Guests - Ava Chen, Jeff Rhodes
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California Wakes Up, the CCP's Sanctions Blindspot, and a Tucson Man Who's Had Enough
Wednesday on Winn Tucson opened on California primary night results that surprised everyone who has been writing the state off, moved through a China Watch Wednesday segment that broke down exactly why Western sanctions against the CCP are less effective than policymakers believe, and closed with a Tucson resident whose name is a punchline about Pima County's roads — but whose campaign is entirely serious.
California Primary Night: The Red Map Nobody Was Predicting
Before Ava Chen connected from across two dropped calls and the CCP's apparent interest in their Wednesday conversations, Kathleen Winn laid out the California numbers from the night before with visible optimism.
In the governor's race, Steve Hilton was leading at 27.8% with roughly 60% of the vote tabulated, ahead of Xavier Becerra at 25.4% and billionaire Tom Steyer at 19.6%. The visual that stopped Winn: a county-by-county map of California painted almost entirely red. The coast ran blue in small, densely populated patches. The vast geographic interior — counties across most of the state — had voted for Hilton.
In the Los Angeles mayor's race, the outcome nobody predicted had happened: Spencer Pratt and Karen Bass will face each other in the November runoff. Pratt cleared the ramen and the other Democrat by approximately six to eight percentage points.
"This is a watershed moment. People want somebody who will take the problems and try to solve them. Karen Bass just makes excuses."
The political diagnosis Winn offered ran deeper than a single candidate: the policies themselves had failed. Not the people — the policies. And when policies fail repeatedly and the people implementing them keep implementing them, the voters eventually stop caring about party labels and start caring about outcomes.
"I don't even think they care what party you are. Spencer Pratt is registered Republican, but he ran as an independent. Because he knows at this point it's not about politics. It's about listening, taking action, and doing what needs to be done."
The California reading also had direct implications for Arizona. A state that has been structurally blue for two decades showing competitive results is evidence for a principle that applies equally in Pima County: bad governance, sustained long enough, converts voters regardless of which party delivered it.
Ava Chen: Tiananmen at 37, Why Sanctions Don't Touch the Core, and Trump's Legal Housecleaning
Ava Chen, co-host and member of the New Federal State of China, joined for China Watch Wednesday across two dropped calls — both of which she and Winn agreed were probably not coincidental given the content of their weekly conversations.
June 4th: 37 Years, Tens of Thousands of Lives
The date was present in both of their minds before either said it. In Chinese time — twelve hours ahead — it was already June 4th. The anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Chen offered context that the famous Tankman image alone doesn't provide: the movement that led to that morning did not begin in 1989. It began in 1988 as a broad societal push for democratic reform and anti-corruption accountability, joined by workers, companies, and even low-level CCP officials who recognized the depth of the corruption around them.
"A lot of people in China are angry about the corruption. As you would see today — that's happening in the United States. People are angry about it."
Students joined because students always join — they have fewer dependencies, fewer fears about what disobedience costs. By the spring of 1989, the movement had morphed into a student-led hunger strike that pressured the government for weeks before the brutal response of the early morning hours of June 4th, when PLA forces ended the protests in a massacre that killed tens of thousands. The Tankman photograph — now among the most iconic images of the 20th century — was actually taken on June 5th, the day after the massacre.
Today, June 3rd, marked 1,177 days since Miles Guo's arrest on March 17, 2023. The number seven carries symbolic significance to the NFSC movement — Guo is a seventh son — and 1,177 is layered with sevens. Chen connected Miles's earliest role to the movement: he was not the leader but the very first financial donor, contributing from the resources of a 19-year-old entrepreneur who had grown up poor in rural China, started selling goods at age seven, opened a 24-hour steamed bun shop at age 13, and made early trips to Hong Kong by sleeping on the train to avoid paying for a ticket.
"He started doing small stuff — selling stuff here and buying there — as young as seven years old. He wanted to provide extra financial support for the family."
That young capitalist eventually became the whistleblower who has spent the last several years in American custody on charges the NFSC describes as CCP-orchestrated lawfare. The anniversary of his arrest — observed in what is functionally a global movement that Chen described as six years old — landed on the same day as the Tiananmen anniversary.
