Guests - Ava Chen, Thomas Horne, Laurie Moore
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The Day Trump Met Xi, a Mayor Pleaded Guilty, and Nanos Finally Got Referred
Wednesday on Winn Tucson began with a red carpet in Beijing and ended with a referral to the Arizona attorney general. In between: a sitting elected American official pleading guilty to being a Chinese Communist Party agent, a CIA whistleblower hearing that confirmed what the public was never allowed to know in 2021, a superintendent with breaking news about charter schools, and a Board of Supervisors meeting that the conservatives attended in force — at dinner time, despite the board's transparent hope that they wouldn't.
Ava Chen: The Red Carpet in Beijing, the Mayor Who Served Beijing, and the Six-Step Playbook for Community Destruction
The eyes of the world were on Beijing as President Trump's delegation landed — Air Force One, a military band, 300 Chinese youth in coordinated white and light blue clothing waving American and Chinese flags, and a reception designed with a specific psychological purpose.
The Reception Was Performance, Not Welcome
Ava Chen, co-host and member of the New Federal State of China, was clear-eyed about what the Chinese government was communicating through its pageantry.
"Xi Jinping prepared to receive President Trump in a very magnificent way. These are performance — psychological performance. This is deal-making. This is how Xi Jinping is seen."
The delegation Trump brought with him — Tim Cook of Apple, Elon Musk, and CEOs collectively representing some $12.2 trillion in market value — was met by a Chinese state propaganda video released two days before the arrival. The video opened with a reference to "ping-pong diplomacy" and the Nixon handshake of 1972, then used Apple and Tesla as the centerpiece examples of American economic dependency on China.
The numbers the CCP wanted Trump's delegation to absorb: 80 percent of Apple's global production is manufactured in China. Fifty percent of Tesla's global output comes from the Shanghai factory. There are 80,000 American companies and factories currently operating in China.
"They take every opportunity to remind America: you can't leave China," Chen said. "Their automated manufacturing lines have very few humans now, but they can build something really cheap, and there's no regulation. All you have to do is make the CCP kleptocratic families richer, and the state resources are yours to use."
The video, the reception, the full-page spreads in the People's Daily — all of it was designed to project the same message: the relationship between the United States and China cannot go back to the past, but there can be a better future. Chen's translation of that message was direct: "You can't go back because I've been stabbing you so many times and you've caught me so many times. But we can still have a bright future. The next time I won't lie."
The 30-Year Marriage America Never Should Have Entered
Chen traced the origins of the current strategic dilemma to the economic marriage that began with Nixon's opening in 1972, accelerated through Clinton's granting of Most Favored Nation status in the 1990s, and culminated in 2001 with China's entry into the World Trade Organization — an entry that gave Chinese companies access to American capital markets on terms no other country in the world received.
"China was the only country that had a special treatment. Their companies were allowed to not go through audit to be able to access American capital in the United States. No other country had that."
Everyone knew China was a black box. Everyone knew they lied. The intelligence community, Wall Street, the political establishment — none of them were operating in ignorance.
"You knew, but Wall Street needed the black box because they didn't want to know. When you're a financial trader, you want to know what's happening. But if it's a black box, you can tell the story of prosperity without being held accountable for enabling a totalitarian regime."
Money came first. And for three decades, that calculation was allowed to stand.
Now the United States finds itself in a marriage — Chen's word — with a partner that has been, in her framing, actively trying to kill it. The trade relationship, the manufacturing dependency, the technology transfers, the fentanyl, the COVID weapon, the election interference — all of it traces back to the same decision made over and over again to let the money flow and keep the eyes closed.
"You made a wrong decision. You gave them the best deal they've ever gotten from any nation on earth. And you have been in a deep marriage relationship for two to three decades, and now you realized this partner you chose really wanted to kill you."
The CIA Whistleblower Hearing Nobody Is Covering
That same morning, a CIA whistleblower hearing organized by Senator Rand Paul was underway on Capitol Hill — and what was emerging from it is among the most significant intelligence disclosures in years.
Chen reported that in October 2021, the CIA's assessment had confirmed — internally — that COVID-19 was most likely a biological weapon that leaked from the Wuhan lab. The intelligence community was approximately six days from releasing that conclusion to the American public, classified as a "black leak" finding.
Between October 12th and October 17th of 2021, that conclusion was replaced.
"The information that came out to Americans was completely different — zoonology, it came from animals."
The strategic implication Chen spelled out was stark: "If the American public in October 2021 knew that COVID-19 was a bioweapon coming from the Chinese Wuhan lab, would you take vaccines developed in less than eight months without completed human trials?"
The answer, she said, is no. And that is precisely why the conclusion had to be changed.
