Category: Guest Authors

Assessing Katie Hobbs

By Joe Guzzardi

Of the 1,287,891 Arizonans who cast their 2022 gubernatorial votes for Democrat Katie Hobbs to replace termed-out Republican Doug Ducey, at least 25% would likely want to take their votes back. Hobbs has proven to be, at best, ineffective and, at worst, a viable threat to national security.

Hobbs’ latest gubernatorial action, consistent with her apparent indifference to Arizonans’ well-being, was to veto Republican-backed Senate Bill 1109. The bill’s objective was to prevent nationals from the People’s Republic of China from purchasing Arizona property. The measure sought to add Arizona to the growing list of states that, because of national security concerns, ban the communist nation from acquiring U.S. land.

In her veto message, Hobbs stated that while protecting infrastructure is important, the bill is “ineffective at counterespionage and does not directly protect our military assets.” Senate Majority Leader Janae Shamp, who sponsored SB 1109, slammed Hobbs for the veto and called out the governor for threatening state and national security. Shamp pointed to China’s recent effort to lease property near Luke Air Force Base in the west Phoenix suburb of Glendale. Luke serves as a primary training base for F-35 stealth fighter pilots from the U.S. and several allies.

The bill also applied to Chinese citizens unless they are permanent U.S. residents. The only exception was for homes on less than two acres located at least 50 miles from a military base or 25 miles from a military practice range—meaning not in Phoenix, Tucson, Yuma, Flagstaff, or Sierra Vista.

The “Veto Queen”

Around Arizona, Hobbs has earned the nickname “Veto Queen.” She has already smashed the Arizona veto record during her first two years as governor, killing 216 bills: 143 in 2023 and 73 in 2024. Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano previously held the record with 181 bills vetoed from 2003-09. Hobbs is running up her winning margin, with 138 vetoes so far this year including SB 1109, as she approaches surpassing her 2023 record.

In defiance of the Department of Homeland Security, Hobbs has vetoed multiple Republican-backed bills that would have forced cooperation with federal immigration and deportation efforts, including three border-related bills on May 12. The Democratic governor’s vetoes demonstrate that she will not embrace federal immigration law, even as the Republican-majority Legislature advances the Trump administration’s priorities on enforcement and deportation. Hobbs frequently states that Arizonans will determine Arizona’s future, not the federal government—a position that could put her on the Department of Justice’s list of states that defy the Supremacy Clause.

Questionable Campaign and Early Actions

Hobbs’ 2022 candidacy raised ethical questions. As the then-Secretary of State, Hobbs was responsible for certifying the gubernatorial election results—a clear conflict of interest since she was in a tight race against Kari Lake. Once she won the nomination, Hobbs ran a Biden-like campaign: she refused to debate Lake and avoided reporters and their questions. Immediately after Hobbs’ paper-thin victory, inquiries arose about Maricopa County’s malfunctioning electronic voting machines and mail-in ballot validity. Maricopa is Arizona’s largest county and leans Republican.

From the start, Hobbs proved herself an open-borders advocate. In her 2023 inaugural address, she promised to extend the Arizona Promise Scholarship Program to illegal aliens attending state universities and colleges. Before Title 42 ended, Hobbs established five new bus routes from border communities to Tucson, overwhelming the city to accommodate undocumented immigrants.

Ongoing Legal and Financial Issues

The governor’s problems are ongoing. A Maricopa County Superior Court judge ruled that Hobbs violated state law when she appointed 13 de facto state agency heads to sidestep the Senate confirmation process. This judicial rebuke represents only the tip of the iceberg regarding Hobbs’ legal troubles.

Her $2 million taxpayer-funded Super Bowl LVII celebration included open-bar parties, 70 hotel rooms at the high-end Arizona Biltmore, sponsorships, and free tickets valued at between $4,000 and $40,000 for teachers, staffers, and political allies. This extravagance drew criticism in a state struggling to provide essential services like helping the homeless and funding responses to the growing illegal alien immigrant presence at Arizona’s southern border.

Pay-for-Play Allegations

The most serious charge against Hobbs involves alleged pay-for-play schemes. Republican Senate President Pro Tempore Thomas Shope demanded an investigation after reports emerged that Sunshine Residential Homes, which donated $400,000 to Hobbs, received an exclusive daily care rate increase from Hobbs’ Department of Child Safety (DCS). The reports alleged that Sunshine’s daily rate increased from $149 to $195 per child while DCS denied rate increases to similar service providers. The Democratic Attorney General has acknowledged that her office has begun an investigation.

Political Future in Question

Hobbs often boasts that she has never lost an election. However, with border politics likely to be at the forefront of voters’ minds and state issues close behind in her now-long-shot reelection bid next year, the question more commonly heard around Arizona is: “How can she win?”

