Guests - Ava Chen, Terri Jo Neff
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Ava Chen: The Ballot as a Weapon, the CCP's Playbook, and a Purge Coming to Beijing
China Watch Wednesday opened, as it has for three weeks running, with the shadow of Lindsey Graham's death. Ava Chen, co-anchor and spokesperson for the New Federal State of China, addressed the question Winn said she had almost called about over the weekend: was there a nefarious actor involved? Chen's assessment was measured. She does not know. The FBI and the White House are both engaged, and more information will come. What she is certain of is the broader context: the COVID-19 pandemic and the vaccines have fundamentally altered the baseline of human health in ways that make sudden deaths harder to attribute definitively. "I would bet if you ask people, are you regretting taking the vaccine, I would say the majority of people will put their hands up and say, yeah, if I would know what I know right now, I would not take the vaccine." She cited friends whose children died young of heart attacks and a personal acquaintance — an anesthesiologist forced to take the vaccine — now living with its consequences. "There was a heart. His dad died of a heart condition at a younger age." She didn't draw a conclusion. She named the environment in which such conclusions have become genuinely harder to draw.
Her framing of Graham's death was ultimately forward-looking rather than conspiratorial. "People who felt shocked by the loss of a wonderful life — turn that energy into something useful." She pointed to President Trump's response as the model: acknowledge the tragedy, then immediately identify what needs to be done for the living. In Graham's case, that means the SAVE Act, the Safe American Act, and the broader legislative agenda he was pressing. "He actually said, pass the SAFE American Act, the Clarity Act. He declared all those acts are basically aiming at the Chinese Communist Party."
CCP Foreign Influence and the Anatomy of Election Interference
Chen's central argument this week was that the CCP's interference in American elections is not theoretical, not limited to social media influence operations, and not something that can be addressed by updating voter registration systems alone. She identified four overlapping vectors.
The first is ideological capture. The Chinese Communist Party took China not through majority support but through guns, lies, and propaganda, backed by international communist networks that have never dissolved. "The force is still here. They're just even louder and more powerful." The same force that funded and organized the CCP's takeover of China 100 years ago operates today through private equity vehicles, philanthropic organizations, and political donations that appear unconnected to Beijing. "Go through the Goldman Sachs special program. They're very well-funded. You have to link all this together."
The second is information warfare. The people who have been radicalized against law enforcement, against the founding fathers, against the intelligence community as a whole — most of them, Chen argued, are not cynics. They believe what they believe. They've been told it so many times, through so many channels, that it has become the lens through which they process everything new. "People who now want that to happen — American people need to calm down and put the emotion aside and really think about why." She cited congresswoman Mary Miller of Illinois grilling university deans who could not confirm under oath that only biological women can give birth as evidence of how deeply the ideological capture has penetrated institutions. "The ideology, the political insanity that is immersed in our college systems right now is ridiculous."
The third is document-based. Chen urged every American who wants to understand what is happening to read Naked Communism — originally published by Cleon Skousen and entered into the Congressional Record in 1963 — for its list of 45 communist goals for America. "You can check to see how many they have actually completed. They're so close to completing it." The book's thesis is that the strategy was never secret — it was published, ignored, and followed almost exactly. Teachers unions, big business, the media — each category named in the playbook has been systematically targeted, and most of the targeting has succeeded. "It makes me crazy when people are lazy... If you're living in a bubble and you're too comfortable, you forget about danger and threats."
The fourth is technological. Chen cited the detective work of Barry County, Michigan Sheriff Dar Leaf — documented on X — tracing the components of every major American voting machine brand back to Chinese manufacturers. "They tell you every brand of American voting machine basically has components of Chinese components, the hardware part and the software part." The software testing, she alleged, was conducted in China and in Serbia — where Huawei, a blacklisted Chinese military company, controls significant infrastructure. This is what she called "TCP supply chain hack": not a front-door attack on the machines themselves but a quiet contamination of the supply chain from which the machines are built. She also cited NFSC intelligence dating to October 3rd, 2020 — a livestream in which Miles Guo disclosed the allegation that the CCP had planned to kill President Trump using COVID-19 as a bioweapon, taking advantage of his age and the virus's then-unknown virulence. "The Trump winning of the election was a surprise to them, surprise to the communists, surprise to the CCP, surprise to the hidden power that you don't see today."