Fentanyl as a Weapon — and When It Became One
Chen walked listeners through a piece of documentary evidence anyone can verify independently: go online, pull up charts showing American deaths from various causes from 2000 to 2025, and look at when fentanyl deaths began their sharp vertical climb.
The answer is 2012 to 2013. Prior to that, fentanyl was not a leading cause of death in any American state. From 2013 forward, every year shows a steep increase.
That is the same year Xi Jinping came to power.
"Miles Guo, in 2017, when he first came out as a whistleblower, said 2012 is a very different year. Because Xi Jinping came into power and pressed the button — activating a switch from defensive to offensive intelligence operations in the United States."
The connection runs directly from the CCP's offensive switch to its coordination with cartels, to fentanyl distribution networks, to the operations now being confirmed through plea agreements.
Eileen Lang and the Six-Step Community Destruction Playbook
The most significant domestic development Chen addressed was the guilty plea by Eileen Lang, the mayor of Arcadia, California — the first sitting American elected official to admit in open court to being an unregistered agent of the Chinese Communist Party.
"This is history. This is the first time a sitting elected official admitted and pleaded guilty — that she is a CCP agent."
Her plea agreement with federal prosecutors, which is publicly available, named a fake Chinese-American news site that was laundering Beijing's propaganda into American communities. Lang was texting another CCP spy, submitting articles for publication, reporting back with screenshots of audience numbers, and referring to the CCP leadership as "the sovereign leader" — not the American people who elected her.
Arcadia has a 60 percent Chinese population. The CCP put Lang there for a reason.
"If you go back to 2014, Leland Yee — a California state senator — was arrested for arms trafficking and corruption. In 2018, Diane Feinstein's driver of 20 years was revealed as a CCP spy. Then Eric Swalwell. California has not had a good time. You have tons of warnings. The CCP has been all over you."
Chen laid out the operating playbook the CCP uses whenever it establishes itself in an American community. Six steps. Every time.
Step 1 — Propaganda. Establish a fake media operation that inserts Beijing's narratives into the community. Shape the information environment before doing anything else.
Step 2 — Political access. Run candidates for any available office: city council, police commission, attorney general, school board. It does not matter what the office is. What matters is getting inside.
Step 3 — Organized crime. Connect to cartel networks. Move fentanyl. Build the financial infrastructure of the criminal economy.
Step 4 — Money laundering. Run underground banking, WeChat payment flows, and trade-based laundering schemes that move money without triggering financial surveillance.
Step 5 — Narrative control. Ensure that anyone who raises questions about Chinese influence in the community is labeled racist, xenophobic, or divisive. The propaganda from step one supports the narrative control in step five.
Step 6 — Community control. Use trusted local figures — business owners, community association leaders, artists, people of influence — as recruits and assets. Once these relationships are in place, the CCP can shape decisions that appear to emerge organically from within the community.
"These are the same operating system," Chen said. "Whenever the CCP establishes itself in your community, they do this. Every American community should start looking around. Because if you understand this playbook, you can see it. And the people doing it are people you already trusted."
California is also the only state that still relies on Venezuelan oil for two of every three barrels it consumes daily — while sitting on its own oil reserves, which environmental regulation has made impossible to access. Chen connected this to the broader communism-as-governance pattern: the ideological commitment to anti-production, paired with the factual reality of dependency, paired with the moralizing language that makes it impossible to discuss honestly.
What Trump Knows Walking Into the Room
Despite everything Chen documented, she was not pessimistic about the Beijing meeting.
"President Trump is not paying attention to all the world in a vacuum. He knew. He needs a way of fighting the CCP while preserving the national interests of the United States. And he is the only president — other presidents have just let this go on, and China with each new presidency has tried to take more."
Her prayer for the meeting: that it is conducted in good faith on the American side, and that the president comes home with a clear-eyed understanding of what the next steps must be.
"He is definitely for America and we are grateful for him every day."
Thomas Horne: Charter Schools Just Made History, the ESA Fight Continues, and the Teachers Who Prey
Tom Horne is the Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction, serving his third term in the role — two terms as superintendent, a term as attorney general, and now back in the seat he has always called his passion. He joined Winn Tucson with a piece of breaking news he had not yet publicly released.
Breaking: Arizona Charter Schools Would Rank First in the Nation
Horne shared, in real time, the finding from a press release his department had not yet issued: Arizona charter schools, if counted as a state, would exceed all 50 states in eighth grade math performance.
"If the charters were a state, they would exceed all 50 states at least in eighth grade math. And we're checking the other grades too."
The implication is direct and significant. This is not a statement about Arizona students being incapable of learning math. It is a statement about what happens when those same students are taught in a different environment.
