With help from Ari Hawkins and Minho Kim

SWAPPING JERSEYS — The detailed choreography surrounding Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s party switch today obscures the fact that it’s a familiar Washington story. Since the 1990s, close to two dozen D.C. lawmakers have looked to the horizon and decided their long-term political interests were better served by changing sides.

Yet their collective experience suggests party switching rarely ends well — and that their carefully laid plans don’t always work out in ways they imagined.

For some, particularly the Southern pols who saw the region’s political realignment coming, ditching their party turned out to be a smart play — there’s no better example than Republican Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, who left the Democratic Party in 1994, the day after the GOP won control of the Senate. In the years since then, Alabama has become one of the reddest states in the nation. And Shelby, who is retiring at the end of this term, has never been threatened at the ballot box.

In 2001, Vermont GOP Sen. Jim Jeffords also made the most of his flip — in becoming an Independent who caucused with Democrats, he gave Democrats a Senate majority for 18 months and received a key committee chairship in return. When his seat was up in 2006, he declined to run for reelection — paving the way for Bernie Sanders’ election to the Senate.

Other party-switching senators met harsher fates. New Hampshire GOP Sen. Robert Smith — who flipped from Republican to Independent and back to Republican again within the span of a few months in 1999 — lost in a primary after the GOP largely abandoned him. Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, a one-time Democratic vice presidential nominee, remains loathed in some quarters of the party long after changing his party designation to Independent Democrat for his final Senate term.

The most recent Senate party switcher, Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter in 2009 (from Republican to Democrat), revealed the degree to which the dynamics of party-switching have changed over the years. Like Sinema, Specter was a centrist thorn in his party’s side who faced a serious primary election threat. Unlike the Arizona senator, however, Specter sought refuge within the Democratic Party after getting assurances of support from top party leaders including President Barack Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden. But by then, the two major parties had become so ideologically hardened that there was limited interest in accepting converts. Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak, who was already in the race to challenge Specter, declined to drop out of the 2010 primary to accommodate him. Specter ultimately fell short against Sestak, losing all but three counties.

Specter, who passed away two years later, wrote in his book “Life Among the Cannibals” that he felt betrayed by the Obama administration and other top Democrats, who he believed failed to follow through on pledges of support.

Sinema’s gambit is different — and more suited to the current climate. As an independent, if she chooses to run for reelection in 2024, she no longer has to face a tough primary challenge from the left, most likely from Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego. The onus is now on the Democratic Party — they will have to decide whether to risk splintering the vote by supporting a Democratic candidate against her in a potential three-way race.

The calculus behind her party switch suggests the lessons of Specter’s experience — and former Alabama Rep. Parker Griffith’s defeat in 2010 — remain relevant.

Griffith, who was elected to the House as a Democrat in 2008 but flipped parties and ran for reelection as a Republican two years later, was crushed in the GOP primary by Rep. Mo Brooks.

“I am a man without a country,” Griffith would later say.

“It’s hard to be a Democrat or a Republican, because they are both so dysfunctional,” he said. “So you choose the cleanest dirty shirt.”

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PLAYING HARDBALL — Seven members of the House Freedom Caucus have circulated a “Dear Colleague” letter outlining their requirements for any speaker candidate, according to POLITICO Playbook. Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy can’t afford to lose more than four Republican votes if he wants to ascend to the speakership.

The letter was signed by Reps. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Chip Roy (R-Texas), Dan Bishop (R-N.C.), Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) as well as Reps.-Elect Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) and Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.). Its demands include that any new speaker:

• Reinstate the “motion to vacate” — basically, allowing any member of the House to force a vote to oust the sitting speaker. The letter notes that the rule was “in place for a reason from 1801 to 2018”; 
• Provide the House with 72 hours of notice on every bill and grant members the ability to amend legislative text; 
• Promise that Republican leadership and associated outside entities will not wade into primaries; 
• Give conservatives more representation on so-called “A” committees, including the House Rules panel; 
• Use must-pass bills to try to secure a number of policy wins, including: (1) leveraging the annual defense authorization to reinstate service members who were dismissed due to their refusal to get the Covid vaccine, (2) forcing any debt ceiling increase to be accompanied by spending cuts, and (3) requiring the farm bill to include cuts to food stamps.

— WTO says Trump’s steel tariffs violated global trade rules: The World Trade Organization ruled today that former President Donald Trump violated global trade rules in 2018 when he invoked national security concerns to justify his tariffs on steel and aluminum products from around the world. The Biden administration strongly condemned the decision, which it said was further proof that the WTO dispute settlement system is in need of fundamental reform. It also said it would not remove the duties that Trump imposed.

— Dems’ final Covid report slams government failures: Democrats on the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis today released their final report, which argues that structural weaknesses, leadership failings and the spread of misinformation contributed to the deaths of more than 1 million Americans during the pandemic. The report closes the book on two-plus years of investigating the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic and arrives amid uncertainty about how oversight will shift under the incoming Republican House majority.

— House Oversight Committee accuses oil companies of ‘lying’ about climate actions: Oil majors portrayed themselves as committed to a clean energy transition even though their executives doubted those efforts would work and the companies poured billions of dollars into new oil and gas investments, according to a memo and internal industry documents the House Committee on Oversight and Reform released today. The release is a culmination of years of hearings and document requests by the committee under Democratic leadership, but its impact is likely limited by the GOP takeover of the House in January.

GLOBAL POLICE STATE — According to a recent report from the not-for-profit watchdog Safeguard Defenders, the Chinese government is conducting surveillance on protesters even beyond the country’s borders. The Madrid-based organization, which has published many reports on human rights abuses in China, says that Beijing runs “overseas police stations” in more than 100 cities worldwide, including New York and Los Angeles.

