in Congress calling for independence for Puerto Rico, but it was opposed by Luis Muñoz Marín, an influential leader of Puerto Rico's pro-independence Liberal Party. Tydings did not gain passage of the bill. (The US senator had co-sponsored the Tydings–McDuffie Act, which provided independence to the Philippines after a 10-year transition under a limited autonomy.) Following the end of World War II, when the US dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, Tydings sponsored a bill calling for the U.S. to lead the world in nuclear disarmament. In March 1950, Tydings was appointed to head a committee, generally known as the Tydings Committee, to investigate Joseph McCarthy's early claims of Communist penetration of the federal government and military. The hearings revolved around McCarthy's charge that the fall of the Kuomintang regime in China had been caused by the actions of alleged Soviet spies in the State Department, and his allegation that the Sinologist Owen Lattimore was a "top Russian agent." The hearings, held from March to July 1950, were stormy as charge was met with counter-charge. In McCarthy's first 250 minutes on the stand, Tydings interrupted him 85 times with questions and demands for substantiation, enraging McCarthy who condemned Tydings as an "egg-sucking liberal". As such, the trial attracted much media attention, especially after Louis F. Budenz entered the proceedings as a surprise witness supporting McCarthy's charges. In July, the committee published its report, concluding that McCarthy's accusations were spurious and condemning his charges as an intentionally nefarious hoax. When Tydings ran for re-election in 1950, he battled Senator McCarthy and would dismiss the Senator's claims of Communist infiltration of the State Department as "a fraud and a hoax." McCarthy's staff distributed a composite picture of Tydings with Earl Browder, the former leader of the American Communist Party. Tydings had never met him before Browder testified in July 1950. The composite photo merged a 1938 photo of Tydings listening to the radio and a 1940 photo of Browder delivering a speech; the text under the composite photo stated that when Browder had testified before Tydings's committee, Tydings had said, "Thank you, sir." Although the quote was technically accurate, it was generally held to be misleading, as it implied a degree of amity between Browder and Tydings that did not exist. In the 1950 election, Tydings was defeated by John Marshall Butler. In 1956, he was nominated as the Democratic candidate for