Midwest
The plan to confront China and kick out companies controlled by the Chinese Communist Party from the U.S.
The line against Beijing is drawn in Little Rock.
“We are taking a strong stand against China infiltrating our state,” says Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders. “We’re going to continue to push back.”
Arkansas is the first state in the nation that forced a Chinese-connected company to divest farmland, and now says it is taking additional action against the CCP.
SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS ON TARIFF THREAT: TRUMP IS TIRED OF AMERICA GETTING RIPPED OFF
Sanders is introducing new legislation that adds further measures to stop China state-owned businesses from operating in her state and shut down programs sponsored by China.
The measures include banning CCP-linked companies from buying or leasing property, blocking ownership near critical infrastructure sites, scraping Sister City partnerships and cutting funding for universities and colleges that have Chinese-funded programs.
“We’ve seen a number of cases where China is trying to infiltrate things that matter to our critical infrastructure, buying up land around our military bases, our substations. These are things that we’re taking strong action against here in Arkansas, expanding existing legislation so that we can continue to hold their feet to the fire and push them out,” says Sanders.
Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders speaks during a campaign rally for former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on November 4, 2024. (CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images)
In 2023, the state ordered Syngenta Seeds, whose parent company is a Chinese conglomerate, to divest farmland used for seed production.
The company said that “the suggestion that China is using Syngenta to purchase land or conduct operations for any purpose other than supporting the company’s commercial business in North America is simply false.” But the state fined the company $280,000 for not initially disclosing its foreign ownership by the deadline.
“Syngenta is foreign-owned — ultimately by the Chinese Communist Party,” said Arkansas Attorney General Tim Miller in announcing the penalty.
“This serves as a warning to all other Chinese state-owned companies operating in Arkansas.”
REPUBLICAN GOVERNORS CAN’T WAIT FOR TRUMP TO UNLEASH PROSPERITY IN THE STATES
“Agriculture is the number one industry here in the state of Arkansas and so protecting our agricultural security and protecting the components that make it so strong, are one of the things that are really important,” says Sanders.
Two other firms are being investigated for possible ties to China, but in December a Federal Judge issued a preliminary injunction to halt the probe of one of them.
At least 22 states have enacted some form of restrictions on Chinese-owned companies.
“The CCP has aggressive intent and has become more aggressive and threatening, both at home as well as abroad, and we need to be aware of these threats,” says Congressman John Moolenaar, (R) Michigan, Chairman of House Select Committee on the CCP. He says more states should follow Sanders’ lead.
“She is taking a leadership role and protecting farmland and green spaces in Arkansas and making sure the CCP doesn’t gain a foothold in Arkansas. We want to see more states taking this kind of action,” he says.
The national flags of the United States and China flutter at the Fairmont Peace Hotel on April 25, 2024 in Shanghai, China. (Photo by Wang Gang/VCG via Getty Images)
For several years, officials have been warning about China’s entry into the U.S., through businesses and other organizations that they say pose a national security threat.
Michael Pillsbury, a former top U.S. government official on China matters and Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, has been sounding the alarm. He authored “The One Hundred Year Marathon, China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower” a decade ago and says not much has changed since then.
“What Governor Sanders is launching is pretty important,” he says, “part of building the long-term foundation to protect ourselves against the CCP, but it is not the end of the story unless she is successful in persuading Homeland Security and the FBI to make this a federal issue.”
“The state of Arkansas doesn’t have a CIA or FBI to do this. The intelligence collection that triggers the alarm is what the federal government has to do.”
FORMER USAID OFFICIAL WARNS CHINA IS ALREADY LOOKING TO FILL VOID LEFT BY PAUSED PROGRAMS
Experts say it can be difficult to determine if a company is really owned by a Chinese firm, which is part of the CCP’s strategy.
“There really is no such thing as a private company in China,” says Rep. Moolenaar. “All the companies are affiliated in some way and directed in some way by the Chinese Communist Party. And secondly, it is important to note that they have something called military fusion, where technologies, even in the civil area, are used for military purposes.”
