by Ethan Faverino | Aug 14, 2025 | Economy, News
By Ethan Faverino |
Intel Corporation is under fire following its receipt of significant funding from the CHIPS and Science Act, followed by recent job cuts nationwide and hiring a new CEO with ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
In November of 2024, the U.S. Department of Commerce finalized $7.86 billion of taxpayer dollars to Intel under the CHIPS and Science Act to support semiconductor manufacturing and advanced packaging projects in Arizona, New Mexico, Ohio, and Oregon.
This funding, part of a broader $100 billion investment plan by Intel, was intended to boost U.S. semiconductor production, create thousands of jobs, and enhance national security by reducing reliance on foreign supply chains.
In Arizona, the award was expected to support the construction of two new fabrication plants and the modernization of an existing facility at Intel’s Ocotillo campus in Chandler, creating 3,000 manufacturing jobs and over 6,000 construction jobs.
However, Intel’s announcement in August 2024 of a global workforce reduction of approximately 15,000 jobs, including 400 at its Chandler facility, has raised concerns about the alignment of these cuts with the CHIPS Act’s goal of fostering U.S. job growth.
The layoffs, part of a $10 billion cost-cutting plan prompted after a $1.6 billion net loss in Q2 2024, face criticism as Intel continues to benefit from taxpayer-funded incentives.
President Trump addressed these concerns about national job loss and a new CEO, saying, “The CEO of INTEL is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately. There is no other solution to this problem. Thank you for your attention to this problem!”
This has gotten support from other GOP members across the country, with Senator Rick Scott following up, saying, “President Trump is right, Intel owes American taxpayers answers TODAY. Intel accepted tax dollars from the CHIPS Act, and instead of investing in America, they cut jobs in the U.S. and hired a CEO with a cozy relationship to the CCP. The CHIPS Act was intended to benefit America, not our adversaries. Intel should return every dime of this taxpayer funding IMMEDIATELY!”
Ethan Faverino is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Jul 23, 2025 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
15 months. That is how much time we have left until Arizona can elect a new governor, and it couldn’t come soon enough.
Since taking office in 2023, Katie Hobbs has been a complete disaster. The heights of her corruption have certainly been well documented. From her illegal use of public resources to solicit money for her inauguration, to an alleged pay-to-play scheme between Hobbs and an Arizona group home that donated to her inauguration, to shelling out $700,000 to a company owned by the brother of the now-former Office of Tourism Director to create a new state logo, Hobbs has proven that the people of Arizona are her lowest priority. And there are no signs that will change any time soon.
In the latest reveal of her efforts to turn her office into a jobs program for her political friends, it was discovered that Hobbs handed out nearly $600,000 in taxpayer money to a former Democrat politician and her assistant for two newly created jobs. These just add to the long line of other phony baloney jobs Hobbs has created so that her buddies can get paid six-figure salaries to sit around and do nothing on your dime. In fact, just last year, she added six new jobs in the newly created Office of Resiliency (whatever that is), four new employees in the Office of Tribal Relations, and three new in-house attorneys, to name a few. All total, Hobbs has increased executive employment costs by over 50%!
With all these new government jobs, you would think Arizona must be leading the way in the nation for job creation, but no. It’s just the opposite…
>>> CONTINUE READING >>>
by Jonathan Eberle | Jul 6, 2025 | News
By Jonathan Eberle |
Governor Katie Hobbs is under fire from Republican lawmakers after vetoing a bill that aimed to block companies with ties to the People’s Republic of China from securing contracts with the State of Arizona.
The legislation, House Bill 2542, sponsored by Rep. Lupe Diaz (R-LD19), would have required companies bidding on state contracts to certify that they are not owned or controlled by the Chinese government. The bill included penalties of up to $100,000 and a five-year ban for false certifications.
Diaz, who chairs the House Land, Agriculture & Rural Affairs Committee, expressed sharp disappointment with the veto, calling it “staggering hypocrisy.”
“The bill was simple,” Diaz said in a statement. “If a company wants a contract with the State of Arizona, it must certify that it is not owned or controlled by the People’s Republic of China. Lie about it, and you face consequences.”
He added that the legislation was crafted in response to ongoing concerns about Chinese government-linked companies undermining American industries and infiltrating U.S. supply chains through surveillance-capable technology, including drones, routers, and 5G equipment.
Diaz argued that the veto contradicts recent rhetoric from the Democratic governor, who had previously criticized the legislature for not doing enough to confront foreign threats. “You can’t issue press statements about ‘getting tough on China’ while vetoing a bill that actually would,” he said.
Supporters of the bill pointed to findings from the U.S. House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, which has warned about China’s economic and technological influence in the U.S. marketplace.
Diaz pledged to reintroduce the bill in the next legislative session and urged Hobbs to reconsider her position. “Vetoing this bill sends a message that Arizona is still open for business with hostile regimes,” he said. “I will not let that slide.”
HB 2542 is one of several state-level attempts across the country to restrict economic ties with China amid broader geopolitical tensions and growing scrutiny of foreign influence in public procurement and infrastructure.
Jonathan Eberle is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
by Jonathan Eberle | Jul 1, 2025 | News
By Jonathan Eberle |
A new Arizona law aims to bolster protections against foreign government interference and intimidation, marking a first-of-its-kind effort in the state to address what lawmakers describe as growing threats from hostile foreign actors.
House Bill 2374, sponsored by State Representative Quang Nguyen (R-LD1), was signed into law this week following bipartisan support. The legislation targets “transnational repression” — a term used to describe efforts by foreign governments to harass, surveil, or silence individuals on U.S. soil, often for expressing views critical of those regimes.
