D.C. Is Home To 10,000 Spies. Democrats Want To Let Them Vote
Democrats and the D.C. Board of Elections are pushing to allow noncitizens — including potential foreign spies — to vote in local elections.
The D.C. Board of Elections will head to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday to fight to preserve a district law allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections. The lawsuit centers around the Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2022, which permits noncitizens eighteen or older who have lived in D.C. for at least 30 days prior to an election to vote for local officials and on ballot initiatives.
With an estimated 10,000 foreign spies operating in Washington D.C. and the U.S. capital also hosting diplomats from foreign and sometimes hostile governments like China, the security risks of such a law are obvious. FBI counterintelligence expert Brian Dugan previously warned that foreign adversaries pose an “unprecedented” threat and that spies often blend into everyday life, posing as students, professors or even neighbors.
Yet, Democrats are determined to extend voting rights to noncitizens residing in D.C., and potentially to agents operating on behalf of foreign governments.
In 2023, the Federation for American Immigration Reform filed a lawsuit against the D.C. Board of Elections on behalf of multiple D.C. residents. The complaint challenged the Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act as unconstitutional and argued the law dilutes the votes of U.S. citizens.
“Noncitizens do not have a fundamental right to vote in the United States. Nor does any noncitizen,” the lawsuit states. “By necessary operation, the D.C. Noncitizen Voting Act dilutes the vote of every U.S. citizen voter in the District. Because it does so, the D.C. Noncitizen Voting Act is subject to review under both the equal protection and the substantive due process components of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”
The suit further alleges the law violates the “constitutional right of citizens to govern, and be governed by, themselves, and should be struck down on that basis” by allowing noncitizens to “hold public office in D.C.” --->READ MORE HERE
Where China’s spies sleep in Washington:
Washington, D.C. is full of open secrets. You just need to be here long enough to know where to look. And in the stone, brick, and flowered neighborhood of Kalorama, where former President Barack Obama still has a house that the Secret Service guards, there is also a home to China’s diplomats and spies.
The residence sits between the chancery of Algeria and a suicide prevention sign, just steps away from the Taft Bridge. There are no plaques or flags denoting its identity or purpose. But observers will notice that it is surrounded by a tall, black fence, with numerous cameras pointing outward and inward. The gated entryway is a little more inviting, with ginkgo leaves carved into a glass awning.
Officially, the building is home to staff of China’s embassy in Washington. In 2015, a local blog documented its construction, mentioning Dingzihu, or “nail houses,” the homes in China that people refuse to let property developers demolish. But that’s not relevant to this complex, and what happened after embassy staff moved in has not been examined.
“There are a lot of intelligence officers from China in the United States, and almost certainly many of them live in that building,” a retired FBI agent who was not authorized to speak on the matter told me. Two other former FBI agents with backgrounds in Chinese counterintelligence concurred.
Possibly divided floor by floor, they are likely members of China’s principal civilian intelligence service, the Ministry of State Security (MSS), as well as the Ministry of Public Security and attachés from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). “The MSS officers would obviously be undercover as diplomats. And the PLA could potentially be uniformed, or they could be also just stationed as diplomats as well,” one of the former agents said.
On a quiet Sunday morning in September, I went to the building and took a seat at a bench across the street. Most of the inhabitants had their curtains drawn shut — to block the sun or prying eyes. A little boy was putting things outside on a high balcony. One unit had what looked like a Macy’s bag blocking its window. Directly across the street, a camera was recording every car that left the gates. And they all had diplomatic plates. --->READ MORE HERE
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