He says Chinese-funded programs that operate under the guise of educational programs also serve to further the CCP’s interests, which is one target of Sanders’ push. Moolenaar points to a recent case in his state of Michigan that raised alarms.
“The Chinese Communist Party will leverage people,” he says. “Five Chinese national students were caught spying at Camp Grayling. Camp Grayling is a military facility, where according to public reports, we train military leaders, including Taiwanese military leaders. So when you consider the threat of the leverage of the Chinese Communist Party, we need to be vigilant and protect American universities and American taxpayer dollars.”
Michael Pillsbury, Senior Fellow and Director for Chinese Strategy, Hudson Institute, on FutureSocieties during the final day of Web Summit 2019 at the Altice Arena in Lisbon, Portugal. (Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile for Web Summit via Getty Images)
The five Chinese students were charged last fall with lying to the FBI after they claimed to be observing meteor showers at midnight at the base, but instead were found to have taken photos of the installation. The FBI said all five graduated last spring from the University of Michigan, and were part of a joint program between the university and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, China.
This is exactly the type of suspicious scenario Sanders is trying to address.
“We know that so often China is looking for any way possible into and developing a relationship for the purpose of exploiting it, and for the purpose of taking that information back and using it against us,” she says. “We want to make sure that we are protecting against that.”
China’s embassy in Washington has accused the U.S. of “politicizing and weaponizing economic and trade issues.” Embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu says U.S. officials “deliberately obstruct normal economic and trade exchange for (a) political agenda.”
But critics charge that is exactly what the CCP is doing under the guise of commerce and friendship.
“We need to be proactive,” warns Rep. Moolenaar. “We need to not so much look for a smoking gun, we need to look for a loaded gun that is actually a threat to America.”
Read the full article from Here
MINNEAPOLIS — On February 12, Trump-appointed “border czar” Tom Homan announced the “end” of Operation Metro Surge, during which more than 4,000 federal agents aggressively targeted immigrant communities in the Twin Cities, causing massive chaos throughout the area and killing Renee Good and Alex Pretti. It seemed meaningful that the same day as Homan’s announcement, Minnesota-based interdisciplinary artist Rosy Simas opened A:gajë:gwah dësa’nigöëwë:nye:’ (i hope it will stir your mind) at the Walker Art Center. The contemplative installation slows the viewer down, inviting a soft sense of communion with objects such as salt bottles made from woven corn husks, each hung from a grid on the ceiling in honor of one of Simas’s relatives, and offering a site of peace amid fear and confusion.
The exhibition is inspired by her fifth great-grandfather’s half-brother Handsome Lake (Ganyodaiyo’), who experienced a vision after years of war and began teaching his people about working from the Seneca notion of a “good mind” in the early 1800s. The aforementioned sensory work, on view through July 5, is part of a two-part project, which also includes performances on May 13–16. Simas is most known for her choreography, but she has long explored visual art in tandem with dance, at times mounting installation exhibitions and performances concurrently, as she does with this project. She’s also been gaining national recognition as a visual artist, recently earning a Creative Capital Award for that side of her practice. Here, she discusses her latest endeavor.
Hyperallergic: How has the work changed since January?
Rosy Simas: The installation became more subtle. It was always intended to be a space that didn’t provoke, but maybe evoked. It is a space for people to rest their nervous systems, but also to inhabit a space made by a Haudenosaunee artist reflecting on what it means to try to create from a place of generating peace. I am interested in response, as opposed to reaction.
H: What is your experience of opening an exhibition in the midst of a federal occupation?
RS: When we knew that it was becoming more difficult for people to just exist around here, asking people to gather, that was sort of a no-brainer — that is not something that we can do. This isn’t a “just push through” moment. At the same time, I think having these kinds of spaces is really important during what feels like an oppressive occupation. It’s not even about a safe space. It’s a space where people can be with themselves.