“This law draws a hard line: Arizona will not be a playground for foreign operatives,” Nguyen said in a statement. “Whether it’s the Chinese Communist Party or any other hostile regime, their tactics of intimidation and coercion have no place here.”
The new statute increases criminal penalties for harassment-related offenses when carried out by individuals acting on behalf of foreign powers or terrorist organizations. Crimes such as stalking, assault, and harassment receive enhanced felony designations if committed as part of an effort to silence political dissidents, religious minorities, or other individuals engaging in constitutionally protected activities.
Additionally, the law establishes a new Class 2 felony offense for any unauthorized foreign law enforcement activity conducted in the state. That includes attempts to surveil or detain individuals without express authorization from state or federal authorities.
To help detect and prevent such operations, the legislation directs the Arizona Department of Public Safety to develop a Transnational Repression Recognition and Response Training Program. The program will train local law enforcement across Arizona to identify and respond to covert foreign interference efforts.
Nguyen, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee and fled communist Vietnam as a child, described the measure as both personal and necessary.
“My family fled government repression,” he said. “I won’t stand by while foreign agents threaten people in Arizona for exercising their constitutional rights.”
The bill is part of the Republican Majority Plan in the Arizona House, which emphasizes border security, individual liberties, and public safety.
Jonathan Eberle is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
by Matthew Holloway | Jun 28, 2025 | News
By Matthew Holloway |
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump’s Senior Advisor for the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), Kari Lake, presented devastating testimony to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Committee. Lake highlighted a multitude of institutional flaws in the USAGM which she described as being “largely incompetent, corrupt, biased, and a threat to America’s national security and standing in the world.”
Lake’s opening statement was a direct, abrupt, and merciless account of what she called “the downfall of this agency.”
She told the Committee, “The USAGM has a critical mission: to inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy. Yet for years, this agency has failed to live up to that mission. Instead of promoting American values, it has too often strayed into dysfunction, mismanagement, and even actions that undermine the very principles it claims to uphold.”
Lake then testified before both Republicans and Democrats, with the latter choosing to launch various ad hominem attacks against the well-known Arizona Republican, that the agency she was tasked with advising and its Voice of America (VOA) division are “rotten to the core.”
“This place is rotten. It’s rotten to the core,” Lake told the committee. “President Trump has asked me to go in and help clean it up, and he’s also issued an executive order to reduce this agency down to its mandate, to what is mandated, statutorily required. That’s exactly what I’m doing. I don’t care if they attack me.”
The Senior Advisor identified several egregious examples of severe dysfunction and potentially deliberate malfeasance, stating that several individuals working as journalists and technicians, many of them foreign nationals, were granted high-level (Tier 3 and Tier 5) access to secure government facilities and information technology (IT) systems, via inadequate and/or entirely fictional suitability determinations.
Lake reported to the committee that extensive corrective action was taken by Trump administration officials while they were in charge at USAGM from June 2020 and January 2021. But their work was an exercise in futility thanks to the Biden administration.
She explained, “Over the decade from 2010 to 2020, Office of Personnel Management and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence repeatedly flagged severe security failures, but USAGM leadership ignored them. They continued to grant journalists, and technicians many from foreign nations, high level security access based on falsified documents and incomplete background checks, phony names, phony social security numbers, even after corrective actions were taken in the final months of the Trump administration.” She added with audible frustration, “These safeguards were reversed by the incoming Biden administration.”
Rep. Abe Hamadeh’s office noted, “Under the Biden administration, USAGM relapsed into past practices, including, but not limited to: records, including SSNs, being falsified or replaced with notional placeholders; fingerprints and fingerprint forms not being submitted to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for basic background investigations; and incomplete or falsified SF-86s and other suitability determination documents used under delegated OPM authority to grant access to Tier 3 and Tier 5 level national security sensitive positions.”
Questioned by Hamadeh, Lake expanded on the significant influence the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) holds over the agency, telling the Congressman that the Chinese government “have more say—this is sad—over editorially what VOA puts out than someone like me, who’s been charged with helping to oversee this agency, because of an editorial firewall.”
She continued, “Key lead management and leadership at U.S. Agency for Global Media cannot have focus in or tell the folks what they should be covering at Voice of America. Unfortunately, the CCP can, and I read this a little bit earlier, but I don’t know if I should read it again, but they—they literally were attending meetings at the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C. And this is a report that I find rather shocking, and I mentioned it: starting in the first decade of 2000, the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., and the leadership of VOA’s Mandarin Service began an annual meeting to allow embassy officials to voice their opinions about VOA’s content.
“They even convinced the former leadership during Biden’s administration to cut short an interview—they wanted the whole thing canceled. They convinced VOA leadership to cut short an interview with a whistleblower who was critical of the CCP, and this just continues.
“This is an article that came out, I believe it was in March. VOA senior executives frequently traveled to China, attending state-sponsored events and meeting with Chinese embassy officials. These meetings weren’t casual diplomatic exchanges; they involved soliciting feedback on VOA’s programming. Congressman Hamadeh, if VOA decided to run a hit piece on you, and it was full of lies, and they called you and told you they were going to run that, and you wanted to say, ‘Hey, let’s clear this up because that’s not true, this isn’t true, and I suggest you don’t run the story,’ they could sue you for a firewall violation. But yet a CCP official can tell them how to run the news.”
Matthew Holloway is a senior reporter for AZ Free News. Follow him on X for his latest stories, or email tips to Matthew@azfreenews.com.