The electoral stakes Chen was building toward: this midterm is not a standard power-sharing exercise. It is a four-year countdown. "Your enemies of this nation, the enemies of America, they're waiting for Donald Trump to basically step down and lose power. So that's your law — you only have four years. Beijing is betting on that." She cited at least five known assassination attempts against the president and noted the actual number is likely higher. "This is really a final showdown. This is life and death about freedom. Is humanity going to turn and go to the dark age again?" She invoked Colonel John Mills's historical research on the Revolutionary War and Civil War to argue that social transformation has never required majority buy-in — only 3% of the population actively engaged, supported by the 13% around them, has historically been sufficient to change the direction of a nation.
Her practical prescription: vote, then don't stop there. "As long as the CCP exists, they will never stop attacking you. OK, now they see a new candidate coming in and the CCP is targeting that new candidate from all fronts." She compared the CCP to cancer cells — not as a rhetorical flourish but as a structural description. Cancer cells don't negotiate with healthy tissue. They don't respond to reasonable offers of compromise. "There is no negotiation between a good cell and a cancer cell. And you can only stop the spread of cancer by putting through the good treatment." The treatment is sustained civic engagement, continued exposure of CCP-linked operations, and unwillingness to look away when looking away becomes more comfortable.
Breaking Intel: Xi Jinping's Coming Purge
Chen closed her segment with what she described as NFSC intelligence on a coming seismic event inside the Chinese Communist Party. Xi Jinping is preparing a massive purge focused specifically on the financial system. The list of targets already compiled internally numbers approximately 1,200 individuals. The purge, Chen said, will unfold between now and China's two sessions scheduled for March — a compressed and consequential window. "If you already see so many purges happening in China, you haven't seen this coming yet. This is going to be creating seismic change."
The underlying motive is not reform. Chen was explicit: "That doesn't mean Xi Jinping is a hero." He is not cleaning the CCP because he finds corruption morally objectionable. He is cleaning it because he is consolidating power. The previous generation of CCP kleptocrats moved roughly $4 trillion in stolen national wealth through Wall Street, through Biden family-linked political access channels, and through other international financial infrastructure. Xi wants that money redirected to himself. "He himself is a product of kleptocracy. Now he's the new king in the corner. So he has to punish all the old kings and drop the wealth." Those old kings are the 1,200 on the list. The purge is not the end of CCP kleptocracy — it is its next iteration. What it will produce is visible disruption in China's financial markets and political class that prediction markets, Chen said, have not yet priced in.
Terri Jo Neff: Kris Mayes, Aluminum Dynamics, and a Town That Followed the Rules and Still Lost
Terri Jo Neff, journalist and reporter for Herald Review Media — formerly known as the Sierra Vista Herald — came to the studio from Cochise County to cover a story that has been playing out in Benson, Arizona, and that she argued is a preview of what business development will look like statewide as long as Kris Mayes remains Attorney General.
The Aluminum Plant That Checked Every Box
The company is Aluminum Dynamics, an Indiana-based firm with a Mississippi office. Its plan for Benson was specific and, on paper, straightforward: recycle aluminum cans by melting them down, removing the paint, converting the metal into molten aluminum, casting it into large slabs, and shipping those slabs to Mississippi for final conversion back into aluminum sheet stock. An industrial recycling operation next to a river, with emissions, water use, and air quality implications — all the things that trigger environmental review.
What happened next is the story. The city of Benson went through its standard permitting process — not a rezoning, which would have been more controversial, but a simple conditional use permit. Aluminum Dynamics checked every required box. The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality reviewed the project, consulted with Attorney General Kris Mayes's office on how to proceed, and issued the necessary permits. The EPA reviewed the same project and signed off. No agency with regulatory authority over the project raised a substantive objection.
