Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs is locked in a political dogfight with Republican state lawmakers, who condemned her veto last week of a ban on purchases of land by Chinese government-tied entities.
After a massive outcry, this week she introduced her own version of the bill, expanding it to other foreign adversaries and cutting a provision that would have allowed Chinese entities to acquire property in Arizona under specific circumstances for up to three years, to claim that her detractors are soft on China.
Something that has gone overlooked in the fracas is that the previous month, Hobbs had vetoed a different China-focused measure.
That bill would have effectively barred the use of technology produced by Chinese genomics companies blacklisted by the federal government over their ties to Beijing’s military and human-rights abuses.
It would have blocked health care and research institutions from using genetic sequencing equipment and software produced by firms on the Pentagon’s list of Chinese military companies and companies domiciled in a foreign adversary country.
The reason Hobbs gave for the veto: “This bill is unnecessary,” she wrote in a terse notification letter on May 2. She did not expand further.
It was the second year in a row that she had vetoed the proposal.
“Rep. Leo Biasiucci worked hard to make Arizona the first state to protect its citizens’ genomic data from the CCP in 2024, but Governor Hobbs vetoed his bill,” said Michael Lucci, the founder of State Armor, a nonprofit group advocating counter-Beijing legislation in over a dozen statehouses across the country.
“Since then, nine other states have enacted Biasiucci’s proposal,” he continued, in comments to National Review. “This year, Governor Hobbs vetoed Biasiucci’s genomic protection again, leaving Arizonan DNA exposed to a blacklisted CCP military company tied to genocide and involved in building genetically targeted weapons to harm Americans. This legislation is being enacted on strong bipartisan votes and signed by both Democrat and Republican governors everywhere it is considered, except for Arizona.”
The other states include Texas, Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, Florida, Tennessee, and Idaho. Louisiana’s legislature is close to passing the bill.
Hobbs’s office did not respond to National Review’s emails requesting comment today. Nor has Hobbs addressed the veto elsewhere.
Hobbs’s most recent veto of the genomics legislation comes amid a broader reckoning with the activities of Chinese genomics firms, the most prominent of which is BGI Genomics.
While the Shenzhen-based biotech giant maintains that there is nothing untoward about its work, media reporting has revealed its ties to People’s Liberation Army researchers on experiments scrutinizing the genetic makeup of minority groups targeted by the Chinese Communist Party.
The Commerce Department has added four BGI subsidiaries to a blacklist barring Americans from transacting with those entities, and in 2021, the Pentagon placed BGI on its list of Chinese military companies operating in the United States.
Senator Tom Cotton and former Representative Mike Gallagher, both prominent China hawks, have previously warned that joint research between BGI and the PLA could inform the development of the latter’s bioweapons programs.
Lucci also pointed to Hobbs’s vetoes of other China-focused legislation in the most recent session of the Arizona state legislature, saying that “she has vetoed more legislation that would protect her state against the CCP than any other governor in the country.”
“Some of her vetoes are being issued on the days when the FBI is arresting CCP scientists for bringing bioweapons into the country. It’s completely unfathomable.”
In addition to two bills focused on land purchase restrictions for individuals and entities tied to China, Hobbs also vetoed a bill this session that would have prohibited the use of telecommunications technology manufactured in China.
Unlike her statement about the genomics, measure, however, Hobbs has described her opposition to the other legislation with somewhat more specificity.
“This bill’s broad language would create undue difficulty for the business community and generate costs to taxpayers,” she wrote about the telecom security bill. Her veto letter about the land purchase restrictions was similarly more specific, warning both that it was not broad enough and that it could lead to “arbitrary enforcement.”
Hobbs has, at least in one case, demonstrated a willingness to reverse course on her opposition to China-related legislation. After last year vetoing the Arizona End Organ Harvesting Act, which bars insurers from granting coverage for transplants involving organs from China, she signed the bill last month.