Tea at Trianon: Congress Jumps Into Action as Fears Grow China Could Spy on Americans in Their Cars

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, October 15, 2026

Congress Jumps Into Action as Fears Grow China Could Spy on Americans in Their Cars

From AMAC:

“First and foremost, no one should spy on you in your car. You should be able to control every signal coming in or going out of your car,” Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, a co-sponsor of the House legislation, told Just the News. “The data that you're creating in it is really your data. You should have a property right in that. We're a long ways off from being able to get full control of that.”
“In the meantime, I think, hopefully, we can at least agree China shouldn't be able to do that,” he added during a wide-ranging interview on the Just the News, No Noise television show.”
The bill Davidson has cosponsored is called the Connected Vehicle Security Act, and it has a companion in the Senate introduced by his home state Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio. The legislation has attracted support from all political spectrums, including liberal senators like Elissa Slotkin.
The legislation has also won support from the powerful United Autoworkers Union (UAW). The UAW has approximately 392,447 active members, along with over 580,000 retired members, its website says.
“Our national and economic security relies on a strong US auto industry,” UAW President Shawn Fain said when the legislation was unveiled. “The American Dream was launched and sustained out of good union auto jobs here in the United States. If we want to rebuild US manufacturing and raise standards for the working class, we can’t keep offshoring and outsourcing our auto industry, driving a global race to the bottom for short-term corporate profits," he said.
“By building on and strengthening the existing connected vehicles rule, this legislation puts common sense guardrails on a major threat to our nation’s auto industry,” he added. (Read more.)