Then Mayes changed her mind. A public outcry arose — combining, in Neff's telling, an unusual coalition: environmental activists on one side and conservative ranchers on the other, united by concerns about water quality, air emissions, and the rural character of the area. With that political pressure building and her 2026 reelection campaign in view, Mayes reversed course. She fired ADEQ as her client — the agency she had advised on how to navigate the permit process — and began threatening Aluminum Dynamics with a public nuisance lawsuit before the company had demonstrated any actual nuisance. "She met with the ADI representatives and eventually threatened them with a public nuisance lawsuit before they even could demonstrate a public nuisance."
The legal posture that followed was, in Neff's characterization, stunning. Mayes attempted to give ADEQ a report that she said warranted reopening the permit — but only if ADEQ signed a non-disclosure agreement agreeing not to share the document with anyone. "She created an imaginary skiff," Winn said, using the term for a classified information facility. The ADEQ director responded in a public record obtained by the Herald Review, noting pointedly that Mayes's own office had provided the original guidance on how to process the permit. The company Mayes was now threatening had followed that guidance precisely.
The financial and community consequences are not abstract. Aluminum Dynamics has pulled out entirely this week. Steel girders being trucked out are visible around Benson as the show airs. The departure takes with it approximately 90 well-paying jobs — with a regional impact extending to Vail and Tucson, not just Benson and Cochise County. It also takes a commitment Aluminum Dynamics had made to fund construction of a new fire station for Benson — a station the community has needed for 20 years, because all of the city's newer residential and commercial development has spread north to State Route 90, miles from the existing station on State Route 80. "They've lost that as well. When we're in fire season right now." Benson's city budget has been significantly disrupted by the legal costs and process fallout from the controversy.
The political aftermath inside Cochise County is layered. The Benson city council recalls in May — three members voted out — were driven by residents upset with how city leadership handled the Aluminum Dynamics situation, even though the attorney general's office later cleared the city of any wrongdoing in its approval process. "They never did anything wrong. Maybe they could hire the people from Pima County — I don't think they're doing a good job either." The lesson Neff drew: when you let others fill the information vacuum, they fill it against you.
Cochise County Board Chairman Frank Antenori has since called publicly for a county-level investigation by County Attorney Lori Zucco and her staff into whether Mayes overstepped her legal authority in invoking public nuisance law against a project that had already received all required state environmental clearances. "What authority does the public nuisance law actually give officials — especially when a state agency has already gone through the proper process?" Mayes has said she is not worried about the investigation. Neff noted the significance of what she didn't say: the AG's original involvement was to advise ADEQ on how to properly approve the project. The record now shows Mayes's office was on both sides of the same issue. And with Tom Crosby's criminal prosecution — also pursued by Mayes — still not set for trial until early 2027, the pattern of aggressive, politically timed legal actions with delayed accountability is becoming visible to county boards across the state. "They're going to get public records. They're going to take a look at what was done. And I think there's other rural boards of supervisors who have the same concern." The announcement the previous day that Mayes is joining a multi-state effort to block the Paramount-Hollywood merger triggered particular skepticism. "She can raise more money for her campaign. That's all that is."
Cochise County's Political Shifts and the Races Worth Watching
Neff used the second half of her segment to give Winn's Pima County audience a ground-level view of what Cochise County's political landscape actually looks like heading into primary day.
The border shift is real and measurable. Douglas and Bisbee, historically Democratic strongholds in the southeastern corner of the state, have seen substantial voter re-registration toward Republicans over recent years. Neff attributed it to a confluence of factors: the traditional blue-dog Democratic coalition — union workers, working families — feeling abandoned by a party that has moved far from their values; and the direct lived experience of border chaos, fentanyl deaths, and law enforcement strain that Sheriff Mark Daniels and others have been documenting for years. "We've re-registered 22,000." The border has closed significantly under the current administration, and while drugs continue to move through — Art Del Cueto noted on a recent appearance that criminal enterprise never fully stops — the human smuggling crisis that was consuming law enforcement resources has substantially diminished, allowing agencies to refocus on narcotics.
