Julissa Walsh: General counsel, House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party

Congress wasn’t short of partisan debates this year, but Julissa Walsh wishes more Americans knew how much collaboration is happening across the aisle.  

Walsh is the general counsel on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, which was responsible for one of the highest-profile and most controversial bills of the year: a bill to that would force TikTok to be divested from its Chinese parent company or face a U.S. ban. And she says passage of that bill is a testament to that bipartisanship.

“On the select committee we’re fortunate to have very good working relationships with our Democratic counterparts, and I know that that’s not the case for all staffers across Capitol Hill, but I do think there’s more of that than most people realize,” Walsh said.  

As general counsel, Walsh is responsible for leading committee oversight work and investigations and for advising the chair on legal and policy issues. She led drafting, strategy and bipartisan negotiations for the forced-sale TikTok bill. 

Although the TikTok bill, which passed 352-65 in the House less than a week after it was introduced by Reps. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), Walsh said it was the product of collaborate work dating to the last Congress. The bill also passed the Senate and was signed into law.

Walsh said the committee also took lessons from past failed efforts to ban TikTok as staffers and lawmakers worked to craft strong legislation and build support.

“So that when we were ready to introduce, the bill really was ready for prime time,” she said.  

“And I think what we were able to demonstrate is that we did our homework ahead of time, so that once we put it out, we were in a great position to just sprint to the finish,” she added.