GOP Sen. Josh Hawley introduces legislation targeting China for withholding coronavirus info

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) announced new legislation Tuesday targeting the Chinese Communist Party for its role in the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak.

From Hawley's perspective, Beijing needs to pay up — figuratively and literally — for not alerting the rest of the world in a truthful and timely manner about the virus during the early stages of its spread after it originated in the city of Wuhan. The bill, which is called the Justice for Victims of COVID-19 Act, would strip the Chinese government of sovereign immunity so Americans can sue "for any reckless actions it took that caused the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States."

It would also establish a task force dedicated to investigating how Beijing's "decisions to distort and conceal" information about COVID-19 led to the pandemic, as well as securing compensation from the CCP.

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Unsurprisingly Hawley and some of his colleagues, like Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), have received pushback from Beijing over their criticism of the party, but some analysts in the U.S. have also expressed concern that their efforts to shift the blame to China are obscuring Washington's own failures. Tim O'Donnell

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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.