"Everything is by God's plan. The tide is coming up. We already saw it coming."
Why Sanctions Scratch the Skin but Don't Hit the Core
The most analytically dense portion of Chen's segment addressed a structural limitation in Western sanctions policy that most policymakers appear to be missing.
The fundamental error, she argued, is treating the CCP like a Western corporate structure — a collection of distinct legal entities, subsidiaries, and holding companies that can be isolated and sanctioned individually.
"You don't have to look at CCP as a Western corporate. CCP is one company."
In China, there is no rule of law that protects corporate entities from political control. Every major corporate decision is ultimately controlled by the Chinese Communist Party — and currently, that Party's power is concentrated in five to seven kleptocratic families who are running the Chinese nation as a family enterprise.
"They're like the traditional globalists, you know, like the old China's 'old friend.' They're not Chinese friends. They are these families' friends."
When sanctions are applied to a specific Chinese company — say, a shipping entity in the dark fleet — the response is immediate and simple: open a subsidiary in Pakistan, Vietnam, or Singapore the next day. The parent structure remains intact. The revenue keeps flowing. The sanction becomes a bureaucratic inconvenience, not a strategic blow.
"You don't hurt them. You may be scratching the skin. But that's it."
The dark fleet illustration was vivid and specific. A single large crude tanker carries $100 to $200 million worth of oil. Individual captains and private shipping operators willing to run dark — breaking U.S. sanctions — receive 8 to 10 percent of the oil's value per delivery. That is $8 to $20 million per run.
"They're like a gambler. They know they're taking the risk. But the return is too high. So there's a lot of private companies — just people wanting to gamble."
Sanctioning the companies does not remove the profit incentive for the individuals. And the CCP families who control the oil keep getting their product delivered.
The actual point of maximum leverage, in Chen's analysis, is the kleptocrat families themselves — their personal assets, their children's holdings abroad, their wealth parked in Western financial institutions, their real estate in London, Vancouver, and New York. That is what hurts. Not the corporate subsidiaries.
The Legal Housecleaning and the China Connection
President Trump recently posted about a New York Times story reporting a "stunning exodus of legal talent" from the administration. His response: good. He had already fired 7,000 to 8,000 people and needed to fire more.
Chen's instruction: look at who those lawyers worked for before entering government. In the peak period of U.S.-China engagement, over 100 international law firms were operating in China, generating billions in revenue. Approximately 98% of their partners were Democratic Party donors. Their client lists: the Construction Bank of China, Huawei, and other entities they would publicly describe as unrelated to the CCP.
"They're not Chinese clients. They are these families' clients."
The same people who were embedded with CCP-connected entities in China for decades entered the federal government and shaped policy. The exodus Trump is engineering is, in Chen's framing, the unraveling of precisely this network.
"He knows. He might not say it. But he knows."
Trump's entire record — 2016 trade battles, the Russia Gate fight, COVID, the 2020 election situation — points, in Chen's analysis, to a man who understands the interconnection of CCP influence, domestic political warfare, and big tech censorship better than most of the people around him.
"Is that a coincidence? No. You have to link all of this together."
The Spiritual Dimension: The 250th, the Revival, and Gen Z Returning to Church
Chen closed on a note that connected the geopolitical with the personal.
She is seeing reports of Gen Z returning to church. Young people — the same generation that was told faith was irrelevant — are meeting in churches, talking about faith, seeking something that the political left and the nihilism of social media could not provide. She sees this as inseparable from the political moment.
"This is a kind of revival. Not only of the country, but spiritually. And I see it as a change."
Her framing of Satan's operation: not direct assault but infiltration — a whisper that grows into desire, a desire that takes root in the heart, and eventually a person who becomes a vehicle for harm against the people they should be loving. The spiritual revival she is observing is the resistance to that infiltration.
"The only people that can stay true to their original mission are those who believe God and who obey God."
Winn's response was grounded in the visible: you can see Satan's operation in the physical world, in the people fighting for criminals over victims, in the lawmakers celebrating the man who shot the UnitedHealthcare CEO, in the political apparatus defending what cannot rationally be defended.