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

Assessing Katie Hobbs

Xi’s Daughter Is Harvard Grad

By Joe Guzzardi

The Trump administration is spot on in its decision to slow foreign-born students’ arrival on F-1 student and M-1 vocational visas. The administration has halted scheduling of new student visa appointments at U.S. embassies abroad as the State Department prepares to expand social media vetting of foreign students. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently announced that the U.S. would “aggressively revoke” some Chinese students’ visas, especially those enrolled in sensitive courses of study or with CCP ties. Future visa requests from China and Hong Kong will be more diligently vetted. Immigration officials are revoking dozens of student visas, with many more cases going unreported at small colleges anxious to avoid federal scrutiny. The battle between the administration and America’s oldest university has entered a new front.

More than 1.1 million international students are enrolled at America’s academic institutions. At Harvard, the administration’s focal point in its battle on behalf of fairness for U.S. high school applicants and intensified national security, about 27% or 6,800 of the student body is foreign-born, a point of pride at the elite Ivy League institution which promotes diversity, equity and inclusion. Last week, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem ordered her department to “terminate the Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) certification”, citing that “Harvard’s leadership has created an unsafe campus environment by permitting anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators to harass and physically assault individuals.” This action would have meant the school could no longer enroll new foreign students, and that current foreign students must either “transfer or lose their legal status.” However, a federal court has temporarily granted Harvard’s motion, allowing the university to continue enrolling international students and scholars as the case proceeds through litigation.

President Trump’s proposed 15% cap on Harvard’s foreign-born students as a percentage of total enrollment may not be sufficiently restrictive. The time is overdue for a complete recalibration on U.S. visa policy starting with the F-1. The administration’s goal should be to return the F-1 visa to its original guidelines which allowed foreign students to study in the U.S., but with a requirement that their visas had to be renewed every year. Such a condition would tamp down on violent anti-Semitic rioting. Moreover, the fundamental F-1 concept required that the international students would put their American educations to use by returning home to improve their nation’s well-being. At the time, optional practical training (OPT), circular practical training (CPT), and STEM OPT did not exist.

Here’s today’s breakdown on international students’ distribution through academic year 2023/2024. Graduate students: 502,291, an 8% increase year-over-year and an all-time high; OPT: a record high of 242,782 students, an increase of 22% from the prior year. Most foreign-born students, 56%, studied in the STEM fields, 25% studied math and computer science while 19% studied engineering. The number of international undergraduates remained stable at 342,875. The top two sending countries are India and China. Since admission to a Chinese university is virtually impossible for an American, many question why the U.S. should permit any Chinese students. The increases were most pronounced at public colleges and universities, which faced budget cuts during the Great Recession and began to rely more heavily on tuition from foreign students. With visa policies tightening under the current administration, consular officers are expected to be more cautious in approving F-1 applications, and visa denials are expected to rise in 2026.

Because employers don’t have to pay FICA or Medicare taxes on their OPT employees, they save roughly 8 percent in payroll costs when they hire a foreign national instead of an American. OPT workers often hold jobs that range from $60,000-$100,000 a year, but they cost Social Security and Medicare about $4 billion dollars annually. Statisticians predict that, at their current pace, Social Security and Medicare might go bankrupt by the mid-2030s.

Giving OPT workers waivers on paying into those vital programs is self-defeating. President Trump’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services nominee, Joseph Edlow, supports ending OPT. During a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing, Edlow said that OPT has been “mishandled” in recent years and that F-1 employment authorization should not extend past the period that students are enrolled. Edlow’s comments, practical though they are, shocked universities and immigration expansionists.

All in, when comparing 2007 to 2023, an enormous 320 percent increase occurred in the number of foreign students who obtained work authorization through some form of practical training. OPT violates federal immigration law and ending the program should not be a partisan issue.

Republican and Democrat administrations have consistently ignored the obvious threat that international students represent to national security. In early May, Stanford University discovered a CCP agent disguised as a student but who was engaged in espionage. A Stanford Review investigative journalist concluded that the CCP is orchestrating a widespread intelligence-gathering campaign at Stanford. Chinese spies have infiltrated Stanford. Also consider that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s only daughter Xi Mingze, a 2014 Harvard graduate who enrolled under an assumed name, is believed to still be living in the U.S., possibly in Cambridge. No one knows who the unvetted Xi Mingze knew at Harvard, what secrets she may have uncovered—remember U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell’s tawdry romance with Fang-Fang— or what confidential information she may have shared with her powerful father. The dangerous truth: on national security, China is a serious and powerful country; the U.S. is frivolous and unconcerned about self-preservation.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

Xi’s Daughter Is Harvard Grad