Pete Sessions

Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, told Newsmax on Sunday that the United States is locked in a biotechnology race with China and pitched a National Defense Authorization Act provision that would allow the Food and Drug Administration to draw on clinical trial data from allied regulators to speed up American drug approvals.

He framed the push as an extension of the 2018 Right to Try Act, which he said helped fuel a wave of biotech startups now central to U.S. innovation.

Speaking on "Wake Up America Weekend," Sessions highlighted his work with the bipartisan Congressional BIOTECH Caucus, which Reps. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., and Stephanie Bice, R-Okla., founded in June 2025 with Sessions and three others serving as vice chairs.

The caucus launched on the heels of the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology's April 2025 report, which warned the U.S. risks ceding ground to China without near-term congressional action.

"The biotech caucus is a bipartisan caucus," Sessions said, naming Houlahan and Bice as co-leaders.

"This caucus is essentially there to help, support, and look at the some 1,800 brand new IPOs. These are brand new ideas that are being brought to the marketplace."

The NDAA provision Sessions described would, in his telling, allow the FDA to incorporate trial data from other countries with "same or similar FDA-type approvals."

He said the aim is not to "shortcut" review but to compress timelines.

"We know that we're in a race with China. We want to own the intellectual property and the ideas," he said.

"We would be able to use that data and information, not to shortcut, but to help the efficiency to bring together, for our FDA, data information results that could then get America and the product to the marketplace quicker."

Existing FDA guidance permits the acceptance of foreign clinical data that meet good clinical practice standards.

Sessions cast the amendment as a sequel to Right to Try, the 2018 law allowing terminally ill patients to seek investigational drugs outside FDA trials.

The statute was authored in the Senate by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and signed by President Donald Trump.

"Right to try simply gave the American people an opportunity to take part in the advantages of an FDA trial, even if they weren't in an FDA trial," Sessions said.

"It's been very successful. It has spawned a revolution of IPOs, especially with AI and other things.

"So it's a competitive edge that gives America that foot up on behalf of the American people," Sessions said.

Sessions in December introduced the Independence Investment Fund Act with Houlahan to create a Treasury-backed fund seeding U.S. biotech and emerging-technology firms, citing the "valley of death" between research and commercialization.

He closed Sunday by framing his caucus work as a bipartisan counter to Beijing.

"This biotech caucus is very important for people, and I'm very proud of this leadership that's being done by these other two members as we move forward together."

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