Making work for a museum gallery is really difficult for me, because I like to think of the work as iterative, even within the time that it’s being shared. So for me, it’s difficult to put something up and let it be there until July, because things change.
H: You tend to want to go in there and shift things around?
RS: Yeah, the static nature of exhibitions is really challenging for me. That is part of why we’re doing so many community engagement activities around it, and also why there are two shows. The performance has more of a presentational aspect to it, where there is something being shared that has more dynamic ebb and flow, and it is also intended to draw an audience’s focus into what’s happening with the performers themselves — what they are expressing and what they are sharing.
That’s different from creating an environment for people to be inside of, where they can be with their own individual experience. There’s still something relational being asked of the people who go into the gallery. They’re asked to contemplate what I’ve put forward in terms of materials and what those materials mean. But it’s a little different than performance, where they’re being asked to exist in relationship to the performers.
H: One of the things that I experienced with the exhibition was the different spaces that you move through. You’re being invited to sit or to visit each station in an active way. It seemed almost like it’s choreography for the participant who’s viewing the work.
RS: In Haudenosaunee world, we do everything counterclockwise. There is an invitation to come in, turn to your right, and see the embroidery and the first set of treaty cloth panels. And then to see the salt bottles, the deerskin lace, the treaty panels with the corn husk, and end up back where the language pillar is, where you can feel the vibration of the language — how it feels through a sense of touch, and not just a sense of hearing. Nobody’s telling people to come in and move counterclockwise, but people are invited in that way.
My work as a body-based moving artist here is an important reference. The corn husk panels are hanging from a grid, and that’s intentional. The grid is made to reflect the way that I think as someone who primarily makes work in a theater setting: The way that the panels hang references how I think about stage design and how we experience performance in space.
H: On social media, you commented about the need for visibility for Native, BIPOC, and queer voices. Why is creating a space for that presence so important right now?
RS: Those voices are the ones that are being suppressed in all of this. We have to keep making work. There are people who haven’t been leaving their houses. There were people who became paralyzed and were unable to do their work. I have had serious moments of paralysis, for six to eight hours at a time, and that has been going on since January. And it’s not just because of this recent occupation, but it’s cumulative in many ways.
H: The space feels sacred. Was that something that you were going for?
RS: I don’t know that I would use that term, but what your experience of the space and how it feels to you is probably the most important thing to me.
It’s the same as making the dance work. From the first residency until now, the ideas around the dance work — not the meaning behind it, but the way that it’s presented and the space around it — shift depending on what environment we’re currently living in. And in Minneapolis since January, we’ve been experiencing a very particular environment, and my work happened to be made in that timeframe. I’ve put a lot of thought into creating a space that I think people need right now, in this very time.
Indianapolis, IN
Franklin Middle School’s ‘Welcome to Reality’ event prepares students for adulthood
FRANKLIN, Ind. (WISH) — Franklin Community Middle School will host its annual Welcome to Reality event on Friday, offering eighth-grade students a hands-on, immersive experience designed to prepare them for the financial and personal responsibilities of adulthood.
Welcome to Reality is an interactive simulation that places students in the role of a 28-year-old working adult. Prior to the event, students select a career based on their grade point average and are assigned a corresponding salary.
During the event, students navigate through a series of stations including housing, transportation, utilities, and food. Students are required to make real-life financial decisions and manage a check registry to track expenses.
“This event is absolutely pivotal in the transition to high school for our students,” Monica Anderson, FCMS school counselor said. “The students experience, in real time, how their education can impact their future.”
Community members play a critical role in the simulation by facilitating transactions and serving as tour guides for students throughout the event.
The event is scheduled in groups throughout the school day:
- 8:15 a.m. – 9:45 a.m.
- 10:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
- 1:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Cleveland, OH
Cleveland’s Inaugural Afterburn Music Festival Announces Star-Studded Lineup for August 2026
Cleveland, OH, May 05, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Victory Entertainment announced the full lineup for the inaugural Afterburn Music Festival, a two-day outdoor rock event taking place August 14–15, 2026, at Victory Park in North Ridgeville, Ohio. Featuring a mix of pop punk, alternative, hard rock, and metal, the festival brings together multi-generational acts for what is expected to be one of the region’s most anticipated summer music events.