"I think what that illustrates is that poor kids can learn just as well as rich kids if they're properly taught. It's not the students. It's the quality of education they're receiving."
Horne was careful to frame the charter school data not as an indictment of public schools generally — he noted that Arizona has many excellent public schools, with 1.2 million students still in the district system — but as a documented model of what works that should be studied and replicated.
"I'd like to steal what they're doing and try to get the public schools to adopt some of the ways in which they're teaching."
He also gave an unexpected shout-out to Tucson Unified's arts program — a district with which he has had significant controversies — for its Opening Minds Through the Arts initiative, which he described as magnificent. He arrived at a K-8 school to find the entire student body greeting him while playing string instruments.
"I've had some big controversies with Tucson Unified. But when you talk about the arts, they've done a magnificent job. There's no question about it."
The connection between music and math achievement is well-documented in the research: music notation is a form of abstract reasoning, teaching students that a symbol on a page can mean something other than what it literally looks like — the same cognitive operation required for mathematical thinking.
The ESA Fight: Same Administrators, Nine Times the Students
The Education Savings Account program now serves over 100,000 Arizona students. It was established when the student population using it was 11,000 — and the administrative staffing level was set accordingly. Under the prior administration, that number grew to 40,000. Today, the same administrative structure is managing nine times the original enrollment.
Horne has repeatedly requested additional administrators to manage the program properly. Governor Hobbs has threatened to veto any budget that includes the funding, and last year the legislature backed down rather than trigger a state shutdown.
"She criticizes us for some cases where there have been mistaken payments — although what she misses is that we get them back. We've collected, or are in the process of collecting, a million too. But she's in no position when she vetoes a bill to give us administrators when we've got the same number with over 100,000 students that was established when there were 11,000."
Horne's frustration was measured but clear. The governor's opposition to ESAs is ideological, not administrative. The program has grown beyond anyone's initial projections precisely because it is working — because parents have chosen it, in overwhelming numbers, because it serves their children's needs better than the alternative they had.
Schools Closing for Political Walkouts: Outrageous
On the wave of "No Kings" school walkouts — where students walked out during school hours to participate in political protests organized around opposition to the current administration — Horne was unambiguous.
"I think it's unbelievably outrageous that the schools encouraged that. Some of the schools were closed down so kids could go out and protest. The Supreme Court has held that young people have the same First Amendment rights as everybody else — they have a right to protest, but not during school hours when they're supposed to be learning. And when you have a school deciding to let them out during school hours — and even the teachers go out in some cases — I think that's outrageous."
His standard for how schools should handle political controversy was consistent with his career-long position: present all sides. Not one side dressed up as fact, but all sides presented in a way that develops the capacity to think independently.
"As long as we teach academics rigorously and when we deal with controversies, we present all sides so kids can think for themselves — I think that's fundamental."
He invoked a 30-year-old controversy with Tucson: a speaker was invited to address students at Tucson High and told them that Republicans hate Latinos. Horne's response at the time was the same principle: it's good to have controversy in schools, but students have to hear both sides.
"You don't just present one side. That's indoctrination. It's good for them to learn about controversies, to be presented with different points of view. So they learn to think for themselves."
Teacher Misconduct: The Law Was Not Being Followed
On the Peoria Unified case — where board president Heather Rooks was removed by a 3-2 vote after she filed mandatory reporting requests with the Maricopa County Attorney and the State Board of Education regarding two teachers involved in sexual misconduct with students — Horne was direct about what the law requires.
"The law requires that when there's evidence of abuse, there be mandatory reporting to three different agencies: the county attorney, the state board, and child protection. In the recent news, we had a school that didn't do that. And then one of the school board members did it on her own — and it caused a controversy and they replaced her as president of the school board."
The State Board of Education, on which Horne serves, has taken action. A three-year license suspension was issued against an administrator in one of the cases. Others are under review.
"I'm on the state board and we have disciplined a number of teachers and administrators. If it's warranted, we're going to take action."
His contact for anyone wanting to reach the campaign: tomhorn2824@gmail.com | Website: tomhorn.com (spelled T-O-M-H-O-R-N-E)
Laurie Moore: The Board Moves the Meetings, the Recorder Drops Signature Verification, and Nanos Gets Referred
Laurie Moore — former teacher of 30 years, LD-17 precinct committeeman, and the woman who shows up to every Pima County Board of Supervisors meeting regardless of what time they schedule it — joined for the final segment with a report from the previous evening's first-ever 5 p.m. board meeting.
The Board Changed the Time to Keep You Away. It Didn't Work.
The Board of Supervisors moved their regular meeting schedule to the second and fourth Tuesdays of each month at 5 p.m. — a time when working people are driving home and conservatives who had attended the 9 a.m. meetings for years are cooking dinner.
