(The Center Square) – Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx said Saturday she will seek to return for a 12th term in the U.S. House of Representatives representing North Carolina’s 5th Congressional District.

Victim of Hurricane Helene last fall, chairwoman in the 119th Congress for the Committee on Rules and in the 118th for the Committee on Education and the Workforce, the 81-year-old New York City native has more consecutive years (20) in Washington than any other from the state. Her conservative principles align with the Trump administration efforts almost perfectly, focusing on a halt to wasteful spending, encouraging economic growth and strengthening national security.

“I don’t know about you, but I am definitely not tired of winning!” Foxx wrote on social media late Saturday morning. “I am pleased to announce that I will be running for reelection in the 2026 midterms to continue fighting for North Carolina’s Fifth Congressional District and President Trump’s America First agenda!”

To date, there are no opponents for her.

The Federal Election Commission says her campaign cash on hand is $3.1 million. Foxx has won each of her 11 campaigns for House snagging 57% or more of the vote regardless of redistricting map authors.

State House Speaker Destin Hall, R-Caldwell, was among the early responders.

He wrote, “I’m so glad @foxxforcongress will continue representing us in Washington. She is a fierce advocate for NC and the America First agenda!”

The state’s worst natural disaster left the home of she and her husband cut off from the main road. In the days after the storm slammed the mountains of the Carolinas and Tennessee, Tom Foxx was stranded inside the home. Foxx was apart from him and remained proactive for storm victims, in particular keeping an eye on efforts by FEMA.

Helene killed 107 in the state and caused an estimated $60 billion in damage. Across seven states, 236 lost their lives because of the storm.

Following the Oct. 7, 2023, escalation of war between Hamas and Israel, college campuses became focus points for antisemitic protests. Foxx was among the most outspoken to quell the unrest and led congressional hearings that led to more probes and the separation from respective top leadership jobs for Dr. Claudine Gay at Harvard, Dr. Liz Magill at Penn and Dr. Minouche Shafik at Columbia. Dr. Martha Pollack resigned from the presidency at Cornell and said the decision was before headline-grabbing protests on campus.

In his Jan. 14 choosing of Foxx to lead the powerful Committee on Rules, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said, “For two decades, Dr. Foxx has been a stalwart in the House and a leader in multiple policy areas. Her drive and personality have established her as among the most universally respected members of our Republican Conference. Dr. Foxx is an example of how members should serve, and our conference will benefit greatly with her at the helm of the influential Rules Committee.”

Foxx turns 82 on June 29. Her district is the northwestern region of the state that borders Tennessee and Virginia. The counties include a dip into northwestern Guilford, and all of Rockingham, Stokes, Surry, Alleghany, Ashe, Watauga, Caldwell, Alexander and Wilkes. Her congressional map was drawn by Democratic majorities in the Legislature for her first three terms, Republicans for seven, and judicial special masters for one (2022).

Foxx has won when presidential elections were won by Republican George W. Bush (second term), Democrat Barack Obama twice, Republican Donald Trump twice and Democrat Joe Biden. She’s won when gubernatorial elections were won by Democrats Michael Easley (second term) and Bev Perdue, Republican Pat McCrory, and Democrats Roy Cooper twice and Josh Stein.

Foxx’s wins have all been against Democrats. She in 2004 defeated Jim Harrell Jr. 58.8%-41.2%; in 2006 defeated Roger Sharpe 57.2%-42.8%; in 2008 defeated Roy Carter 58.4%-41.6%; in 2010 defeated Billy Kennedy 65.9%-34.1%; in 2012 defeated Elisabeth Motsinger 57.5%-42.6%; in 2014 defeated Josh Brannon 61%-39%; in 2016 defeated Brannon again 58.4%-41.6%; in 2018 defeated DD Adams 57%-43%; in 2020 defeated David Wilson Brown 66.9%-31.1% in a three-candidate race; in 2022 defeated Kyle Parrish 63.2%-36.9%; and on Nov. 5 defeated Chuck Hubbard 59.5%-40.5%.