On Bisbee's mayor's race: four candidates are technically on the ballot, but two are the serious contestants. Charles Flanagan is a longtime state-level figure with background in child safety and juvenile corrections. Amy Berkert is a newer resident with strong backing from the hospitality and tourism business community. Bisbee, like Tombstone just miles away, has not recovered economically from COVID's devastation of travel and tourism. "What direction are they going to go?" The city's economic base is almost entirely government jobs — the county jail, county courts, a Border Patrol station — and tourism that has been shrinking for years. The question before voters is not which candidate they prefer personally but which one can realistically navigate the community through a genuine economic reckoning. Neff noted that Bisbee's average resident age is over 50 and rising, which makes economic diversification both more urgent and more difficult to build political consensus around. Tombstone faces the same problem in even sharper relief: "The Old West is fading off for a lot of folks. They're looking for activities to do, not just walk down a wooden boardwalk and watch one or two gunfight shows."
The broader point Neff drew from Cochise County's recent experience: the political dynamics that Pima County Republicans have been fighting for years — aggressive use of legal and administrative tools to suppress economic development, the importing of Maricopa-style campaign tactics into rural jurisdictions, attempts to recall officials for pursuing legitimate policy questions — are no longer confined to Tucson and Phoenix. "We're now seeing in Cochise County things we usually see in Maricopa and Pima." The response she is watching for: whether Cochise County's Republican majority on the Board of Supervisors uses the Aluminum Dynamics investigation to establish clear legal boundaries on what an attorney general can and cannot do when a state agency has already followed the proper statutory process. "This is where counties all across Arizona are watching."
Pima County Primary: Final Week Mechanics
Winn used transition segments between guests to push final-week ballot mechanics, updated in real time from the previous day's data. As of Wednesday morning, 42 sworn affidavits documenting election irregularities had been collected and were being prepared for formal submission. Poll workers were reporting being told they couldn't bring a beverage, couldn't bring a companion to the voting location, couldn't wear certain items — the kinds of overzealous administrative overreach from Democratic county election workers that Winn said is designed to discourage Republican observer participation. "They are trying to disincentivize my poll workers from showing up."
On the uniformed voting injunction: the federal court victory she secured earlier in the week is now operationally relevant. "If you are a law enforcement officer, if you are a military member, you get to show up in uniform and vote. And believe me, you do not disenfranchise those around you. They are proud of you." She noted that Fort Huachuca — the Army intelligence center in Sierra Vista — gives Cochise County a particularly large population of active military voters who are directly affected by the ruling, a point Neff confirmed. The 75-foot protest-distance provision that the court did not rule in her favor on remains on the agenda for the next legislative session. "We're not going to stop because we cannot allow that encroachment."
The mailing deadline has now passed. Any voter who has not returned their ballot must vote in person — either at an early voting center through the end of the week or at a polling place on Tuesday, July 21st. Anyone in line at 7 p.m. on election day is entitled to vote. Do not leave the line. The ID-verified drop-off option at staffed voting centers remains the fastest path to tabulation for anyone with a ballot in hand. Cochise County voters were reminded of an additional logistical reality: mail from the southeastern corner of the state routes through Phoenix before returning, meaning any ballot mailed today in Bisbee or Douglas has no realistic chance of arriving at the recorder's warehouse in time. "If a truck leaves from Tucson with mail at 5 p.m., which is usually when they leave, they're not making it to Bisbee by 7. There's just no way."
On LD19: Winn previewed it as the district to watch on election night given its geographic sprawl across both Pima and Cochise counties and its historically high Republican turnout. "Cochise has always been so solid red and such an important part of LD-19. That's where all three of our state senators and the two representatives right now live in Cochise County." With only three polling places serving the Green Valley-to-border corridor, long lines are likely. Advocacy to increase polling locations in LD19 before the November general election is already underway.
Jeff Rhodes write-in reminder, one final time before primary day: J-E-F-F R-H-O-D-E-S, fill in the bubble, write the name. Both steps required. Supervisor District 5 only.