"I think we do see Satan existing. We see it in all the evil that is going on."
Jeff Rhodes: A Write-In Candidate for District 5 Who Is Running to Fix Things, Not to Be Important
Jeff Rhodes walked into the Pima County Republican Party office about a month before this conversation and told Kathleen Winn he was planning to run for Supervisor District 5 — in 2028. Winn moved that timeline up by two years. He agreed, though he noted with good humor that she's "rotten like that."
Rhodes is not a politician. He is a process server and a licensed mortgage loan officer. He spent six years working in the Pima County jail. He has a University of Arizona degree. He has lived in Tucson for 21 years. He has watched the city become something he describes as genuinely unrecognizable from the place he first visited in 1986.
And one evening, watching a news interview in which his current supervisor's response to people firing guns whose rounds were landing in homes and garages was to suggest studying the situation, he decided he had seen enough.
"The simple answer was: enforce the law. Let's enforce the laws that already exist."
The Write-In Candidacy
Rhodes missed the signature deadline to get his name on the primary ballot — because the race itself didn't officially open until Adelita Grijalva resigned from the supervisor seat to run for Congress, and the timeline compressed rapidly from there. Andres Cano, the current occupant of the seat, was appointed — not elected — and has been in the seat only a matter of months.
To get on the November general election ballot, Rhodes must receive write-in votes in the Republican primary on July 21st.
"All you have to do is go write my name in on the primary ballot as a Republican candidate. We only need 150 to 160 signatures."
Rhodes wants 1,000. Not because the math requires it, but because he wants to send a message to the district that he is a serious, sustained candidate — not a protest vote.
The spelling is critical: J-E-F-F R-H-O-D-E-S. His website — rhodesfordistrict5.com — is the best preparation for spelling it correctly at the ballot box. He recommended visiting it multiple times before election day, for exactly that reason. Winn noted the cosmic irony that the candidate who wants to fix Pima County's roads is named Rhodes.
District 5 is geographically unusual — "like a drunken cow drew it," in Winn's description. It encompasses the southwest area of Tucson (Valencia out to the Ajo intersection, up to the Ajo corridor, much of the 85413 zip code area), a narrow strip running east along Grant to Broadway to Country Club, the entire University of Arizona campus, and north into the Picture Rocks area. Approximately 120,000 registered voters. 17,000 registered Republicans.
District 5 is the only supervisor race on the November ballot in Pima County, because all other seats are serving out full terms. Any primary voter in District 5 who wants Rhodes on the general ballot needs to write his name in the primary — and only District 5 voters will have that option.
What He Saw Working in the Jail
Rhodes spent six years booking people into the Pima County jail. He watched the revolving door operate in real time.
"I booked the same people in over and over again. Those same people that may have done criminal damage for a small amount of money — a couple years later, they were doing burglaries or armed robberies. It does increase when you stop it at the early stages."
The Rudy Giuliani model — prosecute the small stuff and the big stuff gets taken care of — is not a theory to him. It is something he watched play out in a correctional facility for six years.
He extended the same logic to immigration enforcement. "We are arresting people that have 15, 17, 25 prior arrests. We continue to let them go." Fifteen prior arrests, he said pointedly, is already too many. Twenty-five is the equivalent of the county attorney's office advertising that consequences don't apply.
The process serving career gave him additional perspective. On two occasions, he was assaulted while attempting to serve legal documents — once with a baseball bat, once with a pump-action shotgun pointed at him from a gate after he had already left the property. Both times, he called law enforcement. Both times, the subject denied it. Both times, nothing happened.
"I guess all you have to do to not get arrested is say you didn't do it."
When he pushed the baseball bat incident all the way to the county attorney's office, it died there. "She lets murderers out, so don't feel bad — you're just a simple assault." The systemic failure is not the officers on the street. It is the leadership above them and the prosecutors who refuse to use the tools they have.
What a Supervisor Actually Does and What This One Has Been Doing Instead
Rhodes is clear about what the Board of Supervisors is supposed to be doing — and what the current board spends its time on instead.