Third Eye Blind and Skillet will headline the Afterburn Music Festival in Cleveland, Ohio.
Headlining Friday, August 14, are Third Eye Blind, known for hits including Semi-Charmed Life, Jumper, and Narcolepsy, alongside New Found Glory, the Florida pop-punk icons behind My Friends Over You and Hit or Miss.
Saturday, August 15, features Skillet, the multi-platinum rock powerhouse known for Monster, Feel Invincible, and Comatose, and Hoobastank, whose breakout single The Reason became one of the defining songs of the early 2000s.
The full line-up of artists performing across the two-day festival includes:
Friday, August 14
- Third Eye Blind
- New Found Glory
- The Maine
- Switchfoot
- lovelytheband
- Bayside
- Heart Attack Man
- Giveth
Saturday, August 15
- Skillet
- Hoobastank
- Set It Off
- Puddle of Mudd
- Drowning Pool
- Black Stone Cherry
- Small Town Titans
- Rusty
“The goal with Afterburn wasn’t to create just another festival—it was to build something that feels big without feeling out of reach,” said Joe Borkey, President of Victory Entertainment. “This is the kind of lineup you’d normally have to travel for. Now it’s happening right here in Northeast Ohio.”
Designed to appeal to fans across multiple eras of rock music, the Afterburn Music Festival blends legacy acts with modern favorites, offering a shared live experience for longtime fans and newer audiences alike. As demand for regional, drive-in festivals continues to grow, Afterburn provides an accessible alternative to destination events such as Lollapalooza and Sonic Temple Art & Music Festival.
Borkey added, “We curated a lineup of bands to resonate with fans across multiple generations. Whether you came of age on 90s alternative, grew up on pop-punk, or found your faith through rock music, the Afterburn will have a selection of artists performing just for you.”
The festival will feature two full-production stages, an immersive VIP area, and a wide selection of Northeast Ohio food trucks and vendors. Gates open at noon each day, with performances beginning at 12:30 p.m. The event is expected to draw thousands of attendees from across Ohio and the surrounding Midwest region.
Tickets are on sale now at theafterburnmusicfestival.com, with the first tier of general admission tickets priced at $89.65 for a single day, and $159.30 for both days of the festival. VIP options are also available. Early ticket tiers and VIP tickets are limited and expected to sell quickly.
Located just outside Cleveland, Victory Park, a 60+ acre sports and entertainment facility, offers a natural outdoor setting with ample on-site parking, providing convenient access for fans throughout Northeast Ohio.
Additional scheduling details and festival information will be announced in the coming weeks.
For tickets, artist information, and updates, visit theafterburnmusicfestival.com or follow The Afterburn Music Festival on social media. Media inquiries and press credential requests should be directed to BMA Media at jjrborkey@bmamedia.com. High-resolution media assets are available upon request.
ABOUT VICTORY ENTERTAINMENT
Victory Entertainment is a Northeast Ohio-based live entertainment company dedicated to producing high-quality music festivals and concert experiences that connect nationally recognized artists with regional audiences.
The Afterburn Ohio Music Festival logo
About The Afterburn Music Festival
The Afterburn Music Festival is a two-day outdoor rock event held August 14–15, 2026, at Victory Park in North Ridgeville, Ohio. Featuring headliners Third Eye Blind, New Found Glory, Skillet, and Hoobastank, the festival delivers a multi-genre lineup spanning pop punk, alternative, and hard rock. Tickets and information are available at theafterburnmusicfestival.com.
Press Inquiries
Jerrod Borkey Jr.
jjrborkey [at] bmamedia.com
4409754262
https://theafterburnmusicfestival.com/
4091 Erie Street, Willoughby, OH 44094
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