(The Center Square) – As congressional Republicans struggle to find ways to reduce federal spending on Medicaid without affecting vulnerable people, some have eyed shifting part of the cost burden onto states.

To finance President Donald Trump’s expensive priorities laid out in the Republican $5.8 trillion budget reconciliation framework, which includes extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, House committees must find varying levels of spending cuts in other areas of the federal government.

Energy and Commerce, the House committee that oversees Medicaid, must find $880 billion in spending reductions over the next ten years, or about $88 billion per year. Even though the bill does not specify where the committee must find the money, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that $581 billion of those savings must come from Medicaid. 

Medicaid costs roughly $900 billion taxpayer dollars per year, with the federal government shouldering roughly two-thirds of that spending and state governments covering the rest.

With experts split on whether federal spending reductions in the program would necessarily harm state budgets and needy recipients would necessarily, the American Legislative Exchange Council is highlighting some successful state reforms that have lowered Medicaid spending.

ALEC Health and Human Services Task Force Director, Brooklyn Roberts, told The Center Square that the existing budget reconciliation activities provide a rare opportunity to “open up the hood” on Medicaid spending and sustainability, both on the federal and state level. 

“States are the laboratories of democracy, and I think they can innovate and figure out ways to set up their programs and save money if we just give them the freedom to do so,” Roberts said. “We’re not really taking a position on what the reforms are going to look like at the national level; we’re focused on how the states can adapt to whatever happens on the federal side.”

Under the Biden administration, Medicaid spending shot up 20% and expanded program eligibility beyond low-income seniors; families with children; and pregnant mothers with their infants to able-bodied, childless adults. This means that even if Republicans find all $880 billion in savings via Medicaid cuts, federal funding to the program will still grow, just at a slower rate.

But given that most states have also expanded Medicaid eligibility – and many are now struggling under that burden – program reforms can help states adjust to whatever changes happen at the federal level.

“A lot of states, especially states that have expanded Medicaid, are facing these huge financial challenges trying to shoulder the full cost,” Roberts said. “It’s almost a third of most state budgets. So they need to be looking at what types of services they’re providing and then making sure that coverage is going to the people who truly need it.”

A large part of that includes identifying and preventing improper payments and fraud, she said.

“You’ve got Indiana, who just passed SB2, that is focusing on program integrity and making sure that the people who are on the program are the people who truly should be. That requires yearly eligibility verification, [and] it requires that those verifications are matched against federal databases, which are the strongest predictor of fraud.”

Besides simply rolling back Medicaid expansion, other cost-cutting options available include transitioning over to a managed care type of system, like Idaho is considering, or implementing work requirements for some recipients, like Arkansas is doing.

“Medicaid is not a permanent solution – it’s supposed to help people transition to private and other insurance,” Roberts said. “[States] need to be working at looking at the types of reforms that best fit their population.”

Americans are wary of any major changes to the program that more than 71 million rely on for healthcare coverage. The Center Square’s Voters’ Voice poll, one of only six national tracking polls in the United States, shows that the vast majority of Americans do not want any spending reductions to Medicaid.

(The Center Square) – The U.S. is set to meet with China for the first time in the trade war begun just over a month ago, and while it could lead to real negotiations down the road, many observers see it as a preliminary meeting.

President Donald Trump raised tariffs with many of America’s trading partners, including China, on April 2, causing many countries to reach out to the U.S. to negotiate trade deals, according to the administration (though the White House has only shared the framework details of one deal made with the United Kingdom). But China chose to raise its tariffs in response, sparking a trade war that has resulted in a 145% tariff on Chinese imports to the U.S. and a 125% tariff on American goods imported to China.

Trump has said he has been talking with Chinese President Xi Jinping, but neither country had released any details about those conversations, and China denied they happened. Several economists The Center Square spoke to weren’t optimistic that the meeting would yield big results. 

