© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Chairman U.S. Consultant Mike Gallagher (R-WI) speaks with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and former CIA director and former protection secretary Leon Panetta, throughout a listening to of the Home Choose Committee on the Strategic Competitio
By Patricia Zengerle
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Consultant Mike Gallagher, who chairs the Home choose committee on competitors with China, mentioned on Saturday he is not going to run for re-election, 4 days after he was certainly one of solely 4 Home Republicans to buck celebration management and vote in opposition to impeaching President Joe Biden’s high border official.
Gallagher, 39, a four-term Home member and former Marine Corps intelligence officer, issued a press release noting that the authors of the U.S. Structure had not meant elective workplace to be for a lifetime.
“Electoral politics was by no means presupposed to be a profession and, belief me, Congress isn’t any place to develop previous. And so, with a heavy coronary heart, I’ve determined to not run for re-election,” he mentioned within the assertion.
Gallagher on Tuesday joined three different Republican Home members in voting in opposition to impeaching Homeland Safety Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. As the trouble failed by one vote, Gallagher was surrounded on the Home flooring by members of his celebration urging him to flip his vote.
Gallagher mentioned in a Wall Road Journal opinion piece afterward that impeachment wouldn’t solely fail to resolve issues on the border with Mexico however “additionally set a harmful new precedent that might be used in opposition to future Republican administrations.”
Gallagher, a member of each the Home Armed Providers and intelligence committees, has spent a lot of his time this 12 months chairing the Choose Committee on the Chinese language Communist Celebration, a bipartisan panel charged with investigating U.S. relations with China and growing methods to assist enhance the nation’s capacity to compete with China.
Republicans fashioned the choose committee after they took management of the Home in January 2023, a part of an effort to boost consciousness about points behind rising tensions with China. A tough line towards China is without doubt one of the few insurance policies with bipartisan assist within the deeply divided U.S. Congress and Gallagher has been praised for easily working with Democrats on the panel.