Supervisor Jen Allen was reportedly visibly annoyed that conservatives showed up anyway.
"I thought they should have served hors d'oeuvres or cocktails," Moore said, with characteristic deadpan.
The meeting room itself had been physically rearranged in a way that created additional awkwardness: a large conference table had been installed directly in front of the dais — filling what was previously open floor space, forcing public speakers to stand with seated attendees immediately behind them, and creating what Moore described as a "sitting on somebody's lap" dynamic.
"It looks like the Waltons should be eating dinner there. There's no room for it."
None of this deterred attendance. "I think they were a little surprised — like, 'Oh dang it, you guys are coming down here at dinner time.'"
What Moore Said at the Podium
Moore's two-minute public comment challenged the board directly on the concept of sovereignty — using the board's own preferred language against them.
"I asked them if they knew what sovereign meant — what it is to be sovereign. Because they have a flag of Mexico hanging in the lobby. No other foreign country gets that visibility. Just Mexico. I get the sentimental connection to Mexico, but when you're in a government building, the loyalty should be with the United States, with your state, and with your county."
She then addressed the board's history during the Biden administration: the supervisors, including then-board-member Adelita Grajales, had facilitated the passage of over 600,000 illegal border crossers through Pima County — a process that involved NGO funding, taxpayer money, and what Moore characterized as aiding and abetting illegal entry.
Her close: a direct invocation of the board's own slogan — "there are no illegals on stolen land" — and a question as to whether they believed that slogan would stop ICE from doing its job.
The Recorder's Announcement: Signature Verification Is Going Away
Gabriella Casares Kelly, the Pima County Recorder, was present at the meeting and made an announcement that caught Moore's attention: the county is moving away from signature verification as a ballot security measure.
"She talked about voter ID and how they check voter ID — making it sound okay. But she was talking about getting rid of signature verification. That's another layer of protection, and they're removing it."
Moore asked supervisor Steve Christie afterward about the voter ID issue — specifically whether showing a driver's license proves citizenship or only proves identity.
"I said: voter ID can mean a lot of things. People get driver's licenses and they're not legal in this country to vote. How are they checking for citizenship? She didn't point that out. She was talking about voter ID to prove who you are — not voter ID to prove you're a U.S. citizen."
This connected directly to the SAVE Act: the federal legislation that would require proof of citizenship — not just proof of identity — to register to vote in federal elections. Senate Majority Leader John Thune remains the bottleneck.
"We really all need to let John Thune know he's failing miserably in his job. He's got one thing to do and that's it."
The Nanos Referral: Perjury Charges Go to the Attorney General
The most significant action of the evening: under legal advice, the Board of Supervisors voted to refer the perjury charges against Sheriff Chris Nanos to the Arizona Attorney General.
Nanos was not present at the meeting.
Moore's read on the decision was nuanced and worth hearing: "I'm not a lawyer, but my simple-minded conclusion was this — they could be avoiding a lawsuit for Pima County if the board itself made the decision. If there was a lawsuit to be put against the board and Pima County, Lord knows we don't need to lose any more money."
She did not view this as kicking the can. She viewed it as potentially the right legal move — provided it is done in earnest, not as a way to make the problem disappear off the board's desk.
Her specific objection was to Supervisor Matt Scott's framing: that Nanos would have to "kiss and make up" with the community and work out these problems. As if the community had done something wrong. As if this were a mutual conflict requiring mutual concession.
"His deputies have said zero confidence. They're not going to kiss and make up. And it almost sounds like it's the community that has to do the kissing and making up to him. There's no way that's going to happen. We didn't do anything wrong."
The Heather Lappin dimension should not be forgotten, Moore added. The undersheriff who was bullied out of her position, who devoted her career to the Pima County Sheriff's Department, is now working for another agency that was happy to hire her — paying her $50,000 more per year.
"That tells me everything I need to know."
The 481-vote margin in the last sheriff's race — the difference between Nanos's reelection and the county having a different sheriff right now — remains the defining number. Early ballots will be in mailboxes beginning June 21st. The primary is July 21st. The people who understand what that margin means are already working.
Winn Tucson airs Monday through Friday, 9 to 11 a.m., on KVOI 1030 The Voice.
Ava Chen and the New Federal State of China: follow on Getter and X for ongoing intelligence on the Trump-Xi meeting outcome.
Tom Horne for Superintendent of Public Instruction: tomhorn.com | tomhorn2824@gmail.com
Pima County Board of Supervisors: 2nd and 4th Tuesdays at 5 p.m. Show up.
Sparkle for Freedom Gala — July 4th, 7–10 p.m., JW Marriott Starpass: pimagop.org
Primary voter registration deadline: June 21. Early ballots: June 23. Primary: July 21.