California, raiding the home and West Covina office of James Su, CEO of EDI Media — a company that bills itself as the largest Chinese American multimedia firm in the country, by its own count reaching more than 35 million people a year. Agents also hit a San Bernardino County supervisor, an Ontario councilman, and a Chinese-owned Beverly Hills mansion. The thread tying it together: a widening probe into public corruption and Chinese Communist Party influence operations on American soil. EDI Media was forced to register as a foreign agent in 2022 after printing the U.S. edition of a newspaper the State Department labeled a Chinese government "foreign mission." Think about what that means. A platform Chinese-speaking Americans trusted for local news was, in the government's own words, an arm of a hostile state. This is not one bad actor. Two months ago, former Arcadia mayor Eileen Wang pleaded guilty to secretly acting as an agent for China. Her method was chillingly simple: Chinese handlers sent her pre-written articles over encrypted WeChat, and she posted them on a site dressed up as a community news source — the "U.S. News Center." Her associate is already serving four years in federal prison. The playbook is now unmistakable. Build a friendly-looking outlet. Fill it with Beijing's talking points. Launder propaganda as journalism to the very diaspora that fled the Party's control. The FBI is treating this as the national-security threat it is. No one has been charged in the EDI raids yet, and that matters, due process cuts both ways. But the pattern is documented in guilty pleas and prison sentences. So read your Chinese-language news with open eyes. Ask who owns the outlet, who funds it, and whose interests it quietly serves. In this fight, a skeptical reader is a line of defense. ACI — Aric Chen | Insights

🪷 27 Years of Terror Could Not Break Falun Gong. It Exposed the CCP. For 27 years, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has thrown police, prisons, torture, propaganda and transnational repression at people whose guiding principles are Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance. Beijing expected fear and silence. Instead, Falun Gong practitioners answered with candles, banners, meditation and the stubborn power of conscience. This is state-organized evil, exposed in its clearest possible form. Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice rooted in the Buddhist tradition. Since July 20, 1999, the CCP has sought to eradicate it through a nationwide campaign of arbitrary detention, forced ideological “transformation,” abuse in custody and censorship. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) reported this year that practitioners continued to be imprisoned and that several elderly practitioners reportedly died in custody in 2025. Yet the campaign has failed at its objective. Falun Gong has not disappeared. Its practitioners have not abandoned their faith. This July, peaceful commemorations and rallies stretched from New York and Washington to London, Berlin, Yokohama and Seoul. For nearly three decades, their resistance has centered on nonviolent marches, vigils, documentation and appeals to governments. They have asked ordinary citizens to look beyond Beijing’s lies. That moral discipline deserves international respect. Their endurance has made persecution an indictment of communism. The CCP’s brutality also reaches into one of the darkest allegations confronting modern China: forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience. United Nations human rights experts have raised alarm over reports involving Falun Gong practitioners and other minorities. An independent tribunal concluded that forced organ harvesting had occurred in China for years on a significant scale. Beijing has never provided the transparent, independently verifiable accounting that such evidence demands. The free world is responding. Assistant Secretary of State Riley Barnes said the United States is committed to using tools to hold Chinese officials accountable for persecuting Falun Gong and other religious groups. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has also advanced the bipartisan Falun Gong and Victims of Forced Organ Harvesting Protection Act, which would mandate sanctions against identified perpetrators and require a formal assessment of China’s transplant system. This is the right direction, but statements must become consequences: visa bans, asset freezes, criminal investigations and coordinated pressure from democratic governments. Falun Gong practitioners have already shown what courage looks like. Their faith survived the regime’s demand for surrender, and their voices survived Beijing’s attempt to erase them. Throughout, they preserved a peaceful public campaign even as the CCP exported intimidation beyond China’s borders. The international community should stand beside them with unified resolve in defense of human dignity. A regime that fears Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance is revealing its own moral bankruptcy. The persecution must end, and those responsible must face justice. ACI — Aric Chen | Insights Editor’s note: The accompanying video report is from the Newsweek program I anchor.

27 years! 27 years of persecution. 27 years of torture. 27 years of families torn apart. It has been 27 years since the Chinese Communist Party launched its brutal campaign against Falun Gong. Millions have been imprisoned, tortured, and persecuted simply because they chose to live by the values of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. Their stories deserve to be heard. Their courage deserves to be honored. The world must not stay silent.