Increased attention on Gene Wu comes with more anti-Asian insults

As Wu’s walkout drew national attention, Republican officials escalated a stream of anti-Asian attacks, baselessly branding him a Chinese Communist Party operative. Sen. Mayes Middleton posted “Is Gene Wu back in China?” on the first day Democrats denied the House a quorum, then doubled down, accusing Wu of “fighting to put China first and Texas second.”

Wu, who immigrated from China as a child, had answered such smears on the House floor months earlier — recounting how his father, at 13, was sent alone to the fields during the Cultural Revolution and “told to either farm or die.” Democrats noted the state’s “Big Three” — Abbott, Patrick and Burrows — stayed silent, a break from past GOP condemnations of anti-Asian remarks.

When I hear people call me a communist spy … I get a little offended. Because our family has been the victims of communism for a very long time, and we fled to this country as fast as we possibly could. — Rep. Gene Wu