“By all accounts that we can locate, it appears that it’s a meeting to talk about a meeting,” said director of education and senior research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research, Ryan Yonk.”Which isn’t a big surprise. That’s how these things tend to begin, where behind the scenes, there is movement likely on both sides… to begin to talk about how will they actually set up a way to have more formal discussions.’”

Alex Durante, a senior economist at the Tax Foundation who previously worked for the Federal Reserve Board and the Council of Economic Advisers, agreed. 

“I think it’s possible that maybe both sides reach some kind of agreement and tariffs maybe on certain kinds of goods are lowered or removed, but I’m a bit skeptical that we’re going to get something very remarkable,” Durante told The Center Square.

Part of the skepticism is due to an episode of déjà vu – the first Trump administration also had specific aspirations for U.S.-China trade relations which largely never materialized. Trump also raised tariffs on China then to establish a better trade relationship. China, as it has now, responded in kind. In January 2020, the Trump administration signed the ‘Phase One’ trade agreement, which included commitments from China to increase U.S. imports by $200 billion and strengthen protections on intellectual property. But China ultimately fell short of its purchasing commitments, partly due to the pandemic. Trump had also sought to further address non-tariff barriers such as forced technology transfer and state subsidies, but those deeper issues remained unresolved.

“They never got to some of the real issues – that is, the problems of the state capitalism characteristics that really hamper trade and investment with not just the United States but others – the kinds of things about technology transfer, about subsidies, about favoritism to state-owned companies,” said Claude Barfield, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a former consultant to the office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

Some of these issues were spoken about in a congressional hearing earlier this year that focused on the Chinese Communist Party’s influence on American investment. China reportedly pressures companies to share proprietary technology to gain access to the Chinese market, and it employs other business practices in its international deals that don’t comply with World Trade Organization regulations.

More skepticism comes from the fact that both sides have invested far more than merely economics in the outcome of their negotiations.

“You [have] two regimes that are unlikely to make decisions on pure economic outcomes, as much as we think they should,” Yonk told The Center Square. 

China has undergone a marked real estate crisis and faces other economic challenges, and the U.S. is adjusting to new economic policies under the Trump administration, the after-effects of a jarring inflationary period and the looming question of a recession.

“There’s been massive capital investment [in China] that really hasn’t panned out in the way they expected,” Yonk said. “In large part, China had messaged their legitimacy by what they could deliver economically. When that changed, there was a pivot to more Chinese nationalism as the justification, which means it’s no longer about just getting an economic deal that’s going to work for China, there’s also now a much more nationalistic question that’s on the table about respect and sort of world influence.”

Barfield also described economic problems in both countries. Xi has “internal issues,” Barfield said, while Trump, elected for his economic policies, faces pressures at home. 

“Has he done things to help him on the issues that got him elected?” Barfield remarked to The Center Square. “Certainly, throwing tariffs all around the world isn’t going to help. We don’t know yet, but it may not end up in inflation over the whole U.S. economy rather than just sort of price hikes in different sectors, but it’s something he and his people are now worried about.” 

The administration has acknowledged the existing rates are unsustainable, but it’s unclear which side will make concessions first.

“I think it’s a bit of a pick ‘em [whether] one side or the other gives in first, and I actually think we’re not likely to see evidence that one side or the other did. I think both sides will claim the other did and the question will be, can the other side accept that narrative and still go forward with some sort of trade deal. I think it’s gonna be a long road to a trade deal with China that is really sort of substantial and far-reaching,” Yonk said.

Trump did post to Truth Social on Friday, saying a lowered 80% tariff on China “seems right” but that it was up to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, but this was after saying earlier in the week that the U.S. would not lower tariffs on China to prompt concessions from the Chinese.

“I think the best outcome would be sort of a cooling off period, if they agree to actually have discussions after Saturday,” Yonk said.