"If you listen to a lot of the resolutions, the proclamations — none of that has anything to do with the people of Tucson. It makes them feel good. It's a political stunt to get their name in the paper."
His opponent, the appointed Andres Cano, has spent his entire adult life pursuing professional politics. He has a Harvard master's degree that Rhodes generalized as training in how to be a better politician. He has never run a business or sat in a jail booking room or served a legal document to someone who responded by picking up a shotgun.
"His entire adult life has been nothing but politics. He's been trying to become a professional politician, just like the guys in Washington that we all complain about."
The founding fathers, Rhodes noted, never intended for professional politicians to exist. The design was for ordinary citizens to step in, serve a period of time, represent their community, and return to civilian life. That model produces accountability. The career politician model produces self-interest.
On the Spending, the Roads, and the Fundamentals
Rhodes spent time on the basic principle he would bring to the board: treat taxpayer money like it's yours.
"If you don't have it, you don't have it. I'm not going to go get another credit card just because I want to build a new pool. If I can't afford to build the pool, I'm not going to build the pool."
The board's recent 19% water rate increase, its $70 million spending cap expansion referral to the November ballot, its signs on county property announcing non-cooperation with federal immigration enforcement — none of it is designed to address the actual experience of the people living in Pima County. Crime is up. Homelessness persists on the streets. The roads — R.O.A.D.S., not R.H.O.D.E.S. — remain in documented disrepair despite years of tax revenue collected for their maintenance.
Pima County's population is declining. Its businesses are leaving or not arriving. Its roads aren't being fixed. Its law enforcement is demoralized by a non-prosecution culture that makes arrests feel meaningless.
"Pima County is not an attractive place to come. Not with these current policies."
Homelessness, the Second Amendment, and Personal Accountability
Asked about homelessness — not one of his three stated priorities but clearly connected to all of them — Rhodes was precise.
He is not suggesting arresting people for being homeless. He is suggesting that if homeless individuals are committing crimes — and possession of fentanyl is a crime, possession of drug paraphernalia is a crime — those crimes need to be prosecuted.
"The role of government is to not allow those people and their bad habits to affect the good citizens who are law-abiding."
He extended the logic to the Second Amendment question: laws about guns don't affect the people committing crimes with guns. They affect the law-abiding citizens. The same principle applies to the failure to prosecute homeless drug offenders. It doesn't protect the drug offender from anything. It exposes everyone else.
What He Is Committing To
If elected, Rhodes has already made one promise that distinguishes him from his opponent: he will suspend his mortgage loan officer license for the duration of his term.
"I'm not going to have any situation where someone says I'm using my office to further benefit myself. This will be a full time job."
He made the same call when he worked for the Arizona Attorney General's office — suspending a real estate license and a loan originator license for the same reason. He is not looking for a prestigious part-time position. He is running for an office that requires its occupant to be present, accountable, and conflict-free.
His wife Vonda has been telling him for ten years that he should run for office. She said yes this time. He thanked her on air.
He will be knocking on doors across District 5, carrying postcards, going to the University of Arizona campus to talk to students, and building a coalition that includes the 17,000 registered Republicans who, in his assessment, have largely stopped voting because they believe their vote doesn't count in Tucson.
"I'm trying to change that. This is where we've got to start getting all of the Republican voters out."
Steve Christie, the current sole Republican on the board, is his model for what a supervisor looks like when they are actually trying to do the job. Christie consistently stands alone, gets outvoted 4-1, and keeps showing up.
"He needs help."
rhodesfordistrict5.com | Email: rhodesfordistrict5@gmail.com
District 5 Republican voters: write JEFF RHODES on your July 21st primary ballot. Spelling counts.
Winn Tucson airs Monday through Friday, 9 to 11 a.m., on KVOI 1030 The Voice.
China Watch Wednesday continues next week. Follow Ava Chen on X and Getter through the New Federal State of China for ongoing intelligence.
Jeff Rhodes for Supervisor District 5 — Pima County: rhodesfordistrict5.com | Write his name on your July 21st primary ballot.
Primary voter registration deadline: June 22nd. Early ballots: June 24th. Primary: July 21st.