As protests have sprung up across China over continued zero-Covid measures, Chinese citizens living abroad have also voiced their frustration with the CCP, attending rallies or posting on social media about the situation in China.

POLITICO’s Minho Kim spoke with four Chinese expats who have attended protests or posted on their social media accounts about zero-Covid measures in China. Jinrey Zhang and Yiruo Zhang are law school students at Georgetown University; Dayan Li is Yiruo Zhang’s husband; Bella Kong attends a liberal arts college in the South and runs a pro-democracy channel called “What’s Up Beijing” on Instagram. All of them expressed fear of the CCP’s surveillance state, despite being thousands of miles away. Some of those interviewed are using pseudonyms for fear of retribution from the Chinese government.

What was your reaction to the news of so-called Chinese police stations operating in America?

Bella Kong: I wasn’t too surprised, but it got me very scared. I knew that there were secret agents here, but I didn’t know they could be so public. At first, I thought it might be some conspiracy theory on China, but there are public reports on this. I found their official accounts on the Chinese Internet talking about their achievements.

Dayan Li: Such surveillance teams were always here. A few years ago, an NYPD officer was charged with espionage for collecting information on Tibetans. All major American universities have CSSA, Chinese Student and Scholars’ Association, whose members host events for newcomers but also collect information and report to the Chinese embassy.

Jinrey Zhang: CSSA students behave like Chinese bureaucrats. They get money from the embassy and curry favor with the officials. They are encouraged to report the identities of those who attend anti-government protests. Last Monday, while distributing flyers, I was rebuked by a pro-CCP student on Georgetown’s campus. He called me “the scum of the Earth” and “a traitor” and asked me how much money I am taking from the U.S. government, which is none. He was on a video call and tried to broadcast my face to his friends in China.

Yiruo Zhang: They are everyday students sitting next to you in class, but you never know who’s going to report your information. This uncertainty creates fear. Even in America, you know for certain that there are people watching you.

Li: It’s like the panopticon. You know the cameras are always there.

What do you fear the most, living in the U.S. as a Chinese national?

J. Zhang: I fear that they are going to arrest me once I’m back home, even before customs. The Chinese government runs a database of your photos on national IDs, and the face-recognition technology can now detect those with face masks. I protested twice this year, in front of the Chinese embassy. The sheer number of cameras there made me absolutely terrified. So I put on my jacket hood and face mask, and then tried to lower my hair to not let the cameras catch [who I am].

Kong: If my identity is revealed, my parents would be under surveillance. Their social circle will be notified, isolating them and making them feel very unsafe. I know my father’s work would be jeopardized, since he works with those at state-owned enterprises. If they are renting, their landlords might expel them. If they are in desperate need of a job, they might not find one. Imagine your closest ones being threatened of their livelihood. Their passports might be suspended, too, and I might not see them again.

J. Zhang: The Chinese government also checks Twitter, Facebook and Instagram all the time. Last year, a Chinese student studying in Minnesota was arrested after he got home, because he posted on Twitter a photo of him wearing this t-shirt that reads “Xi Jinping is an idiot.” God knows what happens in Chinese prison, because there’s no due process. There’s a lot of torture. That is the ultimate fear of us all.

Li: I know friends who posted things on Twitter and had their family contacted by National Security officers. What they usually do is to show the muscle, instead of beating you in the face. They like to remind you that you’re a Chinese citizen and need to abide by the laws back home, no matter where you go.

TOUGH ON TECH — Legislation that would require platforms like Facebook and Google to pay media sources when links to their content are posted by platform users is making its way through Congress. While supporters argue the bill would transfer distribution power from major technology companies back to local news publications, critics of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act warn the legislation — which is based on an Australian law passed in 2021 — could embolden the very companies the bill is intended to reign in. Rachyl Jones reports on the debate for Observer.

HOSTAGE DIPLOMACY — Brittney Griner is home, but many U.S. nationals remain in the captivity of foreign governments around the world.

The nature of Griner’s release, which culminated in a prison-swap with the notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, underscores the insidious efficacy of hostage diplomacy. State use of civilian travelers as geo-political pawns is on the rise, writes Nightly’s Ari Hawkins.

In fact, at least 60 American nationals have requested public advocacy for their detainment abroad, according to a report from the James Foley Foundation, a hostage advocacy organization named for the American journalist who was killed by ISIS in 2014. And the traditionally hush-hush nature of prisoner swaps suggests the total number of wrongly detained U.S. citizens is much higher. That’s a dramatic increase from the turn of the century, when fewer than five U.S. nationals were publicly detained or held by foreign governments.

The nations of Iran, China, Venezuela, Syria and Russia — all countries with tense relations with Washington — account for 75 percent of all Americans wrongly detained, according to the foundation.

The Biden administration is thus taking a cautious tack on travel to these countries for U.S. citizens. According to Danielle Gilbert, an assistant professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy who researches the causes and consequences of hostage-taking, the State Department is concerned that “this could happen to people who are not affiliated with the government or celebrities, but any American that these authoritarian regimes believe pose a risk.”

At the same time, kidnappings of U.S. nationals by terrorist groups are on the decline. The same report from the James Foley Foundation shows that more than 25 U.S. nationals were kidnapped and held at the beginning of 2008. That number has since declined to below 15, according to recent data.

Diane Foley, the founder of the James Foley Foundation and the mother of James, said that after her son was killed alongside fellow hostages by ISIS, “the government ordered a review, but it was focused only on criminals and terrorist groups who take our citizens. But what we’re seeing now is that there are fewer and fewer criminals targeting our people and more state governments using hostage taking, as a way to interfere with our national security and foreign policy.”

CLARIFICATION: A clarification was made to where Bella Kong attends school.